Druid

I am the seer whose stallion eye gallops over distant hills,
Who changes shape at will and casts mists over the land,
Raises winds and tempests, and baffles enemies with deceptions.
I hold both a draught of forgetfulness and a healing potion;
I can dry up watercourses or turn the tide of battle;
I can prophesy and divine, read omens of all kinds,
Speak the tongues of animals, merge with trees, rocks and rivers,
Curse men to destruction or raise the dead;
All magic is mine, all the rhymes and mysteries of these isles.
Immortal, I walk through the centuries, sacrificing to the gods,
Scion of the Tuatha De Danaan,son and lover of the Goddess;
I sing the sea’s enchantment, the night’s beguiling;
I am man and wolf, male and female, hill and vale,
Sea-wind and wave-surge, rock and plant, flare of horses’ manes,
One with all, all will, intuition and desire;
I am the darkness in the pupil of your eye;
Wherever I desire to be, there I am.
I have drunk of the cauldron, all wisdom is mine;
My rhyme makes a hovel a shining castle, a puddle the moat against foes;
The pauper’s rags become a king’s mantle;
All glamourie is at my word’s command;
My snake eyes transfix and compel.
I wear the serpent’s egg about my neck,
Crystal born of twining vipers’ congress under summer moon,
Green globe of their spittle hissed into the air,
That I, most daring, snatched in a cloth ere it fell,
And ,mounted on a swift steed, spirited away,
Chased headlong by the maddened serpents across fields,
Till, leaping a running stream, I escaped
Where they, in their fury, could not follow;
And so the prize ,the blessing of the gods, was mine,
And dangles now prepotent about my neck,
Proof against evil and licence of office,
Winner of lawsuits and glass of speculation.

Tuatha De Danaan,keepers of the island, fathers of the soul,
Strengthen my hand and vouchsafe me your magic,
Point me always toward the navigator’s stars,
And I will sing of your shining victories over evil,
Your vanquishing off the dark Fomorian hordes,
Those cruel cunning demons in the sea’s deepest pit,
Routed by your greatness to the Land of the Dead,
Their black sorcery banished from Ireland.
I see the souls of the dead assume new bodies,
The endless cycles of transmigration and reincarnation;
I am the man of many lifetimes, counsellor of kings;
Mine is the true throne, the earth’s guarantor
That rivers teem, fields ripen, orchards bow down with fruit.
I am the man of marriage and sacrifice,
Binder of sheaves, whose hand grasps the sickle of the sun;
I bless the man and woman making love in the furrows;
My speech is the storm of rich seed.
O hallowed doak,lightning-beloved,pillar of fire in the mind,
Mistletoe ignites upon your branches and beckons
Priestly procession across silent fields.

I am the Glass Castle’s keeper, the Grail Knight mounted for the quest,
Lion-lord of the zodiac and the stone circle;
I see the grail borne floating through the air,
Bestowing upon the beholder the meat and drink of his desire.
The Stone of Destiny shrieks in my mind,
As when it felt the feet of King Conn of the Hundred Battles
As he paced the battlements of Tara, keeping vigil with the dawn,
Scanning the heavens for fortune’s favour
And the Stone foretold the future of the realm.

This elixir from my cupped hands heals all wounds
And cures all ills with its perfect song;
I am the hooded well-keeper,amster of memory and forgetfulness,
My rowan wand inscribes the air and all things do its bidding.
I hear the witching music of the silver apple bough
Leading me to the Land of the Gods,
Whose apples are the pilgrim’s salvation,
Whose music purges all sorrow and care
And lulls men into blissful oblivion.
The thumb of knowledge witnesses all;
Pressing it to my lips ,I speak the future,;
I have eaten the flesh of the salmon
That swims in the well beneath the hazel-trees
And lives on the nuts that fall from the branches.
I am come back from the Realm of fairies;
I am esk,adder,lion,red-hot iron, mother-naked man,
Then, dipped in milk and water, stand raw and absolved.
Here, take this chance-found iron horeshoe,cast from a grey mare’s hind leg;
Nail it above your door, pointing skyward,
And evil shall not enter the house.

I chew the pig’s flesh and fall asleep;
Song flies to my lips; when I awake sing,
And my song is the breath of all that is, all that has been and will be.
I cure with herbs and stones, wave the rowan in evil’s face;
Toad-stone and snake-stone are my friends and protectors;
The shamrock’s holy trinity watches over me.
I am born a prince of rainbows;
My hand was not made for the plough!
Free of the insubstantial world’s distractions,
I roam where I will, in wondrous other-realms,
And no man may arrest me or treat me with disrespect.
Do your cattle waste away? Does your child pine and sicken?
Then the evil eye has singled you out for revenge,
Its envy sucking dry the sweetest marrow,
Battening on the finest horse, the prettiest child.
How your fine horse sweats and trembles and weakens day by day!
How your best cow’s udders shrivel and give no milk!
How your dear child stares into space with empty eyes!
Enemy mine, I shall make you lose your wits
With a wisp of grass flung in your hated face!
Sickness and distemper I wreak on my enemies,
Melting their clay effigies in fire,
So they waste away to nothing and lose the will to live;
I puncture them with elf-arrows, eviscerate them with oaths.
I flay men alive with incantations, scorch the eyeballs from their skulls;
Disfigure them with pestilence and dislocate their bones;
Undo their slackened sinews beyond repair;
Curse and jibe them to the depths of hell.
My satires are the killing scourge of shame;
I shall turn the blood in your veins to poison,
Be the thorn that bleeds you to death!

I am the lord of second sight,
The wraiths of men made visible to my eyes,
Their astral bodies roaming where no other can see;
I see events and people yet unborn,
And all things far-off and still unknown;
I see the shrouds sewn for the laughing,
And the black dog that will howl at the open grave.
I dance with the fairies, and share their powers,
I ken their dwellings and movements, and parley in their tongue;
My sight has been awakened and trained with method;
The gods are my teachers and protectors,
The dead are ever close to guide my hand.
I riddle you the riddles of existence,
Expound and resolve the perplexities that confound;
Art and science are twin in me,
I am teller of tales, diplomat of worlds.
Come, test your wits against me, and I shall triumph!
I am lord of Beltane; my fire lights the wicker man!

I am swineherd of words,
The black sow is my familiar,
And I ride a white mare by the seashore,
The shouting sea my monster of love!
I know all friends and foes on land and water;
Does the Loathly lady come to your door, begging shelter?
Take her in and feed her, and the kindness of your home
Will deliver her from her spell’s captivity.
The washerwoman comes to the ford after dark,
To wash the shrouds of those soon to die;
Evil follows upon the sight of her,
But come between her and the water
And she must grant any boon you ask.
The banshee keens in the night, foretelling doom,
Dark-cloaked old crone crouched crying on a rock,
Crooked and bony and hideous-eyed,
Long white hair floating in the wind.
The Morrigan ,disguised as a carrion crow,
Scavenges on the battlefield, tearing flesh from bone;
Crows and ravens peck out the eyes of the living,
Loosing madness from under their wings.
Beware the kelpie that haunts fords and pools;
He who mounts the wild black horse with staring eyes,
Thinking to cross the stream on his back,
Will find himself thrown off mid-stream and drowned.

Fairies of raths and barrows, remnants of the Tuatha De Danaan,
Wise beyond reason, deserving of oblation,
Guardians of standing stones and crops in the fields,
I move between you and the living;
I greet you in woods and copses, rocks ,trees and lochs;
The wren and the raven are my kin,
Birds’ voices are my guide amid confusion,
Smoke and flames of sacred fires, shapes and motions of clouds
Are my scripture, and the stars command me;
I reckon the patterns of destiny in a sheep’s clavicle;
My alphabet is everywhere ,the fey world my orchard of words.
I hear the spirit call, and its distant echo;
By the flight of birds and the movements of animals,
By visions in crystals and dreams in the night,
I scry the future; any fate is whispered in my ear;
My thumbs twitch with unearthly intuitions;
Whatsoever I desire to know is revealed to me.;
The visions of ages whelm in my head,
And I utter in the voices of gods.
I am the seer wrapped in a bull’s hide,
Stretched sleeping behind the waterfall, awaiting revelation.

At Samhain, on November eve, when fires are quenched
And rekindled, and the harvest of souls gathered in,
The dead wander free and wayfarers go in peril,
And everywhere is mischief and confusion.
Then the last corn-sheaf is cut and dressed as the ancient hag;
Bonfires are lit on hilltops; sacrifice is offered to the gods;
The black sow devours her own farrow,
Yet the torch is passed from hand to hand, from heart to heart,
And the fire survives the trial of night.
Ghosts of the dead swarm around me,
Weird and horrible, forbidding all approach,
Heralds of calamity, their magic more terrible than death!
I see among them the fetch whose face is my own,
My twin in the netherworld, my stalking shadow,
Beside me always, reflecting me back to front.


I am the sword of Finn MacCoul, tempered in hound’s blood,
Invincible in battle, sharper than death itself;
I keep the genealogy of men, the laws and annals of mind;
My spells and charms aaare legion; I am master of taboo;
Man’s fate is in my keeping, for I swear him to his duties;
My will is the dragon, maker of worlds,
Infinite in power, persuasion and force;
I know the nature of all creatures and things,
Becoming this or that at a glance,
For all forms are in the flow, all elements are altered by mind;
I chant the rhymes of transformation;
I wish myself invisible; change shape; evade all capture;
I circle with the deosil sun, in the right,
And my deeds are propitious, blessed by the sun;
I walk on fire without fear or harm,
And raise the cup of plenty, from which all tastes are poured.
In the quarter before sunrise, barefoot and fasting,
I circumambulate the house with the sun,
Eyes closed, round to the doorstep,
And when I open my eyes, and peer through the circle
Made by my finger and thumb,
The first thing I see shall be my witness,
Showing me the whole world, far into the distance.
If the king shirks and sins, if he betrays his sainted office,
The land will fall waste, the springs cease and the pastures wither,
And the lost tribe wander without hope.
Then only the Grail can save and replenish,
The cauldron of plenty and inspiration,
That repels the unworthy and cures the wounded soul,
If only the right man asks the right question,
Healing the broken world whole.