Song of the Day - 23rd June

Today is Saint John's Eve, the eve of the feast day of Saint John the Baptist. It is one of only two feast days marking a saint's earthly birth (the other being the nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary on 8 September).

The Gospel of Luke states that John was born six months before Jesus; thus, the feast of John the Baptist’s birth was fixed on 24 June, six months before Christmas. In the Roman calendar, 24 June was the date of the summer solstice, and Saint John's Eve is closely associated with Midsummer festivities in Europe. Traditions are similar to those of May Day, and include bonfires (Saint John's fires), feasting, processions, church services, and gathering wild plants.

The poem I have set is not remotely religious, but it is called St. John's Eve by Madison Julius Cawein. It tells a tale of elves and wizards, trolls and Nis (a household spirit in Norse folklore) revelling on Saint John's Eve, trying to tempt the narrator into who knows what, but he was too clever, recalling, "But her wily witcheries well I knew / And the philtre over my shoulder threw / On St. John's Eve."

Madison Cawein was a poet from Louisville, Kentucky, whose poem "Waste Land" has been linked with T. S. Eliot's later The Waste Land.

Cawein's father made patent medicines from herbs. Cawein thus became acquainted with and developed a love for local nature as a child. He worked in a Cincinnati pool hall as an assistant cashier for six years, saving his pay so he could return home to write. His output was thirty-six books and 1,500 poems. He was known as the "Keats of Kentucky."

This song is being Beta tested by the City of Canterbury Chamber Choir

St. John's Eve.

By Madison Julius Cawein

I

Dizzily round

On the elf-hills white in the yellow moonlight

To a sweet, unholy, ravishing sound

Of wizard voices from underground,

Their mazy dance the Elle-maids wound

On St. John's Eve.

II

Beautiful white,

Like a wreath of mist by the starbeams kissed;

And frail, sweet faces bloomed out on the night

From floating tresses of glow-worm light,

That puffed like foam to the left and the right

On St. John's Eve.

III

Warily there

They flashed like a rill which the moonbeams fill,

But I saw what a mockery all of them were

With their hollow bodies, when the moonlit air

Rayed out through their eyes with a sudden glare

On St. John's Eve.

IV

Solemnly sweet,

By the river's banks in the rushes' ranks,

The Necks their sorrowful songs repeat:

A music of winds over dipping wheat,

Of moss-dulled cascades seemed to meet

On St. John's Eve.

V

Drowsily swam

The fire-flies fleet in eddies of heat;

Through the willows a glimmer of gold harps came,

And I saw their hair like a misty flame

Bunched over white brows, too white to name,

On St. John's Eve.

VI

Beggarly torn,

A wizen chap in a red-peaked cap,

All gray with the chaff and dust of the corn,

And strong with the pungent scent of the barn,

The Nis scowled under the flowering thorn

On St. John's Eve.

VII

Merrily call

The singing crickets in the twinkling thickets,

And the Troll hill rose on pillars tall,

Crimson pillars that ranked a hall

Where the beak-nosed Trolls were holding a ball

On St. John's Eve.

VIII

Reveling flew

From beakers of gold the wassail old;

And she reached me a goblet brimmed bright with dew -

But her wily witcheries well I knew,

And the philtre over my shoulder threw

On St. John's Eve.