
I can't remember what year it was that the Druids brought cattle-raiding to Pagan Spirit Gathering. I know for sure that it was when we were still down in Big Valley.
(Big Valley was a self-contained dell among the hollow hills of Southwestern Witchconsin that became, for one sweet and all-too-brief week each year, the New Pagan Republic. Delightful.)
Certainly, they introduced the phenomenon memorably. During Morning Meeting one day, the main spokesman for the PSG Druids stood up and announced that they were, as of today, reinstituting the ancient Celtic practice of the Táin (cattle raid).
Just then, a big, beefy guy, stark naked and painted woad-blue all over, came screaming into the meeting, circled us all, and ran screeching out again, his shoulder-length blonde hair streaming out behind him.
As I say, memorable.
The PSG Druids were an unruly lot, known for their raucous, late-night parties, and their alcohol-fueled public singing.
(If you're thinking Scots ballads or Auld Irish ditties the now, be disabused of the notion. As a song that made the rounds at the time put it,
The Druids are drinking again;
they've opened a bottle or ten.
They're raising their voices in song:
it's “Gilligan's Isle” all night long...
Cringe. One bean-Draoí, I remember, was in the habit, while walking down Merchants' Row, of suddenly—for no apparent reason—bursting into earnest performances of songs from, of all things, Jesus Christ Superstar. What, if anything, the Man from Galilee, or seven stranded castaways, had to do with Druidism—or anything else for that matter—this fearless blogger, for one, is clearly insufficiently evolved to fully grok.)
Here's how it worked. The Druids—usually at night—would steal something large and noticeable from someone else's campsite, and relocate it to their own. The original owners would then miss the item, and eventually steal it back.
Can you say, “escalation”?
Quickly the custom spread beyond the Druids. The teenaged boys of the festival, I recall, took up the practice with great gusto.
(Interesting, isn't it, how ancestral patterns tend, spontaneously, to reassert themselves.)
Eventually, things like picnic tables went missing. Soon there began to be hard feelings. Just like in the old days, things began to spin out of control.