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The longest day in the Northern Hemisphere is upon us: Midsummer has reached even up here in Scotland where the long days go on and on even when we don't have sun. We've had more than our share lately, which is a bit disconcerting.

I have been deep in Scottish fairy lore for a project I'm working on. It's not my usual bailiwick but I am enjoying the tour immensely. One of the unexpected delights (thanks to a recommendation of the Folk Horror Revival group) is A. D. Hope's A Midsummer Eve's Dream: Variations on a Theme by William Dunbar. I have mentioned the late medieval Scots poet in previous columns like A Headache in Medieval Scotland and A Meditation on Winter.

The Germans call it Rapunzel.

Rampion. Campanula rapunculus: an old European cultigen with a beautiful, star-shaped purple flower, whose leaves can be cooked or eaten raw like spinach; its parsnip-like white roots are likewise cooked or served in salads.

You know the story. The couple long for a child; finally she gets pregnant, but craves a salad made from the beautiful rampion that grows in the garden of the witch next door. (What is it about witches and gardens?)

Twice the husband manages to steal rampion undetected, but the third time the witch catches him. In the end, she lets him off with all the rampion he wants, but on one condition: she gets the child.

In due course, the longed-for daughter is born. They name her—of course—Rampion.

And once she's weaned, she goes to the witch.

No one seems to wonder why the witch wants the child. (A weanling is too big and tough to eat.) But the reason seems clear enough. The witch has no daughter of her own. What she's looking for is an apprentice, a successor.

A writer explains what fairy tales can reveal about our heritage. We take a look at witchcraft in Japanese popular culture. And a reviewer explains the appeal of The Librarians. It's Airy Monday, our weekly segment on magic and religion in popular culture! All this and more for the Pagan News Beagle!

Who says pop culture doesn't matter? This week for Airy Monday we took at the ways that pop culture, society, and religion all interconnect. Read about the connection of Mad Max: Fury Road to the Morrigan, popular subversions of fairy tales, and how the political intrigue of ancient Greece compares to Game of Thrones. All this and more for the Pagan News Beagle!

On to Something

I am the letter and you are the hot wax.
I am the needle and you, the dancing midget.
We stuff our mouths – breadcrumbs and magpies.

There is a subtle narrative that exists in the desert, where I meander through a series of washes that lead into canyons. I am nicely secluded, despite being in the middle of one of the West’s largest cities. Summertime in the Sonoran Desert is perfect for a solitary fox like me… I scurry and watch, quietly observing ripening tunas on prickly pear, and listen to the curve-billed thrasher chiming a sharp morning hello to fellow winged compadres. The air is hot, even at 4:30am. The breeze is close but discomforting in its stagnant hold of sand and baked stone. I take a seat on the granite, smoothed by monsoon water flow, and wait for a story to be told.

This is the wash where I have spent many hours. When I arrived in Phoenix in 2007, South Mountain Park, or Muhadag Do’ag, as the range is known by the O’odham nations, was my first taste of this unusual land of light and edge. I have met many wild companions during my solo hikes here. I have listened to the song of five coyotes as they created day from night – turning stars into saguaro blooms. This is the place I watched resident owls descent in twilight, swooping low from their granite and gneiss shelters and out onto the cityscape, into December’s near-chill nights.