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If you don't know Dorothy Edwards' 1981 The Witches and the Grinnygog, you're in for a treat. (For those of you who didn't grow up speaking Witch, a Grinnygog is a “Himmage” of the Horned God.) Even the 1983 BBC children's miniseries version has its moments.

One of the best is this old Witch song, half-remembered by their contemporary descendants among families of the Old Blood.

Both the book and TV versions are incomplete, so I put the pieces together along with some of my own. Just add round dance and voilà: a sweet little power-raising chant for your next coven meeting, singable to the tune of the show's title song.

Don't quite understand it all? That's by design. (Hint: "horn" here is a verb.)

That's witching for you: always leave room for mystery.

Great Herne Would Horn

What would you do if you came down one morning and found shit on the altar?

Literal shit?

It happened to a friend of mine.

She'd recently moved the household altar, with its antlered Grinnygog* and photos of the dead, from a wall-shelf upstairs to a beautiful painted alcove downstairs. By aesthetic standards, the move was a quantum improvement, and yet, there it was: desecration.

What do you do when there's shit on the altar? Well, first you wash everything as thoroughly as you can, and strew the altar with salt.

Then you figure out what's going on, and what you need to do about it.

It turns out that the shit wasn't actually shit, but—hardly an improvement—spew.

The kitty had jumped up on the altar, eaten the food offerings, and then puked them back up. Yuck.

Well, kitties will be kitties. Still, when it comes to the sacred, these things don't just happen.

Did you know that there's a specific name for a statue of the Horned God?

Neither did I, until I read Dorothy Edward's 1981 children's novel, The Witches and the Grinnygog.

Back during the Troubles, goes the story (the Witch Troubles, not the Irish ones), the three appointed Keepers of the most sacred image of the Master just barely manage to escape (on brooms) with their lives and the Lord. They hide Him away in a safe place, and go into a deep, deep sleep until such a time as they shall be needed again.

That time is our day. Where's the best place to hide a Grinnygog? Well, of course, precisely where no one would ever think to look for Him: among the carvings of the local church.

But now the historic church is being dismantled stone by stone, preparatory to being moved to a new location, and the Lord is once more in danger. (Or is He?) His guardians awake, and their magic along with them.