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"In the old language of the Witches, every word has three meanings: something good, something bad, and something to do with a cow."

What is it about animal proteins that makes them so defining?

Like the ancestral Hwicce, the original tribe of Witches, I live in Beef Country. I'd never really realized to just what degree the US is Beef Country—our national dish being (arguably) the hamburger, after all—until I spent some time in Germany.

Germany, of course, is decidedly not Beef Country. When, in her wisdom, the Great Mother gave to each of the peoples their own proper foods, she gave to the Germans swine. Germany is Pork Country, its national dish the sausage.

This culinary fact has both spatial and sociological implications.

Cattle pasture. They eat lots and lots of grass. It takes a certain amount of land to raise a cow.

Swine are a better choice for places were the average joe (or jane) simply doesn't own—or have access to—much land. Fence the pig in a sty, and feed it on your own scraps.

Cattle = more space; swine = less.

Myself a lifelong vegetarian (gods help me, it's been 50 years now), of course, I eat neither pork nor beef, being a whitemeats kind of guy: that's the ancestral term for dairy products.

The Tale of Osred Gleeman

In the days of Osbert, King of the Hwicce, there was among his hearth-companions a certain man who knew no songs, and indeed, was wholly lacking in gleecraft, and the name of this man was Osred.

When, at a feast, he would see the harp approaching, when each would take it in turn to sing for the others, he would arise, and leave the beer-hall, and go to sleep in the cow-byre instead.

On one such occasion, he went to the cow-byre, and there fell asleep. There he dreamt that someone stood before him, and addressed him, and called him by name.

Osred, he said, sing me something.

He answered, saying, I cannot sing. That is why I left the beer-hall and came here: because I cannot sing.

Once again the speaker said, Nevertheless, you must sing for me.

Of what shall I sing? asked Osred.

Sing to me of Beowulf, he said.

Thereupon, he began to sing, and this is what he sang:

Beowulf I sing, best of kings,

guest of Hrothgar, Grendel's bane:

of all kings, keenest to glory,

of all men, liefest to love.

When he awoke, he remembered this stave, to which he soon added more staves in a like manner.

Then he arose, and went to his lord at his gift-stool, and told him of this dream, and of the gift which he had received. Then he sang for him the staves which he had made, and all who heard them wondered at their sweetness and beauty.

Sing to me of Sigemund Wyrm's-bane, said the king, and so he undertook the task and went away, and in the morning he sang to them of Sigemund and of his mighty wyrm-slaying.

Sing to me now of Shield Sheaving, said the king, and so, in the next morning, he did.

So it is that Osred received the gift of gleecraft, which consisted of this: that whatever tale he heard, he could in one night turn it into the finest staves, such that all who heard them marveled and longed to hear more, like some prize cow who grazes and, chewing her cud, in the morning produces the sweetest and creamiest milk, which all long to drink.

Long years he dwelt in the hall of Osbert, King of the Hwicce, and was accounted among the foremost of gleemen, and many rings he received from him.

Indeed, do we not sing his songs to this very day?

A Saga of the Latter-Day Hwicce

Here's the conceit: that modern-day witches derive (at some remove or other) "off of" the old Hwicce tribe (and kingdom) of Anglo-Saxon days. Historical or not, be it admitted, it does make one fine story.

Welcome to the life of a full-time witch and amateur linguist.

Some time back, I'd riffed, along these lines, off of the first line of Beowulf:

Hwaet, wé Seax-Hwicca in [something, begins with S]-dagum...

Lo, we Knife-Witches in [something, begins with S]-days...

I knew that the word that I couldn't remember had to begin with S, because it needed to alliterate with seax: that's how ancient Germanic poetry works, by initial rhyme. But what that word was, I couldn't remember.

(Why “Knife-Witches”? Well, the context required a weapon—“Lo, we Spear-Danes” is how Beowulf begins—and modern witches are preeminently a People of the Knife, which we generally call “athame.” Of course, the old Hwicce were a People of the Knife as well; their kinfolk the Saxons were named precisely for their characteristic knife, the seax. It's also an hommage of sorts to the original Anglo-Saxon witchery of modern times, Uncle Bucky's Seax-Wicca.)*

Seeking the phrase, I search my computer files.

Nada.

Fine. I search my on-line posts on the topic, certain that I've used the phrase as a tantalizing epigraph somewhere or other.

Gornisht.

In increasing desperation, I pick up my little black sketchbook and scan entries on the left-hand side, working (in proper witchly fashion) backwards in time, from the most recent back to the beginning of the volume.

(The left-hand side is where I jot phrases and seed ideas; the right is for longer and more developed thoughts.)

Af klum.

Grinding my teeth, I reverse, scanning entries on the right-hand pages, working from the beginning. It's a slow and difficult process; I keep getting distracted by memorable phrases and ideas that I'd like to expand on.

Finally, about 20 pages in, I give up. “I'm turning in,” I think. “I'll keep going in the morning.”

At that very moment I find what I'm looking for, there at the bottom of the page.

Hwaet, wé Seax-Hwicca in síð-dagum...

Lo, we Knife-Witches in these latter days...

Sometimes the gods speak through meaningful coincidence.

But wait: there's more.

 “Ah, that was a proper nine-cow, that was.”

Thank Goddess, the ritual is finally over.

The friend standing beside me turns and whispers in my ear: “Two goats.”

I smile and nod.

If anything, she's being generous. Me, I'm thinking chickens, myself.

Back in the days when Witches were Hwicce, we counted our wealth in livestock. Our modern word fee (1500 years ago, it was feoh) originally meant “cow.”

That's why rituals are rated in animals.

What my friend was talking about is the fee—number of animals—you would have had to pay the ritual specialist in order to get a ritual of comparable quality back in old tribal days.

These days, when you see online reviews of rituals, they'll sometimes be accompanied by little pictures of animals: chickens, goats, cows.

Think of it as a Star-rating for ritual.

Cows are the best: the more the better.

The best possible ritual is a nine-cow ritual. That's the one that, for the very best of reasons, you'll remember for the rest of your life, the one that they'll still be talking about 100 years from now.

The ratings go down from there. Even a one-cow ritual is still a good ritual.

Considerably less prestigious than cows are goats.

(Depending on where and when we've talking, a good milch cow would have brought you anywhere between 20 and 50 goats apiece.)

A nine-goat ritual, well...let me be generous and say that it's better than a two-goat ritual.

Then there are the real stinkers: the ones you'll remember for the rest of your life, but for the very worst of reasons.

Those are the ones that are rated in chickens.

In the Forest of the Hwicce

Place-names have a long memory.

Six surviving place-names in modern Britain preserve the memory of the Hwicce, the original Anglo-Saxon Tribe of Witches, who for some 225 years inhabited a territory in the Cotswolds and Severn Basin of what is now southwestern England: Whichford (Warwickshire), Wichenford, Wychbury Hill, Wyche, and Droitwich (Worcestershire), and Wychwood (Oxfordshire). Unsurprisingly, with one exception, all of them lie within the boundaries of the original Kingdom (or occasionally—witches being witches—Queendom) of the Witches.

Wychwood, the “forest of the Hwicce,” is the anomalous outlier.

Not all witches, of course, are witches. With trees, in particular, you have to be careful. Both the witch elm and witch hazel originally had nothing to do with witches of our sort, but derive instead from yet another Anglo-Saxon root (wice) meaning “bendable, pliable.” (The same root survives in “wicker.”)

Flexible as we may be, though, historical data makes it clear that the witches of Wychwood were originally the H-and-Two-C, and not the No-H-and-One-C, kind.

So how did Hwicce end up in non-Hwicce territory?

 “Second, Mother of Third”

 To Pagan Friends, Going to the City of Hekate

“They worship the Moon here, just like we do at home.”

—Osred Osbertson to his brother Oswin, King of the Hwicce

Remember.

Remember, it is not to Istanbul that you go, neither to Constantinople.

Rather, you go to Byzantium: pagan Byzantium, City of Hekate, City of the Moon.

She, Threefold Lady, was the city's patron in its youth. Now, in its age, she is its patron still. From each mosque, her crescents proclaim her; let them say what they will.

There is no Moon but Her.

(Whose sacred dogs still rule those streets by night?)

Say what they will, Holy Wisdom is hers, as it was and always shall be. From the ancients we know that, among its columns, columns from the far-famed temple of Artemis of Ephesus, wonder of the world, still stand, remembering. Find them, feel them, remember.

(We of the Old Ways remember that things might have been far otherwise. We remember, and we tell those tales, remembering.)

She waxes, she wanes, she waxes again. What was hers, is still, and ever shall be.