OLD CHRISTMAS EVE

Twas but a flicker in the tallow flame burning in the window. I lit it so that he may find his way home. Thank the Lord God. It was nothing but the rude wind from the hill where the fir tree stands.

Its Christmas Eve tonight. Old Christmas himself saunters the hoary lanes with his dripping candles and evergreens. Stop by Old Man. Please.

I've left him some ale and some cheese from the dairy lest he forgets to bless us with his mistletoes and sage. A blessing for the Yule and the year to follow when we will need his magik luck to run well our stony soils and meagre crops. Yes, it would be truly good. But I'll leave no carrots for Old Man Christmas.

Let's pray its him and not .... the other one. The one who feigns civility and knocks lower down the wood with his furred paw mucked from leaping in the empty furlongs of our darknesses.

In disguise he comes, the evil one. A field animal at home in the worst of winter, its eyes accustomed to the black of night, its legs muscled from clearing our graves, insulting the dead with steaming piss dripping from its legs. 

Fleet of foot and fetid breath, that devil's long front-teeth seem chiselled for tubers but it only plays with them. Its diet is finer for it feasts on our weaknesses on this Eve of Christ and drinks the gilded liquor of our waning souls.

It is to be feared, the ancient goblin from the fields. The smiling leveret. The rabbit-jack no less.

I've lit the hearth and wait nervously for my missing man. The excited bairns are bedded by the hearth but my husband isn't here, detained no doubt from market work whence he sold our sows yesterday to wealthy folk, the twenty third. He's vowed to fetch something back for our sacred table this Christmas Day.

I hope he's safe this cold eve, perhaps curled in soft hay inside a forest hut or nestled in a byre where cattle-breath warms his face.

Dear Lord, do not let him meet the hopping one as it springs between the thorns and hips searching for the lame on this night of nights, its sagging belly hollow as the howling pit from which it sprang.

But lo, I hear something, some sound anew in the drape of dark. The hearth shudders as frost crackles beyond the door where two feet tread. Or God forbid, four filthy paws.

Knock, knock, knock!

High upon the door I hear the knocks and bound for the bar to let him through, my man, frozen to the bone, pale and staring like a lunatic.

He walks and grins. The bairns wake up.

It is only then I see the hare upon his back and He is in.