Toe in the Water

Walpurgisnacht

Digging around in the archives, I came upon this:

Walpurgisnacht

One of my favourite literary tricks (although frowned upon by the powers that be) is to seize the readers by the lapels and talk excitedly into their faces. So, if I, for instance, were to decide upon a chief character by the name of Chariadne, I might suddenly insist upon accurate pronunciation of the word, emphasising that the first two letters be spoken as a K, rather than the obvious options of CH or SH. Pointing out that each vowel is intended to have its day, none being silent, I would then have to maintain that the last two letters be sounded as NEE and not NAY or NUH.

In similar fashion, when prompted to write a story about Walpurgis Night, I am immediately compelled to change it to Walpurgisnacht, the German being the way I first heard mention of the feast. It is, after all, a strange thing to English minds, the festival never having gained a foothold in Britain apart from a brief moment in the villages of Lincolnshire, amounting to no more than hanging a few cowslips to ward off evil. The Germans make much more of it and have built an atmosphere both dark and forbidding around what was once a Christian festival. In my memory, it is the inspiration for a scene in Goethe’s Faust that relies heavily upon witchy influences. Oh, those jolly Germans.

Imagine my disappointment, then, on being advised by Wikipedia that the whole thing began as a feast day celebrating a Saint Walpurga. I suppose it’s mildly satisfying that, after centuries of being accused of stealing pagan festivals, Christianity can at last level the same accusation at the opposition. But the threads of meaning become too complex for me to bother with when in search of a short story and I think I need to consider instead the other prompt, “A test of courage.” All that remains it is to think of something horrifying in that context. And to stay well away from Wikipedia!


Word count: 343