Grumpy Old Witchcraft

So to the second half of the Dark Gathering – the arrival of the Mari Lwyds and the Honouring of the Ancestors.  Following a quick and much needed mulled cider it was time to line-up the drummers ready to send the signal to the Procession to commence.  This is a part of the proceedings where the general public, if they have the ability, can join in with the tribal drumming.

Also this was the time for Penkevyll to emerge from her stable with her Teazers to call the Mari Lwyds to the Museum of Witchcraft & Magic.  As anticipated the Teazers led by Laetitia Latham-Jones danced and wove their magic upon the crowd and Penkevyll to the sound of trance-like tribal drumming.

Shortly after 6 pm the Lantern Procession headed off for the Museum led ably by Laura Marshall from Beltane accompanied by many differing characters including the famous Mari…

There is an ancient Chinese curse which goes: “May you live in interesting times.”  There have been times this past year when I have wondered whether I had unknowingly offended someone of oriental persuasion when it came to the Dark Gathering!  There has also been the odd occasion when I wondered whether it was actually going to happen or not, especially when it came to wrangling with the dead hand of bureaucracy.  Indeed as the date of this year’s Dark Gathering approached there was a last minute flurry of obstacles, cancellations and complications – not to mention wet weather that seemed to take on biblical proportions!

Undaunted we soldiered on…

On the day, we had to put out a disclaimer on the website and social media that there was a police warning of a yellow flood alert on some of the roads approaching Boscastle and for folks to be aware…

To say that the past year as the organiser of the Dark Gathering has been challenging would be the understatement of the year!  Sometimes an event can prove to be so popular it can become the victim of it’s own success, and now that the Gathering regularly attracts many hundreds of people it has also brought upon itself the scrutiny of the red tape brigade.  I personally have been on a very steep learning curve including learning new jargon, PLI, RA, TEN not to mention H&S!  Thankfully I have had the help of the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic’s Events Manager who has diligently steered me through the minefield of licenses, permissions and insurances required by various departments and organisations.  He has been a godsend.  🙂

What this preamble is leading to is to inform you that there may well be a few changes to the way we run things…

There have been some significant changes in parking regulations at Boscastle due to local council decisions.  Henceforth there will no longer be a facility for overnight parking in the main car park.    Any folk who decide to flout this ruling face the very real risk of a parking fine.

So, the small village of camper vans that used to emerge on the Friday night of the Dark Gathering, only to slowly disappear on the Sunday, alas is now a thing of the past in this particular car park.

There will be a field set aside for Performers and Crew but there will be no facilities available.  I will be informing people of where this site is as soon as it is confirmed by the local farmer.  Unfortunately this option is not available to members of the public – however as a result of no overnight camping there will be…

We live in interesting times and the Dark Gathering has not been immune to these fluctuating events.  Sadly I have to announce that our Guest Side, Wild Hunt Bedlam Morris have reluctantly had to cancel their appearance this year due to unforeseen circumstances.  We were very disappointed by this and we hope that Wild Hunt will be able to appear at a Gathering at some point in the future.

Needless to say this caused some avid searching around for a replacement side and we found and decided upon an intriguing act – Huginn and Muninn.

They have been described as ‘Ragnarock ‘n Roll’ and are advertised as ‘a contemporary surrealist two person Border Morris side.  They dance tales of Huginn and Muninn’s adventures from the pantheon of Norse myths, ably kept in check by the music of Odin himself.’  We are hoping that everyone will be well entertained by such…

This is a quick post to let folks know that we have a new page to our Dark Gathering Website.  In pursuit of funding initiatives we have created a Merchandise page which we will add to as and when.  We aim to create high quality items at an affordable cost,  whilst at the same time adding to our funds.

Once again we give thanks to our in-house graphic designer, Chris White.  🙂

Merchandise Page

The sixth annual Dark Gathering has yet again an exciting line-up with something, hopefully, for everyone.  So it’s time to give a bit more detail and introduce the performers to you.

The day will kick off with spooky tales from  Lisa Schneidau who is an experienced storyteller and environmentalist from Dartmoor.  She will bring together her love of nature and the Land with a magical flair that I’m sure will enchant all who attend the session.

Lisa Schneidau

Here are the details:

Wise Women and Witches
Stories from the Isles of Britain

The venue will be the library at the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic.  Given the rarity of some of the books, there is an absolute ban on any food and drink being brought into the library with no browsing of books permitted on this occasion.

There will be two shows, 10am and 11am (running time 50 minutes).  Suitable…

This year saw a brief, unexpected and not-to-be-repeated Boscastle Derby which involved the Mari Lwyds in a race down to the harbour!

Even the most well ordered event can suffer from blips, miscommunication and things getting lost in translation. Our Lantern Procession this year managed to include all of these! Fortunately, we were well able to absorb all this and managed to carry on, according to most onlookers, seamlessly(!) – the worst that happened was that timings got mangled.

The Dark Gathering, which has been recently described as Cornwall’s Annual Halloween event, has almost outgrown itself in popularity.  Sometimes I think that folk forget that Boscastle is a small fishing village and treat it like a town in some ways.  The locals do their level best to accommodate most people’s requirements and I feel that this needs to be remembered when visiting, whether as a performer or an audience member. …

Over the years the Dark Gathering has gathered momentum and has been supported in its endeavours by generous donations from both the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic and Boscastle Chamber of Commerce.  We feel it is time for us to start finding our own ways of funding the event through other means as well so we have begun to look at selling merchandise.  This year we set that particular ball rolling by selling badges, and being rather theatrical types, we wanted to produce a specific character to sell them.  Enter the Pedlar!

I chose one of our friends who had offered help, Michelle Elliot aka Selkie Shell to be the Pedlar and she was brilliant!  She created a wonderful character who I believe met quite a few people over the afternoon as she had sold out in a couple of hours!  However, if you wanted to buy some badges as…