Autumn

 I went out walking at 6:30 this morning, not nearly as early as I'd like, but at least I was out there.  The first morning of Autumn smelled of apples, I'm not kidding, although I'm not aware of any apple groves within two miles of here, and of recently rained-on earth, though we haven't had rain in a week.  

Now the air smells of pollution, and I'm so sleepy that I'm having trouble studying.  Must study.

Not quite a book review

This week I started reading Fearless Girls, Wise Women & Beloved Sisters.  Well, actually I read the introduction a couple of weeks ago, but I read the first story in the collection this week, and I feel like I want to take a minute to comment on it.  

In the first story, which is called something like "The Stolen Baby and the Sidhe," (the book is downstairs, I'm too lazy to go grab it) a mother and her baby are separated by an accident.  Two Sidhe, or Irish fairies, take the baby home with them while the mother is discovered and nursed back to health by a fishing community.  Upon discovering that her baby is missing, the mother determines to find him.  She eventually learns that it is being held by the Sidhe, and because of that is unlikely to be ever recovered, but the mother determines to find him and bring him back.  She learns from a Gypsy that the Sidhe treasure beautiful things, but cannot make things for themselves, and thus they may be willing to trade entry into the kingdom and even her child for something of beauty. 

The mother searches her memory for the most beautiful things she has ever heard of and finds memories of stories of a cloak and a harp believed to be the most beautiful things in the world.  Here is where the story got very interesting for me.   I grew up reading tales of heroic young men who had to win their wishes by obtaining magical items, so I fully expected that the young mother would go off in search of these legendary items, the cloak and the harp.  Instead she did something that amazed me -- she made them.  She gathered downy feathers from the grasses by the sea, and she found an old bone of some sort to make the harp frame.  She cut off all of her hair.  The down she wove into a beautiful white cloak, which she adorned with flowers embroidered of much of her blond hair.  The rest she used to string the harp, and then she tuned it true so it made beautiful music. 

With a bit of streetwise cunning, she gained entrance to the fairy-land and claimed her baby from them. 

I just loved this story, and I'm really looking forward to reading more of this book.