The Coming of Winter

I have news for you; the stag bells, winter snows, summer has gone.

Wind high and cold, the sun low, short its course, the sea running high.

Deep red and bracken, its shape is lost; the wild goose has raised its accustomed cry.

Cold has seized the birds' wings; season of ice, this is my news.

Irish, author unknown, ninth century. Trans. Prof. Kenneth Jackson, A Celtic Miscellany, Penguin Classics

 

These are the Unseelie Court - the bad faeries. The Sluagh - the unforgiven, evil spirits. They are the dead of winter - a danse macabre.

Black clad like crows and white like snow and ice, bones and bleached skulls - baring bright fireworks and searing flares they fight back the Summer revellers like a fierce Winter storm...

...their massed drummers like deafening thunder - breakneck rhythms echoing off the Cathedral wallsa nd filling the square. This is the Winter Court's time to take over the world, to send the summer scurrying underground and frighten small children tucked up tight in beds.