11th August

Take a Leap

There is a fragrance about you. No woman could help loving you. Take me with you, and we’ll run away; be my king and take me to your room. We will be happy together, drink deep, and lose ourselves in love. The Song of Songs 1:3,4.

Once every four years, on February 29, girls, so it is said, take a leap and ask a lad to marry them. However that may be, it is a day when all of us may take a leap into the Spring that will soon be here, and into the love that is in the air.

I praise two who is one and two
Who is really three
Who made …
Love in our senses
A girl dear and tender
And burned five cities
Because of false union.
Early Middle Welsh

The month of February, a feast is rare
The spade and the wheel are hard at work
The ox has no voice to complain.
The evenings grow longer, the mornings earlier.
The sun grows brighter, but the clouds are darker
A rainbow is seen after storms.
‘The greatest pleasure is friendship’.
From Welsh Gnomic Poems

Lord, place these nine choice graces
in the upturned faces
of this day’s hopeful lasses:
the grace of form
the grace of voice
the grace of provision
the grace of goodness
the grace of wisdom
the grace of caring
the grace of femininity
the grace of a lovely personality
the grace of godly speech.
Inspired by the Carmina Gadelica