Hannah Sanders is an author, portion maker, folk singer and guitarist and 50% of the folk duo Hannah Sanders and Ben Savage.
Autumn in Britain is a beautiful time – it is as if the earth knows everyone has to go back to work or school and our reward for leaving the summer is the world turns to reds and browns and golds, the winds shift and the promise of woollies and wet weather moves in. September is a time for ripening fruits and we sense a gathering in. Time to go berrying and collect conkers as the dance of the sun and earth moves towards the autumn equinox – Mabon – the second harvest festival in the modern pagan calendar. September’s full moon is appropriately named Harvest Moon – the time for the final gathering of crop and fruits, the earth’s fruits. For Ben and I, the moon phases are important moments for aligning with the pulse of the heavens, and September’s harvest moon is when we make our new plans for our coming year before hitting the road for autumn tour. It’s also a time when you get to sing songs especially saved for harvest! Ben goes to the folk club’s special Harvest Moon Session to sing the Lazy Farmer, and I get to teach students the joys of John Barleycorn. Now day and night are once more in perfect balance, marking the tipping point to darkness. Ploughing festivities are held across the rural landscape and the last of the grain harvests are put to store. Michaelmas follows this subtle dance of light at the end of September. It was considered unlucky to pick berries before Michaelmas Day and much looking to the weather to foretell the coming winter is done “If St Michael brings acorns a plenty, Christmas will cover the fields with snow”. Living now in the wilds of Cambridgeshire we have some wonderful hedgerows that are rife with busy life at the Equinox, and whenever possible I walk the Iknield Way with friends and pick berries, haws and hips to eat or cook up later.
As the days turn to October, everything seems to fall – rain, seeds, leaves. Ben and I find this a really fruitful phase, a time of great creative industry. We have written and arranged some of our best songs at this time; Ben wrote Whats It Tonight My Love? (Before the Sun) in the heart of the autumn, and we were in the thick of album preparation for Awake last harvest season. Cider making is a favourite of ours too – at the end of September Ben climbs trees all over the county to get barrels of apples and with a collective of good cider loving folks spends a weekend in pressing 1000 pints for the winter. This has become such a seasonal marker, and Ben invites as many folkies as possible to come sing and cut apples as kids run around in the trees, turn the scratter and create mayhem. This is a great community time, where for a moment everyone gets to stop being on a computer or worrying about work and just sinks into the wind and weather, merrily getting blisters from cutting hundreds of apples. For folk musicians October is crazy busy, as we are out touring or crowdfunding new projects and gathering new songs for future albums, hoping to harvest of the year’s work on new material and gigs. And between the road and the weather, sometimes at this time we need a little extra guidance. We carry tarot cards with us on tour but we pay closer attention to the cards drawn as we approach Samhain. Traditions for divining the future; watching the movement of clouds, counting magpies, cutting apples, burning chestnuts, are old ways of harnessing the changing energies of the world as we descend into darkness. In these we catch that momentary rift in the natural world where pick berries, haws and hips can see behind what is visible to what is possible.
Samhain (All Souls) marks the final harvest time at the end of October, where the usual rules that divide the unseen world from the seen world are momentarily cast adrift. In the magical romance ballad of Tam Lin we are told how the time of Hallowe’en is when the fairy folk ride across the land. Now’s the time to leave offerings for the great Sidhe, the Fair Folk, tell stories of relatives now departed and pay attention to dreams. I write all my dreams down during October, to plumb the depths of at some later date for songs or bits of writing. This is the time when unseen forces and spirits of our dead may walk amongst us. ‘A-Souling’, the making of a small round soul cake to give to ‘soulers’ who go door to door offering prayers to remember the beloved dead between All Souls and Christmas is a tradition now faded, but in late Fall the landscape reminds us of those who have gone before.
When we can, between our own touring schedule we like to go to gigs during this month, to sit in the dark amongst friends and listen to good music, to dream a little, allowing the darkness of the outside world to germinate new ideas that can grow through the winter and emerge in spring. The last days of October and the madness of Hallowe’en give us a final moment of warm light before the first frosts to measure our achievements, and give thanks to all those who have brought us to this place…
Hannah & Ben Tour Dates
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Apple image: Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash