What Mountains Say

Last week I was in Co. Armagh for the AE / George Russell Festival. George Russell, known by his pen name of “Æ,” was a friend of the poet and mystic Ella Young. 

I’ve written about Æ before when I wrote about the history of our neighborhood, “History with a Twist.” 

Æ is difficult to describe. He was a painter and poet and publisher. He was a community organizer who established a network of agricultural cooperatives in the early days of an independent Ireland. He promoted other writers; his most successful protégée was Pamela Travers, the author of Mary Poppins. 

Musician Finbar Magee has written a song that tries to describe him, and he released it at the festival. We were the first to hear it. 

During the festival, a monthly event called Flash Fiction Armagh was held in honor of Æ, with the theme of Sacred Mountain. I was thrilled that the organizers chose my story “What Mountains Say.”

I also gave a talk at the festival, which I will post when the video is available. 

New to the Parish

I sent the following to the Irish Times, and they ran our story in the Feb 14 issue. 

People often want to know why my wife and I moved to Ireland from Santa Cruz, California.

Sometimes I say we moved for the dairy products, sometimes for the weather. Usually I say we’re here because of the people.

We came to Ireland planning to stay three months, maybe a year if permitted.

That was eight winters ago.

We first rented a friend’s house in Kerry, and when she sold it, we considered staying nearby in the familiar culture of Cork City and Midleton. As much as I love The Oval and Ballycotton fish and chips, because we could live anywhere on the island, we thought we’d try somewhere different. We ended up between Dunfanaghy and Creeslough. We soon met another lesbian woman with a dog that looked just like ours. One evening, she sang “Homes of Donegal” to us at our fireside. We’d found the place where the people’s hearts are like mountains.

We hope we can stay here forever. Maybe it’s their hearts, or maybe the mountains, but Donegal welcomes strangers and the strange. No one we’ve met cares we’re lesbians or don’t go to church. We like the music at The Shamrock, Glenveagh’s flowers, swimming at Portnablagh in all weathers. We’ve made a small circle of friends, watched the neighbor kids grow up, and appreciate what Letterkenny offers besides Aldi.

Then there was the disaster at the petrol station. If you’ve lived through a tragedy like that, you already know what I’m going to say: you learn who your neighbors are. You know the lengths neighbors you didn’t know you had will go to repair, to console, to reflect.

I didn’t think I could love this place more, and I wanted to give something back.

I fell in with a small group of people in Ireland and California who are raising the profile of Irish poet and mystic Ella Young. Young was active in the Celtic Revival; she preserved and retold stories from Irish folklore. After the revolutionary period, she left Ireland forever. She was 58 years old. She taught Irish Mythology at Berkeley and published three books of Irish stories. She brought to America the Irish concept of cóir, sometimes translated as “natural balance.” It’s a common theme in Irish mythology, just in time to influence the counter-cultural movements California is known for.

Like many emigrants, Ella Young is not well remembered in Ireland. Her memoir, Flowering Dusk, has long been out of print, but contains delightful anecdotes of Pearse, Yeats, Gonne, and Russell that you’ve never heard before. I helped sort out the book’s copyright and it’s going to be republished this year. I’m also working on making her other books more available.

Ella Young left Ireland for California about the same age as I was when I moved here. I won’t inspire a cultural phenomenon like The Hippies, but I’m happy to be returning Ella Young to the people of Ireland.

The Auge Well for Everyone

Not too far from our house is the Auge Well. “Auge” is a word that came into English from French, so I suppose you pronounce it “ah-gew.” It means malaria, and refers to its “acute” fever. Besides the obscure name, the well doesn’t have a saint associated with it, which is unusual.

The Auge Well

I’m interested in malaria because many years ago I read a scary book called The Mosquito, A Human History of our Deadliest Predator, by Timothy C. Winegard.

The horror of Winegard’s book stuck with me because of the incalculable suffering malaria (and other mosquito-diseases) inflicted. History would be very different without malaria. Even our bodies would be different. We evolved blood diseases that confer resistance to the malaria plasmodium; sickle cell anemia being only one of them.

Malaria’s probable arrival in Rome in the first century AD was a turning point in European history. From the African rain forest, the disease most likely traveled down the Nile to the Mediterranean, then spread east to the Fertile Crescent, and north to Greece. Greek traders and colonists brought it to Italy. From there, Roman soldiers and merchants would ultimately carry it as far north as England and Denmark (Karlen, 1995).

For the next 2,000 years, wherever Europe harbored crowded settlements and standing water, malaria flourished, rendering people seasonally ill, and chronically weak and apathetic. Many historians speculate that falciparum malaria (the deadliest form of malaria species in humans) contributed to the fall of Rome. The malaria epidemic of 79 AD devastated the fertile, marshy croplands surrounding the city, causing local farmers to abandon their fields and villages. (source)

Some researchers see evidence that malaria arrived in Ireland with the Mesolithic farmers who brought the cows. Maybe it arrived after extensive contact with the Romano-British in St. Patrick’s day. We know for sure the disease really got bad 400 years ago, when thousands of immigrants arrived seeking the health and prosperity that eluded them in their home country.

Between 1585 and 1640, England’s queens and kings established plantations, the same sort of colonial enterprises in Ireland as they did in North America. But in 1649, a civil war resulted in the execution of a king and rule by Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell looked to what the monarchy had started in Ireland and embarked on what is called The Cromwellian Conquest. The  immense destruction and desecration of the conquest remain visible.

But here’s where malaria comes into the story.

At a significant battle known as the Siege of Drogheda, Cromwell contracted malaria. He was sick with it for nine years before he died. In Cromwell’s day, malaria was treated with an early form of quinine, powered bark from the cinchona tree.

According to Winegard:

His doctors begged him to take cinchona powder. He flat out refused. Given its discovery by Catholic Jesuits, Cromwell insisted that he did not want the “Popish remedy “ or to be “Jesuited to death” or be poisoned by the “Jesuit’s Powder.” In 1658, twenty years after quinine first voyaged to Europe on the later winds of the Columbian exchange, Cromwell died of malaria. Two years after his death, the monarchy, under Charles II, was restored. Unlike Cromwell, Charles was begrudgingly safe from malarial death by sacramental cinechona bark.

Because of malaria, Cromwell didn’t live long enough to establish a viable successor. If he had been healthy, the monarchy may have never been restored. Instead, under Charles II, the political and economic power of the Ascendency began.

For the next 200 years, Ireland experienced a real-life Scouring of the Shire. The plantation system developed Ireland’s natural resources into industries: textiles, agriculture, mining, fisheries, shipbuilding.

This is where malaria comes in again. The Planters found a labor force among the farmers of the England’s southeastern fenlands. Their behavior could be regulated from the same prayerbook. Unfortunately, the southeast was also England’s malaria belt.


According to Winegard: 

The current partition of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland is directly tied to the settlement patterns of these malaria-fleeing English Fenland farmers of the 17th century. …

The mosquito forced over 180,000 thousand Protestant English farmers to Catholic Ireland, where they settled among the landed English gentry, and Protestant Scots who had fled the English Civil War that raged from 1642 to 1651. This motley crew of Protestants created what became to be known as the Early, Munster, Ulster, and Later Plantations during the 16th and 17th centuries. Their immigration, presence, and territorial expansion ignited a nationalist racial and religious war…. These plantations have had obvious and profoundly violent effects on the history of Ireland ever since.

The woods above the Auge Well, mid-day Winter Solstice

If it weren’t for malaria-induced emigration, perhaps the new landlords of Ireland would have had to work with the locals to build their new industries, and together they could have built a more integrated society. This integration process of immigrants had been successful in Ireland’s past. 

I wonder if the Ague Well was so designated at the time of Plantation of Ulster 400 years ago. That would explain why it has that particular cure, but not a saint. At this time, many Irish people emigrated, but some remained, perhaps as crypto-Catholics, as evidenced by the Mass Rocks in the neighborhood. Regardless of their faith or family, ancestors of my neighbors suffered from displacement, immigration, and malaria. Anyone could visit this beautiful well, and take what comfort they could.

The Ague Well is described in the Irish Folklore Collection.

The well is situated on Cashelmore hill nearby two miles from Creeslough, County Tirconaill. It is in the vicinity of Doe church. This old church is still in use.

The well is situated in the Ards Demesne which formerly belong to the Stewarts but now belongs to the Irish Land Commission and to the Capuchin fathers. Ards house is now a Capuchin monastery and situated along the shores of Sheephaven Bay. There was a little whitethorn bush beside the well. Little fir trees have been planted around by the Irish Land commission in 1932 to 1933. There is a mass rock beside the well.

The patron saint of the well is unknown. It was blessed by a priest now unknown. There is no annual pattern. The well is usually frequented by people going to America, who take bottles of the water with them to prevent them from taking the ague. There are no special rounds. There are no pebbles used. When people frequent the well, they go round it two or three times and say any prayers they wish. There are no special prayers. The water of the well is used to cure the auge, and to prevent people taking the auge. The water is drunk and carried away.

The pieces of cloth or tape are tied to the little bush beside the well.

The well never gets dried up. It was known to cure people that many years ago of the auge. A little distance from the well is a mass rock where the priest often said mass in the penal days.

Mary Colhoun, Massiness Girls’ National School, Creshlough, Co. Tirconaill. 20th of June 1934. Dúchas.ie

This is my transcription. At the link, you can see the original handwritten account.

Photo from few summers ago. 

People I’ve asked about the well didn’t know what the name means. I know I didn’t. They are surprised to learn that malaria was once endemic here. The last malarial outbreaks in Ireland were in the mid-19th century. Globally, the suffering continues; malaria infects 200 million people a year. But post-Covid advancements have led to new malaria vaccines. If we’re lucky, the whole world will be free of malaria soon.

I don’t believe the Auge Well ever cured malaria, but I do know that holy wells offer a sacred site for everyone. I find offerings at the Auge Well, some obviously Catholic, some not. The Ague Well is a place that—like malaria—doesn’t care what your faith tradition is.

Another source on Dúchas.ie records that emigrants took Auge Well water with them because it cured homesickness. If I ever had to leave this place, I would definitely keep a bottle of its water on my mantle. It would be a balm, as homesickness comes on like a fever, sharp and cyclical, just like malaria.

Traditionally, holy wells cured diseases of the mind and heart, as well as the body. An “eye well” might sooth eyes irritated by the smoke in a poorly ventilated cottage, but might also help the person “see” the resolution of a dispute.

The Heritage Council published a brochure last year about Ireland’s Holy Wells, and describes several of these multivalent cures.

There’s a well in North Kerry called Tobar na nGealt with a cure for mental illness. A while ago, the water was tested, and it contained lithium. So maybe there is something medical to these cures.

But there doesn’t need to be. A walk in nature, with intention, and formal words, said aloud for your own ears to hear: these actions can be self-transformational, the only true magic. You only have to believe in yourself.

Winter solstice trees at the Auge Well

I wrote about the Auge Well a few years ago when it comforted me during cancer treatment. 

Now and Then

The last Beatle song has been released. Give it a listen if you haven’t already.

The song is great, the video inventive and whimsical. So Beatle, so much about love, like their music ever was.

Because it’s the music I like, I usually like anyone singing a Beatle song. This one is quite good. 

The other day I was at a music session where the guitar player was taking requests. I was able to ask, for the first and last time in my life, “Can you play that new Beatles song?”

I’m in a generation of women who were little girls during Beatlemania. We loved the Beatles, but without erotic sensations, just pure appreciation for the music and antics. Sometimes I can still conjure that excitement.

An early memory is walking with my Mom to the laundry room in our trailer park on the outskirts of Fresno singing “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” With four cans of tuna I made a drum set and beat on them with spoons. Like all little girls, I loved Ringo best, but as I grew older I loved Paul’s pop songs, then George because: adolescence; and finally I was old enough for John.

I have never forgiven one of my sisters for announcing to me in December 1980, with a smirk: “John Lennon got shot.” I will never understand how someone so young–she must have been 12—had already mastered the mean-spirited tone of right-wing cultural warriors.

But does this have anything to do with Ireland? Of course. All four men have Irish ancestry and grew up among the Liverpool Irish, an immigrant community dating to the 1840s, at time when a trip to Liverpool was the cheapest ticket off the island. (The potato crop failed all over Europe in the 1846, but only Ireland starved.) The Great Hunger is why Liverpool is the city it is today, why it has its distinctive accent, and why the Beatles are so dang talented.

The Beatles performed in Ireland only once, in 1963. After that, there probably wasn’t a venue large enough.

Here’s an Dublin airport interview you probably haven’t seen:

Ten years ago, Dublin hosted a Beatles Festival commemorating that one concert. 

Both John and Paul released songs about Northern Ireland on their first solo albums. “Give Ireland Back to the Irish” isn’t a great song, but it was Wings’s first single and the government banned it. They banned a Paul McCartney song! And he’s the nice one! After that, British pop stars didn’t openly support civil rights in Northern Ireland.

John and Yoko’s first album included two songs about the Troubles: “Sunday Bloody Sunday”

…and “The Luck of the Irish.”

My pal Hilary is about my age and another Beatle fan. She and I watched all eight hours of Get Back over three days. We loved it. The creativity, the friendship, the collaboration, the heartbreaking inability to see a solution to their problems. How wonderfully they worked together, and were not the bickering  shit show we were told they were.

When Hils and I were in England in April for the Anne Lister pilgrimage, we detoured to Liverpool for the weekend and immersed ourselves in all things Beatles.

We stayed at the Hard Days Night Hotel.

It looks like an early 20th-C office building, but now displays 
statues of the Beatles above the columns, like saints around the Vatican. 

In the lobby, only Beatles music. 

“And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”
Now I wish I had bought this clock. 

Each room features a portrait. We were in the “John as a wain” room.

 We hired the highest-rated private black cab tour.

The statue at the docks.

Paul’s family home. 

The street Paul grew up on. John lived nearby with his aunt.

The driver played all the hits, and we sang them at the top of our lungs. 

“What do you like best about the Beatles?” he asked us. “The Music!”

The driver was our age, too young at the time to get into the clubs, but he knew their families and friends.

The house of John’s mother’s sister. 

Our driver knew how to take the best photos. Obviously, I ignored him. 

The church yard with Eleanor Rigby’s grave.

The Empire, and street in Ringo’s neighborhood. 

The barber. 

The roundabout.

Strawberry Fields. In John’s time these were the grounds of a Salvation Army children’s home. The sort of place he nearly ended up in. 

The best part of the visit was the last night. 

We descended into the rebuilt Cavern Club under the hotel for a Beatles concert. 

At first, the museum display gave off a cringey Hard Rock Hotel vibe. 

But once the music started, the magic happened. 

I didn’t take any more pictures, I just listened, absorbed in the music. I heard the Beatles again, like I never had, for the first and last time. 

Sometimes I can still conjure that excitement.

One of the greatest archeology documentaries of all time. “1000 years in the future, the legacy of John, Paul, Greg, and Scottie remains.”

The Story of Abhartach the Blood Drinker

We love a vampire comedy called What We Do in the Shadows. Most people know all about this show, but here’s the trailer from the first season. 

The story follows the lives of four vampire housemates and a young man who hopes to one day be made a vampire. The show was created by Jemaine Clement, who is, among many other accomplishments, a vampire expert, which I didn’t know was a thing until preparing to write this post. 

Vampirian scholars say the mystical rules and restrictions on vampires started with Bram Stoker’s Dracula. However, Stoker didn’t know very much about Vlad the Impaler or Transylvania when he wrote about vampires in 1890. 

What he did know were Irish stories about undead bloodsuckers. If you look up Irish vampires, you’ll find the legend of Abhartach, and the origin story of the Slaghtaverty Dolman.

I looked up some of these stories, but I didn’t like them. In these stories Abhartach is an evil wizard dwarf— abhartach means “dwarf” —who must be killed because he is evil. He comes back from the dead and demands that people feed him bowls of blood, returning and demandingrepeatedly until people bury him under a stone upside down with a stake in his heart.  

So I wrote my own Irish blood-drinker story. 

A long time ago, people lived together on small farmsteads, in their few wattle houses encircled by stone and dirt walls that can still be seen today. People call them Fairy Forts. 

There was a valley in Derry, where instead of getting along with their neighbors, the head of every household was always falling out with his equals, and setting himself up as King and Chieftain and inciting young men to make war on each other. The strongest and bravest men were too frequently harmed in the ceaseless, senseless combat, maimed and unable to work, or killed and leaving fatherless children.

The people wearied of petty wars and their considerable destruction. Then rose up from the people a great man to lead them. Abhartach had the gift of language, beguilement, exhortation, and charm. Under his influence, lesser men desired to cooperate in planting and lend their labor to the harvest of a neighbor, and thus grew in standing. The people built sacred circles to honor ancestors and gathered there for contests, trade, and dancing. At the end of every season’s festivities, Abhartach passed the bowl of friendship.

And so did Abhartach became a true king and chieftain, and the people were no longer contentious.

Eventually Abhartach grew old and died, and the people mourned him. They buried him standing up, with the bowl of friendship in one hand, his shield in the other, and his sword at his feet. In death he stood ready to return and bring peace in the time of need. 

Not long after, a small-minded man from the West incited acrimony among the people, and the fighting began again. 

Abhartach’s people needed him. At sunset they killed a pig and poured a bowl of blood on his dolman. With a roar Abhartach came to life, tossing the giant stones above him like hazel shells. He dropped the bowl and threw the shield from his hands. He picked up the sword at his feet. Above his head he raised his terrible blade to defend his people. 

Through the long dark night, Abhartach crossed the fields until he found the house of the upstart king, split his head, and covered the ground with the dark red blood.

Abhartach returned to his people’s place, and stepped into the grave under the dolman, silent and dead. He held his bowl and shield, his sword at his feet. So did he appear to the people as they piled stones atop him.

Abhartach’s people then lived in peace, until small-minded man from the East came to believe that the fields of Abhartach’s people were more fertile than his own. He raised a war band and attacked.

At sunset Abhartach’s people killed a pig, and poured a bowl of its blood on the dolman. The sky grew dark, as they waited for their Champion to return. But the great stones remained still and silent.

The people killed another pig, and poured another bowl of blood on the dolman. With the last drop, the stones flew asunder, and Abhartach stepped out, sword in hand. He ran over the fields and found the warriors asleep in the small-minded man’s house. He killed them all, soaking the ground with blood. Abhartach burnt the house over their bodies, and the place where the blood was spilled and the bodies lay buried became the most fertile field in the land.

Abhartach’s people knew peace for three hundred years.

Then from the North a fearsome people arrived on the island. They refused to share it as had other newcomers, and all of country was pillaged and burned. Abhartach’s people gathered at sunset, killed three pigs—adding one because the remembered the last time—and poured three bowls of blood upon the stones. But the stones of Abhartach’s dolman remained still.

That is when a young man, full of the promise of a long life ahead of him, strong and good, stepped forward and said, “I know what must be done. Slay me now, and give my blood to the old king, that he may defend our people.”

With tears in their eyes, all the people of the tribe raised their knives and killed the brave young man, the best of all his brothers. They poured bowl after bowl of his innocent blood upon the dolman.

And just as before, Abhartach burst aside the stones, leapt over the gathered people, sword in hand. He ran away to the north, and all that night he slew northern enemy.

When Abhartach returned from his victory, he fell to his knees and implored the people to never summon him again, for the price of war with their neighbors was too great.

So the people buried Abhartach once again. But this time, they buried him upside down, both hands around the cup of friendship.

And the next time when some ee-jit rose up against them, they did not summon their old king, and they did not send their sons to fight and shed blood on the green fields of Ireland. They met on a low hill. They raised their voices, fiddles, and drums in song. They taught their enemy to dance. They danced together until the top of the hill was flattened, and that is why that place is called Cnoc na Rinca.

(Part 2) Peculiar Interest Tinged with Melancholy

Please read Part 1, “Are You Classical?” first.

I Love and Only Love

Anne Lister is the first modern lesbian. 

That we know of. 

Lister’s extraordinary diaries have given historians huge insight into lesbian relationships in the past. Lister left an estimated five million words documenting her life over many decades, including significant sections written in her own personal code. These extensive diaries record everything, from the routines of her daily life to her numerous sexual encounters with the “fairer sex.”

The National Library of Britain

Although portions of the diaries have been in print for decades—I read them in the 90s—Nobody saw Anne Lister for who she was until Sally Wainwright—a straight woman—adapted the diaries for drama, and filmed the series in Anne’s real home of Shibden Hall, on the real landscape of Halifax.

Anne’s diaries in a a birthday week celebration exhibit at the Halifax library. The diaries are included in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Archive. 

Anne Lister directed her own education, found her own teachers and devoted years to the study of science, business, literature, philosophy, and languages. She recorded the events of her world and copied out letters into her diaries because she thought her life was worth recording and reflecting on. She improved her mental health by writing down observations of the world and her own feelings.

June 1921
I owe a great deal to this Journal. By unburdening my mind on paper I feel, as it were, in some degree to help get rid of it; it seems made over to a friend that hears it patiently, keeps it faithfully, and by never forgetting anything is always ready to compare the past and present and thus to cheer and edify the future.

Among 5 million words, the most quoted passage is where she came out to herself:

I love & only love the fairer sex & thus beloved by them in turn, my heart revolts from any other love than theirs.

It wasn’t just that she loved women, but that they loved her back. 

In the 1890s, fifty years after her death, Shibden’s owner John Lister looked through the diaries, stored in a closet. He deciphered the code, but read enough of her story to not share them with anyone. He was gay too.

March 1825

…took her on my knee and began grubbling. She having no support for her back, lay her on the bed. Knelt down by her, grubbled well and had the kiss. We both groaned… she declaring towards the last, that the pleasure became pain. I said she had never given me so good a one. We both got into bed to have a little nap, took about an hour’s nap then absolutely grubbed again and had another very good kiss. The kiss tho’ not quite so good as the one before. Then another hour’s na and got up about two to undress and go regularly to bed—each took a glass of hot weak brandy and water and after my doubting a moment whether to have still another kiss we both fell asleep about three.

As quoted in: In The Footsteps of Anne Lister, by Adeline Lim

Not until nearly a hundred years later did a local historian decode and publish Anne Lister’s diaries.

When Helena Whitbread entered the public library in the West Yorkshire town of Halifax, in 1983, she had no idea that she was about to discover what author Emma Donoghue was to describe as “the Dead Sea Scrolls of lesbian history.” Not long before, Whitbread had completed an undergraduate degree as a mature student, and she was now looking for an interesting research topic for an article. “I’d heard about Anne Lister, who lived in my hometown of Halifax, 200 years ago, and I decided to go down to the archives, where a collection of her letters was held, and find out more about her.” …


In 1988, Whitbread published her first book, “I Know My Own Heart” – a selection of Lister’s coded diaries, from the years 1817 to 1824. At first some people thought it was a hoax, finding it difficult to believe that a woman from that period could not have written with such brazen and aware openness about sexuality in general and lesbian sexuality in particular. But the journals were entirely authentic; it was the scholarly perceptions concerning the history of lesbian identity that were false.

Haaretz.com

Helena Whitbread grew up in Yorkshire, daughter of Irish immigrants. 

Anne Lister wanted what Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby had found in Llangollen. Anne and Mariana were never able to live together, but the story of Anne Lister and Ann Walker is the romance plot of Gentleman Jack.

The Gentleman Jack Effect

I knew Gentleman Jack was popular among lesbians, but I only recently learned about The Gentleman Jack Effect, as compiled by Janet Lea.

[It is] clear that Gentleman Jack had electrified lesbians worldwide by positively representing us and validating the way we think and feel and who we love. …

Lin interviewed scores of women who made major changes to improve their lives after watching the show, reading her diaries, and participating in online GJ communities.

As many fans observed, it’s the show we didn’t know we needed. When I saw that hundreds of women reported experiencing the motivation to make significant changes in their lives, I knew there was an important story to tell. …
Gay women reported that the show validated their identity as a lesbian and gave them a surge in self-esteem and self-confidence. They said that as a result, they’re more willing to take risks, to be more open about who they are and who they love.

The chapter titles indicate the variety of the Gentleman Jack Effect: “Confidence and Courage,” “Communities and Friendships,” “Myth Busters and Armchair Detectives,” “Adventure Seekers,” Creative Expressions,” “Catalyst for Change.”

In the afterword, Lin writes:

I recognize I am just one in a long line of women across time who’ve challenged norms and broken society’s rules to be themselves. I discovered my voice to tell the inspiring stories of lesbians and other women living their truth. I now live in a world that is enriched by the new friends I made because of what a television show stirred up.

Gentleman Jack Nation a documentary about (mostly)

lesbians finding their place in the world. The community they made grew far beyond “the show.”

What Happened When We Found Them

The Yorkshire city of Halifax is east of Llangollen and not far by Californian standards. I’m not a student of the industrial revolution, so my knowledge of the area comes from two television shows, both written Sally Wainwright (writer and director of Gentleman Jack).

Happy Valley

Last Tango in Halifax

In 2020, Hilary and I had planned our trip to Halifax to coincided with Anne’s birthday on April 7. Since then, thousands of other fans had the same idea. The entire region has copped on to the Gentleman Jack Effect. There’s program of private events called Anne Lister Birthday Weekend, but we didn’t attend any. There was quite enough to do already. 

Unlike the Butler/Ponsonby/Carryl monument in Llangollen, Anne’s gravestone was damaged during long-ago church renovations. Its original location is lost, but the stone is on display, as is the font where she was baptized, amid the many lovely windows and relics of Halifax Minster.

Lacking a grave, when pilgrims like arrive, we leave flowers on her statue in the center of town.

The next stop would be Shibden Hall itself.  We had early tickets to avoid the crowds. 

Everyone takes this picture.

The Shibden Lion, commissioned by Anne.

Anne built this tower addition as a retreat for herself and Ann Walker.

Mushroom statues under Anne’s tower.

Anne redesigned the central hall. 

Although she called it “shabby little Shibden” she didn’t tear out the medieval heart of her home and replace it with her own era’s Georgian simplicity. She enhanced the baroque. Maybe it is a coincidence that she valued the dark oak carvings of a certain era, just like Eleanor and Sarah, but it seems to be a shared aesthetic. 

That table under the window is same sort of furniture that the Ladies upscaled into wall paneling. 

Eleanor and Sarah used ornate beds like this one to build the porch of Plas Newydd.
 

A room restored as Anne might have left it. 

Only two portraits of Anne Lister are known. 

View from Anne’s room.

Of course we exited through the gift shop.

At the cafe I met an online friend who has written a terrific book about modern lesbians. This is the review I left in the ALBW Chat facebook group. 

This morning I finished Miss Lister’s Guest House by A.L. Aikman. I don’t usually read lesbian romance novels but this one was recommended by a trusted author acquaintance. I loved it. It’s a book about what lesbian community really is. It’s about the common lesbian experience, grounded in our love and mysterious overwhelming desire for women, and the adventures and consequences that follow that love: in all its forms and follies. It’s funny, it’s sad, and the characters will reminded you of women you know. And it all takes place here in Halifax in a group of women who love Anne Lister. Anyone who’s at this ALBW gathering will love this book. You can get it on Amazon. I happened to meet the author, and she’s putting on a staged reading of three scenes on Saturday, 1:30. The Book Corner has copies but only 20. So get yours today before they run out. (The author did not ask me to do this post. I want to get this story out there. )

Anne Lister is famous for walking and climbing mountains. She and Ann Walker were in Georgia on a hiking excursion when she died. The walking route between Shibden Hall and Halifax is only a few miles, and everyone wants to walk in Anne Lister’s footsteps. 

A walk in Anne Lister’s footsteps.

I thought this brochure would be our guide. It even included the route from our hotel.

This genre of overly detailed documentation scares me. 

The instructions provided by the hotel were worse. A loop walk in only 22 stages. 

We opted for a walked organized by Calderdale Council Countryside Services. (A local church advertises the “Anne Lister Way of the Setts” as a pilgrimage: “ The basis of this pilgrimage is Anne’s strong and unwavering faith, which did not conflict with any aspect of her life, and took her back and forth, from her home at Shibden Hall to the parish church to worship.” Many paths, one destination. )

We started at Anne’s church, the Halifax Minster, and soon rose above the town. 

The paving stones are called “setts” and date to medieval times.
The rectangular shape make it easier for horses on inclines.
At one time, this was the only route to the town. 

The hill above Shibden, hidden in that valley.

Just before coming onto the Shibden estate (now a public park) we passed the ventilation tower of The Walker Pit, so named for Anne’s lover. Unlike the utilitarian towers that are long since pulled down, this monument to their love and Ann Walker’s fortune is a lovely folly. 

My photos didn’t turn out, so here’s a sketch from the map. 

Anne Lister and Ann Walker were traveling in Kutisi, Georgia when Anne fell ill and died at age 49. What on earth were they doing there? I’ve never read any speculation; maybe we will learn as the rest of the diaries are decoded and published. But I have a theory. Kutisi is the home of the ancient Amazons. They were looking for strong women. They were looking for women in romantic friendships. They were looking for fierce women. They were looking for the lesbians.

At the end of two days we were exhausted. All this—thousands of women, hundreds of men, parties, lectures, ceremonies, art, books, exhibits—all because one woman’s diaries happened to survive accidents of history and disgust of the censor. How many other lesbians kept diaries since women were taught to read and write?

My life’s intellectual project is to understand the impact lesbians have in the world, not just in our own private lives. I blame Kurt Vonnegut for inspiring me when I was fourteen. I read—was it in Cat’s Cradle?—that human beings cannot reproduce without a lesbian couple nearby. His point was that life is more complicated than we can imagine.

Lesbians have always been. What did they get up to? We know so little. Men’s external and internal worlds appear in literature for thousands of years. We have a brief two-hundred years of scant records by women who lived together alone without men. 

I remember in the late 1980s passing a yard sale in front of one of those tiny Westside Santa Cruz cottages on a corner lot. I stopped my bike and looked over the contents of an old woman’s lifetime. Her clothes, her pots and pans, her shoes, her books, her photo albums, her bundles of letters, her diaries. Something in that collection of the most personal of property led me to wonder if she had been a lesbian. I don’t remember the details now, but I read some letters and examined the faces of the women in the photo albums. I was sure of it. But I was poor. I didn’t buy any of it. I wished I could have preserved the story of this woman who lived to old age in a town reshaped in her lifetime by lesbians. Soon, a new house replaced her little cottage. For 40 years I never passed that corner without regret and loss. 

At Shibden Hall Anne Lister’s bedroom is decorated with a move-set bed we’re encouraged to sit on. They’ve provided a writing desk and a jar of pencils, to record a public diary entry of our own.

This is what I wrote in the Shibden Hall book:

Why are we here? Why did we also visit Plas Newydd? Not because these women were lesbians and had sex with women. But because they loved women. The love, devotion, and joy found between women is why they defied their fathers and lived life as they willed. They chose to be free because they loved women. And… they wrote diaries. So that we may know them. So, my sisters, remember them, and remember each other. Love women and let that love carry you into an unconventional life. Live and love as you please, and keep a record of your lesbian life. It is our gift to the women of the future. 

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Use of the word “lesbian” instead of “queer”

I understand that the word “queer” is preferred because LGBTQ+ and the word “queer” is inclusive. (Worse, “Lesbian” is problematic since it became a porn genre.) Inclusivity without limit is now a rule, to the point where to refuse to include everyone in any observation is seen as bigotry. That’s fine if you are interested in everyone, because everyone is queer in some way. But the queerosity of all people is not my interest. I’m interested in lesbians, so that’s the term I use. I’m comfortable with it being a word that can’t be scientifically defined. I mean to be poetic and specific and to exclude men.