{"id":275,"date":"2010-08-17T23:56:36","date_gmt":"2010-08-18T04:56:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jameschatto.com\/?p=275"},"modified":"2012-05-01T10:20:10","modified_gmt":"2012-05-01T15:20:10","slug":"bee-magic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jameschatto.com\/?p=275","title":{"rendered":"Bee magic"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
honey and scrambled eggs<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This is a jar of honey. Our neighbours, Yorgos and Kiki, keep bees and I\u2019m proud to say they forage in our garden (the bees, not Y and K). So while I can\u2019t claim to have produced this rich, dark meli<\/em> with its complex floral, herbal, even malty character, I do see myself as its godfather, after a fashion. I don\u2019t remember the name of the yellow and white flowers \u2013 I call them scrambled egg flowers, for obvious reasons \u2013 but they too have played their part.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Our son Joseph was born on this island and spent his formative years in this garden. Durrell-like, he was fascinated by the insect life \u2013 he once considered becoming a myrmecologist \u2013 but in the end archaeology and then history claimed him and he embarks on his third MA next month. Baltic rather than Balkan studies are his passion now, including a research interest in the medieval Lithuanian beeswax and honey trade. Apparently it was the European hub in those times, thanks to the busy-as-bees Hanseatic merchants. What goes around comes around. I remember hurrying him indoors one day when the neighbours\u2019 bees were swarming \u2013 the air thick with them, thousands of frenetic bees intent on some private business, the buzzing extraordinarily loud \u2013 to me, it was like a moment from a horror film, but it made a more favourable impression on Joe. An hour or so later, order was restored and we ventured back into the bright morning.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Honey is magical. Always has been. In the Finnish epic, The<\/em> Kalevala<\/em>, Lemmink\u00e4inen\u2019s mother manages to bring her heroic but dismembered son back to life with honey\u2019s help. She summons a bee and sends the little guy away to gather it. You remember the moment:<\/p>\n

\u201cTiny bee, thou honey-birdling,
\nLord of all the forest flowers,
\nFly away and gather honey,
\nBring to me the forest-sweetness,
\nFound in Metsola\u2019s rich gardens,
\nAnd in Tapio\u2019s fragrant meadows,
\nFrom the petals of the flowers,
\nFrom the blooming herbs and grasses,
\nThus to heal my hero\u2019s anguish,
\nThus to heal his wounds of evil.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The bee does his best but regular honey isn\u2019t effective. So he flies off to fetch the magic honey from the Isles of the Blessed. Even that isn\u2019t enough. It\u2019s only when he flies all the way to the Seventh and highest Heaven of God (Ukko\/Jumala) himself and brings back the ultimate honey that gives life to every living thing that Lemmink\u00e4inen is revived. Such a noble bee.<\/p>\n

Now the mother well anointing,
\nHeals her son, the magic singer,
\nEyes, and ears, and tongue, and temples,
\nBreaks, and cuts, and seams, anointing,
\nTouching well the life-blood centres,
\nSpeaks these words of magic import
\nTo the sleeping Lemmink\u00e4inen:
\n\u201cWake, arise from out thy slumber,
\nFrom the worst of low conditions,
\nFrom thy state of dire misfortune!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You\u2019ll notice she speaks in mellifluous trochaic tetrameter, every Finnish rune-singer\u2019s preferred metre. Honey-tongued Henry W. Longfellow borrowed it for The Song of Hiawatha<\/em> after spending a summer in Sweden in 1835 and picking up a bit of Finnish. Or so Joe tells me.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The point is, honey is good for you. Around here, in ancient times, the priestesses of Artemis and Demeter were referred to as melissae \u2013 bees \u2013 while the original Melissa was a gracious nymph, one of Zeus\u2019s nannies, who taught the first humans how to turn honey into mead. Another reason to be grateful.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Is the honey from my neighbours\u2019 hives the best in the world? Well, there\u2019s some serious competition out there. I still carry a torch for a certain organic Tasmanian Leatherwood honey that some kind soul imported into Toronto, circa 2003. It was sold in colourful little tins and I haven\u2019t seen it for years but it was as pure as thought and heady with the aroma of tropical fruit.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Lacking that, we have this. I stir some into my thick local yoghurt at breakfast-time and then slice up a peeled, juice-gravid, flavour-bomb of a peach over it. It certainly brings me back to life. Next week, in honour of Lemmink\u00e4inen\u2019s doting mama, I shall take the jar in the photograph back to my mother in London.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a jar of honey. Our neighbours, Yorgos and Kiki, keep bees and I\u2019m proud to say they forage in our garden (the bees, not Y and K). So while I can\u2019t claim to have produced this rich, dark meli with its complex floral, herbal, even malty character, I do see myself as its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[105,1,103,101],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=275"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2118,"href":"https:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275\/revisions\/2118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jameschatto.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}