Lantern Songs: Martinmas 2012

Tomorrow we take our first Martinmas journey.  Martinmas has been described by authors of the book “All Year Round” in the following quote:  “The traditional way of celebrating Martinmas is with lantern walks or processions, accompanied by singing.  St. Martin recognized the divine spark in the poor man of Amiens, and gave it the protection of his own cloak.  When we make a paper lantern, we, too, may feel that we are giving protection to our own little “flame” that was beginning to shine at Michaelmas, so that we may carry it safely through the dark world.  It may only be a small and fragile light- but every light brings relief to the darkness.”

Narina made her lantern in kindergarten last week.  We will join the rest of her class and sing the traditional songs of this special festival together as we take a walk through the woods tomorrow night.  Who knows what we will find!

In trying to learn the words of the  songs we will sing, I invariably forget the tunes that accompany them.  I found this beautiful little voice recorded on youtube that has helped me learn Glimmer Lantern Glimmer for this years walk.  I am so excited for this festival.  It is pure magic and I can't wait.

Martinmas 2011

Happy Martinmas!

It is cold and foggy here in Kent. It has been all day.  When trying to explain fog to Narina on the ride to our Steiner School play group she kept repeating "today is fecky". I haven't talked much of our special Friday ritual.  I am sure I will at some point.  It has been one of the best things we have invested in for Narina so far. Back to Martinmas, though. There is a wonderful article over at NaturalKids about some of the rituals that go along with Martinmas and links about whom "Martin" was.  For our family, this year, Martinmas was about light and lanterns.  It was about Narina building her own lantern for the first time.  In upcoming years the lanterns will get more portable and they will be paraded through the local village or community where she goes to school, but for this year it sat next to another lantern she built with her childminder a few weeks ago.  Singing songs I learned from one of the links on the NK blog I linked to in this post, we lit our lanterns tonight before dinner and just celebrated their beauty. 


Here are Narina's lanterns:

Here is the song we sang:

Glimmer, lantern, glimmer
Little stars a-shimmer
Over meadow, moor and dale
Flitter, flutter, elfin veil
Pee-wit, pee-wit, tikka-tikka-tik
Rucoo, rucoo.

Glimmer, lantern, glimmer
Little stars a-shimmer
Over rock and stock and stone
Wandering, skipping, little gnome
Pee-wit, pee-wit, tikka-tikka-tik
Rucoo, rucoo.