Would anybody know the words to a poem called "Widdershins" it began - 'Outside my window up the hill just where the lonely track begins I looked across and saw last night three witches dancing widdershins"

It's probably from a Wiccan rite, or "rede". Here's a rede which uses the term.

Bide the Wiccans laws ye must,
In perfect love and perfect trust.
Live and let live,
Fairly take and fairly give.
If you wish to live and thrive,
Let the spider run alive.
If ye would clear the path to will,
Be certain the mind be still.
'Tis by Sun that life be won,
And by the Moon that change be done.
Cast the circle thrice about
To keep unwelcomed spirits out.
What good be tools without inner light;
What good be magick without wisdom-sight?
To bind the spell everytime,
Let the spell be spoken in ryhme.
Soft of eye and light of touch,
Speak ye little, listen much.
Deosil go by waxing Moon,
Sing and dance the Wiccan Rune.
Widdershins go when the Moon doth wane,
And the werewolf howls by the dread wolfsbane...


Les

Lest someone interpret the word as referring to the lower legs of women whose husbands are no longer alive,

[en.wikipedia.org]

I first encountered this word in this great poem by the late Judith Wright.

‘Bullocky’

Beside his heavy-shouldered team,
thirsty with drought and chilled with rain,
he weathered all the striding years
till they ran widdershins in his brain:

Till the long solitary tracks
etched deeper with each lurching load
were populous before his eyes,
and fiends and angels used his road.

All the long straining journey grew
a mad apocalyptic dream,
and he old Moses, and the slaves
his suffering and stubborn team.

Then in his evening camp beneath
the half-light pillars of the trees
he filled the steepled cone of night
with shouted prayers and prophecies.

While past the campfire's crimson ring
the star-struck darkness cupped him round,
and centuries of cattle-bells
rang with their sweet uneasy sound.

Grass is across the wagon-tracks,
and plough strikes bone beneath the grass,
and vineyards cover all the slopes
where the dead teams were used to pass.

O vine, grow close upon that bone
and hold it with your rooted hand.
The prophet Moses feeds the grape,
and fruitful is the Promised Land


>Widdershins (sometimes withershins, or widershins) is a word which (usually) means anticlockwise, however in certain circumstances it can be used to refer to a direction which is against the light, i.e. where you are unable to see your shadow.

Obviously Judith wasn't using the word with either of those dictionary meanings. I think she meant it figuratively to mean 'in a disorderly way' or 'out of control'. It seemed perfect for that. Worthy of an additional entry in the dictionary.

Ian

Is this a word that should reverse in the antipodes?

From COD
widdershins // adv. (also withershins //) esp. Sc.
in a direction contrary to the sun's course (considered as unlucky); anticlockwise (opp. deasil).
[Middle Low German weddersins from Middle High German widdersinnes, from wider ‘against’ + sin ‘direction’]

If it did that, Linda, its meaning would have to start getting fuzzy in the region of the equator. Not good for a word !

Clock hands in Australia have always gone traditionally clockwise, despite the sun being in the north and thus seen to move anti-clockwise, because people brought their northern hemisphere artefacts with them.

The aborigines had no clocks. The pioneers faced an environment alien to much they were used to in Europe. They were probably all too busy coping with the practicalities of survival to worry about which way to walk round a circle when they couldn't walk straight. So I doubt 'widdershins' (used as a value judgement) featured much in their vocabulary.





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/08/2021 03:32PM by IanB.

Isn't there anyone out there who can help me with the poem. I have searched high and low, trawled the internet, and been to just about every wican site available. I'm assuming it is a childrens poem as it mentions in places witches dancing magic brooms and a black cat and a grey cat (Sam). Last verse goes something like "And in the morning when I woke, the purring bundle on my bed was most annoyed to be disturbed and so I very firmly said, "now Sam get up and ........... you can't go sleeping all the day and dancing Widdershins at night"

> Isn't there anyone out there who can help me with the poem.

It's probably not on the internet. Copyright laws prevent much of what is written from being transferred without the publisher's permission. So if it is from a textbook of some sort, it might not have been printed on the internet.

There are probably only 5-10 people who have read this post. I'm sure we've all tried as you have to locate it on the internet, so unless you know the source of your information, we probably won't be able to help you.

Go to your closest university library, or large city/county library and ask the reference librarian there, who might be able to help you.

Les

I see the folks at the link below have a Contact page. Perhaps sending an e-mail there might produce results?

[www.widdershins.org]

Other than something like that, I am out of suggestions. Doesn't ring a bell with anything I have read, that is.