Odd things are always popping into my head – it’s no wonder I’m so forgetful about important things like where I left my glasses/keys/bank card/vital piece of paper etc, when my noddle is so full of nonsense. As I get older I do wonder how I, or anyone else, will be able to tell when things upstairs go awry (the mental side of me I mean, not mental as in the colloquial use)) Back to what I was going to mention – odd things which arrive unbidden at the front of my mind.
For no reason at all, and with no suggestion from anywhere, “willow wight” sprang into my mind. In many ways willows are the trees I am most familiar with. I spent so much time by rivers – or as Ratty in “The Wind in the Willows” would say, ‘by it and with it and on it and in it’, and the rivers I was by were lined with willows. I saw them at every time of year, full-leafed, or losing their foliage onto the ground and into the water, or budding brightly in spring, and that special feel of the leaves in hot dry summers. On the river we canoed past them, or ventured under them, into a green cave, quiet and private. If we were swimming in one of the races it wasn’t hard to not notice a bend in the river and end up swimming through drooping fronds. And of course, in the rowing races, where eights sped along the water trying to catch the boat in front, if they did they’d stick a spray of willow behind the cox to show their victory.
So that’s willows – and wight? Being such an avid reader of all sorts of books, stories, tales, poems, I probably came across a wight meaning a super-natural, mysterious and probably scary creature long before I “met” them in Tolkien. This is Wikipedia’s definition (slightly abbreviated):
A wight is a being or thing… In Old English, it could refer to anything in existence, with more specific usages arising in Middle English, perhaps due to the term of similar meaning in Anglo-Norman, creature. The term is widely used in modern fantasy, often to mean specifically a being which is undead.
So willow wight. I can’t find a willow wight reference anywhere, so I guess I will have to write a story including one to fill that gap!
Lois Elsden 