The Western Gate

The Devil and the Crowman

In the days before Christmas morn’ when the moon was darkest in the long dark nights, when our Mother the Earth had descended to the lowest ebb, the Devil as some know it walks abroad.
His purpose in the midst of winter, to sway those unable to function with a free and maverick mind and tempt them to all the pleasures of flesh and wanton diversions that dissuade their mind and purpose from an obedient, prostrate life before ‘God’. It could, of course, be added that those of a free and maverick mind indulge in such pleasures and wanton lusts of their own free will anyway, and that free will, the chaos and permutations are as a resultant born of course from the Herald of Light- Lucifer, though some scholars would argue against this discourse, it is not for us to deliberate over suffice to say all else of course is subservient and determined, a path laid down for travellers who cannot veer off the beaten track, and beaten so it is.
But! let us return to the story.
There! he wanders across the fields of Albion. The Devil.
Though those of us blessed/cursed with a spirit vision and creative interpretation will recognise his figure, to all others, he appears perfectly amiable and ‘normal’, perhaps a little jolly and inquisitive as to the nature of each person he meets, perhaps a little weird some would say but perfectly agreeable and in whose company many would attest to having a fine. Fine time.
It so happened, upon the Devils current deviant quest he came across Merle Crawford¹, the Crow master of the fields of West Essex. Alike the scarecrows (of those farmers who were averse to the strange ways of Mr.Crawford,) he stood upon the crossroads of the fields, or the crosspathways between farms to assess the gathering of the crows, ravens, jackdaws and suchlike. This gave him a position to observe across the whole plain of the area in which he worked. And as every wayfarer knows, upon the crossroads we meet the travellers both fayre and foul……

“Good Morn!” said Crawford to the stranger in the midst, walking towards him somewhat hobbled, whose ankle seemed to struggle with its step. ” twisted thy ankle sir?” enquired Crawford
“The blasted brambles of the Blackberry entwined me in my fall?” said the Devil, somewhat startled that he gave the correct response, and knew at one he were in the presence of a cunning man.
Crawford looked at the figure and saw in his minds eye the subjective image that others had portrayed of the adversary. Now, Crawford, followed neither that ordained by the establishment, the church, or indeed those in opposition to those institutes, for him, it were the wisdom that he found in nature, in the minds of the crows and ravens, in the whispers of the horses, in the visions of the toads and the song of the bee. He cared not whether the Devil, as it were, tempted ‘fallow folk’ nor the pious to change their ways, Crawford would always be of his path, and unaverred. However, compassion reigns in the cunning man, and he knew at once the weak were vulnerable in the approach of the Devil.
“Where is’t thou heading, and, if I may, what business art thou to deliver?”
The Devil at once began to dupe the answer, to trick the cunning man as surely as serpents entwine themselves to be free from the rod that binds them. Yet, despite the first utterance of lies and filth from its mouth he found himself unable to say anything other than the purpose, for which, he was allowed rhetoric to conceal exactly the nature of his deviance.
“I am, as you say, in the charge of elaborating myth and song and verse to the folk, as I find them, and to leave them thus, joyful and inebriated by my performance.”
“You are,” retaliated Crawford to the charge, “an actor?”
“Indeed as is, and in my nature,” replied thence the Devil.
“Where then, are ye heading?” Crawford asked at the same time purposefully looking across the fields of Essex, and nought but the abandoned farmhouse of Patalan’s² farm was to be seen.
The Devil followed Crawford’s eyes across all the fields and land that could be seen from where the paths carved ran and where the crows trespassed overhead.
“Ah!” said the Devil now quizzical as to Crawford’s concerns in the midst of a barren and desolate promised land, “It is such that you could give me directions to the nearest settlement of those in need of respite from the mundane and I would of course, be much obliged to give to you the fruits of my finding?”
The Devil produced a small ‘kerchief of blackberries, many half stamped or bruised, presumably from the devils clumsy fall into the bush itself.
“It need not be so,” proclaimed Crawford at once, “for look upon my baggage?”
Crawford produced a large holdall, crammed full of shoes, battered, worn and bereft to be fit for purpose, “these…” continued the cunning man,” are how far I have walked, alike to find such a settlement.”
Indeed had Crawford walked thus far, but need not detail that those paths were same re-trod, repeated, encircled, re-imagined and cast over each field continuously, over years. The holdall itself contained those shoes, for sure, and it was not the Devils notion to know that Crawford, before the winter solstice were placing them about the fields for the mice and for the birds to seek solace from the cruel winter bite.
“E’Gads!” or some such exclamation uttered the devil positively fuming at the images of himself walking miles and miles and miles, ” I have no time for such distance.”
He looked squarely at Crawford, and knew his disguise need not be maintained and at once, the Devil merged into the spirit of nature and formed itself into a bat that flew towards Patalan’s old farm to nestle there till spring.

¹ Merle Crawford. Merle is an antiquated Christian name, the masculine form of Merla, which translates as ‘Blackbird’. Crawford, of course is English-true language meaning ‘ Ford of the crows.’ The Crawfords of Essex were known as being intelligent, articulate and very intuitive, latterly renamed~ cunning men.

²Patalans Farm, taken from the old Essex dialect which was a mixture of extinct Gaelic and very similar to Sanskrit, Patala means ~ of the subterranean, and alike the Devil, it was a liminal force between the Earth and the underworld, between the waking world and the dreaming.

Afterword: Picture shows the Devil, landing upon a bush of blackberries, legend has it that he fell from heaven after St. Michael and the host of heaven cast out the rebel angels, this would be Michaelmas day Sept 29th, or the week after the Vernal Equinox, the devil fell to Earth and landed upon the Blackberry bush refereed to in the story. Folklore tells us that we should not eat any blackberry after Michaelmas day, i.e. from Sept 30th onwards, as the devil is born to Earth and walks abroad.