“Enchantment” - a bewitching, a conjuring, an act of magic; with a secondary sense of speaking or singing aloud. “To enchant” is from the Latin “in-cantare”, literally, to sing into or to sing upon; an enchantment is a spell-song.
About six months ago, in The enchantment of grammar, I wrote about the enchantingly lovely etymology of the words grammar and glamour. Shortly after, enchantment appeared again as a word of the day in its own right, and this time I found myself remembering fragments from Bruce Chatwin's book The Songlines. It weaves travelling, searching and theories around the nomadic life with Aboriginal Creation myths. These tell of legendary beings who wandered around Australia in the Dreamtime, singing out the name of everything they saw - animal, vegetable or mineral - thus singing the world into existence.
Singing the world into existence... enchanting it into life... It's how we can look at spring, when new life bursts from every bare branch; or even those earlier moments when the first snowdrops and crocuses appear, heralding the freshness to come. But it's an enchantment sung in winter, silently and hidden in earth's depths; an enchantment conjured from what was seemingly dead and barren.
Winter's darker mornings and later sunrises mean that the dawn chorus is currently a backdrop to my morning prayer, segueing into more mundane sounds, as the city begins another day. And sometimes, as last night, I wake in the early hours, and as I turn sleepily back into my pillow, I hear a bird singing, somewhere. And snoozily I think, as I more wakefully do during my prayertime dawn chorus... they're enchanting the world, enchanting this day, into life...
What spell-song, I wonder, are they singing around each one us? What words does it contain... of hope, of protection, of new life, of God...?
About six months ago, in The enchantment of grammar, I wrote about the enchantingly lovely etymology of the words grammar and glamour. Shortly after, enchantment appeared again as a word of the day in its own right, and this time I found myself remembering fragments from Bruce Chatwin's book The Songlines. It weaves travelling, searching and theories around the nomadic life with Aboriginal Creation myths. These tell of legendary beings who wandered around Australia in the Dreamtime, singing out the name of everything they saw - animal, vegetable or mineral - thus singing the world into existence.
Singing the world into existence... enchanting it into life... It's how we can look at spring, when new life bursts from every bare branch; or even those earlier moments when the first snowdrops and crocuses appear, heralding the freshness to come. But it's an enchantment sung in winter, silently and hidden in earth's depths; an enchantment conjured from what was seemingly dead and barren.
What spell-song, I wonder, are they singing around each one us? What words does it contain... of hope, of protection, of new life, of God...?
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