The Land of Nod
us a clue of times past, but I’ll come back to that later.
Being caught between the wide-awake club and the land of dreams, that kind of ‘drifty’ country where if someone speaks you’re not sure whether you heard them or not, and neither did they, and any response was on some kind of spiritual plain where both parties intuitively understand.
As Joanie rubbed her eyes and saw me staring from the window, she observed, ‘It’s like you’re in a trance!’ ‘It’s ‘dreamtime’ girl’, I said, ‘The native Australian nether-land’, as she drifted back off into the aptly named Land of Nod.
No pun or allusion intended there but, as I wrote those words remembered that Nod is a place to the East of Eden in the Old Testament, to which Cain was sent after he had killed his brother Abel (Genesis 4:14) and of course it has come to mean an imaginary place where sleep is found.
Anyway before I get distracted further - I first read about ‘dreamtime’ in a vintage ‘Strange But True’ book when I was a lad, where it was briefly alluded to in amongst the usual guff about boomerangs always coming back, and kangaroo Joeys in pouches, and there was an illustration of a native Australian pointing to a wonderful rock painting of the now extinct carnivorous marsupial the thylacine.
Dreamtime allows
Aboriginal people to understand their place in traditional society and nature, and connects their spiritual world of the past with the present and the future, and they have always shared their stories to pass on imperative knowledge, cultural values, traditions and law to future generations; and they are also passed on through various customs such as ceremonial bodypainting song and dance.
Because of their beliefs, passed down orally for thousands of years, they have sustained a rich cultural heritage which is very important to them to this day.
So much so that, this week in the face of Covid-19 the Peoples of the Aboriginal lands in the remote North West of South Australia, known as APY, have introduced strict rules for entry to their lands.
‘We are protecting our people, especially those who hold our ancient cultural knowledge, and we know they are already vulnerable as they are quite old,’ APY general manager Richard King said.
I respect the notion that the cultural heritage is so important and meaningful, that it is right up there in the forefront of their thinking with actually staying alive.
Maybe even as far as, without our past, we have no future.
The ‘past’ representing ancestors, memory poems, rock drawings, but also for the here and now and indeed the future.
In ‘dreamtime’ the Ancestor Spirits came to the earth in human form, and as they moved through the land, they created the animals, plants, rocks, rivers, mountains and other forms of the land that we know today.
These Ancestral Spirits also formed the relationships between Aboriginal people, the land and all living beings.
Once the ancestor spirits created the world, they transformed into trees, the stars, rocks, watering holes etc.
These are the sacred places of Aboriginal culture and have special meaning.
Because the ancestors did not disappear at the end of the ‘dreamtime’, but remained in these sacred sites, it is neverending, linking the past, present and the people and the land.
It doesn’t take a genius to spot how these stories from thousands of years before Christ could have been cribbed by any number of later story tellers.
Which brings me back nicely to Hoarstone Edge, from the Middle English horeston, harestan, from Old English har stan, from har hoar and stan stone.
A place where stones were laid down or erected to commemorate people and events.
I’d like to think these post-mating wood pigeons with Hoarstone Edge as a back-drop would have made the grade as a memorable rock painting.
One, two, three, back in the room, and please stay safe.