Spanish views from a small town

Tonight is Walpurgis Eve. It is the eve of Beltane. Tonight, all witches roam and hold sway. To keep them away from our homes, our animals, and our means of transport, broom must be hung on doors, gates, and cars.  It is an ancient custom Christianized by Saint Walpurga, whose intercession was also requested for protection against witches, just because she had been an abbess in what was later to become Germany, and had converted the locals to Christianity. (This is because pagan beliefs were once thought to be a form of Devil worshipping, so, if she converted people, she fought against the Devil.) Making her saint day on the first of May is one form of Christianizing the pagan festival of Beltane. The other is to hang the broom to sweep away the witches (pagans) who might roam the night.  Broom, the plant, has long connotations in magic. It is a plant sacred to the gods, and was used even in ancient Rome to sweep away negative magic from a house where a baby had been born, by ...

Once upon a time sheep were as important to the lands of the Spanish meseta as they were in England. In fact, fine merino wool was exported from Castile to England. And until the eighteenth century it was against the law to take a merino sheep outside Spain. It was punishable by death. That guaranteed the Spanish monopoly for many years. And Spain being a country of meteorological contrasts between the plains and the mountains, the sheep were kept in the mountains in summer and brought to the plains in winter. Thus began the trashumancia . It's a purely Latinate word. Tras means "the other side" and humancia comes from humus , "earth." Literally "the other side of the earth." And in the Middle Ages, driving the herds for days from one end of the country to the other, that must have been what it seemed like. But so important were the sheep herds for the economy, that the owners created an association, the Mesta , and controlled the herding and bree...