Echoes of Awen: Exploring Druidry with Nimue Brown on Your Average Witch

Ever felt the pull of ancient wisdom whispering through the leaves and stones around you? Join me as I sit down with UK druid Nimue Brown, unwrapping the mysteries of Druidry and its interwoven threads with nature's rhythm. Nimue unveils her spiritual journey, influenced by both pagan childhood whispers and the UK's rich natural tapestry. Our conversation meanders through her daily practices that echo with the chants of Awen, revealing how these rituals infuse serenity into her life. A surprising familial connection to another druid author adds a twist to her tale, illustrating the depth and interconnectedness of the Druidic community.

Navigating the ebb and flow of spiritual practice, I get personal about combating the shadow of doubt with the brilliance of nature's solace, a struggle many of us face. Nimue and I dissect the duality of Druidic paths – the solitude of individual rituals against the shared energy of group ceremonies. We reflect on evolution within our practices, from the shedding of former rituals to the profound simplicity of oracle cards, and how these shifts have honed our spiritual resilience.

The episode crescendos with a look at the influences shaping our Druidic journey, from myth-soaked literature to the soul-stirring melodies that led us to discover our place within the wider Druid collective. Nimue offers a lantern for those new to the path, encouraging an embrace of personal evolution. Finally, a heartfelt invitation extends to you, our listeners, to continue the dialogue online and stay tuned for the enchanting tales and insights awaiting in the wings of next week's episode of Your Average Witch.

Visit Nimue's website here!
Druid Life

Transcript

Kim: 0:04

Welcome back to your Average Witch, where every Tuesday we talk about witch life, witch stories and sometimes a little witchcraft. Your Average Witch is brought to you by Crepuscular Conjuration. This week I'm talking to author Nimue Brown, a druid in the UK. We talked about what it means to be a druid, how druidry is different from witchcraft, and she tells us about her favorite tool in her practice. Now let's get to the stories. Nimue hello. Welcome to the show. Hello, can you please introduce yourself and let everybody know who you are and what you do and where they can find you.

Nimue: 0:47

Hello. So I'm Nimue Brown. I blog pretty much every day at druidlife. wordpress. com. I'm published by Moon Books. I give pagan books away on Ko-fi. I'm on YouTube. I'm kind of all over the internet like an enthusiastic disease. I'm on YouTube. I'm kind of all over the Internet like an enthusiastic disease. I'm an O-board trained druid originally, although I'm fairly experimental. I like wandering about doing my own stuff and then writing about it.

Kim: 1:24

So that's. That's broadly what I'm up to Now. Usually I'm asking questions to people who identify as witches, but you said you are on the Druid path. What do you prefer to be called? What sort of? When I ask these questions, what word would you prefer I use instead?

Nimue: 1:40

Druid is a good word for me and it's a big word, it's quite loaded. A lot of people who study druidry or are into druidry tend to self-identify more with that language because I'm a druid. It's a bit kind of, it's a bit much sometimes, but at the same time I'm reasonably happy and it saves you having to do a weird sentence every time. So let's go with druid as a word.

Kim: 2:06

I think that's better and into the point for this evening what does it mean to you when you call yourself a druid?

Nimue: 2:15

um. It identifies me with a particular community, with ways of being in the world, with philosophical positions, with a frankly large, complicated, messy sort of history, but it's somewhere that I feel very much at home.

Kim: 2:33

How would you say it's different from being a witch?

Nimue: 2:39

Okay, I read a lot, so my sense of witchcraft mostly comes from having read a lot of books, but I'm no expert really on what witches do. But my impression is that witches are very magic-orientated in terms of doing magic and that Druidry is much more about participating in the magic that is there and that might be through working with deity or through working with the land or the elements or with inspiration, but it's more being a collaborator with some other force rather than necessarily thinking you're going to get to direct it all the time. Although druid magic is a very variable thing, there's lots of different ways. Although druid magic is a very variable thing, there's lots of different ways.

Kim: 3:26

That's I like that, and I know people. I can hear you. We do that too. Okay, I hear you?

Nimue: 3:36

Yeah, I mean, there's all kinds of shades of everything out there. Yeah, can you go into your spirituality from childhood? Did you have any druids in your family? Parents were exploring paganism when I was a child, so I was exposed to all sorts of things, but perhaps most importantly Alan Garner's the Owl Service, which took me to the Mabinogion, which is the Welsh myths and legends that Drudery draws on so heavily. So that was in early, although I did not know the words for it at the time.

Nimue: 4:27

The women in my family have been odd for some generations, so there's a lot of stories about kind of weird arguably quite witchy things that my grandmother and my great grandmother used to do. So I grew up with that as part of my context. Are there other druids in my family? Yes, fascinatingly part of my context. Are there other druids in my family? Yes, fascinatingly. Graham tollboys, who also writes druid titles at moon books, um, seems to be related to me. We have an ancestral property in common and we only figured this out a few years ago. Amazing, he's some kind of distant cousin by the looks of it, which is fantastic. But there were. You go back a few generations and there were like 12, 13 kids, so we have no idea exactly where it meets up.

Kim: 5:13

Good old Ancestrycom.

Nimue: 5:16

Yeah, I haven't really got the patience, I will admit. I just enjoy knowing that it's a thing.

Kim: 5:23

Can you introduce us to your practice? Do you have any daily or, if not daily, just consistent rituals or anything that you do?

Nimue: 5:33

um, the most important thing for me when I can do it, when health permits is simply getting outside and being physically present in the landscape, and that's how I um experience the turning of the wheel of the year, ideally on a day-by-day basis, but weather and body do not always make that feasible. Ideally, I like to walk from where I live. I think that's very powerful, but again, my body has not been very cooperative in the last few years so I can't always do that and get to places few years. So I can't always do that and get to places. Um, when I can, engaging with history in the landscape, um, I've got a lot of ancient sites near my home.

Nimue: 6:12

Um, I like to go to the barrows and the hill forts, um places that that feel resonant to me with older history. Um, yeah, so it's. It's very, very local, it's very day-to-day um. I have something of a, an everyday prayer practice. I try and do a bit of meditating most days. Um, uh, I like to think about things a lot and that's um, that's also a big part of the druidry for me is the, the contemplating and reflecting and learning and studying um, and again, that's a most days sort of thing so you're actually in the uk and you felt do you follow the wheel of the year?

Nimue: 6:51

um, yes, now, obviously. Um, all right, maybe not. Obviously, druidry holds the same eight that that contemporary witchcraft does, because gerald guidner and the chap who most informed the modern druid movement, ross Nichols, were chums and swap notes. So we've got those same eight festivals and I started out with those when I started exploring druidry as a path and I like them and they're great for social get togethers and for having kind of focal points. But for personal practice, the wheel of the year is an everyday thing for me. It's it's that constant movement, it's that constant checking in and that's a big part of why I need to get outside and what's happening today, um, rather than those kind of narrative focal points, because they miss out so much, um, and and the wheel of the year is really specific to where you are, yeah, exactly what point it feels like spring and exactly when the leaves turn and all that kind of thing. It's really local and that's important to me.

Kim: 7:54

Yeah, where I live I would hesitate to call it spring or fall, because the desert's weird.

Nimue: 8:04

Ah, yes, that's a whole other environment, ideally set up for celtic festivals, I would imagine.

Kim: 8:11

But so I'm kind of finding my own annual things to notice and, yeah, notate and do.

Nimue: 8:25

I think that's so important, and celebrating the idea of a festival that doesn't relate to where you are just seems very odd to me. And they don't even reliably work in the UK. So you know, the difference between spring on the South Coast and spring in Scotland is quite a difference and in theory you know we're all in the right place for this, but we are not how would you say your practice has changed your life oh, it's, um, it's got me through quite a lot of things.

Nimue: 8:58

Um, I'm one of the big ones. When I started exploring prayer in earnest 10, 12 years ago, I was was coming out of some very difficult stuff and I was waking into panic attacks pretty much every day, real heart thundering, hyperventilating panic attacks, and I started a prayer practice in a very in a very loose and open hello universe kind of way, because I'm not great at belief, and within a very short time frame that waking into panic just went away and there was nothing else that I changed in that time frame that could possibly have accounted for it, and it was a very startling thing. But, um, yeah, the meditation practices, the prayer practices, the showing up it helps me to stay calm and I feel rooted. That's a big part of what I do. I feel a sense of belonging in the landscape I'm in and, yeah, that's a a very stabilizing underpinning and my life has had a lot of unstabilizing things in it.

Kim: 10:01

So that's um, that's something I very much need I like the thought where you said I'm not really a believer or I'm not a big believer.

Nimue: 10:11

I like that phrasing yeah, I, I experience things. I've had some very strange and interesting experiences along the way. I trust those at a personal level, but the idea of going around believing in things is like I don't believe in the postman. The postman turns up or does not, and I'm kind of on that level. It's a bit Terry Pratchett, to be honest, but he is one of my favorite philosophers.

Kim: 10:43

I like that very much. What would you say is the biggest motivator in your practice and has it changed since you first started um?

Nimue: 10:55

it hasn't really changed. It was more a process of recognition initially. Um, one of the key concepts in druidry is the sacredness of inspiration and that has always been very much at the heart of what I do and how I am in the world. So seeking inspiration, working with inspiration, trying to inspire others, and that's very much the bypass within Druidry, but that's where I fit.

Kim: 11:23

What would you say is your biggest struggle with it, with that in particular, or with with your practice as a whole?

Nimue: 11:31

oh, it's certainly in the. In the last few years it's been the um, the difficulty of navigating my own body through the world. I've recovered a lot in the last year, but I had a a patch where low blood pressure and anemia um were making it very difficult to stand up. So going outside and being present when you can't reliably make it off the sofa, um, and I lost. I used to be able to walk like all day and that was so key to what I was doing and I lost that for a while. I'm just, I'm up to about I can do four miles now, which is amazing, having had a lot of years where I could maybe do some yards. So, yeah, that has been a big struggle is what happens when my body will not let me throw it in the way that I want to, but I think I'm winning it that way.

Kim: 12:19

Yay.

Nimue: 12:20

Yay, indeed.

Kim: 12:24

How do you deal with self-doubt or imposter syndrome about your practice?

Nimue: 12:30

Oh, do I deal with it? I mean, I've had it. It intersects with depression. There's no two ways about that. If I'm depressed, then my ability to connect with the wider world is undermined by that. But I found over the years the best thing to do is just get out there to be with trees, to be with the where the streams are, to be on a hilltop, and just let that happen to me, because nature is very real. Again, it's the not having to believe. You stand on the hilltop, there's the sky, there's the sun, there's the wind in your face. You know the ground is there, it's all there, it's definitely real and it's quite hard to argue with. So I find, I find that physicality of reconnecting gets a lot done for me and then other stuff will start flowing again from there. I just have to get out there and meet it.

Nimue: 13:24

What brings you the most joy in your practice? Oh, I think it's probably those moments where where the inspiration really hits and flows and catches other people and there's an incredible magic to that and uh, that that can be, you know, when I'm writing and everything's moving, or when, when the music really, really gels I'm in a couple of musical groups at the moment and when those, when those really catch and something, something works. It's such a joyful and magical thing to be doing so that's. That's big one for me. Singing with people is, yeah, wild.

Kim: 14:03

That made me think of a question. Okay, Are druids like? Okay, the word coven? I don't really use the word coven because I'm not. I'm a solitary practitioner, but I still work in groups. Sometimes I have my group of friends that I work with. Is druidic or druid solitary, or is it a group thing or is it both sometimes?

Nimue: 14:28

It used to be much more group orientated. I think there are a lot more solitary druids, and deliberately solitary druids, than there used to be, but there are a lot of structures for communal things. So there's the, the orders, which tend to um, teach and educate as well as holding spaces. Some of them have organized rituals, um, you have groups, groves usually, rather than covens, um, so groves will meet to. What a good word. It's lush, isn't it? I like how it feels.

Nimue: 15:00

But that might be about ritual practice, it might be about meditating together, it might be more of a study group, it might be a mix. So there's lots of different ways of doing it. And you get groups that only come together to do ritual. Like, there's a group that meets at Stonehenge a few times a year and, as far as I know, it only really comes together then and you can just rock up with a ticket, obviously, but you can just. You don't have to be massively involved in order to be there and be present if you want to be. I've done that a few times and it's beautiful. So there's all kinds of different ways of structuring and organising and people sort of, you know, organically moving in and out of community spaces and solitary stuff and yeah, you know, sometimes that's messy and sometimes it isn't, and that's people really I realized, as I was admiring the word grove used in that way, that we use hive like that, like a beehive.

Kim: 15:56

We use hive because we call ourself our, we just we're the little bees. Nice, yeah, so maybe that's why I don't like the word coven. I already have a word and it's not that. No, no, what is something you did early in your practice that you don't do anymore? And why don't you?

Nimue: 16:18

Oh. So there's quite a few of those. I've explored celebrant work and it just it isn't for me, it's not where I belong. I can do it if people need me to. I've done hand fasting, I even did a funeral. But frankly, if someone else can pick that up, I'd much rather they did. It's just, it's not. It doesn't feel quite right for me, much rather they did. It's just, it's not, it doesn't feel quite right for me. I used to teach um, I mentored quite a lot of people individually when I was a lot younger and I mentored on the, the OBOD course, for a little while. But, um, I'd rather do that more informally. Um, I'm not so keen on the, the structure and the authority of having a a-student relationship with people. It's not quite where I'm at. So I've tried these things and stepped back from them. In terms of my personal practice, I just move around, I do what speaks to me at the time. I go in and out of things. It's consistent in not being consistent, I guess.

Kim: 17:23

What is your favorite tool? It does not have to be a physical object. It can be a philosophy or an idea or a song. But what is your favorite tool and how do you use it?

Nimue: 17:30

In terms of physical tools, because that narrows it down. I really like oracle cards because the way in which divination will let a little magic into a day with, frankly, very little effort is rather nice.

Nimue: 17:44

And they're also great kind of prompts for contemplation. You can meditate with them. They're very flexible. So you know, if we were doing a desert island, what one thing can you take with you? I'd probably take an oracle deck, because they give so much and they're, you know, very low maintenance.

Nimue: 18:01

Um, in terms of other kinds of tools, there's a thing that that druids do called chanting the arwen, and that's that's just reliably beautiful and, again, very easy. Arwen is the is. It is a Welsh word. Um, that druidry is sort of co-opted in a more spiritual way than welsh people would use it. Um, I think it just means inspiration in welsh, but that's great and the inspiration is great. But it's just a pulled out kind of thing where you just chant it and if you've got lots of people doing it out of sync with each other, in a just go, with what your breath allows, it's just this most beautiful, strange, lovely sound and you get all these shifting harmonies and um, discord and resolution, and it's such an easy and beautiful thing to do with people. So that's probably my other go-to for things to do that sounds great it's like I want to try that.

Nimue: 18:56

Yeah, yeah, that, yeah, that sounds amazing. Yeah, high five.

Kim: 18:59

We're doing this. Can you pick out one decision in your life that has changed the direction of your life? And, if you can, what was it?

Nimue: 19:13

Oh God, I do this a lot. To be honest, I'm quite keen on wild and crazy leaps in the dark and just sometimes going with it. So I've, I have shaken things up for myself quite radically on a number of occasions, with varying degrees of success. But, um, I like the principle of the um, of the dramatic change, and throwing myself wholeheartedly into things um, which makes it very difficult to pick out one in particular. It's like this you know, when I on form, this is pretty much what I do I would just go, let's try this and jump.

Nimue: 19:45

And my most recent big ones have been musical in that I got heavily involved with a singer-songwriter and I'm playing Viola for her, and that was just. That was a total leap of faith on both our parts. We played together once and she said be in my band, and I said, yes, um, and then you know so, um, my, my son and partner got lured into that because she needed a band and we are it, and that was cool. And then back before Christmas, I had a a moment of going well, maybe we could have a very flexible community singing group where my son and I hold the core of this and people can come along on whatever terms they like. So if they've got care commitments, if they've got health issues, they don't have to be super committed to be part of it, because that's always such an issue for people and I've been given a church.

Nimue: 20:37

One of the churches down the road said oh yeah, we could host this. Come to us, just have the space, jump to hire me, just be here. Yeah, this is perfect. Jump in the dark. Things happen and now people are going. Do you want to come and do a gig? Yes, yes, we do. We'll see who we've got.

Kim: 20:53

And that's what it is.

Nimue: 20:59

Are there magical practitioners. In the band, in the singing group, we're a fantastic array of pagans and Christians and not particularly religious folk, and we're finding the places where we naturally mesh. There's some great kind of socialist Christianity that everyone feels very at home with. We're doing cycle and season stuff and things we find amusing, and the church is fantastic. The church is on the site of a roman temple and we know this because they dug up the altar stones a while ago. So you know, it's fine with us. It's a very eclectic space. It doesn't mind at all.

Kim: 21:35

Um I can't imagine that happen a church in the us other than like unitarian universalist, I can't imagine that happening here yeah, I think, I think the the churches in the uk have got much more interesting in my lifetime.

Nimue: 21:52

There's this fantastic movement called hedge church for christians who'd quite like to stand under a tree, um, and who like celebrating the cycle of the seasons, and they're such lovely people and they'll come to drew things and they'll invite to come to their stuff and some of them are kind of a foot in each camp and, yeah, they're wonderful. Um, that sounds great, it's lovely and um. So there's a lot of places of sort of warmth and overlap and, of course, physically speaking, a lot of churches are on older sites. Sometimes there's pretty clear evidence for that, as with my Roman tablet business, but you know this whole thing about yew trees in churchyards.

Nimue: 22:34

It may quite often be fair to say that there are churches in ye new yards and that you know these are older places. So there's a lot of overlap. There's a lot of sharing of space and history and all the folklore and all the magic traditions. There aren't hard lines. It's like my great grandmother. My great grandmother didn't go to church. She didn't like church. She'd go for a walk on a Sunday. I think she probably thought she was Christian but at the same time.

Kim: 23:00

You know, this is very normal historically speaking I have never seen or met a yew tree and I really want to they're amazing and strange things and maybe they live forever, which is quite exciting I want to meet a yew tree, a blackthorn. There are several trees that I have never met and I really want to.

Nimue: 23:25

Yeah, they're remarkable things.

Kim: 23:32

How do you pull yourself out of a magical slump?

Nimue: 23:36

Oh um. I find connecting with other people's creativity is always very powerful for me. So if I'm kind of lost in my own stuff, seeking out people whose inspiration, whose energy will shake that up, for me is good. So sometimes that's knuckling down with an author I trust Fill my head with good things. I trust the Linton people of Bad Ilk, because that's always restorative Music, always live music. I might check in with one of my magical and pagan friends and look at what they're doing and try and sort of reboot from there. So yeah, I usually try and get out of my own head and into somebody else's.

Kim: 24:22

Oh, I like that phrase too. What do you wish was discussed more in the magical community?

Nimue: 24:33

Oh, that's an interesting one. I mean, I feel like we are such a young community in so many ways that there's so much that we need to talk about. Um, I get a bit frustrated by the endless. I've just discovered this is a thing blue starry stuff, conversations that happen on the internet like how do we get past the beginner's stuff and talk about anything that isn't absolutely basic? So, um, yeah, I mean for a long time the frustration of how few like druid books are where that went basically another introduction to druidry. It's like can we, can we move on to anywhere? Um, so I'm enjoying the way, um, more focused and specific things are coming out, um, moon books.

Nimue: 25:18

So I'm with do this wonderful um introductory books thing with this cunning twist again, here's an introduction to a really specific little topic that you may not know anything about. Like you know, here's a candle magic or this particular deity, a whole tiny book on this particular deity or fairy magic or whatever it is. So you can have kind of a beginner's book without boring everybody to death because it's a new thing and you haven't necessarily read it before and that's great. I like that a lot. So I just want more, really I want more people talking about more stuff. I think that would be. That would be cool I would love it.

Kim: 25:58

listeners, please tell everyone you know I go to this wellness retreat every year, called Anahata's Purpose, and I would love it if druids would come and tell us druid things.

Nimue: 26:14

Plenty of druids out there in America. You've got to be able to lure some in somehow.

Kim: 26:24

I'm going to make a post. Think about the three biggest influences on your practice, whether it's a person or a pet, or a song or a philosophy whatever, thank them for the effect they have on your practice or the effect they have on your practice.

Nimue: 26:47

So I said alan garner and the owl service earlier and that was that was just such a big starting point for me because that led me to um so many stories and myths that I found really resonant as a child. Um, but the point at which I found it wasn't just me. I was at an event on the welsh border and I saw on a sign that they got somebody called Daphne Bard playing and I thought, well, clearly I have to check that out with a name like that, d-a-m-h. Also Dave and I went and he was singing songs based on the Welsh mythology that I had always loved and felt was sort of sacred religious text, even though it's not presented that way, and he was singing about it in exactly the way that I felt about it and I was absolutely mind blown and and obviously bought his stuff and stalked him on the internet as one does, and that's what brought me to Obod, because that's where he comes from going.

Nimue: 27:40

Oh, my god, it's not just me, there's a word for it. It there's all these people, it's Druidry, and I didn't know. So that was a huge, huge moment for me in terms of sort of connecting and, working out where I fit, pick a third one. I don't know, I mean so many things I guess. I guess the other major source of impact is simply the landscape. It's the landscape I grew up in um. So I come from a very specific location. I live on jurassic limestone, on the edge of um, a hill line above a river, and that combination of the stone and the water, the plain and the high hills and forest bell and high blue hill, that's so intrinsic to who I am and to how I come to Druidry. So I guess that's the other one.

Kim: 28:28

I relate to that. Cool, I miss my mountains in the Appalachians.

Nimue: 28:37

Mm. I mean, we're literally formed from the landscapes we grow up in, such that archaeologists can look at your teeth and work out kind of who you were and where you came from. It's physically, it's in us, and I think that's really important. That's weird.

Kim: 28:59

What advice do you have for somebody just starting out? What?

Nimue: 29:02

advice do you have for somebody just starting out? Oh, experiment, don't be afraid to try things and don't be afraid to go. No, that's not it, let's try a new thing. It's okay to get stuff wrong. It's okay to not magically know how to magically be. It's actually a process. It takes time, it takes work. Trust what feels right, trust what calls to you, and if you're not a perfect match for the first people you run into, uh, you know this happens a lot. It's no big deal.

Kim: 29:29

Keep, keep looking, it'll be out there who do you think I should have on the show, now that you've seen what this, these questions, are like?

Nimue: 29:39

oh well you're. You're clearly, um, in need of more druids. Yes, you could conceivably get Mr Bard, as I like to call him, good old Dave. He's marvellous and a great speaker and very entertaining. Cat Treadwell is a very interesting druid and she will talk and does things. Brendan Myers is a bit on the druid side, philosopher, canadian, very interesting chap. I could recommend him. Robin Hearn's, another one. So yeah, get more druids definitely.

Kim: 30:15

Is there anything else that you wanted to talk about? Anything I didn't ask or did you have any questions for me? Do you have anything happening soon?

Nimue: 30:22

I have things happening soon. I have things happening all the time. I'm talking at a fairy event local to me in a couple of weeks time, doing an introduction to druidry. I've got the bands there and be all sorts of stuff. Um, I'm on sub stack, which is where I most reliably put the things I have going on. I'm on twitter, I'm on blue sky, I'm on instagram, I'm on facebook, I've got the druid life blog. I, as I said earlier, I'm all over the internet like some kind of disease and I'm really easy to google. So if you want to look me up, I I have the kind of name that that is easy to track down. So, um, and I, generally I'm happy to have friends requests from, from pagans. It's always good to connect with fellow travelers. So, you know, friendly stalkers are always welcome.

Kim: 31:09

So Nimue is not something Americans would really know how to spell when they're looking it up. So links will be in the show notes. Make sure you go down and click them to follow. So the last two things that I ask of my guests. Thing number one please recommend something to the listeners.

Nimue: 31:30

Does not have to be witch or druid or magic related at all, just whatever you're into this week recommend it Okay going to recommend checking out the international transition towns movement because this is little projects all over the world where people are trying to make social and environmental change and it's beautiful stuff and some of it's really exciting and it's all inspiring and you might find you've got someone on your doorstep and it's a great place to go and do your paganism quietly, without going. Ah, I have a way to try madrid over here, but you know, they're just doing amazing things.

Nimue: 32:06

It's a great place to sort of walk your talk, really, so I recommend that.

Kim: 32:13

Finally, the last thing that I ask is can you please tell a story? It can be from your life, from your childhood, something goofy that happened to you in school, or it can be a story you really liked hearing.

Nimue: 32:32

Oh, stories are such a big and ongoing thing for me, and the notion of people as storytelling creatures, so I've been kicking this one around for ever since we started talking about this. What kind of story might I be inclined to share? And I think I'm going to go for one of the key moments that got me to where I am. So when I was in my 20s, I ran a folk club in the Midlands. Now I came to this kind of this is another ancestral thing. My parents met in the folk club. My I came to this kind of this is another ancestral thing. My parents met in the folk club. My mother and grandmother were running. Um, my child grew up in a folk club, so it's kind of it's who we are is what we do.

Nimue: 33:13

And I was there one week and we didn't have a lot of people, so there were more songs needed than I kind of planned for and I was wondering what to sing. And one of my regulars said why don't you sing us one of your druid songs? And I went oh, and frankly, at that point I was consciously pagan. I'd been pagan through my teens and into my early 20s, but I wasn't calling myself a druid. I was thinking what, what the hell have I got in my repertoire that would even make him think this um.

Nimue: 33:45

And in the end what I sang was um a setting of Rudyard Kipling's Oak and Ash and Thorn. And I later found out that that was in fact probably the best choice of the material I had and that the Marids definitely do sing Oak and Ash and Thorn, particularly around mid-summer. I mean, it's all the things. It's very tree-based, um, it's got some mid-summer. I mean, it's all the things. It's very tree based, um, it's got some midsummer celebration in it and a good chorus, um.

Nimue: 34:08

And that was. That was actually a couple of weeks ahead of the experience of um going and hearing um dave smith, dav the bard, performing. So I was kind of primed and I went into that space already, having wondered what did Druid sing? And there he was. You never answered Absolutely. It was just sort of perfect alignments of things that really made me look at what I was doing, and that somebody else saw me that way made me kind of think about whether that fitted or not. It was quite a moment. Sometimes things just turn up and you've got to go with them, and it was certainly one of those.

Kim: 34:50

I love that. It was good. Well, thank you very much for being on the show. I liked learning about druids and I do hope more come on the show. I'm going to name drop you, get ready. So everybody be sure to go down to show notes and follow Nimue everywhere, and I'll see you on the internet. Bye, so Nimue, welcome to Hive House. Thank you, it's been great fun. The first thing I'm going to do is draw one of these cards that have questions on them, so tell me when.

Nimue: 35:41

When worm.

Kim: 35:46

Oh, I don't know how this is going to work because it's kind of America specific. Did you join, or would you join a fraternity or sorority?

Nimue: 35:56

in college, we went down to the beach to look at a forest that was a preserved bog, that had been buried by sand and then exposed again. It is the weirdest environment in the world, this kind of 4,000-odd-year dead forest on a beach covered in seaweed. So yeah, that's been a lot of fun. I've just had the most amazingly good fun of the weekend doing music and taking wildlife and looking at the sea.

Kim: 36:25

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Kim: 37:17

Thanks for listening to this episode of your Average Witch. You can find us all around the internet on Instagram, at your Average Witch Podcast, facebookcom, slash groups, slash Hivehouse, at wwwyouraveragewitchcom and at your favorite podcast service. If you'd like to recommend someone for the podcast, like to be on it yourself, or if you'd like to advertise on the podcast, send an email to youraveragewitchpodcast at gmailcom. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next Tuesday. Thank you.