Lùnasdal is about horses

At least for us it is. Historically it was a time of horse races and Macha, well, one of Them, is associated with the horse races and the holiday and with horses because of this. While somewhere else I might get into footnotes and contemplations about how the various Machas do and do not connect with each other or do or do not connect with horses, well, this blog is more about what we do here. So I'll save that, this is about living it. And I'm tired and that stuff is all on another computer and on a thumbdrive I'm too lazy to go get and what ever. I'm not bothering with the researchy stuff.

We often refer to this holiday as An Fhéill Macha, the Festival of Macha, which is a totally made up name based on the Là Fhéill Bride for Imbolg. We focus on Macha, as She is a primary Goddess to us as a household, She the Land to us. We moved here to be able to get, to rescue, horses, Macha is who we believe called us to it.

We have always joked that as we do not have horse races we have the Great Horse Unrace. During the day of our celebration (which is a few days yet here), we make sure to spend some time watching the horses be horses. Saoradh's first Lùnasdal here we took him up to the ritual area where we made a temporary fence and he bolted, some say they saw Someone riding him even, and ran home. That was a bit more race-like than we usually get. In later years, I'd try to get him out for a bit of a ride on that day, not like it was different than others but it was our unrace then. Right now we have the two Minis and Saorsa is yet unbacked so we'll pretty them up and just watch them be horses.

What we do NOT do, of course, is watch professional horseracing, due to the cruel practices and use of horse slaughter as an "out" for "poorly preforming" horses and, well, we're not fond of people who think this somehow is a thing to do for the holiday. Okay, that's as close to politics as I'll get here. I have been, however, rather horrified by suggestions I've seen, often coming from people who are simply clueless and not actually cruel, to do this.

Anyway, next year perhaps we'll have a bit of a race, depending on how things go. We may have a new horse coming into our "herd" and Saorsa will hopefully be backed by this time next year (although I'm letting her let us know when the time comes, so we get off to the best start). Meanwhile, I'll leave you with a Saorsa picspam, her first road trip with her trainer.

This is boring!

No, really, can't we do something else?

Hey! Where we going?

We're heading down the road!

Hey! We're being followed!

Why do I have to get out of the way, he's the one going to fast! Road hog!

You want me to go into the ditch?!

Oh, wait, there's food down here!

It's better up here though! Hey, a helicopter!

BTW, that is my trainer's saddle, when I do someday ride her it'll be with a Western style endurance saddle most likely. Eventually bareback. The only problem with the bareback bit is, well, the height issue. All the more reason to get her use to going into ditches.