I admit to having a certain romantic propensity toward warrior types of men and I can’t help it, after reading the description and notes but be smitten by the stories and images those have conjured in my mind.
See for yourself:
BITTER ROSE, BROKEN SPEAR
Aromatic materials from the lands of the Red Branch knights and their travels to prehistoric Scotland – smelted iron, larchwood, thistle – emboldened with bitter rose and amber
From Ulster fort to Argyll’s holy top, Red Branch nights, proud chiefs in wool, faded dyes – rowan berry, bitter rose, hunt in wood-of-wonders, melancholy thistle, for feasts, water-of-life, Caeawg’s amber wreath, smelted iron, wine-in-horn, now broken spear and empty hills
ISLE RYDER
A call to the fabled isles of archaic Norse and Celtic myths. Resinous Norway spruce and fir cones with narcotic jasmine, island wildflowers, honeyed mead and bulrush straw.
To the Blessed Isles, past the Manx seaman’s myst and thundering valour, past Balor’s blackened bulrush, the Summer Raider in ashwood shyp, his northern woods, saps, cones, honeyed mead, wax, golden gorse, meadowsweet, to inner loch, of inner isle, always ryding west
PALE GREY MOUNTAIN, SMALL BLACK LAKE
A chilling air of wood, water, stone, and shrubs that grow on a mythic mountain in Armagh.
Up pale grey mountain, through silver fog, bracken, bramble, dry heather shrub, past gravestone pile from forgotten time, facing west in whipping wind, the small black lake keeps witch’s ring, where the doomed king looked out to sea, Fenian blood in turf, the chilling quiet, the cry of hounds