Today’s Photo Friday is entitled: Midsummer Night’s Dream

Follow the links below for other entries (I will add links as entries come in!):

Tall Chick Tales

Idea jump!

A picture’s worth a thousand words

Blahblahblog (Linda is away at the moment but is posting in absentia!)

Below: music to get you in the mood: The piece is the Scherzo from Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.

We are a day early since traditionally the 21st June is Midsummer night! Midsummer has been celebrated in Europe for many centuries and some traditions predate Christianity. Traditionally all turning points of the solar year were celebrated, and midsummer was originally celebrated as the summer solstice.

The word “solstice” comes from the Latin “sol” meaning sun and “stice” to stand still. Midsummer’s day – June 21st – marks the summer solstice, the day when the sun reaches its northernmost point and stops before beginning its journey back to the south of the equator. The sun reaches its highest point in the sky and Midsummer’s Day is the longest day of the year – in northern latitudes of the British Isles the sun is only just below the horizon even at midnight, and it never gets completely dark.

Midsummer is thought to be a magical time, and there are many superstitions connected with it. Almost all magic is said to be more powerful at Midsummer and Midsummer dew is said to have special healing powers. The superstitions vary from young girls washing their faces in the dew, to make themselves more beautiful – older people do the same to make themselves look younger. And it is said that if you walk barefoot in the dew on Midsummer Day’s morning, it will stop the skin from getting chapped. If you can brave the sometimes chilly June night and bring yourself to dance naked through the dew, then it will also ensure fertility for the coming year! It is also said that you dream of your true love on Midsummer night, the one to which you will become betrothed - and so many hopeful young lovers go to sleep thinking hard about the one they love, perchance to dream.

Many of you will be familiar with one of my favourite light hearted Shakespeare plays, a romantic comedy: A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The main plot of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a complex and involves two sets of couples (Hermia and Lysander, and Helena and Demetrius) whose romantic cross-purposes are complicated still further by their entrance into the play’s fairyland woods where the King and Queen of the Fairies (Oberon and Titania) preside and the impish folk character of Puck or Robin Goodfellow plies his trade. Less subplot than a brilliant satirical device, another set of characters—Bottom the weaver and his bumptious band of “rude mechanicals”—stumble into the main doings when they go into the same enchanted woods to rehearse a play that is very loosely (and comically) based on the myth of Pyramus and Thisbe. The play is charming and fun, hilarious in parts – and has a classic happy ending where each wins the hand of their love.

So – what’s this got to do with Photo Friday, I can hear you ask? Well, I decided to create my own enchanted woodland! Below, is a recent favourite photo I took of my husband P standing on a tree trunk in a bluebell wood – I didn’t ask him to pose – I just turned around and he had climbed on to the stump of a tree (it’s a boy thing!!!!) so I quickly took his photograph – and that gave me the idea for this week’s title.  Then, with a little photographic manipulation, a few tweaks, and the help of Google image search, I introduced magical companions for him in the form on beautiful enchanting fairies. Don’t you think he makes a good Oberon?

Photo Friday: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

 

Photo Friday Advance Diary:

27th June: Tall Chick Tales choice: Sunrise/ Sunset
4th July: CuriousC’s choice: Traditions
11th July: CordieB’s choice – TO BE NOTIFIED
18th July: Julie’s choice – TO BE NOTIFIED