Winifred Hodge Rose
Ostara comes in rushing swiftness, dawntide gold,
Her glowing brightness, cool and clear, we now behold!
Chorus:
She glides between the shimmering stones
With gentlest step, our lithe maiden glowing:
With blessing treads the mountain’s bones.
~~~~
Her flashing gaze, her soul’s clear main, make bright the air,
No elf-queen mighty, full of grace, could be so fair!
Chorus:
She glides between the shimmering stones
With gentlest step, our lithe maiden glowing:
With blessing treads the mountain’s bones.
~~~~
With floating grace upon the sward the elf-maidens come,
To spin about the Springtime Queen, their souls’ sweet home.
Chorus:
She glides between the shimmering stones
With gentlest step, our lithe maiden glowing:
With blessing treads the mountain’s bones.
~~~~
Ostara, Lady, come to us, your folk do call,
Your springtime gifts, your blessing give, to one and all!
Chorus:
You glide between the shimmering stones
With gentlest step, our lithe maiden glowing:
With blessing tread the mountain’s bones.
Notes
I address the Heathen Spring / Dawn Goddess as ‘Ostara’ here, the German version of her name, because it is the most familiar. For myself, I like to call her by her Anglo-Saxon name, Eastre or Eostre.
The Anglo-Saxons honored her by naming an entire month after her: Eostre-monath, which began on the first full moon after the spring equinox. This timing coincidentally overlapped with the calculations for Christian Easter (which falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox, in the Western Christian church). This is how the Christian holiday came to be named after a pagan Goddess in England (Easter) and Germany (Ostern). In all other countries, even in Scandinavia and Holland, this Christian holiday is named after some version of ‘passover’ or ‘paschal’ tide, because the crucifixion and resurrection occurred during the sacred time of Passover in the Jewish calendar. Only in the ancestral languages of English and German was the devotion to the Spring and Dawn Goddess and her holy month so strong that the name of her month was attached to the Christian holy day: Easter in English, Ostern in German.
These names are both derived from words for ‘east’, relating to dawn and springtime. The name Eostre is cognate to the Greek Goddess of the Dawn, Eos. Ostara is the German version of her name. There’s a long tradition in some places in Europe of climbing a hill or mountain before the Sun rises on Easter morning, to greet the Dawn on that day; I did that myself when I lived in Bavaria in the 1980s, though I was not Heathen then. I like to think this is a continuation of pagan practice: greeting Ostara on the mountain-top as her holy springtime month begins.
It is also meaningful to address this Dawn-Goddess by her reconstructed Proto-Indo-European name, Hausos. She has many other names in other Indo-European pantheons. All these names refer to the East and the Dawn, and the associated season of Spring.
Though I have not found solid proof of this, I like to think that the fertile Hare, who runs wild and free with March madness at this time of year, was the sacred animal of Eostre and Ostara (called the Oster-Hase in German). Hence the ‘Easter Bunny’, whose behavior is a good deal more sedate and child-oriented than is the wild Hare with its spring frenzy of fighting, mating, and mad dancing!
As we celebrate Ostara, let us honor Eostre’s power to bring renewal and fertility, to release us from the constraints of winter and set free our urge to create, to celebrate, to renew our lives. Hail the Spring and the Dawn: Hail Ostara!
About the song: Years ago, before I knew about modern Heathenry, I experienced a beautiful dawn scene in the Alps. Wisps of white mist rose from wet grass and twined in the dawn light and breeze as though they were dancing, while the rising sun shot pearly gleams through the mist and reflected off boulders and rocks. This scene stayed in my memory, and years later when I wished to write a song for Eostre, this memory inspired me. I was also inspired by the lovely Anglo-Saxon word ælf-sciene or elf-sheen, describing the shining beauty of the elven-kind. The wisps of rising mist, pearl-shot by the sun, seemed to me to be elf-sheen maidens dancing in the dawn light, gathering around their beloved Lady of the Dawn. This was the beautiful scene that led to my song “Ostara’s Dance.”
This song is set to music, which I shall attempt to score and post here at some point.