In the Day of Trouble

I had a curious dream the other day, which I was moved to jot down. It seemed more amusing than anything else, but it left me feeling oddly cheerful and optimistic. At first I couldn't see a relationship between the events of the dream and waking life, but as often happens, connections appeared after I started thinking about details, such as the bottle of Frangelico that popped up in the middle of the dream, seemingly out of nowhere. Yeah, really--Frangelico!

In the dream, I was stranded in an affluent suburb outside Omaha. I know: why Omaha? I've no idea, except that to me, the city seemed to be somewhat farther south and to the east of Omaha, more in the vicinity of, say, Saint Louis. Nevertheless--Omaha. It was an attractive retail area and actually had more of an urban feeling than the word "suburb" indicates, but I really wanted to get back downtown, where I was staying. I seemed to be there for a conference at a university and had somehow gotten stuck in the outskirts, where I was repeatedly frustrated in efforts to catch a bus.

I had several bus tickets with alternate numbers written on them, along with a bottle of water and some other items. I kept seeing buses go by, but never the one I needed. There was a chic little restaurant just off the street, and I passed a little time inside at a table. (For a moment, I seemed to be in my own neighborhood at home, but that feeling passed.) When I got up to leave, I had the bottle of Frangelico in my hand, and my bottle of water was nowhere to be seen.

As far as I know, I've only had Frangelico once, in a delicious chocolatey sort of drink. It was very good, and I'd certainly have it again, but in the dream I was incensed that my bottle of water had disappeared. I complained to the cashier, who, while polite, seemed mildly obstructionistic as I tried to exchange the Frangelico for my bottle of water. It didn't look like a real Frangelico bottle but was instead fairly small and flat, like a flask. The liqueur was golden brown and had small brown seeds at the bottom similar to cloves.

I'm not actually sure whether I ever got my water back, but I was outside and sort of flying around chasing a bus when Harrison Ford showed up. Then we were both chasing the bus, and I had the feeling that I'd known Mr. Ford before and that we were actually old friends. It finally started feeling like things were going my way, and although we still seemed to be pursuing a bus, it was now a fun sort of pursuit and no longer worrying. Then I woke up.

I may have known that Frangelico is made from hazelnuts, but if I did, I'd forgotten, until I looked it up. I then had to look up hazelnuts, remembering vaguely some associations they have with Celtic mythology. In fact, I had just been reading about hazelnuts in the last book of "The Dark Is Rising" series (which I wrote about last week). In the book, two heroes on their way to retrieve a crystal sword stop to eat some hazelnuts and apples given to them by a character who may or may not be Taliesin, the mythical bard and sometime god.

You may be wondering what that has to do with waiting for a bus in Omaha. Me, too. I note that I was not particularly happy to have a bottle of hazelnut liqueur instead of the water I started out with. Frangelico didn't seem like a practical beverage for a long bus journey, but more than that, I seemed to be saying "no" in some way to an idea of someone else's. In some of the old Celtic stories, hazelnuts are a source of wisdom (obtained in one instance by eating a salmon that had previously eaten hazelnuts). You'd think a mythologist would be the first one to say "yes!" to hazelnuts, but apparently it's different when you have a bus to catch. Maybe a jar of Nutella instead?

The beauty of the old tales about Taliesin, Fionn, and the Salmon of Knowledge, slippery and shape-shifting, has long appealed to me, and I had a good time today re-reading just about everything I've ever read about them. One nugget I came across was the idea that Elphin, the hapless youth who fished Taliesin out of a weir and was rewarded a thousandfold for his act, did this on April 29th. This is so close to the cross-quarter day of May 1 that I assumed a connection, and, yes, there are stories linking Taliesin and the salmon to May Day. Wisdom (and possibly fertility) is a special gift of Taliesin, who told Elphin, "In the day of trouble, I will be of more service to you than three hundred salmon." And he proceeded to make good on his word.

I actually had my dream not on May 1 but on August 1, which happens to be the cross-quarter day of Lughnasadh, an early harvest festival and celebration of the Celtic god Lugh. Lugh, by the way, had an emblem, a spear that never missed its mark. I may have had Lugh in the back of my mind, since I've written about the cross-quarter days before, and his spear certainly has a connection to a magic sword, the sword of Nuada; together, they are two of the mythical Four Treasures of Ireland. Apparently, reading about a magic sword and hazelnuts shortly before having this dream triggered an association.

But a spear is not a sword, and it wasn't Lugh, Nuada, or Taliesin that I encountered while chasing a bus, but a calm and collected Harrison Ford. While not a Celtic god (or is he?) he is certainly known for playing larger-than-life characters. So the moral of this story is . . . better one good hero of proven vintage or a bottle of spirits of dubious provenance? Well, which would you rather have in a tight spot?