Long ago, in the most appropriate time and place, deep in the blackness of the void, rich with the delicate raw fibres of beingness, the unsee-able and unknowable womb of old mother dark birthed the egg of life. It is widely known that this egg contained the beginnings of everything: all space and all time, thought, words, love began here. And in this place, this island which is our home, the first being who burst from the egg was the dreaming tree. In other places other first beings came forth, but here in the land that came to be called Albion the first being was that dreaming tree.

This tree’s roots stretched deep into the fecund richness of old mother dark herself; the tree trunk was slender, supple and strong; the tree spread branches into the enfolding darkness and gathered to them some of the raw fibres of being, folding and twisting the fibres to form dreaming blossoms on the dreaming tree. A dreaming breeze stirred the branches and the flowers of the dreaming tree so that they danced lightly together. The dreaming blossoms released a fragrance so fine, so delicious, along the dreaming breeze that dreaming bees were drawn and spun from the raw fibres of beingness to come and drowse amongst the dreaming flowers.

When the dreaming bees had drunk their fill of nectar and the baskets on their legs were laden with pollen, they flew out from the dreaming tree laying trails of dreaming behind them amongst the raw fibres of beingness. Forward and back, up and down, right and left they flew. The trails they laid were sweet with nectar, fertile with pollen and spun from the stuff of dreaming. Around them gathered the raw fibres of beingness which warmed in the heat of the sun and the light of the moon and cooked themselves into hills and valleys, rivers and streams and mountains: a land sweet with the makings of honey and of flowers, of abundance.

Sailing overhead the moon saw this sweet land forming and she trailed her fingers across the weaving, strumming it like a harp and raising from it the song of life, of lives lived in the soil, of lives lived in the water, of lives lived in the air, lives with voices of their own each singing their own song and making the song of life richer and fuller. Each pass of the moon, in all her faces, each strum of her fingers, drew more life from the land and the waters. In other places things may have been different, but this is how they were here in Albion. Each voice sang the song of love and of death, of abundance and of privation, of life in all their variety. So they have always sung, and so they sing today; if you listen, you can hear them still.