Song of Fire and Water

Time, seasons, and holidays » Song of Fire and Water

Laerme has few festivals but just as her priests bless marriages, she does have one which accompanies the birth of a child. The Song of Fire and Water is a celebration of the birth which calls down blessings on the child and the parents. Gifts are given to the parents, many of these are practical, but the ceremony requires only poems and stories that are told to the parents that they might know how to raise the child according to the morals of the community.

The ceremony concludes with a dance which symbolizes fire (to enliven the spirit of the child) and also water (to symbolize the mercy and tolerance that is hoped for in the child). Typically the dancer holds two sticks, one has a red ribbon and one blue two symbolize the fire and water, these are swirled in a leaping dance which appears to entwine the two around the child (more accurately around either the mother as she holds the infant or about its cot as it, hopefully, sleeps).

Wealthier families may have many dancers (in which case each dancer tends to represent either fire or water) or even use a burning torch as the fire and an aspergill as the water rather than symbolic ribbons, although these generally are done only in the case of a very wealthy family where the dance is public to show the crowd that the child is healthy and has been blessed.