Celtic knotwork star design

Bess twisted rushes on the flat rock above the mere, three strands passing over and under until they made a ring, and from its edge she spun five curls like the heads of young ferns. Her father said a knot with no loose end was a knot that would hold a boat to its post in any gale. She laughed at him. She wanted one that held nothing at all, only itself, so she pinned it to the wall of the cottage and let it be.

The fishermen's wives came up the hill in the grey of a Tuesday morning and asked to borrow it. They wanted to tie down the moon, which had been slipping its moorings and dragging the tides about. Bess said she would lend it on one condition: they must find the end of it first. They sat on the wall with their fingers in the bands for three days, following the points out and the curls round, and every road they took came back to where they had started. On the fourth morning they gave up and went home, a little wiser and a little cross, and the moon kept to its own business.

So the cord is still pinned up in that cottage, though the roof has gone. When the wind gets in through the broken slates, the curls turn very slowly on their pins, and if you watch long enough you will see the centre hold still while the points move. Now off to bed, all of you. And if anyone asks where the start of the rope is, you tell them Bess is still looking.