Collecting

And here by the path on Hoar Stones Brow, 

I find a large, black feather. Crow rudder. 

The only testimony – on this blank morning –

 that the air bore something on its back.

 Lifted high on its shoulders. Singing.

Richard Skelton

Illustration by David McConochie Photograph: The Art Market

Collecting; this time Richard Skelton, language and video;  I have been reading, the storms hardly conducive to anything else.  Came across this interesting article about how eerie the landscape can be, written by Macfarlane and it set me thinking, mostly about fear.  Well fear is something I experience in my life, basically it is just to do with meeting people but I am never fearful in the outside world, the trees, rivers and the great industrialised farmed fields round here never provoke thoughts of ghosts.  Ghost live on the page, we invoke them with our imagination, when I go out at night to close the hens coop, I often look out over the grave stones and wonder about the people lying there, their lives, their time on this earth but it is curiosity nothing more.  
The book I am reading, "Candlenight" by Phil Rickman, has a scary theme but then it is fiction, a delicious need to frighten oneself! And strangely part of the plot is English people in Wales, and learning the Welsh language.It seems a long time ago when 'English' holiday homes were set alight by the Welsh, now the Welsh language is part of the curriculum and life seems to have quietened down.

The other link was how to put on an Iron Age torc, the article in a blog on the British Museum site.  I suspect this was mostly male jewellery with perhaps powerful leader females wearing them as badges of office.