The time of the flowers

This morning when I woke up I thought of the little wild white wind or wood anemone.  It is strange how the mind unconsciously remembers the time of the flowers. Well I know it will be flowering up at Langridge near Bath and also in Blake Wood near Chelmsford, so I wish them well in their sanctuaries.  I turned to Richard Jeffries writing.  He came from Swindon, not exactly the town you would expect to have such a fine 19th century writer but there you are.

The tiny windflower jostles amicably with the violet

One needs to get away from the constant throb of stupidity in the news. Perhaps even get on one's bandwagon and yell about the terrible encroachment by Man on the natural environment.  For instance in  Jeffries  writing on the countryside, you will see the great amount of insects that once 'plagued' the countryside but in truth fed the birds that we see disappearing from our view.

Did you know that the bright green of our fields so beloved by the farmer to feed his herds, relies on nitrogen and the nitrogen will slowly work outwards destroying the wild as it goes.  Our rivers are so polluted by farm waste and sewage that the abundant water life ceases to exist.  I don't really worry about people being able to swim in the rivers and lakes but I do worry about the fish that once lived in clean waters.  An earlier blog.........................

"This photo shows the delicate wood (or wind) anemone with its finely dissected leaves, it nestles amongst dog mercury, a woodland plant which is supposedly an indicator of old woods. But it is the white starry anemone that is the subject. Apparently, according to Marjorie Blamey (The Illustrated Flora) there is a yellow one as well. It belongs to the somewhat larger family of pasque flowers, monkshoods and that dainty elegant flower of the garden - larkspur.

Grigson has many local names for the anemone, bread and cheese and cider, candlemas cap, chimney smocks, drops of snow, Moll o' the woods, moon-flower and so it goes on..

Its actual name of anemone is borrowed from the Greek legend of Anemone Coronia, because the flowers nod and shake in the wind, and the Greeks called it Daughter of the Wind.

And to pasque flowers, they have become garden flowers because of their beauty, pasque of course since it blooms at Easter, William Turner gives an apt description...

The firste of these Passe flowers hath many small leaves finely cut or jagged, like those of carrots; among which rise up naked stalkes, rough and hairie; whereupon do grow beautiful flowers bell fashion, of a bright delaid purple; in the bottom whereof groweth a tuft of yellow thrums (stamens) and in the middle of the thrums thrusteth foorth a small purple pointell; when the whole flower is past there succeedeth an head or knoppe, compact of many graie hairie lockes, and in the solid parts of the knops lieth the seede flat and hoarie, every seede having his own small haire hanging from it'  .

A concise description of a flower that I have never been able to grow, though it has acquired the name of Dane's Blood or Dane's Flower, (unusual beauty deserves unusual origins says Grigson)
But it did grow on the Devil's Dyke and Fleam Dyke which were associated with the Danes."

It is quite an exciting time of the year, the small Pasque flower (for Easter) is making an appearance and also the Snakeshead Fritillaria flower, a rather exotic flower and though cultivated now, the one place you can see it in the wild is North Meadow near Cricklade in Gloucester.

Fritillary

Matilda recovers well, came down this morning to make coffee and found the two girls bickering in usual fashion.  Did the Lucozade Matilda demanded do the job? though apparently rather than making you feel better it is now an energy drink ;) well I suppose it is the same.  Who would have thought the Lucozade bottle which stood by my bedside as a child and probably every other sick child bedside would make it to this time in history.

29th March 2025 - humour

 Humour:  Like the thread of silver that used to run through our old pound notes, so has humour run through the blogs lately.  So I set a very forgetful mind to work out who made me laugh - it was a mixed bag!

Remember 'The tub of Lard' that was 1993, when Roy Hattersley the politician did not appear on 'Have I got news for you'.  They substituted a tub of lard for Hattersley, it was original and funny as they addressed the tube of lard quite seriously.  

Ian Hislop and Paul Merton always have on the tips of their tongues a funny remark, my two favourites by the way.  Ian Hislop latest was recently, when asked to talk about the latest crisis with America.  He said, and here I am paraphrasing,  it will be four years of glorious fun, there maybe a few nuclear bombs involved - but hey-ho.

Spike Milligan's rather droll outlook on life is captured brilliantly on his gravestone "I told you I was ill".

My one and only joke which is so pathetic.  

There were two dogs who lived in Rome, one was a Catholic dog the other a Protestant dog.  One Friday wandering together through the streets the Protestant dog cocked his leg against the Vatican.  The Catholic dog looked at him furiously, 'if it wasn't Friday I would bite your balls of for that'.

Now most people won't know why.  But of course you don't eat meat on Friday just fish by Catholic command, silly but it always made me laugh.

Home news: the Swiss trip is off, Matilda was sick all night, apparently Nora virus is doing the rounds through her friends so the trip is cancelled much to my daughter's relief.  Funnily enough she and Andrew went to listen to an older comedian at a club on Thursday night.  She didn't find him very funny, but if I remember will look his name up.  She was cross with him because he picked on them in the front row.  

Andrew's laugh is always enormous, he laughs at most things. But is funny how humour and laughter helps the human heart to relax.  One more, when the bet was on that Liz Truss leadership would not outlive the life of a lettuce.  Guess who won? the lettuce of course. It was an Iceberg lettuce, spiteful of course but humour can also be cutting.

28th March 2025

 

what can I say?  America is despised by an awful lot of people at the moment, although we love many of you but it is basically because of your government's outrageous behaviour to several countries.   Blatant takeovers, I don't think.  Usha Vance is not welcome (wife of JD Vance) in Greenland, no one wants to host her, so her husband grasping the stinging nettle bravely is going to inspect the American base that is there. A show of military force  maybe.

We find ourselves in extraordinary times, perhaps it is a good idea for the EU and Gt. Britain to revue their defense spending. It would never happen to us? Perhaps Starmer instead of rolling over and having his belly rubbed like a dog by the Americans should actually  stand up and bark aggressively.  Canada is all ready for the fight, though economically it will  cause drastic losses.

But I am beginning to wonder if the Democratic party in America is just sitting back on its heels and waiting for the great downfall of the blessed three and not prepared to fight.

It's Over; Mark Carney speaks - Life is a daily bulletin of weird news.

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I wish life could return to its old ways, messy of course but then humans rule the roost.  Here, Matilda returns home today, she goes off with her mother to Switzerland this weekend.  She has finally nailed a journalist job, online magazine.  She has been working in an Iranian restaurant in London for the last couple of months to pay for her share of the flat, so it seems she may be off on a writing career, bless her.

My Mother's day card, opened early.

And an earlier blog

25th March 2025

 Sticky toffee pudding, my daughter's, mine was gooey cornflake tart.  Yes we went out to lunch on Sunday at the Staff of Life.  I photo'd this cross in the window, weird and slightly unnerving.  It did make me wonder if it was a pilgrimage route, but it was a fairly strong statement for whatever reason.

Edit: some research found out the following there is a pilgrim route - Paulinus Pilgrim route, which takes in the short space between (3 miles) of Staff of Life and Todmorden, several clues.  1) Mount Cross and 2) Golden stones which seem to be under the Bridestones.

The pilgrims route seems to come down from Northumbria to York.

But the news this morning is about an Iron Age hoard called the Melsonby Hoard found in North Yorkshire near Richmond, here is the BBC link, though the link below will give you some videos.  Plenty of decorative pony attire harnesses and four wheeled wagons along with the two wheeled chariots.  Also a cauldron badly damaged.  If you were more fanciful, you could see the cauldron as the Cauldron of Renewal.  There is a plate on the Gundestrup Cauldron, showing a man being dipped into a cauldron, for what reason we can only guess.

Cauldrons, the great cooking pots, for feasting or family, or showing off the family gold/bronze as in this German burial, the Celtic Hochdorf burial which we visited in 2014.

Huge Iron Age hoard is discovered in North Yorkshire: Archaeologists uncover over 800 ancient cauldrons, spears, chariots and horse harnesses thought to be worth £254,000 | Daily Mail Online

22nd March 2025

 

chiefs and Indians; I am not sure where I am going with this.  But chiefs and indians was a game we used to play on archaeological digs as volunteers.  Jim one of our team would say 'hey up, here comes the chiefs' (meaning the archaeologists).  Here were the experts though they could be talking rot but we had to be attentive and quiet.

Now of course we have to have leaders, foremen, teachers, sister nurses and even politicians but the thing we learn that each and everyone of them is just as silly as ourselves.  They are not divine gods - listening to Professor Ronald Hutton yesterday and his practical approach to the telling of history always impresses me.

But again I go off the subject, as I have often written about Lillie, now 18 years old and  she belongs to a scout group.  She is a leader and trustee which is a bit of responsibility, especially when she has to act and talk with adults, so this holiday back at home she was nervous.  There had been a bit of a falling out whilst she was away with the other leaders, leaving the group split in half and she was worried.  Luckily she managed it fine and this third day, she has been every day, will monitor a walking competition. 

Professor Ronald Hutton: Yesterday he described the builders of Stonehenge as 'cowboys' (note: someone who does a quick lousy job of building work).  The trilithons of the monument are based on a wooden method of building, a tenon on the two uprights fits nicely  underneath  the horizontal stone.  But apparently on one trilithon there was a long, vertical stone and a short vertical stone, so the long stone went down say five feet (they often go down much deeper) and the shorter stone rested in a shallow hole.  Of course it fell down in time.

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Words as always interest me.  Fascism is the Word at the moment.  Terrifying to many of us. Tell me why are people voting for it don't they realise how serious it is?

Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement. It is characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, and strong regimentation of society and the economy. Wiki

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A Game of Henge - Stonehenge

Phillip Gross

A game of Henge, my masters?

The pieces are set. We lost the box

with instructions years ago.

Do you see Hangman? Or

Clock Patience? Building bricks

the gods grew out of? Dominoes?

It's your move. You're in the ring

of the hills, of the stones, of the walls

of your skull. You want to go?

You want out? Good - that's

the game. Whichever way you turn

are doors. Choose. Step through, so...

And whichever world you stumble into

will be different from all the others, only

what they might have been,

you'll never know.

Edit:  Mike Pitts latest on Stonehenge and Ken Follet book

21st March 2025

 

Summer. Did you notice our one day of warmth yesterday.  The weather is changing today!

I have just eaten breakfast, never talk about food much.  But it was a favourite, large chestnut mushrooms on sourdough with garlic and Maggi for flavour. Lunch will be a homemade soup and the main meal of the day depends on who is cooking.  Last night for instance it was a chicken stew, tonight it maybe a takeaway.

 

I have just been watching a video on rations in the last war, the fat content was very meagre and the person who was doing a week long experiment said she  felt hungry all day but more energised.

There is also news of the fire in the substation near Heathrow airport and the airport closed down till midnight, throwing passengers into disarray as they find themselves in different parts of the world.  There is also this rather disturbing news on Sky News a French researcher has been denied entry to the US for what he has written in messages on his phone about Trump.

The other good news, and the reason I was thumbing through my photos, was that they were saying on the news that a new forest will be planted in the South-West of England.  That's funny, they were talking about it 14 years ago, or nearabout. I think that this is called 'carrot dangling' to keep us happy in this time of difficulties.  Anyway I did not find the photos.  Land like this up at North Stoke.

20th March 2025 - Welcome Spring

 Words: Thank you Murr  for these three, "petrified pansies of progressivism" those of us who think that Climate Change is being woke  will enjoy being a pansy.

Up against the wall!

I love pansies by the way they freely seed themselves everywhere, they have such sweet faces, it is the viola, that tiny heart-shaped flower called Heartsease which is the prettiest.

Well parts of the family are back.  Lillie arrived from London, Andrew in the morning and Karen in the afternoon.  She had made an appointment at the doctors (same day) and had been triaged over the internet, and the doctor deemed it serious enough for an appointment, so she arrived in Tod, went to the doctors, and got all of her prescriptions as well in less than under an hour.  

As in many parts of the country we do not have enough doctors at our enormous clinic, so people get passed down the line to faraway doctors.  The problem of course starts at the reception desk, so the poor receptionists are at the mercy of patients on the phone but they are slowly changing things in the 'white elephant' of a clinic that was built a few years ago..  There are stupid things patients do - I mean everyone call at eight in the morning, it stands to reason you are going to be put on hold. 

 Anyways, someone wrote on the local thread how GOOD the service was, and mostly everyone agreed with her, except the 'negative nellies' another two words to add to the pot.

I have been collecting the writings of discontent around the world as the insane mess that Tr*ump/M*sk are creating unfolds.  I love the following song from Canada.  A battle cry maybe and childish to boot, but far from being leaders of the world, the world has turned on them with the power of words to show up their foolishness.  Funny coincidence, the polar bear in Dark Materials, the one that Lyra rides is a Pansbjorn. 

Celtic Tale - The Man in the Tree

 

The Peaked Red One or The Man in the Tree 

"Finn was was walking through a wood one day and happened to spy a man sitting at the top of a tree. A blackbird on his right shoulder, and in his left hand a bronze vessel filled with water, in which swam a skittish trout, and a stag at the bottom of the tree. The man would crack a nut, half of which he ate himself the other half he gave to the blackbird. Then he would take an apple out of the bronze vessel, half of which he ate himself the other half he threw to the stag below. Then he would take a sip of the water in the vessel, as did the stag and the blackbird - they would all drink together.  And then his followers asked Finn who he in the tree was for they did not recognise him on account of the hood of disguise which he wore."

The followers of Finn asked who this disguised hooded man was. Ann Ross in her book 'Pagan Celtic Britain'  speculates that this 'nurturer of animals' could be attributed to Cernunnos  or the Romano-Celtic god Vosegus,  who had some of the attributes of the man in the tree.

The stag headed god called Cernunnos.  Surrounded by animals.  In one hand a serpent in the other a torc.

Trees were also very important in the Celtic mythology.  Men were given the name of trees such as Mac Iba - son of Yew.  There is a story of Saint Martin of  Tour, who  died in 397.  Given the job of converting the pagan people to Christianity he razed temples to the ground and also cut down sacred trees....

"When in a certain village he had demolished a very ancient temple, and had set about cutting down a pine-tree, which stood close to the temple, the chief priest of that place, and a crowd of other heathens began to oppose him; and these people, though, under the influence of the Lord, they had been quiet while the temple was being overthrown, could not patiently allow the tree to be cut down"

The story goes on of course in typical Christian manner, by stating that Martin stood in front of the tree as it was cut down, and by some miracle the tree missed him!

There is also on the Gundestrup Cauldron another depiction of a tree in the inner plate, it is called the giant general/priest and cauldron.  The cauldron I believe is supposed to renew life.  You can see it on the following video.

Tidying up

 Tidying Up:  I have decided to draw out the little tales of Celtic telling.  It is to do with the old saints, the Celtic ones, that wandered round our land and others of course, preaching but there is a whole swathe of opinion that the term 'Celtic' is a descriptive term that has come in through over-romanticism, starting in the 18th century, of past people.

A lot of the stories come from the Irish tradition of storytelling and old books still exist with the dates of battles and kings and ancestral lineage.  So imagination may have run riot but there is still a small truth hidden somewhere in all the myths.

This thought came to me when on listening to a talk on Saturday.  The speaker had written a book on tales from Lindisfarne, but the thing missing was hardly any reference to Lindisfarne??  

I did enjoy the talk, though there was a thread of the modern day through it which was gender identity, she identified herself as she/they.  Now my family will tell you I get completely confused by the use of they, but that is my age obviously.  Also obviously trying to work out whether people from the Celtic Age were LGBTQ, was a stretch too far ;)

Lindsfarne Island like Iona Island on the West side of England was the place where the first early monasteries congregated and were the place where many important Celtic saints came from, they accrued their stories and preached far and wide.  They took some of the practice of imitating the Eastern monks, finding lonely places to live like hermits but also preached.  I also love the idea of them walking around with a bell, a bangu to summon the congregation in the open air.

So I start with probably my favourite female saint, Melangell, she saved a hare from a local  hunting prince and was rewarded some land which forever became a sanctuary from the kill of the hunt.  The first environmental person to stand up for the rights of animals maybe.

Celtic Tales

 

The Story of Melangell

The story of Saint Melangell and her little hare. She was the daughter of King Cufwlch and Ethni of Ireland and she fled to Wales to escape a forced marriage. She settled in Pennant at the head of a valley, and whilst one day sitting in a clearing she heard the sound of a hunt, dogs and horses galloping up the valley. This was Prince Brochwael of Powys hunting hares. As she sat a hare came into the clearing and Melangell hid it in the sleeve of her dress to protect it. When it peeped out the dogs fled, and so the Prince gave her the land on which he hunted, and she lived at Pennant for another 37 years and no animal was killed in her sanctuary.   Hares were known as wyn bach Melangell or Melangell's little lambs, and to kill a hare was an act of sacrilege.

1795 drawing of the hunt on rood screen

This story is taken from "The Book of Welsh Saints" T.D. Breverton, and there are other versions of the tale. But at Llanfihangel-y-Pennant near Llangynog is probably the site of her foundation, because on the church's medieval rood-screen are little hares.

Church of Melangell, Pennant

15th March 2025

 Not much to write about.  My back has suddenly given up, think it was spinning some yellow wool yesterday, the different way of sitting. I sit in a three sided cocoon, to the right is the sewing machine on its table, in front of me is my larger table with computer screen and to the left my spinning wheel.  

This afternoon I go to a talk on 'Legends from Lindisfarne' which should be interesting.  These talks at the Folklore Centre get plenty of people.   Also I have been deserted (once more) as daughter and Andrew off to Germany this morning to visit Andrew's relatives in Munich for a few days.

Andrew who is the most affable person you are likely to meet, spends some of his evenings on the computer to the young children in Munich teaching them how to programme.

What else, I have just read the most comprehensive blow by blow, or at least date by date of the horrendous would be takeover of Canada by Trump.  I cannot say America because I believe if American people were to read the document they would be horrified.  Carney seems the man for the job, his ex job as the chair of the Bank of England should give him some leeway in the fight against the loathsome three.

Things I miss:  Lazy spaniels who can't be arsed to open their Xmas presents.

Roses in their state of supreme loveliness

The bantams who wandered the garden with freedom

Also miss the grandchildren as children.  As the first marriage of the oldest takes place this summer.  Got my dress but can't find shoes.  Cottage is booked for the whole family to come down to a civil wedding.  I am blessed.

It seems I look backwards more than forward but that is as it should be I have grown into old age unwittingly ;}

12th March 2025

Each year I write of cherry trees in March.  Early to flower their blossom attracts the bees and the butterflies.  The white clouds of blossom against a blue sky, a revelation after winter.

But Paul also had another ceremony when the blossom came out, it was the drinking of hot Saki  wine out in the garden to welcome the two cherry tree's he had planted as they blossomed.  We would choose our small Japanese cups and then pour the wine for each other.  I can also remember eating soya beans.  They came in their pods and were hot and salty, you sort of sucked the beans out of the pod, it always reminded me of childhood when we podded peas and chewed the inner sweet layer of the pod. A good greeting for Spring. 

Paul's friend who lived in Hawaii, was a Saki wine merchant, and every so often would come to London to sell his wines to restaurants there.  An American, he was also at Kyoto at the temple the same time as Paul, so it was a long friendship. He also edited an air magazine in Hawaii, presumably for reading on the plane. 

Here they are at Rievaulx Abbey, tucked deep in its valley away from the troubles of the world.  I think Chris was more of a friend of Gary Snyder than Paul.  But Gary Snyder who was also at the Ryozen-an temple helping with the translation of a book.

There is a kind of sadness that comes from knowing too much, from seeing the world as it truly is. It is the sadness of understanding that life is not a grand adventure, but a series of small, insignificant moments, that love is not a fairy tale, but a fragile, fleeting emotion, that happiness is not a permanent state, but a rare, fleeting glimpse of something we can never hold onto. And in that understanding, there is a profound loneliness, a sense of being cut off from the world, from other people, from oneself.

— Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

Virginia Woold wrote well but in the end she gave way to unhappiness and committed suicide but she also left behind a legacy of words that are often beautiful and strong. Pat (Weaver of Grass) was not keen on her neither was Pat keen on the Japanese people because of the treatment her first husband had received at the hands of the Japanese soldiers building the notorious railway, that took so many lives.

All water under the bridge now as we turn and face another blip in history. America colluding with Russia, our fate in the hands of shallow business men who only do good for themselves.

But then look at the fate of Rievaulx Abbey and the rest of the abbeys in Britain, as a greedy king in 1538 bent only on his own will brought them down because they had become too wealthy.

stream of?

 "Why did Joseph say that no one would read what he wrote?  Why did the villagers tie tin cans to the tail of his dog? Why did the peacocks shriek and the bells ring?  Why was there no mercy shown to him and no respect and no love?  With agonising repetition the diary asks these questions; but there was no answer. At last, one morning in December 1839, the Rector took his gun, walked into the beech wood near his home, and shot himself dead."

Virginia Woolf's essay on the Reverend Skinner and the world which so plagued him.  Picking out sentences to allow the thoughts to roam ;) You can find the whole story here. I actually felt sorry for him, he had a parish of unruly villagers, miners in the village of Camerton, near Bath.  Children who laughed at him and then of course his children died because it was Victorian times and disease stalked the land.  But through all this he traced the prehistory of the area around him and occasionally following in his footsteps I also have felt the 'pull' of the unknown.  The sense of excitement as you look across an empty field and imagine the life that once lived there.

Probably Diane and her hound

I think it was brought home sharply when I picked up a book yesterday, Wedlake's excavation of the Roman Temple at Nettleton Shrub.  I occasionally took  Moss for a walk along this little sanctuary of a valley with its chalk meadow of wild plants preserved by dictate of the wild life trust.  What had struck me was the depth the archaeologists had dug down to, revealing the walling of the Roman temple.  It was an early dig, somewhere in the 1970s.  Therefore no trace of the excavation existed except for the line of the old 'canal'  I should study it more.....

So what else caught my eye?  It was one of those walks on a lovely August day from the Avebury stones to Silbury Hill to witness the gathering of the neo-pagans.  Sometimes life is not about religion for some people but about a belief system and the need to dress up.  So as I have observed the neopagans, sometimes full of anger over the fact that Stonehenge is not their temple of druidical worship (as dictated by the laws that be) Or singing and drumming to welcome spring or farewell to summer.

So an old 2008 blog mooching along on a walk, with all my senses alert to the world around me, and this time I walk towards humans not away from them!

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Nettleton Shrub

August 2008 - Silbury Reflections

Yesterday I walked all round Silbury on a warm sunny day, that by happenstance turned out to be Lammas so I was rewarded by the event of a Druid ceremony on top of the hill, though in truth I was supposed to be recording what was happening with the contractor's work to restore the mound to its original state.

Moss and I commenced our walk from the carpark, over the road, and there is the river beautiful as ever, long green fronds moving under the water, always invoking Rossetti's Ophelia drowning. Though rotten Rossetti made his wife lie submerged in a bath of cold water to get the effect, and probably gave her pneumonia. 

But the river is sparkling clear, making those soft chuckling, rilling noises as it flows under the silver leaved willows. There is a green verdancy about after all that rain, an exuberant green energy, broken by patches of flowers and the field of ripening yellow wheat. As we walk along the path I spy a partridge ahead, suddenly little chicks appear from out the undergrowth, maybe eight,I hold on to Moss's collar as they awkwardly take to the air, the mother continues along the path with a little one following furiously and they escape under the bar. Continuing to the bridge, and over the stile, where I see a hare sitting as bold as brass in the grass, his ears are a much darker colour than his body and so enormous, I sit on the stile and he sits in his field, Moss investigates the hedgerow, a perfect moment, magical of course a hare on Lammas day.

Photographing Silbury now, I notice the monorail running like a zip up her side, the rail is aligned with the straight ditch that leads to the river, and I wonder if they are draining the water from Silbury this way. Though later I am told there was no need to drain water. Up Waden Hill to take in the view, West Kennet long barrow in the distance, crowning its ridge amongst the vast space that is the Wiltshire downs. Sweeping round now to Silbury, the neat square of the archaeological/contractors compound under the hill, on top men in bright orange move around the great necklace of its silver fence which sits ungainly on top.

Moss is on his back rolling happily in the grass and we descend to follow the path once more. More photos, there is a crane hiding neatly in the hedgerow away from the compound, and as we come up to the road, a crew of two, camera and interviewer, one of the men rushes over the road to me, had I seen the druid procession along the path. I hadn't, no one had followed me, and I am glad that the partridge and hare are now in hiding and can watch the humans play their games.

Walking along the road to the visitors centre, I meet two women with pushchairs, plump and slightly panting from their exertions they are definitely druidical in their colourful clothes, we greet each other. Further on I pass three people coming out of the compound, the two girls are in shorts, archaeologist team, but the man is dressed in a formal brown suit, it looks like Professor Ronald Hutton is here to witness the pagan ceremony, coincidentally I am reading his books at the moment, a sceptic like me, he is honest in his appraisal of this 'otherworld' and records, like all good historian should, the passing of this particular history.

I stop and take photos of the entrance to Silbury, a solitary helmeted Skanska man stands guard just below, waiting for Terry the Druid to make his climb to the top of the mound. People are gathering, but I go on, first to stop at the visitors centre to gather information. During my conversation with the girl there, we got to talking about the platform on top, and maybe its levelling during the Saxon period, when it seems to been made into a stockade, evidence of postholes in a trench have been found, but as only one trench was opened I suppose this can't be confirmed.

Walking now down to the little bridge, here along the path I can watch Terry the Druid conduct his ceremony, Hail and Farewell rings down from the top of the hill, part of the ceremony is to go to the four quarters of the hill and call on Lightening, but sadly (or happily) it does not appear, he kneels down and seems to dig the earth, is he taking or giving I wonder?

Musing at the bridge, watching the clear water make its way down the river, one realises nothing really matters in the world, the moment is captured, Moss will at the end of the walk take one last cold drink from the river, sating his thirst and resigning himself to the end of a happy ramble looking for elusive mice and voles.

Thought for the morning

Beaumaris Castle

Somehow, in that abstract way of my thinking, castles seem to be a popular line of defense in the present climate.  Doesn't it look good in the sunshine, a place where battles were fought and sieges occurred though.  The water reflects a placid and beautiful world.  But those dark clouds??

What to worry about this morning? Well the 'Wandering Turnip' has come back to make another video, I will put it down below.  And as we know my geographical expertise is not of the highest but I do know the shape of our country - long and narrow.  I know the Romans built Hadrian's wall across it to keep the Picts out.  Before that the Antonine Wall which was not a success

.

But here on the East coast of Yorkshire, England is slowly slipping into the sea.  No strong rock cliffs to keep the sea at bay just soft crumbly geological material.  Slightly scaring.   Roads end up mid air, houses teeter on the edge, gardens falling to the sands below.  Could it be in centuries hence that we will be split from the Northern territories such as Northumberland and Scotland.

London drifting even further away?  The sea taking our narrowest point the Hadrian Wall, which is 73 modern miles across, and driving a wedge of sea, just like Doggerland when the glacial ice age of only about 7000 years ago, covered the land between us and Europe and made that narrow sea called the North Sea.

Celtic Spoons

Well I am not sure that I have bought this 2014 blog forward properly but at one stage these ritual spoons fascinated me and I see from this link on Bensozia' blog that another one has been found.  Iron Age Divination spoon on Isle of Man.  One of the reasons these spoons interested me was a pair of spoons that had been found by the Loxbrook/Locksbrook stream that ran into the River Avon in Bath, it was not very far from where we lived.  Christianity, or indeed the Romans, had not made their appearance in Iron Age Britain, so how were these spoons used?

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Gathering theories

So where am I going with these Celtic spoons, not sure, but this pair of spoons below were found not far from my old house in Bath, down the lane following the fierce little brook (Locksbrook) that would eventually join up with the River Avon. I remember chasing the literature at the time, a friend had given me an old article on the subject and at the end, it was just one of those mysterious Celtic puzzles.  My mind had become locked into the silver baptismal spoon my daughter had had as a baby, no answer.

"Celtic spoons found at Loxbrook; One other interesting fact is that near the end of the brook before it joins the River Avon a pair of “Celtic” spoons were found. To quote (taken from Rev.Preb.Scarth 1870). “they were found while clearing the ground for quarrying stone to form a new road, and lay near the stream, at the depth of about 7 feet”. These spoons, of which other pairs have been found in England, Wales and Ireland, are considered by Scarth to be early christian spoons, probably dating from the 3rd or 4th century. Its interesting that they should be found just outside Bath, and near to a local stream. This leads one to believe that they were used for a baptismal rite, one spoon normally has a small hole in its bowl, also they are often incised with a faint cross in the bowl. The other characteristic is distinctive celtic curvilinear patterns that are found at the top of the spoons."

Then on checking the Westmoreland spoons, to be found at the British Museum, I found this written about them..... appertaining to the Druidical nature of the spoons....

"The spoons were found by a farmer digging in a bog near a natural spring. They were buried under 30-50 cm of peat and were about 200-250 cm apart. Objects were offered as sacrifices in bogs, lakes and rivers in the Iron Age and the spoons' location suggests that they might have been used in rituals. Spoons like these are usually found in pairs and one spoon always has a small hole on the right side. The other spoon does not have a hole, but is always decorated with a cross which divides the bowl into four quarters. Why? It has been suggested that something, perhaps water, blood or beer, might have been allowed to drip through the hole in one spoon onto the other spoon during attempts see into the future."

There is no sense to making the cross in the centre of the right hand spoon for measurement as  liquid dripping through would on the whole take the pathway of the lower r/h quarter.  Always I see the spoon as an anointing spoon, but this is because of a strong Catholic upbringing when I was young and the association of baptism and water, the 'ritual' though whatever it was has a more symbolic nature to it.

There are quite a few pairs found, as one can see from the above illustration

Romilly Allen - Celtic Art in Pagan and Christian times 1904

The Welsh spoons and those from the south of England are of the best workmanship, with embossed concentric or curvilinear designs on the handles, the reverses of which are in some cases engraved with curvilinear designs. In one Welsh pair (1 and 2) and in one English spoon (5) the junction of the bowl with the circular handle is strengthened

by wide lateral wings. That this junction was a weak part is shown by a small ornamented plate riveted on the back of a spoon found in London (8); the only other evidence of repair is a small gold plug inserted in one of the Cardigan pair (2). The spoons from the north of England, Scotland, and Ireland have engraved designs on the handles and are not embossed; the bowls are less circular than those from the south, the Irish spoons being specially elongated. In the Irish and Westmorland spoons the cross radiates from a small engraved circle; this might suggest an origin from a spoon with a central perforation similar to the French spoon, but the design is probably purely decorative....