Behold the shiny things (with a surprising amount of penis)... Part two

Some more pics from the National Museum over in Edinburgh, though this time with fewer shiny things per se... We'll start with a statement piece, though:

There were quite a few of these in the museum, though unfortunately I didn't spot any of the ones with Pictish symbols engraved on one end. As you might guess, the chains are typically thought to be Pictish in origin, probably dating to around the 5th to 9th centuries CE, and they're more than likely to have been worn by those of high status – not just the aristocracy, but royalty, the information board reckons. Just like the penanular brooches the Gaels wore (like the Tara brooch, for example), they were probably worn as an indication of rank. They were worn around the neck and fastened together with a "terminal link" – the bits that have the Pictish symbols engraved on them, which were originally highlighted with red enamel. Each link is made of solid silver (probably recycled Roman silver), and given the weight of them – up to 2.9 kilos (6.4 lbs) each – it seems unlikely that they were worn as regular, everyday pieces of jewellery. Instead it's thought that they were probably worn "during important ceremonies."

From a slightly earlier period – late Bronze Age – we have the Ballachulish idol:

Which is surprisingly huge – I didn't know it was actually life-size... The figure was discovered in a peat bog with the remains of some kind of wickerwork structure covering it. The site is situated overlooking a sea loch, so it's thought that the figure was meant to represent a goddess of some sort, "probably associated with fertility" – she's holding a "phallic object over her abdomen" so yeah, OK. I think equally the situation of it, overlooking the sea loch, could imply a protective purpose as well?

If you get up close then you can see the quartz pebbles that have been used for her eyes:

Given the long association of white quartz with the dead, could their use be significant? Or were they just convenient?

Speaking of phallic object, the museum has a surprising number of them. You can blame the Romans for this one:

It's described as "an undressed stone with carved phallus, Birrens," on the information plate, and dates to the first century CE.

You can blame the Romans for these ones, too:

These are pretty small, and were used as amulets to ward against the evil eye, or perhaps as fertility charms.

Here we have some "mysterious stones" from Neolithic Skara Brae, one of which looks pretty penile at the least:

We don't know what these stones were for – maybe "ritual," perhaps simply decorative – but number 13 here is one of the better known examples:

I couldn't get a good close up, unfortunately, but the detailing is spectacular.

Finally, here we have an unusual carved stone, known as the Bullion Stone (taking its name from where it was found, Bullion, in Angus), which dates to around the tenth century CE:

It's unusual because it's not often that you find stones that have a comical or unflattering tone to them like this one does, and by this point in time carved stones were almost exclusively Christian in its symbolism. Clearly whoever this guy is, he's a little worse for wear and the bird's head on the end of his over-sized drinking horn is looking a little judgemental there. The man appears to be a warrior, with his shield, but he's old and bald – not a flattering look when baldness wasn't considered to be a desirable trait. His horse looks tired and is maybe a little past it, too, as it plods up the steep hill. The drinking horn is maybe intended to indicate a Norseman here, since they introduced them to Scotland, hence the unflattering imagery?

Behold the shiny things! (Part One)

Last October, if you might remember, I took a trip with the kids down to visit my mother in Suffolk. It's not my favourite place on earth, but on the upside I managed to convince my mother to make a day of it in London so we could make a visit to the Celts exhibition at the British Museum.

Over all I was a little disappointed with the exhibition, but I was interested in seeing it again once it got to Edinburgh in the new year, just to see if it was much different. It's a bit of a trek from here to get to Edinburgh, so I wasn't sure when we'd be able to manage it, but it turned out that our plans to go visit my family and friends down south weren't going to work out – schools in Scotland finished for the Spring break just as schools in England were returning from theirs and the timings just weren't going to align. So instead, seeing as Mr Seren had already booked time off from work, we decided to have a few days out, and Edinburgh was one of them.

We got there a little late in the day thanks to a slight detour (which meant we got to see the new Forth road bridge that's being built at the moment, and that was pretty cool), so by the time we'd parked up and got into the city centre it was well past lunchtime. It was nearly 3pm by the time we got to the museum, which didn't give us long to look around. Tom wasn't so keen to come and look at the Celts exhibition again, seeing as there was also a Lego "build it" thing on in the museum, so he and Mr Seren decided to do a bit of that before going off to look at the natural history stuff. Rosie decided to come with me so she could look at the shiny stuff again. She likes the artwork.

In London the exhibition cost £16.50 to get into, but in Edinburgh they're charging £10 for entrance (kids go free). The actual price is £9 but they've added on a pound extra for a "donation" to the museum, and while they do tell you that and ask if you want to make the donation, it's a bit cheeky to do that. Again, there's no photography in the exhibition which still pisses me off. I didn't bother trying to sneak pictures this time because there were way more members of staff around; it just wasn't going to happen.

Once we got in to the exhibition it was already very noticeably different. In London there was a three-minute slideshow as soon as you walked in, and while that would have been very informative, it clogged everything up from the get go. In Edinburgh we walked straight into a section with a few pieces on display that I think were intended to set the tone for the rest of the exhibition. They were a different selection from the ones chosen in London, in throughout the rest of the exhibition there were some pieces that were very noticeably missing – the bucket and flesh-hook I managed to snag pictures of in London, for one, along with a very impressive Gaulish statue of some dude with a big headdress. Those were the more obvious pieces I noticed missing and I'm sure there were others too. I noticed a few pieces I didn't think I'd seen before but I suspect that all in all there were some major artefacts that didn't make it to Edinburgh from the London exhibit.

That aside, I think the layout and flow of the Edinburgh exhibit is much better. The Gundestrup cauldron is on display in a room all by itself, and it's been set at a more sensible height so you can see all around it. The lighting is a little better, too, so it really becomes a feature all of its own rather than just one more shiny thing in a sea of shiny things.

There's a chariot (or replica of what the chariot would have looked like when it was fully intact) and goods on display that were recovered from a burial, and Rosie commented that she wasn't sure the people would be too happy to find all their stuff on display in a museum instead of in the ground where they left it. Wouldn't they want it to be left alone? she wondered. That's a perennial question in archaeology, I said. A lot of the time these things are dug up because they're going to be destroyed otherwise, so is it better to destroy them or try and recover them and preserve them so we can learn about the past? Rosie decided that perhaps the best thing would be to stop building stuff on top of important places like other people's graveyards and put the buildings somewhere else. I couldn't really argue with that, to be honest. But still, she loved looking at all the metalwork and jewellery, and we spent quite a bit of time looking for all the hidden faces and anthropomorphic features. When we got to the statue of Brigantia she was pretty excited and wondered if she was related to Brigid.

After we came out of the exhibition we met back up with Tom and Mr Seren and I decided I wanted to look at the "Early Settlers" section where all the early Scottish stuff is. We only had an hour left before closing by this point and I really didn't have time to look at everything I wanted to, but even so the place is amazing. One thing I noticed is that where the more well-known items had been taken for the Celts exhibit, they often replaced them with replicas, unlike in London. I thought that was a nice touch.  

There were plenty of shiny things like the Pictish "plaques" from the Norrie's Law hoard (one of which was in the Celts exhibition):

In pictures you might think they'd make a nice pair of earrings, but they're way too big for that. Silver hoards are pretty common in this period of Scotland's history because there wasn't much raw material available, so they had to rely on recycling silver instead. In some cases the hoards consist of Roman silver, which were presumably given to the local Picts, Britons or Gaels as bribes.

But it's not all about the shiny stuff, and that's one of the reasons I really wanted to go to the museum in the first place, because I wanted to see this – an almost perfectly preserved woollen Pictish hood:

Which was found in St Andrews parish (I presume that means the St Andrews in Fife, east coast of Scotland) and dates to some time between the 3rd-6th centuries CE.

There's also a hat, woven from hair moss, that dates a little earlier than the hood, around the first century CE. It was found at Newsteads, near the Scottish border:

And this is what the hair moss thread or twine looks like close up:

Things like this are what interest me most because it brings home the fact that we're not just dealing with something so nebulous as "a culture," but actual people.

I mentioned in my post from the London museum that there were the "divination spoons" on display in the Celts exhibition, and they were on display again in Edinburgh with a note to say they may have been used for magical or "healing" purposes. Nobody really knows what they were used for, but I found a set on display in the main part of the museum that had been recovered from the east coast of Scotland:


There seems to be some deep politics surrounding these things, because while there's the pet theory that Miranda Green pushes about their being "divination spoons," which is reflected in how they're described down in London, Edinburgh chooses to simply describe them as "a pair of sacred spoons, possibly buried with a holy man:"

These ones are bronze, as you can probably tell, and they were recovered with a bronze dagger, too. They aren't as well preserved as the ones in the Celts exhibition, but if you look closely they have the same kind of markings – one spoon being quartered, and the other with a hole in it. People seem to get weirdly invested in the idea of their being used for divinatory purposes, but there really could be any number of other explanations. I can see why divination has been suggested, but it bugs me that the idea gets treated as absolute truth by some.

Anyway. One last shiny thing before I finish off:

These are very late Bronze Age, and while the swords are set next to some moulds, I don't think they're the actual moulds that were used to cast them.

There's very little evidence for Bronze Age metal-working in Scotland, but a few sites have been found relatively recently that's changing what we know of the practice. I went to a lecture about one such place (just down the road from me, in fact, situated right on the coast) a few months ago and it was mentioned that the layout and orientation of the site had clear suggestions of ritual or religious purposes. The site, which is thought to have been very late Bronze Age in date, was surrounded by a number of palisades and the entrance was oriented to the south-east (very common for this period and into the Iron Age) with what appears to have been some sort of processional way leading into the main enclosure. One of the most interesting things that they found from the site is that the moulds were often transported across the Firth of Clyde so that they could be deposited at the foot of a major hillfort that dominated the area. This practice continued into the Iron Age, and it's thought that the burial of the moulds is possibly ritual in nature – perhaps an offering of some sort? It's no surprise that there seem to have been religious overtones to the production of metalwork, but it's fascinating to me, nonetheless.

Anyway, I think that's enough for now; I'll continue in another post with some more bits and pieces that piqued my interest another time.

Oran Buaile – Teiris a bhò

You may have noticed I have a bit of a thing about cows...

Part of the reason I chose "Tairis" as a name for my website is that I found a definition given in Macbain's Dictionary that described its meaning as:

tairis! int. The dairymaid's cry to calm an unruly cow at milking. 

Ordinarily, however, it means:

tairis -e, a. Kind, sincere, loving. 2 Compassionate, tender-hearted, soft, tender, kindly, urbane. 3 Confidential. 4** Trusty, faithful, loyal. 5** Acceptable. Cha tairis leam ur fàilte, your invitation is not acceptable to me; guth tairis nam bàrd, the mild voice of the bards.

And while the latter definition seems apt in itself, the former meaning tickled me enough for it to stick in my head. When the time came to buy a domain name I couldn't think of anything else so that's what I went with.

One thing I always wondered, though, was that in all of the milking songs I'd seen (in places like the Carmina Gadelica), the term was always absent. I figured maybe it was either a very localised term that Carmichael never came across, or else perhaps Macbain himself had kind of... made it up? Misheard it? Today, though, I came across the following song thanks to Google, and things make a bit more sense now. The song itself was recorded by the folklorist "Nether Lochaber," the pen name of Rev. Alexander Stewart, who lived in the area he took his pseudonym from. In the song we have teiris, not tairis, though Dwelly gives Macbain's spelling and lists teiris! as a local variant of the same word, recorded in Poolewe – which is in the Nether Lochaber area. As a plain old verbal adjective, however, the word teiris is listed as meaning:

teiris ** va & n. Tame, quiet, as unruly cattle. 2 Stop. 3 Be at peace.

So it all makes a bit more sense to me now.

Gaelic milking songs were kind of legendary – folklorists of the nineteenth century often liked to note that Highland cattle were some of the best milkers in the world, and it was said that a cow of the Highlands wouldn't give milk unless the dairy maid sang to it a soothing song. Since I can't find the song recorded by Rev. Stewart published anywhere else, I thought I'd transcribe it here (the site I found it on has a poorly done OCR transcription).

As this piece notes, the song was originally published in the Inverness Courier, though no date's given for that. In the copy I found, though, the date given is Saturday 23 March 1895, and it's interesting that this is from an Australian newspaper, the Northern Star from New South Wales. Anyway, here it is, with the newspaper's own write up. I've transcribed it as best I can, though some of it was difficult to read. I'll note that some of the words have the accents in the wrong place, as far as I can tell, but I've kept it all as-is and I haven't updated any spellings either. The translation is as given in the paper, though it's not completely literal – there's an extra line added in (and hopefully the table comes out OK; Blogger can be finicky with tables so if the formatting's off, apologies):

The following Oran Buaile or Shieling song, as sung in the Highlands of Scotland, was taken down from the words of a woman still living in Adnamurchan, and sent to “Nether Lochaber,” who gave it a place in the INVERNESS COURIER. It will be interesting to Highland readers, many of whom have perhaps heard it sung:

ORAN BUAILE	A MILKING SONG
Teiris a bhò Teiris an t’ aghan beag Teiris a bhò Teiris a Chaòmhag; Bleoghnaidh mi bhò Le lamh bhog nach goirtich i, Mo dhearn mar an sìde, Bleoghnaidh mi ‘Chaòmhag.	Gently my cow. Gently my little heifer, gently! Gently my cow, Be gently and quiet, my darling: I will milk the cow With soft hand that will not hurt her; With the palm of my hand soft and smooth as silk, I will milk my darling.
Bi laghach, a bhò, Bi laghach, bi ceanalta, Bi siòbhalta, ceanalta, Laghach, a runag; Gheibh i bad feoir, Is leaba de’n rainnich ‘nam, Gheibh i min air burn lainnir, ’S am bainne cha diult i.	Be nice, now, my cow. Be nice and be gentle, Be quiet and gentle, [And all you should be now –] Of all pets the dearest! She will get a nice wisp of hay, And a soft bed of ferns from me, With (a drink) of meal on crystal-clear water, And (meantime) she will not refuse me her milk.
Bheir i am bainne dhomh, ’S i bheir am bainne dhomh, Criosalt no buarach Cha luaidh mi ri m’ eudail, Cha thog i eas idir, ’S cha teann i ri crosdachd, Mar a ni an crodh mosach nach tuig ach a bhéurla!	She will give me her milk, Ay, her milk she will freely give me; Foreleg fetter or handset shackles Shall not be so much as mentioned in connection with my darling; She will not lift a leg, Nor will she show any ill-temper, Such as is only shown by the nasty cows That understand only the English language!
Tha’n t’sine bhog, bhlàth Aig martan an aigh, Tha ‘bainne bog, blàth, ‘Se fo bharr a ta cùraidh; Mo ghaol is mo chíali Air an aghan bheag, lurach, Fhuair mise do ghealladh, Am bainne orm nach diult thu.	Soft and warm is the teat Of my charming little cow; Soft and warm, too, is her milk Under its froth of delightfullest odour. My dear and delight Is the beautiful little heifer; She has given me her promise That she will not refuse me her milk.
Mach thu ’n an ionaltraidh, Mach thu ’n an ionaltraidh, Mach thu ’n an ionaltraidh, Moch maduinn a màireach, Bi’dh ‘m féur thu’n na glùn dhuit ‘An Doire-na-Giubhsaich, Bheir thu dhachaidh làn ùth, ’S cinnt’ nach diult thu dhomh pàirt deth!	Out to the grazing ground, Out to the grazing ground, Out to the grazing ground, To-morrow morning early! The grass will reach well up to thy knee In Doire-na-Giubhsaich (the Fir Tree Woodlands); She will thence carry home a full udder, And sure I am that she will not there-of refuse me a fair, full share.

There is considerable humour in the song, as in the way the heifer’s character is exalted at the expense of the Ayrshire cattle of the township, who are spoken of with contempt as only understanding English, while her own heifer (a genuine West Highlander, we warrant her!) is so thoroughly up in Gaelic that she understands its every word! TEIRIS is a term of conciliation and kindness used in soliciting the friendship and good behaviour of cattle in stall – something like the “Gently, now,” of a good-natured groom when astride a steed disposed to be skittish. To be of effect it has always to be uttered in a conciliatory, or in what may be called a wheedling tone of voice. It is never addressed to horses; only to the bovine race, in their every stage of growth from clashed to extremest old age.

Book review: Myth and Magic: Scotland's Ancient Beliefs and Sacred Places

Myth and Magic: Scotland's Ancient Beliefs and Sacred Places
Joyce Miller

This book is on the Gaol Naofa recommended reading list, but until now I hadn't had a chance to read it myself.

Over all, this is a nice little book and an easy read, and I think it makes a good introductory book for anyone looking to learn about things like sacred places (both Christian and pre-Christian) and the beliefs associated with them, along with a bit of an overview of the Good Folk and other Otherworldly beings, and the kinds of charms, amulets, and talismans that are traditional to Scotland. It's going cheap, second-hand, so that's always a plus, too.

Some of the chapters are effectively lists of different kinds of places around Scotland, while other chapters give an introduction to different kinds of subjects -- healing and holy wells, festivals and rituals, stones, amulets and talismans, superntatural beings, and so on. We start off with one of the chapters that lists places of interest -- shrines and pilgrimages in this case, which I found a little off-putting to start with. A little preamble about them first would've been nice. Each entry in this chapter is listed by the saint we're dealing with, and there's a brief overview of the site (or sites) they're associated with. Then we move on to a more conversational sort of chapter, detailing the ways in which healing and holy wells are used. I preferred these kinds of chapters, as they were more informative and the listed chapters were a little repetitive, going over material or sites already covered elsewhere, and I'm not sure the choice of listing them by saint, or name of the site, is terribly useful. If you want to look up sites in a particular area or location then it gets fiddly...

For the most part the information given is pretty solid, and there's some genuinely interesting stuff in some of the chapters that I've not seen elsewhere. The chapters towards the end of the book - on stones, and on talismans and amulets, and the one on supernatural beings offered the more interesting stuff, for me, but it's a shame there aren't any references given anywhere in the book. There's a short, but pretty solid bibliography, but that's about it.

This problem with lack of sources is especially unfortunate when it comes to some of the more interesting tidbits I found in the book. In the second chapter Miller mentions a St Triduana, who she describes as a "Pictish princess from Rescobie in Angus... Triduana had converted to Christianity but she was desired by a pagan prince Nechtan. The prince particularly admired her eyes but, rather than submit to him, Triduana is said to have plucked out her eyes and sent them to her admirer on a thorn." As far as I'm aware there aren't any names of Pictish women recorded, so this reference piqued my interest. Looking into it further, however, I can't find any agreement that Triduana was actually a Pict. So just be aware that sometimes the author seems to put her own spin on things.

One serious niggle I have with the book is in the chapter on festivals and rituals, which gives some rather dodgy information:

Imbolc or St Bride's Day was the feast of the Celtic spring goddess, and celebrated the first day of spring. Beltane was associated with the feast of Bel, ruler of the Celtic underworld, and celebrated the renewal and growth of crops and the land. Lugnasad, or the feast of Lugh, was the same as Lammas and marked the start of the harvest. Samhain -- the feast of the dead -- marked the end of the yearly cycle and the first day of winter.

I mean, at least it doesn't say that "Samhain" is a god of the dead, right? But Bel just isn't a thing and Lúnasa and Lammas are two separate (though admittedly similar) festivals, and "Celtic" just isn't a useful term to use here... So although I'd recommend the book, I'd also recommend taking the information given with a pinch of salt unless you're already familiar with what's being talked about from other sources, or you follow it up yourself. For the most part it's really OK, but there is the odd clanger here and there. It's not a major downer, and it's par for the course in any book, but it needs noting, I think.

The title kind of implies that you're going to learn loads about pre-Christian belief and practice, but if you go in expecting to find this then you'll be disappointed... What you will find is a good overview of Scottish folklore and folk practice, and in this respect it's a good complement to F. Marian McNeill's The Silver Bough series, in particular. Miller covers much of the same ground, but gives a little more detail here and there, especially when it comes to places, so I think if you're looking for a more rounded view of Scottish folklore then it's a good book to get hold of. All in all, a good read with a few caveats.

In which I left the house and Did Stuff

All last week I had some friends visiting, much to my excitement because it meant I got to Do Stuff With Grown Ups. Mr Seren graciously (in his own special way, i.e. with much good-natured whinging and moaning) took charge of the kids while I went off gallivanting around Scotland and all kinds of fun stuff. I finally got around to going to visit Paisley Abbey and spied the xenomorph carving:

Which was pretty high up so the picture is grainy because it's so closely cropped; I first learned about the xenomorph from some links that went viral a while ago and the abbey went on to my list of places to see and then I promptly forgot about it. But seeing as we were going to be nearby, at the museum, and had an hour to kill before that opened, the abbey was a good opportunity. There were some beautiful stained glass windows there as well (and a very talkative warden).

I'll start with our trip to Luss in Loch Lomond, though, and given the amount of pictures I took I'll probably spill over into a couple of posts after this. Loch Lomond was our first big day out (involving lunch and cake, naturally). I've been there many times now, but this time I had the chance to wander around a bit more and we visited the village church as well. The village itself is very picturesque (here's some I took from a previous visit, when it was sunny):

The church is really unusual, with the pulpit and font situated in the middle so everyone sits around it and can face each other. It's also beautifully done inside, but I didn't take too many pictures because the warden (or whoever he was) was very obliging in giving us a history and I didn't want to appear rude while he was talking. The font was originally removed sometime after the Reformation and buried under a cairn of stones not too far away, to protect it from being destroyed. It was eventually replaced after being discovered by soldiers, who brought it back to the church (which had been rebuilt by then). I didn't take a photo of it, but I did get a picture of the statue of St Kessog:

Who seems like a cheery fellow. He's said to have brought Christianity to the area over 1500 years ago, and according to the Wikipedia link he used to be the patron saint of Scotland before St Andrew took over; his name was also used as a battle cry. There's a wee trail behind the church that goes into the history, which starts off with a beautifully carved cross that spells out "coexist," which is a nice touch. And there are some beautiful views of the hills, that are still covered in bluebells at the moment:

You can kind of see the Celtic cross there as well. There are memorial trees planted all around the edges of the field and the guy we spoke to inside the church said they plant a fruit tree for each Christening they do, so they have an orchard as well, which is a nice touch. Some of memorials were for kids, which is just heartbreaking to see, with the teddy bears and kids' toys at the base of the trunk.

Back in the churchyard there's a Viking hogback - about tenth century in date, I think - lurking amongst the more recent gravestones:

They don't tend to have inscriptions so I'm not sure who it's for, and it seemed smaller than the ones I saw at Govan last year. I don't think I've ever seen one in situ before so maybe it just seemed wee by comparison, but I think it's sunk a bit and weathered a lot, going by the Canmore records.

Down at the shore there are some views of Ben Lomond, which marks the start of the Highland line:

And there's also a nice wee shop by the pier, with possibly the most talkative proprietor EVAR. Enter if ye dare... The shortbread's nice but you might never leave.

The next day we did Bute by car, so we got to see more than just the usual. In spite of the weather, which was a little changeable, it was a fab day, but I'll leave that for the next post. Or possibly two, because I kind of went to town with the camera that day.

St Andrews – Part three

St Andrews is a very quaint and pretty medieval city, with lots of old lanes and the occasional kilted ginger:

Just to add a little more authenticity to the whole feel of it. You're welcome.

Part of the trip involved a guided tour but I'm pretty sure you're not interested in the finer points of architectural changes or medieval town planning and the photos I took of that aren't particularly interesting either (unless you like playing games of spot the archaeologists). So I'll crack on with the cathedral precinct and the castle, which are right by the sea. They're both in ruins now, thanks to the Reformation mostly, but the cathedral precinct was still used after the cathedral itself was destroyed because people wanted to be buried there. So it's surprisingly crowded:

St Rule's Tower, on the right there, is still in good condition and you can climb up it if you want. The views are pretty spectacular:

You can see the castle there in the bottom picture. In the top photo you can see the remains of the priory's cloister and the cathedral proper. Outside of the precinct, while my mother-in-law help give a tourist some directions, I accidentally sat beneath a clootie tree:

If you look closely you can make out the hawthorn blossom, too.

We didn't have much time for the castle but if you look where the steps are:

They lead down to a tunnel that was dug through during a siege sometime in the 1540s. Thanks to a little bit of religious persecution by the cardinal, who lived in the castle and wasn't too keen on Protestants, he martyred one too many and pissed off a few folks, which he probably ended up regretting. One of the Protestant preachers he had burned at the stake, George Wishart, had friends who decided to get some good old-fashioned revenge and they stormed the castle, killed the cardinal, and held the castle for themselves. In an effort to remove them, a siege took place and tunnels were dug underneath the castle walls in an effort to undermine the building's integrity without risking the lives of the VIP hostages who were being held inside (I'm not convinced of the logic there, what with aiming to collapse at least part of the castle instead of bombarding it with artillery). The castle's temporary occupants tried to undermine the efforts of the people who were trying to undermine them by digging false shafts as well, and they're all still there. I didn't go too far down the actual siege tunnel – I'm tall and the tunnel was not – but it must've taken quite a bit of dedication, for sure.

There's not much of the castle left now, but being sat right on the edge of the North Sea must've been a bit chilly in winter:

The cardinal probably had it a little easier than the monks did, though, because there was only one building in the cathedral precinct where they would have been able to warm up beside a fire.

So that's the end of the brief tour! I'll spare you more photos and go off and do something productive now, but I have some more catching up to do with a book review, which I'll get round to soon, hopefully.

Notes: Continuity and Adaptation in Legends of Cailleach Bhéarra

Seeing as JSTOR is giving the public access to a wider portion of its catalogue now, I figured doing these occasional notes is a bit more useful to readers. I'm listing the articles covered so far on a page here, and I've added in a link to any of the articles that might be available on JSTOR if any of them happen to pique your interest. Unfortunately only two of them that I've done so far are accessible through JSTOR, but this next summary is one of the first ones I stuck on my shelf after browsing around and trying to think what to pick first. This is one I've been after for ages and I can foresee myself picking my way through pretty much the rest of this journal given half a chance...

Continuity and Adaptation in Legends of Cailleach Bhéarra 
Gearóid Ó Crualaoich 
Béaloideas Iml. 56, (1988)

This is an article that's mainly aiming to bring together the variety of traditions about the Cailleach Bhéarra in Ireland, with a view to tracing the evolution and influences of those traditions and legends. Or, as Ó Crualaoich puts it:

At different stages and at different levels of Gaelic tradition the figure of the Cailleach Bhéarra has been used to represent different clusterings of cultural meaning so that we are faced with a multiplicity of forms and functions of Cailleach Bhéarra that prove very difficult to distinguish and whose historical and/or functional relationship to each other continues to be obscure to a great degree.

These forms and functions include the Cailleach functioning as a "Mother Goddess" with Indo-European roots, or else she's a Divine Hag and Sovereignty Queen, and ancestress of various peoples. Otherwise she might be a supernatural woman of the wilderness and weather, which is perhaps most pronounced in Scottish traditions. Ó Crualaoich argues that this latter expression of the Cailleach is particularly influenced by Norse cosmology. Then there's her "geotectonic role in the landscape" - lobbing rocks about the place and making mountains, or causing rivers, lochs and whirlpools and so on. All of which can be seen to interrelate to each other to a certain extent.

There are some important points raised in the article, and while some of them are only incidentally mentioned they provide a good reference as a starting point. For one, there's the fact that although the Cailleach is an incredibly important and popular figure in legend and lore, she's not a prominent figure in the myths. This can partly be explained by the fact that we can see she's been known by other names like Buí or Sentainne Bérri, before the name "Cailleach" takes over (the word itself being the result of Christian influence, originally referring to a nun, a 'veiled one' - as in a married women, and then old women/hags) and Ó Crualaoich comments:

I find it very interesting indeed that Professor Wagner, in his recent Zeitschrift article, should identify both these earliest names for Cailleach Bhéarra, viz. Sentainne (Bérri) and Boí/Buí with derivations from the Indo-European forms *Senona and *Bovina meaning, respectively, ‘female elder’ and ‘cow-like-one’ - the latter being, Wagner claims, a characteristic appellation of Indo-European manifestations of the Magna Mater. On Professor Wagner’s terms, then, both the rivers Shannon and Boyne are named ultimately for the female divine who herself begins to become known as Cailleach Bhéarra round about the late eighth or early ninth centuries when the famous Lament was composed.

This comes across as being a wee bit conflationist (the Magna Mater??? is that still a thing?), and is something that Ó Crualaoich does quite a few times, but it's interesting to ponder nonetheless.

Another point that's raised is the explicit association of the Cailleach with the seasons in Scotland, but not so much in Ireland - something that would be great to see more on, but Scotland isn't really Ó Crualaoich's focus (there are several pointers to other articles on that - most of them old and already public domain).

If you're looking for a good article that will help you pick apart the various strands that have accrued to the traditions of the Cailleach over the years then this is a good place to look. It may ultimately end up raising more questions than it answers, but it's a start, right? And while I have a bit of a problem with Ó Crualaoich's position on the Magna Mater, that's read around easily enough.

Bliadhna Mhath Ùr a h-uile duine!

Slàinte, sonas agus beartas dhuibh.
Health, wealth and happiness to you.

Hogmanay was a quiet one for us - surprisingly quiet considering the kids stayed up to see the new year in! The day was spent setting the house in order, baking shortbread and treacle scones, and a dinner of beef stew and sticky toffee pudding, and the evening was spent with slightly manic children and a game of Ludo (a Christmas present we'd yet to play) and keepy-uppy with a balloon up until the bells. We watched as the cannon at Edinburgh was fired to welcome in the new year and the fireworks started going off, and the kids jumped about all excited and we toasted each other with fizzy orange or lemonade (we're nothing if not rock n' roll in this house). Offerings were made, and for once I remembered to put a silver penny out on the doorstep (it was still there this morning; a good sign). We haven't had any first-footers yet, but we'll be going over to the in-law's later on for the traditional steak pie dinner, and probably far too much pudding.

Following on from my previous post, there's an article from the Beeb that ties in neatly:

Happy Hoggo-nott? The 'lost' meanings of Hogmanay

Meanwhile, up north in Stonehaven, the fireball event was nearly cancelled due to flooding this year, but in the end it was planned to go ahead as scheduled. I can't find any videos or articles on it yet, but hopefully everything went smoothly.

Anyway, Happy New Year everyone! May 2013 bring all good things.

Plans for Gàidhlig-only village on Skye

I saw this on tumblr referencing The Times (which is behind a pay wall), and the only other source I can find on this at the moment is a teaser from The Press and Journal:

The new £40million village beside the Gaelic college at Sleat will include almost 100 new homes – from affordable to high-market seafront plots – college buildings for research and teaching, and a new conference centre. There are also plans for hotel accommodation, a retail outlet and cafe bar as well as sport facilities, a central green, and parks, paths and cycle networks.

Skye Gaelic village will be ‘plan of the century’

But it certainly sounds like exciting news, and I just hope they can make this work without too much of a negative impact on the local environment.

Mare stanes, adder stones, frog stones, oh my

Summer is definitely coming to an end, and it feels like the seasons are changing much earlier than usual this year. The leaves on horse chestnuts are already starting to turn reds and yellows, and some other trees around the place are changing too. The seaweed is coming up onto the beach in piles:

And the rainy weather is starting to get a bit of bite and fury to it.

Seeing as it was the first time I've managed to get to the beach since Midsummer, though, it was time to pay my respects to Manannán. As with previous years, Rosie insisted on finding a special stone. Last year she picked up a tiny heart-shaped stone with pink flecks in it; this year, she found a larger heart-shaped stone with white flecks in it. "Like a cow!" she decided. And so it was declared that it was obviously for us, because mummy likes cows.

As usual, the kids made a collection of stones and sea glass they liked, we built sandcastles and had a wee snack, took a turn over the rocks so I could make my offerings, and let the dogs run around mental and rescue sticks from the water (after four years, Mungo finally found the courage to go swimming and rescue a stick himself, even).

And while I was combing the beach, I found this:

Out of habit I tend to call them hag stones because that's what I've always known them as, but I suppose in order to be authentic I should call them mare stanes. They are stones typically found on the beach or river-bed, with a natural hole through them. A mare stane will keep away nightmares or being hag-ridden, if you hang them above your bed or wear one, and they are also a good preventative against disease or witchcraft, and are often found hanging in byres or stables to protect cattle and horses for the same purpose as people might hang them in the home, or wear them. McNeill doesn't have much to say about them, but she does note that stones of rock crystal (quartz) often had holes put through them to be worn about the neck as protection against the Evil Eye and witchcraft.

The Brahan Seer had a stone with a hole in the middle - the stone being described as white (or blue) and smooth - which is said to have been a gift from the daoine sìth. It is said that he could 'see things' if he looked through the hole; he could "see into the future as clearly as he could remember the past, and see men's designs and motives as clearly as their actions." Unfortunately for Coinneach Odhar, the Brahan Seer, things didn't work out so well for him. Apparently his accuracy as a seer meant that when he confirmed a lady's husband was away having an affair, she was so upset that she accused him of witchcraft. Before his execution, the Brahan Seer threw the stone into a loch after one final - and terrible - prophecy.

For some reason Wikipedia conflates them with adder stones, but I really don't think that's right. Every source I have lists them separately, with hag stones or mare stanes being any kind of rock with a natural hole in it from the beach or river, and adder stones (or clachan naithaireach as Black lists it, while John Gregorson Campbell and others give 'clach nathair') being somewhat mysterious in form and origin. Adder stones are usually described as being greenish in hue, and are believed to be some kind of secretion of adders, although Hugh Cheape, the former principal curator at the National Museum Scotland identifies them as simply being spindle-whorls, "lost or discarded and subsequently picked up." There are also such things as adder beads or glass (glaine nathair), and from the description Black gives, I would guess some of the adder beads are probably actual beads made from glass or enamel, that were found in the same way as the old spindle-whorls. Adder stones can offer protection against witchcraft as well, but are generally used for healing purposes. Gregorson Campbell describes them as "Of all the means of which superstition laid hold for the cure of disease in man or beast, the foremost place is to be assigned to the serpent stone (clach nathrach), also known as called the serpent bead or glass ((glaine nathair)." Unlike mare stanes, they don't offer protection from nightmares or being 'hag ridden,' but they are the go-to cure for snake bites in particular (the only potentially deadly snake in Britain being the adder), amongst more general cures.

There are also such things as snail beads (cnaipein silcheig) and frog or toad stones (clach nan gilleadha cràigein). The snail bead is said to be produced by the at least four snails who form them into a mass and somehow "manufacture" the stone between them and is described as being "a hollow Cilinder of blue Glass, composed of four or five Annulets: So that as to Form and Size it resembles a midling Entrochus." It can be used as a cure for sore eyes and breakouts of tetter on the mouth, but also serves to protect against danger. The frog stone, on the other hand, seems to have been a fossilised tooth known as bufonite, although popular belief held that it was formed in a frog or toad's head. Its main value was as a protection or antidote against poison.

I have a few mare stanes now so I might work the smallest of them into a charm I can wear; the one I found yesterday is way too big to wear - it seems to be a mixture of quartz and mica layers - so it's sat on my shelf at the moment. Maybe I'll hang it above the front door at some point, to keep my rowan company. The heart-shaped stones I seem to be collecting now might make good charm stones too; healing stones were often chosen for their shape, being sympathetic to whatever it was they were supposed to cure.


Further Reading:
George F. Black's Scottish Charms and Amulets
F. Marian McNeill's The Silver Bough Volume I: Scottish Folk-Lore and Folk-Belief
Ronald Black's The Gaelic Otherworld
Hugh Cheape's 'From Natural to Supernatural: The Material Culture of Charms and Amulets', in Fantastical Imaginations: The Supernatural in Scottish History and Culture, edited by Lizanne Henderson

Wildflowers again

Taking a break from the articles for a wee while, and back to the wildflowers...

Thinking about my ignorance of all things wildflower, I realised that during my childhood there weren't really any. They certainly weren't common, because fields and grass verges were heavily sprayed with pesticides and weed killers. Local councils made sure roadsides were neatly manicured and green, and fields were carefully maintained so weeds and wildflowers wouldn't compete with the crops.

As I got older, I remember a big fuss being made about the decline of wildflowers and practices changed, and the wildflowers came back. I remember noticing poppies growing along the roadsides as I got older; plants like cow parsley began spreading along the edges of the fields at the bottom of the garden (I grew up in a semi-rural village; I could go through a gap in the hedge at the bottom of my garden and walk through miles and miles of fields). So I suppose it's not surprising that I don't know much about wildflowers, and it makes me think how lucky my kids are, that their world is a much more colourful one than I grew up in. They're growing up in a more rural, isolated area than I did.

The weather has stayed quite warm and sunny - slightly cloudier and windier now, but the cool breeze offers some welcome relief from the heat. The other day I took Rosie and the dogs out to the woods we went to a couple of weeks back, to see the bluebells. There are still some bluebells around but they're well past their best now. A lot of the bluebell carpets are being crowded out by the bracken, which are still busy unfurling:

While elsewhere the woodland floor is being taken over by a sea of pinks and yellows. Mostly red campion:

Mixed in with different kinds of buttercups and yellow pimpernels:

Around the edges of the woods are a few white campions:

Pink purslane:

And some beautiful, deep purple columbines:

Near the woods there's a meadow that's prone to getting a bit boggy when it rains. There's a goal post at one end of the meadow (which happens to be right near our back fence) and a lot of the locals complain that the meadow itself isn't maintained properly. The ground is too soft for football practice so I don't see the point in the grass being regularly cut, anyway, and if it was then these would get mown up:

A kind of marsh orchid, although I'm not sure which. They're quite tiny, but beautiful, though. There are also some tiny, tiny blue flowers, which were too small for me to get a photo of with the lens I have for my camera, but I think they're forget-me-nots. There are also cuckoo flowers lurking close the edge of the meadow:

And I think these are bugles:

The hawthorns are in full bloom now as well:

As are the rhododendrons, which have turned the hills behind us purple:

It's amazing what you find when you look for it.

Sacred Stones out in the Sun - Tigh nam Bodach

After the hydro-scheme proposals that put the future of Tigh nam Bodach (also known as Tigh na Cailliche) under threat last year, it's back in the news again. This time, however, it's just a nice wee article about the Bealltainn ritual being observed, with some additional tidbits I found interesting:

Tigh nam Bodach means the ‘House of the Old Man’. The bell-shaped waterstones are believed to represent a family – the Old Man or Bodach, the Old Woman or Cailleach and their daughter, Nighean. Local legend suggests that over time the family gets bigger, with new stones reportedly appearing over the years.  

Each spring, a local person opens the stone house and places the family of stones outside. Then at the autumn festival of Samhain, the stones are carefully wrapped up in a bed of marsh grass and put back inside. 

It is recognised to be the oldest, uninterrupted pagan ritual in Britain, some say in all of Europe.

Sacred Stones out in the Sun

Skye swim farmer revisited

A while ago I posted a link about the last farmer on Skye to swim his cattle. This week in the news, there's an article on the "UK's oldest farmers," which includes Iain MacDonald, the same Skye farmer:

Forgetting to put your teeth in seems an unlikely occupational hazard. But for another of the UK's oldest farmers, it is just that.  

Iain MacDonald, 80, recalls a trek into the hills of Skye to round up sheep and only then realising he had left his dentures at home. Without his teeth, he could not whistle commands to guide his collie Pip.  

The dog and sheep went everywhere except in the right direction. Defeated, Iain had to return home to retrieve his dentures. "I'd gone all that way and I couldn't get the dog to do anything I wanted her to."

Meet the UK's oldest farmers

Check out the videos in the article, too!

Solstice!

I got up this morning at around 8.15am and thought, "Ooooo, it's still dark." I put it down to the fact that the clouds were low and thick - as per usual now - and thus the sun wasn't able to brighten things up too much. It took a while to realise that it also perhaps had something to do with the fact that it's coming up to the shortest day of the year - tomorrow, officially...

So a happy solstice to those of you who celebrate! I will be making some offerings to mark the occasionbut my main focus of celebrations at this time of year will be on Hogmanay as usual - as yet we have no plans for Hogmanay, so it will probably be spent at home all quiet and boring. I'll be glad to see the back of this year, and fervently hoping that the new year ushers in a definite improvement on 2011.  

If the weather in Ireland is anything like here then the solstice sun at Newgrange won't be illuminating much of anything (yup); the official gathering at Newgrange took place today, but there's a video you can watch from 2007 that shows what should happen quite nicely (although you might want to forward along a bit):

Newgrange might be the most famous solstice alignment, but there are others as well, including the chambered tomb known as Maes Howe on the mainland of Orkney. The light of the solstice sunset is captured there (when it shines!), and there are also cameras set there to capture and broadcast it. Neither of these tombs are Celtic, of course, but both remain as significant features in the landscape even today.

In the twelfth century the tomb was opened by some of the Norse settlers, and they made their mark by leaving a load of runes to commemorate their visit (33 inscriptions in all). Some of the graffiti attempts to make verse, and one such verse is thought to have (possibly) been made by Thorhall Asgrimsson, who is mentioned in the Orkneyinga Saga. The verse is rough, and reads:

The man who is
most skilled in runes
west of the ocean
cut these runes
with the axe
once owned by Gauk
son of Trandil
in the south country.

(Translation from: The Triumph Tree: Scotland's Earliest Poetry AD 550-1350, edited by T.O. Clancy)

Which is not particularly relevant to the solstice, but there you go...

I will finish off with a seasonal poem translated by Kuno Meyer, one that's particularly relevant considering the recent hurricanes we've been having in these parts:

Dubaib rathib rogemrid

robarta tonn turgabar

íar tóib betha blái.

Brónaig eoín cach íathmaige

acht fiaich fola forderge

fri fúaim gemrid gairg.

In the dark season of the deep winter

heavy seas are lifted up

along the side of the world's region.

Sorrowful are the birds of every meadow-field,

except the ravens of dark-red blood,

at the uproar of the fierce winter-time.

I shall dedicate that to the Cailleach and the storm hags who've been unleashing their fury over the past few weeks.

A little festive cheer?

We survived 'Hurricane Bawbag' (as it was dubbed) relatively unscathed - we lost a wee bit of fence in the end, and the old satellite dish bounced off gleefully down the road before Mr Seren managed to catch it (losing all dignity in the process). But considering the damage elsewhere, we didn't do too badly at all. With winds over 160mph in some places, it seemed sensible to stay indoors as much as possible, and hope for the best...Thankfully the schools were closed.

Today, however, all is back to normal, and aside from some early flurries of snow this morning we've yet to experience the predicted blizzard. To make the most of it (and as a blatant excuse to get out the house) I decided to spend the afternoon at the garden centre, in order to glory in all things questionably festive in nature. Of course, I took the camera with me, because otherwise I cannot share in the glory of all that is of a questionable and disturbingly festive nature. Allow me to illustrate:

I have to admit, I can't blame the look on the poor wee kid's face at the back there. (Is the tallest clown...supposed to look 'red face'?)

This is something the local garden centre does every year - it's their 'Winter Wonderland' sort of thing, where they put up loads of random and often tenuously festive displays. Aside from the clowns, most of the scenes of recent years have been of various fairy tales that are popularly adapted for pantomimes (they're a popular festive form of entertainment here). This year it's all been toned down a little, the first year we went it was definitely the best. That year, we had homicidal dwarves:

Another year, there was what can only be described as a suggestively come hither Cinderella:

There was no Cinderella this year, but the dwarves were back again. Although alas, one of the dwarves certainly hasn't faired too well:

I can only imagine its injuries were the result of a heroic battle against the homicidal dwarf of previous years. A valiant defence of Snow White (a.k.a. Vampyra, I suspect), perhaps, for behold! She returned gloriously this year (after a few appearances with a mop for replacement hair), with the added bonus of a couple of pensive deer in tow:

It's perhaps safe to say that 'Snow White' has been taken to a somewhat literal extreme.

It's the clowns that really do it for me, though. I'm not sure quite why they might be considered festive, and they're something I've always found more than a little sinister in general (but especially so, after seeing Stephen King's IT when I was about thirteen or so), but the garden centre tends to go all out with them, for no apparent reason. This one is bad enough:

But this one takes first place for downright disturbing. If it were art, I would call it 'A Study in Sinister Nonchalance':

They move, you know. They all play happy and festive tunes and 'dance'. The first year there was this display:

And I swear to you, I swear that the clown at the the front there, it was making rude gestures of the self-pleasuring variety. With his flute. Poor Santa. Look at him there, edging uncomfortably away. Ho-Ho-Ho-ly Shit What The Fuck Am I Doing Here...

But it seems that for decency's sake, they've toned it down somewhat this year:

And now the clowns just want to eat your soul.

Outside, though, it's lovely:

As furious as the Cailleach has been these past few days - snow, hail, sleet, rain, thunder and lightning, sleet, and more snow and torrential downpours - well. It doesn't seem like anyone round here minds.