Archive for the 'Cuckoo Stone' category
It has never been a problem to write for Eternal Idol, aside from finding the time to do so. Time is something that’s been in extremely short supply recently for a number of reasons, but I’m certainly not complaining. I’m extremely grateful to everyone for all the correspondence I receive, with suggestions, new material, new information, new ideas, photographs, diagrams, offers to investigate localities and so forth; as I’ve mentioned numerous times, I have a backlog of posts to complete and publish, while there are ongoing investigations such as that into the Spoils of Annwn, on a separate static page, but there are others still that keep my attention.
In addition to all this, I’ve been working non-stop on two separate projects and I’ll post something up about these as soon as I can. I’m always mindful of the observation “Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them”, so I couldn’t be happier that I have so many things to engage me, but back to the matter of writing. I’m generally satisfied with what I’ve posted here over the years, although I’m painfully aware that some pieces could be a great deal better. Every now and again, however, something comes along that makes me wonder why I bother with the keyboard at all, and one such occasion came about as a result of watching a video sent in by Red Raven, one of Eternal Idol’s many prolific and insightful contributors.
To cut a long and involved story short, the video was made to promote a song called “Roots” by a folk band called Show of Hands. This is turn led me to being contacted by another visitor, Yvonne, who informed me of a play in the West End of London called Jerusalem. She was kind enough to transcribe and send on the text in the programme, and I was so taken aback by what I read that I contacted the author, Paul Kingsnorth.
Paul very kindly allowed me to reproduce his words here, so I would urge you all to visit the various links I’ve supplied for Paul’s site and for the play, while you might also like to see this review in the Guardian, which echoes my thoughts on Paul’s writing. There are many reasons I’ve reproduced Paul’s brilliant essay, one being that I am of course intensely interested in the legends of Jesus visiting Britain, while I’m also fascinated by tales of supernatural creatures emerging from barrows. Paul’s work also reinforces an idea I’ve mentioned here several times before, where I’ve quoted the late Ralph Whitlock, from his wonderful book In Search of Lost Gods:
“Against the backdrop of human settlement in Britain, even the Celts were relative newcomers. As warlike invaders they started to arrive in Britain about the middle of the first millennium BC, but before that the island had an unwritten history of at least two thousand years. The Celts came in no great numbers, imposing themselves as an aristocracy on the older races, and it is unlikely that they initiated a great religious upheaval. Rather, their own beliefs were probably grafted on or merged with those of a much older religion.
Thus, in our search for the old gods, we may well find traces of those who had commanded the worship of men in the days when Stonehenge was young…”
Most of all, however, I’ve reproduced Paul’s words in the hope that anyone reading this will enjoy them one half as much as I did, so without further ado, here is the work in question:
[This article is taken from the programme of the play JERUSALEM and is followed by the words of William Blake's Jerusalem on a separate page]
OAK, ASH AND THORN
Paul Kingsnorth is the author of Real England, The Battle Against the Bland
Before the Normans arrive in 1066, and began to unravel the English sense of self at the tip of a sword, everyone in the country would have known the story of Wayland the Smith. Travelling storytellers – gleemen or scopmen as they were known – would have trawled his tale from village to town to port, embellishing it in the telling but keeping the basic spine of the story intact. The legend told of how Wayland, or Weland, a blacksmith whose works were the wonder of the world, was enslaved and crippled by a greed-blinded king and forced to work for him alone, and how he enacted his revenge in the most terrible way. The story of Wayland spoke to Old English society of themes at once specific and universal: power misused, leaders blinded by cupidity, ordinary men wronged and out for revenge. If we were searching for a foundation myth for the English people, the story of Wayland would be a strong contender.
Who in England knows the legend of Wayland today? The English, notoriously, have a blind spot when it comes to their myths, the legends of their past and their people, their folk tales and their origins. This is not something that could be said of any of the other peoples of the Biritsh Isles. The Scots and the Irish share Cuchulainn and the legends of Finn, and celebrate any number of ancient and modern folk heroes; the Welsh have the Mabinogion and the re-invented Druids, and lay claim (in rivalry with the Cornish) to Arthur and Merlin. Britain’s ethnic minorities bring stories, folk legends, songs and still-living religions from India, Africa, eastern Europe and elsewhere.
But the English are strangely quiet about their deep past; disconnected, embarrassed. It’s a curious thing, for the country is full of living reminders of its mythical history and prehistory, from the green men on the lintels of old churches to maypoles and even Christmas trees. But the English have nothing to rival the Mabinogion. They have no W.B. Yeats or Dylan Thomas, diverting old myths through new channels. What are the foundation myths of the English. Who are their folk heroes? When they look for a mystical past, why do they turn to the Celts? Where did they come from, who built their landscape? Why are the barrows silent and where have the faeries gone?
It’s not as if the stories aren’t there waiting to be found. The old English tales are as deep, as archetypal, as any other myth cycle. As well as Wayland, the Old English pantheon included one-eyed Woden, also known as Grim, god of the slain, who walked the high downs with his familiars – the raven and the wolf – looking down on the world of men. There was great Thunor with his hammer of fire and his sacred groves, and Frig, Woden’s consort, pagan matriarch and goddess of the green. There were Balder and Ing and others long-forgotten, whose swords and carved idols are still dragged up today from riverbeds and bogs. There were orcs and ents, dwarves and elves, demon hounds and giants in the landscapes and mindscapes of England long before they re-emerged in the pages of Tolkien.
These were the gods and the demons of the Old English; dead but not resurrected, unlike their Celtic forbears or Christian conquerors. But the myths of a nation are about more than gods; they are about the folk legends, the small stories, the culture that grows from season and place. In England this gives us, amongst others, the strange mystery of the green man, his foliate head carved on churches, over centuries, a heathen riposte on a Christian building. Who is he? If we once knew we have forgotten, like we have forgotten Jack in the Green and the origins of Robin Hood; like we have forgotten Hereward the Wake and Eadric the Wild and Jack Cade, like we have forgotten the craft of the village witch and the story of the wind smith, the meaning of the white horses and the ballads of the sea.
Times change and the world moves on. Perhaps the English have forgotten because they wanted to forget. Perhaps English is such a self-confident, forward-looking nation that it doesn’t need to bolster its self-image with half=remembered stories from a dead world. But it doesn’t seem that way to me. Rather the opposite: it seems as if, for some reason, the English are afraid of their myths – intimidated by their stories, maybe even by their past. For whatever political, sociological or historical reason – take your pick, according to your inclinations, from a ragbag of defendants that includes the Norman Conquest, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, political correctness or the simple process of historical forgetting – we do not seem inclined to dig into the barrows and unearth the old hoards. Maybe we are afraid of seeing our faces in the reflection.
Over a century ago, in Puck of Pook’s Hill, Rudyard Kipling resurrected Puck, the impish faerie that Shakespeare had himself laid down from the collective memory centuries before. In Kipling’s tale, Puck is the last of the faeries, “the oldest Old Thing in England”, summoned accidentally from his barrow by theatrically-minded children. The first tale he tells them is the tale of Wayland the Smith.
And so the cycle continues. Because though we have forgotten much in England, we don’t have the option of leaving the past behind. No-one ever does. Weirdly, obtusely, at the margins and from the corners of your eyes, the old myths can still be seen. A hundred years on from Kipling, the long barrow on the Ridgeway near White Horse Hill is still known as Wayland’s Smith; the old smith, it is said, will shoe any horse left there overnight if a coin is placed on the stones. The third day of the week is still Woden’s Day, the green men on the cathedral ceilings receive coats of fresh paint, and every May Day, even now, the strange green dance goes on in crevices and byways while most of the nation is driving to the out-of-town retail park.
This is the England of Johnny Byron, a post-modern Puck, a dangerous spirit of the old world and the new, leading the children astray, telling them stories, a story himself. The old gods are still with us, and the myths. Not because we have held onto them, but because they have held onto us. We tried to banish them, like the council tries to banish Johnny from his wood and the developers try to banish the woods themselves. But like Puck, they linger in the barrows long after they were supposed to be gone. “I came into England with Oak, Ash and Thorn” says Puck in Kipling’s tale, “and when Oak, Ash and Thorn are gone I shall go too.” Perhaps when climate change comes to England it will banish the oak and the ash and the thorn, but more likely they will cling on, like Puck and Jonny and Wayland and Grim, like lichen on bark or moss on stone, impossible to shift, so common as to go unnoticed unless we go out and search for them.
The 2007 Stonehenge Riverside Project dig began today and despite the occasionally unpleasant weather, around one hundred and fifty students and volunteers turned out to assist with the excavations and other related tasks. The areas currently under investigation are Durrington Walls, the Cuckoo Stone and the western end of the Cursus.
At Durrington Walls, Professor Mike Parker-Pearson and his staff are extending the trench he opened last year and the year before in a search for more Neolithic huts. As well as discovering a small part of a vast prehistoric village, last year’s excavations also produced evidence of some Iron Age activity at the site, so the current dig will almost certainly unearth a great deal more of interest to anyone who is aware of Durrington Walls and its relationship in prehistoric times to nearby Stonehenge.
Furthermore, in the southern quadrant of Durrington Walls closest to Woodhenge, two trenches are being dug in an attempt to locate the position of the now ploughed-out bank and ditch of the colossal earthwork.
The Geophysics staff attached to the Stonehenge Riverside Project have carried out magnetometer and resistivity surveys between Woodhenge and the nearby long barrow. Test pits have already revealed the presence or existence of at least two ring ditches, so excavations will be carried out on these features over the coming week.
The Cuckoo Stone to the west of Woodhenge is a solitary sarsen, so-called because it is out of place, while no excavations have ever been carried out in its vicinity despite it being a standing stone or megalith in the Stonehenge landscape. Test pits have been dug nearby, revealing the beginning of one large feature believed to be Roman, while on the other side, a posthole has been revealed whose age is as yet unknown.
Excavations are also taking place at the western end of the Cursus and perhaps this year, firm evidence might come to light of the bluestone monument that may once have stood there. This lost monument is presumed to have existed on account of the large quantity of bluestone fragments unearthed by J.F.S Stone during his 1947 excavation at the Cursus, but you can find out more about this, if you wish, by entering a search on this site.
A trench dug across the ditch today found what is thought to be a terminus, possibly from Stone’s 1947 ditch, but when we find out more, we’ll report it here. On the opposite side of the Cursus, but further to the west, another trench has been opened, while as a result of magnetometer and resistivity surveys, a trench has been opened in the middle of the Cursus. Finally for now, another trench has been opened across the ditch at the western end of the Cursus, but we’ll update this site with any finds or discoveries that are made there.
There will be an Open Day this coming Bank Holiday Weekend with displays of archery, Neolithic food, flint knapping and other activities. Families are most welcome, so if you know anyone with children who might be interested, then please click on this link from the Salisbury Journal and pass it on. Whatever the weather, it should be a great weekend for everyone and a great chance to see this fascinating site, and we might see you there!
Words by Dennis Price. Photographs copyright Pete Glastonbury 2007.
