Gwaith 1: Starting My Residency

Haia Pawb/Hi Everyone

This blog entry is the first of my 2016 trip to Britain. Its title, Gwaith 1, refers to the Welsh word for ‘work’. This trip is all about working on and conducting research for my dark ages novel, with occasional visits with friends, and the Gwaith blog postings will record my journey for the five or so months I will be in the country.

Today (Sunday, 4 Sep 16) is the first full day of my second residency at Stiwdio Maelor in Corris, Wales. I arrived in the UK last Wednesday and travelled by train from Birmingham International (which has a great shuttle service from airport to train station) to Machynlleth. As I looked out the train window to watch the countryside fly past, with its masses of foxgloves, the deep, vibrant greens of oak and beech, the flat fields giving way to hills to mountains, I felt contentment at being in this land of my ancestors, which in turn filled me with hope for the task I had set myself, to finish the third draft of the novel.

In Machynlleth, Veronica, who established and runs the welcoming and inspirational Stiwdio Maelor, picked me up and took me to Dolgellau to stay with her until my residency started on Saturday. From Wednesday to Saturday, I battled jetlag, did a little research, and helped Veronica set up Maelor for Helfa Gelf, Art Hunt/Art Trail, a scheme where artists open their studios to the public. Maelor will open each Saturday in September, though not many people dropped in yesterday, mainly because of the weather. It was raining ‘old women and sticks’, as they say in the Welsh (Mae hi'n bwrw glaw hen wragedd a ffyn).

This morning, the weather had cleared and I went for a walk along the road leading out of Corris and then went up an old forestry track. As I strolled past hawthorn and blackthorn hedges, past oak, ash and rowan trees (with their bulging bunches of red berries), past stone channels and water courses jostling with rain burst, as I scrambled through a birch and fir wood along a soggy trail, as I listened to gossiping robins and finches, all the while foraging for blackberries, their juicy sweetness bursting in the mouth, I felt jetlag and creative concerns drop away, my whole body slowing to the open rhythms of the land. A good omen for my own ‘art hunt’.

Below are some photos taken during my walk:

A view up the valley towards Corris 

Tasty blackberries. If they come off the branch with a slight tug, they are juicy and sweet.
If more pressure is needed, they sometimes have a slight hardness and bitterness to them.

Rock and moss

Heather

Vigorous undergrowth

Rowan berries

Part of the forestry track

That’s it for now. I hope you will enjoy my postings from Britain and, as always, I welcome any comments.

Cofion Cynnes/Warm wishes

Earl

Cyfaredd 14: Long Meg and Her Daughters

Haia Pawb

The day after our trip to Thor’s Cave, Grevel drove us to the Lake District, to visit more megalithic sites and stay overnight in his favourite B&B in the region, How Foot in Grasmere, which is a few doors away from William Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage.

As with the start of our drive the previous day, the weather in Manchester was terrible—bucketing rain—but when we reached the Long Meg site, the weather cleared and we spent a long while counting stones, observing offerings of coins, flowers and crystals on Long Meg and clooties on the nearby old, rugged ash trees, watching flights of jackdaws, and sitting still listening to the wind and the ambience of the place, its genius loci.

An aerial view, from Wikipedia

Long Meg and some of Her Daughters

Long Meg and Her Daughters is the third largest stone circle in Britain (and Grevel’s favourite). It was erected around 1500 BC and the circle (the Daughters) comprises (around) 69 boulders of rhyolite, a form of granite. Two large blocks are placed to the east and west of the circle (sunrise and sunset of sun and moon, possibly) and there are two extra 'portal' stones placed to the south-west.  Long Meg herself is a nine ton block of red sandstone. This monolith, when viewed from the centre of the circle, through the 'portal' stones, is aligned with the mid-winter sunset. The south-west face of Long Meg has crystals in it, whereas the face looking towards the circle has spirals and other rock art inscribed on it.

The south-west side of Long Meg, showing its facial features

Video of the site, taken from the centre of the Daughters

As Grevel notes in his A Literary Guide to the Lake District, William Wordsworth stumbled upon the site while walking in the area in 1821 and wrote a ‘sombrely impressive sonnet’. Below is the version that appears in The Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth: Together with a Description of the Country of the Lakes in the North of England, Now First Published with His Works:

A manuscript page of one version of the poem,
available from Amherst College Digital Collections

XXIII. The Monument Commonly Called Long Meg

and Her Daughters, Near the River Eden

A weight of awe not easy to be borne

Fell suddenly upon my Spirit, cast

From the dread bosom of the unknown past,

When first I saw that Sisterhood forlorn;

And Her, whose massy strength and stature scorn

The power of years – pre-eminent, and placed

Apart – to overlook the circle vast.

Speak Giant-mother! tell it to the Morn,

While she dispels the cumbrous shades of night;

Let the Moon hear, emerging from a cloud,

At whose behest uprose on British ground

Thy Progeny; in hieroglyphic round

Forth-shadowing, some have deemed, the infinite,

The inviolable God, that tames the proud.

I said ‘around 69 boulders’ above because there is a legend that says it is impossible to count the boulders and come up with the same answer twice. If you do, the magic that created the structure in the first place—Michael Scott, a wizard, froze in stone a coven of witches as they danced on the moor—will be broken and the witches set free.

The other side of Long Meg, again showing facial features

Close of this side, showing markings

Close up of one of the  'cup and ring' markings,
from Wikipedia

Diagram of markings on this side, from here

Clooties on one of the ash trees

For those who don't know, clooties are offerings made by locals to the spirits of a place. The rags, trinkets and other objects usually represent hopes or thanks for love, health or deliverance. I have read, however, that the origin of clooties is that a cloth would be soaked in the water of a holy well or sacred stream and used to wipe the forehead of a person in sorrow or illness. The cloth would then be hung on a hawthorn tree, which is associated with the Land's lady of sovereignty, so the tree would take away the cause of the misfortune.

As archeologists are increasing discovering, sites such as Long Meg and Her Daughters are not solitary monuments but are often part of an elaborate sacred landscape, which show that the ancient Britons had a sophisticated knowledge of the land, its energies (spiritual and/or psychological and/or magnetic, depending on your worldview), and surveying and construction techniques.

Plan of prehistoric sites around Long Meg, from here

A mood photo of the site

After Grevel and I finished communing with the site, we ate our lunch and left to visit other sites, which I'll cover in my next one or two posts.

For those still following my jackdaw obsession, here's another photo:

...and a jackdaw in an ash tree... (Sang to 'Twelve Days of Christmas')

Cofion cynnes (Warm wishes)

Earl

References and Further Reading:

https://acdc.amherst.edu/view/asc:86858

http://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/england/cumbria/featured-sites/long-meg-and-her-daughters.html

http://www.stone-circles.org.uk/stone/longmeg.htm

http://www.visitcumbria.com/evnp/long-meg-and-her-daughters/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Meg_and_Her_Daughters

http://witchesandpagans.com/sagewoman-blogs/danu-s-cauldron/the-faery-thorns-hawthorn-folklore-and-magic.html