Tag: folklore

Story of the week: Walking with the druids on Anglesey

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* My next assignment is a trip to West Sweden on a folklore angle. Meanwhile, here’s a tale of history and folklore from Wales. 

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“The enemy lined the shore in a dense armed mass. Among them were black-robed women with disheveled hair like furies, brandishing torches. Close by stood Druids, raising their hands to heaven and screaming dreadful curses.” – Tacitus, Annals XIV, 30

This evocative description by the Roman historian Tacitus of the final raid by the Romans on the druidic stronghold of Mona (Anglesey) in AD61 highlights the problem: the Druids, the priestly sect of ancient Celtic society, are both one of the most colorful and yet most misunderstood figures from ancient history.

They fire our imagination with tales of mystic powers and human sacrifice, but there are virtually no written records about their lifestyle, beliefs and values. Much of what we do know is recorded through this prejudice-heavy prism of Roman records.

Yet, while the Romans quashed the Druids without mercy, their influence is still strongly felt today, especially in Wales, where they bequeathed a myth-shrouded legacy of oral tradition, ancient wisdom and environmental awareness.

“What fascinates me about the druids is the way people have re-invented them over the past 500 years. With their dramatic and contrasting imagery, they’re a wonderful vehicle for our hopes, fears and prejudices in the modern age,” says Professor Ronald Hutton, historian and author about the Druids.

“The reinvented Druid taps perfectly into our desire to reconnect with the land and with our ancestors.”

Uncovering the clues

Delving beyond the fables and seeing past the Disney-styled stereotypes has tested historians for generations. But, if anywhere can offer clues to the real story of the Druids, it’s Anglesey, their ancient stronghold.

The island, jutting out of Northwest Wales towards Ireland, is home to the third most important grouping of ancient sites after Salisbury/Wilshire and Orkney. There’s no official Druid trail and a dearth of official tourist information, but its ancient Celtic heritage is increasingly inspiring visitors to the island.

If find a good guide, read up on some ancient manuscripts and devote yourself to some light detective work while driving round the rural Shangri-La, shards of clues will eventually shine through like the early rays of a solstice dawn.

The west coast of Anglesey, away from the main tourist hubs and lashed by crashing waves, is the starting point for my Druid odyssey. Bryn Celli Ddu, standing stark and alone in a sheep farmer’s field near Llanfair PG, is one Anglesey’s key Neolithic sites, dating from around 3000 BC.

The Celts found early Neolithic tribes, described as a “smaller, darker people” when they arrived in Wales around 500 BC and they adapted their sites of worship, turning Bryn Celli Ddu into a burial chamber.

It is laden with carvings evoking the cycle of birth and death, and providing a bridge to their ancestors.

Following the coast path around the sandy fringe of Rhosneiger beach, nearby Barclodaid y Gawres (built around 3010 BC) also has carvings reminiscent of other Celtic tribes from Ireland and France.

The twin, early Bronze Age standing stones of Penrhosfeiliw, stoically bracing the elements in a field heading west towards Holyhead, hint at the complexity of Neolithic geography given their inch-perfect alignment with other ancient sites all the way from Holy Island to the Lyn Peninsula.

Building a power base

By the Iron Age, the Celts were well established on Anglesey and the Druids were entering their golden age of learning, spiritual healing and community guidance. Between 100BC and 60 AD, it is believed that Anglesey became one of the leading Druid centers of learning in Western Europe.

The Druids were a class apart, some suggest they were hand picked like Dalai Lamas as children, and schooled for more than 20 years in the ancient arts.

Once ready to don the white robes, wear the gold necklace and carry the sickle to cut down the scared mistletoe, they took a vital community role, acting as astronomers, healers, political advisors and ritual leaders.

They even formed part of a powerful ancient spy network across Europe, and were revered by the Celts, a power that both alarmed and enraged Rome in equal measure.

One of their most important ritual sites is Llyn Cerrig Bach, a tranquil lake today located just across from the RAF Valley air base, where the future king of England is currently completing his training.

The lake yielded one of the most significant Iron Age finds in Western Europe when it was dredged in 1943. Swords, shields, slave chains and even war chariots returned to the surface after centuries of gentle slumbers.

For the all-powerful Druids, at one with nature and self-assured of their higher spiritual purpose in life, such largesse in offerings to their deities suggests the spy network had warned them of the impending storm as Rome grew increasingly suspicious of their revered status.

A key source of druidic power was their preference for verbal communication only. Aside from their Ogam alphabet based around the tress and the Coligny calendar with its 64 months, the Druids committed everything to memory, scoring their wisdom in musical triads and passing their knowledge via an oral tradition that today underscores much of the Welsh-language culture.

“I have a passion for the powerful mix of stories and landscape in Wales the Druids celebrated.”

“It tells me a lot about who I am as Welsh,” says Angharad Wynne, a heritage consultant working on heritage-inspired tourism trails in Wales.

This idea of linking ancient folk tales to the landscape, continuing the oral tradition of the Druids, underpins my journey around Anglesey, the lack of traditional interpretation more than compensated by tales of wizards, kings, dragons and giants for every ancient rock, or weather-beaten carving I encounter.

At the Holyhead Mountain stone circle, a group of low, stone-walled roundhouses with thatched or turf roofs, I join the Welsh-language poet Gwyn Edwards for a story-inspired yomp through purple heather and gherkin-hued gorse.

His poem, Bwrdd Arthur, filled with images of stone circles, hill forts, sacred groves and the Roman advance, was inspired by a summer-evening stroll around ancient sites on the east coast of Anglesey.

“I feel the druidic ideas are still relevant today as people need harmony and balance in their lives. They view the natural environment as a commodity,” he explains, the piercing intent of his hazel eyes betraying the softly-spoken constants of his Welsh-English patois.

“I see druidic ideas as a means to help people find peace with each other and with the world around them. In that way.”

He smiles, “They will never become old fashioned.”

Questions and answers

Driving east to Llangefni, central Anglesey, Oriel Ynys Mon is the main museum for historical interpretation about the island, but offers few clues to the legacy of the Druids.

The most significant artifact is the Hendy Head, a carved-sandstone deity with an enigmatic Mona Lisa smile and world-weary eyes. Found on a farm near Llanfair PG, it’s one of the finest examples of stone heads found on Anglesey and a rare physical manifestation of the nature-dwelling gods to which the Druids made their offerings.

The Roman targeted Anglesey from AD43 onwards, completing the final fateful massacre in AD60, and returning to Anglesey in AD73, after battles with Boudicca, to form Romano-Celt communities, the likes of which still survive today at Din Llugwy near Moelfre amongst others.

The Druids were eradicated but their knowledge, shrouded in swirling ancient mists and buried deep in the livestock-roamed pasture, would live on.

The so-called “noble savage” may be one of the most maligned figures in ancient Britain, but their legacy shapes the national psyche of Wales to this day.

“The fascination for me is the way the Druids lived a simple but balanced life as part of nature not above it,” says Angharad Wynne.

“While so much of their story remains unknown, based on speculation shaped by archaeological finds, the enigma gives us space to use our imagination.”

* This story was first published in Discover Britain Magazine in 2010. Liked this? Try Exploring prehistoric sites on the Gower Peninsula.

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Story of the week: Well-dressing traditions in Derbyshire

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* With May Bank Holiday approaching, this piece takes a look at one of Britain’s more unusual summer traditions.

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* Image: www.peakdistrictinformation.com/features/wellart.php

The villagers around rural Derbyshire do it every year.

It draws on ancient English folklore relating to the natural environment. It is the ancient art of well dressing and retired joiner, Roger Stubbins, 72, from the Derbyshire farming village of Barlow, is one of its leading exponents.

Well, he does have 48 years of experience. “My parents brought me to see the well dressing as a little boy,” he says.

“I still remember the sense of occasion that day with the fair and the main street full of people.”

Celtic origins 

Well dressers decorate springs and wells with materials provided entirely by nature. The tradition is thought to originate from a Celtic thanksgiving rite for fresh water and has become a cornerstone of Derbyshire’s rural heritage.

The process takes a wooden frame, packed with soft, wet clay, and transforms by it into a colourful but transient artwork.

Each year a new picture, often depicting a biblical scene, is hand drawn and the outline craved out before being filled with freshly gathered flowers, moss and heather. It’s an organic process with a team of seven to ten people working solidly for nearly two weeks.

Of the 80 wells around Derbyshire to be dressed between May and September, the Barlow well is one of the best know.

Records show villagers have been dressing it every year since at least 1800 with the pump added in 1840. Today, it still attracts huge crowds of visitors, including coach parties touring local wells, and raises over £1,000 for local charities in the process with its on-site collection boxes.

Each village has a different technique. Barlow uses whole flowers, not fragments or petals, and late-summer flowers coming into season, such as marigolds, yarrow and chamomile.

The team spends a week foraging for materials and preparing the frame, then a further five days actually dressing the well itself. The final stage comes when the local vicar blesses their handiwork and leads a procession of over 200 people through the village to the fairground.

“I started dressing in my early twenties. I used to take a week off work and we would work 5am to 10pm, eating all out meals in the pub garden opposite,” says Roger.

“Today we take a bit longer over it, but I still enjoy the banter and the companionship. We have a good laugh together.”

Visitors are welcome to watch the work in progress and some even feel moved to join in. For details, collect a booklet from the tourist office in nearby Chesterfield with dates for dressings and blessings around the county.

Handed down

To the well-dressing cognoscenti, however, it’s an intricate and time-consuming affair. The process follows a strict set of guidelines passed down through the generations from father to son and, in recent years, father to daughter.

The secret, explains Roger, is to mark out the outline of the picture with bark before applying the flowers.

“Everyone has their own bark,” he says, his work-worn hands clutching slithers of larch. “I’ve used the same bark for 48 years and I’m the third owner of it. It was passed down to me by the men who taught me how to dress and I vowed to keep it safe.”

This year Barlow is departing from the usual triptych design to produce one large, single image, based on the story of Christ and the fishermen.

Over the years Roger and his co-workers have tackled the likes of The Last Supper, Adam and Eve and Saint Francis of Assisi. The year they marked the anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar proved a particularly testing one.

“It’s always hard getting it in proportion,” says Roger. “We use yarrow for the sky but, some years, supplies are scare, so we simply have to make a smaller sky.”

Another problem is training up the next generation of well dressers. Many of the villagers started dressing as children but move away in search of work and never come back.

“I’m the oldest now. We’ve got a couple of young ‘uns in their forties. Some people are very enthusiastic in the first year but, when they realise how much hard work is involved, they’re not so keen to come back,” he says.

Autumn leaves 

Like the changing of the seasons, the well-dressing tradition reaches its crescendo in September. As the last flowers wilt, the frame is taken down and stored for another year at the local pub.

“When we take it down and I go home, I feel a bit lost. I’ve lived with the well every day for a fortnight,” says Roger.

“But we’ll be back next year as it’s a huge part of the local community,” he adds.

“I think it’s essential to keep these village traditions alive.”

Story of the week: Elf hunting in Iceland

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* The last dip into the archives of this year, so let’s end with a suitably festive and seasonal story from the back catalogue. 

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I never realised Icelandic road building was such a tricky business.

Driving through the lava deserts topped with neon-green moss on the Alfholsvegur road outside Reykjavik, I’d been puzzled by the strange contours of a large bend in the tarmac.

The explanation, I later discovered, was that the Icelandic Roads Department, after their equipment had broken in a series of mysterious accidents, had been instructed by local mystics to build the road with a hefty deliberate kink so as to avoid bulldozing a large rock where the elves lived.

That’s right. Elves. Iceland’s 280,000 population has the world’s highest literacy rate at 99.9 per cent. Some 82 per cent of Icelanders are regular Net-savvy computer users.

Yet, despite their propensity to embrace modernity, 70 per cent of Icelanders still believe in the old ways – ways that include the existence of a huldufolk or a ‘hidden world’ of elves, dwarfs and spirits with magical powers.

Elf school

As I started to ask around about this so-called hidden world, it became clear that Iceland with its glaciers, geysers and a landscape somewhere between that of Ireland and the Moon, had a long and proud heritage of being close to nature.

The hard-living inhabitants have told folk tales of ‘little people’ since the time of the Sagas, medieval stories of Nordic life dating from the 12th century.

Today, however, Reykjavik has been transformed from rural fishing community into one of the coolest world cities. 5,000 locals and tourists crowd bars such as the Damon Albarn co-owned Kaffibarinn each weekend to revel in the city’s ebullient nightlife.

Mass tourism has mushroomed with revenues now accounting for 13.6 per cent of Iceland’s foreign earnings, second only to the fishing industry.

Nevertheless, the old ways survive.

For a glimpse into the marriage of old and new ways, I hooked up with one of more enterprising locals who was turning ancient folklore into a nice little earner. As such I found myself outside an ordinary grey building in Reykjavik’s east to meet Magnus Skarphedinsson, historian and headmaster of the Reykjavik Elf School.

From these premises, shared with a psychic school, Magnus has devoted 19 years of his life to documenting eyewitness reports of contact with the hidden world.

He has also helped 2000 students – mainly Germans and Scandinavians – successfully complete their diploma in elf studies, a course comprising a half day in the classroom followed by an afternoon’s elf hunting around town.

As I took to my desk diligently, pen poised, Magnus explained to the class that there are, in fact, two nations living in Iceland: the human world and the hidden world.

The latter, he assured us, gesturing to a large ceramic elf in a jaunty red hat and britches on the shelf above the whiteboard, live in a different dimension to humans and have their own unique culture. Only psychics or the odd lucky student actually gets to spot one.

Fairy dust

His main rival in the elf studies stakes is Erla Stefansdottir, a local mystic women who lives in an unassuming corrugated iron house on the edge of Reykjavik. Erla claims the ability to communicate with the hidden world and espouses the need to respect their culture, not exploit it for material gain.

On a rainy Monday morning, I joined Erla for a guided elf tour of Hafnarfjordur, a fishing village seven kilometres south of Reykjavik built on lava and lay lines.

The village is, reputedly, the elf capital of Iceland. Indeed, according to Erla, the local population of 20,000 people share their home with over 20 types of dwarves and four of gnomes.

The town’s Hamarinn cliff, in particular, is a centre for activity with its elfin inhabitants believed to be of royal elf stock.

Erla agreed to assist with tours, which have proven so popular they are set to go twice daily from next summer, on the proviso that visitors are encouraged to show love for the earth by patting rocks gently.

Having been assured by the Hafnarfjordur tourist board, she went about drawing up a hidden world map of key sites around town. And the tourists promptly flocked in.

The battle for the hidden world tourist market is rapidly escalating into a showdown between Reykjavik’s two leading elf-spotting experts with their drastically different approaches to elf folklore.

However, while ‘non-ethical’ tours continue to carelessly trample over the rocky lava field elf homes, Erla is concerned that if humans continue to violate the hidden world, the elves will soon take their revenge.

And, as the Icelandic Roads Department will tell you, nobody messes with a seriously angry elf and gets away with it.

This story first appeared in the Guardian in 2001. Liked this? Try On the Edge in West Greenland.

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