Secret as the thoughts of God

All sunlit was the earth I trod

All sunlit was the earth I trod,
The heavens were frankest blue;
But secret as the thoughts of God
The stones of Stanton Drew.

Sir William Watson (1858-1935)

Upon these eternal hills. Image credit Paul Atlas-Saunders

Written Within View of Castlerigg Stone Circle

I cannot believe
That in this fateful hour
The infinite beauty
That shall caress mine eyes
Behold!
I cannot believe, that the
Glorious fanfare of strange
Stark contrasts that my gaze
Is upon, so lifts me that
I become overwhelmed by passions
That I have never known.
I cannot believe that
The form of beauty
That the scene foretells
Can (alone) create such an impression
Upon my mind
That primeval memories stir
From depths uncharted territory.
So I am fired up by the glory of
The Holy Spirit
In Her pantheistic ways
Upon these eternal hills of mine.
I cannot believe that
Such variety of colour
And texture can engulf the
Ageless pattern strewn formations
Of fell side and mystic ring
And I cannot believe that Deity
Has not a hand in all of this and more
For surely all life's creation
Emanates from She who is
Sacred Earth's
Goddess Divine.

Alex Langstone

See also Alex Langstone's Spirit of Albion website here - http://www.alexlangstone.blogspot.com/

In dreams

Henge of stones and dreams of old

I am a fool.
From a distance
An ocean-span shall we say
I thought you were just stone sticks.

On my stomach
I floated
In dreams mind you
down the Avon
to prove my thoughts wrong.

I am jealous of you
I should like to wear a henge
as sophisticated as you do
that would make scholars wonder
and trowels pause in mid air.

And what was burned here?
What was burned?
And no lying
just how old are the ashes found?
No more fairy tales
and alignments
or spiritual ownership.

Come, come now,
these stone sticks
should be full of confessions
and of pride-pocked veins
that do not warrant such fertile
emotional destruction.

If I could grant you one thing
despite the limited power I possess
it would be the freedom
to escape back down the river
and the right to finally collapse
into your parents grieving arms.

© Copyright Persephone Vandegrift 2008

Fair fall on thee the morning light

From western lands

From western lands beyond the foam,
We sought our English fathers' home
By few or known or sung.
Which 'neath the quiet English skies,
far from all busy haunts it lies
The wide chalk downs among.

Huge druid stones surround the spot,
Which else had almost been forgot
By the great world without.
The mystic ring now scarcely traced
Is by a grassy dike embraced,
Circling the whole about.

Deep hangs the thatch on cottage eaves,
And buried deep in ivy leaves
The cottage windows gleam.
There little birds fly to and fro,
And happy children come and go
With rosy cheek and rustic walk,
They curtsy for the gentle folk,
As they the strangers deem.

With pinks and stocks the beds are gay,
And box and yew their shapes display
Fantastically trimmed.
And each small garden overflows
With scent of woodbine and of rose
Above the borders trim.

The ancient little Norman church,
With quaintly medieval porch,
Stands 'neath the elm tree tall
Sunk in the graveyard plot around,
The moss-grown headstones scarce
are found
Few stoop the lettering to trace
Which time's rude hand will soon efface.
Some there may be of highborn race,
But none the names recall.

The many gabled manor house,
With winking casement sheen,
Seem in the summer light to drowse
And dream of what has been
And we may dream of earlier days,
When the old convent marked the place,
When nuns in gown and coif complete,
Paced the green paths with quiet feet,
And gather herbs and simples small
Beneath the high brick garden wall,
Finding a safe retreat.

Like some small nest securely placed,
With ferns and grass interlaced,
But open to the light,
The hamlets seem to lie at rest
Upon the common's ample breast,
Secure in loneliness of space
From aught that could the charm efface
Of innocence and old-world grace
Worn by ancestral right.

Home of sweet days and thankful nights,
Fair fall on thee the morning light,
Soft fall the evening dews.
Wild winds perchance may sweep the wold
But age, untouched by storm or cold,
In memory's sight thou standest there,
Encircled by serenest air,
In changeless summer hue.

Mary S Cope (1852-1888)

Once in a circle to the seasons

At the feet of rubber wheels

Displaced
souls of our ancestors
Once in a circle to the seasons
sure security to all who saw them

Buffer stones now on a busy street
where juggernauts thunder by
their secret story
still known
to a few

For the rest
just buffer stones
where our history lies dusty
at the feet of rubber wheels
and on the piled desks
of an immovable bureaucracy

Anon

The Dying Gaul

Tara remains

Tara remains.

Skryne remains.

The Gabhra River remains.

The spirit of that land remains.

And so long as either of those remain, we FIGHT for it.

Whether by word or by action.

Whether you choose to do it by intellect, or by magick.

By fact or by faith.

We FIGHT for it.

Because it is all worth FIGHTING for.

Our ancestors didnae' fight for the freedom of this land and its people,
only to have us lay down in the wake of another kind of tyrrany.

It has been said by a woman to "Never doubt that a small, determined group of individuals can change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever really has."

I, for one, will not give up. And I am but a descendant of the Isle.

I am still her child.

One of millions.

I refuse to give up.

What say the rest of you?

Anon

TARA OF THE KINGS

WE MET AT THE SUMMER SOLSTICE
WHEN EVERYTHING STOOD STILL
HER SLOPING AWAY LIKE ISEULT
LEFT ME OVER THE HILL
I RAISED THE CHAMBER IN THE MOUND
THE OAK-FRINGED SACRED SPRING
THAT FEEDS THE STREAMS THAT RUN AROUND
TARA OF THE KINGS

SHE WAS THROUGH WITH CARBON DATING
STAKEHOLDERS WITH NO HAIR
SHE WAS THROUGH WITH MONSTER MEETINGS
IN FLATS OFF PARNELL SQUARE
SHE WAS THROUGH WITH CROWNED AND UNCROWNED
YEW TREES WITH COUNTLESS RINGS
THE DITCH THAT USED TO RUN AROUND
TARA OF THE KINGS

COULD WE WHO ENDURED THE PENAL
AND EDWARD POYNING’S LAWS
(NEVER MIND THE BEEF TRIBUNAL)
NOW SOMEHOW BE IN AWE
OF A ROAD RUNNING THROUGH THE GROUND
ON WHICH STOOD OUR ALTHING
AND NOT ENSURE IT RUN AROUND
TARA OF THE KINGS?

WE KNOW THE STONE OF DESTINY
WAS SET UP IN THIS SOIL
NOW THE SOLDIERS OF DESTINY
ARE SET TO BANK THE SPOILS
AND LEST THEY WISH TO BE RENOWNED
FOR RAPE AND RAVISHING
THEY’LL NOT GIVE US THE RUNAROUND
ON TARA OF THE KINGS

WE’RE FATED TO BE REMEMBERED
AS SPOILERS OF THE DEAD

AND THOUGH WE SEEM QUITE UNHAMPERED
BY HONOUR OR BY DREAD
YET WE ARE DREAD- AND HONOUR-BOUND
TO OUR UNBORN OFFSPRING
TO ENSURE THE M3 RUN AROUND
TARA OF THE KINGS

Paul Muldoon

East Kennet Long Barrow

The Path and the Poppies

The Path

Silk red poppies edging the green of the wheat field, translucent blue cranesbill flowers lacing their way along a rough grassed path, and pollen clad bees humming in the sun. The open downland spreading out into the distance leading to freedom and unexplored places...

The Poppies

Amongst green fields

Brief moments of scarlet magic

fretted with sky-blue flowers

hanging heavy

with pollened bees

High above grey sarsens

lie hidden amidst trees

guarding the bones.

Anon

When evening sheds her twilight ray

Stonehenge

Here oft, when Evening sheds her twilight ray,
And gilds with fainter beam departing day,
With breathless gaze, and cheek with terror pale,
The lingering shepherd startles at the tale,
How, at deep midnight, by the moon's chill glance,
Unearthly forms prolong the viewless dance;
While on each whisp'ring breeze that murmurs by,
His busied fancy hears the hollow sigh.

From Stonehenge by Thomas Stokes Salmon. 1823

The Nine Maidens by T J Blight: circa 1856

Megalithic limericks. The Pied Piper vs The Good Shepherd

There was an old farmer called ‘noch
who frowned at my interest in rock.
“Go on”, he replied
but fenced me inside
and followed me counting his flock.

gjrk

Bound for hell?

Under the clouds, grey and sublime,
in a root and branch strangle-like vine,
two stones or three? It's not so easy to tell,
but oh, for neglecting them,
some are sure bound for hell?

CianMcLiam

All things porcine

Said the megarak, “I think I’ve worked out
What A’bry was really about;
All things porcine
Inspired the design
‘Twas built as a pigpen no doubt.”

Nigel Swift

It's kebabs from now

The pigpen at Avebury were a goodun
it came to an end of a sudden;
The chief priest he did say,
tis better this way,
it's kebabs from now made o' mutton.

LS

Said the Devil

There was an Old Sarsen on Salisbury,
That got lost on the road out of Avebury;
Said the Devil to 'ee,
It's a posset for me,
Or I'll bury thee deep under Silbury.

LS

(The Devil should sound like John Laurie :-)

The Bartlow Burial Mounds

Touching the sky

Blue dragonfly spiralling down
A glade etched in darkness
Sun splintering through
Great tumulus
touching the sky
Jewelled day echoing softly...

Anon

Wiltshire Barrows by William Stukeley

Lob

AT hawthorn-time in Wiltshire travelling
In search of something chance would never bring,
An old man's face, by life and weather cut
And coloured,--rough, brown, sweet as any nut,--
A land face, sea-blue-eyed,--hung in my mind
When I had left him many a mile behind.
All he said was: "Nobody can't stop 'ee. It's
A footpath, right enough. You see those bits
Of mounds--that's where they opened up the barrows
Sixty years since, while I was scaring sparrows.
They thought as there was something to find there,
But couldn't find it, by digging, anywhere."

To turn back then and seek him, where was the use?
There were three Manningfords,--Abbots, Bohun, and
Bruce:
And whether Alton, not Manningford, it was,
My memory could not decide, because
There was both Alton Barnes and Alton Priors.
All had their churches, graveyards, farms, and byres,
Lurking to one side up the paths and lanes,
Seldom well seen except by aeroplanes;
And when bells rang, or pigs squealed, or cocks crowed,
Then only heard. Ages ago the road
Approached. The people stood and looked and turned,
Nor asked it to come nearer, nor yet learned
To move out there and dwell in all men's dust.
And yet withal they shot the weathercock, just
Because 'twas he crowed out of tune, they said:
So now the copper weathercock is dead.
If they had reaped their dandelions and sold
Them fairly, they could have afforded gold.

Many years passed, and I went back again
Among those villages, and looked for men
Who might have known my ancient. He himself
Had long been dead or laid upon the shelf,
I thought. One man I asked about him roared
At my description: "'Tis old Bottlesford
He means, Bill." But another said: "Of course,
It was Jack Button up at the White Horse.
He's dead, sir, these three years." This lasted till
A girl proposed Walker of Walker's Hill,
"Old Adam Walker. Adam's Point you'll see
Marked on the maps."

"That was her roguery,"
The next man said. He was a squire's son
Who loved wild bird and beast, and dog and gun
For killing them. He had loved them from his birth,
One with another, as he loved the earth.
"The man may be like Button, or Walker, or
Like Bottlesford, that you want, but far more
He sounds like one I saw when I was a child.
I could almost swear to him. The man was wild
And wandered. His home was where he was free.
Everybody has met one such man as he.
Does he keep clear old paths that no one uses
But once a life-time when he loves or muses?
He is English as this gate, these flowers, this mire.
And when at eight years old Lob-lie-by-the-fire
Came in my books, this was the man I saw.
He has been in England as long as dove and daw,
Calling the wild cherry tree the merry tree,
The rose campion Bridget-in-her-bravery;
And in a tender mood he, as I guess,
Christened one flower Love-in-idleness,
And while he walked from Exeter to Leeds
One April called all cuckoo-flowers Milkmaids.
From him old herbal Gerard learnt, as a boy,
To name wild clematis the Traveller's-joy.
Our blackbirds sang no English till his ear
Told him they called his Jan Toy 'Pretty dear.'
(She was Jan Toy the Lucky, who, having lost
A shilling, and found a penny loaf, rejoiced.)
For reasons of his own to him the wren
Is Jenny Pooter. Before all other men
'Twas he first called the Hog's Back the Hog's Back.
That Mother Dunch's Buttocks should not lack
Their name was his care. He too could explain
Totteridge and Totterdown and Juggler's Lane:
He knows, if anyone. Why Tumbling Bay,
Inland in Kent, is called so, he might say.

"But little he says compared with what he does.
If ever a sage troubles him he will buzz
Like a beehive to conclude the tedious fray:
And the sage, who knows all languages, runs away.
Yet Lob has thirteen hundred names for a fool,
And though he never could spare time for school
To unteach what the fox so well expressed,
On biting the cock's head off,--Quietness is best,--
He can talk quite as well as anyone
After his thinking is forgot and done.
He first of all told someone else's wife,
For a farthing she'd skin a flint and spoil a knife
Worth sixpence skinning it. She heard him speak:
'She had a face as long as a wet week'
Said he, telling the tale in after years.
With blue smock and with gold rings in his ears,
Sometimes he is a pedlar, not too poor
To keep his wit. This is tall Tom that bore
The logs in, and with Shakespeare in the hall
Once talked, when icicles hung by the wall.
As Herne the Hunter he has known hard times.
On sleepless nights he made up weather rhymes
Which others spoilt. And, Hob being then his name,
He kept the hog that thought the butcher came
To bring his breakfast 'You thought wrong,' said Hob.
When there were kings in Kent this very Lob,
Whose sheep grew fat and he himself grew merry,
Wedded the king's daughter of Canterbury;
For he alone, unlike squire, lord, and king,
Watched a night by her without slumbering;
He kept both waking. When he was but a lad
He won a rich man's heiress, deaf, dumb, and sad,
By rousing her to laugh at him. He carried
His donkey on his back. So they were married.
And while he was a little cobbler's boy
He tricked the giant coming to destroy
Shrewsbury by flood. 'And how far is it yet?'
The giant asked in passing. 'I forget;
But see these shoes I've worn out on the road
And we're not there yet.' He emptied out his load
Of shoes for mending. The giant let fall from his spade
The earth for damming Severn, and thus made
The Wrekin hill; and little Ercall hill
Rose where the giant scraped his boots. While still
So young, our Jack was chief of Gotham's sages.
But long before he could have been wise, ages
Earlier than this, while he grew thick and strong
And ate his bacon, or, at times, sang a song
And merely smelt it, as Jack the giant-killer
He made a name. He too ground up the miller,
The Yorkshireman who ground men's bones for flour.

"Do you believe Jack dead before his hour?
Or that his name is Walker, or Bottlesford,
Or Button, a mere clown, or squire, or lord?
The man you saw,--Lob-lie-by-the-fire, Jack Cade,
Jack Smith, Jack Moon, poor Jack of every trade,
Young Jack, or old Jack, or Jack What-d'ye-call,
Jack-in-the-hedge, or Robin-run-by-the-wall,
Robin Hood, Ragged Robin, lazy Bob,
One of the lords of No Man's Land, good Lob,--
Although he was seen dying at Waterloo,
Hastings, Agincourt, and Sedgemoor too,--
Lives yet. He never will admit he is dead
Till millers cease to grind men's bones for bread,
Not till our weathercock crows once again
And I remove my house out of the lane
On to the road." With this he disappeared
In hazel and thorn tangled with old-man's-beard.
But one glimpse of his back, as there he stood,
Choosing his way, proved him of old Jack's blood
Young Jack perhaps, and now a Wiltshireman
As he has oft been since his days began.

Edward Thomas (1878-1917)

Garryglass: a last breath. Image credit gjrk

Garryglass

Please won't you grind me from this ground?
I can't hear them. Are they gone?
A last dance made holy by the flames.
A last breath made sacred by the bonds.
Please, it's the dark that's choking me.
I can't see. Where are they gone?

gjrk

Ode to Stonehenge

Turning Ground

I see the first ones lately much more clearly
Spilling blood along the turning ground
Diving...
In your eyes...

Will you feel the softly spoken lies
Will you find what lives behind my eyes...

Lyrics by Caroline Lavelle from her song, Turning Ground. Video by Matthew De Haven, Ode to Stonehenge at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq3QS4W2uBQ

Cairn S. Image credit Ken Williams/ShadowsandStone.com

The Valley of the Black Pig

The dews drop slowly and dreams gather; unknown spears
Suddenly hurtle before my dream awakened eyes,
And then the crash of fallen horsemen and the cries
Of unknown perishing armies beat about my ears.
We who still labour by the cromlech on the shore,
The grey cairn on the hill, when day sinks drowned in dew.
Being weary of the world's empires, bow down to you,
Master of the still stars and of the flaming door.

W B Yeats (1865-1939)

Reindeer hinds engraved on reindeer foot-bone. 10,000-15,000bce. Chaffaud, France

Found objects

A reindeer bone carved
In the reindeer's likeness
Saddle quern
Loom-weight
Spindle whorl.
A chalk phallus
A lump of chalk
With heavy curves bearing
The image of woman.

A necklace with blue beads
of Egyptian faience, black ones
of Kimmeride shale.
Slingstone
Cannon ball
Cartridge.
A phallus carved on the church wall.
A statuette of the virgin.

A coin worn headless,
with a disarticulate horse
Cartwheel
Crankshaft
flash bulb
a bust of the death-god
cast in imperishable alloy.

Jeremy Hooker

Duntryleague Passage Tomb, Co. Limerick. Image credit gjrk

The Great Leader

An eye on the hilltop, bristling with trees,
whose dark lashes blink in the shuddering breeze -
a lingering witness of a day long past,
when that petrified carcass first rose from the grass.
It waited for legends to grow in the tomb
and pulse through this salmon-flesh quartz-speckled room,
where I sit dreaming of spines of stones,
of flakes of life once picked from their bones.

Mixed with soil in a corn-coloured powder,
Olill Olum lies, the people's great leader.
"Place me on high, over the valley's soft breath,
where I can see and be seen, even in death."

g

Something of his sad freedom

The Tollund Man

Some day I will go to Aarhus
To see his peat-brown head,
The mild pods of his eye-lids,
His pointed skin cap.

In the flat country near by
Where they dug him out,
His last gruel of winter seeds
Caked in his stomach,

Naked except for
The cap, noose and girdle,
I will stand a long time.
Bridegroom to the goddess,

She tightened her torc on him
And opened her fen,
Those dark juices working
Him to a saint's kept body,

Trove of the turfcutters'
Honeycombed workings.
Now his stained face
Reposes at Aarhus.

II

I could risk blasphemy,
Consecrate the cauldron bog
Our holy ground and pray
Him to make germinate

The scattered, ambushed
Flesh of labourers,
Stockinged corpses
Laid out in the farmyards,

Tell-tale skin and teeth
Flecking the sleepers
Of four young brothers, trailed
For miles along the lines.

III

Something of his sad freedom
As he rode the tumbril
Should come to me, driving,
Saying the names

Tollund, Grauballe, Nebelgard,
Watching the pointing hands
Of country people,
Not knowing their tongue.

Out here in Jutland
In the old man-killing parishes
I will feel lost,
Unhappy and at home.

Seamus Heaney

Maiden Castle. Image credit http://celts.etrusia.co.uk/

Maiden Castle

They said it could not be conquered
guarded by silent eyes and fierce hearts.

~ How tight is your grip son
thrust here – strike low
find the tendon release it from the bone ~

Who comes to such a place
there was no prize here.
Why did you come
across Poseidon’s plateau?

This castle was not the heart of the people!

The fort may have been their body
ringed
in complex configuration
but each blade of grass was their soul
planted
in rapacious repetition.

~ For it will come to pass
mark my words true
Belatucadros has spoken
All hail the god’s vengeance!
We may slip into his arms this day
but our souls will never be taken
We look out to our enemy and know
that for every one of their victories
we take two for our own! ~

Persephone Vandegrift

Stonehenge: mid 14th century MS

A dark enigma to the memory

...and when you die, I will erect a monument,
Upon the verdant plains of Salisbury,
No king shall have so high a sepulchre,
With pendulous stones, that I will hang by art,
Where neither lime nor mortar shall be used,
A dark enigma to the memory,
For none shall have the power to number them;
A place that I will hallow for your rest;
Where no night-hag shall walk, nor were-wolf tread,
Where Merlin's mother shall be sepulchred.

William Rowley (1690–1768)

Trevethy Quoit. Image credit Snap

Standing stones

BLOWS the wind to-day, and the sun and the rain are flying,
Blows the wind on the moors to-day and now,
Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying,
My heart remembers how!

Grey recumbent tombs of the dead in desert places.
Standing stones on the vacant wine-red moor,
Hills of sheep, and the homes of silent, vanquished races,
And winds austere and pure:

Be it granted to me to behold you again in dying,
Hills of home! And to hear again the call;
Hear about the graves of the martyrs the peewees crying,
And hear no more at all.

Vailima

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

Silbury. Image credit anonymous

Silbury Hill

I think Gaia was a virgin
when the men came
took their dreams out
and buried them deep inside her

Then they wandered the fields bewildered
carved circles on rocks
and built stone chambers
trying to decipher

What is this great mound?
Surely it holds such plunder?

Oh you silly men
with your measuring strings
sandals tattered and torn

Everyone knows
this mound
is just a belly full of gods
waiting to be born

Persephone Vandegrift

http://www.thisisby.us/index.php/content/silbury_hill

Tara uprooted. Image credit Paula Geraghty

In the Seven Woods

I HAVE heard the pigeons of the Seven Woods
Make their faint thunder, and the garden bees
Hum in the lime-tree flowers; and put away
The unavailing outcries and the old bitterness
That empty the heart. I have forgot awhile
Tara uprooted, and new commonness
Upon the throne and crying about the streets
And hanging its paper flowers from post to post,
Because it is alone of all things happy.
I am contented, for I know that Quiet
Wanders laughing and eating her wild heart
Among pigeons and bees, while that Great Archer,
Who but awaits His hour to shoot, still hangs
A cloudy quiver over Pairc-na-lee.

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

Lettergorman South. Image credit gjrk

Lettergorman South

Beal's eye planting with a gaze and reaping with a glance.
From the breast of a lover, into his breath I went spinning.
Twisting, turning and entranced, unmoving onto this.
From the top of the dog's hill, into his stop I sit staring.

Face my brothers to the mountains and my sister to the stream.
Mad minds melted by the years, pouring their grief into raving.
While the whispers of my kinfolk, hissed as this dance moved the sun,
are now faint in the distance, and taunt this terrible waiting.

gjrk

Silbury Hill: A pile of rusted iron struts. Image credit anonymous

Faintly, and as if from a great distance

Faintly, and as if from a great distance.*

Fall steps along the hallowed, hollowed whitened path
that began four millennia ago
and end today
in a pile of rusted iron struts
and rotting Merewether timbers.
Cast sarsen souls on pallets of 21st century dust.

Words fail
voids fill
then open up on another dismal collapsing surface
of another dark day of dismal lies.

And all the time they paint another rosy watercolour
of consolidation and restoration and not-in-the-book conservation.
Epithets for the spineless.
Phoney photographs for the future.

While a thousand plastic bags pad out their stupidities.

LS

* Thanks to gjrk for this line.

The Irreverent Day. Image credit anonymous

Suggested by the opening made in Silbury Hill, Aug 3rd 1849

Bones of our wild forefathers, O forgive,
If now we pierce the chambers of your rest,
And open your dark pillows to the eye
Of the irreverent Day! Hark, as we move,
Runs no stern whisper through the narrow vault?
Flickers no shape across our torch-light pale,
With backward beckoning arm? No, all is still.
O that it were not! O that sound or sign,
Vision, or legend, or the eagle glance
Of science, could call back thy history lost,
Green Pyramid of the plains, from far-ebbed Time!
O that the winds which kiss thy flowery turf
Could utter how they first beheld thee rise;
When in his toil the jealous Savage paused,
Drew deep his chest, pushed back his yellow hair,
And scanned the growing hill with reverent gaze, -
Or haply, how they gave their fitful pipe
To join the chant prolonged o'er warriors cold. -
Or how the Druid's mystic robe they swelled;
Or from thy blackened brow on wailing wing
The solemn sacrificial ashes bore,
To strew them where now smiles the yellow corn,
Or where the peasant treads the Churchward path.

Emmeline Fisher (1825–1864)

Avebury: south-east quadrant

All that remains

A tree, a branch
roots that curl and burrow
through the chalk.

A whisper in the leaves
a skylark's glorious
defiant song.

Snails along the path
rain that washes all away
and wheat again as tall as ever.

A life, a smile
reaching out and touching others
changing imperceptibly
the fabric of our universe.

LS

South to Silbury

The Ridgeway

like a friend
I hated you at times
the paces you put me through
each time I go further and faster
so I always know how the pilgrims felt on their way
south
to silbury
and the stones of Avebury and
beyond

mindweed

Salisbury Plain. Image credit Cowley: circa 1744

Tuppence worth of imagination

I am told that there are people who do not care for maps, and find it hard to believe. The names, the shapes of the woodlands, the courses of the roads and rivers, the pre-historic footpaths of man still distinctly traceable up hill and down dale, the mills and the ruins, the ponds and the ferries, perhaps the Standing Stone or the Druid Circle on the heath; here is an inexhaustible fund of interest for any man with eyes to see, or tuppence worth of imagination to understand with.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Stonehenge by John Constable: circa 1836

The Broken Circle

I STOOD On Sarum's treeless plain,
The waste that careless Nature owns;
Lone tenants of her bleak domain,
Loomed huge and gray the Druid stones.

Upheaved in many a billowy mound
The sea-like, naked turf arose,
Where wandering flocks went nibbling round
The mingled graves of friends and foes.

The Briton, Roman, Saxon, Dane,
This windy desert roamed in turn;
Unmoved these mighty blocks remain
Whose story none that lives may learn.

Erect, half buried, slant or prone,
These awful listeners, blind and dumb,
Hear the strange tongues of tribes unknown,
As wave on wave they go and come.

"Who are you, giants, whence and why?"
I stand and ask in blank amaze;
My soul accepts their mute reply
"A mystery, as are you that gaze.

"A silent Orpheus wrought the charm
From riven rocks their spoils to bring;
A nameless Titan lent his arm
To range us in our magic ring.

"But Time with still and stealthy stride,
That climbs and treads and levels all,
That bids the loosening keystone slide,
And topples down the crumbling wall,--

"Time, that unbuilds the quarried past,
Leans on these wrecks that press the sod;
They slant, they stoop, they fall at last,
And strew the turf their priests have trod.

"No more our altar's wreath of smoke
Floats up with morning's fragrant dew;
The fires are dead, the ring is broke,
Where stood the many stand the few."

My thoughts had wandered far away,
Borne off on Memory's outspread wing,
To where in deepening twilight lay
The wrecks of friendship's broken ring.

Ah me! of all our goodly train
How few will find our banquet hall!
Yet why with coward lips complain
That this must lean, and that must fall?

Cold is the Druid's altar-stone,
Its vanished flame no more returns;
But ours no chilling damp has known,--
Unchanged, unchanging, still it burns.

So let our broken circle stand
A wreck, a remnant, yet the same,
While one last, loving, faithful hand
Still lives to feed its altar-flame!

O H Holmes (1887)

Silbury Hill beneath the clear dark sky. Image credit Thelma Wilcox

Unchanged it stands

Unchanged it stands: it awes the lands
Beneath the clear dark sky;
But at what time its head sublime
It heavenward reared, and why -
The gods that see all things that be
Can better tell than I.

Rev A C Smith

Liddington Hill. Image credit Jane Muir

How many words

How many words has it taken to describe so briefly the feelings and the thoughts that came to me by the tumulus; thoughts that swept past and were gone, and were succeeded by others while yet the shadow of the mound had not moved from one thyme-flower to another, not the breath of a grass blade... The silk grass sighs as the wind comes carrying the blue butterfly more rapidly than his wings, A large humble-bee burrs round the green dome against which I rest; my hands are scented with thyme. The sweetness of the day, the fullness of the earth, the beauteous earth, how shall I say it?

Richard Jefferies

Silbury Hill time capsule. Inspired by Agostino Ramelli (1531-1600)

No sitting on fences

Our Silbury, chalky old pile
Was concerned with a threat to defile
But no sitting on fences
Brought EH to their senses
Now the hill can sleep on for a while

Slumpystones

Stations in the sacred landscape

Henge, barrow and midsummer hill

Henge, barrow and midsummer hill
Are stations in the sacred landscape.
Here the timeless Goddess enters
The times of her tribes. It was lifetimes back
And what it meant we have almost forgotten,
Almost forgotten.

We killed a child
With great honour and buried her body
Curled like a snail at the heart of the henge
Where earth spirits might rise through her grave,
Follow the curve of the bent bones
And spiral out among villagers dancing
The sunwheel dance that is danced in spring.
A captive ghost, in my meditation,
She takes my hand, but I cannot lead her
Beyond the ring where the magic fixed her.
She will be four years old forever,
And crowned with flowers.

But all the rest of us
Have to be laid in tribal earth
To be remade by the winter Goddess
Before we come back to the world again.
She is the sow that eats her farrow,
Old bones cracking within the barrow,
But to those whom she fails to frighten
A giver of gifts.

No corpses lie
On midsummer hill, but of all the stations
This is the saddest. The sun on high
Burns, burns as midsummer’s Queen
Hands over her whitening world to death-
The fields by severance and the woods
By slow decay. With her hair combed out
In its red gold sheaves she is perfect strength
And perfect beauty about to fade
As from this moment summer does-
And the child will leave its mother and
The long procession wind down the hill.

Tony Grist

Avebury in 1722 by William Stukeley

Dowsing History's Mysteries

To map the magic of the Rollright Ring
To feel the lines of force pulse through the air
To lay its megalithic secrets bare
In the stillness of a summer evening
To walk in wonder through the Avebury Stones
And track earth’s whispering patterns there
Then dowse the rings about the Devil’s Chair
And know the nature of their undertones
To stand in awe within the Stonehenge zone
And check the powers that charge the winter’s air
To probe its dazzling patterns, then dare
To sound the secrets of the Slaughter Stone
To view the world from Silbury’s soaring crest
And sense the power throbbing in its core
In tune with Gaia’s geodetic law
These earthly enigmas I treasure best.
These monuments were raised by men who knew
The patterned secrets in the planet’s crust
Who harnessed Gala’s power with sacred trust
In circle, barrow, hill and avenue.
Their sacred circles now stand vandalised
The sarcens grey and shattered lie around
Razed by religious zealots to the ground
Who saw Satan in the circles they despised.
Yet Silbury Hill still thrusts towards the sun
Like the breast of a giant Amazon
Immune to all, this cryptic paragon
Preceded Mycenae, Crete and Babylon
And like the pyramids win also be
As enduring as Everest, or the sea

Denis Wheatley

Amid the general ruin unsubdued

Silbury Hill

O Thou, to whom in the olden time was raised
Yon ample Mound, not fashion'd to display
An artful structure, but with better skill
Piled massive, to endure through many an age,
How simple, how majestic is thy tomb!
When temples and when palaces shall fall,

And mighty cities moulder into dust,
When to their deep foundations Time shall shake
The strong-based pyramids, shall thine remain
Amid the general ruin unsubdued,
Uninjured as the everlasting hills,
And mock the feeble power of storms and Time.

Rev William Crowe (1745-1829) of Alton Barnes, Wiltshire, England.

The Mound of Hostages. Image credit Ken Williams/ShadowsandStone.com

The Heart of Ireland

Skryne, Faughan, Lismullen, Tara,
Look around these hills of drama,
For if there is a heart to Ireland
It beats here, where we now stand.

Each ditch and mound, earthwork, embankment
Tells its story of burial and settlement,
Worship of ancient Gods, of gatherings
Right back to the time of the old High Kings.

The very folds in the landscape hold our history
And beyond that, our myth and mystery.
This is home to the Goddess Maebh
Honoured here three thousand years.

Once a Royal City filled the whole of Gabhra
And vast timber temples formed the sanctuary of Tara.
Here fought our heroes from the time of the Fianna,
And Kings were crowned by the Tuathá de Danann.

At the mound of Hostages, Duma na nGiall,
First home to the stone of destiny, Lia Fáil,
Perfectly aligned with sunrise Samhain and Imbolc,
And every full moon in honour of Lugh.

So standing here now, let’s contemplate
What will be Ireland’s fate,
If we build a road through the valley of Gabhra
And destroy the sacred sites round Tara?

What will the future say of us,
When we in our turn, are ancestors
If we are responsible for the desecration
Of the most powerful symbol of our nation?

So lost are we to a sense of self,
Intent on destroying our truest wealth,
Only a people who do not understand
Could so wound the heart of Ireland.

Or will we become the generation
Who refused to allow this violation?
Who’ll fight to the end like heroes before
Because we know what it is we’re fighting for.

So our children’s children’s children can stand
As we now stand on this sacred land,
Feel its heartbeat, know its power,
Cos’ we saved Tara in her darkest hour.

Dearbhaile Bradley
Chief Bard of Ynys Witrin 2007

Through the solar field. Image credit Tim Norris

1000 Oceans

well i can't believe that i would keep
keep you from flying
and i would cry 1000 more
if that's what it takes to sail you home
sail you home, sail you home

i'm aware what the rules are
but you know that i will run
you know that i will follow you
over silbury hill through the solar field
you know that i will follow you

Tori Amos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGCRFCokEqI&feature=related

A thing of the past. Image credit W Byrne and Medland: 1786

The motors and the constant traffic

....the sense of solitary grandeur which arose as one came slowly up across the wide deserted plain to stand alone beneath the huge trilithons, is a thing of the past. The military camps, the motors and the constant traffic along the dusty road, the wire enclosure, necessary as one must acknowledge it to be, and above all, the offensive pay-shed, so placed as to spoil and vulgarise the approach by its natural avenues, have robbed the temple of all its old romance.

J P Williams-Freeman

Choirokoitia, Cyprus: circa 9,000bce. Image credit Marcobadotti

People of Choirokoitia

Nine thousand years ago you lived here
in little round houses surrounded by little narrow alleyways
connecting each of your homes one to another.
Alleyways no wider
than the outstretched arms of a modern man.

But then you stood no taller
than one of our children of ten years or so stands now
and lived no longer than our middle years.
It was a time before the thought
of clay pots had even crossed your minds.

You ate as well as we however
perhaps even better.
Pistachios, figs, olives and prunes.
Deer, sheep, goats and pigs.

Unpackaged and unpaid for
taken from the hills all around you.
Water from your streams
fish from your rivers and from the sea.

Choirokoitia, Choirokoitia
people of Choirokoitia.
I walk along your ancient pathways
and peer through your ancient windows and doorways.
What am I looking for?

Simplicity perhaps.
No doubt your loves and losses were as rich and as sad as ours
but at least you knew one another
walking from house to house
through field and wood
laughing and arguing
living life to the full.

Nine thousand years on no-one knows anyone anymore.
You would not like it here people of Choirokoitia.
The sound of your rivers and steams have gone.
The sea supports a flotsam of rubbish you could never imagine.

Gone is the quietness that you knew.
Gone now your harmony with the changing of the year.
Gone too your finger upon the pulse of life
and your upturned hands when life lies cold.

Choirokoitia, Choirokoitia
people of Choirokoitia.
If I could travel back to be with you I would.
I would happily forfeit half my life to walk with you
picking olives and figs along the way
listening to the far-off sounds of the sea
and the mountain streams as they tumble and fall
around your village of little round houses
and little narrow alleyways.

LS

It seemed to whisper Quietness

Three Counsellors

It was the fairy of the place,
Moving within a little light,
Who touched with dim and shadowy grace
The conflict at its fever height.

It seemed to whisper 'Quietness,'
Then quietly itself was gone:
Yet echoes of its mute caress
Were with me as the years went on.

It was the warrior within
Who called 'Awake, prepare for fight:
Yet lose not memory in the din:
Make of thy gentleness thy might:

'Make of thy silence words to shake
The long-enthroned kings of earth:
Make of thy will the force to break
Their towers of wantonness and mirth.'

It was the wise all-seeing soul
Who counselled neither war nor peace:
'Only be thou thyself that goal
In which the wars of time shall cease.'

George William Russell (1867-1935)

Worn white by endless sunbeams

The Open Air

The great stone of a fallen cromlech, crouching down afar off in the plain behind me, cast its shadow in the sunny morn as it had done, so many summers, for centuries - for thousands of years: worn white by endless sunbeams - the ceaseless flood of light - the sunbeams of the centuries, the impalpable beams polishing and grinding like rushing water: silent, yet witnessing of the Past; shadowing the Present on the dial of the field: a mere dull stone but what is it the mind will not employ to express to itself its own thoughts?

Richard Jefferies

Silbury time capsule

Hi,

i visited Silbury Hill on Sunday afternoon [19 August 07], it was bedraggled with construction site equipment (inert), workers' portacabin extempore village (no sign of life), persistent drizzle and lots of chalky mud everywhere; the caterpillar diggers have left a wide muddy track all the way round one side of Silbury; there is a forlorn visitors' information point, roadside of the hill, with a flimsy sign fixed to the fence, fluttering in the grey breeze. there are neither visitors nor experts in bright yellow, hard hats, enthusiastically disseminating words of wisdom: the spot is entirely vacant. above the tunnel entrance is marked out - in blue rope - the shape of a long subsidence, running up the hill, directly over the tunnel. before the ominous-looking, shuttered entrance to the re-opened tunnel stands a motionless mechanical digger, apparently abandoned? the entire site is eerily silent and resembles more the messy aftermath to some awful catastrophe, rather than the sprightly prospect of an efficient EH project, so deftly filmed for PR posterity several years ago, when the initial steps were being taken to stabilise the hill, and ultimately restore it? where are the cameras, state-of-art technology, helicopters, snappy press releases, smart presenters and television experts now? what is happening at Silbury? what is happening to Silbury?!

:(

Ric

ps. i wrote to Eric/Lord Avebury - he advises everyone concerned to write, phone or email English Heritage to object to their plan to bury a 'time capsule' inside Silbury Hill.

Where prayers are left to bleed. Image credit Tim Norris

A Means To An End II

A legacy, in time removed
Your guardianship to prove
Eternal rights we left behind
In trust, our World enshrined
To pay respects, protect it too
We put our trust in you
We put our trust in you

We thought our Gods would recognise
Our efforts justified
Strange the way that hopes can rise
Our vision touched the skies
Immortal gift, our love to prove
We put our trust in you
We put our trust in you

Beneath a hill of sacred soil
This modern vermin's spoil
Is this your hope, your final deed?
Where prayers are left to bleed
Resigned to this, we curse your soul
We put our trust in you
We put our trust in you

slumpy & Joy Division

Stonehenge. Image credit Snap

Solace in Stone

Seek them out, search out the Ancient Ones. Stones of Salutation. Solstice and Symmetry
Stones of Mystery. Millenniums and Magnetism. Stones of Ancients. Augurs and Alignments
Stones of Loneliness. Lunar and Leys. Stones of Ghosts. Gnomic and Geometry
Stones of Destiny. Druids and Direction. Stones of Elementals. Equinox and Equations
Stones of Ceremony. Celts and Chronology. Stones of Hypocrisy. Hedonists and Harmonics
Find their Sanctuary, find their Solace. Pitted with time, grey and ochre patched
Yet smooth as silk where hands have rubbed. In fields, woods, valleys, bog, bracken and bramble
Standing, fallen, broken, smashed by the Church. No matter their magic felt through centuries and time
For they have seen death, life and the stars. Sit in their majesty, turn and look back
See the horizons. Mothers, mapped out. Look on in wonder, best all alone
For then you will find Solace in Stone

T J Ackley

Silbury from Avebury steeple by William Stukeley

Silbury Speaks

Once, men knew no science
But saw how things worked,
Couldn’t fly to the moon
Yet possessed it,
Never dreamt the world was round
But knew it was whole.

Such men raised me with those simple tools
And here I stand
A monument, magnificent,
To simple men and simple ways
That tells an ancient Truth
That knowing much is knowing less.

Why then did you not
Simply protect me?

Erich Thrupp

The Long Man of Wilmington: Image credit Sorcha

Windover

I guard the gateway
Hold two spears
Or staffs
Or rakes
Through the years
The truth has misted

Clearly a man
Though my hips might say other
Wise Mother I might be
God to many
Most certainly

Yet as you approach me
Kerbstones are all you will see
Industrial covering for the mystery

Once I was the Green Man
Seen only at dawn
Upon my Down
By Mrs. Downs
Of that village below

Or as the snow melted
Upon me
Before around me
Yet I became harder to see

So they bricked me in
That I might remain seen
Though so faint in the earth
My left foot turned east

Was my face lost then?
Did spear become stick?
Did they add hips?
Did I lose a dick?

And then in your sixties
Brick became slab
Call it drab
If you like
My essence
Still lies beneath.

Atop my hill
Lie two barrows
One Long and for many
One round and for a chief

The long one it points
Directly at my head
And however many lie within
They lie undisturbed
In a grave long enough
To be mine
Approached by a steep Cursus
From which to watch Sirius rise

The round one
Lies in line with my body
Abused and raided by an antiquary
One Mr. Mantell
Yet still with its majesty
Though no longer a king

Two ancient cultures
Lined graves up on me
And five thousand years back
From where cars now park
On a cold winter’s night
Orion the Hunter
Dressed in his stars
Would have walked my horizon

Am I he?
Am I the Stonehenge Sun God?
Cernunnos of the Celts?
Or Caesar of the coin?
Or Alfred’s estate marker?
Or Sampson, carved by monks
On their day off?

I have been much to many
Else I would have died
I may be much to you
Or just a man in the side
Of a hill

Still
Yet on a mound
‘Neath a chalk-pit next to me
People now gather
To give thanks to their mother
And father, the Earth
And to honour their gods
And for what it is worth

I thank you

For you sustain me
And I shall be whatever you wish
Until the Downs crumble
And fish swim above me
Many years from now
When we shall all lie
Underneath sea or sky

For as rock became human
So too human stone
The cycle is endless
For you and I belong to the Land
And to it we return
Whether short or Long Man.

Cursuswalker
Lammas 2001

Silbury: Image credit Robert M Williams

Something beyond the books

There is something beyond the philosophies in the light, in the grass-blades, the leaf, the grasshopper, the sparrow on the wall. Some day the great and beautiful thought which hovers on the confines of the mind will at last alight. The whole sky is full of abounding hope. Something beyond the books, that is consolation.

Richard Jefferies

Max Gate: Image credit Gerald Ponting

The Shadow on the Stone

I went by the Druid stone
That broods in the garden white and lone,
And I stopped and looked at the shifting shadows
That at some moments fall thereon
From the tree hard by with a rhythmic swing,
And they shaped in my imagining
To the shade that a well-known head and shoulders
Threw there when she was gardening.

I thought her behind my back,
Yea, her I long had learned to lack,
And I said: ‘I am sure you are standing behind me,
Though how do you get into this old track?’
And there was no sound but the fall of a leaf
As a sad response; and to keep down grief
I would not turn my head to discover
That there was nothing in my belief.

Yet I wanted to look and see
That nobody stood at the back of me;
But I thought once more: ‘Nay, I’ll not unvision
A shape which, somehow, there may be.’
So I went on softly from the glade,
And left her behind me throwing her shade,
As she were indeed an apparition—
My head unturned lest my dream should fade.

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)