Pic: una cierta mirada

We have the honour of featuring a Guest Blogger today who tells us about the call to include the free Channel, BBC Alba on our Freeview boxes. Let’s hand the pen over to Ancestral Celt. As a new learner of Scots Gaelic, I was dissapointed to find that the new BBC channel, BBC Albais not available on freeview boxes, despite being a “free” channel on subscription services, such as Sky. Apparently, this will be the case until a review in 2010.

So, I found out that there is a petition doing the rounds to urge John McLeod of the Scottish parliament to release the channel onto freeview. Why is this important? Because not everyone can afford to subscribe to cable/satellite television and why should they if the channel is paid for by their television licence fees? What’s more the Scottish government state they wish to promote gaelic culture, yet by having BBC Alba available on subscriptions services, it limits the potential for promotion that television can provide.

So, if you are new learner of the language, a native speaker or just interested in the culture of Scotland, why not sign the petition, so everyone can enjoy what only the priveleged few can at the moment.

St. Andrew’s Day is the feast of Saint Andrew, celebrated on 30 November each year. Saint Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland and St. Andrew’s Day is Scotland’s official national day. In 2006, the Scottish Parliament designated the Day as an official bank holiday. However, instead of being a full public holiday, it is a voluntary public holiday.

The Scottish flag is the cross of St. Andrew, also known as the Saltire. It is said to be one of the oldest national flags of any country, dating back at least to the 12th century. The flag of Scotland (and consequently the Union Flag and the arms and flag of Nova Scotia) feature St Andrew’s saltire cross. Its designer, William Porcher Miles, said he changed it from an upright cross to a saltire so that it would not be a religious symbol but merely a heraldic device.

About the middle of the tenth century, Andrew became the patron saint of Scotland. Several legends state that the relics of Andrew were brought under supernatural guidance from Constantinople to the place where the modern town of St Andrews stands today

The oldest surviving manuscripts are two: one is among the manuscripts collected by Jean-Baptiste Colbert and willed to Louis XIV of France, now in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, the other in the Harleian Mss in the British Library, London. They state that the relics of Andrew were brought by one Regulus to the Pictish king Óengus mac Fergusa (729–761). The only historical Regulus (Riagail or Rule) — the name is preserved by the tower of St. Rule — was an Irish monk expelled from Ireland with Saint Columba; his date, however, is c. 573–600. There are good reasons for supposing that the relics were originally in the collection of Acca, bishop of Hexham, who took them into Pictish country when he was driven from Hexham (c. 732), and founded a see, not, according to tradition, in Galloway, but on the site of St. Andrews. The connection made with Regulus is, therefore, due in all probability to the desire to date the foundation of the church at St. Andrews as early as possible. Continue Reading »

Forty years ago, archaeologist George Eogan became the first person in centuries to see the underground passage tomb at Knowth in Meath (Ireland), part of Brú na Bóinne (Bend of the Boyne), now a Unesco World Heritage site. A year earlier, in 1967, the Knowth excavation had uncovered a smaller underground passage leading in from the western face of the megalithic mound, but this larger east-side tomb surpassed it, recalls Eogan, a professor of archaeology at University College Dublin. “The western tomb was stunning but the east one was huge,” he says.

Pic: Spud Murphy

Knowth’s charms had lain undiscovered for hundreds of years before excavations started on the site 46 years ago, with Eogan present. The fourth volume in a series of books on the dig’s findings is published by the Royal Irish Academy later this month.

“We started at Knowth in 1962 and we have been there ever since,”

he says, detailing how the project has uncovered 18 satellite tombs around the great mound as well as unusual findings, such as a decorative flint macehead and a series of eight-century inscriptions within the passages and chambers.

But some of the findings pre-date all of that,

explains Eogan. Continue Reading »

Pictures: Brian Kerr

They have been found where the earth meets the sky, high up on the moorlands of northern England, a mysterious series of strange and ancient carvings hewn into the rocks and boulders.

More than 100 elaborate carvings dating back thousands of years have been discovered on rocks and boulders in the North of England.

The art, thought to be the work of Neolithic man, is open to the air but is so remote that it had lain undisturbed and undetected for thousands of years  -  until it was recently discovered by English Heritage.

It  includes a series of intricate designs of concentric circles, interlocking rings and hollowed cups.

They are among only 2,500 examples which exist in England – having survived natural erosion, quarrying and field clearance.

Volunteers have found more than 100 examples of ancient rock art in places like the Ketley Crag in Northumberland

Around 100 volunteers, trained by English Heritage, have been recording the location, content, context and condition of rock art for the last four years as part of pilot project. Continue Reading »

And then on the following day they came to Arthur’s court. They seemed like giants, wearing black steel and strange weapons. They were powerful and invincible warriors and people called them the Knights. No one knows who they are. No one knows where they came from. But they might be Arthur’s only hope to stand against the coming tide of wonders, mayhem and awe.”

NeocoreGames, a fresh and talented game developer team from Hungary would like to announce their new PC-only RPG/Strategy game King Arthur.

Three years in the making, this grandiose storytelling game by NeocoreGames is an innovative mixture of the best gameplay elements from the RPG and strategy games, with a unique and beautiful visual representation. Continue Reading »

Pic: 1Sock

Nearly 50 years ago, archaeologists began excavating at Knowth near Newgrange – and the site has yet to give up all its secrets, writes Claire O’Connell in the Irish Times. The first day we went in, we went up the passage. When we got in towards the end, the passage became difficult, but there seemed to be a void at the top and I crawled up with a flashlight and walked until I came to the end of the passage. I flashed the lamp around and saw this massive void. I flashed the lamp upwards and I could see a massive roof, which was nearly 20 feet in height.

In my great excitement I jumped down six or seven feet, and to my amazement I found that what I had jumped into was a massive cruciform chamber. There was an astonishing amount of art and a magnificent stone basin in the right-hand recess.

Continue Reading »

Pic: Martin Millar

The Good Fairies of New York is a damn good read by Martin Millar who was born in Glasgow, Scotland, but has lived in London, England, for a long time. He has written profusely,from novels and plays to short stories and articles. The Good Fairies of New York finds two Scottish thimble fairies transported to lower Manhattan. Morag and Heather, who didn’t completely fit in back in the old country, are a bit bewildered by their new surroundings, but make do as best they can. They’re not entirely alone-as it turns out, New York is heavily populated by fairies, including Italian, Chinese, and black ones.

They glomp onto some humans; Morag joins Kerry, who suffers from Crohns disease (complete with colostomy bag), while Heather hooks up with the asocial (and unmusical) Dinnie. The humans aren’t entirely enthralled by the fairies, with Dinnie telling Heather: “I’ve decided not to believe in you in the hope you’ll disappear.” His efforts are, of course, ineffective. Continue Reading »

Pic: gary

In this story, which is part 1 of a 2 part story, we hear about the coming of Manannan Mac Lir to to Tuatha De Danann and a maiden that cannot eat mortal food. We hear about an insult that has dire effects and the coming of the Christian God to the Ancient Celts.

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Pic: Guardian

The Guardian reports that the “virtual time machine” – a digital reconstruction of ancient Rome has today became available to hundreds of millions of internet users around the world.Users of Google Earth can now see the city, down to the last aqueduct and arena, just as it looked at midday on April 1 AD320. They can float through the Forum, past the platform or “rostra” from which Cicero once declaimed, admire the statues, read the inscriptions, pry into palaces, and then slip round to the Colosseum or whisk over to the Circus Maximus where the ancient Romans held their chariot races

There, the virtual traveller will find, not the slightly disappointing, though enormous, oval expanse of grass that confronts the real tourist, but the huge, walled stadium that tourists are forced to conjure up from their imagination.

Google Earth’s chief technologist, Michael T Jones, at the presentation in Rome’s city hall said:

It is the Rome of [the emperor] Constantine in which everything is new. It’s new. It’s modern. It’s beautiful. All that the awe-inspiringly detailed reconstruction lacks is people. Their absence gives a slightly eerie feel to the stadiums and temples, the marketplaces and thoroughfares of classical Rome.

Some 6,700 digitally reconstructed structures have gone towards making up Google Earth’s latest layer, which can be superimposed on its images of the city. Users can enter ten of the buildings, including monuments such the Colosseum, where the software enables them to marvel at the architecture and even gaze on details like marble floors whose exact shape and pattern are known because their remains have survived to the present.

Read the full story at the Guardian

Pic: bigcagwell

The Falkirk Herald reports that around 9000 years ago the first humans set foot in Falkirk. Since then Bronze Age settlers and the Romans are among the many cultures to have left their mark on the area. The clues to their existence are everywhere.

They can be found beneath the ground we walk on and across the local landscape. Park your car at The Falkirk Wheel (pictured above) and you are actually on top of an Iron Age settlement.

Those responsible for discovering, analysing and documenting these finds are people like Geoff Bailey.

Since 1984, Geoff has been Falkirk Council’s archaeologist and keeper of local history.

For many, archaeology will conjure up the image of cinema icon Indiana Jones, but it was not the exploits of a fictional film character which sparked off Geoff’s childhood interest. He said:

This year, when someone was getting a conservatory built in Laurieston, near where the annex of the Roman fort would have been, an iron smelting furnace was found. At another dig in Laurieston along the back of the Antonine Wall, we found a gully with Roman pottery and ramparts.

Then through the back of the Howgate Shopping Centre, an investigation into the north ditch of the Roman fort means we now know that it was two acres in size and not one of the smaller ones. Despite the heavy Roman influence, there has been plenty other antiquities uncovered – including those from the Bronze, Neolithic, Medieval and Dark Ages.

One that Geoff found particularly memorable took place during an excavation at Callendar Business Park. He explained:

It was probably the most significant in terms of the artefacts we found. We found an 80ft long timber hall which dates back to 981 AD, which was the Viking Age. It was also unique for the fact it was a combination of the Northern Pictish and Anglian architecture – which again makes it very interesting.

And while archaeological methods may be becoming more scientific you never know what you might find by simply going for a stroll in Falkirk.

Read the full article at the Falkirk Herald.