Pic: (A3R) angelrravelor (A3R)

In Great Britain nowadays most people celebrate by popping the cork of a bottle of champagne and toasting for luck during the coming year.  There is much kissing and arms are linked and ‘Auld Lang Syne’ is sung. But what are the folk customs that were celebrated going back into the mists of time. These customs and rituals could give us some clues as to how the New Year was actually celebrated. According to the Gregorian calendar, the start of each New Year in Great Britain is on January 1st.   January 1st was officially designated as New Year’s Day in 1752.  Other cultures and traditions celebrate New Year on a completely different day.

  For example, in the Eastern Orthodox Church they celebrate New Year on 14^th January, which is the 1^st January in the Julian calendar.  Samhain as it means the summers end is the Celtic festival of greeting the new time. Samhain is basically the occasion of celebrating the summers end and the time to welcome the winter season. As per the Celtic beliefs it is the time when God comes near to earth and is therefore the New Year time to start afresh. November 1st is the Samhain day and has been traditionally known as the Irish (Celtic) New Year.

The Irish New Year & Samhain

The Irish New Year festival is known as Samhain which meant summer ends and was celebrated on 31 October. The festival has survived as Halloween.

It was at this time they hold their General Assembly. This was held in the out in the air parliament where the laws were renewed and accounts of events, details of births, deaths and marriages, were recorded.

This day was considered of great danger for it was when the spirits of the dead returned to earth. It was believed the spirits could do harm unless precautions were taken. The Celtic priests go into the woods on New Year’s Eve to gather bunches of mistletoe which they handed out to people to protect them from any harm. Also bonfires were lit to drive away evil forces. They also believed that it was safer to stay indoors as fairies were abroad on New Year’s Eve.

In Ireland the girls would go to bed with sprigs of mistletoe, or holly and ivy leaves under their pillows so they would go to bed dreaming of their future husbands.

Hogmany & First Footing

Up until the 1960’s, Hogmanay was a more important festival in Scotland than Christmas. On the day of Hogmanay, 31^st December, traditionally the house would be cleaned throughout so that the New Year would be welcomed into a pristine, tidy home.  It is regarded as very bad luck to welcome the New Year into a dirty and untidy house!  Fireplaces would be swept out and scoured, and some families would read the ashes of the last fire of the year, to see what the New Year had in store for them.  The act of cleaning the house for New Year was known as the ‘Redding’.

The first stroke of the bells ringing in the New Year at midnight was known as The Bells, and this would hopefully bring the first of many ‘First Footers’ to visit the house.  The back door of the house would be opened to let the Old Year out. It is believed that the first male visitor to a home on New Year’s Day brings good luck.  Preferably the male visitor would be a young, handsome, dark-haired, healthy male.  The male visitor was supposed to bring gifts of money, bread or cake, coal or salt as these were considered lucky.  The bread and cake was to ensure that the household did not go hungry during the coming year, the coal was to ensure that the house would be warm throughout the year and the salt was said to bestow wealth, as salt used to be a rare and precious commodity.  A blond or red-headed man or a woman visiting the house first was a big no-no and was considered to bring bad luck.  This is because a dark-haired man in ancient times would have been regarded as a fellow Scotsman, and therefore to be deemed safe, whereas a fair haired or red headed man could have been a Viking and therefore potentially a dangerous enemy.

Welsh New Year Carnival

Like all the other European countries New Year brings the joy of welcoming a whole new time in Wales. The typical European culture clubbed with traditional beliefs and rituals make their presence felt in the matchless aura of Welsh New Year carnival. New Year in Wales is definitely the time to greet the forthcoming year and according to the deep traditional beliefs of the country New Year signifies the new life and optimism or a better morrow.

Feasting and amusement lace the Welsh New Year which is the time of suspending the farm works. Welsh New Year therefore symbolizes the more crop production in the coming year and this symbolization is further complemented with an age old tradition of placing a plough under the dining table of the house to signify the advent of winter and the suspension of farm works.

Welsh New Year begins with a festive mood and apart from refined dinner and amusement football matches, rabbit and squirrel hunting and with other flamboyant activities Wales greets the first day of the year with immense passion and romance.

Little Christmas on the Isle of Man

This was often called Little Christmas. Fiddlers would go from house to house to rouse the occupants with music, and their wives would follow the next day for payment, usually food or drink. The English tune ‘The Hunt is Up’ was a favourite.

Celebrating the New Year in the UK

People in Scotland still go ‘First Footing’ and go around visiting all the houses in the neighbourhood.  They probably take a bottle of whisky with them to offer neighbours a New Year dram.  In less prosperous times, the bottle would be stored on the mantelpiece and only opened on the stroke of midnight.  In the older times the villagers would drink something called a Het Pint.  The Het Pint is a mixture of ale mulled with nutmeg and whisky.   This fragrant, warm brew would be served from a copper kettle to any ‘first footer’ encountered during the celebrations.

New Year in Great Britain is also a time to make New Year Resolutions.  A New Year Resolution is a commitment to change a habit or engage in a healthier lifestyle.  Typical New Year Resolution’s include giving up smoking, losing weight, vowing to get fitter or saving money.  However, many of these resolutions, made in a flush of alcohol and partying, are not kept for very long and are apt to be repeated year after year!

So whether you go to London for the fireworks display on New Year’s Eve and then watch the parade on New Year’s Day or you are going from home to home with your bottle of whisky in a small Scottish home, you will find many different ways of bringing in the New Year in and around Great Britain – the Celtic Lands.

[Source] [Source] [Source] [Source]

In September, a book was released by Kate MacAlister which tells two stories: one based loosely on Celtic Myth and one based on Norse myth. The Celtic story is called Stag Party and tells of the Irish fertility god, Cernunnos (?) who has to find a bride in the week leading up to Beltaine or become mortal and die.The Norse tale, Horse Truly tells of a cursed Viking, doomed to sail the seas forever. When a car skids off the road, he and his men rescue the driver and Alrik discovers that the driver may be able to break his curse. Each story sounds like great fun with quite a bit of romance thrown in. I found it mentioned here. Amazon

Originally posted 2008-01-14 17:37:32. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Pic: Bronze Age Bressay

Bronze Age Bressay! was an ambitious and innovative project to reconstruct an eroding Bronze Age site on the island of Bressay, Shetland. The site, the Burnt Mound at Cruester, originally sat on the northwest coast facing Shetland’s capital, Lerwick. A previous excavation in 2000 revealed an impressive array of stone cells, together with a large hearth, a cistern, a stone tank and a sloping chute or passageway. These had all been built into a mound, formed from discarded stones that had been heated and then plunged into water.

Burnt mounds with structures within them are very rare, and the Cruester Burnt Mound is one of only a handful of known examples.

The project ran through June and July 2008 and involved the excavation and dismantling of the site, which was then transported to Bressay’s Heritage Centre where it was reconstructed. The replica structures, built at the same time as the reconstruction was carried out, were intended to be fully functioning so that they could be used as a centre for experimental work into these enigmatic structures. Volunteers were trained in drystone walling and a range of archaeological techniques.

The reconstruction will be open to the public and the finished site is being interpreted for the public with an on-site information panel, a leaflet, and a permanent exhibition at the Bressay Heritage Centre. The project also includes a twelve month education and outreach programme led by Bressay History Group and involving the local school and volunteers from all over Shetland. Events have so far included Open Days, a series of public lectures, Living History days, ancient technology workshops (such as pottery making) and Experimental Archaeology days.

A burnt mound is a mound of shattered stones and charcoal, normally with an adjacent hearth and trough. The trough could be rock-cut, wood-lined or clay-lined to ensure it was watertight. Radiocarbon dates vary quite widely, the earliest being late Neolithic, with clusters of dates between 1900 – 1500 BC and 1200 – 800 BC, with some outliers in the Iron Age. There are also some dates that go into the early Medieval period. The technology used at burnt mounds has much greater antiquity and is found from the palaeolithic onwards.

Pic: Bronze Age Bressay

The main explanation for burnt mounds is that they were cooking sites. However, there are problems with such explanations, not the least of which is the lack of any direct evidence of cooking. The process undoubtedly works; experiments were carried out in Ireland in the 1950s to show that a joint of meat could be fully cooked in about three to four hours through this method. However, bone is rarely if ever reported from burnt mound sites, which would be unusual for a cooking site. This has been explained as the result of the soils being too acidic for the bone to be preserved, but this is unsatisfactory. It would be rather unlikely that all of the soils relating to burnt mounds were so acidic that no bone survived, particularly as the pH of the soil will vary considerably from site to site. However, there are examples of burnt mounds that have been recorded on neutral or basic soils, without bone being apparent in the burnt mound material, Alternatives that have been suggested include saunas (where the intention is to create steam rather than cook anything), fulling, salt production, leather preparation etc.

The implication found in many accounts of burnt mounds in Britain gives the impression that they are found in Ireland and Scotland, but they also are found in Wales and in England. The Welsh examples tend to be upland and rural, as are many of the English ones, but there are also many found in the lowlying English Midlands. Barfield & Hodder’s interpretation of burnt mounds as potentially saunas arose from their various excavations of burnt mounds in the Birmingham area, while more recently forty mounds have been discovered in Birmingham . One example is in Moseley Bog where experiments were made in the late 1990s to asses the plausibility of the sauna hypothesis. [Wiki]

In order to replicate the burnt mound, it was decided to dig down and not build up, as a low hill lay on the reconstruction plot. A hole was dug that matched exactly the shape of the outer wall of the Bronze Age building.

Not only was the threatened Bronze Age building moved, we also built a second structure for conducting experiments in. This was built to the same dimensions as the original building, but using new stone. So far, we have built the hearth cell, the passageway, the tank and one of the side cells. In the future, dry-stone walling classes will be held and more cells will be added.

The replica stone structures were built with the aim of conducting experimental workshops to replicate a number of Bronze-Age style technologies. We also wanted to try to learn what burnt mounds were originally used for. Of course, there may have been a range of uses, and suggestions range from cooking, bathing, industrial processes and even making beer! Not only will we try different processes, we will measure the temperatures reached in the hearth cell and tank; record how long it takes to bring the water to boil; and see how many times we can use the same stones before they shatter.

The Project Team have not only done such marvellous work and promise much more but if you tour their site you will find many photographs of the various stages of re-building and  their experiments.  They promised more details of more detailed experiments in 2009 but as yet the site hasn’t been updated.

Go and visit the Bronze Age Bressay site for more details. Better still, go and visit the Visitor Centre on Bressay – one day, I’ll get there!

Pic: Bronze Age Bressay

News at the Scotsman.com reports that a Bronze Age structure thought to have been used as a sauna has been saved from destruction by the sea after a team of archaeologists moved the entire find to a safer location. The building, which dates from between 1500BC and 1200BC, was unearthed on the Shetland island of Bressay eight years ago. It was found in the heart of the Burnt Mound at Cruester, a Bronze Age site on the coast of Bressay facing Lerwick.

But earlier this summer (2008), because of the increased threat of coastal erosion, local historians joined archaeologists to launch a campaign to save the building and to move it somewhere safer. A third of the mound had already been lost to sea erosion.

The central structure was carefully dismantled and each stone numbered before being moved to a site a mile way next to Bressay Heritage Centre.

And today (23/8/2008), following the completion of the unusual removal scheme, the Bronze Age building will be officially opened at its new location by Tavish Scott, the MSP for Shetland. Douglas Coutts, the project officer with Bressay History Group, said the structure was one of the most important archaeological discoveries ever made in the Northern Isles.

The building was hidden in a mound of burnt stones and is thought to have been used for feasts, baths or even saunas. The structure comprises a series of dry-stone, walled cells, connected by two corridors. At the end of one corridor is a hearth cell, thought to have been used for heating stones, and at the other end is a tank sunk into the ground which is almost two metres long, more than a metre wide, and half a metre deep.

Pic:Bronze Age Bressay

Mr Coutts said:

Burnt mounds don’t usually consist of very much more than a hearth and a tank and a heap of burnt stones. But in Shetland, we seem to have much more complex structures with little rooms or cells leading off from a main passageway which connects the hearth and tank.

He added:

We think these cells may have originally been roofed over in a beehive shape. One theory is that these structures may have been used for cooking meat or tanning hides. But it is possible they could have raised steam by heating the water and that these little cells could have been used as saunas.

Tom Dawson, a researcher at St Andrews University who also worked on the removal project, said coastal erosion was threatening thousands of archaeological sites around Scotland.

The local group here came up with a novel idea for dealing with the problem. It is great to have had the chance to give new life to this particular site and make it accessible to future generations, while also learning something new, not just about Cruester, but about burnt mounds in general.

This structure is important in world terms. There are thousands of burnt mounds in Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia but only a handful are known to have structures within them.

Mr Scott praised the partnership between the local history group and outside archaeological bodies.

He said:

This exhibition will be a great asset for visitors to Bressay and local people. The more we understand about the past, the better informed we are about the future.

[Source]

Look out tomorrow for more details on how the re-construction of the Burnt Mound is helping Education in 2009.

Pic: Wiki

Do you remember a post just recently in which we looked at some of the meanings of Yule, there was a picture of Father Christmas or Santa riding on a goat? Well, the Vikings must have some relationship to the more modern origins of Christmas because the most common symbol for Yule amongst the Swedish is the Julbock or Christmas Goat (see image below). In the town of Gävle, they erect an enormous goat (last year’s is pictured to the left, but the BBC reports that in the early hours of yesterday morning (26/12/2009):

A giant straw goat – the traditional Scandinavian yuletide symbol – erected each Christmas in a Swedish town has been burned to the ground yet again. The 13-metre (43-ft) high billy goat has been torched 24 times since it was first erected in Gävle in 1966.

The goat was set alight in the early hours of Wednesday morning in the city north of Stockholm. City spokeswoman Anna Ostman said the incident, which is being treated as serious vandalism, was "sad".

We had really hoped that he would survive Christmas and New Year’s.

she said. As well as being burnt, the goat has over the years faced other acts of vandalism including being run over by a car, having its legs removed and being smashed.

The Goat’s History

• 1966: The first goat is burned down – beginning the tradition
• 1970: It is set on fire six hours after being erected
• 1971: Schoolchildren build a miniature; it is smashed to pieces
• 1976: A car crashes into the goat
• 1979: Goat is burned down before it is finished
• 1987: Goat is treated with fire-proofing, but is still burned down
• 2001: Tourist from Cleveland, Ohio is jailed for burning goat
• 2005: Two men dressed as Santa and Gingerbread Man torch goat

The Gävle Goat on the Internet

The city’s website offers a bilingual blog and Twitter feed, as well as webcams to allow fans to follow the beleaguered goat’s fate.

In one of its last entries, the goat writes:

Terrible night! Slept so well under my beautiful snow blanket, when it suddenly became awfully hot. It was fire!!! At 0300 someone managed to set me on fire and destroy the amazing Christmas spirit in Gavle.

You can follow the Goat @gavlebocken on Twitter.

Pic: Swedish Christmas

Pictured left is the traditional Swedish Christmas Goat or Julbock that many homes have on display at Christmas time. The straw Julbock is a popular figure that Swedes like to place under their Christmas trees. It’s believed that these small Christmas Goats, were once made from the last shafts of the harvest crop and symbolized the power of rejuvenation and fertility. The Julbock, or Christmas Ram, preceded St. Nicholas as a Christmas figure in Sweden. You can also find Straw Ornaments hanging from the Christmas tree.  Go and see live what is happening on Goatcam 1 & Goatcam 2! The webcams were closed on December 29th – I guess until next year.

[Source]

[Gävle on Wiki]

[Official Gävle City website]

We are proud to announce the release of our second Wallpaper for your computer’s Desktop, initially in a 4:3 ratio and later in 16×9 for widescreen Desktops. This one shows the Tuatha De Danaan, the Children of Danu, exploring the crisp, brand-new Erin for the first time. There are no right answers, but after listening to the stories at the beginning of the Irish Mythological Cycle, can you guess who each of the characters are? A couple of them have definite answers, a couple could be one or more inidividuals…

You can find the new Wallpaper on the Wallpaper Page in all of the sizes I have made for you. If the size you are after is not there, let me know and I’ll make it especially for you.

Pic: Robert Holdstock Website

On Sunday, November 29, 2009 the author of an outstanding series of books left us for new realms and our good wishes go with him and our deepest sympathies are with his family and friends. The Guardian, apparently his favourite newspaper carries an obituary as does The Times. I won’t quote personal memories from either of these obituaries because, regretfully, I did not know the man but his work! Now there is a different thing! So intensely mythological and magical was his writing and creation that it definitely broke out of the bounds of the Fantasy genre.

The Guardian said:

Mythago Wood was at odds with readers’ expectations of literary fantasy at the time. Rob’s world was brutal, disturbing and almost unknowable, rather than being simply our world in medieval fancy dress.

Set in the late 1940s, in a small Hertfordshire forest that has been undisturbed since the last ice age, where time flows more slowly and the forest protects itself by disorientating those who try to enter, Mythago Wood is a history, not of the British Isles, but of our pre-Christian, shamanistic subconscious. It is a place impossible to map, one that defies attempts to catalogue, photograph or constrain it. The mythagos of the title are beautiful, sometimes deadly personifications of myth drawn from subconscious snatches of the stories we have been told about characters such as Robin Hood and Herne the Hunter – not the figures we know, but their earlier forms. (In later books the psychologist father of the main character is revealed to have studied with Carl Jung.)

It has to be said that when I first read Mythago Wood, I did not know what to make of it. It did not lend itself to categorisation very easily. It stalked through my love of mythology, crossed easily into my admiration of classic works of fantasy and even sent tendrils of new growth into the my knowledge of the realms of magic, paganism, shamanism and the inter-personal psychology of the subconscious mind. As I read it, I could feel my own perceptions of these things being tinkered with in a way that would take some time after completing the novel to unravel and come to terms with. In other words, the book was a true life experience and not just a work of entertainment.

The Times carries on the story:

… in 1984 Mythago Wood was published. The premise of this fantasy is that time and space are different at the heart of this ancient wood, and those able to penetrate it encounter beings from the collective unconscious, at first recognisable figures such as King Arthur or Robin Hood, but eventually more primal beings, monsters from the earliest dreams of stone age people. These are “mythagos”, or living myth-images.

Although he had no intention of writing a sequel, Holdstock returned to Ryhope Wood a few years later in Lavondyss, in part a magical, female coming-of-age story, much darker and more disturbing than the first book, and thought by many to be an even greater achievement. Avilion, published this year, was a direct sequel to Mythago Wood, following the fates of its main characters, and the adventures of their children.

In addition to the five books that make up the Mythago cycle (“the sequence as a whole is a central contribution to late 20th-century fantasy” according to the Encyclopedia of Fantasy), Holdstock wrote three volumes of the Merlin Codex: Celtika, The Iron Grail and The Broken Kings, an adventurous reimagining of the Matter of Britain combined with Ancient Greek legends, bringing Merlin together with Jason and Medea. The Ragthorn, a novella written in collaboration with Garry Kilworth, created an entire imaginary mythos around a thorn tree and won both the British Science Fiction Award and the World Fantasy Award in 1992.

The best thing that I think I can do to honour this man and the work that he has accomplished is leave you with an introduction to each of these amazing books and my firm recommendation to read them. Travel well, Robert!

Mythago Wood

Pic: Robert Holdstock Website

Deep within the wildwood lies a place of myth and mystery, from which few return, and none remain unchanged. Ryhope Wood may look like a three-mile-square fenced-in wood in rural Herefordshire on the outside, but inside, it is a primeval, intricate labyrinth of trees, impossibly huge, unforgettable … and stronger than time itself. Stephen Huxley has already lost his father to the mysteries of Ryhope Wood. On his return from the Second World War, he finds his brother, Christopher, is also in thrall to the mysterious wood, wherein lies a realm where mythic archetypes grow flesh and blood, where love and beauty haunt your dreams, and in promises of freedom lies the sanctuary of insanity.

Lavondyss

The unique setting of Mythago Wood is a tract of ancient English woodland, in which mythological people and creatures from the human collective unconscious still live and interact. Mythago Wood followed the adventures of a modern young man, Harry Keeton, as he discovered and became enthralled by its mystic power. Now, in Lavondyss, young Tallis Keeton, Harry’s sister, grows up possessed by the magical allure of Mythago Wood. Believing that Harry is lost somewhere inside, Tallis becomes adept at mysterious rituals that allow her to witness events in the mythic past and future. Still not finding Harry, Tallis at last begins a quest to rescue her brother that leads her to Lavondyss, the place that is the source of all myths at the centre of Mythago Wood. The rich, mysterious environment of the wood — which, like the human mind, is larger on the inside than on the outside — opens for her, and for us.

Pic: Robert Holdstock Website

The Bone Forest

Pic: Robert Holdstock Website

In the novella ‘The Bone Forest’ which forms the centrepiece of this outstanding collection, Holdstock goes back to the events preceding Mythago Wood. It is 1935, and two scientists, George Huxley and Edward Wynne-Jones, are attempting to map the wood and analyse the curious manifestations which they have christened ‘mythagos’. At the same time, Huxley’s obsession with his work threatens to alienate him from his family, and in particular his son Steven. The collection contains the following short stories: The Bone Forest Thorn The Shapechanger The Boy who Jumped the Rapids Time of the Tree Magic Man Scarrowfell The Time Beyond Age

The Hollowing

Simon Bradley, a highly imaginative child, brain-damaged after a bizarre attack, vanishes one day from his home. Months later a body is found on the edge of Ryhope Wood. The wood shields a heart of primeval forest wherein live phantoms and strange creatures – mythagos – those shades generated over time by our dreams and nightmares. Alex has in fact been absorbed by the wood, drawn into its green heart – through a ‘hollowing’. There his dreams will continue to populate the wood with its mythagos. But like Alex, they too are damanged: the great heroes he conjures are wrped, incomplete and dangerous. Savage and lost, they are compelled to seek their creator. The havoc they wrek threatens those who search for Alex, including his father, Richard.

Pic: Robert Holdstock Website

In the end, it will threaten the very existence of the wood itself and of its natural mythagos. Richard must quest repeatedly through Ryhope’s hollowings in an attempt to bring his son to safety and quiet the monsters Alex has created.

There his dreams continue to populate the wood with “mythagos”, warped, dangerous hero figures, threatening all those who come in search of the boy.

Merlin’s Wood

Pic: Robert Holdstock Website

In those days Broceliande was a terrible place, an ancient gloomy forest growing over misty dells, forgotten stones, a place of hidden lakes and strangling thickets. Though the true heart of Broceliande could never be found, the stink of its corruption oozed from the edgewood, shedding ghosts like autumn leaves. This was the forest of legend, where Merlin had come to dream his magic and the enchantress Vivien had come to beguile that magic from him. Martin and Rebecca have long since fled the forest, but when they are forced to return years later for their mother’s funeral, they are at once ensnared in the forest’s net of enchantment, an evil that has held the local villages in a root-strong grip. And when Rebecca gives birth to Daniel, a beautiful child who is deaf, dumb and blind, she finds herself sucked into a twilight world where she can see only strange mysterious shadows.

The 2009 Gollancz edition of Merlin’s Wood, also contains the following short stories:

• Scarrowfell
• Thorn
• Earth and Stone
• The Bone Forest

Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn

Several years ago, Christian Huxley’s father, George, obsessively documented the strange phenomena emanating from Ryhope Wood at the edge of their property. He watched the ancient heroes emerge, shouting both incomprehensible warnings and unmistakable invitations. Recklessly, George followed them into the mysterious sylvan shadows that changed him forever. Christian himself was not untouched by these living dreams. A childhood encounter with a phantom from another time draws him to the Wood as an adult. Deep in Ryhope, Christian uncovers the lie that permeates his worst nightmares. And like his father, he will be consumed with the mythagoes of Ryhope, especially a young Celtic warrior called Guiwenneth. She is the key to the mystery of the universe, an ancient heroine caught in a timeless tale of bravery and sacrifice.

Pic: Robert Holdstock Website

Now, together with a band of crusaders from a world long gone, Christian and Guiwenneth become part of the unfolding stories both remembered and forgotten. They meet sorcerers in battle and giants who can travel miles in one step. And they discover the meaning of the two gates, Ivory and Horn — one the lie, the other the truth.

Avilion

Pic: Robert Holdstock Website

At the heart of Ryhope Wood, Steven and the mythago Guiwenneth live in the ruins of a Roman villa close to a haunted fortress from the Iron Age, from which Guiwenneth’s myth arose. She is comfortable here, almost tied to the place, and Steven has long since abandoned all thought of returning to his own world. They have animals, protection and crops. They also have two children, a combination of human and mythago. Jack is like his father, an active boy keen to know all about the outer world’; Yssobel takes after her mother, even to her long auburn hair. But this idyll cannot last. The hunters who protected Guiwenneth as a child have come to warn her she is in danger. Yssobel is dreaming increasingly of her Uncle Christian, Steven’s brother, who disappeared into Lavondyss, and Jack wants to see ‘the outer world’ more than anything. Events are about to overtake them.

The Mythago Cycle – Volume 1

Ryhope Wood is three square miles of Herefordshire woodland which is, once inside, much, much more: a labyrinth which spreads over space and time, wherein live all the creatures and configurations – the mythagos – of ancient legend. This great primal forest is fascinating and terrible, steeped in myth and mystery, and no one who passes into it comes out unchanged – if they come out at all. Ryhope Wood is quite unlike anything anyone could ever have foreseen, beyond reality, beyond imagination. The Ryhope Wood Omnibus contains two novels: In Mythago Wood, Stephen Huxley has already lost his father to Ryhope Wood; he returns from war to find his brother Christian has followed the family obsession. Lavondyss finds young Tallis Keeton adventuring into the very heart of the realm.

Pic: Robert Holdstock Website

The Mythago Cycle – Volume 2

Pic: Robert Holdstock Website

Ryhope Wood holds ancient secrets and memories from legend and history, both real and imagined, that take on physical form. Known as mythagos, they are unpredictable and dangerous. Ryhope Wood is ancient, sentient, and it has its own agenda: it calls to those who have an aptitude for creating mythagos to constantly refresh itself. And it has its own formidable defences, to keep out those who would bring its mysteries out into the light of day. The Ryhope Wood Omnibus contains: In The Hollowing Alex Bradley is a damaged, visionary child, but he has no idea that the distorted creatures of his mind are alive inside nearby Ryhope Wood until he is summoned by the strange forest. Like so many others before him, he disappears into the green depths, but the frightened child’s vivid fantasies are so powerful that the forest itself starts changing.

Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn follows the adventures of Christian Huxley. As a boy he watched his father’s obsession with Ryhope Wood change to madness. He witnessed his mother’s suicide after a horde of questing warriors broke out of the wood and into their home. Now a young man back from the Second World War, he is drawn into the wood, where a series of dangerous quests, a heart-breaking love affair and the most difficult decision of his life lead him to the Gates of Ivory and Horn, the gates of truth and lie.

I’ll leave the final words to the wonderful maintainer of the Robert Holdstock website that has been so helpful in creating this tribute.

Rob was one of the best fantasy writers of his generation, and a man with a huge appetite for life. There was nothing he liked better than the company of good friends, a cracking meal, drink and laughter.  His departure at only 61 years old is a tremendous loss.

He will be greatly missed.

Rest in peace, Mr Holdstock.

Dublin, Ireland, 27th June, 2008. Last summer two Galway archaeologists proposed a theory which made worldwide headlines. They suggested that one of the most common archaeological monuments in the Irish landscape may have been used for brewing a Bronze Age Beer. They will demonstrate and discuss their experiments and research (and distribute tasters of the brew) into the enigmatic site that is the fulacht fiadh at the World Archaeological Congress Fringe’ at UCD on Thursday 3rd and Friday 4th July.

Billy Quinn and Declan Moore, two archaeologists with Moore Archaeological & Environmental Services (Moore Group) in Galway, believe that an extensive brewing tradition existed in Ireland as far back as 2500 BC. These ubiquitous monuments, which are visible in the landscape as small, horseshoe-shaped grass-covered mounds, have been conventionally thought of by archaeologists as ancient cooking spots, saunas or industrial sites. However, Quinn and Moore believe that they may have also been used as breweries.

According to Quinn ‘the tradition of brewing in Ireland has a long history, we think that the fulacht may have been used as a kitchen sink, for cooking, dying, many uses, but that a primary use was the brewing of ale.’ The two set out to investigate their theory in a journey which took them across Europe in search of further evidence.

To prove their theory, Quinn & Moore set out to recreate the process. They used an old wooden trough filled with water and added heated stones. After achieving an optimum temperature of 60-70°C they began to add milled barley and after approx 45 minutes simply baled the final product into fermentation vessels. They added natural wild flavourings (taking care to avoid anything toxic or hallucinogenic) and then added yeast after cooling the vessels in a bath of cold water for several hours.

According to Moore ‘including the leftover liquid we could easily have produced up to 300 litres of this most basic ale’. Through their experiments, they discovered that the process of brewing ale in a fulacht using hot rock technology is a simple process. To produce the ale took only a few hours, followed by a few-days wait to allow for fermentation.

Quinn and Moore point out that although their theory is based solely on circumstantial and experimental evidence, they believe that, although probably multifunctional in nature, a primary use of the fulacht fiadh was for brewing beer.
For additional information on ancient Irish beer, contact Declan or Billy or visit www.mooregroup.ie/beer/index.html or Moore Group’s blog at mooregroup.wordpress.com/. A selection of photographs can be viewed at www.mooregroup.ie/beer/gallery/index.html. Larger versions can be provided on request.

[Source] 

Pic: Chris Campbell

Today is Christmas Day and we here at the Celtic Myth Podshow would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and an even Happier New Year! As we have been studying the Irish Myths I though you guys might be interested in some old folk traditions that are followed by the Irish at Christmas time. I found these in an Irish newsletter coming from the Information about Ireland site. Ireland, like most countries, has a number of Christmas traditions that are all of its own. Many of these customs have their root in the time when the Gaelic culture and religion of the country were being suppressed and it is perhaps because of this they have survived into modern times.

The Candle in the Window

The placing of a lighted candle in the window of a house on Christmas eve is still practised today. It has a number of purposes but primarily it was a symbol of welcome to Mary and Joseph as they travelled looking for shelter.

The candle also indicated a safe place for priests to perform mass as, during Penal Times this was not allowed.

A further element of the tradition is that the candle should be lit by the youngest member of the household and only be extinguished by a girl bearing the name ‘Mary’.

The Laden Table

After evening meal on Christmas eve the kitchen table was again set and on it were placed a loaf of bread filled with caraway seeds and raisins, a pitcher of milk and a large lit candle. The door to the house was left unlatched so that Mary and Joseph, or any andering traveller, could avail of the welcome.

The Wren Procession

During Penal Times there was once a plot in a village against the local soldiers. They were surrounded and were about to be ambushed when a group of wrens pecked on their drums and awakened the soldiers. The plot failed and the wren became known as ‘The Devil’s bird’.

On St. Stephens day a procession takes place where a pole with a holly bush is carried from house to house and families dress up in old clothes and with blackened faces.In olden times an actual wren would be killed and placed on top of the pole.

This custom has to a large degree disappeared but the tradition of visiting from house to house on St. Stephens Day has survived and is very much part of Christmas.

Decorations

The placing of a ring of Holly on doors originated in Ireland as Holly was one of the main plants that flourished at Christmas time and which gave the poor ample means with which to decorate their dwellings.

All decorations are traditionally taken down on Little Christmas (January 6th.) and it is considered to be bad luck to take them down
beforehand.

and lastly….

The Traditional Gaelic Christmas Greeting

The Gaelic greeting for ‘Merry Christmas’ is:

‘Nollaig Shona Duit’

…….which is pronounced as ‘null-ig hun-a dwit’.

(C) Copyright http://www.ireland-information.com

Pic: Nat Geo

Natiopnal Geographic tells us that prehistoric cattle remains found close to Stonehenge suggest that partying pilgrims brought the animals from afar, scientists report. The remains support a theory that the megalithic monument near Salisbury, in southern England, drew ancient peoples from distant regions to celebrate important feast ceremonies. And the feasts, it seems, were movable. Cattle slaughtered during ritual festivities at the site may have come from as far away as Wales, Jane Evans of the United Kingdom’s Natural Environment Research Council announced this week at the British Association Festival of Science in Liverpool.

The discovery is based on 4,500-year-old cattle teeth and bones recently unearthed at a late Stone Age village at Durrington Walls, less than two miles (three kilometers) from the famous stone circle.

We are seeing physical evidence of the movement of populations into the [Stonehenge] area for the feasting.

said Evans, a member of the research team.

Read the full story at Nat Geo

Originally posted 2008-09-25 09:14:32. Republished by Blog Post Promoter