Pagan holidays: Litha … On summer solstice celebrations, and the dangerous similarities between modern paganism and evangelical Christianity

Great Britain, Journal, Pagans, Heathens and Witchcraft

On the wheel of the year listing pagan holidays, Litha is perhaps the most problematic.

This hit home to me when I read a blog post recently, from someone who was going to Stonehenge on Midsummer’s morning, to celebrate Litha in the manner of their celtic ancestors. Bloggers aren’t known for accuracy, but what really stuck in my craw was reading today on the CNN news site, that Stonehenge was built – possibly – by the Druids. This is of course, all bullshit.

These are all common beliefs about pagan holidays, Litha being no exception. But the facts show that none of that is true, and so I’m reminded of another religious group who believe in myths about their ancient gods, and ignore science and the facts … fundamental Christianity. A group which pagans as a rule, do their best to avoid similarities.

As one of the pagan holidays, Litha has a problem with Stonehenge

To begin with, Stonehenge wasn’t built by the Celts, nor is there any evidence that they worshipped here. Litha wasn’t the name of the Midsummer celebration, it’s a Saxon term name of the month describing the last half of June and the first half of July, and not in use till thousands of years after Stonehenge was abandoned. Finally, there is no evidence that I know of that points to a Midsummer celebration at Stonehenge.

If you take it as fact that Stonehenge was built to align with the Midsummer solstice – and even that has more than reasonable doubt – it certainly wasn’t a celebration. That took place at Durrington Walls, a couple miles away on the summer solstice. If there was anything going on at its more famous neighbor, it was likely a highly codified ritual, or to use a modern phrase, organized religion. It certainly bore no resemblance to what takes place at Stonehenge on Midsummer’s morning.

There is plenty of archaeological evidence to point to celebrations on Midsummer, or if you choose the pagan holidays Litha, and others, at Durrington Walls and other ancient sites. Bronze and iron age revelers weren’t particularly tidy, so if there was a celebration at Stonehenge it must have been a solemn affair. Totally unlike the anything goes celebration at Stonehenge today. If the ancients witnessed what goes on there today, they’d likely see it as sacrilege.

Winter Solstice at Stonehenge, Pagan Holidays Litha — Stonehenge is actually aligned for the winter solstice, rather than the summer solstice. There is a yearly sunrise celebration at the winter sunrise, but ironically, the winter solstice alignment is for sunset, rather than sunrise.

The celestial celebrations at Stonehenge

The current theory about Stonehenge has the important alignment taking place at the winter solstice. Great you might say, you’ll show up at sunrise on that morning instead. While it’s open on the morning of the winter solstice to anyone who wishes to visit, the problem with that is that the alignment is at sunset the night before. Those thousands of dedicated pagans are showing up about twelve hours too late to miss the crucial moment their ancestors might have designed it for.

Stonehenge was started about 3,500 B.C. It was completed in phases, the last being about 1,500 years later, or about 1,600 BC. Now keep in mind, these people had no written language. In fact the people who started Stonehenge aren’t the same people who completed it. And none of them wrote down what they were doing. There is no evidence that a thousand years after it was begun, the people finishing the job had any clue about what those who started it were trying to accomplish.

And so it’s impossible to say with any degree of certainty that what you might do there had any resemblance to what it was designed to be for. And certainly not in a crowd of ten thousand thousand people.

We do know it served as a cremation graveyard, as did many of the ancient sites of Britain, Ireland and the rest of the world for that matter. And it’s surrounded by other monuments to the dead, and countless undiscovered burials. When the ancient Britons were building Stonehenge for their dead, the Egyptians were building the pyramids for theirs.

Woodhenge at Cahokia Mounds, Pagan Holidays Litha — The Woodhenge at Cahokia Mounds, near St. Louis. Woodhenges were also found in North America, similar to the one found at Durrington Walls near Stonehenge. The fact that the celestial observations attributed to Stonehenge could be done with much less effort, means that the main purpose of Stonehenge must have been something more important than determining the day of the summer or winter solstice. After all, the ancients would have had the ability to determine that simply by watching the path of the sun in the sky.

Pagan Holidays: Litha, and the problem with the Celts

The Celts reached Britain after Stonehenge was finished, and the Celtic culture which gave rise to Druids didn’t rise up till 300 BC, more than three thousand years after Stonehenge was begun.

Did the Druids use Stonehenge, as they found it? It’s possible, but there are no records of it, and more tellingly no archaeological record of it. Besides, Druids preferred the grove and the highlands to the open plain.

Also, Midsummer isn’t a Celtic holiday, and until the twentieth century, in Britain it wasn’t even considered a pagan holiday.

Was there a universal ancient pagan religion?

There was no ancient religion adhered to en masse in the British isles. There was no pagan religion standing opposed to encroaching Christians. Instead you had many religions based on an individual community’s needs, changeable at particular times, worshipping gods which we might not even recognize as gods today. When we find evidence of commonly recognized gods in ancient Britain, they tend to be northern European, not celtic.

In that, modern paganism does perhaps get it right. Modern paganism allows anyone to create their own religion. Just add incantations, the name of your favorite god and water. Shake well.

And in the process, neopaganism falls into the same trap as evangelical Christianity.

As religious fervor spread throughout Britain and the United States in the 18th and 19th century, the reins that tried to hold Christian beliefs in place started to slip. By the end of the 19th century, personal charisma overtook Biblical knowledge or insight, resulting in a religion strong on faith, but lacking in a firm foundation.

A person with enough charisma can spread an opinion until a large group of people accept it as a belief.

And so we believe the place to be to worship in the manner of our Celtic ancestors is Stonehenge, not because the historical evidence gives it any credit. But because popular writers write it, and enough people choose to believe it.

Wicca and Litha, and how the wheel of the year came to be

Then there’s paganism’s witchy relative, Wicca. The Wheel of the Year and pagan holidays, Litha specifically came in large part from Wicca’s founder, Gerald Gardner. He in turn was expanding on the work of Margaret Murray, then renowned for her book The Witch-Cult in Western Europe.

Murray was one of the leading Egyptologists, among other things, but unfortunately, she wasn’t well schooled on European witches or the witch trials, transcripts of which she used extensively in creating her theory.

Her concept involved a branch of witchcraft which had gone pretty much unchanged and undetected throughout the centuries, and that a careful reading of the transcripts of the witch trials made it possible to understand their belief system. She listed the days sacred to witchcraft, based on an Irish king from the 10th century who wrote about the four Druidic fire festivals. These were held in February, May, August and November. Of those, May eve or Walpurgis, known in Britain as Roodmas, and All Hallow’s Eve were the two main ones, based on the activity of herdsmen, rather than agricultural.

Which is ironic considering the large number of vegetarians celebrating a way of life where survival, and sacred days depended on eating meat.

Murray might have known her shit when it came to Egypt, but she was out of her depth when it came to the history of her own country. Though most historians disagreed with her book, they had enough respect for her work in Egypt and other subjects, that they held their fire for the most part. It was only after her death that they tore her theory to shreds and by then her story of a surviving witch cult had stuck.

Gerald Gardner expanded on that notion, making the claim that he had met up with this cult which led to his part in the Bricket Wood coven. According to Wiccan legend, the current wheel of the year and the pagan holiday Litha came into being as a compromise between Gardner and Ross Nichols, head of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids. Their goal was to create a codified system of sabbats, and in the process increase the number of celebrations which made the new religions more sociable and, well, fun. In short, they were looking to create a more social spiritual path, and in so doing, fudging the facts, dispensing of the ancient knowledge that didn’t fit their scheme.

The current naming of the holidays occurred around 1974, and I’m sorry, but I have a problem with any religion whose official names of sacred days is younger than myself.

Traditional celebrations of pagan holidays, Litha and others

Are there any ancient traditions associated with the pagan holiday Litha? In parts of Europe there are fire celebrations on Midsummer, but it should be noted, even when evidence exists that these occurred in pagan times, it wasn’t a celebration of the witch. Instead if there were witches involved, the fire was meant to keep them away, not something for them to join in on.

In Britain these can’t be definitively placed before the 13th century, and it’s entirely possible they are based on Christian tradition, rather than pagan custom. Certainly it wasn’t handed down from the builders of Stonehenge. If the Celts and Druids worshipped at Stonehenge, they were simply doing what Pagans accuse, somewhat derisively, what Christians do, which is making religious sites of those who came before them their own.

Knowlton circles — The Norman church inside the henge at Knowlton, Dorset. Christianizing pagan sites is one of the practices pagans still hold against Christianity, but if there had been Druids worshipping at Stonehenge, or even the modern pagan celebrations held there, a similar accusation applies to them as well. In reality, this could also be said of those who modified Stonehenge in the latter phases, including the adding of the surviving standing stones.

Why does all this matter to the pagan community?

As in the case of the evangelical Christian who follows a leader based on charisma, (or something that just feels right), a lot of pagans accept what they’re told in a book or lecture as fact, and there are a lot of charlatans out there. As the Bible says, beware false prophets.

Margaret Murray’s theory of an existing witchcraft cult has been thoroughly debunked. Gerald Gardner drew on her work, and others in a way that created a system not based on ancient truths, but at best, an attempt to create a new religion, familiar but more palatable to modern tastes. There also those who make the case, and not without evidence, that Gardner was also driven by human ambition, ego and quite possibly, the desire for fame and wealth. He was perhaps one of the first wealthy lay ministers who founded his own congregation, after all.

Those who have come afterwards, whose thoughts shape modern paganism almost always have a commercial element. Wicca and modern paganism are two of the first religions whose evangelical needs have from the beginning, been for profit. It can easily be argued that most who become involved do so not from other believers, but from purchasing a book.

So how to celebrate the pagan holidays Litha and others?

How do you adhere to the old ways when the old ways were never written down and impossible now to ascertain?

Paganism is indeed a nature religion. But it wasn’t practiced in ancient times by people heading to the countryside eight times a year. It was practiced by people who lived in a way where the line between nature and civilization was incredibly thin. Choices we face today, like choosing to be a vegetarian wasn’t a moral decision, it was life and death. These were a people who regularly practiced animal sacrifice, and the occasional human as well. The gods they worshipped demanded these things, and who is to say that when you call the name of those gods now, they don’t demand the same?

Yes, the ancient gatherings were community gatherings. But each member of the community had a job to do. If they failed in theirs, the whole community could collapse. The weak were a drain on the whole. There can be no doubt it was a brutal way of life, so far removed from the free spirited celebrations at Stonehenge as to be unrecognizable.

These people weren’t just remembering their ancestors, they were bringing them out of their grave and celebrating right beside their remains.

A lot pagans fall into the category of “spiritual but not religious.” But they idealize ancient ways where the punishment for not believing was either death or being ostracized and pushed outside of the community, in a time and place where that quite often meant death as well. Our clear cut moral codes, liberal or conservative differ greatly from their beliefs, and it’s hard to see how you can reconcile the two.

There is a great body of evidence that the Celt not only condoned homosexuality, but promoted it as a preferred way of life. Which should resonate with the LGBTQ community. Except to accept that part of their society means also accepting the concept that slavery, as well as human sacrifice is acceptable as well, just as accepting the good of Christianity also means accepting those passages of the Bible which we find abhorrent today.

That was the crux of the ancient pagans. They believed, and worshipped however they needed at the moment to survive. Because to them nature wasn’t a benevolent mother goddess, or randy horned god. Nature was certain death if you were exposed to it without means of survival. And you didn’t just pray for a bountiful crop, but also the death of your enemies.

To glean the good from a culture and ignore the evil is to yearn for a golden age which never existed, and that urge is as old as history.

One of the pagan goddesses we know was worshipped in Britain was Minerva, here shown in a gold mask from the Roman occupation, found in Bath.

So what is a traditional Midsummer solstice celebration?

Midsummer is a traditional time for gatherings of the community, but it’s just as traditional in your own living room as at Stonehenge. The crops are in the ground and it’s a chance to take a short break and rest before the hard work of tending to the fields and the harvest takes place. It’s a time to pray that nature is kind this year, and brings enough sun, and enough rain – though not too much, to make it all work, and that the community survives.

Stonehenge was an amazing accomplishment, but in the end, we know almost nothing about it. Those who built it had disappeared long before Caesar set foot on the island. We’ll never know exactly why it was built, and how it worked. We don’t need to, but at the same time, we don’t need to invent meaning simply to have a place to have a pagan party twice a year.

Most of all, if you want to invent your own spiritual path, it’s your choice to do so. All too often, pagans are as derisive about Christians as the Bible thumpers are about the heathens. As the Bible says, and both sides should remember, if you live in glass houses ….

Pondering why landscapes become sacred and the mysteries of the Uffington White Horse, Uffington Castle and White Horse Hill

Britain, Great Britain, Haunted Hikes, Journal, Pagans, Heathens and Witchcraft

A month ago I stood atop a long barrow on White Horse Hill, with the grass covered chalk walls of Uffington Castle behind me, the galloping Uffington White Horse below me, and pondered a question for which there is no answer. What makes a landscape sacred?

Is sacred the right word? Mystic perhaps. What makes certain places cry out to be treated with reverence, to inspire the imagination of the soul?

If you keep a good step, you can probably walk from Uffington to Avebury and its stone circles and ancient wonders in a day or so. If you keep to the high ground, the tops of the ridges you’ll find yourself at times on the Ridgway, now a national trail, dedicated in 1972. But its origins are ancient.

Walking the Ridgway on Overton Hill, near Avebury. Tree covered barrows are visible to the right.

The idea is simple – by keeping to the tops of the ridges which stretch across southwest England, you avoid the mess and the hassle of walking below … no crossing rivers or heavy forests to get lost in and of course, the mud of Britain’s incessant rain. These highlands were above the tree line, often on a bed of chalk, which is more agreeable to walk on than mud.

You can see for miles, so it’s harder to be taken by surprise. They were taking these routes five thousand years ago, and for millennia they were some of the most important arteries flowing through the countryside.

Some of the earliest man made landmarks along the Ridgeway were the mounds, barrows and long barrows built for the dead. These weren’t wholesale cemeteries, but private tombs for a chosen few. It was in the shadow of these tombs and the Ridgway itself that Avebury, the largest of Britain’s stone circles was built.

Approaching the causeway enclosure on Windmill Hill near Avebury

It’s believed that the significance of Avebury as a location begins with the causeway enclosure atop Windmill Hill. Causeway enclosures typically consist of concentric ditches in a roughly circular pattern, with an earthwork bank. Crossing these circles are wide causeways, hence the name.

These are large ditches, and along with the chalk and soil, they mixed the bones of their ancestors, creating a connection between a people and the land.

Long barrows came along about the same time as causeway enclosures. West Kennet Long Barrow at Avebury coincides with the activities at Windmill Hill. Those activities involved the dead, indeed could have been in large part dedicated to their ancestors. It’s thought that the bones from West Kennet were brought to Windmill Hill for these celebrations.

West Kennet Long Barrow, Avebury World Heritage Site, Wiltshire, Great Britain

West Kennet Long Barrow was in use in one way or another for almost a thousand years. In that time, about 400 years after its construction, they started work on Stonehenge. Just after that they started building down below what is now Avebury circle and henge. It was an ambitious project and they kept coming up with new ideas, so it was over 600 years in construction.

But it all started with mounds and the dead.

+ + +

White Horse Hill

Wayland’s Smithy connected in legend with the Uffington White Horse nearby, Neolithic Chambered Long Barrow, 3400 BC, Ashbury, Oxfordshire. Great Britain. Todd Atteberry, artist

I’m walking the Ridgway between the neolithic long barrow known as Wayland’s Smithy, climbing up towards Uffington Castle. Wayland’s Smity is roughly the same age as West Kennet Long Barrow, also with a megalithic forecourt, and one of the earliest features of landscape around White Horse Hill.

The trail is fairly wide and well packed, likely more so than in ancient history. These neolithic highways were still in use through the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, through the dark ages, and the medieval era. Eventually, during the seventeenth century, banks were added, hedges were planted alongside much of their routes, enclosing the walkway to prevent livestock from getting into the fields.

In the earliest days, the lands below the paths would have been wooded, with the ridges rising above. Today I’m walking up towards one of those ridges, the highest spot in Oxfordshire. It’s raining, or misting perhaps. As you climb it’s hard to tell which because of the wind. Though not incredibly steep, it’s steep enough and I’m cursing that first cigarette that found its way between my lips. Coming from the flatlands of America, and being an idiot and smoking far too long, it’s a curse I utter frequently in Britain.

At the top of this ridge is Uffington Castle. When you hear the name you think stone, but Uffington Castle is a hillfort. HIllforts are typically found on the high ground, along the ridges which is why they’re frequently encountered along the Ridgway. These often starting coming about late in the Bronze Age or even the Iron Age. By this time the great complexes of Avebury and Stonehenge were abandoned.

At the beginning of the modern age, many of these locations were forgotten almost entirely.

A henge has nothing to do with stones. It’s an easy mistake for Americans because most, typically all of our knowledge of the word comes from Stonehenge. Aliens built it, yes?

The inside of Bratton Camp, a hillfort near Bratton, Wiltshire, also home to a somewhat later white horse. In the center a long barrow is visible

A henge is a circular walled enclosure, built up of dirt or chalk, with a ditch on the inside of the enclosure. It’s thought that the ditch being on the inside meant that it wasn’t constructed for defensive purposes. A defensive structure would be more effective with the ditch on the outside, which is what you find with hillforts. So it was that hillforts were believed to be defensive in nature, though over time archaeologist and sociologists have shown that in reality, some had little or no defensive purpose.

Uffington Castle began its life as a causeway, another sign on the ancient landscape. It’s not known whether this causeway was enclosed, or ran for some distance, perhaps to Wayland Smithy or beyond. Next to the causeway was a long barrow, with other smaller barrows in the vicinity.

This was in the Neolithic period, which predated the Bronze age. It’s impossible to know exactly what something like a causeway was intended to be used for. What we do know however, is that it took quite a few people, social organization and a good amount of free time to build these things. They didn’t come into existence on a lark.

Imagine a family or small tribe traveling the Ridgeway in the Neolithic period, who aren’t so far advanced from the hunter/gather stage, and have no qualms about taking over land others have already developed. They were bound to be humbled encountering a people who have built a structure that extends for miles. Uffington Castle’s white chalk walls could be seen atop the highlands by their builder’s enemies and was right along the Ridgway.

People would be more likely to want to join the community rather than rape, pillage and plunder. Perhaps in that way, the ancient landmarks were more defensive, in a more subtle way than is commonly believed. The best defense after all, is getting your enemies to become followers. Imagine how appealing having the kind of free time to build something like this would be to a people who are still struggling with day to day existence.

As is often the case, late in the bronze age it was decided to turn this causeway into a hillfort. And as so often the case, this was accomplished in stages.

It was about the time of the building of Uffington Castle, perhaps a bit before, that they had the idea to carve the horse into White Horse Hill.

The Uffington White Horse, visible along the top of the ridge to the left was never intended to be seen up close. Though there are a few land based locations to see the horse, it’s best viewed from above.

The Uffington White Horse
‘Before the gods that made the gods
Had seen their sunrise pass,
The White Horse of the White Horse Vale
Was cut out of the grass.
Before the gods that made the gods
Had drunk at dawn their fill,
The White Horse of the White Horse Vale
Was hoary on the hill.
Age beyond age on British land,
Aeons on aeons gone,
Was peace and war in western hills,
And the White Horse looked on.
For the White Horse knew England
When there was none to know.

The Ballad of the White Horse, from G.K. Chesterton’s ‘Vision of the King’

Britain is know for its hill figures, symbols cut into the highlands to be seen for miles. Cut into the grass exposing the chalk beneath, these symbols are as enigmatic as they are iconic. From the somewhat shocking Cerne Abbas Giant, to the Long Man of Wilmington, and the horses of Wiltshire and beyond, it’s easy to imagine that these have been in place since prehistory. The reality is most were created during recorded history with some notable exceptions.

One such exception is the White Horse of Uffington, the oldest of Britain’s hill figures. It’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,000 years old and the length of a football field. It can be seen clearly from 20 miles away, but it’s somewhat of a mystery, in that this figure seems to be less intended to be seen from the ground, but instead, skirting the top of the hillside, it best seen from above.

The White Horse of Westbury viewed from the top of Salisbury Plain. Like the Uffington White Horse, it’s built below a hillfort – Bratton Camp, and overlooks the same type of hill face as the Manger at Uffington. Perhaps the builders of the Westbury White Horse were struck by the similarities between the two locations?

Curious of course, as the people who built it had no way of seeing from above, best appreciated by the skylarks and buzzards circling overhead. To this day, nobody knows how these people could create this form, which can only truly be seen from miles away.

There are those that make the case that time and erosion have caused the horse to actually slip up the hill, and perhaps it was more visible at its creation. It’s certainly changed its appearance a bit. Aerial photography is supposed to show that it once bore more a resemblance to real horse than the stylized design we see now.

Of course there’s magic related to the White Horse. Stand in the eye and spin around three times as the clock turns while making a wish, and your wish will come true. Workers repairing the horse in the 1950s reported their foreman stood on a hill a quarter mile away to give suggestions, and was able to speak in a normal voice, which then carried along the hillside to the workers.

And at night, the White Horse and its foal come down from the hill and grazes in the Manger below.

Standing atop the barrow in my memory once more, I look down at the semi circular indention in the hillside below me. This is the Manger, a natural formation. On the western wing you have the Giant’s Stairs, terraces cut into the hillside that were the product of Ice Age shenanigans. Below me to my right is Dragon’s Hill, a natural formation but with a curiously flat top, famous in folklore, and might have been sculpted a bit by early man.

Standing atop the long barrow above the Uffington White Horse, overlooking The Manger, with the Giant’s Stairs to the left and Dragon Hill to the right, barely visible here but identifiable by its bald spot.

Once more I’m hit by the thought that I’m standing in a sacred place, and once more I’m reminded, it all started with the dead, the bones and the barrows.

This long barrow isn’t as elegant as Wayland’s Smithy, no sarsen stones along it sides, no megaliths guarding its entrance. Its only decorations now are the wild orchids that pop up occasionally on the grass at White Horse Hill, and the variety of butterflies which make their home there. It’s aligned northwest to southwest, is about 115 foot long and 30 foot wide, and it’s only about a foot tall. The ditches which ran along its side are long filled in, In the center is a depression from an excavation in 1857. During that trip into the mound, a cremation urn was found. All in all, about 46 skeletons were located, from various times throughout history.

After Uffington Castle was abandoned, the Romans seemed to have used it for a base. They also used the long barrow to bury their dead. Five of those burials had coins in their mouth, which dates them to late in the late Roman period. They filled the barrow with their dead, and an unknown amount of the ground around it as well. Many of the skeletons were found to be missing heads in later excavations, but it’s not known if those heads were taken in the previous dig.

There’s also evidence that the barrow was used during the Saxon period as well.

The ancient causeway seemed to terminate here at the long barrow, and it was here late in the late Bronze Age, sixth or seventh century BC, that the people of the area built the first phase of the hillfort, likely some time after the White Horse of Uffington was scoured into the hillside below.

That white horse is 360 foot long and stands 160 foot tall. It’s dug into the chalk of the hillside three foot deep, ten foot wide, and was probably picked out by wooden spades and antler picks. It was then filled in with chalk and rubble. Against the green of the hillside, visible for so many miles, it spoke out to anyone who could see it, “here are people.”

Beyond that, no one can say for sure what it means.

“Gerllaw tref Abinton y mae mynydd ac eilun march arno a gwyn ydiw. Ni thyf dim arno.” (Near to the town of Abinton there is a mountain with a figure of a stallion upon it and it is white. Nothing grows upon it.⁾Llyfr Coch Herbiest, The Red Book of Herbiest, 1375–1425

Some argue the Uffington White Horse marked the boundary, or at least the territory of a tribe, in particular the local Belgae tribe. Others point to the Dobunni, as the land below was a sort of no man’s land between their territory and Altrebates.

Its distinctive shape is similar to celtic coins which were in use prior to the Romans invading Britain. These coins were associated with Epona, a pre Christian goddess known in Celtic Britain as Rhiannon, connected to horses, and who represented fertility, healing and death.

Others connect it with sun worshippers and the belief that the sun was helped in its travels by a horse drawn chariot. It’s said that in midwinter the sun overtakes the White Horse of Uffington.

Dragon Hill, below the Uffington White Horse and steeped in folklore. Why there is a bald spot on top where grass will not grow is something of a mystery.

That it be dedicated to a sun god, dwelling above, or even Belenus who had a connection with horses, would make sense, as the best way to see the white horse is from the sky. So it’s hard to make the argument that it was created for a deity above, instead of those on the ground.

Others make the case that it’s not a horse at all, but a saber toothed cat, a dog or the most popular, a dragon.

On Dragon Hill below me, there’s a curious white patch on the flat surface of its flat top. It’s said that no grass grows there, and geologists agree, though can’t come up with a definitive answer for why.

For that we turn to folklore and Christians get in on the story. Dragon’s Hill is one of many sites in Britain which lay claim to where St. George had his famous duel with the dragon. It’s said that when he drove his sword into dragon’s breast, its blood spilling onto the ground bleached it white, and no grass will grow there ever again.

Another legend has it that Uther Pendragon died atop the hill fighting the Saxons,

But the best explanation for the bald patch is the high level of potash on top of the hill, where there is evidence that it was used quite often in the dim and distant past for ritual fires and sacrifices. Indeed, even into the Victorian era, pagans were using the hill for their ceremonies from the 17th to 19th centuries, culminating in 1857.

Uffington Castle

Behind me looms the banks of Uffington Castle. HIllforts are often imposing, even seen from a distance. There are less than a hundred of then across Great Britain, and are typically found on the southern part of the island. Like Uffington which started as a causeway, most had other uses before being converted into the basic designs we see now. Most were built in a 500 year period which ended around the end of the first century AD, which makes Uffington Castle one of the older hillforts.

The original Uffington Castle was a single circuit with entrances on the east and west side. This phase of construction was likely between 8-900 BC. It fell into disrepair somewhat rapidly, and was abandoned.

About four centuries later construction began again, with the ramparts being built up to a considerable height, and the ditch widened and deepened. The walls themselves would have been kept cleared of grass, and the white chalk would have been quite imposing and visible for miles. The inside of the walls were braced with timber and sarsen stone and the eastern entrance was blocked up.

There was also a wooden structure built about this time outside the walls, now only identifiable by post holes.

Archaeology can only do so much to identify what took place inside these enclosures. It was originally thought that hillforts were for defensive purposes, and that the insides would have been teeming with life. It’s true that some show signs of being used extensively. Trade was beginning to pick up as the agrarian lifestyle was forming communities. It was also at this time that skilled trades were becoming more common, metal working for instance during the Bronze and Iron ages, and in some cases hill forts were where these skilled laborers plied their trade, where commodities were brought to be bought and sold.

Others, such as Uffington Castle show very little signs of use, certainly very little occupational use. It’s now believed that these enclosures were used for rituals as well as celebrations.

Uffington Castle’s walls and ditch which are visible now were from a second rebuilding of the site in the Iron age. The Uffington White Horse is just to the right and below on the hillside.

I can’t help but wonder, given the relationship between the dead and their celebrations in the Neolithic period, how the memory was kept alive into the Bronze and Iron ages? Or did it spring up again after a period of absence? If so, that means the people of these later ages were able to identify the marks on the landscape as sacred. Whereas scholars from our own era mistook the later hillforts dedicated to ritual and celebrations, as defensive.

What crucial bit of visual knowledge did we lose, that leaves us unable to see the works of the past for what they were? The people of Bronze age Uffington were able to look at the signs on the earth and determine this was a holy place. When abandoned then rebuilt in the Iron age, the memory of this place was still intact, despite the fact that several generations had passed and there was no written record.

It was abandoned again in the middle Iron age and taken up by the Romans a century or so later. They made modifications which possibly included a temple. Others have pointed out that it could have been an open air temple on Dragon Hill. Regardless, the Romans were from a different culture altogether, but still recognized the sanctity of the place.

When the Saxons took over many generations later, they named the Wayland’s Smithy Long Barrow below Uffington Castle for one of their gods.

One piece of folklore about the Uffington White Horse is it flies to Wayland’s Smithy to be shod, a Neolithic Long Barrow named for a Saxon god.

Sometime between then and now, we lost the ability to read the signs.

Or was it lost? Pagans held rituals on Dragon Hill into the Victorian Era. Perhaps when it comes to identifying the sacred, or finding the purpose behind an ancient site whose purpose is long ago forgotten, these things are best done by non scholars, who might see the landscape with the right kind of vision.

Or perhaps folklore holds the keys to understanding, if we open our minds up enough to see it for what it is, storytelling with a grain of truth.

What of the tale that the horse flies across the sky to be reshod by the ancient god and ironsmith Wayland at his long barrow? Is this the Saxons identifying the horse as one who belongs in the sky, as an ancient belief in sun gods would indicate?

For who knows how long, people from the area gathered on White Horse Hill for a ritual known as the scouring of the horse. Within ten or fifteen years of neglect, the horse disappears. So every seven years the people would gather to clean and rechalk the figure. At times there were thousands of people participating in the event. They held fairs to go along with the scouring within the walls of Uffington Castle. The debris left from these later festivals bears a startling resemblance to the type of debris left after the ancient ceremonies.

The trappings of the ritual and the fair changed over time no doubt, but the concept likely has been there since the Uffington White Horse was first carved into the hill. When it was occupied by the Romans, the locals were still climbing the hill to keep the horse tidy.

Perhaps someday, some crackpot will look at a place like Uffington, Avebury, Stonehenge or countless other ancient mysteries and see the truth. Perhaps they already have, and we’re still waiting on the science necessary to prove it. Maybe it’s not archaeology that will finally solve these mysteries, but instead, visions.

And for that we can always be hopeful, for three thousand years after a people deemed the Uffington landscape sacred, it still inspires visions.

The hammer of the gods still ring out at Wayland’s Smithy, a long barrow chamber tomb nestled in a secluded grove in Oxfordshire

Britain, Great Britain, Haunted Hikes, historic and haunted travel-destinations, Journal, Pagans, Heathens and Witchcraft

Neolithic Chambered Long Barrow, 3400 BC, Ashbury, Oxfordshire. Great Britain. Todd Atteberry, artist

The chambered tombs and long barrows of Britain have long tickled the imagination, and perhaps none more so than Wayland’s Smithy. Perhaps it’s the stand of beech trees enclosing it which makes it feel more intimate, more hushed. Unlike West Kennet Long Barrow near Avebury, sitting exposed to the wind and the rain, high on a ridge, Wayland’s Smithy can feel at once comforting, or oppressive, depending on one’s mood and perhaps the weather.

I visited it on a soft day, light rain falling in mid April. The trees had yet to fill out their branches with leaves, and when we arrived there was a family having a picnic near the entrance, as well as some hikers taking a rest at the back. It was already a tense day, so perhaps my mood was colored by that. I’d seen photos and in those it looked quite inviting, beautiful even in its pastoral beauty. On this day however, it felt more like what it is.

A tomb.

Wayland’s Smithy has many connections to literature and folklore, stretching back to the earliest long poem in Old English and the Saxon invasion. Sir Walter Scott named the tomb where the blacksmith worked as Wayland Smiths’ forge in his novel Kenilworth. In the Old English Beowulf, the hero’s breastplate was forged by Wayland, or Weland. In the translation to Old English of Boethius, often attributed to King Alfred, it is said that

Who knows now the bones
Of the wise Weland
Under what barrow
They are concealed.

Job Cork, a shepherd from the nearby village of Uffington, known for taking the stories of the old ones and putting them to rhyme wrote in 1807,

If you along the Rudgeway go,
About a mile for aught I know,
There Wayland’s cave then you may see,
Surrounded by a group of trees.

They say that in this cave did dwell
A smith that was invisible;
At last he was found out, they say,
He blew up the place and vlod away.

To Devonshire then he did go,
Full of sorrow, grief and woe,
Never to return again;
So here I’ll add the shepherd’s name –

The idea that the ruins which confronted 19th century visitors to Wayland’s Smithy were caused by the destruction of the forge of a pagan god stretches back to the days before Christianity replaced pagan beliefs, as the story of Wayland the Smith dates at least to the tenth century.

The antiquarian John Aubrey, writing in Monumenta Britannica, about 1670, wrote about Wayland’s Smity, “about a mile [or less] from the Hill [White-Horse Hill] there are a great many large stones, which though very confused, must yet be laid there on purpose. Some of them are placed edgwise, but the rest are so disorderly, that one would imagine, they were tumbled out of a cart.”

Sarsen stones and dry stone walls at the entrance to Wayland’s Smithy

Wayland’s Smithy is a Neolithic long barrow and chamber tomb, nestled inside a grove of beech trees, near Whitehorse Hill in Oxfordshire, not far from the village of Ashbury. It sits just off the Ridgway, one of the ancient tracks of Neolithic Britain, upon which people used to move throughout the countryside. It sits just downhill from the Iron Age Uffington Castle, a breathtakingly situated earthwork hillfort, and the more famous Uffington White Horse.

Wayland’s Smithy was constructed in two phases, a short time apart, the first being built between 3590 and 3555 BC. Britain, perhaps following the lead of their continental counterparts was moving at the time from hunter gatherers to farmers, and a more pastoral lifestyle somehow prodded the Neolithic people to construct impressive houses for their dead.

Much has been made about astronomical alignments in the construction of prehistoric British monuments. The long barrow of Wayland’s Smithy runs north and south, with two burial chambers flanking the main passage, aligned east and west. Technically, it’s a bit off center, which might have had some relevance, as the second phase of construction kept the original alignment.

The first phase of construction of Wayland’s Smithy was built on slabs of sarsen stones, and consisted of a narrow, lidded wooden box, in which the remains were placed. At either end were two tree trunks, split in two and placed upright, which have been interpreted as the supports for a roof like structure over the box containing the cadavers. Nearby, post holes provide evidence for a platform which might have been used to expose the bodies to the elements, quickening decomposition and reducing them to bones prior to burial. Fourteen sets of remains were found, eleven men, two women and a child, and some at least appeared to have been buried intact, with at least tendons and cartilage holding the bones together.

One body was found to be interred in a crouching position. The others were stacked like a cord of wood, though as noted, quite likely devoid of flesh and reduced to bones. Three of the bodies might indicate death in combat, though it’s debated whether the arrowheads were lodged first in the body and exposed by decomposition, or added later as previously thought, as grave offerings. Two of the bodies appeared to have been partially eaten by scavengers prior to burial, also pointing to the possibility of death in battle.

The life span of this first phase of Wayland’s Smithy appears to have been only about fifteen years, something within the time frame of 3590-3550 BC. It’s also possible, if not especially likely, that it was used for as short a time as a single year. Afterwards, an oval mound was built over the complex consisting of chalk extracted from ditches dug on either side, completely burying it.

The original construction of Wayland’s Smithy lies buries about halfway down the length of the long barrow.

“It was one of those long barrows, which we meet with occasionally, having a kistvaen of stones within it, to protect the place of interment. Four large stones of a superior size and height to the rest, were placed before the entrance to the adit, two on each side ; these now lie prostrate on the ground : one of these measures ten and another eleven feet in height ; they are rude and unhewn, like those at Abury. A line of stones, though of much smaller proportions, encircled the head of the barrow, of which I noticed four standing in their original position ; the corresponding four on the opposite side have been displaced. The stones which formed the adit or avenue still remain, as well as the large incumbent stone which covered the kistvaen, and which measures ten feet by nine. “

Sir Richard Colt Hoare, Ancient Wilts.,1821

About a half century later, about 3460 and 3400 BC, the people living in the vicinity of Wayland’s Smithy decided to revisit what came before, and built a larger, more elaborate structure over the top of the previous. What they built was a type of construction long known to this part of the country, and indeed on the way out, as Wayland’s Smithy is one of the last, and best preserved long barrow chamber tombs in Britain.

The long barrow was wedge shaped, a hundred and eighty feet long, forty eight feet wide at the front and twenty feet wide at the rear. It was built up with chalk to a height of ten feet and contained a main passage, with side chambers forming a prehistoric crucifix on the inside. The main passage was twenty two feet long and six foot high inside, with the side chambers being four and a half feet high. Two long ditches, fifteen foot wide and six foot deep flanked the sides, with sarsens set up as curbstones along the edges of the barrow. Split tree trunks were set upright along the ditches like totem poles from the native Americans.

But it’s the facade of Wayland’s Smithy that attracts attention. The front of the barrow had a dry stone retaining wall, and in front that stood six sarsen stones, about ten foot high. Today there are only four remaining, but the effect is still staggering.

The remains found in the second phase of building were more scattered and nearly impossible to learn much from. They found the skeletons of seven adults and a single child. Though it’s hard to say for sure if it was intentional, or just a freak coincidence, three leaf shaped arrows were found, each touching the pelvis bone of different bodies.

Dating of the remains found that the second phase of Wayland’s Smithy only lasted about a hundred years, before it was sealed off.

Though often thought to be intentional, the cause of the holes sometimes found in sarsen stones are in fact the result of geological forces, and were likely chosen by the builders for this unique characteristic. No one knows why.

Curiously, two Iron Age pieces of metal were found in the barrow, perhaps unfinished swords, or maybe bars used for currency. Either way, iron working become forever connected to the site in folk legends.

The first written mention of Wayland’s Smithy occurs in a charter dating from 955 AD, during the reign of the Saxon King Edred with refers to it as Weland’s Smithy.

The name seems to refer to a Saxon god, Wayland or Wolund, who was a smith, one who worked in metal. The Saxons who inhabited the area had no clue the site was already four thousand years old when they dedicated it to their own god.

Wayland, or Wolund wasn’t a particularly nice character. According to an old Norse poem,

He struck off the heads of those stalwart boys,
Under soot-blackened bellows their bodies hid,
From both their skulls he scraped the hair
And set them in silver as a sight for Nidud,
Of their eyes he fashioned excellent gems
For his dear neighbor, Nidud’s wife,
And out of the teeth which were in their mouths
He forged a brooch to bring Bodvild joy.

But in the folklore handed down to the recent past, Wayland actually proves to be quite helpful to the local inhabitants.

Francis Wise, an eighteenth century antiquarian composed a letter to one Doctor Mead in 1738, describing the folklore of Wayland’s Smithy. “At this place lived formerly an invisible Smith; and if a traveller’s Horse had lost a Shoe upon the road, he had no more to do, than to bring the Horse to this place, with a piece of money, and leaving both there for some little time, he might come again and find the money gone, but the Horse now shod. The stones standing upon the Rudge way as it is called; (which was the situation, that they chose for burial monuments) I suppose, gave occasion to the whole being called Wayland-Smith; which is the name it was always known by to the country people.

Sir Walter Scott used the folklore, name and setting in his novel Kenilworth, published in 1821. The character Richard Sludge speaks:

“But enough of that—here are we at Wayland Smith’s forge-door.”
“You jest, my little friend,” said Tressilian; “here is nothing but a bare moor, and that ring of stones, with a great one in the midst, like a Cornish barrow.”
“Ay, and that great flat stone in the midst, which lies across the top of these uprights,” said the boy, “is Wayland Smith’s counter, that you must tell down your money upon.”
“What do you mean by such folly?” said the traveller, beginning to be angry with the boy, and vexed with himself for having trusted such a hare-brained guide.
“Why,” said Dickie, with a grin, “you must tie your horse to that upright stone that has the ring in’t, and then you must whistle three times, and lay me down your silver groat on that other flat stone, walk out of the circle, sit down on the west side of that little thicket of bushes, and take heed you look neither to right nor to left for ten minutes, or so long as you shall hear the hammer clink, and whenever it ceases, say your prayers for the space you could tell a hundred—or count over a hundred, which will do as well—and then come into the circle; you will find your money gone and your horse shod.”

The young man with Sludge is dubious of his claims, and fears the loss of his money, and refuses to call to Wayland Smithy for service.

“Man or devil,” said Dickie, “I see that I must summon him for you;” and therewithal he whistled sharp and shrill, with an acuteness of sound that almost thrilled through Tressilian’s brain. “That is what I call whistling,” said he, after he had repeated the signal thrice; “and now to cover, to cover, or Whitefoot will not be shod this day.”

Tressilian, musing what the upshot of this mummery was to be, yet satisfied there was to be some serious result, by the confidence with which the boy had put himself in his power, suffered himself to be conducted to that side of the little thicket of gorse and brushwood which was farthest from the circle of stones, and there sat down; and as it occurred to him that, after all, this might be a trick for stealing his horse, he kept his hand on the boy’s collar, determined to make him hostage for its safety.

“Now, hush and listen,” said Dickie, in a low whisper; “you will soon hear the tack of a hammer that was never forged of earthly iron, for the stone it was made of was shot from the moon.” And in effect Tressilian did immediately hear the light stroke of a hammer, as when a farrier is at work. The singularity of such a sound, in so very lonely a place, made him involuntarily start; but looking at the boy, and discovering, by the arch malicious expression of his countenance, that the urchin saw and enjoyed his slight tremor, he became convinced that the whole was a concerted stratagem, and determined to know by whom, or for what purpose, the trick was played off.

Accordingly, he remained perfectly quiet all the time that the hammer continued to sound, being about the space usually employed in fixing a horse-shoe. But the instant the sound ceased, Tressilian, instead of interposing the space of time which his guide had required, started up with his sword in his hand, ran round the thicket, and confronted a man in a farrier’s leathern apron, but otherwise fantastically attired in a bear-skin dressed with the fur on, and a cap of the same, which almost hid the sooty and begrimed features of the wearer. “Come back, come back!” cried the boy to Tressilian, “or you will be torn to pieces; no man lives that looks on him.” In fact, the invisible smith (now fully visible) heaved up his hammer, and showed symptoms of doing battle.

View of the interior chambers of Wayland’s Smithy.

Of course, a remote, ancient burial chamber will be the source of ghost stories and sightings as well.

Children still reported hearing the sounds of hammering coming from Wayland’s Smithy, as recently as the nineteenth century. The Uffington White Horse was believed to leave his hillside on occasion to have new shoes at the long barrow.

A recent sighting spotted a figure on the track leading to Wayland’s Smithy, his feet and legs disappearing into mist. As the witness turned his head and then back to the mysterious figure, he found it had disappeared, vanished.

Feelings of being watched while at Wayland’s Smithy are common, as are oppressive feelings, weighing down upon visitors. Others, particularly those entering the chamber report a feeling of not being wanted in there.

Though the deity to whom the long barrow and burial chamber gives his name is long forgotten by most, people still remember to leave tokens for him, pushing coins into the cracks of they dry stone wall which lines the front of Wayland’s Smithy. The mystery of where those coins disappear to is easily solved however, as workers for The National Trust collect them and give them to local charities.

And in this way, the story of Wayland Smithy lives on, and the mysterious smith in the barrow still helps the locals to this day.

View a gallery of images of Wayland’s Smithy and Whitehorse Hill at Wytchery Art.

Folk horror from Wiltshire: The Blood Stone at Luccombe Spring, starving out the Vikings at Bratton Camp, the White Horse of Westbury and the nature of folklore

Britain, Europe, Great Britain, Haunted Hikes, historic and haunted travel-destinations, historic sites, Journal, The History Trekker

The Luccombe Valley below Salisbury Plain and Bratton Camp, just visible in the upper right. In the foreground are two of the four barrows in the valley, with one of the others being the site of the Bloodstone.

While wandering on Salisbury plain one day I came across a hidden valley and as I walked into it the air changed all around me. There were flashes and sparks of tragedy like nothing I’d ever experienced before. So I got home and googled the valley and found this …

“One of the smallest and most overlooked of these sites is the Blood Stone, situated in the center of a sheep infested valley between Westbury White Horse Hill and Picket Hill in Bratton, on the edge of Salisbury Plain.”

“The stone itself is about three feet across, two feet high and a dark, scabby red in colour. It’s said that the stone was one of those used by King Alfred’s men as a block upon which to behead Danish prisoners of war after the Battle of Ethendune of AD 878, which is how it is supposed to have got its particular shade. There are even paired indentations in the surface of the rock, which look uncannily like the marks left by a pair of front teeth.”

“There is archeological evidence to suggest that it really is an ancient execution site since a large pile of headless skeletons, dated to around that time, were excavated from the nearby watercress beds at the bottom of the valley in the 1970s. The skulls were found a half mile away, buried upside-down, apparently according to the Saxon tradition that if a soul escaped through the top of the head it could be thus trapped into heading straight down into the bowels of the Earth.”

“There were quite a few of these stones dotted around the valley up until the nineteenth century, but only one remains today. It is mostly visited now by villagers walking their dogs and in need of something to sit upon, and local children, who revel in local myths about the stone, (such as the idea that the Devil appears when you walk round it backwards thirteen times, reciting the Lord’s Prayer)”

I hadn’t seen the bloodstone in the long grass, and because I didn’t know it was there. Now I’ve seen it it’s clear it’s come out of a barrow right next to it, so I knew what it said in that article isn’t entirely true. Since then I’ve learned this is article was a small bit of fact and a lot of folklore. But there is evidence of Romano British human sacrifice at the spring there.

Or maybe it’s the name, the Bloodstone that sent the chill up my spine. The word already had meaning, because of the mineral of the same name.

Bloodstone, also known as as Heliotrope is a form of Chalcedony, dark green in color and spotted with red. The Aztecs used it for health, to control the flow of blood. European folk beliefs and mythology give it the power to make the sun turn red in the sky, as well as cause thunder and lightening. It was also thought to give one the ability to see into the future, or the past and to perceive things which weren’t visible to the eye.

Christians of the medieval era used Bloodstone as a basis for their carvings of the martyrs, as well as of the crucifixion, which led to the name Martyr Stone. Legends and folklore attribute the spots of red to a story where drops of Christ’s blood fell onto some Jasper which lie at the foot of the cross.

In India, Bloodstone is ground up and used as an aphrodisiac, and I can’t help but wonder what dark sex would spring up from the use of that.

It’s the nature of British history that various eras are stacked one atop the other, seeping from layer into the one below, making identification and understanding difficult at best.

Historians and archaeologists start by sticking to the facts, and try to build a story from there. Experiments and ideas have to be repeated to be of use in their conjecture. Folklore is the opposite. With folklore, something can happen in one place quite unexpected, and never occur anywhere else again.

For example, we know that Romans in Britain frequently buried their dead near roads. We also know that criminals and other outcasts were often buried away from the main settlements to show their place in society. We also know that executions were buried quickly and without ceremony, and are often found face down, with their hands behind their back.

Some attribute that to the belief that the soul goes the direction the body faces. So the ghosts of criminals and other miscreants will head into the ground rather than out of the grave. But that’s supposition. It could also be it’s a lot tidier carying a body which has had its throat cut face down rather than up.

The Romano-British discovery at the Bloodstone

In 1955, a skeleton was found near the Bloodstone, which sits through the woods from Luccombe Spring near Bratton, buried face down, its arms behind its back. It was dated to the Romano-British period, about 100AD.

Archaeologist have supposed that the Bloodstone was once a territorial marker, which could provide evidence that this person was executed, or deliberately sacrificed.

Investigated by Stella Maddock and Pamela Mahon, they wrote in “A Romano-British Prone Burial from Bratton, Wiltshire,” the location of the burial on a boundary hundred and parish – may be significant. Hundred boundaries may very tentatively have their origins in Romano-British territorial divisions. If Westbury was the centre of a Romano-British territorial division, it is possible that the extent of the later hundred followed its boundary, meaning the burial site was on a significant boundary in the Romano-British period. This might be a relevant factor in explaining the burials, suggesting the victims were criminals or outcasts, deliberately buried at the outer limits of a local territory.”

A keen eye will pick words from that selection – may, possible, might, suggesting – each defining the statement which they refer to not as fact, but as supposition. If a set of circumstances which have been properly defined happened for a certain reason in one place, a similar set of circumstances in another place may be be supposed to have happened in the same way.

That works in the world of science, but not in the world of people. There isn’t always a good or even cognizant reason people do what they do. Sometimes shit just happens, and that was as true in the era of Romano Britain as it is today.

In short, the archaeologist takes a limited set of facts and tries to expand on them using what they know from other places, other times. When we do that, we stop looking at the individual as a person, and instead we see then as a part of a group, and this poor unfortunate soul’s story will never be known.

If your bones are dug up dear reader, in a thousand year’s time, they’ll be able to tell a lot about you. Your age, your sex, health conditions, medical problems, diet, where you lived during your life. They’ll know a wealth of information about you.

But the one thing they can’t tell from all of that is who you are, and what your story is.

The assumption is this person is an outcast, a minority or a criminal, because its skeleton was found face down with its arm behind its back. But it could have just as easily ended up in that position by rolling it into a hole not quite wide enough. Or being carried face down to the grave by the arms and legs and dropped into it. They may not have known the person, didn’t do anything ceremoniously, they just didn’t want him decomposing near the spring, uncovered.

This shows the difference between archaeology and folklore. archaeology has a few facts to base its story on. Quite often, folklore does too. The difference is with archaeology, we know what those facts are.

But it doesn’t make it any more likely that the story is true, than folklore. They both have value. Perhaps archaeology’s reputation is a double edged sword. Their work is invaluable for understanding the past. But they’re often seen as snobs for discounting folklore, for the same reasons that could be applied to their own work. It’s based on supposition.

Folklore is more colorful and like archaeology, the story is always changing.

Through the woods at Luccombe Spring towards the Bloodstone

Where the original folklore came from

The vale in which Luccombe Spring sits was once called Danesley. The reason for this is a battle was fought near here, the Battle of Ethandun, in 878 AD between armies of King Alfred and Guthrum, a Viking. The Danes had invaded Wessex and essential been kicking Alfred’s ass all over the countryside. They were holed up nearby for the winter in what is believed by some to be Chippenham, and others to have been Bratton Camp, an iron age embankment at the top of Bratton Downs, which looked down on Luccombe Spring.

Alfred spent the winter not far away, trying to raise his army to a fighting strength once again, and in a hurry because soon farming would start and men would be wandering off.

Exactly where the battle was fault is also a contentious one, with some saying down near the Avon, and others on Salisbury Plain.

The most sensible theories have Guthrum camping here in the Luccombe valley the night before the battle. Some believe they were struck by Alfred here, during the night, but that seem unlikely. Alfred pulled off a decisive victory and the Vikings were routed. It’s generally agreed the bulk of the fighting force made its way to Bratton Camp. Bratton Camp is distinctly uphill from the Luccombe Valley. A steep hill. A man fleeing for his life doesn’t take a route up a hillside, they run downhill.

So for my money, if they ended in Bratton Camp, the battle was fought on the plain.

According to legend there was some who did run downhill, back towards Luccombe Springs where they had camped the night before. They might have expected not to be pursued far, as Alfred had the reputation for being wishy washy and not following up on his few victories. Alfred didn’t make that mistake this time, and slaughtered all those his pursuing men came across.

Up till the discovery of the 1955 skeleton, this was the story that colored the legend of the Bloodstone red. For it was said that it was the stone where the Danish captives were beheaded on Alfred’s orders.

There has long been reports of mass graves in the area, found over the centuries, also attributed to the rout following the battle. There were also other bodies nearby where this skeleton was found, but the location was lost since the excavation.

With the discovery of the skeleton discovered there dating to Romano Britain, at least 500 years earlier than Alfred, the folklore began to change as well. The words ritual sacrifice added a new whisker for the storyteller to use in their stories. For dark as mass executions are, ritual sacrifice holds a new kind of terror, the folk horror that has helped define Britain’s history.

The Bloodstone near Luccombe Spring in Wiltshire, where it's believed King Afred had prisoners executed, and is the location of a possible ritual sacrifice dating to the Romano-British period — The Bloodstone near Luccombe Spring in Wiltshire, where it’s believed King Afred had prisoners decapitate after the Battle of Ethandun, and is the location of a possible ritual sacrifice dating to the Romano-British period

The second excavation

In 2009, an excavation was begun to identify the site where the 1955 skeleton had been found, and if accomplished, search for the other skeletons nearby. They had quite a bit of luck with the former. The debris found in the trenches illustrate the layers of history which sometimes turn into a soup.

They found everything from Romano-British pottery sherds, as well as debris from the Medieval period through the Victorian era. They found a pencil stamped with R&J Reeves & Sons Agricultural & General Engineers. Phone Bratton 236-7 that could have dated from the 1955 excavation.

And they found bones. This time they didn’t find complete skeletons, but rather pieces, enough to show that it was the remains of at least five people, all jumbled together, and perhaps up to ten. A young man or woman was one, as was one a child.

We’re in the era of the internet now, and it thrives on sensationalism. All it takes are the words ritual sacrifice, and suddenly the story behind the Bloodstone takes on a more sinister tone than a forgotten battle.

And if the 1955 skeleton was a sacrifice, it’s reasonable to assume all these bodies could have been sacrifices.

There are two sharp indentions on the Bloodstone, and folklore has them caused by the teeth of victims as they bit into the very stone in pain. Of course, that story could equally apply to the Danish prisoners, so one can’t automatically assume that the story of the teeth dates from after 1955. It likely just changed to fit the new story.

And no, the indentions aren’t caused by teeth. The people buried here had a few dental problems. I can’t imagine their chompers biting into stone.

But there’s a problem with all these stories. When examined, the bone they tested from the later excavation dates to 1756, That leads to two conclusions. One would be that the archaeologists were digging in the wrong place, which is possible. But if so, they did manage to find a second mass burial and it should be noted, they were fairly confident they were in the right spot.

It’s also possible these later burials were done in complete oblivion to the fact that there was another body buried right beside it, about 1,500 years earlier.

Or it’s also possible that folklore, and knowledge of the landscape helped keep that spot alive as a known burial location. Perhaps for those outside of society, perhaps for criminals or perhaps for people whose history just wasn’t known from finding their corpse.

The Bloodstone is part of a scheduled monument, and I found this from its listing, “The barrow lies on the gentle south west facing slope of the valley floor immediately above a sharp drop to the valley of the Stradbrook to the west. The mound of the barrow is 9.2m in diameter and 0.75m high. There are two depressions in the surface of the mound which are interpreted as chalk diggings or early attempts at excavation. Surrounding the mound is a ditch 2.5m wide and 0.25m deep from which material was quarried during its construction. A single sarsen stone 0.8m high which lies in the ditch on the north west side is known locally as the `Bloodstone’.

According to folklore, these are teeth marks on the Bloodstone from the victims of ritual sacrifice biting into the stone in agony. The reddish tint is said to be caused by their blood.

It’s not unusual for later generations to bury their dead in or near neolithic and iron age barrows. Hell, here in the states the settlers often buried their dead among the mounds of native Americans. Oddly enough, like many Britain burials, in areas prone to flooding.

In this way, the folklore of a place becomes as tangled as the bones you find in the ground beneath. Not only is it impossible to untangle the eras, it’s sometimes wrong to. Because the folklore of one generation can influence the reality and practice of those following it.

And besides, time isn’t really linear anyway, you dig?

According to Sherlock Holmes, “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”

If Holmes were investigating the Bloodstone he would lament “I need data Watson!”

For you simply can’t eliminate the impossible in the legends. The body of the Romano-Britain man might truly have been sacrificed on the Bloodstone. Survivors from the Battle of Ethandun might truly have been beheaded on the stone as well. It’s entirely possible that the executed in the centuries that followed were buried here too, all the way through the 18th century.

If so, it was folklore that kept the memory alive of this place. And keeps it alive still.

And so it was that a few years later I found myself standing outside the earthworks of Bratton Camp looking down toward Luccombe Springs and the Bloodstone. Then I fixed my gaze along Salisbury plain, out towards where they believe the Battle of Ethandun was fought. I looked for the Viking horde to come stumbling back through the mist to the safety of the camp.

I didn’t see them. Nor did I see the mysterious black dog that haunts Salisbury Plain. Shiny black, with a spiked collar, it was believed to be a murder reincarnated by some, the devil himself by others.

Towards Luccombe Spring and the Bloodstone in the foreground, and the site of the Battle of Ethandun further along the plain

On Bratton Camp …

This strong fortress is situated on a point of land projecting to the north-west, over the rich vale that separates the chalky districts of North and South Wiltshire. On three sides it is naturally fortified by steep and precipitate hills; on the south side where the ground is level, and the approach weak, art has been employed to strengthen it by double ramparts and a large outwork. The entrenchments of this camp, as in all our hill fortresses, humour the form of the hill; on the sides difficult of access one rampart was found sufficient, but where the approach was easier, two were raised. On the eastern side the very perpendicular declivities of the hill rendered any artificial fortifications unnecessary. On the north-east point there is an additional outwork, like a detached camp. The area within the ditches contains above twenty-three acres, the circuit on the top of the outer vallum is one thousand five hundred and forty yards, and the greatest height of the rampart is thirty six feet.

From The Ancient History of Wiltshire by Sir Richard Colt Hoare (published 1812)

On the escarpment of Salisbury plain, at the western edge where the Bratton Downs fall into the Pewsey Valley, stands the iron age earthwork known today as Bratton Camp, formerly known as Burywood. Built about 2,000 years ago, it wasn’t just a defensive position, though with its two deep ditches and high, steep drops on three sides, it would have been hard to breech from any direction.

When excavated, debris from the Iron Age, as well as Romans, Saxons and Danes was found.

The earthworks were created in the Iron Age, and they likely weren’t built for any single defensive event, but to protect against threats in general, as well as to wow those who came there.

Inside these Iron Age earthworks like Bratton Camp, communities were developing. With the working of iron there came better tools and more important, a demand for things made of iron. Where there’s a demand for one thing, there’s usually a demand for others, and so communities begin to grow up around the new industry. Not only would the earthworks of Bratton Camp help protect the occupants, it made for a powerful statement of growth on a scale which which would likely leave a new visitor awe struck.

Those of us who grew up in small towns or in the country know the feeling of going into a city, even a small one and being overwhelmed. It had to provoke a similar feeling amongst iron age visitors, coming to trade or celebrate.

Inside the walls of Bratton Camp, towards the long barrow

“As you enter this camp from the south, a large oblong barrow appears on the left, which has excited the attention of different people, and given rise to various reports; but as I cannot depend upon any researches, but those made immediately under our own eyes, I shall not repeat those handed down by uncertain tradition”

From The Ancient History of Wiltshire by Sir Richard Colt Hoare (published 1812)

The long barrow he refers to is a thousand years older than the earthworks. So there’s no doubt Bratton Camp was a powerful place from as far back as we can trace. Yet there isn’t lot said about it. It’s only been lightly excavated and seems to have been left fairly clean by its inhabitants.

The folklore is pretty silent on the site as well. In Ireland, locations like this were thought even into the early twentieth century to be the places where spirits of the dead return. Even the Romans were big believers in ghosts. As such these places were avoided. Perhaps this belief once held true in Britain as well, and people stayed away.

For it’s where there’s life that stories about people’s lives grow from. Perhaps after the site was abandoned there simply wasn’t enough life there and the people were forgotten.

It is a barren and inhospitable place, as I found out that morning. Even the high walls of the embankment can’t block the wind over such a large area, which blew cold even in July coming off Salisbury Plain. There is no protection against the rain, and so as Guthrum’s army lay holed up within its walls, they grew increasingly desperate.

In those days you were as likely to die from a wound received in battle later on, no matter how small as you were to be cleaved outright in the thick of things. Indeed, it was recounted in legends from Bratton that the tracks leading from Bratton Camp were awash in Danish blood.

So with Guthrum’s army trapped inside the camp, with only the food the soldiers carried and no water and people still dying all around them, all Alfred had to do was sit outside the walls and wait.

He only had to wait about two weeks before Guthrum came out and accepted the king’s terms. He had to leave Wessex forever, and before he went, he had to convert to Christianity and be baptized. This was important as at the time, being a Christian made you more likely to abide by the king’s laws.

By adding this stipulation, Alfred started a process which led to the eventual unification of England as a country. Which is why the Battle of Ethandun is important. And needed to be commemorated.

On the White Horse of Westbury …

“I shall now return to the western ridge of hill, and direct my course towards Bratton Camp, where the White Horse presents its uncouth and ill-proportioned figure on a steep declivity to the left ; a level plain leads us to the southern entrance to the camp.”

From The Ancient History of Wiltshire by Sir Richard Colt Hoare (published 1812)

If Sir Richard hated the White Horse of Westbury then, he’d certainly despise it now.

An 18th century engraving shows an earlier horse, smaller and facing the opposite direction.

It’s believed a still older one predated that one, back to around 1200 AD, possibly to commemorate King Alfred’s victory, though there’s no explanation of why it took about 400 years to get around to it.

We know that the first written accounts of the existence of the Uffington White Horse begin to pop up about the same time, and there are those that believe this was when the idea occurred to the people at Bratton.

King Alfred was born in the Vale of the White Horse at Uffington, and the horse became one of his symbols. So there is good reason to believe that this idea could have merit.

Still it’s conjecture – this is what happened here, and so since something similar happened there, it could be related.

If we accept that, then we need not stop there.

Uffington Castle, another hill fort lies above the white horse, and dates back three thousand years. Less than a mile away lies Wayland’s Smithy, a Neolithic Long Barrow, where construction began about 3,500 BC. The Uffington White Horse was first dug into the chalk sometime after 500BC.

Track along the walls of Bratton Camp, cut away to show the chalk beneath.

So if it happened there, it could have happened above Bratton as well. You have the same evidence – a hill fort, long barrows and white horse carved into the chalk of the hillside. Both sites were along well travelled routes, so it’s easy to believe that those at Bratton Camp had seen or at least heard of what was at Uffington. Or perhaps the idea developed naturally.

Janet and Colin Bord in the book Mysterious Britain recount a legend that the White Horse of Westbury, as it is sometimes thought about the Uffington Horse, might have originally been a dragon, and indeed the earliest white horse at Westbury was thought to have a beak-like nose.

The Bords make the case that it was created in an age where there was a more spiritual tie to the earth and to nature, and that’s a lovely thought. If so it’s certainly been a lasting tribute to those people. The horse is visible for miles across much of Wiltshire, and has become one of the symbols of that county.

Today rather than chalk it’s poured concrete to save the trouble of keeping the chalk clean of brush. Which is a shame in a way, because I can’t help but believe that that kind of communal experience, if there’s any truth to Janet and Colin Bord’s story, would be some echo of that distant past.

Below the White Horse of Westbury lies Briddle or Bridewell Spring, not far in fact from Luccombe Springs. According to the tale, when the clock in Bratton strikes midnight, the white horse comes down to drink from the spring.

The spring itself is also the subject of legends. It’s believed to have some connection in ancient days to fertility, and indeed the name Bridewell could refer to brides. It could also refer to Brigid, who was the patron saint of midwives, and before that the triple goddess Brigid in Celtic folklore.

Lest you be tempted to wait outside at midnight on a dark night, watching the white horse and waiting to see it come down the hill, you should keep in mind there is no clock now in the church in Bratton.

Bird taking wing over the Pewsey Valley through the ditch at Bratton Camp

Folklore is the oral history of a people, and I’m sure in the past people realized the storyteller’s job was to entertain, as much inform. I don’t believe they accepted literal truths in the same way we do now. We’re used to knowing facts, disproving beliefs with their use.

These people knew what they saw, believed the stories of the people they trusted, but perhaps most important, believed what they felt. It could be true that they saw the world in a more mystic manner than we do today.

Like the feeling I got when I first wandered into that valley that there was a story to be told here. I was right, it’s an ever changing story, one which can never be told definitively. Since it can’t, all the layers and folklore are allowed to lay jumbled up still, so with each generation a new story gets told, using whatever thread from the past catches their attention and imagination.

That’s what keeps stories, and history alive.

On the mystery of a white horse carved into the slopes of Bratton Downs … the White Horse of Westbury

Britain, Great Britain, historic sites, Journal, The History Trekker

Nobody really knows when or why a chalk horse was carved onto the side of Bratton Downs, below the iron age Bratton Camp. The current version has evolved over the past two centuries into its rather literal shape today. An 18th century engraving shows an earlier horse, smaller and facing the opposite direction. It’s believed a still older one predated that one, perhaps back to around 1200 AD, possibly to commemorate the victory of King Alfred over the Danes which is thought to have happened nearby in 878. That would make it the second oldest chalk horse in Britain, after the Uffington Horse. But while there is documentation to show that a white horse, or some other creature existed at Uffington, there is none that trace the Westbury Horse with that kind of lineage. It’s entirely possible it came along in the 18th century, either as a heraldic emblem or even related to the practice of building follies.

However, Janet and Colin Bord in the book Mysterious Britain recount a legend that it dates back to the time of Bratton Camp, an iron age earthwork immediately adjacent to the White Horse of Westbury. It’s believed that like the Uffington Horse, it might have originally been a dragon, and indeed the earliest white horse at Westbury was thought to have a beak-like nose.

The barrow inside the embankment at Bratton Camp. Dating from the iron age, it’s believed by some the first horse or even a dragon was carved in that era.

The Bords make the case that it was created in an age where there was a more spiritual tie to the earth and nature, and that’s a lovely thought. If so it’s certainly been a lasting tribute to those people. The horse is visible for miles across much of Wiltshire, and has become one of the symbols of that country.

On the abandoned village of Port, in Donegal Ireland … wind swept, wet and wild, the folklore of Irish music and the ideal place to go drowning

Europe, Haunted Towns and Cities, Historic Towns and Villages, Ireland, Journal

The top of Glengesh Pass in Donegal, Ireland is breathtaking. You’re in one of the most remote corners of the country here, sparsely populated, windswept and wild. You’re as likely to hear Gaelic spoken as English, for life hasn’t changed a whole lot over the past hundred years. The land and sea and the weather it brings still govern people’s lives, as it once did in the village of Port.

Coming down off the pass leads you to Ardara, famous for its weaving. Take a left and you end up in the holy land of Glencomcille, deep in the Gaeltacht. The rain has been alternating between pounding and steady, the wind buffeting the car and it was a helluva a climb to the top of the pass. Particularly as it was being driven by an American who has no great love of heights. With a nasty hangover as well.

I’d spent most of the past two weeks in various stages of drunk, chasing the fiddle music of county Donegal. Some places resurrect their regional folk music. In some places it never died, and Donegal is one of those places where the tradition has continued unbroken. This isn’t the diddly dee most people think of when they think of Irish traditional music. They don’t get the foreign tourists here like they do in other places. Down south they often play a slower, lilting style. Up north it’s fire and blood. It’s the Led Zeppelin of Irish music. At its heart it’s a single fiddler, maybe two playing tunes passed down from generation to generation.

In a lot of places, the people who play Irish music almost make it a point of pride not remembering the name of a tune. After all, they know so many. Up north they can tell you the name, the person they got it from, who they got it from before that, and the story of their lives.

Blame it on the mountains. It made traveling outside of the area difficult. It kept outsiders away. And it blocked the radio transmissions of the early twentieth century which would have brought new musical styles in much sooner.

So that’s what I’ve been doing, which means hanging out in a lot of pubs, where I had no choice but to be sociable and drink. The day before in Teelin, on the edge of the world, the music started late in the morning. Whiskey was flowing shortly thereafter. I have a vague memory of staggering back to the B&B late that night. We didn’t make it till closing time. Before we left I had a curse put on me by a witch.

This was the morning we found out whether it stuck or not.

I took a right, back towards the wild, windy north Atlantic, and the abandoned ghost village of Port.

It wasn’t long before we were on a single lane road. It didn’t matter as there was no traffic. There were no signs, very few cottages, just open bog and rain. I was on my third raincoat since I’d arrived. I didn’t pack one because I figured there’d be more of a selection in Donegal. I was right, but I didn’t expect to buy a whole range of them.

The first proved impossibly light – the rain poured in every available orifice. The second one … I don’t remember what happened to it. But it didn’t work either. Finally in the fishing village of Killybegs I bought a lined wax coat, with drawstring around every opening and a hood. I was ready.

Somewhere out in here was the hamlet of Kityfanad, if anything of it remains. All I know about the place is a fiddler came there by the name of Padai Bhilli na Ropai. He’s famous for a tune called the Black Mare of Fanad, as well as a few others. There is some debate about whether the Fanad in question lies further north, where there’s a peninsula by that name. The tune is known there as well, credited to a fiddler by the name of Doyle. But the source for the tale was John Doherty, a traveling fiddle who worked a circuit that took him to Ardara and this area. John was as important for the stories behind the tunes as he was for the tunes and his otherworldly technique. But John’s stories tended to vary depending on where he was and who was playing for. I wasn’t going to be in Fanad, but I was sure we were Kityfanad, and so I adopted it as the home of this tune.

Photo of The cottages of the abandoned village of Port, in Donegal, Ireland in the rain — The cottages of the abandoned village of Port, in Donegal, Ireland

John Doherty is quoted telling the tale in the book The Northern Fiddler. “It seems that Fiddler Doyle was returning home on horseback after playing at a dance party when he came to a crossroads, a place where visions had lately appeared of an old druid. As they approached the crossroads the horse, seeing the apparition when the man didn’t, shied away, and Fiddler Boyle, unaware of what might be wrong, had to exert mastery of the animal to get it to approach the road again. As horse and rider arrived at the intersection once again the vision reappeared, and this time the horse halted and threw back its head. Boyle managed to stay on the mount, but the horse’s gaze was fixed to the side, and he finally broke into a gallop. The vision stayed at the horses side and Boyle finally saw what it was. Though frightened, the fiddler and his mount finally made it home. After retreating to bed and sleep, the next morning Boyle was inspired by the rhythm of the horse’s hooves on the road and heard a reel in his mind, which he called “The Black Mare of Fanad.”

At the time we visited Port, there were no instructions on the internet to find it. It wasn’t on any maps. I finally found it on the Ordnance Survey Map, which was spread out over half the car as we were sure we had to be lost. But then there was the ocean, and there was the turn marked on the map, which looked a road to nowhere.

I took it. As you come over the rise the Atlantic is below you. It’s almost like a shallow bowl, open on one side with the sea rushing in. We parked, I got out of the car to see how badly it was raining. It was tolerable, but the wind almost blew you over. Still, there were the ruined cottages just in front of me, so I took a step towards them. I sank almost to my thigh in the bog. After fishing my boot out I was pretty wet, but the coat held. I put my boot back on and said “come on.”

One of the things this area was famous for was its rope. The wind was giving a lesson in why. The winter gales that come off the north Atlantic are fierce. Concentrated in this shallow bowl, they’re amplified. These cottages date from the 19th century if not before and were roofed with thatch. Thatch is held down onto the roof with ropes and if the rope doesn’t hold, you lose the roof. The rope that these people made to hold their roofs down had to hold and so they developed their own technique. The wove together the boiled roots of fir trees which made an exceptionally strong rope, and became one of the few commodities that came from Port.

It’s believed that Port was the first port opened in county Donegal. Trawlers still come in on occasion, but the port, like Port itself is long since abandoned. It’s often said it was abandoned during the famine because of lack of food. Caoimin MacAoidh, author of Between the Jigs and Reels – which had become my defacto tour guide, told me they left because life was just too damned hard there.

Standing in front of one of the cottage hearths in the village of Port

And yes, on a day like today you can see why, as there’s a gloom that settles on you as wander the abandoned cottages. There are ghosts here, watching you as you move through their homes, those hardy roofs long gone, doors and windows as well, nothing left but stone skeletons.

Once there was music here, and dancing. I stood in front of a hearth in one of the larger cottages. The best place for dancing was there on the hearth stone, as it was often hollow beneath for the ashes. The hearth stone was missing, but I could see the man in his heavy boots dancing before me on it, hear the scratchy fiddle coming from the corner of the room and feel the hot breath of the people within the small space.

Though the village itself had been abandoned long before, people continued to live here for periods of time long after. It was a place to pull yourself together, to plan your next move, to hide away from the world.

The walls of the cottage blocked the wind, but without a roof it didn’t do much about the rain. The waxed canvas did a great job of repelling it. It ran in rivulets down my arms, off my head and managed to find its way up inside the cuffs, around my neck and inside the coat, soaking the lining. I figured “what the hell” and abandoned my attempt at shelter.

Eventually I wandered out and down towards the sea. Some madness seized me and I decided to walk out a few feet into the water. The beach was stone, not pebbles but stones big enough to fit into the palm of your hand. I was happy to see my boot were waterproof after all, and didn’t plan on going out over the tops. I’m not stupid. Or so I thought.

The first waves that sizzled around my feet, grabbed the back of my boots like hooks and pulled me back towards the sea as it went. The rocks were like glass and within a couple of seconds the water was over the boots, and almost up to my knees. I danced that delicate dance people do when they’re trying not to topple over into the surf. So I wasn’t even aware when the second wave hit, splashing halfway up my thighs. As it receded I slipped further out, almost to my knees. It was time to panic, or at least make my way to shore.

Walls of the village of Port with the Atlantic Ocean beyond

It wasn’t as easy as it looked, and for a moment I thought of just letting go, getting out into deeper water and swimming towards the shore a bit to my right. But I instantly realized the waves would throw me into the rocks behind me. Or if I did make it away from this stretch, I’d be pounded into the jagged rocks that lay to my sides.

There’s a creek that runs into the ocean here, and I recalled a story about it. Tarlach Neill, head of the clan of Ui Bhaoill had a daughter, Siobhan who was learning to swim in that creek. She was swept to sea and drowned.

I inched my way back towards shore, moving a tiny bit then bracing myself to stay put when the next wave tried to pull me out.

There’s an alternate version of that story. In that his daughter was to be married to a man who lived nearby. She didn’t love him, instead loving a sweet boy from here in Port. When the day of the wedding came she ran. She ran here to Port with her father in hot pursuit. As she reached the low cliffs looking over the ocean below, the cottage beyond where her beloved lived, he caught up with her. She was given one last chance to come back and go through with the marriage. She refused. Her father picked up and threw her off the cliffs and onto the jagged rocks below, and washed away by the sea.

I finally stepped out of the surf and back onto the stones.

When we travel we look for those perfect moments. They aren’t always the happiest moments, the most beautiful sunsets or the most exotic locations. They’re those places where you’re swallowed up by where you are, by the moment. For me, it’s the moments that become timeless, where you’re no longer who you were a moment before, but someone else entirely.

That was my perfect moment. There was nothing happy about it. Port is a desolate place, though I hear it’s quite nice when it’s sunny. It’s a place of hardship, so much that even the hardy soles who lived here gave it up. I looked beyond the ruined cottages and saw in the distance a red one, still intact.

I haven’t been back to Port, nor Ireland since then. But I will, and soon. Ireland is a place of natural beauty, amazing history and there are so many places to see. But when I come back, it’s to that red cottage, which as it turns out is available. It’s where I’ll stay, where the scenery is shrouded in mist, where the history has been forgotten, but the ghosts are still there. I hope it rains.