A story that can never be told

The following poem has haunted my mind for a few days, it is a story that can never be told, a mystery, yet there is something poignant in the way that Snyder captured the archaeological story in a few simple words. Who was she, this person from 26,000 years ago, a shaman of the tribe buried with due honour and ceremony, attendants on either side. Perhaps this small trio of people were related, brothers and sister, caught by some fatal passing disease, and buried with many tears by their family. Maybe she was killed in some sacrifical honour, her attendants accompanying her to the spirit world. Tantalising in death, the history of old bones haunt our imagination, fleshing them once more, gracing their bodies with movement and speech I wonder what we would really be confronted by?

Under The Hills Near the Moravia River

She lay there midst

Mammoth, reindeer, and wolf bones;

Diadem of fox teeth round her brow

Ocher under her hips

26,640 plus or minus 110 years before 'now'.

Burnt reindeer-pelvis bone bits

in her mouth,

Bones of two men lying by her,

one each side.

Gary Snyder

-----------------------

And perhaps a few more words by Snyder on this cold August morning, reminding one of travelling and far off places, the following taken from Raven's Beak River At the End, in this poem he captures for a moment the old celtic enmeshing of nature, animals and the cosmic reality we sometimes forget.


...

Raven-sitting high spot

eyes on the snowpeaks,
nose of morning
raindrops in the sunshine

Skin of sunlight

skin of chilly gravel

Mind in the mountain, mind of tumbling water,

mind running rivers

Mind of sifting

flowers in the gravels

At the end of the ice age

we are the bears, we are the ravens,

We are the salmon

in the gravel

At the end of the ice age.

Paul Nash - November Moon

One of the paintings at the Ancient Landscapes exhibition was Paul Nash's November Moon, according to the catalogue Nash had been interested in how the moon appears in daylight in November. Autumn is a time of decay and death, and of course the painting has the cypress trees, evergreens associated with immortality, this tree also is part of death as well, connected with the Greek underworld.

Here Nash is playing the cycle between dying and living, the large mushroom at the forefront and the convolvous or Morning Glory one representing autumn and death, the summer flower twisting its way following the sun. This painting is very similar in expression to the Sun Eclipsing the Sunflower shown earlier on, and its soft pastel tones hide a more dramatic expression.

This picture by Nash is not in the exhibition, but again the moon figures strongly, the rounded hill is probably the Wittenham Clumps in Oxfordshire, which he painted several times, a more formalised version can be seen in Under the Hill.

Partial Eclipse of the Sun. .http://thelmawilcox.blogspot.com/2008/08/blog-post.html

The Brotherhood of the Ruralists

This is a group of several painters who came together in 1975 and founded the Brotherhood of Ruralists in Wellow, which is not too far from a favourite place of mine, Stoney Littleton longbarrow. They painted the Wiltshire countryside, amongst other things, in a stylised and romantic vision, following in the footsteps of the Pre-raphaelites.



The Station House at Wellow which they bought in 1975 in a derelict state, now it is a family home, though the station verandah can still be seen.



Now both styles of art are an acquired taste, the voluptuous red-hair females of Rossetti and Morris enmeshed in historical fantasy, are a 19th century adaption of the highly idealised style of that century. The Ruralists on the other hand create a misty visionary art style, but also there is that clear cut lines of almost surreal images.

This for instance is David Inshaw's Standing Stones,


They are the stones in the Avenue at Avebury, and he has captured the sexual connotations of the male and female stones, the 'male' stone falling neatly between two 'female' stones. His other works (to be included in the later exhibition at Victoria Gallery - Bath are;

Silbury Hill on a Starry Night
Owl and Silbury;
Portrait of Silbury Hill;

As will the work of Graham Ovendon; a painting and a drawing entitled 'Sentinels of Silbury Hill'

Graham Arnold on the other hand (no illustration here,) paints a vivid scene of Found Objects , such things as we like to display on a shelf. Here a vase of bright red poppies, a conch shell, quill pens in an old victorian bottle displayed against a black background, but to the left of the composition a window on a megalithic structure - a quoit - for they also lived in Cornwall, home to these megalithic mushroom stones that are so much part of the countryside. Arnold's work has caught the serenity of the Wiltshire countryside, with the following painting;-

Earthwork at Maiden Castle;
Dragon Hill, Uffington;
The White Horse (Uffington);
The White Horse, Alton barnes;
His wife, paints in a different style,


but do not think that you are looking at a unicorn placed so serenely in its enclosure backed by a rock. For this is a donkey and the painting is based on a real hill in Shropshire, where the Arnolds lived, and they allowed it to become a sanctuary for wild animals. Two donkeys also lived on this hill, so dreamy notions of chaste white unicorns must be subverted into a rather awkwardly placed donkey in a very small space - though safe in its sanctuary, the space is very small in the wilderness.

August 1st Partial eclipse of the Sun

Eclipse of the Sunflower

This rather dramatic painting is to be found at The Victoria Gallery part of an exhibition called Ancient Landscapes, Pastoral Visions, and it seemed appropiate to marke the partial eclipse of the sun today with Paul Nash's Eclipse of the Sunflower.
Why did he choose this particular expression of the sun eclipsing the sunflower, he was coming to the end of his life, both through ill health and the war. For him the sunflower had many meanings, for instance the sunflower always follows the path of the sun, and in the classical myth Clytie was punished by her sister who turned her into a flower so that she 'turns with the sun and reflects its colour', and it was in the 19th century that it became the symbol for yearning or unrequited love. And of course an eclipsed sun-disc could also reflect the 'infernal calamity of a global conflict', So this painting represents Nash seeing himself as 'escaping into vast lonely places in complete freedom of bodily action, escaping the land but in death returning to it'.
There are several other Nash paintings at the exhibition...

Druid Landscape

Landscape of the Megaliths

This last painting is not the same 'landscape of the Megaliths' that is normally shown.

Ref; Catalogue - Ancient Landscapes, Pastoral Visions by Anne Anderson, Robert Meyrick, Peter Nahum

Dragons and Yews

Sigurd slaying the dragon

Sometimes a horn sang out,

an eager war song, but

the troop all waited, watching

along the water the kin

of snakes, strange sea dragons,

swimming in the deep or

lying on the steep slopes--

water monsters, serpents, and

wild beasts, such as the ones

that appear on a dangerous

sea journey

in the morning time.

When those creatures heard

the war horn's note

they hurried away

bitter and angry.

Taken from a translation of Beowulf by Dr.David Breeden

Sometimes when we view history it is best to go back to storytelling to capture for one moment the imagination of past societies. Here in our present time we analysis with such thoroughness, that the life and soul is taken from the events that moulded our ancestors.

So it is with this story,the story of Nickers Pool, Nykerpole at Cunetio or Mildenhall. The first story I had read about this pool said that a small settlement of felons lived nearby and that their ghostly presence had caused wraiths to appear in the nearby River Kennet, the ghosts tumbling around on top of the water.

The second story told of Nickers or Nicor's well, now here we go back to Saxon sea-monsters, for nicor means just that and like the above translated verse from Beowulf, relates to dragons and monsters of the Saxon world. So here we have some evil creature living in the River Kennet that came out at night perhaps and terrified the people at Mildenhall. Strangely it is similar to a story in West Wales about a prehistoric stone cairn, though in this case the water-monster was a beaver.

A body of a Saxon woman was found in one of the Roman wells excavated near this site, it would seem that she was murdered and then thrown down the well and perhaps her disappearance adds to monsters coming out of the river at night.

Here be dragons
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Yew at Alton Prior


The Saxon presence round this part of Wiltshire is very strong, and perhaps the best place to understand it is in the Vale of Pewsey, along the road by Martinsell hill, or up on the old Ridgeway next to Adams Grave and the great Wansdyke, But for the moment we shall stop in the valley bottom by the two churches Alton Barnes and Alton Prior, situated by a small flowing stream.

There is magic here, time has been trapped for a moment, a small path leading from one church to another and there is a quiet sanctity to the place. In Alton Prior church there is an old supposedly 1700 yew tree, which of course puts us right back into the Roman period of 300 ad.

Why two churches you may ask, for that explanantion you must turn to John Chandler's

words here.

http://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/community/getconcise.php?id=5.

He describes Alton Prior church yard as a 'tree yard' with its great and beautiful Yew tree. For it is indeed beautiful, a soft creamy pink inner wood, sensually smooth to the touch, and the twisted contortions of the tree have a vibrant life of their own. Were yew trees sacred in their own right, perhaps with their evergreen foliage, they were one of the sacred trees of the Celtic people, and this relic in Alton Priors may have had predecessors in the Iron Age.

This is not so fanciful as it may appear for the famous well at Glastonbury when excavated, (and you have to go down many feet to expose the original Roman well,) also had a yew very near.

In Thomas Packenham's book Meeting with Remarkable Trees, there are glorious old yews a couple said to be dating back to before the christian church took dominance, and were 'druid' trees, one is at Selbourne, home to the 18th century naturalist Gilbert White. This great tree was blown down in the storms of 1990, but the vicar at the time, had the great crown cut off, and the trunk was lifted into place by crane to reside ivy clad like a stone monolith in the church yard.

the yew's inner wood

Information on the Nykerpoole was taken from the following link;

http://people.bath.ac.uk/liskmj/living-spring/sourcearchive/ns6/ns6kmj1.htm

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now there is another story told by Nennius (an 8th AD Welsh monk), who though his stories are often thought of as mythlike and foolish, does tell an exceedingly good tale. Dragons dreams can foretell a future event, and in one of the chapters of Nennius's book, he tells the story of a young boys dream. Nennius had access to 5th century books, and this story is about Vortigen, who had found a young boy call Ambrose, the boy had a dream in which he saw a tent at the bottom of a pool, in this tent slept two dragons , a red one and a green one. They woke up and fought, and the red dragon who represented the saxons overcame the green dragon who represented the British, the tale in its full version from Nennius is told here......

"a pool; come and dig:" they did so, and found the pool. "Now," continued he, "tell me what is in it;" but they were ashamed, and made no reply. "I," said the boy, "can discover it to you: there are two vases in the pool;" they examined, and found it so: continuing his questions," What is in the vases?" they were silent: "there is a tent in them," said the boy; "separate them, and you shall find it so;" this being done by the king's command, there was found in them a folded tent. The boy, going on with his questions, asked the wise men what was in it? But they not knowing what to reply, "There are," said he, "two serpents, one white and the other red; unfold the tent;" they obeyed, and two sleeping serpents were discovered; "consider attentively," said the boy, "what they are doing." The serpents began to struggle with each other; and the white one, raising himself up, threw down the other into the middle of the tent, and sometimes drove him to the edge of it; and this was repeated thrice. At length the red one, apparently the weaker of the two, recovering his strength, expelled the white one from the tent; and the latter being pursued through the pool by the red one, disappeared. Then the boy, asking the wise men what was signified by this wonderful omen, and they expressing their ignorance, he said to the king, "I will now unfold to you the meaning of this mystery. The pool is the emblem of this world, and the tent that of your kingdom: the two serpents are two dragons; the red serpent is your dragon, but the white serpent is the dragon of the people who occupy several provinces and districts of Britain, even almost from sea to sea: at length, however, our people shall rise and drive away the Saxon race from beyond the sea, whence they originally came....

Avebury - Jacquetta Hawkes

To continue with Jacquetta Hawke's writing, her words on Avebury, what she then saw at Avebury 70 odd years ago, thousands of tourists, is still seen today, as they traipse round paying homage. Strangely she does'nt have much to say about Silbury except perhaps
"there it stands a challenge to science, and a proof that faith can build mountains with the help of no more than bone shovels and antler picks"

Time drifts on but Avebury still manages to keep its air of mystery, its secrets safely kept, Silbury is the same, experts circle and pronounce their verdicts, amateurs theorise but the essence of truth remains stubbornly hidden.

" Learned men and kings (she mentions a testimonial in the Red Lion here), still go to Avebury, but they are supplemented by thousands of tourists. This flow of visitors to ancestral monuments is curiously reminiscent of that of medieval pilgrims to famous shrines; though without faith or doctrine, their fundamental needs and purposes are, I believe, very much the same.
However this may be, there is no doubt that in the summer months visitors swarm at Avebury, and the archaeological traveller may prefer to go there in other seasons when the place relapses peacefully into the downland countryside. Let him go in early spring when the wind still blows chilly across the chalk hills but the beeches are grape coloured with thrusting buds, or in autumn when these same trees are no more than a glowing aftermath of summer in the pale nostalgic air, and he can wander in pursuit of earthworks and stones among cottage gardens heavy with the last dahlias and chrysantheums."

Stonehenge By Jacquetta Hawkes

One of my favourite authors is Jacquetta Hawkes, an archaeologist who not only loved the ancient world but described it with extraordinary imagination, here she writes of Stonehenge...

The traveller who wishes to approach Stonehenge most fittingly should keep along this road, crossing the little river Till at Winterbourne Stoke. As he reaches the quiet crossroads on the summit, he will be on the edge of one of the greatest, and certainly the richest, congregation of burial mounds in all Britain. Here was a kind of vast scattered cemetery on ground hallowed by its proximity to the renowned sanctuary. Barrows cluster round Stonehenge on all sides - 300 0f them - but here to the west is the greatest concentration and the area most sequestered from the blighting military activities of Amesbury........
When the ritual and whatever it accompaniment may have been of masks, effigies and offerings have vanished so long ago, when there is no stir left of emotion and the ghosts which emotion keeps alive, when the verypeople responsible for raising these mounds have been overwhelmed, absorbed and forgotten, then their detailed study can become lifeless enough.
Better perhaps to look at them with knowledge but with knowledge unexpressed, these round barrows that are like the floating bubbles of events drowned in time.
Away to the right of the road the bubbles ride the downs in lines and clusters. First on Normanton Down immediately above Stonehenge where some of the richest burials of the Wessex invaders have been uncovered, then further away the great conglomerations of Wilsford and Lake. So we approach Britain's most famous prehistoric monument through crowding satellites attracted towards it by the magnetism of its own holiness......
...... Stonehenge is concentrated into a very small space and as a result it seems to have grown upwards. Partly because of this concentration colour plays a great part in the architectural quality of the sanctuary. The huge blocks of sarsen are a pale silver grey and in many lights they stand out with a strange pallor against the duler tones of the downs, an effect seen with heightened intensity in Constable's marvellous painting of the stones enveloped in storm-clouds.
.......We may feel that publicity has destroyed the spirit of this too famous building; yet once among the stones all but the most stubborn resistant moods must surrender to their power.
The massive, roughly squared blocks of sarsen seem to possess a forceful presence which asserts itself within the human consciousness. Their silver grey colour fills the eye but now shows itself to be variegated with dark lichens and with the shadow of the grotesque fissures and hollows worn by centuries of rain and frost.....

Prehistoric and Roman Monuments in England and Wales - Jacquetta Hawkes 1951