Beach at Northton

Beach at Northton
Beach at Northton

Wednesday 18 January 2012

16.3 Cladh Hallan

Cladh Hallan

16.2 Of Stone Circles and Presbyterians



Foreword.
Please note that this is a carry on from 16.1. This has turned into an ambitious little project, and it takes me days to get a few paragraphs sorted. I don't really want to put anything up that isn't as accurate as I can make it. And I'm fast reaching the end of my shelf life!!! In addition, the hovering husband wants me to get on with HIS blog.

The Bodies in the Bogs
The earliest written information on Celtic religion comes from the Romans, and should be treated with care, as they and the Celts had  very nasty relationship. Julius Caesar writes disapprovingly of their habit of human sacrifice. He should talk! What went on in the Coliseum in Rome to entertain the masses was a lot worse.
In addition to gladiators and wild animals, killed in various artistic ways, we had hapless Christians exterminated by brutes both animal and human.

I  hope we've all moved on.

 


Lindow Man, As Found                                                           Lindow Man, Reconstruction of Head

Tolland man, Reconstruction of Head
All over Northern Europe, bodies have been turning up in peat bogs. Peat has preserved them, even to the contents of their stomachs. They have been dated to up to hundreds of years before the Christian era. A feature common to these bog bodies is that they have all been murdered, some quite brutally. Lindow Man, found in Cheshire in 1984 had two massive blows to the back of the head, was strangled, and his throat cut. He seems to have been of a privileged caste, as his fingernails were neat, and his beard properly cut. He had eaten a flatbread of barley and wheat, cooked on a fire made of heather. Unusually, for a bog body, he has a beard.

Tolland Man, As Found
In the stomachs of bog people, there is usually a meal of seeds and grains. Some, like Tollund  man are naked, but some have clothes, of wool and skin. Both men and women have been found, one of the women wearing a long caftanlike woollen dress.                                    

Why were they killed in this fashion, in spring, and put into bogs? When we marry Ol' Julie's comments about human sacrifice to the violent deaths suffered by these people, it seems he might not have been far off the mark.

Some say that the bodies might have been sacrifices to the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring, Eostre. But, there were only Celts in Cheshire in 2BCE to 119CE. Was he one of those illegal immigrants to Britain, bringing his tribe and his funny religion with him?

Others think they had something to do with the old festival of Beltaine, or Samhain, round about the first of May. Whatever! All I remember about the first of May in the Outer Hebrides is that if you washed your face in the morning dew, you would acquire beauty. Forget it. It didn't work

What, you may ask, has this to do with the Hebrides?

We must now take a trip to South Uist, home to the Clanranald MacDonalds, and origin of Flora Macdonald and of Etienne Macdonald, Duke of Otranto.

 Not only was Flora Macdonald born here, but Macdonald of Clanranald is said to have introduced the potato in 1743. This rapidly became the staple food of the Islands, along with oatmeal and fish. In the potato famine of the 1840's this had dire results, but not nearly as bad as in Ireland where thousands died. Emigration, which had already started, increased and continued to increase. The Uist people say there is scarcely a place name in Uist which is not repeated in America, Canada and Australia

Full of surprises, the Hebrides, including more bodies, and the remains of a VERY old village.

At Cladh Hallan, in 2001, The University of Sheffield unearthed the bodies of a man and a woman, the former dating from 1500 BCE, the woman from 1300, buried in one grave. The man turned out to be men, with the torso and limbs of one, the skull of a second, and the jawbone of a third.

The bodies had been buried in a bog, then removed and displayed in a warm, dry place. Then they seem to have been buried together. Two of the woman's incisor teeth had been knocked out and placed in her hand. Again, there is speculation.

Cladh Hallan
Skeletons have been found under some of the houses. Curiously, the same thing has been found in South Africa. It was the practice to bury the body of a chief under a hut floor. Perhaps  in Uist as in Africa, ancestors were held to have great powers, especially if they were chiefs, whereas most people were cremated.

What we do know about the people of ancient Uist is that they grew barley, kept cows and sheep, ate venison and veal, and very little fish.

And perhaps the value of the bog bodies is that they open a window to the past, tell us what our ancestors looked like, what they wore and what they believed.

Perhaps they are the people who built the stone circles. Modern scholarship thinks they had nothing to do with the Druids.

I just like to think the Hebrides are not on the fringe, but in the thick of historical research.

The University of Sheffield has a nice site for those who are interested in detail. Google up Cladach Hallan. The British Museum is also good for bog people.

P.S I try to verify that the photographs I use are not copyright. Some great people have given me hundreds for free. If I have infringed, it is unintentional.
16.3 A nice site for those interested in what we have been doing.
16.4 Will have a short bit on stone circles and we will get to the nitty gritty of Celtic christianity.

Friday 13 January 2012

16.1 Of Stone Circles and Presbyterians

Constant reminder! Please note that I'm not writing a history book but a wee blog to entertain the family, many of whose children want to travel in the Hebrides and want a bit of background knowledge. Hence the number of pics and family snaps.
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A friend of mine from Montagu, Western Cape, tackled the Outer Hebrides in February. The average temperature in Montagu in February is in the 90's, so I had some doubts about her sanity.

"I visited the Standing Stones at Callanish, "she said. I found it odd that they were surrounded by houses. I thought they would be in an isolated place."
Standing Stones, Callanish

Personally, I think that a church miles from its congregation might have had a very small one, before the era of the combustion engine. Mind you, my grandfather when offered a lift when he was walking the three miles from Northton to his church in Leverburgh, refused.

"What are legs for if not for walking?"

He was in his nineties at the time.
But I digress (Again!!!)

The only thing we know for certain is that the stones must have been of huge importance to the community. The labour and time used to carve and set them must have been enormous. The stones for Stonehenge were brought from Wales, by people power, proving that our ancestors may have been illiterate, but they knew their physics.

And there are standing stones all over Europe, although the Romans did their best to wipe out local religions. There are many in the Hebrides, the Thrushel Stone being the most impressive, once you get past Callanish.

Thrushel Stone
Near Barvas, Lewis


There are many legends about it, one that it is the gravestone of a Scandinavian princess. but I am highly suspicious of all stories Celtic. It all started when I walked into our local library in Montagu, darkest Africa, and our friendly librarian, the same nut who visited the Hebrides in February, said, with a funny look in her eye, "There's a new book out on Celtic Civilisation."



And there it was! Dun Carloway, right on the cover, and a much better photograph than our happy snaps.
Dun Carloway, Interior
Why all the pics? you will notice I have captioned them. Dun Carloway is an example of a fortified dwelling, possibly of a person of standing in the community. Built in the 1st Century BCE, it was last inhabited about 1300 CE, according to radio carbon dating. The whole extended family -and the animals at times- would have slept there. (Personal privacy and separate bedrooms were not a feature of the lives of our ancestors.)

It is a stunning example of drystone walling, and has lasted for two thousand years. Excavations in 1971 have revealed that pottery was probably made on the site.

What I found amazing was the staircase inside the walls, the economic use of space, and the skill of the builders. When we visited Carloway, which is not far from Callanish, there was an informative board about the building, snapped by Len. This has now been superseded by the display in the Visitor Centre.


Inner Staircase, Dun Carloway



Dun Carloway
by Len
The staircase runs between the double walls


Dun Carloway
Also by Len












Don't try to read this! I am just inserting it to show how hard the conservationists try to get it right and inform the public.










Dun Carloway is a no- miss monument, even if, with stunning lack of sensitivity, the local authorities have allowed  the building of a modern house which dominates the scene. I suppose the owners are making a statement, and can deal with the baffled fury of the conservationists.

But why all this? How does this connect with my friend the librarian and the book on Celtic Civilisation?

The wonderful picture of Dun Carloway was captioned as "An Ancient Celtic Temple"

Nuff said. The author was pouring out the usual junk about the Celts, with magic trees, fey priests sailing about in boats the size of a baby's bathtub and Coptic connections.And, according to some of our more screwy transatlantic cousins, Columba was really a Baptist.

People make big money out of the Celtic connections. It has given us a bit of an identity crisis. We Fringe Celts have always known who we are, but people have been trying to make us into something different, mainly, I think, for financial reasons.

I had to tread carefully on this subject. Where could I find the truth, not only about Celtic civilisation, but about the religious aspect?

Acting on the old Hebridean principle, I decided to ask the neighbours- well -the neighbour. Big Al is not only enormous, but he has the contents of an average library crammed into his house. Born in Zululand, he received quite some education at Durban Boys' High, and is an expert on many things. So I took my pencil and paper, and disturbed his cricket, rugby, athletics, or whatever South African team he was following on the telly.

Big Al
At Len's 80th
Check the Shirt
"Tell me something about Celtic civilisation, " I commanded.

"Ask me a question," he said.

"What about the Druids?"

"We don't really know very much about them."

"What was  Celtic Christianity?"

"Well, Celtic Christians were basically Catholics."

I could hear my Free Church ancestors turning in their graves.

"To  learn the truth, you must have access to primary sources," he said, so I followed him into his study, received a pile of books, with brief comments on the reliability of each and was turfed out to do the reading which has kept this blog out of the ether for an extra week.

There are no free lunches with Big Al.

So I have been introduced to A Church History of Scotland, by JHS Burleigh, and The Quest for Celtic Christianity, by Donald E Meek, a native of the island of Tiree, a noted scholar, and on no one's fringe.

And here's a connection. Too many years ago to think of, my grandad's brother, Captain John Macdonald married the delightful Elizabeth Lamont from the island of Tiree. Their daughter, my dad's beloved cousin, Lizzie or Leezie (depending on who you listen to), married Captain John Mackinnon of Tiree, commodore of Macbraynes. He used to let us wear his cap when he visited us in Tarbert.

He had great stories of the old days in the islands, and a love for the Gaelic language.



Wedding of Captain John Mackinnon and Lizzie Lamont Macdonald
Glasgow, 1936




I don't intend to bore you with a scholarly analysis of the subject, but make a few observations, and connect to family history.
Thanks, Big Al. What is this thing you have for dressing up?

Rev Dr Alan Maker
Past Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Southern Africa
(In his Princeton Robes)