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.