Re: Rhiannon the chronicler | Forum — The Modern Antiquarian

fitzcoraldo Mar 20, 2007 14:11:55

Replying to Rhiannon

Hi Rhiannon, it was an excellent piece of lore. Wade, Bell, the cow, the baby, the Old Wife and of course Old scratch are responsible for just about all of our NYM landscape features. I spent the last couple of years trying to pick out the threads of these tales but am still really none the wiser. It's just reassuring to know that something of our native creation mythologies still exists.

Regarding the Guisbro' / Whitby thing. I enjoy the continuing rivalry between fishers and farmers (scaley backs and wooly backs) I see farmers as essentially solar people who live their lives by the seasons and are in it for the long game. I see fishers as lunar people who live their lives by the tides and deal with more immediate elemental forces. I have flights of fancy regarding the interaction between the coast dwelling folks of the late Mesolithic and the new pastoralist/farmers.
I'm not sure how this all ties together but one line of investigation is the difference between the coastal burial mounds and the moorland mounds and the use of cupmarked stones in the mounds. I know I'm cutting across millenia here but I've got to get rock art into the mix haven't I?
(-:

fitzcoraldo Mar 20, 2007 16:16:54

Replying to fitzcoraldo

Perhaps this illustrates how lore survived in pockets around the moors.
It was written by John Walker Ord in his book The History and Antiquities of Cleveland, published in 1846

"The fishermen, although hardy, brave and adventurous, are nevertheless, strongly tinctured with superstition, to an extent scarcely credible in these days of enlightenment..........
Although Staithes contains considerably more than a thousand inhabitants, no regular system of national religious instruction has even been afforded them, and they are permitted to wallow in gross ignorance.......
Whilst the Hindoos, Africans, Chinese, and other distant lands are liberally supplied with Christian ministers, twelve hundred of our own white brethren, close at hand, on the centre of a wealthy dioscese, and in the midst of civilisation, are actually without a church."

Chris Collyer Mar 20, 2007 19:21:39

Replying to fitzcoraldo

>I see farmers as essentially solar people who live their lives by the seasons and are in it for the long game. I see fishers as lunar people who live their lives by the tides and deal with more immediate elemental forces.

Nice analogy Fitz.

On a vaguely related subject, have you got a copy of 'A Man of the Moors' by Elgee. If so then how much of it relates to prehistoric stuff, or is it more of a study of the man himself?

Cheers-
Chris