WATER divining is one of those things that sounds utterly improbable until you see it for yourself. For me, it happened last summer. Workmen were digging trenches in our garden and we were all worried about the digger hitting the water pipe, the location of which had always been unknown. To our surprise, the very pragmatic engineer whipped out a set of divining rods and had not merely located but had also mapped the course of the pipe in less than a minute. Still skeptical, we tentatively dug where he suggested and, sure enough, the spade soon struck metal. There was the 100-year-old water pipe, following a course that defied all logical predictions, but that had somehow been found, using only a pair of bent copper rods.
The art of divining, also known as dowsing, goes back millennia and seems to have sprung up independently in several different countries. Prehistoric cave drawings in Spain, Algeria, and Iraq depict figures clutching a forked twig, engaged in the act of divining. Confucius wrote about it and the ancient Egyptians practiced it: divining tools were found in the tomb of Tutankhamun and Cleopatra allegedly employed dowsers to search for gold.
The Christian Church appeared to have a complicated relationship with dowsing— there are plenty of accounts of monks using it, but it was eventually concluded to be on the side of sorcery and was denounced accordingly. Yet, it continued to be used. Elizabeth I brought German miners over to England to teach British miners how to divine for ore deposits and many notable thinkers and scientists were dowsers, including Leonardo da Vinci, Sir Isaac Newton, Thomas Edison, and Albert Einstein. By the early 20th century, it was practiced widely but remained a slightly dubious art.
Denne historien er fra June 23, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra June 23, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
