A PREHISTORIC ring barrow stands in Co Armagh. It began as a wooden frame, which was then filled with thousands of stones, burned and covered with soil, leaving a gigantic mound. It is now known as Navan Fort or, in Old Irish, Emain Macha. By the Middle Ages, it was the legendary palace of the Kings of Ulster (or Ulaidh). In Lady Augusta Gregory’s early-20th-century retelling of the Ulster Cycle, a princess called Dechtire swallows a mayfly in her wine and falls asleep. As she sleeps, Lugh of the Long Hand appears to her, claiming to have been the mayfly. He transforms Dechtire and her 50 handmaidens into birds and steals them away to Brú na Bóinne, a Stone Age passage tomb in Co Meath. A year later, Dechtire is found giving birth to the hero Cúchulainn.
As mysterious sentinels in the landscape, it makes sense that prehistoric barrows inspired stories of the supernatural, but stories are everywhere, if one knows where to look. Barry Island in Wales is famous for the earthy TV sitcom Gavin & Stacey, but it’s also the setting for the story of the 5th/6thcentury St Cadog and a miraculous salmon, written down in the 12th century. Cadog— King Arthur’s contemporary—is returning from Flat Holm island to Barry when he realises his followers have left behind his precious handbook. He commands two of them to retrieve it and, seemingly impossibly, never to come back. On the return journey, their boat capsizes and the two men are drowned. Cadog’s remaining followers, fishing for dinner, discover the book unscathed in the belly of a salmon.
Denne historien er fra January 22, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra January 22, 2020-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.
