An aerial view, from Wikipedia |
Long Meg and some of Her Daughters |
The south-west side of Long Meg, showing its facial features |
Video of the site, taken from the centre of the Daughters |
A manuscript page of one version of the poem, available from Amherst College Digital Collections |
The other side of Long Meg, again showing facial features |
Close of this side, showing markings |
Close up of one of the ‘cup and ring’ markings, from Wikipedia |
Diagram of markings on this side, from here |
Clooties on one of the ash trees |
For those who don’t know, clooties are offerings made by locals to the spirits of a place. The rags, trinkets and other objects usually represent hopes or thanks for love, health or deliverance. I have read, however, that the origin of clooties is that a cloth would be soaked in the water of a holy well or sacred stream and used to wipe the forehead of a person in sorrow or illness. The cloth would then be hung on a hawthorn tree, which is associated with the Land’s lady of sovereignty, so the tree would take away the cause of the misfortune.
As archeologists are increasing discovering, sites such as Long Meg and Her Daughters are not solitary monuments but are often part of an elaborate sacred landscape, which show that the ancient Britons had a sophisticated knowledge of the land, its energies (spiritual and/or psychological and/or magnetic, depending on your worldview), and surveying and construction techniques.
Plan of prehistoric sites around Long Meg, from here |
A mood photo of the site |
After Grevel and I finished communing with the site, we ate our lunch and left to visit other sites, which I’ll cover in my next one or two posts.
For those still following my jackdaw obsession, here’s another photo:
…and a jackdaw in an ash tree… (Sang to ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’) |