The Wansdyke & District Forums

Avebury_Bran

<t>I will only say that the places being bought are the places that were held sacred, in the old way, and that whoever is buying knows exactly what they are buying, whatever the reason they give. You do not gather up the holy ground of a whole country by accident. I do not know what it is for. But i...

Avebury_Bran

There have always been Watchers on the high places, dave. The old folk knew to give them a nod and pass on, and not to make a study of them. I do not say be afraid. I say be courteous, and let it watch the sun down in peace.

Avebury_Bran

<t>A question I am asked on every walk and answer differently depending on my mood, so let me put it to the people who actually know. Where does the name come from? The old folk hereabouts, my grandmother's age, would tell you the Devil dug it in a single night, threw up that great bank with one cas...

Avebury_Bran

<t>And you are right to, Bill, and I am sorry for it, truly. The mess and the open gates are a disgrace and they are not us, or not most of us. It is the few hundred who come to party and not to mark anything who leave the bottles. Those of us who actually keep the day would gladly help marshal it a...

Avebury_Bran

<t>For those who never go, a word on what it is actually like. We gathered at the stones before dawn for the summer solstice, a few hundred of us, drummers, a handful in robes, families with children, old hippies, tourists, the lot. The light came up grey and then gold over the bank, somebody starte...

Avebury_Bran

<t>There is more in it than smuggling, I have always thought. The moon raked from the water is an old, old image, the reflected thing taken for the real, the treasure that is there and not there at once. The smugglers' tale is the last comfortable coat an older idea has put on to keep itself decent....

Avebury_Bran

<t>And the Ridgeway is the right place for it, the oldest road in Britain, walked for five thousand years. If any road has soaked up its travellers it is that one. I have never seen the soldiers, but I have felt, up there at dawn, that I was one of a great many walking it and not the only one presen...

Avebury_Bran

<t>Dave, I have wonderful news and slightly deflating news, and they are the same news. That was almost certainly me, or one of my grove. We greet the sunrise at the stones on the quarter days and around the solstices, and yes, we wear the robes, and yes, we stand very still facing the east, and yes...

Avebury_Bran

<t>That is gold, Nancy, thank you, and exactly what I hoped for. The Gabriel hounds, the sky-yelpers: that is the genuine local article, and far better than any book. The detail that you must not look up is the old one, the same as do not watch the smith, do not look back. And that it goes west. The...

Avebury_Bran

<t>A question that has nagged me, because the Wild Hunt is everywhere in the books but I cannot pin down a properly local Wiltshire telling. The Hunt, for those who do not know it: a spectral chase that rides across the sky or the high downs on wild nights, hounds and horses and a terrible huntsman,...

The Wansdyke & District Forums

Search found 16 matches

Why is it Wansdyke - the Devil, or Woden?

Solstice at the stones

The Wild Hunt - a real folk tradition here?