The ‘Fifth Branch’ of the Mabinogion & Some Plagiarizing Pagans

In 2008, an English academic who works with ancient and modern Celtic languages created “a piece of Iolosim,” in other words, a pseudo-ancient tale in the spirit of the Welsh literary forger and Druid revivalist Iolo Morganwg.

Written in Middle Welsh and “translated” into English, it purports to be a hitherto-unknown section of the Mabinogion, a famous collection of medieval Welsh tales with possibly older roots.

Imagine his surprise when he finds the whole thing—uncredited, of course—on a website devoted to “Keltic mysteries” and the revival of ancient Welsh Paganism, or some approximation thereof.

The ancient ‘Legend of Amaethon Uab Don’ quoted here as evidence for this mystic cosmological bollocks was penned over a month or so by yours truly, c. 2008, while glugging back the diet coke in Jesus College Oxford computer room. The website of this bunch of chumps not only has copied my entire text (in English and Middle Welsh), but also begins with a long and pompous screed about how wicked it is to steal other people’s material.

Anyone who read the “Fifth Branch’s” introduction carefully would have seen some signals that it was bogus—there is no “Judas College” at Oxford University, for one thing—but who reads carefully on the Internet when they are busy cutting and pasting?

Of New Agers, Nazis, and Vin Chaud

People described variously as “hippies” and “New Agers” apparently view a mountain in the French Pyrenees as some sort of a refuge from the upcoming apocalypse (you do have that on your calendar, don’t you?).

A rapidly increasing stream of New Age believers – or esoterics, as locals call them – have descended in their camper van-loads on the usually picturesque and tranquil Pyrenean village of Bugarach. They believe that when apocalypse strikes on 21 December this year, the aliens waiting in their spacecraft inside Pic de Bugarach will save all the humans near by and beam them off to the next age.

Of course, no one actually interviews any of them. That would require work, and this is just one Oliver Pickup of The Independent free-associating at his keyboard.

For decades, there has been a belief that Pic de Bugarach, which, at 1,230 metres, is the highest in the Corbières mountain range, possesses an eery power. Often called the “upside-down mountain” – geologists think that it exploded after its formation and the top landed the wrong way up – it is thought to have inspired Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth and Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Since the 1960s, it has attracted New Agers, who insist that it emits special magnetic waves.

Let’s see, the travelers in Journey to the Centre of the Earth enter lava tubes in an Icelandic volcano, and Close Encounters is set at Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, but hey, when you’re Oliver Pickup, one mountain is as good as the next.

There should be something here for researchers into new religious movements though.

From Snow into Fire

Spring equinox sunset in "the notch."

Everyone has posted their “Happy Equinox” messages. Oh well. I live in a house that was placed by the Old Ones to line up with the equinoctial sunsets, instead. You can see how tonight the sun seemed to fit into a particular notch in the ridge to the west.  They were truly wise, the Old Ones.

And what did I do? I rolled out of bed, walked and fed the dogs, and went off to a wildland fire-training class in the next county. Actually, it was no so much a class as a demonstration/sales pitch for this product—which is a cool product if your agency has big bucks to spend.

It’s a great way to show people who live in the urban-wildland interface, which is where my little volunteer fire department is situated, exactly how a forest fire could roll up their bosky subdivision.

We’re not buying it, of course. No big bucks for the high-tech stuff.

But I also had the chance to chat with some agency people whom I needed to see, and then the other guy from my department and I stood back against the wall and muttered sotto voce about how the US Forest Service really could have used the SimTable last year, when they made a very bad fire prediction that, literally, blew up in their faces hereabouts.

Hey, no one pays us, so we can be free with our opinions.

Here is a news report about modeling last summer’s Wallow Fire in Arizona and New Mexico.

I normally post fire stuff on the other blog, but I thought that I would share a bit here. I may be at my desk editing this big book on Central and Eastern European Paganism for our book series, but now when the telephone rings, I think, Uh-oh, is this a fire call?

Andre Norton Revisited

When I was about 11 years old, I wandered up to the science fiction section of a hole-in-the-wall branch of the Jefferson County (Colorado) Public Library. I came away with two books by the author Andre Norton, The Time Traders and Galactic Derelict.

Written in the late 1950s, they are now considered part of the “Ross Murdock series,” also known as the “Time Trader series.” The better-known (?)  Witch World series was just coming out, and I did not encounter them until later.

When I discovered later that “Andre” was a woman first known as Mary Ann Norton, I briefly had her confused with the English writer Mary Norton who wrote the “Borrowers” series, which my older sisters had read.

They were both fantasy series, after all, and so perhaps “Andre” was her space-opera pen name and “Mary” was her “cozy” pen name — or so I reasoned. I was totally wrong — they were completely different people.

So last week I was in a nearby city’s public library, looking for an SF title that someone had recommended, and there on the shelf was a newer edition of Time Traders and Galactic Derelict bound together.

Time Traders had been my first encounter with the term, the “Beaker People.”  Norton makes this ancient culture (or cultural period) into a “guild of free traders.” (SF writers seem to like guilds of free traders — it’s an enduring meme.)

So if life were a novel, I would have carried that memory forward and become an archaeologist. Didn’t happen.

The plot I did not remember at all, just a couple of images. There are lots of near-misses and close escapes, with language like this: “A white-hot flash of pain scored his upper arm.”

What I did not remember was that the time travelers encounter Neolithic conflict between the religion of the Great Mother, served by priestesses at megalithic sites, and the sky/storm god Lurgha, whose worship is pushing its way in and which is exploited by their Russian counterparts. (There is a Cold War atmosphere, despite the 21st-century setting.)

It’s not a major plot element, but did it plant a seed?

Ring-Dancing Monkeys and Black Death Rubbish

At Got Medieval, Carl Pyrdrum re-debunks the persistent, authentic-sounding story that the nursery rhyme “Ring around the Rosies” has anything whatsoever to do with the Black Death of the 1340s.

It does not.

As any good English plague survivor********** could tell you, the plague was caused by sin and best warded off by extreme piety and making sure your humours were in balance.***********

His version includes dancing monkeys, a feral cat, and Lancelot.

Here on the banks of Hardscrabble Creek, which is starting to rise as the snows are melting, we are fairly suspicious of authentic-sounding stories about surviving medieval practices. See also St. Patrick and the “snakes” who were not Druids.

Introduction to Mongolian Shamanism

Introductory ten-minute video about Mongolian shamanism, revived in the post-Communist decades. Just enjoy the visuals, unless you understand the language. Jenghiz Khan shows up, of course, as does Buddhism.

This well-made video shows the drumming and trance dancing of both male and female shamans. Some of the drums seem to have miniature bows in them — is that a traditional Mongol style?

At about the 1:02 point, however, I had a realization. New Agey esoteric-themed art is a circumpolar phenomenon.

Apotropaic Magic, Size 9

I don’t know if the custom of hiding used shoes and clothing in a house under construction to ward off evil influences ever crossed the pond to North America from Britain. If you know of instances—or of people still doing it—let me know in the comments.

I first learned of this custom at an archaeology conference at the University of Southampton some years back. Archaeologists are delighted with such finds. Often they provide the only samples of ordinary people’s clothing, which otherwise would have been worn until it fell apart.

The custom apparently went to Australia with the convicts and other early settlers, however.

Convict's shirt (BBC).

A few blocks away from the Sydney Harbour Bridge is the imposing, vivid orange structure of the Hyde Park Barracks.

Built to house some 50,000 unfortunate convicts transported from the UK between 1819 and the mid-1840s, the jail was among the first substantial structures constructed in the city.

On the second floor, under the boards of a wooden staircase, workers found a striped prisoner’s shirt.

[Historian Ian] Evans rejects the idea that the shirt could have been put under the stairs by accident. Just like the Harbour Bridge shoe, he believes it was hidden for a purpose.

But if you are renovating an 18th or 19th-century building and find an old shoe under the floor, now you know why it was there—maybe. (And did this custom die out completely, and if so, why?)

Fisking the Red Tent

At Regretsy, an elaborate take-down of first-menses rites for girls.

7. In addition to not being a womyn or a goddess, your daughter is most likely not a priestess. Ask yourself if people routinely drop by the house to see if Caitlyn can perform an exorcism after school. If the answer is no, she’s just a 13-year-old girl who doesn’t need made-up fairy titles or a bloody vagina necklace. She just needs a pad and a couple of Midol, and for you to stay the fuck away from Etsy.

(Hat tip: The House of Vines.) Also, fisking defined.

 

Happy Birthday to Blog

It just hit me: Letter From Hardscrabble Creek celebrated (?) its ninth anniversary as a blog on the 7th. To be truthful, I forgot. So raise a glass—better late than never.

Here is where it started.

When Britain Goes Pagan…

Click to embiggen.

… the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) will become a religious institution. (Hat tip to Andy Letcher.)