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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| Do rabbits get rabies? If not, maybe they were known for it at one time and it killed all but the resistant ones we have left... or they were put into warrens to prevent the spread of the disease... |
Apparently rabbits like other rodents such as rats and mice rarely get rabies even though they're commonly regarded as disease-carriers. Rabbits are young 'conies' apparently, perhaps the conies who were captured (before they could be infected?) and placed in rabbit-farms; maybe rabbits used to be bigger and less gentle (I had a rabbit, 'Randy Mandy', who was a biter though not as lethal as the Monty Python variety).
| what's about fires and baby animals?... |
Sacrifices (first of the crop) come to mind though it's preferable to think of them being cossetted rather than slaughtered, after all baby animals need to be kept warm.
| cf. kinetic, kinetikos, kinein to move |
Something to do with kine (plural of cy/cu) perhaps. Kine or rather cyna seems to be a native English word though, like oxen, it's odd to find a plural not ending in 's', maybe it's a Welsh thing.
Are we alone in equating rabbits and hares with beginnings and endings of months or is it a widespread folk custom?
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| Apparently rabbits like other rodents such as rats and mice rarely get rabies |
Rabid/rabbit might just be a reference to mad behaviour then.
| what's all this about fires and baby animals?... |
Sacrifices (first of the crop) come to mind |
Hmm. "Throw another kid on the fire..." Does sound like domesticated food animals, dunnit? (As opposed to domesticated working animals.)
| Are we alone in equating rabbits and hares with beginnings and endings of months or is it a widespread folk custom? |
How d'ya mean?
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Rabid/rabbit might just be a reference to mad behaviour then.
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They're the daftest creatures, literally jumping into the air (for joy?) and racing round in circles for no particular reason. The dogs or ferrets used to catch them are potential disease-carriers but one snap and the rabbit's had it anyway.
You're supposed to say "rabbit" on the last day of the month and next day "hare" on the first of the month, or maybe it's the other way round. In order to work they've got to be the last and first words respectively, spoken aloud. Something to do with fertility I expect.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| So maybe I'll say all this western European bull fighting and racing stuff is a remnant of the famous Atlantean bull wrestling, slightly less glibly. |
The bulldog is a symbol of Britshness and there's 'John Bull' somewhere in the wings. Maybe bull wrestling or bullfighting was a national sport before pitbulls and cocks took over.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Burrowing into Wiltshire places, I read somewhere that Salisbury Plain used to be known as Ellendune or Ellen Down but can't find more on this tantalising reference. Apparently 'Roman' roads were sometimes called Elen's roads or causeways. There's also an oak link which ties in with ake/ack/og etc. running through, cf. Hebrew אלון 'alon' meaning oak (alone or all-one, as in island?).
Leaving aside all the sun-goddess/Helen stuff for a moment, seems plausible that a tree trunk with branches should be equated with a network of roads leading off from a trunk route as it were.
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| Mick Harper wrote: | Nah, it's got something to do with dragons=worms=snakes=serpents=wisdom
which is the Megalithic Corporation's logo. |
This my first post so forgive me if this has been posted elsewhere. - I think to begin with most of my posts will be observations rather than answers, so here goes.
Nobody seems to have mentioned that the Avebury complex resembles a snake. William Stukely described another avenue (Beckhampton) which until very recently archaeologists dismissed. However a couple of years ago ground penetrating radar discovered buried megaliths in 2 parallel lines exactly where he said they were; I have a copy of his drawing but can't seem to post it.
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Keeping each post to a single item, I find it interesting that most milestones are in fact stone but most signposts are wood. However the direction of somewhere doesn't alter but the distance can if a new bridge is built. Logically they ought to be the other way around. Or are milestones vestigial megaliths? Were there milestones before there were turnpike roads that charged tolls by the mile?
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| Deejay wrote: | | However the direction of somewhere doesn't alter but the distance can if a new bridge is built. Logically they ought to be the other way around. |
Distances between destinations are tremendously important if you want to arrive somewhere before nightfall, standing stones must have borne some indication of mileage though long since eroded. Fat lot of use coming across a landmark without knowing how far you've got to go. In some areas there seem to have been standing stones or menhirs quite close together, it would be interesting to know the locations across the whole island but since the majority have been moved if not removed there's little point now.
| Or are milestones vestigial megaliths? |
If they served the same purpose they were almost certainly one and the same, wonder how old the stone of milestones is. As a hardwearing and local stone, sarsen stone is often used to line kerbs.
Would signposts as we know them have been needed before the advent of turnpike roads? I'd have thought roads or tracks came first, waymarks later. The Ridgeway is older than Avebury.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Nobody seems to have mentioned that the Avebury complex resembles a snake. William Stukely described another avenue (Beckhampton) which until very recently archaeologists dismissed |
I have mentioned that Stukely's map looks exactly like an 'O' level diagram of a womb with the two falopian tubes going off either side -- and is duplicated by the grotto at Margate. (Deejay, make yourself useful and run down diagrams -- including any that justify your snake-claims -- and post them up. Or post up the URLs if you, like me, lack the software skills to put them up direct.)
Oh yes, and welcome aboard.
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| Mick Harper wrote: | (Deejay, make yourself useful and run down diagrams -- including any that justify your snake-claims -- and post them up. Or post up the URLs if you, like me, lack the software skills to put them up direct.)
Oh yes, and welcome aboard. |
the diagrams are here
http://www.avebury-web.co.uk/beck_avenue.html
By the way how do you post diagrams?
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | Anyone having knowledge of the heavenly stars could thus find his way around on Earth by means of the megaliths, which served both as boundaries and landmarks, sighted (and sited) by astronomy. |
A beautfiul example of the double-explanation (that means it must be wrong). Boundaries and landmarks have nothing whatever to do with getting around (somewhat mutually excluding in fact). But these dullards cannot see that it's simple...they have to choose!
That said, I suppose we ought to take the simple precaution (as they ought to have done) and asked for a single example (yes, folks, one will do) of anything reasonably entitled to be called megalithic acting as a boundary. Even a parish boundary would do! |
Perhaps doesn't quite fill the requirement but I immediately thought of "beating the bounds". This article describes a modern version - http://www.strangebritain.co.uk/traditions/bounds.html
In Britain the custom involved walking around the parish boundary and beating it with a stick, or stripped willow branch known as a wand.
Curiously, certain stones, trees or other marker points around the boundary would also be beaten by literally bumping a boy (often a choirboy) against the mark. The boy would be suspended upside down and his head gently tapped against the stone or he would be taken by the feet and hands and swung against a tree!
Markstones are small boulders usually used simply to mark a boundary or a route, but which are often thought by the town folk to be of much more importance. The actual boundary line and marker stones were considered almost sacred and woe betide anyone who had removed one of the stones or built their house on the boundary line. |
In 1985 an attempt to revive the practice took place in High Wycombe, Bucks (not far from the Ridgeway)
| They went under the subway past the Anchor pub, the back of the Falcon pub and to the Angel pub, almost on the same site as the old Angel pub mentioned in the 19th century account of the Beating of the Bounds. From the Angel they walked up St Pauls Row and stopped to look at the standing stone in front of the Guildhall. | |
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I see no snakes! Must dig harder.
"Beating the bounds" is certainly very important and requiring of our attention. What is its purpose? would be my starting point. It is often (and even reasonably) supposed that surveying/ geometry/ science generally started/ flourished when it was necessary to re-mark land every year because of annual inundation by the Nile or the Euphrates or whatever. But why would Ancient Brits need to constantly mark out boundaries that were there for all to see anyway?
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Grant
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| But why would Ancient Brits need to constantly mark out boundaries that were there for all to see anyway? |
Homer nods! That's obvious.
If you don't regularly check your boundaries, what's to stop the next door tribe sneakily moving the boundary marker by a few megalithic yards. And it's best if all the local groups check their boundaries on the same day. Pretty soon it would become a nice little ceremony and we could all drink beer at the same time.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| Rabid/rabbit might just be a reference to mad behaviour then. |
Or the other way about, of course.
| You're supposed to say "rabbit" on the last day of the month and next day "hare" on the first of the month, or maybe it's the other way round. In order to work they've got to be the last and first words respectively, spoken aloud. Something to do with fertility I expect. |
Haven't heard of that one. I'm told we have to say "rabbits and hares" on May Day... summat like that.
| The bulldog is a symbol of Britshness and there's 'John Bull' somewhere in the wings. Maybe bull wrestling or bullfighting was a national sport before pitbulls and cocks took over. |
Archaeologists say the British diet changed from fishy to beefy 4000 BP/BC (can never remember which).
| Burrowing into Wiltshire places, I read somewhere that Salisbury Plain used to be known as Ellendune or Ellen Down but can't find more on this tantalising reference. Apparently 'Roman' roads were sometimes called Elen's roads or causeways. There's also an oak link which ties in with ake/ack/og etc. running through, cf. Hebrew אלון 'alon' meaning oak (alone or all-one, as in island?). |
Oak trees had to be introduced, so I doubt they'd be identified with Britain (unless they only became extra special in the hands of... Druids, presumably). But what about "El-one", the Supreme God, Zeus, to whom the oak is sacred?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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But why would Ancient Brits need to constantly mark out boundaries that were there for all to see anyway?
Homer nods! That's obvious. |
No, dear, not Homer but orthodoxy (and you, of course). The thing that stops the next door tribe sneakily moving the bounday is the fact that if they did, everybody would say, "Ooh look, the next door tribe have just sneakily moved the boundary." So not very sneaky then. In any case these things appear not to be applied to tribal boundaries, where there might be some purpose served, but to parish boundaries. In other words boundaries where actually it matters not a tinker's fig where the boundary actually is.
Sometimes I marvel at my own lack of noddiness.
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