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Author
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Comment
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Otherworld
Registered User
(1/20/03 1:51:43 pm)
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King Arther!!! clooty wells
Hi folks
thanks for input
bit tired just now so apologies for typos etc.
Most recent discoveries point to Arther being active around Scotish borders, northen england and wales with camolote being located in southern scotland.... I have a refrence somewhere and will look it up.
Clooty wells. These are trees that people go to and tie up a small rag of cloth to a branch. They tie up a problem in the rag and it is left their untill it rots off, for someone else to untie it means they will recive that persons problem. They are assiciated with springs and wells [ushiully with healing powers]
Although some are linked to saints, most were likely the home of water spirits. Their are 2/3 near Inverness that people still visit to tie rags to on May the first.
This coustom is completly unknown in the central belt and lowlands of scotland.
I did see something almost identical on a documentary about chinies rituals.. does this ring any bells with one??
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Charles Vess
Unregistered User
(1/20/03 2:38:33 pm)
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Clooty Wells...
Those springs or wells are documented all over Ireland and still "used" today with the same custom of tying rags onto the tree/bush limbs of nearby vegetation. Looks wonderfully barbaric in the photos.
There's even a very nice, contemporary song written/performed by Tim O'Brien off his CD, TWO JOUNEYS called 'The Holy Well'.
Since your sources find these wells only in the Highlands and I've seen photographic documentation from Ireland perhaps it is custom that carries over to those other countries generally concidered to have a Celtic past: Wales, Cornwall, Brittany, Galithia?
Best,
Charles
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Meurglys
Registered User
(1/20/03 4:14:05 pm)
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Re: Clooty Wells...
A bit OT, but the closest I've come to one in Edinburgh was at an art exhibition by Yoko Ono about 3 or 4 years ago. There was a tree in one corner of the gallery with instructions to write a wish on one of the ribbons provided and tie it to the tree.
I think she intended creating a list or a book of some sort with all the results afterwards. I gathered at the time that it was related to a Japanese custom.
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Jane Yolen
Unregistered User
(1/21/03 12:14:05 am)
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in Fife
We have something similar here in Fife (southeastern Scotland) in a little town called Dunino (Hill of the Seven Sisters. . .or maybe it's nine.) There is a strange grotto with an incised celtic cross on a rock face (scholarly thinking is that it's nineteenth century rather than earlier) and a rock basin with odd stains in it. People tie feathers and cloths and other things onto the trees in front of the cross.
Interestingly, the grotto is to be found by going from the local kirk and following a path that leads from the kirkyard.
Jane
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DonnaQ
Registered User
(1/21/03 12:15:57 am)
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Re:Wells...
The custom is still very much alive and well in Cornwall, England - saw it myself at several sites (Madron and Sancreed). There are a number of beautiful photos and more info on clouty wells in "Holy Places of Celtic Britian" by Mick Sharp.
Hope this helps...
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Otherworld
Registered User
(1/23/03 2:56:47 am)
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Re: The Fachan and seers
Glad to hear versions of clooty wells is more wide spread than I thought.... do any of them have names?
Next question is about a highland fairy called "The Fachan" this strange creature has one eye, one arm and one leg and can be found near Glencoe. It is a mischievious creature that some times tells your future in a light harted and tricky way.
He is very likly a coruption of the druidic seers who would stand on one leg, close one eye and stand with one arm out streched holding a seer stone to optain their visions. No doubt thay had to do this for many hours before the vision would occer, like many shaman
The spell check is not working and my dyslexia is their in all it's
glory... :( hope it makes sence
cheers
otherworld
[martin]
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Otherworld
Registered User
(1/28/03 2:35:36 am)
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Re: What folk tales do you associate with the highlands
thanks for all the info folks
but what tales would you link to the Highlands of Scotland.
If you had never been here what would you expect?
Bragadoon? [what a laugh that film is]
cheers
otherworld
[martin]
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Judith
Berman
Registered User
(1/29/03 7:21:09 am)
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Ethnicity & ethnonymy in the history of the British Isle
> In the first century BC the British (or Pretanoi) lived quite happily on their islands all fighting one another, and probably not even aware that they were Pretanoi. This pleasant state of affairs was disrupted by the invasion of the Romans (actually not Romans, but Gauls, Germans, Spaniards, Numidians, Thracians, and lots of others were a few Italians pretending to be Romans for appearance?s sake). <...>
JB: Which reminds me of the joke about what is the distinction between Italians and Romans -- answer: the year 600 AD.
Grindlegutz, this may be OT, but it made my day. Such a great riff on the mythologizing of history and the complexity of any people's actual history, and the way that ethnicity, about which people feel so fiercely and genuinely, and about which they have so many fiercely argued pseudo-empirical rationalizations, is SO thoroughly myth.
People are oppressed and killed by the millions, of course, on the basis of these myths. If anyone's tempted to doubt the efficacy of stories.
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Otherworld
Registered User
(3/10/03 5:22:00 pm)
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Re: thanks all
Hi all
been away for a while so had no chance to read all your comments untill tonight. Going to take me a while to digest it all but it has been a help.
On clooty wells? any one seen info relating them to China?
Also any info on the myth of Selkies being linked to Native Americans being blown off course and ending up on the west coast of Scotland.... does this ring a bell with anyone [their seal skin clothes being bases of the link]?
thanks for now
all the best
martin
;)
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Meurglys
Registered User
(3/11/03 3:43:01 am)
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Selkies being linked to Native Americans
There's a documented case of what turned out to be an eskimo arriving by kayak at Aberdeen (on the E. coast) in, I think, the early 1800s. People were initially baffled as whether he was human because of his fur clothing.
He died after a couple of days before anyone could figure where he was from (no language in common and he was dying) but some artifacts are still in existence (Aberdeen University museum, or similar, IIRC) which have been dated & placed with more modern knowledge.
This is half-remembered from a book called Diamond's Ace about the cultural influence of America on Scotland up to around WWI; I'll confirm details, etc. if you want; the book's at home.
Edited to say, whoops! A hundred years out... it happened in 1728.
Edited by: Meurglys at: 3/12/03 3:19:51 am
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Jane Yolen
Unregistered User
(3/15/03 3:57:05 am)
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origin
I have heard both the Eskimo (Aleut) story and a story that it was a single Viking in a kayak. Given that kayaks are Eskimo rather than Viking creations, I rather favor the first interpetation.
However, I have serious doubts that a single off-course Eskimo could be the origin of all selchie stories, but rather confirmation of what the folks already believed.
Jane
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Meurglys
Registered User
(3/15/03 6:29:02 am)
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Re: origin
Apparently (from The Diamond's Ace by Tom Cunningham) a book published in 1782* recalled him as being 'an Indian man' which would imply an eskimo, rather than a Norseman. The kayak, on fairly recent examination, however, seems to include wood from Scandinavia.
One theory (supported by a matching Danish story, apparently) is that an eskimo couple were captured and taken to the Danish royal court as a curiosity and, when the wife died, the husband escaped and set off for home in a kayak he had made using local wood, etc. The supposition is that he got as far as Aberdeen.
I have a vague recollection that this story (about eskimoes at the Danish court) is mentioned in Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow by Hoeg. Can't vouch for it though.
Cunningham also says that thare are other similar 'sightings' mentioned in 'similar contemporary documentary sources' (as *) and that a common term for referring to them was Finnmen.
Or maybe, Norsemen having reached Greenland and America and also having settled much of northern & western Scotland, the stories of selkies are based on stories of what other Norsemen saw on their voyages to the west.
Tom Cunningham's e-mail is in his book; I can send it to anyone who's interested if you send me an EZBoard message, or whatever.
* A General Description of the East Coast of Scotland, from Edinburgh to Cullen by Francis Douglas, pub. at Paisley, 1782.
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AlisonPegg
Unregistered User
(3/20/03 11:05:28 am)
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Clooty wells and selkies
Hi!
This is the first time I've read these boards and I'm fascinated! This is very much an interest of mine. I write fairy tales and if you're interested you might like to read "The Strange Tale of Love and Plain Elspet" and "The Strange Tale of Seal Island" which are both very much on these themes.
All the best
Alison
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AlisonPegg
Unregistered User
(3/20/03 11:11:00 am)
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Website!!
Hi again!
You can read either of these stories at www.17xthemoon.com
All the best
Alison
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