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distinctive regional traditions - CARTOON REALITY - 11th July 2012
Extract from ‘The Romance of Mis and Dubh Ruis.’ Recorded in a manuscript of 1769, certainly medieval but probably earlier than that.
The story concerns a young man pursuing a woman who has gone mad and turned into a wild woman of the mountains/woods and his quest to cure her.
When he reached the mountain he sat where he thought she might pass and he spread his cloak on the ground and spread his gold and silver around its edges. He lay on the cloak and took up his harp. He opened his trews and bared himself for he thought that if he could lie with and have intercourse with her that it would be a good way to bring her to sanity again. Not long after that she came to where he was on hearing the harp music and she stood there in all her wildness listening and looking at him and waiting.
‘Are you not a person?’ She said.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘What is this?’ she said, putting her hand on the harp.
‘A harp,’ he said.
‘Ho,’ she said, ‘I remember the harp. My father used to play one. Play it for me.’
‘I will,’ he said, ‘ but please do not harm me.’
‘I will not,’ she said.
She saw the gold and silver and said:
‘What is this?’
‘Gold and Silver,’ he said.
‘I remember,’ she said, ‘my father used to have gold.’
She glanced and him and saw his nakedness and his playful members and said:
‘What are these?’ pointing to his testicles. And he told her.
‘What is this?’ She said pointing to the other thing she saw.
‘That is my magic wand.’
‘I do not remember that,’ she said , ‘my father did not have anything like that. A magic wand,’ she said, ‘What tricks can it do?’
‘Sit near me and I will do the trick for you.’
‘I will,’ he said, ‘ And he lay with her and had intercourse.
‘Ha,’ she said, ‘That was a good trick. Do it again.’
‘I will he said, ‘but I will play the harp first.’
‘Don’t bother with the harp,’ she said,’ just do the trick.’
‘Well,’ he said,’ I would like some food first. I am hungry.’
‘I will get you a deer,’ she said.
She was not gone long from him when she returned carrying a deer under her arm. She was about to tear it apart and eat it as it was when Dubh Ruis said to her:
‘Wait until I slaughter the deer and boil the meat.;
With that he cut the deer’s throat and skinned it. Then he made a large fire of dead wood from the forest and he gathered a heap of granite stones, and put them in the fire. He made a pit, square all round in the ground, and he filled it with water. He cut up his meat and wrapped it in marsh grass, with a well-turned sugan around it, and he put it in the hole and he was supplying and continuously putting the well reddened, long-heated stones in the water, and he kept it constantly boiling until his meat was cooked . . .
He then took her to the hole in which was the cold broth with the fat of the deer melted on it, and he put her standing in it, and he took a piece of the deer’s skin and he rubbed and massaged the joints of her body and all her bones, and he took to smearing her, rubbing her, and spreading her with the grease of the deer and with the broth until he had cleansed much of her, and until he brought streams of sweat out of her like that.’
distinctive regional traditions - CARTOON REALITY - 11th July 2012
Those two passages I have posted come from Diarmuid O Drisceoil's marvellous entry in 'Burnt Offerings: International Contributions to Burnt Mound Archaeology' Compiled by Victor Buckley. 1990. Wordwell Publications. Well worth a look - somewhat outdated now due to the sheer volume of sites excavated since that time but still of value).
The Dubh Ruis story makes clear links with cooking and washing in these pits but also sexual and curative qualities hinted at, there's also that business of cleaning the wilderness out of the woman (passing between worlds?)
Quote:They come with a trough round here rather than pits'He made a pit, square all round in the ground, and he filled it with water.'
Many Irish examples are timber lined incidentally.
I can see you're not warming to this idea Dino, and when you explain your pits they don't sound like a match for fulacht fiadh. At absolute best a very distant cousin.
Anyway, just thought I'd throw that slab of info in. I'll say no more on the subject, take it or leave it.
I never did find out if Mis and Dubh Ruis lived happily ever after . . .
distinctive regional traditions - Unitof1 - 12th July 2012
Quote: it was aluded that neolithic pit digging in east anglia had nothing to do with neolithic pit digging in northern england. can this be so? is there such a thing as a distinctive regional tradtion in neolithic pitso a region in the neolithic must have at least one rub down pit to call its self a region in the neolithic rather than the regionising that was alluded too might have been geologic and that could be taken at a regional scale but in the case of digging a hole to hold water a very local level with what I would imagine would be a lot of holes that had to be abandoned although maybe they all might have worked if there was a lot of raised bogs and perched watertables around than we have to day to compare with. Probably not the best place for your average cockchafer.
distinctive regional traditions - Dinosaur - 12th July 2012
I think there's a lot of commonality between the stuff dug in Cambridgeshire/Norfolk and that found in Yorkshire/Northumberland, but there are also differences - eg Garrow's work at Kilverstone relied on dense groups of pits intercutting one another - we just don't get that up here (off the top of my head I think I'm right in saying that at Marton le Moor only 2 of 153 pits had a direct physical relationship and I think there were only 2 cross-contextual pot joins).
Cartoon - actually I think the quotes are fascinating, but burnt mound stuff seems to be related to a different activity although possibly by the same people, maybe they did the burnt mound stuff up on the moors during the summer and dug all the pits in the lowlands during the winter? - yes, certainly round here the archaeology has a distinct geographic seperation although perhaps that's just because the burnt mounds only survive as earthworks to be recognised and excavated in the uplands and big infrastructure and quarry projects responsible for identifying pits occur mostly in the lowlands? Must check the book out :face-approve:
distinctive regional traditions - Unitof1 - 13th July 2012
presumably the biggest commonality is that the digger interpretated the feature as a "pit". Which is presumably how the pension grabbers in post ex like it so that they can play the big archaeologist by doing the lets compare regions. All part of the hiearchie to becomeing Professor of world prehistory.
distinctive regional traditions - Dinosaur - 13th July 2012
Unitof1 Wrote:presumably the biggest commonality is that the digger interpretated the feature as a "pit"
Not so common that they can do things like bother to bulk-sample them more than once in a blue moon
distinctive regional traditions - Sith - 13th July 2012
Unitof1 Wrote:presumably the biggest commonality is that the digger interpretated the feature as a "pit".
That puts me in mind of the folowing exchange between a certain theoretical archaeologist based at a northern university and a student preparing to write an undergraduate dissertation on the deposition of material in a well-known group of pits:
Lecturer: So what were you planning on looking at?
Student: The distribution and significance of Roman material deposited in the pits at XXXX.
Lecturer: Woah! Can I just stop you there. Can you define what you mean by 'pit'?
distinctive regional traditions - Unitof1 - 13th July 2012
its the northern bit which probably says it all
distinctive regional traditions - P Prentice - 17th July 2012
Dinosaur Wrote:I think there's a lot of commonality between the stuff dug in Cambridgeshire/Norfolk and that found in Yorkshire/Northumberland, but there are also differences - eg Garrow's work at Kilverstone relied on dense groups of pits intercutting one another - we just don't get that up here (off the top of my head I think I'm right in saying that at Marton le Moor only 2 of 153 pits had a direct physical relationship and I think there were only 2 cross-contextual pot joins).
Cartoon - actually I think the quotes are fascinating, but burnt mound stuff seems to be related to a different activity although possibly by the same people, maybe they did the burnt mound stuff up on the moors during the summer and dug all the pits in the lowlands during the winter? - yes, certainly round here the archaeology has a distinct geographic seperation although perhaps that's just because the burnt mounds only survive as earthworks to be recognised and excavated in the uplands and big infrastructure and quarry projects responsible for identifying pits occur mostly in the lowlands? Must check the book out :face-approve:
so when is a variation a regional difference? i would contend that the patchy and uneven spread of communal monuments reflects a patchy and uneven spread of cults or religeons and that there is no reason to suppose that pit digging was imune from cult thinking or that it was an entirely secular obsession. just wish we could find some waterlogged examples. anybody?
distinctive regional traditions - Kel - 17th July 2012
Pits which are inclined to stay waterlogged are usually wells. There's a whole different kettle of worms.