Robin redbreast

One summer evening, I was crossing the Church St. footbridge over the River Teith in Callendar, Scotland, when a small bird hopped up to me, expectantly eying my red boot. I let out a little squeal of delight when I recognized what he was. A real robin! I didn’t dare move for fear I would disturb or harm him. 

Of course I had no idea that the diminutive European robin redbreast of English literature and fairytale fame, a flycatcher, was a bird of a completely different feather than our rather robust north American robin, a large thrush built like a Sherman tank. Or a hefty bird in hand.

Both birds are more orange than red, but there, the similarity ends. The word for the color orange was a linguistic newcomer to 16th c. Britain. In those days, the color choices were either yellow or red, or both. But robin red-yellow breast doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. And as it turns out that there are many species of birds that are called robins the world over. Australia’s flame robin is similar in size to our American robin.

Callendar was home to the famous Scottish outlaw, Rob Roy McGregor, or Raibeart Ruadh MacGriogair. Rob, or Robin was a diminutive form of Robert. In this case, Roy was an Anglicized form of Ruaidh, or the red one. Rob Roy Way separates the Highlands from the Lowlands. 

And Rob Roy, a Jacobite rabble-rouser, was a cattle rustler cum folk hero. The Highland outlaw, immortalized by Sir Walter Scott, became a legend within his own lifetime. Liam Neeson made for a big braw rogue in the movie.

The lingering twilight on the footbridge spanning the Teith River was beautiful. The long golden hours of summer, were as good as it gets. As I was taking photos of the river reflections, a tiny orange-breasted bird hopped right up to me on impossibly thin legs, and promptly fell in love with one of my red Reebok boots. 

I had never seen an European robin before, I had only heard about them from my Irish grandmother, and of course the Mother Goose nursery rhyme and finger games came to mind—for species identification purposes only, of course. 

Little Robin Redbreast
Sat upon a rail;
Niddle noble went his head,
Widdle waggle went his tail.— Little Robin Redbreast

There are many apocryphal stories associated with robins, mostly to do with Jesus and purgatory. They covered the bodies of two dead children with leaves in Babes of the Wood. In Irish mythology to kill a robin is to invoke bad luck for the rest of your life. There is no cure. They’ve become a ubiquitous symbol of Christmas, featured on Christmas cards and postage stamps. And of course, they’re also associated with Robin Hood, defender of the poor.

Legend has it that when Jesus was dying on the cross, the robin, then simply brown in colour, flew to his side and sang into his ear in order to comfort him in his pain. The blood from his wounds stained the robin's breast, and thereafter all robins carry the mark of Christ's blood upon them. —Wiki

It was not the first time my red Reeboks were siren sentinels to robins. Once, while I was exploring the Crystal Lakes rift near San Francisco, an American robin, perhaps seeking a sole-mate, became equally enamored of my red boot. 

I had to stand patiently on the Callander footbridge in the gloaming until the little love affair with my boot was over. The fading of the light brought a close to this little romance. Pure magic.

 robin redbreast

The cultivated history of daffodils as we know it

A daffodil admiring itself in the mirror, ca. 2008. I forgot to date it.

Note bene: This blogpost began as an excerpt from a letter I wrote to novelist Gregg Dunnett who emigrated to Spain from Britain and was missing his daffodils. I never did get around to reshaping my notes into a blogpost, until a year later, so these notes are convoluted. 

Lechyd da! Those daffodils that everybody bashes over their neighbors’ heads in Wales on March 1 may not be native to Britain because daffodils, as we know them, along with rabbits, originally hailed from Iberia! So get your repatriation papers in order. 

In Wales, the daffodil is known as cenhinen Bedr or ceninn Pedr in Welsh—that which is like St. Peter’s leeks. It’s a complicated simile. The daffodil leaves resembled a leek that rules out daffodils as being native in Wales as they didn’t even know its name. According to a 1630 broadside ballad, the Welsh wore leeks in their hats to recognize friend from foe before the battle won on St David's Day. And ate them afterwards. Crossing leeks and daffodils, the national flower of Wales, could be dangerous as they are, like all lilies, extremely toxic. Don’t tell Saint Dewi.

Sant Dewi stained glass window at St Non's Chapel; note the flowers—daffodils. Wiki

To be fair, there might also have been a “native” plant that resembled the narcissus/daffodil/jonquil in the British Isles. However, I don’t trust the sources (since they’ve all copied each other, warts, and all) though I’ve included the links below. People often confuse the concept of native wildflowers with escaped naturalized cultivar flowers. Like with mustard, forget-me-nots, and Scottish bluebells…. the word “wild” can swing both ways.

But I did find this: “ The only species of narcissus native to Britain is the rather demur Lent Lily…” However, The National Records of Scotland misidentified the daffodil, or narcissus as a member of the Primulaceae family. Ak! Nope. Strike the word, “native,” add “naturalized.” (Unless it is a primrose —not a daffodil.) At least Wikipedia got that part right—they came from Iberia. I should’ve just begun my quest with Wikipedia, and saved myself a lot of grief, but I wanted original sources.

That classification error by The National Records of Scotland led me on a merry Google chase—because despite Easter being movable feast, the idea of a flower named after Lent certainly suggests a long-term cultivation. For the record, the narcissus or daffodil is a member of the Amaryllidaceae family, a lily with six tepals, and not a four-petaled primrose (oxlip looks a bit like a narcissus). And narcissi are not native to the British Isles.

In the middle ages, narcotic cowslips were called St. Peter’s herb. Wiki

And it doesn’t help that the origin and symbology of the daffodil is muddied by the strife between Catholicism and Protestantism. I suppose we could blame Martin Luther who never saw it coming when he nailed his theses on the church door at Wittenberg in 1517.

The folklore surrounding the daffodil is diverse. During the middle ages, narcissus was associated with the Virgin Mary and resurrection. Its leaves were compared to a spear, its sap was a gateway drug to the undiscovered country from which no one returns. Elysian Fields and all that. I can see the leaves of daffodils compared to spears, and Dame Edna (yes, I met him too) said that gladiolus refers to the Celtic Claymore sword. (See Narcissus in Culture.)

Etymology Online revealed that the word daffodil possibly arrived by way of Middle English affodill " (ca. 1590s) by way of the Dutch affodyle), via medieval Latin, via Ancient Greek—to make numb. Narcissi, like all lilies, are extremely toxic. But despite the added-on article, “d,” an accretion from the Dutch “de affodyle,” references cite the word (d)affodil itself as from an unknown source. Another source stated that affodyle means 'that which comes early.’

I tried another approach. First reference in English. Terminus post quem (TPC—that is, the first ever literary mention I could find…) During the “late 16th and early 17th century botanists and herbalists John Gerard and John Parkinson described them as "Pseudonarcissus Anglicus pleno", "Gerrards double Daffodill".

Ok, that reference suggests that cultivated daffodils were introduced before 1629, as there were notices concerning the introduction of daffodils to the British Isles. This may be one of the earliest citations. (And don’t forget the 1630 Welsh reference to daffodils as Saint David’s leeks). When I looked up the original source, the gardener-monk Gerard wrote that “The common yellow Daffodilly or Daftodowndilly is fo well knowne to all, that it needeth no deicription.” He also noted with almost a nod that they originally came from Spain.

“The double yellow Daffodill hath fmalf finooth narrow leaues of a darke greene colour: among which rifeth up a naked hollow ftalke, of two hands high: bearing at the top a faire and beautifull double yellow flower…The common yellow Daffodilly or Daftodowndilly is fo well knowne to all, that it needeth no deicription. We haue in our London gardens another fort of this common kinde, which naturallic groweth in Spaine, very like vnto our beft knowne Daffodil in fhape and proportion…” —Gerard’s Herbal 1597

Gerard’s Herbal may be a TPQ for the term, daftodowndilly/ daffodowndilly, not A.A. Milne. Move over Winnie the Pooh! But Milne got it right, when the daffodil arrives, it’s a sure sign of spring. Winter is dead. 

Garden historian, Dr. Twigs Way, who is associated with the Cambridge University, gets it wrong too as she too repeats that Britain also has wild daffodils. She goes on to say “Daffodils… have been seen in England since the 17th century; Shakespeare celebrated them as the flower that “comes before the swallow dares”, and bunches of wild blooms were sold by flower girls on the streets of London.” 

The full Shakespeare quote: “Daffodils/ that comes before the swallow dares, and takes /the winds of March with beauty…”, (Winter’s Tale, Act IV Scene 3), which makes the reference date ca. 1609-11. Too late. Not TPQ.

Dr. Twig’s 17th century reference is too late on the cultural horizon, as by the Elizabethan era, daffodils and asphodels were firmly ensconced, if not entrenched in English literature. Somehow the dubious connection with the asphodel and daffodil ca. the 15th c. isn’t exactly a TPQ either. By the time the Daffodil Society was founded in 1898, the greeny asphodel dominated the decorative arts—especially William Morris’s wallpaper. No, not the wallpaper Oscar Wilde morbidly objected to. (And yes, like Winston, I ended that sentence on a preposition.)

I was reminded that William Carlos Williams wrote: "Asphodel, that greeny flower." I always wondered what the greeny asphodel was. (I was lazy and went to school before internet!) You know how the poets are overfond of death as muse. But Milton said it earlier: “To embathe in nectared lavers strewed with asphodel.” (Comus, 1634). And Tennyson wrote: "Others in Elysian valleys dwell, Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel." 

And somewhere along the way, the similar sounding asphodel and daffodil and their death mythology were conflated with each other. cross colonization. Deep botany as we know it hadn't yet been invented. Asphodelaceae (which includes the red hot poker plant) wasn’t identified by Carl Linnaeus until 1753. Let that sink in.

So here’s the rub, asphodel is a completely separate family that got kicked out of the lily family along with aloe and asparagus by the way. DNA never lies. Allo? Who’s your daddy? And they do look like our New World Oenothera, aka evening-primrose. And there were no less than 10 different species of asphodel on the Iberian peninsula. The yellow ones do look a bit like daffodils if you have a good imagination, or need glasses and hearing aid.

Cleric Robert Herrick, in To Daffodils (1648), described narcissi as portents of death: Fair Daffodils, we weep to see/ You haste away so soon…And of course, By the time Wordsworth wrote his famous 1804 poem, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, When all at once I saw a crowd/A host, of golden daffodils;/Beside the lake…daffodils were thoroughly naturalized and canonized ad nauseam in English literature.

A teacher asked me for a drawing to go with Wordsworth. I got an epic sunburn in Feb.

Digging deeper, I found a vague reference: “Daffodils were introduced into gardens in about 300 BC. The Greek botanist and philosopher Theophrastus listed and described many of the earliest known kinds of narcissus in his nine-volume 'Enquiry into Plants'. Daffodils were brought to Britain by the Romans who thought that the sap from daffodils had healing powers.” (What? 300 BC? Asphodel or daffodil? Whose gardens? Where?)

I found another plagiarized source: “Narcissi were introduced to the UK in about 300 BC by the Romans who later inexplicably abandoned these blooms.” What? Somebody lifted and condensed  the sentence out of context, replete with the arrival date typo. Now, I’m fairly certain that the Romans had not settled in Britain circa 300 BC. That quote should probably read that in Greece and also in Rome people were cultivating daffodils circa 300 BC. In the Mediterranean, not Britain.

Trying to find out the truth about daffodils from the internet is like trying to sort out whether or not rabbits were brought to southern Britain by the Romans, or if they were introduced later during the Norman Conquest. See, that inexplicable line of logic suggests that daffodils were not introduced to Britain at all by the Romans, but much later. Like the rabbits. It always amazes me that people post nonsense and don’t even verify the basics—like a timeline.

A close-up, Mr. deMille, stabilo, pencil, ca. 1994; original drawing was destroyed.

I tried another approach. DNA. Yep, genetics definitively rules out the possibility of there being any endemic narcissi in Britain (see excerpts from a paper, below). Genetics can measure what is lost in the process of cultivation, and defines Iberia as the homeland of British “wild” daffodils. Iberian narcissi have the most genetic diversity whereas the daffodil cultivars of Britain have a truncated genetic pool. And the answer is daffodils were not introduced by the Romans. Certainly not in 300 BC! 

Also, narcissi weren’t even cultivated until Muslim era ca. the 10th -12th centuries. Etymology Online, footnotes daffodil with: “First reference to the yellow, early spring flower we know by this name (Narcissus pseudo-Narcissus) is from 1590s.” So, I didn’t get my TPQ closure as to when daffodils were introduced to the British Isles, but I can surmise they arrived from Holland somewhere around the 15th to the 16th century, and, as they say, the rest is history. at least the Welsh had enough common sense to not conflate the daffodil with the asphodel and made a leeky simile instead. Ceninn Ped. Happy St. David’s Day.

I was playing with backlighting. These daffodils were miniatures from the supermarket.

The Isle of Staffa

In 2008, we sailed by the isle of Staffa from the Iona to Mull ferry and I was dumbstruck by the beauty of all that columnar basalt dressed in lichen, moss, and sea spray. I wanted to jump off the deck of the small ferry boat. Of course there was no time to backtrack and visit the island. 

Ours was a mad overnight run from Oban, courtesy of a newfound friend who scored us coveted ferry tickets for locals on an overbooked ferry. Driving down Mull from the wee village of Craignure to catch the Iona ferry at Fionnphort, we were late late late, so we barreled down the one-lane road like banshees along the glaciated Ross of Mull which took my breath away, such ragged beauty. 

Iona was extraordinary, on my bucket list for ages, My Irish grandmother, who inspired me to visit Iona, often talked about Iona and Tír na nÓg, the land of the ever-young, in the same breath—it was a whirlwind visit replete with several missed ferries, no place to stay, last minute reprieve, but then, it was over, we had to leave that singular beauty. 

Lammastide and Lúnasa

Image: “Lammastide,” British postage stamp, 1981.

Lúnasa, the beginning of harvest season, technically begins Aug 7 because our modern calendar doesn’t quite fit with the cross-quarter day celebrations between the solstice and equinox. Dedicated to the god Lugh Lámhfhada, this harvest celebration and Tailteann Games, marks the beginning of the harvest season, also celebrated as Lammastide in Britain and Northern Ireland. I’ll give Lugh his due on Aug 7.

Today, Lammas Day, aka Loaf Mass Day, from Hlaef-masse, is celebrated Aug 1. The hlafsenunga, 'blessing of bread,' from segnian, is 'to make the sign of the cross.’ The Auld Lammas Fair, a traditional fair dating back to the Renaissance, is held in Ballycastle, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, every year on the last Monday and Tuesday of August. There is also a Welsh variant, Gŵyl Awst that ties in with Lammas Day rituals. 

In a book of Anglo-Saxon charms (no, not Bede who was strangely silent on the subject), Anglo Saxon monks blessed the first loaf of the new harvest, the Lammas bread, decorated and baked in the shape of a sheave, an owl, or a corn dolly, broken into four farls, and tucked in the corners of the barn to protect the new harvest from vermin and harm. 

Corn dollies were made with the last sheaf of grain so that the spirit of the corn had a place to winter over until they were turfed into the ground during the first plow. (Corn means grain, not maize.) The time of the agrarian goddess and the Greenman, a time of blessing of the First Fruits of harvest. 

The Old English name for autumn is hærfest. A sheep was let loose in the stubble fields and whoever caught it got to keep it. It was also rent day. In many parts of England, tenants brought sheaves of freshly harvested wheat to their landlords on the first day of August. The landlords in turn, gave their tenants a gift of a pair of gloves at Lammastide to show their authority and benevolence. 

A day that debts were settled, labourers hired, households moved, contracts and promises made. And from that, arises the term, “latter Lammas,” a day that will never come. And of course, there is John Barleycorn, who must die.

Thanksgiving in the New World

We tend to think of Thanksgiving as a uniquely North American holiday, but its roots are embedded in the mists of time. The November harvest festival that British-American pilgrims celebrated, prior to emigration, was called the Feast of St. Martin, or Martinmas. 

The first New England settlers were zealously pious British separatists and Puritans who left Britain during the Protestant Reformation. The dour Puritans believed the Church of England’s reforms did not go far enough in breaking away from Catholic tradition, and so they left Britain for the Netherlands.

The Pilgrims even found the Protestant Dutch of Leiden who gave them safe harbor from Britain, too lenient, hence the 1620 voyage on the Mayflower to establish a strict, if not a downright grim, religious utopia in the New World. After a reading, we went to the Pilgrim’s Pub in Delftshaven, raised a few pints at the place where the pilgrims shoved off for America.

The Wampanoag Nation, the “People of the First Light,” saved the Pilgrims from starvation during that harsh winter of 1620–21. But they too had an agenda shaped by years of tense interaction with European explorers and fur trappers, plague and disease—not to mention displacement. And you know what that led to.

When I brought home the usual Thanksgiving tropes from second grade, the hand-traced turkey, cut-out pilgrim hats, collars and buckles, instead of admiring my handiwork, my Irish grandmother grumbled that American Thanksgiving was a Protestant holiday. 

I was shocked, and fearful of losing my favorite holiday, I didn't know what she was referring to at the time. I didn't have my history down. However, I am thankful that the holiday has become re-secularized over time as it's my favorite holiday (and sometimes my birthday too)—despite its interim origin and political implications. 

Thanksgiving is merely a Protestant-American spin-off on an ancient harvest celebration—updated to expunge longstanding Catholic (and pagan) traditions centered around the feast of Martinmas, or Old Halloween, cognate with the Irish festival of Samhain/Calan Gaeaf— replete with gift giving. Samhain was not only the New Year, but also a time when the gates to the Otherworld were open. In Wales too, the entrance to the Otherworld (Annwn) was thin. Magic (and the dead) was afoot. 

Martinmas marked the end of the harvest season and beginning of winter and the "winter revelling season". Traditions include feasting on 'Martinmas goose' or 'Martinmas beef', drinking the first wine of the season, and mumming.

So this year, we celebrated an unThanksgiving of sorts, small bubble gatherings. In our case, it was just me, my cousin and a friend. A far cry from the the days of thundering herds of relatives, friends, and orphans, where dinner was served on doors propped up on sawhorse planks in the yard because there weren’t tables long enough to go the distance. 

Who remembers staging boxing matches with pitted black olive puppets on all of our fingers? And eating the losers? Playing conkers or marbles with loose cranberries, or sword-fighting with the crudités? Pasting deviled eggs on your nose? Stealing food before dinner? Strange gelatin salads and odd casseroles. Smoking dope in the closet with the cousins and fooling no one? That momentous graduation from the kids’s table to the big table.

Harvest festivals were traditionally linked with the September harvest moon or the October(ish) hunter's moon (first full moon in October or November): my Canadian cousin reminded me that Canada celebrates Thanksgiving, which predates our Thanksgiving by 22 years, in October. (But there were multiple Thanksgivings, by nationality—truly a movable feast.) Germany’s Erntedankfest, is celebrated at the end of September or early October, aka Octave of Allhallowtide. Goose was the turkey of choice, as turkeys were introduced from North America.

The Old English name for November was Blōtmōnaþ ('sacrifice month'). One could easily add the Celtic New Year, Samhain into this litany of feasts list (after all, Samhain was the Celtic New Year’s Eve). Christmas and New Year were winter holidays moved to coincide with calendrical reform. 

St. Martin distributed food to the poor on horseback, and gave presents to the children who made turnip, or paper lanterns to guide his way. During the English Reformation, festivities were expunged, the bonfires reignited as Guy Fawkes Night.

(The Julian calendar was recalibrated by Pope Gregory XIII, in October, 1582, The Brits were a couple of centuries behind in implementing the Gregorian Calendar. Britain and its colonies resisted, because it was a Catholic edict, but succumbed to the Gregorian calendar on September 1, 1752. By that point the calendar was off by 11 days—the reboot caused riots.)

The feast of St. Martin, Christianized from the old pagan harvest festivities, was as big as Christmas, besides bonfires, mumming and mayhem, there was so much exorbitant feasting and drinking, that in the 6th c., the Catholic church established a post St. Martin-fast until the Epiphany. 

After gorging ourselves silly on Thanksgiving, we still make those collective vows to our expanding waistlines, to eat less leading up to the Christmas season. And then we begin those vows anew after the New Year. 

Rev. 11/23, (ref. The Atlantic, Wiki and Medievalists.)

"Up Helly Aa," reconstructed Fire Festival, or Imbolc in Viking drag?

Guizers with torches at Up Helly Aa celebration in Uyeasound,Shetland.  Before the 19th c., tar barrels, not torches, were used. They look a bit KKKish.

The “Viking” Up Helly Aa fire festival celebrated on the last Tuesday of January (originally held on old Christmas Eve) in the Shetland Isles in Northern Scotland, is not a Norse festival, but a "reconstructed" Victorian Solstice fire festival. I'm not convinced the festival has any Viking roots, though modern-day Shetlanders, proud of their Norse heritage, would probably avow it does. 

The setting of the beacons, or the wards along the coasts and the lit tar barrels rolled downhill are well-attested Celtic motifs. The lit barrels, (my great grandfather also lit on Beltaine in Bantry County Cork, Ireland), evolved into setting a fire a long ship. 

The origin is a bit more obscure, as the Vikings invaded the Shetland Islands during the 9th century, and the fire festival was founded in 1880s—1905, more than 500 years after Norse rule was vanquished. Besides, there were other cultures living in the Shetland Isles since the Neolithic era. They didn’t just disappear with the arrival of the Vikings.

The Vikings, as we know, were not big on sharing the wealth, and 19th century Viking scholars were also not keen on sharing either. When something is claimed as being authentically Viking in Celtic lands, there is often a convenient blurring of anthropological lines, with the idea of Vikings still plundering other cultures a millennia after assimilation.

What cultures in situ before the Viking invasion, are often overlooked, because it doesn't fit current romantic thought. So, rather than observing the overlay with a cultural substrate, we often get skewed cultural theories based solely on later invading cultures—especially in Scotland where the Viking love affair is still in full swing some six centuries later. There is only "I" in Viking. Not even poetic license can alter that.

Shetland (sometimes referred to as Thule in Classical tracts), was no terra nullius before the Vikings invaded. The archipelagos of Shetland, the Orkneys and the Hebrides, also were not considered part of Scotland, which did not become a kingdom until the ninth century. The Latin term Scoti/Scotti referred to the Irish Gaels, whether in Ireland (Scotia Major) or Scotland (Scotia Minor). 

Long before the Shetland archipelago (Scots Gaelic: Sealtainn) was under Icelandic-Norse control, it was a Mesolithic, Neolithic, then a Celtic stronghold—for millennia. The Shetland Islands were originally settled by Neolithic Bell-Beaker peoples, then the Celts and the Picts, and the Scotti, or the Irish Celts—who also celebrated a fire festival on this date as well. Thule was supposedly settled by blue painted people (Picts), it could be a corruption of the word for fire, Iceland was also referred to as Innis Tile.

The first written mention of the Shetland Islands, comprised of some 300 islands and skerries, is from the Icelandic 13th c. epic, Njal’s saga. And of course, redheaded Njal with his fierce temper was probably an Irish-Norse Dubliner. At least one Irish Scotti place-name survived the Viking invasions, Dunrossness, and the islands of Papa Stour (Papey Stóra) and Papa Little (P. Litla) refers to Irish Culdee monks. Brother Island may also refer to those Irish monks. Three island place-names may be of Pictish or even pre-Celtic origin: Fetlar, Unst and Yell—once heavily settled by Culdee monks (Pappay/Papil Ness, Loch of Papil and Papil Bay.) St. Ninian’s Isle too was a papar stronghold.

Another Celtic influenced place-name Muckle meaning “big” in 17th c. Scots dialect, and Rua, meaning red (Old Irish ruiadh), a red granite islet, though Muckle Rua is erroneously identified as a Norse place-name, as is Dunrossness. But Dun is fort and ross is a promontory. And ness is a common Scots-Norse accretion also meaning headland in case one didn’t know what a ross was—a clear indication that the promontory was already aptly named before the Vikings arrived. Nothing to do with a noisy tidal race. 

The early medieval Pictish Bressay Stone,  (It’s in the basement of the National Museum in Edinburgh) with Celtic knotwork and beasties, has an Ogam inscription: “The cross of Natdad's daughter, child of Maqqddrroann,” (OId Irish Mac (son of) Droann. More here.) One of five Ogham stones in Shetland, the inscription is an admixture of Old Irish, and Norn, as the word for daughter is in Norse. Certainly, most of the village names would be of Old Norse derivation as the Irish Scotti didn’t go in big for the idea of towns.

Since the Neolithic era, (4000 BC), people have raised cattle and sheep, and farmed the Shetland Isles. What survives are prehistoric field systems, Bronze Age burnt mounds, Iron Age brochs, and Pictish wheelhouses. The oldest archaeological find, ca. 4000 BC, is a midden at West Voe, Sumburgh. Hard to imagine now, but much of the North Sea was once dry land, Shetland was lightly wooded and the climate was warmer. Neolithic burials include stone cists, and heel-chambered cairns on the island of Vementry, Punds Water and Islesburgh. Skara Brae, Maes Howe, and Ring of Brogar, in nearby Orkney, are extraordinary Neolithic monuments.

During the Bronze Age (2000 to 600 BC), the climate deteriorated, peat bogs spread, and sea level rose. Some 300 crescent-shaped burnt mounds (possible hearths) date back to the Bronze Age. "Ireland was the chief center for the manufacture of bronze and Scotland's early settlers were energetic seamen." Even way then there was a lot of travel between the islands. For millennia, there was Irish contact in the Shetlands, whether by trade, or by theft: a bronze-gilt harness mounting was made in Ireland during the 8th or 9th c. AD, was excavated from an archaeological dig.

Possibly due to a population explosion, or increased warfare, the Iron Age in Shetland saw the rise of massive fortifications: double-walled circular towers, and dry stone brochs—sometimes called "Pictish Towers", but their construction predates the Picts. Ancestors of the Picts, maybe.

Of the 120 Iron Age broch sites, Old Scatness, and the Broch of Mousa (ca. 100 BC), are among the finest preserved examples of Iron Age fort towers. In the case of Old Scatness, the Celts, the late Iron Age Picts, then the Vikings each built atop the old fortifications. Excavations at Jarlshof, confirm archaeological evidence in Mainland, Shetland, since the Bronze Age.

By the sixth century AD, Shetland had become integrated into the mainstream of Pictish politics and life. Artefacts such as painted pebbles and carved symbol stones demonstrate a strong Pictish presence in the islands. Good examples include the ogham script of the Lunnasting Stone, and Christian cross-slabs which include fine examples such as the cross slab and the Monk’s Stone, both from Papil.... From the late 8th century, Shetland was subject to the turbulent impact of the expanding Viking world.—Visit Shetland

The Viking invasions began ca. 800 AD. The earliest archaeological evidence of Norse occupation is in the nearby Orkneys (Viking Shetland was administered as part of the Orkneys, and they were both called the Northern Isles). In 800 AD, a Pictish, or Irish Culdee hoard of silver bowls, brooches, torcs, thimbles, chapes, and a porpoise jaw, was found beneath St. Ninian's church floor on Shetland's St. Ninian's Isle. (See St Ninian's Isle Treasure. St. Ninian AKA Apostle to the Southern Picts).

Human settlement of the island dates from circa 3000 BC and there are remains of several Neolithic burial chambers known as 'heel-shaped cairns'. Little is known of the pre-Celtic and Celtic eras, but when the Norse arrived it is likely they found a religious settlement as the name of the island derives from Papey Stóra meaning "Big island of the Papar" (Celtic monks), in distinction to Papa Little. —Wiki  (see Culdees or papar.)

In 1299 AD, the oldest Old Norse manuscript from Shetland (the Norse called it Hjaltland), was over a duel, where the isle of Papa Stour is referenced. Thorvald Thoresson, accused of corruption, was called "dominus de Papay." In early Irish literature, Shetland was referred to as Inse Catt—"the Isles of Cats." And the name Shetland, like Caithiness, may derive from the Pictish name for the cat islands. Ferocious European wildcats were not your modern moggies.

During the outbreak of Celtic Christianity, when "green" martyrs were seeking hermitages to commune with God, the Irish monks settled on most of the Hebrides, Orkneys and the Shetland Isles, as well as the Faroe Islands, and Iceland, the first stepping stone from Shetland to Iceland. Iceland was settled by the Norse, and Celts from the British Isles—including from Hebrides and Shetland.

During the Dark Ages, groups of outlaws and farmers took to the sea from the northernmost reaches of Europe. These seafaring marauders became known as the Vikings. Some of these outcasts among the Vikings were to achieve historical distinction indirectly through dubious means. —from The Struggle against Colonialism and Imperialism in Kalaallit Nunaat

What's interesting about the Up Helly Aa festival is that it completely obliterates any connection with the peoples of the past, other than a nod to 19th century Viking revival nostalgia. It's a wayward case of settler colonialism displacing the preexisting subculture, as a means strengthening an invader's power base to shore up national identity. This was certainly true in Iceland even though Iceland was settled by as many Irish as Vikings. So, what is Up Helly Aa?

According to John Jamieson's Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language (1818), up is used in the sense of something being at an end, and derives from the Old Norse word uppi which is still used in Faroese and Icelandic, while helly refers to a holy day or festival. The Scottish National Dictionary defines helly, probably derived from the Old Norse helgr (helgi in the dative and accusative case, meaning a holiday or festival), as "[a] series of festive days, esp. the period in which Christmas festivities are held from 25th Dec. to 5th Jan." while aa may represent a', meaning "all".  —Wiki Up Helly Aa

But the Northern Isles were once described as "Pictish in culture and speech."  Not Viking. Few Irish pr Pictish place-names survive, except for the northern islands Fetlar with its stone Funzie Girt (Finn's Dyke) a Bronze Age Berlin Wall, Unst and Yell, the second largest island, with 12 brochs, and 15 early chapels—a Culdee stronghold, probably not as enticing to the Norse. The dearth of Celtic "place-names suggest that the Picts may have been forced onto poorer land."There is another school of thought that they are pre-Celtic place names.

Despite many archaeological remains, we have only a patchy understanding of those who lived in Shetland before the Viking invasions of around 800 AD. Immediately before the Vikings arrived, though, it’s clear that Shetland – like much of Scotland - was part of the Pictish culture. By the time of the Viking invasion, possibly two or three hundred years earlier, Christianity had reached the islands. —History of Shetland

The "Northern Isles were the first to be conquered by Vikings and the last to be relinquished by the Norwegian crown." The historical record is weak but Woolf (2007) suggests the Icelandic sagas proclaiming dominion over the Shetland Isles are stories concocted "to legitimise Norwegian claims to sovereignty in the region." Perhaps that is also why a Celtic fire festival, possibly Imbolc, underwent a transformation into Up Helly aa.

An interesting aside: according to the Icelandic sagas, Egil's saga, and the Orkneyinga saga, the Broch of Mousa was used as a refuge for runaway lovers.

I suppose if one is inventive enough, the Norse origin of other island place-names could be challenged: Vementry (Old Norse: "Vemunðarey) could also be derived from a form of Finn, as in Finn's beach: as in Ventry, (Irish: Ceann Trá—which means head beach), which is an anglicization of Fionntrá, in Dingle, Co. Kerry. St. Ninian was also known as Fionnian. M, B and F, in the genitive, take on a v sound. But I'm being linguistically silly.

Maybe it would be more fruitful to look at DNA. Shetland's genetic heritage is 60% Norwegian Y-chromosome DNA (R1a Sigurd), and 40% is ancient Briton (Celts) DNA. The most common male Y chromosomes reflect the most recent migration. Apparently the Norse married lots of local women; as Norse (matrilineal) mtDNA was 30%. However:

[in] Orkney and Shetland, Roberts reported (1985, 1990) that both island populations diverged considerably in allele frequencies from neighboring populations. Roberts concluded that the islanders of Orkney and Shetland most likely represented remnants of an aboriginal gene pool that had changed on the British mainland because of later population movements.... Of the Scottish populations, Orkney [not Shetland] evidently has the closest matrilineal links with Scandinavia. The inhabitants of the Scottish islands share two to seven times more of their lineages exclusively with Gaels than they do with Scandinavians.... mtDNA lineages can be used to identify recent migration. Viking men settled and intermarried with existing populations in Shetland... —mtDNA and the Islands of the North Atlantic

So, with all that intact ancient matrilineal Celtic Briton gene pool intact, do you think their fire customs, celebrated since time immemorial, would suddenly be forgotten and just disappear with the occupation of the Vikings—only to return as a new and improved Viking festival? Methinks this particular fire festival smacks of the neo-Romantic Viking revivalist movement: think truncated Wagner as performed by Viking mummers. (Note that Up Helly Aa is not celebrated in Scandinavia.) 

According to the Smithsonian article, "Up Helly Aa was first celebrated in the 1880s. Before then, rowdy residents would take to the streets to mark the end of the Yule season by burning tar barrels." 

Up Helly Aa is a procession of 1000 guizers celebrating their Norse heritage. Guizers (dis-guisers and galoshins) are a long-standing tradition in the Celtic ream; our modern Halloween trick or treaters are guisers. 

The festival is stapled onto the end of Yule season (see: Burning of the clavie), but even using the old calendar, "Old Twelfth" would have fallen on Jan. 17, not the end of January, which would be Imbolc, the Fire Festival of Brigid.

A parallel story of confusion: an Irish Medieval History Facebook post notes that people erroneously assume the pagan Celtic Goddess Brigid, who represented the light half of the year, was transported into Christianity as Saint Brigid. Ancient customs and religious beliefs were not swept away with the arrival of Christianity and traditions associated with St. Brigid’s day are thought to date from the pre-Christian period. Candlemas is the Christian overlay of Imbolc.

So taking that model for cultural continuance, despite new landlords, I suspect this Shetland fire festival is an offshoot of the festival of Imbolc, and of the pan-Celtic Goddess Brigid, which was a time for a massive spring clean-up, burning old possessions and replacing them with new ones. 

Since Neolithic times, cross-quarter days, that midway point between solstice and equinox, were celebrated with fire festivals. Cross-quarter days were marked via astronomical alignments on ancient monuments: Mound of the Hostages: Hill of Tara, Howth, Newgrange, Stonehenge. The four fire festivals, Samhain (the end of the Celtic harvest year), Imbolc, Beltane and Lughnasadh also mark the beginning of each season. Spring was the beginning of the Roman New Year.

Imbolc might derive from Old Irish í mBolc, meaning in the belly (as in pregnant—bolg — Spanish /Galician bolsa means bag); it might mean purification or, First Milk.

...which arises from the word “oimelc/oí melg” used in the 10th century Sanas Cormaic (Cormac’s Glossary) which some people have taken to mean “sheep’s milk”. The word “melg” meaning ‘milk’ comes from the Proto-Indo-European (PIE—the ancestor language of most European languages) word “melg” which means "to wipe, to rub off". Purification/ cleansing was an important aspect of many ancient festivals and “oí melg” is not milking but rubbing, as in the act of cleansing. Further evidence of cleansing comes from the Roman festival of Februalia. The Old Irish word for February is ‘febra’, ‘febrae’ from Latin ‘Februarius’ which in turn comes from ‘februa’ meaning purifications. —Irish Medieval History: February 1st or Imbolc 

Imbolc was the second of the four great fire festivals, with significance placed upon the Light of fire. The Irish word for spring, "errach” thought to be related to the word “airreach” which means hauling and dragging. In Ireland, Imbolc is referred to as the big Spring Clean. "Right up to the twentieth century, on Brigid’s eve, the house was be scrubbed from top to bottom by the women who worked into the night." 

All debris was burned (including floor rushes, beds and bedding). Bonfires galore. Oh, and Brigid is a daughter of the Dagda, and a poet. She is the patron of the hearth, healing, metal smithcraft; and inventor of poetry, keening, and beer making. Ya don't want to piss her off. Burn, baby, burn. Sláinte!

A Bhríd, a Bhríd, thig a sligh as gabh do leabaidh
Bríd Bríd, come in; thy bed is ready

Brede, Brede, come to my house tonight.
Open the door for Brede and let Brede come in.

Imbolc festival in Marsden, Yorkshire. —Wiki

Brigid's the goddess of weather, for an early spring, forget the groundhog, chant this instead:

Thig an nathair as an toll
Là donn Brìde,
Ged robh trì troighean dhen t-sneachd
Air leac an làir. 

The serpent will come from the hole
On the brown Day of Bríde,
Though there should be three feet of snow
On the flat surface of the ground.

Lá Fhéile Bríde shona dóibh go léir (Happy St. Brigid’s festival day to you all)!

St. Daffyd's Daffodils

What makes us come to attention suddenly for a brief moment, like the sun channeled through a magnifying lens? Then, as if a cloud crossed the sun's gaze, nothing, we are left withn othing but shadow and amnesia? We could call it indifference. If the shoe fits. Or temporary amnesia.

My gaze shifted, blurred, focused, and it was as if I were seeing the daffodils for the first time. Saint Daffyd's bells. Sunlight dancing in the meadow on the cusp of spring, when sap and hope rise eternal. 

These moments recollected in tranquility that Keats was so fond of, honing words until they shone bright as the sun, burning a path to the brain.

Someone once said that nature is indifferent, we bestow it with grandeur, and benevolence, because it is our nature to give relevance to arbitrary events. Because we can't bear the thought of all that aloneness, without pattern. 

We are all smithys at the forge, hammer and tonging out patterns or paths for others to follow. What about that moment when the universe was formed when angels danced on a pinhead? Call that momentary silence before the Big Bang, a ditte.

Crystalline structure, the music of dancing mathematics, and fractals make the up the matter of the universe. It goes on with, or without us—only we can't bear the thought, it's too deep to hold onto for very long. And so we rise up momentarily, with a glimpse into something we can't quite get a hold of. Can't quite remember. And are left wanting. 

And suddenly, daffodils are nodding their heads in the sunlight. We come to, we come to for a moment, and pay attention. Then the clouds cover the sun, laden with rain. 

We planted daffodils by the side of the road for cancer victims, for those already dead. After 9/11, we planted a daffodil for each victim. Now there are thousands of daffodils nodding their heads in the churchyard.

2/27/2004

I said arbitrary indifference, to see if there were a distinction between the two words, and I played with the paying and then the not paying of attention. Arbitrary. Indifference. The Arbitrary Indifference of Trapped Sunlight.