| Well, 21. June was certainly a big deal with the pre-christian celts it
seems. On the morning of 21. June this year I watched the sun rise
from a hill in the rocklands between Dysart and Taughmaconnell, in
south Roscommon, in the hope of better
understanding the innumerable standing stones in the area. It was very
rewarding and I found several stones aligned with where the sun rose on
a beautiful morning. It was just as exciting again in the evening with
many stones pointing at where the sun went down. There also used to be
stones on Sheep Hill (ship hill ?) marking the winter solstice on Dec
21. These are still marked on the ordinance survey maps but they have
long since been removed, allegedly by Christian zealots.
I think there may be some substance to the hijack theory, but the
hijacking is maybe a long a complicated story. A bishop was buried on
sheep hill around 1690 and a cross erected, possibly as competition to
the standing stones, which must have still been around then. In modern
times the parish priests are said to have made a great drive against
planting and sowing rituals based on lunar cycles and other astronomical
phenomena, denouncing them as pagan pishrogues. I understand the Synod
of Whitby sometime around 1300 years ago (?) was a barney between the
roman and celtic threads within Christianity.
On 23. June there were a number of bonfires in the area, but noone was
sure why.
Can someone learned please explain all this?
By the way, there won't be much time left to worry about the standing
stones as the bulldozers are rolling to reclaim the land for sheep
farming and innumerable sites have been destroyed in all over the West in
recent years. So soon all that we will have left to do is light
bonfires on 23. June and wonder why we are doing it.
Kevin
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| St Johns day is another hijacked festival. It was one of the 4 major
Druidic Festivals of ancient times. These occurred on the 2 equinoxes and
on Mid summer and Midwinter.
They were called Bealtine, Lughnasa, Samhain and Imboloc (I think thats
correct but it has been a long time).
Re collecting Furze
What! were there no virgins to collect -) That was what the ancient
Celts did.
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