Megalithic Calendar

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Re: Megalithic Calendar

Postby TisILeclerc » 8:33 am

'How does one save a Youtube video to disc?'

If you use Firefox as your browser you can get an app that sits on the toolbar at the top called something like youtube video and audio downloader. When the video is running on the screen all you have to do is click on the icon and you'll be given choices of what resolution you want to download it. It does the rest itself from then on. You'll find the saved file in the downloads folder.

If you run other browsers you could use realplayer and that has its own downloader built in. You use realplayer to go to youtube, select the video and do the same again. Although youtube has a habit of disabling realplayer's downloader so there's a continual war between the two of them.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefo ... audio-dow/

Hope that helps.
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Re: Megalithic Calendar

Postby Boreades » 10:09 pm

Back on the trail of all calendar things...

According to Celtic calendar traditions, Lugh is the sun god who dies as the nights get longer after the summer solstice; a traditional feast in his honour was held on Lughnasahd or “Lammas” day on the first of August, a day marked in the old Celtic pictographic calendar with a bow-and-arrow shape.

As Lugh was the primary god representing the red sun, his name in common parlance would have been “Coch Rhi Ben” anglicised to “Cock Robin” – a leftover from the belief that souls became birds after death.

This idea is still sustained in the old folk song “Who Killed Cock Robin” in which the sparrow kills him with “my bow and arrow”, the sparrow here representing Bran, the tanist incarnation or opposite of Lugh – the god of winter.


http://www.lablit.com/article/341
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Re: Megalithic Calendar

Postby Boreades » 11:31 pm

I reckon I could write a whole book on folk songs, stories and nursery rhymes that encode ancient tales.

The Folk Story Detectives
(c) Boreades 2015
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Re: Megalithic Calendar

Postby hvered » 12:02 pm

Coch Rhi Ben is (Robin) Redbreast, coch meaning 'red'. The poem doesn't refer to Lugh or Bran; all the various birds claim in turn to have shared in the killing of the robin, like a council of execution.

The folkloric take is that the wren, the king of the birds, represents the old year and has to die at the midwinter solstice so that the new year, represented by the robin, can replace it/her. Certainly the robin redbreast is associated with Christmas even now. It may of course simply be a modern explanation for the otherwise bizarre wren-killing ritual that takes place, or used to, on Boxing Day.
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Re: Megalithic Calendar

Postby Boreades » 8:47 am

That wren-killing day is indeed bizarre.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wren_Day

And embarrassing.

I still haven't forgotten how the local vicar reacted when I suggested we should do the same. Not only was it too pagan for him, but he was visibly upset when I asked where we could find some Wren Boys. He'd misheard me and thought I said Rent Boys. Whoops. Ah, the curse of the glottal stop.
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Re: Megalithic Calendar

Postby Boreades » 8:57 am

Wren Day is not universally celebrated; it may be significant that the areas most strongly with it are all West Coast, or associated with Sea People. Isle of Man, Pembrokeshire, and Carcassonne are mentioned.

Similarly, on the same day of the year, Cornwall has Mummers Day.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummer%27s_Day

Both hark back to a more ancient Calendar.
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Re: Megalithic Calendar

Postby TisILeclerc » 10:50 am

Image

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016 ... the-stars/

It looks like scientists are now thinking that passage graves were telescopes for viewing the stars. In particular Aldebaran in Taurus which, conveniently enough seems to signal the time for taking the cattle up the hill for the start of summer grazing.
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Re: Megalithic Calendar

Postby Boreades » 11:24 pm

Nice one Tisi - I find that a more satisfying explanation of the so-called "passage graves". That, or they were storage depots for local produce. Burying dead people in them seems like a waste of space, or something that came later. (The Westminster Abbey syndrome)

Getting back to Lughnasahd or “Lammas” day on the first of August, it would be nice if we were ahead of the game. For a change.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lammas

On this day it was customary to bring to church a loaf made from the new crop, which began to be harvested at Lammastide. The loaf was blessed, and in Anglo-Saxon England it might be employed afterwards to work magic: a book of Anglo-Saxon charms directed that the lammas bread be broken into four bits, which were to be placed at the four corners of the barn, to protect the garnered grain. In many parts of England, tenants were bound to present freshly harvested wheat to their landlords on or before the first day of August. In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, where it is referred to regularly, it is called "the feast of first fruits". The blessing of first fruits was performed annually in both the Eastern and Western Churches on the first or the sixth of August (the latter being the feast of the Transfiguration of Christ).


Is this the origin of the Harvest Festival? Nowadays our locals bring tins of fruit and baked beans. So much easier than having to grow and harvest your own wheat.

William Hone speaks in The Every-Day Book (1838) of a later festive Lammas day sport common among Scottish farmers near Edinburgh. He says that they "build towers...leaving a hole for a flag-pole in the centre so that they may raise their colours." When the flags over the many peat-constructed towers were raised, farmers would go to others' towers and attempt to "level them to the ground." A successful attempt would bring great praise. However, people were allowed to defend their towers, and so everyone was provided with a "tooting-horn" to alert nearby country folk of the impending attack and the battle would turn into a "brawl." According to Hone, more than four people had died at this festival and many more were injured. At the day's end, races were held, with prizes given to the townspeople.


I would have liked to ask Edward Woodward if he would liked to have done that instead of being a Wicker Man.
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Re: Megalithic Calendar

Postby Boreades » 3:24 pm

Megalithic calendar-keepers and sky-watchers must have had it easier than it is now.

The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) has just sent me a slightly hysterical email on "dark skies that need protecting".

The most detailed ever satellite maps of England’s light pollution and dark skies have been released by the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) ... The maps are testament to the success of more than 40 years of protecting our countryside from harmful development. It is possible to pick out the shape of the North Wessex Downs AONB with the areas of darker more tranquil skies in contrast to the more developed areas outside the boundary.

However, there are some shocking exceptions clearly visible within the area, notably Harwell Enterprise Centre and Chieveley Services which cause more light pollution than the largest settlements of Marlborough and Hungerford, and prominent light pollution from larger towns just outside the AONB, such as Swindon and Reading, spills far out into the North Wessex Downs ... we are calling on local authorities, local businesses, land owners and developers to use these maps to identify areas with severe light pollution and target action to reduce it, as well as identifying existing dark skies that need protecting.


The maps are here: http://nightblight.cpre.org.uk/maps/

Presumably "reducing light pollution" means some action to stop light being produced? Some local authorities, ever keen to cut costs, might be motivated to follow suit.

Mind how you go, when they turn out the lights.
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Re: Megalithic Calendar

Postby Bmblbzzz » 3:18 pm

Skeletons have been found in passage graves, long barrows, tumps, so certainly they were graves. But that's no reason to exclude other uses; just as churches are surrounded by graveyards but have many other uses.
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