Pub Crawl

[Boreades]

I wish I could remember which site it was on, but I dimly recall a thread somewhere else, a few years back, where a nice keen-but-amateur lady suggested to the overwhelmingly male professional/traditional archaeo types that the stones could ring, or sing. With links to her website with pics of people hugging some stones.

She was (figuratively) stoned to death by the outraged pro-archaeos, who couldn't stand any suggestions of "advanced technology", in cutting stones to produce pure notes, or mystic uses of stones for music making.

[macausland]

There was a report the other week where some art students from the Royal College I think had done experiments along the same lines.

I also gave a link somewhere here to a channel 4 video on youtube in which acoustic scientists from I think Reading University did all sorts of experiments with sound at Stonehenge and other sites including Orkney and Ireland.

[hvered]

The notion of Perpetual Choirs has been around for at least two centuries and was enthusiastically re-interpreted by folk connected with Earth Mysteries, including its founder, John Michell, as a sort of mystical protective belt. Monks were said to have sung throughout the day and night which is rather improbable, being a notoriously lax lot, but it may be there's an older connection with animal herding in general and shepherds in particular singing to their sheep (which is still done in some areas), especially since many monasteries were engaged in the wool trade.

[Even now certain sounds communicate that all is right, such as the bongs of Big Ben and the Today programme on Radio 4. Wasn't there a group of Wiccans or somesuch who claimed they'd protected Britain during WWII by singing in a circle?]

[macausland]

Cathedrals and the like make effective resonating chambers for Gregorian chanters and others of that ilk.

[spiral]

Cathedrals and the like make effective resonating chambers for Gregorian chanters and others of that ilk.

Cathedrals make effective observatories......

[macausland]

Spiral

'Cathedrals make effective observatories....'

So do pubs. You can see life passing before your eyes.

One problem though is to remember how much you've had to drink. It's not so bad with the first pint but get's a bit vaguer as the glasses empty and are refilled. Which reminds me of a site I came across where the local inhabitants were discussing the naming and counting of days.

I forget exactly how the discussion went but basically they found a problem in coming to terms with how our weekdays use the sun and moon and then jump into norse and germanic gods.

Somebody suggested that the reality was that originally the days were counted. One, Two, Three, Four etc. That's usually where I lose count in the pub so I'll stop at that.

I will try and reconstitute the argument with my own input. I'm not sure which is mine and which is theirs. A bit like pints on a pub table really. It was an honest mistake, really.

If we think of the prisoner in his cell he keeps track of time by scratching lines in the wall with a cross bar at some point to bundle each line/day into an easily counted number.

So, Moonday, is really One day. Tuesday is really Two day. At this point, for convenience we have a Wednesday or Wait day which is the cross bar.

Then we have Thursday or Three day ( yes I know, let me finish my pint) and then Friday or Four day ( And there's me thinking it was for Frying fish) followed by another Wait day or Sit day or Sat day.

Imagine these days are not scratches on a wall but sticks of some sort. We put them in two and tie them with a flexible stick to make a bundle of three. We do it again with the next three.

We then take the two bundles and tie them together with a Seven day which is a large circle around the two bundles. Seven becomes Sun and even Sun as the round hot thing in the sky. We start the week cool and finish up hot. The end of one cycle.

If we need to count the number of days before the beer has brewed to perfection we could lose count so all we have to do is pop completed bundles into a bag or put them on an altar of sorts and it will be easy to see how many days have passed at a glance.

As for Day. Germanic languages call a day something like Dag or Tag.

If we have a sack full of sticks that are waiting to be counted we need a convenient means of differentiating between those counted and those not counted.

When we put the first stick down for One Day all we need to do is put a Tag on it and we know that it's done. The same with Two Tag, Wait Tag and all the rest.

The assumption is of course that people counting in bundles could actually count to seven and know that there is a difference between the names of the Tags in the bundle and the actual number of the Tags.

A bit like keeping the score on the dartboard which is not exactly like the score which means twenty but we understand the difference.

Which reminds me, I'm getting Thursday, er Thorsday, er what's the word again. Ah I know, 'looks good, tastes good, and by golly it does you good.'

I am in the right pub aren't I?

[Mick Harper]

No, you're not. In the first place your scheme doesn't account for why there are seven days in the week (a number which is arbitrary). Nor does it account for the strange coincidence that the days of the week are specifically named after the seven bodies of the (anciently observed) solar system ie (Sun)day, (Moon)day, Tiu(Mars)day, Mercredi (Mercury), Thor's(Jupiter)day, Freya/Venus day and Saturnday.

[Boreades]

If we're into why we have seven days in a week, shouldn't we go the whole hog and look at why we have twelve months in the year as well? And why the months are organised (sic) in the shambolic way they seem to be?

Along the way, we might get onto the subject of a scientific basis for a Megalithic Calendar. Closely related to the Calender of Enoch, which divided the year into four seasons of exactly 13 weeks each.



As perhaps did the "Western Druid" calender.

No, not this Western Druid: http://www.flickr.com/photos/24555083@N08/2988725547

This one: http://www.druidry.org/druid-way/teachi ... -festivals

Or perhaps this one.

There's a big hint/clue for those that want to join in the legwork and share with me in the write-up and credits for rediscovering a lost slice of our pre-Roman history. I have much more to post, but it needs sorting into some semblance of order first, and I've got too much day-job still to do. :-(

[Boreades]

The Calendar of Enoch emphasizes the four natural divisions of the year. With twelve months of 30 days and 4 other days which are quarter-year markers for the four seasons, or Holy-Days.

It's a well-structured calendar. Not only does it have the same number of days every month, but every quarter-year contains 91 days, which is exactly 13 weeks.

Add one Annual Holiday at the start of the year (which could be in Spring, but could be put in mid winter as now), and every few years, one more Leap Day, to keep the start of the cycle in time with Sirius Rising (as in the Egyptian Calendar)

[spiral]

I am in the right pub aren't I?

You are always in the right pub till you come up with something better............ If you can't you are in the right pub.