The death that greets at Butser

Haggard  skeleton;
Sockets deep;
Horns of plenty,
Decaying bone.
An Iron Age greeting?
Welcome talisman
Or deadly curse?
Dare I enter……?

I was privileged enough last weekend to visit the Iron Age replica settlement at Butser in Hampshire UK. The original farm was an archaeological experiment from the 1970s. It has now moved to a different site nearby where there are houses from Pre-Neolithic to Roman times some recreated from actual archaeological finds in Wessex, giving a living museum. They run various course throughout the year in skills used by our ancestors. I got to make felt for clothing and a friend learned to knapp stone tools. There are skulls above the doors of the neolithic houses. Probably the houses were built by a group and an animal killed for a feast on completion. The skull representing the animal spirit was put over the door maybe to ward off evil spirits.

Words and photo copyright Englepip©

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Daily Prompt: Above Ullswater

 

 

Above the valley and the lake

We look down from the silence

To the busyness and beauty below

A toy town of village cottages

On the lower slopes and

The lake like a puddle,

Miniature steamers plying its waters.

Sounds rise from below,

Shouts of children in the beck

Paddling and dam building in the summer sun.

And the hooting of the steamer as she leaves port

To sail the length of Ullswater.

But no traffic. Not here.

The trees occasionally obliterate the view

Like the frames on a triptych

Fringing the scene with foliage.

And all the while the shadows

Race across the hillsides,

Turning greens into purples

And back again as the cloud scapes

Weave across field and fell and crag.

 

From above, we marvel at the distance

And the depth of this poetic landscape,

Subject of Romanticists

And we feel  the history of the place

Walking in the steps of Wainwright

But also Wordsworth, Southey

Coleridge and Lamb

And it is the lambs themselves

Whose sound punctuates

The high land: hauntingly plaintive.

 

We look down from above and

Feel like self-satisfied gods

Admiring our faultless handiwork

Below.

 

If you have never visited The Lake District of the UK, I thoroughly recommend it. There are still pockets of quiet and you can sometimes have a whole mountainside to yourself.

These were the hills traversed by the Lake Poets of the eighteenth century, Wordsworth and Coleridge the most famous. Whilst they concentrated their walks to the south of the lakes, they had a great appreciation of the whole district. Wainwright was a great fell walker of the last century, who wrote amazing guides to the walks there.

 

via Daily Prompt: Above

Daily Prompt: From Above

They stand statuesque at the doors

Motionless, fierce and domineering

Their garb, loosely wrapped

Inadequate for the weather

Yet they flinch not

But stare through the glass with wings furled

And harps clutched tight.

Have they arrived from above to this

Cathedral door, now shut against the elements?

To pass judgement on those of us within

At earthly voices raised, we think sublime

But which can bear

No comparison for their celestial tones.

Unsettled, cowed,

We move into the cathedral nave

And resuming our seats,

Ponder our inadequacies and our souls.

 

Angels West door Guildford Cathedral

John Hutton engraved these angels on the Great West Door.  I find the angels forbidding and eerie. What do you think?

 

Words and photo copyright Englepip©

 

 

via Daily Prompt: Above