The Key-Holders…..News From The Orkney Archaeology Society…. AND…..
by Bernie Bell - 10:04 on 20 October 2024
The Key-Holders….
I’m part of a group called the Ancient Stone Botherers, and on their FB page I saw an image of Newgrange before it was excavated….
To enter Newgrange, a person got the key from Mr Hickey the Custodian and explored by lamplight. Imagine.
This brought to mind other ancient sites where there was/is a Key-Holder. Orkney’s Maes Howe, where the key was held at Tormiston Farm and a person hoping to visit would call by Tormiston where Lilias Mathers would put on her head-scarf, get her torch and take them across the road to the alternative ‘Light in the North’ (St. Magnus Cathedral reference).
And there are sites where you still have to collect a key to gain entry. In Orkney, to enter the Grain Earth House a person has to collect the key from Judith Glue’s café in Kirkwall. This summer, friend Bart from America did just that, and had an extra-ordinary experience…
http://www.spanglefish.com/berniesblog/blog.asp?blogid=16903
Back across the sea to Ireland, and Fourknocks Cairn where we got the key from Mrs. White who lives down the road - and had our own extra- ordinary experience…….
https://theorkneynews.scot/2018/05/03/re-the-boyne-to-brodgar-programme-ii/
While we were there some lads turned up with their football. They are local lads - have lived there all their lives - aged around, I'd say, 18. They like to come to the cairn to go on top of it and look around, and so they took us up on top of it and pointed out which all the mountains that we could see were, and anything else of interest. It was a clear day and we could, as the song says, see for miles and miles and miles and miles and miles. This, as you can imagine, added to our perception of the location of the cairn.
The lads had never been inside the cairn, they didn't like to ask for the key. So they came inside with us. They loved it! They loved the 'Smiley Face' - that's what they saw it as…..
They just loved the whole place - asking lots of questions - Why was it built? How old was it? What was it for? We answered as best we could, and suggested that they go to the library and find out more about it. They took loads of pictures of it, which they were sending to their friends, explaining what it was. Mike also made some toning noises and they very much liked that - said it was "cool" - that cover-all approval word of the young these days!
These lads were local - it's part of their 'patch', yet they'd never been inside. Also, a lot of folk would maybe have seen them as 'youths', and stayed clear or doubted them. I saw them as lads, out with their football, as lads will have been way way back, too, with whatever the equivalent of football was then!
They were genuinely interested and impressed. Found it hard to believe that folk 5,000 years ago had built this structure – asking the usual question about how did the folk back then manage to get such big stones to that situation, and then raise them? And they got excited, making suggestions about how they thought it could have been done.
To me, that was all part of it - part of the history of that cairn - that the local kids are still interested and admiring of it. It was a centre of attention all those years ago - maybe on and off in different ways since - and those lads were interested but had never been in it, even though it is part of their local 'stamping ground'.
Being with them added to our visit - not only because they took us up on the top and pointed out what the mountains were etc, but also - being with young folk there, young folk who were interested, and for whom it's part of their life, still.
They went off into the field to play football, and we went back and posted the key through Mrs. White's door - she'd warned us she would be going out.
I had a wonderful dream about the cairn a few nights later, of people coming out of the stones, and dancing round inside the cairn, to humming music.
A really good visit, made better by the presence of this generation of inhabitants of that area.
To visit Loughcrew we collected the key from a cafe in nearby Loughcrew Gardens.
While we were at the cairn, a young couple from America turned up. They’d gone to the cafe, been told that the key wasn’t there, and thought they’d come along to see the cairn anyway and, as chance would have it, coincided with us being there, which added to the visit for all of us.
At Loughcrew and Fourknocks, Mike and I temporarily became the key-holders - for the local lads and the American couple.
This got me thinking about this time of year and how keys are turning in locks to open doors to understanding life and death and the in-between-time - as used to happen at the ancient sites - and still does.
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News From The Orkney Archaeology Society….
“The Tomb of the Eagles Project .. a link to the recording of AOC’s excellent talk about the archaeological survey of the tomb. Here it is – https://vimeo.com/1011396614?share=copy – so many people have a very soft spot for the Tomb of the Eagles and I am sure will find it fascinating.”
I’m one of those people – here are some of my many tuppenceworths about an extra-ordinary place…
https://theorkneynews.scot/2017/05/04/bernie-bell-orkney-walks-with-stories-the-eagle-cairn/
https://theorkneynews.scot/2018/01/13/bernie-bell-orkney-walks-south-ronaldsay-east-coast/
https://theorkneynews.scot/2021/07/29/a-tale-of-the-eagle-cairn/
https://theorkneynews.scot/2021/05/13/the-tomb-of-the-eagles/
https://theorkneynews.scot/2021/02/02/an-appreciation-of-john-hedges-an-archaeologist/
AND…..
Some very impressive numbers…
https://www.nessofbrodgar.co.uk/ness-in-numbers/
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