A Goose Is A Use-full Beast
by Bernie Bell - 08:52 on 22 June 2025
A Goose Is A Use-full Beast.
On the 'Friends of the Cairns' FB page, I read that Louise un-earthed a Goose skull….
https://www.facebook.com/groups/398769848454325/
I hadn’t been aware of Goose remains being found at similar sites, and Louise’ discovery got me thinking that it would make a lot of sense for the Iron Age folk at The Cairns to have not only hunted wild Geese, but also to have kept domestic Geese.
A Goose is a use-full beast, providing meat, eggs, feathers, Goose-fat for cooking and lubricating and I remember Goose-fat being rubbed on the chest as a cure for the cold – I never understood why – but it was, and possibly still is, used for that purpose.
Our neighbour keeps Geese, and gave us an egg which was big enough to make a substantial omelette, just on its own.
Geese can also be helpful as guard dogs - I used to know a couple who would leave their baby outside their house in her pram, with their Geese guarding her. No-one got near that pram without them making a devil of a racket.
This find of a Goose skull adds to my picture of life at the Broch, possibly at many Brochs and settlements – picture it, a gaggle of big, fat domestic Geese, waddling about the village, contentedly nibbling grass.
I then wondered did they keep chickens too, and so I Googled, to find my ideas about them eating the Geese blown out of the water by Julius Caesar – and I quote….….
“The Britons consider it contrary to Divine Law to eat the hare, the chicken, or the goose. They raise these, however, for their own amusement and pleasure.”
https://news-archive.exeter.ac.uk/featurednews/title_787590_en.html
The trouble is, the Romans wrote a lot of tripe about their subject nations, so it’s hard to know what’s true and what isn’t.
When food was harder to come by, would they ‘waste’ such an easy and valuable resource? Tho’ it look like the people of the Brochs didn’t eat much fish, tho’ Brochs are always at the coast, and there were plenty of fish in the sea. Presumably they had their reasons – reasons which we’ll never know.
I previously wrote of the idea of being able to talk with someone who was actually at The Ness of Brodgar to ask about the why’s and where fore’s …….
https://theorkneynews.scot/2021/12/01/someone-who-could-explain-the-ness-of-brodgar/
……I now add to that, someone from The Cairns for the same reasons.
The more the archaeologists discover, the more questions there are.
And that’s why it’s all so fascinating!
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