In this third ‘Madwen’ blog, I delve further into the journey and duties of an Anglo-Saxon dairy maid on Dartmoor during transhumance, the seasonal movement of livestock to upland pastures. I follow Madwen’s travel to her summer dwelling, known to us as Higher Butterworthy, her community’s preparation for the fire festival marking summer’s start, and the initial tasks on reaching her summer dwelling.
Category: <span>Landscape and Mammary</span>
In this second in a series of blogs based around a 9th century Anglo-Saxon dairy maid called Madwen, we follow her on the second part of her short journey from the Tavy, through to the sinister White Tor, a place which she fears. On this route we learn a little of how the Anglo-Saxon landscape was divided, and how it might have looked differently because of fewer enclosure walls. I will also explore some initial thoughts about how the dairy landscape might have been managed – the role of Smeardon (named after butter) and the possible subsequent development of abbey ‘vaccaries’.
Using a different approach to my normal writing, in this blog I imagine a fictional historic character called Madwen, a 9th century Saxon dairy maid. In this first of a series I follow Madwen from her home at Hurdwick on the first stage of her journey for a season of summering and dairying on Dartmoor. I use this made-up narrative to help me explore transhumance, dairying and dairy folklore.
Imbolc, one of the Celtic fire festivals, is a festival of fertility, childbirth and is full of anticipation (and fear) about the coming agricultural year. In this blog I examine the snippets of what is known about this spring feast and how it morphed into the Catholic celebration of St Brigid.
In this last blog of four about Samhain, I finally get a chance to use what I learnt in my research to have a stab at placing Samhain on Dartmoor. Where might the gatherings, fires and drinking have happened?
In this blog I look at a selection of Halloween folklore, building from an understanding of the earlier Samhain customs. Included here is a long-dead Devon tradition, recorded by Mrs Bray that harks back to the pagan rhythm of the festival year.
In this second blog of four about Samhain, I delve into Irish Celtic mythology and the research literature on Samhain practices, to lay the groundwork for understanding what Samhain might have been like on Dartmoor in the pre-Christian days before it became Halloween.
This is the first of a quintet of blogs on Samhain Dartmoor; Samhain being the pagan predecessor to Halloween. I am going to use the first three blogs to build an understanding of these sinister celebrations so that in blog four, I can sketch out a picture of what this might have meant in the culture and landscape of Dartmoor.
In this second blog on Mesolithic White Tor, I focus on its geology – dolerite. Dolerite, also known as greenstone, has been recognised as being important in relation to other Mesolithic and early Neolithic sites, but as yet White Tor’s dolerite seems to have gone under the radar in considerations as to what made this place special. What might research on stone use in the Stone Age tell us about the ontology of Mesolithic people at White Tor and their ‘charismatic’ stone tools?
In this blog I take my interest in Cudlip and its dairying history right back to the beginning – to the Mesolithic and a time before agriculture. I use this blog to explore why White Tor, with its early Neolithic tor enclosure, emerged as an exceptional place at the birth of pastoral farming. What was happening in the Mesolithic that helps us understand our ancestral shift at Cudlip to a cattle-based way of life, and the monumentalising of this landscape?
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