Friday 19 June 2015

Much and the Standing Stones

This coming weekend is Solstice. Midsummer. You could have fooled me. We got grey skies, north wind and intermittent rain. 'Er's just put 'er winter sweaters away, and had to go and get 'em all out again. We ain't seen any 'edge'ogs this year, and I reckon they've all gone back for another week or two of 'ibernating. And if the weather's in a foul mood, 'er's no better. Going about with a face like Grumpy Cat. 'Er wants to get away to somewhere down south where it's warm.

Stone'enge is down south, a long blooming way down south, and this weekend it'll be full of 'appy 'ippies celebrating the solstice. It were built about 4,500 year ago, and the mystery is that some of them stones don't come from round about there at all, they come from Wales. Archyolologists have been scratching their 'eads for centuries trying to work out how you get a five ton lump of stone from Wales to Wiltshire when you ain't got all your modern technerlogies. They're asking the wrong questions. They ask 'ow, when the question is 'oo?

Gnomes may be small but we're tougher than we look and we know about stone, seeing as it's what we're made of. Gnomes in the old days 'ad muscles like boat ropes. There's gnome lore from way back in time, but 'umans fon;t know it. You may hear stories of King Arthur and the Round Table, but nobody ever told you about King Arthur and the Fishing Rod Gnomes of 'is Garden Pond, did they? Merlin the Magician, where did 'e get the idea for 'is pointy 'at?

It were gnomes that got the contract for building Stone'enge, and they 'appened to know where to lay their 'ands on a nice bit of blue stone. It were epic, that were, two thousand gnomes moving them stones, log-rolling 'em, snail-dragging 'em, picking 'em up and carrying 'em, all that way. They say you couldn't see the gnomes, just a stone with 'undreds of little legs marching across the landscape. And when they got there, what did the Druids say? Oh, they said, we don't want them stones. We've already started building with the local sarsen, we don't want your blue ones, they won't match.

Well, we aint taking 'em all the way back, said the gnomes. They dumped them stones, got on their snails and rode off with trails of smoke be'ind them, because snails could set a cracking pace in them days, especially with an angry Druid be'ind them. And them stones is still there where they left 'em.

2 comments:

Songmorning said...

So it's not just America that's unusually cold this year, is it?

I'll have to show this one to my dad, though. He's an astronomer and has been to Stonehenge, so I'm sure he'll enjoy this lore about it.

margaret mcallister said...

It's 'nithering' as we say here. The latest theory about Stonehenge is that the existing stones are the foundation for a platform, so the Druids could be nearer to the sun, moon and stars in their worship.