Nataraja's Foot: King of England Thou Shalt Be

Banbury Barges (click to enlarge)

Another lovely day today. Met up with Mum in Banbury for lunch:

Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross,
To see a fine lady upon a white horse;
Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,
And she shall have music wherever she goes.

My own lady upon a white horse,
as I arrived in the world there.

Above is St. Mary the Virgin's Church, which I think is particularly beautiful, although rather phallic for a virgin. Built in the 1790s.

Mum and I did plenty of shopping, drank lots of tea, and wandered around the museum.

Even saw the original Banbury cross, which is in the museum - destroyed by a bunch of those pesky Puritans. I feel a Pogues song coming on:

A curse upon you Oliver Cromwell
You who raped our Motherland
I hope you're rotting down in hell
For the horrors that you sent
To our misfortunate forefathers
Whom you robbed of their birthright
"To hell or Connaught" may you burn in hell tonight

Civil war inspires such heartfelt lyrics.

On the drive home, I stopped off at my bedrock. The place that grounds me. I occasionally post about rocks. This post is one of those. So if rocks aren't your thing, change the channel now.

The Rollright Stones are part of the foundation of my being. There are so many ghosts of myself wandering around that place, it's like reaching through a mirror.

It was my favourite kind of weather - dreich.

That's Scots for 'dull, overcast, drizzling.' It means no one else is around.

Did something I'd never done there before - took some pictures.

A lot of what happened at Rollright stays at Rollright. But there are a few things I can share.

This may not look like much, but several years ago there used to be a hut here. There was no running water, no electricity - just a fireplace. No toilet, either. Bears. Woods. You betcha. Anyway, spent some incredible nights and some incredible memories in that little hut. It's a little hard to stand there now and look at the empty space where it once stood. It was burned down - suspected arson. But I can see everything so clearly. Like we were there only yesterday.

Makes you realise how important the stones are. You can burn down a building, but those stones have stood for thousands of years. I will always know where they are, my entire life.

I went straight down to the Whispering Knights. I always walk there barefoot, whatever the weather. Thick mud between my toes, rain, moss and slippery grass.

You can tell where they get their name from - see the face of the soldier?

I slept on the flat stone once, after an argument. Back when I was young and skinny and there was a hole under the fence.

The Whispering Knights know all my secrets.

They form the old tomb. The whole legend of the stones is that a king was marching his army across the land to seize power from the ruler of the time. He encountered a witch. She told him:

Seven long strides thou shalt take
And if Long Compton thou canst see,
King of England thou shalt be!

So the king took six long strides but, just as his foot came down for the seventh, the witch made the earth rise up to block his view.

As Long Compton thou canst not see, King of England thou shalt not be!

At which point she turned the king to stone, along with all his men (the circle) and his knights, who were down in the field plotting his downfall.

Then she turned herself into an elder tree.

Those of you who know your Wiccan Rede will know the line:

Elder is the Lady's tree burn it not or cursed you'll be.

Witches had a habit of turning themselves into elder trees. They're near impossible to poison, so a perfect disguise. The only way to kill them was to cut them down. If they escaped, you could tell a witch by hitching up her skirt to see whether there were red rings around her ankles where the axe had failed.

Moving on.

Above is the King Stone, halfway up the hill that overlooks Long Compton. There was a festival for the Jubilee and someone's erected what I assume to be a (headless) witch in front of it.

Doesn't look like much, but I used to perch on these old sitting stones and watch the most incredible blood-red sunsets across the hills. Best seats in the house. A long time ago - as all good stories begin - a feral child (remarkably like myself, actually, only littler), lost her heart to a kind woodcutter on that same spot. Or perhaps he was a dry stone waller. Unfortunately, she eventually turned into a wolf and tore him apart. But she was sorry for that. She couldn't help it, it was just her nature.

Morning mist, pilgrims walking to Tewkesbury, sleeping in ditches, giants in kilts with bones through their noses, flame, fire, drums and derobing, startled trespassers, torches and over-the-stone, in the tin, on the wind, barefoot, take my hand, round we spin, Druid Spear, dying embers, hooting owls, down to the river to drink.

That land is the strangest of dreams.