TenHornedBeast

Nature & Time

2011-04-23T09:27:00.003+01:00

I had planned to visit the Cheviot Hills in Northumberland but with my day arranged and my maps prepared I awoke in the middle of the night with the desire to see anemones. I have just spent five days in London and while I enjoy the feeling that I am walking the same streets as Doyle, Wilde and Machen the vulgar crowds with their self-aware obsessions and the noisy filth of the city soon becomes tiresome causing the train ride home to the cooler, greener hills to quicken to an irresistible urge.

In the small hours, with my watch glowing on the bedside table, the desire to see anemones filled my mind. I was tired but could not sleep. I ran through all the references to the flower in Dunsany, for whom anemones were a totem of spring and the triumphant resurgence of nature. He wrote about them time and again, as a signum for life and beauty, as a numeral on the clock face of the year by which he ran his life. As I lay waiting for the graying of the dawn I thought about Dunsany’s story Nature & Time, in which the two spirits have a domestic argument on the streets of Coventry (Dunsany seems to have had a special place in the darkest corner of his heart for the industrial cities of the Midlands) and I knew that with the unseasonably warm spring now was the time to find the flowers at their best.

By morning I had abandoned my trip to the hill forts on the Cheviots and set out for a piece of woodland where I knew few other people would trouble to go. I walked amongst fresh green beech leaves, newly sprouted bracken fronds uncoiling from their winter sleep and small clusters of blue dog violet amongst the white wood sorel. And by a small stream, no more than a ditch, on a bank covered in young nettles and brambles, was a patch of wood anemones, their starry flowers blushing pink and white. I sat and listened to chaffinches calling from the tops of trees, the warming sound of early bees on the wing and I forgot everything I knew about London.

Through the streets of Coventry one winter's night strode a triumphant spirit. Behind him stooping, unkempt, utterly ragged, wearing the clothes and look that outcasts have, whining, weeping, reproaching, an ill-used spirit tried to keep pace with him. Continually she plucked him by the sleeve and cried out to him as she panted after and he strode resolute on.

It was a bitter night, yet it did not seem to be the cold that she feared, ill-clad though she was, but the trams and the ugly shops and the glare of the factories, from which she continually winced as she hobbled on, and the pavement hurt her feet.He that strode on in front seemed to care for nothing, it might be hot or cold, silent or noisy, pavement or open fields, he merely had the air of striding on.And she caught up and clutched him by the elbow. I heard her speak in her unhappy voice, you scarcely heard it for the noise of the traffic.

"You have forgotten me," she complained to him. "You have forsaken me here."She pointed to Coventry with a wide wave of her arm and seemed to indicate other cities beyond. And he gruffly told her to keep pace with him and that he did not forsake her. And she went on with her pitiful lamentation.

"My anemones are dead for miles," she said, "all my woods are fallen and still the cities grow. My child Man is unhappy and my other children are dying, and still the cities grow and you have forgotten me!"

And then he turned angrily on her, almost stopping in that stride of his that began when the stars were made.

"When have I ever forgotten you?" he said, "or when forsaken you ever? Did I not throw down Babylon for you? And is not Nineveh gone? Where is Persepolis that troubled you? Where Tarshish and Tyre? And you have said I forget you." And at this she seemed to take a little comfort. I heard her speak once more, looking wistfully at her companion. "When will the fields come back and the grass for my children?"

"Soon, soon," he said: then they were silent. And he strode away, she limping along behind him, and all the clocks in the towers chimed as he passed.

Lord Dunsany, 1915

Spring In Town

2011-03-13T14:22:00.002Z

At a street corner sat, and played with a wind, Winter disconsolate.

Still tingled the fingers of the passers-by and still their breath was visible, and still they huddled their chins into their coats when turning a corner they met with a new wind, still windows lighted sent out into the street the thought of romantic comfort by evening fires; these things still were, yet the throne of Winter tottered, and every breeze brought tidings of further fortresses lost on lakes or boreal hill-slopes. And not any longer as a king did Winter appear in those streets, as when the city was decked with gleaming white to greet him as a conqueror and he rode in with his glittering icicles and haughty retinue of prancing winds, but he sat there with a little wind at the corner of the street like some old blind beggar with his hungry dog. And as to some old blind beggar Death approaches, and the alert ears of the sightless man prophetically hear his far-off footfall, so there came suddenly to Winter's ears the sound, from some neighbouring garden, of Spring approaching as she walked on daisies. And Spring approaching looked at huddled inglorious Winter.

"Begone," said Spring.

"There is nothing for you to do here," said Winter to her. Nevertheless he drew about him his grey and battered cloak and rose and called to his little bitter wind and up a side street that led northward strode away.

Pieces of paper and tall clouds of dust went with him as far as the city's outer gate. He turned then and called to Spring: "You can do nothing in this city," he said; then he marched homeward over plains and sea and heard his old winds howling as he marched. The ice broke up behind him and foundered like navies. To left and to right of him flew the flocks of the sea-birds, and far before him the geese's triumphant cry went like a clarion. Greater and greater grew his stature as he went northwards and ever more kingly his mien. Now he took baronies at a stride and now counties and came again to the snow-white frozen lands where the wolves came out to meet him and, draping himself anew with old grey clouds, strode through the gates of his invincible home, two old ice barriers swinging on pillars of ice that had never known the sun.

So the town was left to Spring. And she peered about to see what she could do with it. Presently she saw a dejected dog coming prowling down the road, so she sang to him and he gambolled. I saw him next day strutting by with something of an air. Where there were trees she went to them and whispered, and they sang the arboreal song that only trees can hear, and the green buds came peeping out as stars while yet it is twilight, secretly one by one. She went to gardens and awaked from dreaming the warm maternal earth. In little patches bare and desolate she called up like a flame the golden crocus, or its purple brother like an emperor's ghost. She gladdened the graceless backs of untidy houses, here with a weed, there with a little grass. She said to the air, "Be joyous."

Children began to know that daisies blew in unfrequented corners. Buttonholes began to appear in the coats of the young men. The work of Spring was accomplished.

Lord Dunsany

Photograph: derelict townhouse, Picadilly, London

High Cup Nick

2011-03-07T12:01:00.001Z

For many years High Cup Nick called to me. I have studied it on the map and driven by its vast open mouth, looking up into the rolling clouds that cap its top. I have planned expeditions that have never happened, over night wild camps on the slopes above the trough, long walks down the steep gills that fall into the vale of Eden and then steeper climbs back to the summits but all in vain. But I had never set aside the time to visit the place. The call of this wild and remote place seemed as far away and faint as the moon but like all things it is there for the taking, and if we stop thinking about it and start doing it we get a little closer.

On a grey and ordinary March morning I set off to finally see this place. A long drive to the trail head on the banks of Cow Green reservoir, a few minutes to boot up and check equipment and I was off, striding along the rough tarmac road that leads down to the dam wall that holds back the might of Condatis’ Tees, across the dam and onto the Pennine Way heading west. I have sometimes pondered what it would be like to do one of these long distance walks and today I realised that this is definitely, positively not for me. I have no problem walking long distances, no problem wild camping or doing the day after day after day slog that comes with the challenges – what I dislike, maybe even despise, is the pedestrian nature of these walks.

Other than physical stamina and mental dullness I can see little else that is needed to complete these trails. The Pennine Way is as wide and well marked as a suburban street. At every mile there seems to be a sign post showing the way, a helpful information board provided by some do-gooding organisation and in places where the ground may be a little muddy for gentlefolk they have even provided duck-boards, huge stone slabs and footbridges to get those who lack the initiative across the becks and gills. What is the point of venturing into “Englands Last Wilderness” if it is impossible to lose ones way? I appreciate the arguments about erosion and the impact of thousands of boots on delicate ecosystems but I really do not want to be herded along sanitised corridors in the landscape like so many day-trippers on a bus to Blackpool.

Not only is the walk to High Cup Nick insultingly well marked it is also insultingly boring. Mile after mile of dull heathery hills rising with that rounded convex slope of the North Pennines, a shifting mirage that places the summit always beyond the next ridge. Here you find yourself among some of the highest hills in England – Mickle Fell, Meldon Hill, Dun Fell, Cross Fell but the path winds sheepishly around their lower flanks, across miles of soggy featureless upland plain on which the only point of interest is the soft chuckle of startled grouse and calling lapwings and curlews.

I reached High Cup Nick in a poor humour. The walk had been tiresome and dull, the weather was neither warm and sunny or cold and cloudy – both of which I would have welcomed for their own reasons – but just the sullen dull grey of very early spring. Too early for the flowers of the famous Teesdale Assemblage, too late for the snows that linger long in this sub-arctic microclimate. Even so, when one stands at the head of the vast glacial trough of High Cup Gill and beholds the majesty of the place all the bullshit and interference that has clung to you like the scum of the modern world blows away, leaving you cleansed and quiet. I sat for a long time, a lone tiny figure in this enormous landscape, looking out into the sky. Sat like a falcon on a crag, ready to launch into the shifting clouds, suspended in a world of sky and rock, of greys and black, lost in the soft fall of water and cold whine of wind. But I knew when I had stayed too long. The chill bit and worried any area of exposed skin, hands began to tingle then scream in the coldness, tuning to the pink of boiled lobsters. Taking photographs was difficult, fingers began to stiffen and lose their dexterity, the pain increased until ones whole consciousness was reduced to the need to put on gloves. If there is a Genius Loci of this wild and viscous place it is not to be taken lightly.

Maize Beck: I

2011-03-07T11:57:00.001Z

I did not have the heart to return by the same route. I had not walked so far just to turn around and go through the same dullness so I consulted my map and looked for an alternative. I had considered walking up the southern slope of Meldon Hill to its rounded summit, 767 metres above sea level and on the walk in the perfectly flat surface of Cow Green reservoir had reflected the hill like a mirror, making it seem nearer and attainable but now I wanted something more interesting than an endless climb to the top of an unremarkable hill. The clouds were starting to roll in like massive white curtains pulled across a stage. On the walk to High Cup Nick I had crossed Maize Beck, a small upland stream flowing roughly north-east to join the Tees and decided that this was where my route lay. I would reject the paths, do away with the duckboards and follow this small mountain river where it lead me.

Maize Beck rises in the huge blanket bogs of Dufton Fell. Water falling in this catchment gathers in the thick peaty soil, thatched with sphagnum moss and tussocks of grass before making its slow way into ditch and sike, runnel and gill. Even it its upper reaches the beck is wide and rocky, alternating between stony rapids and deep dark pools where the water moves slowly, swirling in dark depths that call for wild swimming on warm days. Today is not that day, the wind is rattling the dry heather, the sky is threatening rain and this high in the hills small becks can flash flood, sweeping down turfs and stone in their force. I decide to keep my clothes firmly on my back.

The geology of these hills is varied. There is shiny black limestone, washed smooth and dimpled by millennia of water, vast igneous intrusions of whin sill form cliffs and pinnacles while sedimentary layers lie in slabby formations. The beck cuts down through this landscape, a cold serpent of water, a living presence in a place that can evoke a sense of emptiness and stillness. There is a modern footbridge across the beck and this is where I begin my journey. The map shows a footpath running along the southern edge of the beck – in reality this is a faint and elusive trail that winds between the heather and the stones, sometimes lost from view. This is the kind of place I love, a place where it is not certain where the path lies and where ones skill and strength are tested. Leave the Pennine Way to the ramblers and their Skye Terriers, this is where I want to be.

Maize Beck: II

2011-03-07T11:53:00.001Z

But even in these wild and remote places you are reminded of the outside world. The Army has a firing range at Warcop on the southern side of the hills and the Ministry of Defence has annexed hundreds of square acres of moorland for its own use, planting their ugly signs in this wilderness, telling people to Keep Out. Let the army mind its own business and I will mind mine.

There is evidence all along the beck bed of the special microclimate of this place. Ice forms where spray from the small falls has frozen on the cold stone slabs that face away from the sun. Icicles grow where water drips from exposed faces in the peat, making beautiful and delicate shapes against the dark, muddy background. Walking in these places you can hear the popping suction of air squeezed up from the bog or the hard crunch of frozen ice just beneath the surface. There is a feeling of cold in the land, that on these tundran hills the last ice age was yesterday and may come back again tonight.

Maize Beck: III

2011-03-07T11:42:00.002Z

The beck reaches its most southerly point at the confluence with the Swarth Beck, which drains the northern slopes of Arnside Rake. Confluences are special places, places of joinings and powers merged. These waters are hallowed to Condatis, the god of the confluences, a God known only to the northern Brigantia people who lived in the valleys between the Greta and the Tyne. At this southern point of the beck there are a series of wide rapids and beautiful water falls, water rippling and singing as it drops over the plucked, bare rocks. This is a place to sit and linger. A place to be, even on a day as cold and grey as today, with the snows not yet melted on the tops of the hills and the wind sniffing round gaps in clothing like a hunting dog.

Maize Beck: IV

2011-03-07T11:38:00.001Z

Upland rivers have a life a vibrancy that fills me with joy. They are young and reckless, capable of acts of destruction and acts that create the most beautiful places. In these hidden valleys where few people visit there are pools of water that are known only to the dipper and the otter. A dipper has been my companion for the last mile, flying back and forth, its white throat flashing in the grey of the day, a small black bullet skimming the surface of the beck. The water runs quickly now, anxious to get to the bottom of the valley. From its source in the bogs to the west to its confluence with the Tees the Maize Beck drops over 200 metres in something a little over 10 kilometres, not a particularly steep drop but one that keeps the water running fresh and fast.

Now the beck seems to be a series of small falls, one following the other as the water flows between square boulders, around rocks and slabs that have taken a strange orange-brown colour, as if stained by the peaty waters. Here it is possible to cross backwards and forwards from one side to the other at will. The rocks are smooth and flat, wide surfaces that make perfect steps. The water flows beneath me as I walk from side to side, feeling the pull of the landscapes, flowing with the water downwards towards the valley bottom.

Maize Beck: V

2011-03-07T11:35:00.001Z

I am suddenly arrested dead in my tracks. There, on a large flat slab of brown rock protruding from the water is a fresh otter spraint. There are three pieces of scat, all deposited on the higher edge of the slab. I have seen similar depositions of otter scat in other places – sometimes on large flat rocks by the river side, sometimes on tussocks of moss. It is classic territory marking behaviour – leaving a spoor in a place that will warn those who need to be warned and entice those who should be enticed.

Of the three individual spraints the central deposit is the largest, showing that curled and twisted morphology characteristic of mustelids. There is wide seasonal variance in scat morphology amongst otters and these pieces range from 2cm to 5cm in size, with a very soft mucousy texture. This would suggest that the animal who marked this place is currently subsisting on a very meagre diet of slugs, earth worms and possibly frogs, if they have yet woken from their winter hibernation in these cold hills. The external colour of the spraints was a rich dark brown but when broken showed a greener colour, there were no fishbones or any solid particles in the spraint. The spraint gave off a sweet musky smell, not unpleasant. It is because of this smell, blown down the valley by the near constant winds, that the otter chose this rock.

Interestingly the otter had deposited the spraint over a grouse dropping, showing that this particular rock – perhaps owing to its flat tabular form and prominent position in the river affording a clear view down the valley – is favoured by more than one species as a marker point. I have found other communal latrine sites where different species have marked the same places – specifically roe deer and hares during snow coverage, but this is the first time I have found otter using a communal site with other species.

Maize Beck: VI

2011-03-07T11:31:00.001Z

I sat on the river bank and pondered this find. Tracking is about understanding animal behaviour, not just about locating track and sign, and to understand the significance of this spraint one needs to understand the landscape. Here was a small and stony beck in the highest hills of the Pennines. Winters up here are cold and hungry times, certainly no place for a large mammal like otters. It seems more likely that this is a sign of a spring migration. Signalled by warmer days and increasing daylight a dog otter has travelled upstream looking for a new territory – beyond the hay meadows, beyond the tree line into a place where few others will go. I have no idea what quantity of fish Maize Beck holds – certainly the massive waterfall at High Force, down in middle Teesdale, forms a barrier to migratory species but above that there are grayling and small brown trout in the river. The Maize Beck with its alternate stretches of deep pools and rocky shallows is an unspoilt habitat but fish would first need to navigate the extensive obstacles of Maize Force. Even so, the presence of otters so far up the beck suggests that there is sufficient prey in the river to support a breeding population, even if these resourceful animals do supplement their diet with everything from slugs to the eggs and young of ground nesting birds.

Maize Beck: VII

2011-03-07T11:28:00.002Z

The spraint documented and the location assessed I carried on down the valley. The beck falls in step after step, fed by small runnels and sikes that flow down the hill sides. Tracking otters across this substrate is impossible, I look for soft muddy pools where a print may be found but there is nothing. I concentrate on the grassy band and at a place where the bank rose high above the rocky flow I found more otter spraint – this time left in four small deposits along a 10 metre length of bank. Each spraint was between 3cm and 5cm in length and were of the same semi-solid mucousy texture that had been deposited several kilometres upstream on the slab. It seems that the animal was taking no chances in marking its area clearly and thoroughly.

I have found similar otter deposition sites in woodland areas, it would appear that dog otters move through the landscape using both the river and the bank, depositing spraint on high points above the water to allow the scent to move down the valley, signalling presence and ownership. This is a satisfying find, telling me that my reading of the landscape was correct, affirming things that I only suspected to be true.

Maize Beck: VIII

2011-03-07T11:24:00.001Z

It was now late in the afternoon and the light was starting to fail. I was a long way outside of mobile phone coverage and still had any miles to go before I could regain my car parked at the reservoir. I picked up the pace, no longer examining every rock and tuft of grass for track and sign and set myself the target of covering ground quickly. This was easier said than done, there are no paths in this place and I was left hopping from rock to rock, conscious that this was neither the time nor the place to fall and get injured. I passed the relics of the forgotten industries of the North Pennines– shakes holes where subterranean galleries and shafts have subside, spoil heaps from century old lead mines now grown grassy and smooth, isolated piles of stones shaped into curricks, marker stones, and the remains of walls now broken down and mossy. Still the beck flowed on, gurgling and calling, running over deep still stretches in slow motion, pulling with it the white lines of foam made by small step falls and rapids.

Maize Beck: IX

2011-03-07T11:20:00.001Z

The valley was broader now. No longer the quick run of water between interlocking spurs of hills, the beck flows strong and broad over rocky beds. Rounding a corner in the land I came to the falls at Maize Beck Force. The word “Force” is used in Northern England and comes from the Old Norse “Foss”, which describes a fall of water. Here the falls are wide and strong, channelling water over flat slabs of hard whin sill and down strong flumes of white foaming spray. There are river rounded cobbles and angular, squared blocks. Wide flat pastures of rock. The sound of the falls fills the air but it is a peaceful sounds that allows the outside world to soak through, unlike the overpowering roar that comes from higher falls.

I explore the rocks, flat and inviting, purpose made for climbing and gripping. To fall in here and crack bones would be a poor end to the day and I am careful not to push either my own limits or the hospitality of the place. In the cool of the late afternoon I sit on a flat rock beneath the lower fall and drink the last of my water. The first midges of the year dance above the water in a shifting, changing orb. It has been a long and exciting day. A day of contrasts, the dull monotony of the featureless Pennine Way contrasted with the exciting variety of the Maize Beck. A day of biting cold at the cusp of High Cup Nick and soft warmth as nameless hollows of the hills caught the fleeting sun. I have never been happier to have abandoned the path and looked for my own way.

Maize Beck: X

2011-03-07T11:16:00.001Z

I have promised to call home and let people know I am alive before 7.00pm. To do that I have to reach the car by 6.30pm and drive sufficiently closer to civilisation to get a signal. Reluctantly I get up and shoulder my pack, turn my back to the beauty of Maize Force and make for the trail. The last mile of moorland is boggy and wet but I learn to savour the comfort of walking on such a surface having slogged along miles of rocky road in the morning. I join the Pennine Way at the Grain Beck footbridge, rise up the slope to Birkdale farm where noisy dogs bark at me from behind locked doors and stride out towards the Cow Green.

This is a landscape of moving targets. Behind every hill there is yet another hill. The distances worked out on the maps can be doubled, such is the undulation of the land and the difficulty in moving through the terrain. My first real trip of 2011 has left me footsore and weary. I have covered close to twenty miles, most of it off-trail, and the last miles are the worst. Hip-flexors scream and strain. Calf muscles burn. Winter calories are burned off as I look at last on the buttress wall of Falcon Clints with the river Tees sweeping round in a broad loop and there on the right is the confluence of the Maize Beck as it joins the larger flow, a beck no longer but accepted into the flow of the main river, sweeping on to the sea.

Icefyre I

2011-03-04T06:00:00.002Z

I was recently walking on the high moorland to the east of the Mallerstang valley when I found a beautiful frozen tarn. Down in the lowlands there had been no hard frosts for many weeks but up here in the High Places the cold was intense and long lasting, reluctant to relinquish its hold. The water level of the tarn had dropped since the first frost, it’s ebbing away causing the thick layer of ice to bow and sag, cracking in to large continental plates that lay stranded on the deep, dry yellow grass.

Icefyre II

2011-03-04T05:57:00.001Z

The fractured ice marked the winter months of this lonely place like a talisman. How many people had passed by this small nameless pool on these cold pathless hills and stopped to wonder at this secret mystery? How many people had seen the fantastic bent forms of curved ice, seemingly beaten like steel into fantastic shapes. Ice as preserver and destroyer, frozen life and frozen death. Ice as a lens to focus the shy pallid sun that hides behind cloud and hills. Ice as the tracks of the Winter that will melt away before the warm winds of Spring but not easily, not before it’s time.

Icefyre III

2011-03-04T05:44:00.002Z

Fire & Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great,

And would suffice.

Robert Frost, 1920

Megalithic Monday: Gamelands Stone Circle

2011-02-05T10:20:00.001Z

On a fine, bright winters day I set out to visit a series of megalithic monuments and stone circles in the east of Cumbria, a county which holds a third of all the stone circles in England. The concentration of prehistoric monuments in the county is testament to the importance of the area to our ancient ancestors but the questions I wished to explore by visiting these sites was what made this area so attractive, why were these sites chosen as special and then marked in such a visible way by the erection of massive stone monuments.

The night before my journey I had sat down with my 1:25000 OS maps spread over the floor and carefully planned my route so that I could cover as much ground as quickly as possible and it was with a light heart and a blithe spirit that I set out with my itinerary tightly scheduled. In the tangle of small lanes and minor roads that criss-cross the countryside south of Appleby my tightly scheduled itinerary began to unravel when I found the road I wished to take was being dug up by a team of navvies and was firmly closed. A quick glance at the map showed that I could get in from the west rather than the east but this would necessitate a lengthy detour however all was not lost as my new route would take me through the village of Orton and close to the circle at Gamelands. So I threw the itinerary out the window and trusted to my sense of direction.

Orton is a small and visibly affluent village sitting in a green low-lying hollow between the massive limestone scar to the north east, the Howgill hills to the south and Lakeland fells to the west. The village has all the necessary features of the chocolate box lid – white-washed stone cottages, a church with a high tower and large country houses with their own drives scattered around the perimeter. Leaving the village along the B6261 and driving east along the foot of the scar you come to Knott Lane, a small and rocky track leading to the stone circle. It was bitterly cold with the winds seeming to blow from every direction at once as I set off up the lane on foot. The map showed the circle to be on the eastern side of the dry stone wall, which at this point was around 5 feet high. I peered over the wall from the advantage point of a large mossy stone and there it was – 33 large pink granite boulders (actually 32, one of the boulders is limestone and badly weathered and pitted) in a rough broken circle with sheep tracks between. A quick look over my shoulder to make sure I was alone then an even quicker climb over the dry stone wall, here made with large stone slabs that acted as steps, and I was down the other side and among the circle.

Gamelands is a large structure, around 40 metres in diameter, with some very large stones, which although fallen still retain their sense of scale and presence. The stones themselves are glacial erratics of Shap granite, deposited in this predominantly limestone area by the retreating ice of the last glaciation. They have an easy and worn shape, like a boiled sweet that has been sucked smooth. The pink feldspar crystals, or phenocrysts, give the stones a fleshy, organic look – almost like the backs of subterranean animals breaching the surface of the earth. In the bitter winds I walked around the circle and touched the stones, noting the blue pieces of piping discarded in the middle – the ubiquitous agricultural litter of the British countryside. Nobody was around. Very few cars passed by on the road to the south. Only the sheep watched me and then only briefly, returning after quick glances to the grass that was much more important.

Megalithic Monday: Gamelands Stone Circle II

2011-02-05T10:17:00.001Z

What was special about this place? Why here? These are the critical questions with stone circles – purpose and location, location and purpose. For all the theories about stone circles as cattle pens, astronomical instruments, tribal centres and meeting places I feel that the answer is much more simple and often very obvious, if only one looks up from the theodolite, slide rule and tape measure. Such huge, megalithic structures require planning and resources – not just brute labour but intellectual resources and spiritual resources. The circle is here because ancient people wanted to mark this place – and if we look around we quickly see that the most dominant topographical feature is the massive bulk of Knot Hill looming over the stone circle from the north. The presence of this hill must be significant to the location of Gamelands stone circle – perhaps because of it’s shape, rounded and prominent, or the fact that it’s limestone geology and hydrology marked it as different and worthy of celebration.

We have lost the stories and lore that explained the significance of the location but it can be partially regained; with a sensitivity to place and lines of sight, with an understanding of the direction of valleys and passes, with an awareness of how the ebb and flow of the landscape impacts on the lives of plants, animals and people we can begin to rebuild the lost lore of Ancient British Animism that lies buried with the megaliths and rock-art of these islands.

Megalithic Monday: Castlehow Scar Stone Circle

2011-02-05T10:13:00.001Z

My route now took me through the moorland north west of Orton and on towards Shap. The small town of Shap sits on the far eastern fringe of Lakeland like a poor relation at a wedding celebration. Despite the efforts of the council and tourist board to market Shap as “Gateway To The Eastern Lakes” it remains a working class town with a very visible industrial presence along the length of its linear plan. It feels like a place where you are more likely to see hi-vis vests and rigger boots than designer mountain jackets, which is a good thing. Of course in the stone age Shap and the hill sides around the present town were at the centre of a large and complex ritual landscape marked by a network of stone circles, megalithic avenues, cairns and standing stones. Driving over the moors from Orton every other rock catches ones attention and it is possible to see broken cairns and opened cists at every bend in the road. I would love to spend more time here and test to see if my suspicions are bourn out but the day is already moving on and I have too many things to do.

Castlehow Scar is a small and ruinous stone circle that is, quite frankly, hardly worth the effort of visiting were it not that it is on the way to other, more impressive sites. One crosses the M6 heading east out of Shap, rising up to the long ridge that runs north-south from Penrith to Tebay. At the crest of the ridge and in the lee of a long narrow plantation of spindly, under-nourished sitka spruce the stone circle stands up against a wire fence and a dry stone wall. Public access is not allowed and I had to balletically climb and balance across the barbed wire fence but it really wasn’t worth the trouble. After the vast scale of Gamelands this is an anti-climax. The sense of bewilderment and let-down is increased by the obstruction caused by the plantation, which cuts off all views to the fells at the far east of the vale of Eden. But ones eye is drawn westwards to nearby Shap with it’s complex of megalithic monuments and the siting of Castlehow Scar stone circle must be part of this wider landscape, with its views to the amphitheatre of High Places that surround the Vale of Eden. Even so, Castlehow Scar circle is not something that I would travel to see again.

Megalithic Monday: Iron Hills North

2011-02-05T10:09:00.002Z

Carry on down the lane from Castlehow Scar, round the southern end of the ugly 1959 spruce plantation and onwards towards the isolated farmstead of Oddendale and you can visit the twin sites of Iron Hills North and South, otherwise known as Haberwain. There is a long straight green-lane leading up from the corner of the road, up towards the ridge line that attracted the eye of these ancient architects. There are so many erratics in the fields around Haberwain, and often in vaguely regular distributions that one can get confused and “stone crazy” but it is worth remembering that in this part of the world stone circles occur, like fox shit, in prominent places with clear lines of sight and that means the summit of the ridge

There is some debate as to whether Iron Hills North is actually a stone circle or the remains of a ruined cairn with its base stones exposed. That there is a large cairn-shaped mound in the middle, with a dry stone wall cutting through it, would suggest the latter. Never the less this is an impressive site and one that affords clear lines of sight to other High Places around the panorama – including the large glacial trough of High Cup Nick, the edge-like summit of Wild Boar Fell, the massive of the Howgill Fells to the south and the wall of Grey Crag and Bannisdale Fell behind Shap.

Who was buried in a place like this? John Salkeld Bland’s 1910 book “The Vale Of The Lyvenett” has an anecdotal and frustratingly romantic account of the “careless” opening of the cairn “a few years ago”, which revealed a human skeleton allegedly of “gigantic proportions” (what else), fragments of red deer antler and a “bronze dagger” described as thirteen inches in length. We may snigger at the exaggeration of the size of the skeleton and Bland’s fanciful assertion that the man “opposed the advance of the Roman legions” – he may have been as removed from Roman Britain as us – but this is a place of obvious and significant importance.

At How Tallon above Barningham Moor – 40 miles to the east – there is a Bronze Age burial cairn that affords similar lines of sight to high hills along the valleys of the Swale, Greta, Tees, Wear and even (on a clear day) the Tyne. There is also a small stone circle at the head of a prominent gill, a place that provides a permanent spring and which is commemorated by spectacular rock art panels. Here at Haberwain is a similar site – a burial mound with panoramic views, sited within a large and complex ritual megalithic landscape. The effort of erecting these burial mounds in such places, with thin soil and steep ascents, must have been considerable. Are we confident that our family and friends would go to such lengths for us when we die? Will our graves occupy a place where the High Places can be seen? Will there be anything of importance for our souls to see?

Megalithic Monday: Iron Hills South

2011-02-05T10:05:00.002Z

50 meters south of the burial cairn at Iron Hills North is the creatively named site of Iron Hills South. Nine stones form a ring around the top of a (very) low mound, with one stone about 2 metres outside the ring. Three other stones occupy the centre of the mound, with all the stones except one being Shap granite. Like its brother to the north this may also be a broken and dilapidated cairn, certainly some commentators have suggested this but there is no obvious raised structure around the remaining stones such as Iron Hills North, rather the ground within the circle is flat and level.

The feature appears to my untrained and unprofessional eye to be a small stone circle, of a similar size to the nearby Castlehow Scar circle but with a small stone assemblage in the centre. It could be anything – we really don’t know exactly what it was but like all the monuments in this complex it occupies a prominent location with wide, panoramic views.

Megalithic Monday: Iron Hills South II

2011-02-05T10:02:00.001Z

Some modern commentators have expressed their dislike, even their disgust for the large open cast limestone quarry to the west of this site, claiming it to be a scar on the landscape and not in keeping with the ancient monuments that surround it. I feel that this attitude does not sit well with the tradition these sites represent. The North Pennines and Cumbrian fells have always been places of industry and extraction – coal, lead, iron stone, slate, granite, and limestone. The landscape has been shaped – not just recently but back into antiquity – by these actions and the modern, usually urban, expectation that the countryside be a beautified and genteel place of recreation is unrealistic and condescending. People need to make a living, money needs to be earned and this was as true for the people who quarried stone for axe heads from Glaramara, Langdale and Mallerstang as it is for the people of Shap today. I feel our Neolithic and Bronze Age ancestors, who were acquainted with the uses and properties of stone in a way that few modern people can rival, would have understood this perfectly.

Megalithic Monday: Oddendale Stone Circle

2011-02-05T09:58:00.001Z

Some two kilometres south of Haberwain is the tiny, isolated hamlet of Oddendale. It would be hard to find a more remote place than this collection of cottages and farm buildings sheltering in the lee of huge beech and sycamore trees at the head of a small gill. There are no shops, no pubs and as the settlement shrinks behind its protective dry stone wall it takes on the character of a fortified farmstead, a place that keeps the outside world at bay.

When I arrived at Oddendale the weather had changed to one of those beautiful days of shifting winter light. The sun illuminated a low blanket of dark rolling cloud that shadowed the ground; shafts of light were cast down to the earth, bathing the landscape in a soft golden glow. In this spectacular place of earth and sky the winter grass was pale and dead, blowing and flowing in the strong wind. The moor seemed huge and empty, not even the movement of sheep or birds disturbed the peace.

Megalithic Monday: Oddendale Stone Circle II

2011-02-05T09:55:00.002Z

The circle is to the south of the hamlet, beyond a section of raised limestone pavement. The moor is scattered with glacial erratics, some of which are massive blocks of Shap granite weighing many tones. Approaching from the north the circle is hidden, concealed by the grass and the lie of the land but one learns to read the landscape and because Oddendale’s near neighbours are situated on the crest of a ridge of high ground with vast views in all directions I walked in that direction and found the stones, like scattered jewels, exactly where I thought they would be.

Oddendale is a concentric stone circle, with an outer ring of 34 stones measuring 30 metres in diameter. The inner circle forms a kerb around a low mound of approximately 7 metres in diameter. Outside the circle to the north there is another smaller structure, possibly another circle of 11 stones. Just like Gamelands to the south this is a large, imposing circle built with heavy stones that would have required considerable skill and energy to arrange, something that tells us much of the social structure of the people who celebrated this place. From this high ridge there are clear, unobstructed (except for the modern spruce plantations) views to the High Places all around – including the cairn at Haberwain on the northern horizon. From here I could see the Howgills, the fells above Shap, the west wall of the Pennines and even the pass that leads east over the hills to Stainmore and the valleys of the rivers Tees and Greta.

Megalithic Monday: Oddendale Stone Circle III

2011-02-05T09:51:00.001Z

This prominent location in an open and exposed landscape is not accidental. This place must have been chosen because it allowed clear lines of sight to other important places and conversely because from those places this site could be seen. In the landscape of 4000 years ago, with a warm and gentle climate it is not too difficult to imagine a hospitable, greener and more wooded location than the bleak atmosphere these northern uplands sometimes project. To the immediate west of the site is the modern M6 motorway, which occupies the valleys of the rivers Lune and Lowther. Beyond is the old A6 road connecting Shap to Penrith in the north and Kendal to the south. When I have tracked badger and fox I have noted their use of paths and trails through the landscape and I have wondered which came first – are the animals using our paths or are we building our roads and paths on animal trails that are far older. Animals and people need to move across the land, they naturally use the paths of least resistance – river valleys, passes across the hills, ridge lines that give clear views and avoid dark and dangerous places. The Neolithic population of Cumbria would have also used these routes, allowing them to move from the coastal peninsulars in the south – a place with another concentration of stone circles and monuments – to the ritual centres around Penrith, with its confluences of rivers, massive henges and stone circles.

It would be a mistake to assume that these sites are simple way markers, mere signposts that point the way for ancient travellers. Anybody who has ever walked in the countryside will quickly realise that no such help is needed – it is obvious where the best path is to be found, the landscape tells you very clearly by the pain in your legs but I feel that there is something deeper going on – the sites mark, maybe even venerate, special places in the landscape. From here people could see the High Places in the hills and mountains that surround the stones, as well as the surrounding valleys with their rivers and woodland. There is a genius loci about these places that is only grasped by looking up at the sky and hills, not down at the stones.

Megalithic Monday: The Cockpit Stone Circle

2011-02-05T09:47:00.001Z

It was still early afternoon and although I had lingered longer at Oddendale – lying in the soft thin grass and watching the horizons – I still had enough daylight left to take in another site. Back in the warmth of the car, and out of the blustery winds that make unfolding maps so irritating, I consulted my notes and decided that I had enough time to visit The Cockpit – a large stone circle on a saddle of raised land between the northern shores of Ullswater and the valley of the river Lowther. The drive took me back into Shap and out again through the quite villages and hamlets of the north eastern fells of Lakeland and into Helton, where I took a turning up a typically steep and narrow Cumbrian track onto the moor. There were several cars already parked at the side of the lane when I got out, booted up and looked at the threatening sky to the north.

Divock Moor has a concentration of cairns, stones and circles and I had already planned a longer and more extensive visit for the spring but today I was aiming for The Cockpit – the largest circle in this fascinating location. Some of the guidebooks warn of the difficulty in navigating across the moor in low cloud and fog but today the walk was clear, level and easy, with the path clearly defined and often as wide as a street. Although the moor is at no great altitude the several hundred metres climb from Oddendale and Haberwain clearly showed in the burning cold that reddened my hands every time I took off my gloves, which was often as I stopped to take photographs of the surrounding topography and sites. Moorland walking is really boring, I have never understood those people in blue windcheaters and woolly hats who set off for a walk across miles of barren and featureless moor land. For me there has to be a point in walking, and I don’t always have to walk a long way. Sometimes I take hours to cover a distance that could be walked in minutes because I criss-cross the area, often crawling through the undergrowth, looking for track and sign. Even when I’m going to a specific place for a specific purpose I deviate from the path and wander as my fancy takes me. There is nothing duller than keeping to the path.

The Cockpit appears suddenly from the deep grass and heather. The circle is made of 75 stones, some standing some fallen, with a diameter of 28 metres. The Cockpit was possibly once a double circle, like Oddendale and Gunnerkeld to the east, although the visible evidence for this is scant. I sat down on the southernmost stone, opposite what seemed to me the “entrance” and partook of my bait. A fell runner, somewhat larger of frame than the usual type, lumbered by in his black lycra suit. Several walkers, one carrying a backpack that would have made a Tibetan Sherpa quake, passed several hundred meters to the west along the line of High Street, the old Roman Road that traversed the eastern fells. After the quiet, contemplative solitude of Oddendale this felt like sitting on a city pavement. A couple on bright shiny mountain bikes went east along the trail to Helton. Some time later a well-to-do couple with leather hats, long coats and expensive dogs passed by, going in the opposite direction. No one stopped to look at the circle. Even taking into account my uncouth, mud-spattered and possibly threatening presence I found this strange. Maybe these people come here so regularly that the place no longer holds any glamour and has become invisible? Maybe some people are so intent on getting to the next place that they fail to appreciate where they are now.

Megalithic Monday: The Cockpit Stone Circle II

2011-02-05T09:44:00.003Z

Why is this moor strewn with ancient sites? The obvious topographic features that are visible from the moor hold the key: To the west is the long glacial ribbon lake of Ullswater, draining at it’s northern end through the river Eamont. On the outskirts of the modern village of Pooley Bridge and overlooking the lake and river is Dunmallard Hill, an ancient hill fort crowning the conical wooded summit with ditches and ramparts up to 10 metres high. Immediately to the west of the circle is High Street, the Roman road which was probably an enlargement of an older pathway along the ridge line. To the east is the Lowther valley – with the Penrith complexes of ancient monuments to the north and the Shap complexes to the south. The Divock Moor sites sit at the centre of this network, the saddle of land beneath Loadpot Hill to the South allowing a relatively easy ascent and descent from valley to valley. Beyond the immediate landscape the site has clear uninterrupted view to the north west, to the twin conical hills of Great Mel and Little Mel with their cairns and burial mounds and further on to the massive hulking presence of Blencathra and Skiddaw, both capped with snow during my visit. Like Castlerigg to the west The Cockpit sits below an amphitheatre of High Places and at the nexus of pathways that follow river valleys and mountain ridges. It is the landscape and the power that is contained within its features that dictates the placement of these circles.

Megalithic Monday: The Meaning of Place

2011-02-05T09:41:00.002Z

An archaeological examination of a megalithic site can reveal much about the mechanics of construction, the choice of material and the approximate age of the structure. It may also tell us something about usage and the ritual significance of a site but so far archaeology has not provided answers to the really big questions: – why did the people build here, what did these people believe and what did the circle builders hope to achieve? When modern people stand here these are the questions they ask, or at least these are questions they should ask if they are not too occupied dropping crisp packets and scratching their names into the stones, and having asked is there an answer?

With their distribution along the Atlantic fringe of Europe and concentration on the British Isles the Megalithic monuments represent a specific and unique prehistoric tradition, the echoes of which we may still be able to hear but first our modern understanding needs to be freed from the accumulated cultural fluff that has attached itself to these sites. We need to ignore, or perhaps gather up and destroy, the litter of crystals and charms that woolly minded New Age pagans have left at the more accessible sites. We need to cut through the faux-Druidry and Celtophilia that seeks to smother the real mysteries of Ancient British Animism beneath a cloak of deism and cod-worship. We need to disregard the rag-tag of hippies, witches, tramps and hand-knitted rainbow-flavoured pykies that gather at the quarters of the year to venerate their Gods and Goddesses because these things are not real. They are false, pretend, make-believe faerie stories for kidults who Want To Believe. In the distant future of millennia to come such people will gather at the ruins of churches and cathedrals and pray to something that does not resemble Christ - and that will not be real either.

Megalithic Monday: The Meaning of Place II

2011-02-05T09:38:00.002Z

We are of the earth. Our survival as individuals and as a species has always been dependent on our relationship with the earth and our understanding of its systems. The modern world, the wer-eld or the Age Of Man, conspires to prevent us from acknowledging this reality but even the most urbanised, techno-dependent townie – those people who measure their adventures by the distance they travel from coffee-shops and wi-fi – could not fail to be aware of the power of these places: not some vague, occult-supernatural power but real, physical power expressed by the land itself. We need to become aware why the land is shaped the way it, why the winds blow in the directions they do and by what means the rivers flow. The awareness of these phenomena and the subtle physical and metaphysical influences they exert on flora and fauna is at the heart of what the modern world calls Animism. To grasp these subtle mysteries we need to build our awareness, exercising it like a muscle, shaping and polish it like an axe-head until we can push beyond our own immediate bubble and understand the songs that are being sung all around us. As I turned to leave The Cockpit the sun was descending behind the hills, the clouds ran before the wind like burning black deer. The light became horizontal and it grew colder still as the pale sun was finally lost. In this moment was the opening of awareness, the clarity in which it was possible to understand the meaning of place on this cold, windy moor.

Tintaggon

2011-02-04T17:54:00.002Z

Already more than half the world lay subject to Slid, and still his armies advanced; and the people of Slid, the fishes and the long eels, went in and out of arbours that once were dear to the gods. Then the gods feared for Their dominion, and to the innermost sacred recesses of the mountains, to the very heart of the hills, the gods trooped off together and there found Tintaggon, a mountain of black marble, staring far over the earth, and spake thus to him with the voices of the gods:

"O eldest born of our mountains, when first we devised the earth we made thee, and thereafter fashioned fields and hollows, valleys and other hills, to lie about thy feet. And now, Tintaggon, thine ancient lords, the gods, are facing a new thing which overthrows the old. Go therefore, thou, Tintaggon, and stand up against Slid, that the gods be still the gods and the earth still green."

And hearing the voices of his sires, the elder gods, Tintaggon strode down through the evening, leaving a wake of twilight broad behind him as he strode: and going across the green earth came down to Ambrady at the valley's edge, and there met the foremost of Slid's fierce armies conquering the world.

And against him Slid hurled the force of a whole bay, which lashed itself high over Tintaggon's knees and streamed around his flanks and then fell and was lost. Tintaggon still stood firm for the honour and dominion of his lords, the elder gods. Then Slid went to Tintaggon and said: "Let us now make a truce. Stand thou back from Ambrady and let me pass through thy ranks that mine armies may now pass up the valley which opens on the world, that the green earth that dreams around the feet of older gods shall know the new god Slid. Then shall mine armies strive with thee no more, and thou and I shall be the equal lords of the whole earth when all the world is singing the chaunt of Slid, and thy head alone shall be lifted above mine armies when rival hills are dead. And I will deck thee with all the robes of the sea, and all the plunder that I have taken in rare cities shall be piled before thy feet. Tintaggon, I have conquered all the stars, my song swells through all the space besides, I come victorious from Mahn and Khanagat on the furthest edge of the worlds, and thou and I are to be equal lords when the old gods are gone and the green earth knoweth Slid. Behold me gleaming azure and fair with a thousand smiles, and swayed by a thousand moods."

And Tintaggon answered: "I am staunch and black and have one mood, and this - to defend my masters and their green earth."

Taken from The Coming Of The Sea, Time And The Gods Lord Dunsany, 1906

Photograph: Borrowdale, Cumbria 28 January 2011

Kenneth Grant (23 May 1924 - 15 January 2011)

2011-02-02T18:30:00.003Z

The death of Kenneth Grant has been announced. Grant died on 15th January after a long illness but in keeping with the privacy that characterised his life the announcement has only just been made.

I first became aware of Grant and his work 20 years ago, when as a young man I made that leap into the abyss that marks the beginning of ones magickal development. At that time I was a regular visitor to the Golden Dawn, a small occult bookshop in the old Corn Exchange in Manchester city centre. The Golden Dawn was an Aladdins Cave of books, prints, journals and pamphlets where I used to browse for an age before deciding to part with my money. One of the first books I bought was “The Magicians Dictionary”, by American linguist and occultist EE Rehmus. Rehmus was himself an original and creative thinker but it was his exploration of the Typhonian Tradition, which Grant had done so much to illuminate and expound, that really thrilled me. I then set out on a lengthy (and costly) campaign of acquiring as many of Kenneth Grant’s books as I could. In those pre-internet days that meant placing orders with booksellers and waiting many weeks for the title to arrive. Throughout those early years of the 1990s I devoured each title as it was re-issued by Skoob, branching out to the Starfire journal to fill in the gaps then avidly collecting Grant’s titles published by Fulgur Press, including several signed deluxe editions.

Those who have heard the albums Endvra released during this period will have no difficulty divining Grant’s influence on my thinking. Whilst I was interested in traditional Crowleyan Thelema I was captivated by the Typhonian Tradition. Grant’s ideas resonated in perfect harmony with my own and as I used his work to develop my internal folklore and ritual landscapes the themes he explored, especially in “The Nightside Of Eden” and “Hecate’s Fountain” exerted a deep and profound influence that lasts to this day.

I am not a disciple, nor a member of any order. I do not view Grants work either through rose tinted spectacles or through the antagonistic prism of inter-group jealousy. I came to Kenneth Grant with an open mind and an open heart and I found revelations that have unlocked doors that lead both inwards and outwards. I am saddened by the news of his death.

Robert E Howard - 105 Today!

2011-01-22T17:32:00.002Z

Today, January 22, is the anniversary of the birth of Robert Ervin Howard. If Howard had lived – which given how bright he burned during his young, short life is unlikely – this would have been his 105 birthday and to celebrate this anniversary I have spent the last week re-reading and enjoying my favourite REH stories.

The impact of Howard’s work on me, and by extension my recordings with TenHornedBeast, has been profound. In various interviews in recent years I have spoken at length of how Howard’s anti-modern, anti-urban, anti-intellectual themes act as a lodestar by which I steer. Which is not to say that Howard was a fine writer, he was a hack who wrote for money and to order but although he may have lacked the lyrical finesse of Clark Ashton Smith or the sheer mastery of Arthur Machen his writings pulse and throb with a living sense of action and a gritty, hardboiled realism even when they are swooping over fantastic tans-mundane planets or describing impossibly wonderful palaces lost in the depths of ancient dust.

It is this link back to the real world that is Howard’s strength. Growing up in the tough boom towns of Texas he mixed with those who still remembered the frontier with its wars and skirmishes, old men who were young when the South fought the North. He absorbed this lore of blood and bone and used it to flavour his writing in a way that Lovecraft, for instance, did not. There is nothing pallid about Howard’s fiction, nothing effete or unnatural. When Howard describes violence, or struggle or fear it is written with a realism that convinces us of the veracity of his words. In this regard I feel that Howard is unique among his circle and perhaps even among those who have followed in the last century; not enough writers of fantasy and weird fiction have been punched in the face, if they had we would have more of the vivid, blood-red tales that Howard was so good at and less of the claptrap that litters the shelves of charity shops.

These are my five favourite Robert E Howard stories. I make no special pleading for them to be his best, although I certainly feel they are in the front rank, but they are the ones that gain the most pleasure from reading. It has been a difficult task selecting only five and the list of honourable mentions of those that could have made the final cut is long and wide but speaking as somebody who has read an uncommonly large amount of Howard’s cannon I feel that those who wish to know why readers are still seeking out and enthusing about a long dead writer from a small town in rural Texas will find the answer in these five stories.

5: Pigeons From Hell

2011-01-22T17:27:00.002Z

Despite being cursed with one of the worst titles in weird fiction Pigeons From Hell succeeds in being amongst the most eerie and evocative haunted house stories you will ever read. Written by Howard in late 1934 and published postumously in Weird Tales in 1938 the story has many of the stock tropes of the type – strangers lost in a weird deserted landscape, a delapidated and eerie house, bloody murder at the hands of a spectral presence but casts these traditonal elements against a backdrop of sinister local colour that raises what could have been merely another pulp horror story to the level of a genre masterpiece.

Both sides of Howard’s family had roots throughout the south, with various ancestors owning plantations and fighting for the Confederacy in the Civil War and Pigeons From Hell captures this mood of lost splendour and forgotten brutality beautifully; the decaying plantation mansion of the sadistic slave-owning Blassenville’s harbouring the dark secrets of sexual sadism, black magic and zuvembies. If one can park the reservations around the pulpy title and sink into the stiffling atmosphere Pigeons From Hell is as good a piece of Southern Gothic as you will find.

4: Wings In The Night

2011-01-22T17:24:00.003Z

Howard had no difficulty creating new characters to populate his fantastic imagined worlds, that many of them are the same character in a different loin-cloth is something that the seasoned Howardian comes to accept and, perhaps, enjoy but with Solomon Kane REH found a vein of something deeper and more weighty with which to work. Kane may share some of Howards other characters propensity for violence but he is a much more complex human being that Conan or even Kull ever apear to be. As a dark, dour Puritan wandering the known and semi-known byways of late 16th century Europe and Africa Kane is driven by a seemingly philanthropic desire to combat evil and help the helpless. Kane is the sword arm of God and seems to know the burden that this role brings.

Howard set several of the Kane stories in sub-Saharan Africa, then just being penetrated by European merchants and slavers. This exotic setting allows Howard a fine broad stage to play his characters – dense steaming jungles, rumours of ancient Atlantean sorceries and wicked, forgotten cities that were old before the stones of Rome were laid. Wings In The Night sees Kane travelling through this wilderness of equatoria, discovering a deserted village that appears to have been attacked from above and setting out with all his grim purpose to rid the world of the blasphemy that ruin it, a blasphemy of winged bestial terrors that will be familiar to those who know their Howard.

Kane may appear to be more philanthropic than Conan, who’s constant wenching and reiving are done for simple personal pleasure but in the silent, violent Puritan the modern reader can readily detect a vehicle for Howard’s views on race and civilisation, views that have been split and examined with the diamond cutter zeal only found with internet nerd of fantasy fandom. Howard’s views, wether his own or those placed in the mouth of his characters, will not sit easy with many modern readers and whilst they may be distasteful and ignorant they are not nearly as unpalatable as those of his apologists or detractors who seek to either exhonerate or condemn a man who died in 1936 using the moral standards of today. That said Wings In The Night contains a paragraph that is the purest Howard, and one that is most often cited for his prosecution.

Kane stood, an unconscious statue of triumph - the ancient empires fall, the dark-skinned peoples fade and even the demons of antiquity gasp their last, but over all stands the Aryan barbarian, white-skinned, cold-eyed, dominant, the supreme fighting man of the earth, whether he be clad in wolf-hide and horned helmet, or boots and doublet - whether he bear in his hand battle-ax or rapier - whether he be called Dorian, Saxon or Englishman - whether his name is Jason, Hengist or Solomon Kane.

For Howard violence spoke louder than words, and although popular culture may know his Barbarians better than his Puritans the Solomon Kane stories are at the very heart of understanding this complex writer.

3: Worms Of The Earth

2011-01-22T17:21:00.002Z

Howard’s Pictish King Bran Mak Morn is the crowning achievement of his long running Celtophilia and Worms Of The Earth is without doubt one of the finiest stories Howard committed to paper. Here is everything the reader demands from Howard – a fast pace, a just cause, a hero who will stick at nothing to seek his vengeance. Bran is an Iron Age Hamlet, brooding on this and other worlds, obsessed by the decline of his race, wearing his barbaric crown heavily.

Originally published in Weird Tales in November 1932 the plot see Bran Mak Morn vow revenge on the Roman governor of Britain, Titus Sulla after witnessing the crucifixion of a fellow Pict, having penetrate colonial Eboracum in disguise. To conquer the might of Rome Bran seeks help from the Worms of the Earth, a race of creatures who the aboriginal inhabitants of Britain had driven underground. In doing this Bran must seek the aid of a fey witch woman, swim in a lake guarded by a shadowy gaurdian and descend to the underworld to summon the Worms of the Earth.

Twice in Worms of the Earth Howard mentions the "black gods" of R’lyeh, a working of the now over-familiar Cthulhu Mythos into this very British landscape of burial mounds and wight-haunted mountains. That Bran finally slays his enemy in mercy rather than vengeance adds a sophistication to this savage, supersticious barbarian that some critics of Howard fail to credit. I have spent too long reading for improvement rather than pleasure and it is a joy and a delight to return to Worms Of The Earth.

2: Queen Of The Black Coast

2011-01-22T17:18:00.002Z

For most people Robert E Howard means Conan so if we are to have a Conan story we may as well have the best. Queen Of The Black Coast was first in Weird Tales in May 1934, earning Howard $115 and was accompanied with a suitably spicy cover illustration by Margaret Brundage. This is an epic story, unrivalled in the Conan series, setting our hero in the context of lover and warrior and containing some of Howard’s best writing.

The plot of the story recalls Conrad’s “Heart Of Darkness”, published in 1902, with it’s journey up the black jungle river and the threatening unknown that lies all around. In Queen Of The Black Coast Howard succeeds in drawing a female character worthy of her consort, a beuatiful and wilful pirate queen who’s name is feared along the coast. Conan and Belit talk as lovers, the describe their desire and fears as the ship sails into the horror of the ancient jungle.

Howard takes time time to explore the relationship between Conan and Belit, something that few of his other stories attempt but readers of Sword & Sorcery demand an equal helping of both and in this Howard does not disappoint, turning his pen to some of the bloodiest and most violent prose. There is a dark, sinister heart to this story – ancient blasphemous magicks, greed and avarice, sadomaschoistic love and raw, lustful desire. For a small town boy who seems to have been awkward around women Bob seems to have got to grips with the darker side of love in a very deep way.

Queen Of The Black Coast also contains one of my favourite Howard passages, in it’s description of the horror that has made the jungle it’s home -

They who had been winged gods became pinioned demons, with all that remained of their ancestors' vast knowledge distorted and perverted and twisted into ghastly paths. As they had risen higher than mankind might dream, so they sank lower than man's maddest nightmares reach. They died fast, by cannibalism, and horrible feuds fought out in the murk of the midnight jungle. And at last among the lichen-grown ruins of their city only a single shape lurked, a stunted abhorrent perversion of nature.

This is the apogee of Howard’s art.

1: Black Canaan

2011-01-22T17:15:00.002Z

This may be a controversial choice, many will feel that Conan is the where Howard excelled and whilst I can agree with some of the sentiment that elevates the Cimmerian to the height of pop-culture icon I feel as strongly that his bloated, muscle-bound physique had done more harm than good to Howard’s reputation.

More harm than good – that may well be an apt description of Black Canaan because if modern readers balk at the casual tone of white supremacy that permeates much of Howard’s early writing they will have some difficulty with this story. Published in the June 1936 issue of Weird Tales, the month of Howard’s death, this is a regional horror story in the Southern Gothic mode, one of several such tales that Howard set in the piney woods and swamps of a mythical, supernatural south.

The story is one of voodoo and violence that must have been familiar to readers of the pulps but placed into a gritty, realistic context of poor white farmers cowering in their homes in fear of a bloody, genocidal uprising by freed slaves. Fear runs throughout this story like a wide dark river; the whites fear the blacks, the blacks fear Saul Stark the strange African conjur man who has enslaved them with his magick. The hero, Kirby Buckner - an upstanding land-owning white man, fears the sexual desire he feels for the Bride of Shamballah, a licentious and semi-naked black woman who appears – as if by magick – to mock and murder him. This says as much about race relations in 1930s America as any other work of fiction.

There is high adventure here, and deep unnatural horrors. In this story REH lets the matter of race ride at the head of the team but this is not the crude Aryanist polemic we find in the earlier Solomon Kane stories. There may well be more use of the term “swamp nigger” than the modern reader can easily stomach but it would be wrong to read a racist message from this most complex of Howard’s stories. Instead the hero fulfils all the ancient conditions of that role – he places himself in danger, risking death and un-death to save his community from a menace that is beyond his ken. The question we need to ask of this story is who are the members of Buckner’s community and for whom does he risk his life and sanity? I feel that the answer is very much more inclusive than many of Howard’s detractors would admit.

Genius Loci: Tangential Intrusions

2010-12-30T15:27:00.004Z

SOLID granite monolith cutting through Pacheco Pass... aka Blood Alley cursed lands since the Pioneer times for sure...the Natives did their good work here

Pacheco Pass on Highway 152 is one location said to be a gateway to an other-world realm. Legend has it travelers driving through this scenic route east of Gilroy often experience unexplained terrors suddenly striking them. Some people have claimed time became "distorted" during their trip, and their car journey of many miles only took a few minutes.

Many thanks to Kevin Yuen for the data.

Zero Tolerance

2010-12-20T06:34:00.002Z

Mysterious and sinister, slowly rising and droning, ominous waves of distortion, TenHornedBeast spread a cerecloth of hypnotic torpor across the consciousness with grim determination. A calmly sinister shroud of soothing lunar terror with a refreshingly organic approach to ambient noise, this is just structured enough to attain a considerable strength of personality whilst remaining serpentine and duplicitous in a manner that demands attention. The title is particularly fitting, a primordial sense of predatory strife invested in the martial rhythms which frequently surface amidst the chaos:skin-crawling forest-clad ambiance skitters through the undergrowth whilst something wet and scaly shifts deep below the surface, an almost percussive bass moving in strange shapes atop the pervasive horror beneath. With a length of over 60 minutes, there's a point at which concerted attention becomes something of an effort; I would hope for a more concerted sense of release towards the end of such a journey, yet the obscure atmosphere remains constant right to the finish, leaving the listener lost and miserable. Not essentially a problem but some closure would have been welcome.

Terrorizer

2010-12-20T06:05:00.003Z

The primeval drone of TenHornedBeast is designed to stir emotion, to seep into pores and take over the mind and transport it to a distant realm away from human contact, to be in a place before cities, consumerism, organised religion, governmental control and 9-5 drudgery, a place where nature's dark chaos lurks, where the wild is unpredictable and the beast in man is free to run and hunt. The dark ambient contained within "Hunts & Wars" conjure images of untouched forests in early spring, nocturnal hunting sessions, sombre reflections, the demise of of the beast and the aftermath of battle (whether it be internal or external). "Hunts & Wars" reconnects the listener to the part of mankind that has been forgotten, the part that is free from the daily grind, but is still governed by instinct and superstition. A spellbinding release. [8].

ROCK-A-ROLLA

2010-12-20T05:44:00.004Z

This is Christopher Walton's third release on Cold Spring under his TenHornedBeast alter-ego and rather unsurprisingly it is a remarkably bleak affair, albeit one interspesed with the odd moment of introspection. Comprising of four larger pieces separated by three briefer intermisssions, it lies somewhere in that grey area where drone ends and ambient begins, a hulking colossus of bass and free-form drumming one minute and a somnambulistic foray by way of birdsong the next. Whilst the droning sections are suitably atmospheric it's the intermissions which are the most interesting.. Each one possesses its own particular charm,be it the natural beauty of "Hilnaric", the clinical precision of "Ironborn" or the bizarrely unsettling waves of synth in "Cimmeria", and in each case acts as the calm before the storm, a brief moment of respite before another onslaught of crippling distortion. The album is closed by the title track, a 20-minute long composition which does its title justice with plenty to spare; it quite simply crushes everything that has come before, overcoming all with its sheer density and leaving a potent aftertaste. Definately not one for the faint of heart.

compulsiononline.com

2010-12-12T10:45:00.002Z

On The Sacred Truth and My Horns Are A Flame To Draw Down The Truth Christopher Walton as TenHornedBeast crafted a sound so bleak and desolate you might wonder how they could evolve. With greater emphasis on bass and percussion, it's clear that Hunts & Wars is an altogether different beast. On this their third album they present three shorter interludes to the four expansive tracks, each offering a lighter tone to the dank, oppressive sound prevalent of their previous releases.

Having said that the opener here, 'Reaching For The Stars We Blind The Sky', is definitely one of TenHornedBeast's finer moments, with its dark arching drone and controlled guitar feedback that makes up their doom sonic sound. Here a funereal procession of drums bashes out a primal beat that continuously becomes more thunderous amidst cymbal crashes and heavy bass drones. TenHornedBeast's guitar drone carries the torturous squall of eighties guitar noise bands such as Skullflower, even though at the hands of TenHornedBeast it is reduced to a slower-than-slow sluggish crawl.

Unlike their previous releases, percussion plays a pivotal role on Hunts & Wars. It's most evident on 'I Am The Spearhead' where rhythmic wrenching gives way to cymbal crashing and pounding beats. It's almost as if Walton has swapped drones for rhythms to create the layers. Even the tones of the guitar drones are forever changing. Tracks are more structured too. Stark but effective in its simplicity is 'Father of the Frosts' where lumbering bass notes are surrounded by heavy distorted chords. Cymbals crash and controlled feedback drones are added bowing out on a series of gongs. This is TenHornedBeast at their most skeletal.

Previous TenHornedBeast releases by their nature have been pretty bleak affairs - and that's an observation not a criticism - but Hunts & Wars is far more structured in terms of composition and flow. The inclusion of short musical interludes is highly effective offering Christopher Walton the opportunity to step away from the inherent malevolence to produce tracks much lighter in tone. On 'Hilnaric' the twittering of birds is set against a brooding soundscape. It carries a heavy sense of anticipation; a foreboding atmosphere that draws images of a desolate battlefield where something is afoot. It makes me think of the pastoral fields of Michael Reeves' quintessentially English horror movie Witchfinder General; of an English countryside charged with an impending evil. 'Ironborn' is more martial; a muffled fanfare of horns and percussion that sounds like an army of soldiers beating their shields. With its lulling melodic keys unfolding gently over aching drones 'Cimmeria' is the tenderest of tracks to emanate from the claws of the TenHornedBeast. Like much of Hunts & Wars it takes its inspiration from Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan the Barbarian, to whom the album is dedicated.

Hunts & Wars closes with the epic title track where washes of atmospheric guitar drone are wrapped around a low loping bass shudder. Gaining in power and volume this twenty minute piece rises and falls with the sound of a gong being struck. Drones veer from layers of blackened noise to a golden shimmer eventually dissipating entirely as the entire piece slips into a short slumber. Reawakened 'Hunts & Wars' then closes with a renewed vigour.

Hunts & Wars goes way beyond dark ambient, its shorter interludes add shading to the pitch-black atmospherics. It remains resolutely a product of the TenHornedBeast. The structure created from percussion and low-end bass could easily attract doom-drone listeners. Three albums in and they've carved a niche of their own and Hunts & Wars is yet another stunning release from TenHornedBeast.

ARMANDO ACOSTA - RIP

2010-12-01T14:38:00.004Z

SAINT VITUS have confirmed that the band's former drummer, Armando Acosta, passed away on Thanksgiving Day (November 25) at the age of 58.

Hearing Saint Vitus on the radio in 1987 was a life changing moment. We will never see anybody capable of wearing a studded leather warhelm with quite the same style.

Hail.

Winter Woods: On The Trail

2010-11-28T12:50:00.001Z

I was not the first out. The path through the woods show the signs of others who have been there before but that doesn’t matter. I will be breaking off into the woods as soon as I find a track, off into the places where only the deer know. Deeper into the woods and only my own foot prints mar the snow. At a place where I know deer love I find what I’m looking for – signs that two animals have crossed a small field, their tracks merging and diverging as they leave the shelter of the hedge and cross out into the open.

The snow does not fall even, in the deep covers beneath canopies of spruce and larch there is hardly a dusting, along the margins of fields where the woods have taken the brunt of the storm there is a clear line of brown but out in the open, in places where shelter has not been afforded the snow is deep and powdery, blowing to and fro in the strong eastern wind. The snow has fallen heavily over night, these are new tracks but they are changing even as I look at them, covered by windblown snow, there edges flattening and blurring. I find orange snow stained by urine, roe pellets and disturbed ground. I lack the snow knowledge to recognise how old the tracks and signs are, how hot the trail. I decide the follow them and find out.

Winter Woods: Crossing The Beck

2010-11-28T12:47:00.001Z

The tracks go down through the woodland and meet a stream, wide and noisy in the silent whiteness of the winter woods. The becks run black against the white of the snow, quick and dark, swirling down the hills and filling the rivers. I look for a place to cross, getting my feet wet would not add to the enjoyment of the day. I mark the place where the deer have crossed the stream, where they have jumped up, caprioling, onto the opposite bank. A winter wren watches me from the tangle of branches over hanging the stream. In the middle of the beck is a wide flat rock covered with snow, here I find a series of fresh paw prints showing where a fox decided he didn’t want his feet wet either. I have no chance of tracking the fox on his quick straight lines across the country so I leap and totter from stone to stone and make the other side, on the trail of the deer.

I know this game trail well, it seldom fails. Further up the hill I find small scrapes at the foot of a spruce tree, showing where the deer have tried to open up the frozen ground to find bracken roots and bluebell bulbs. The scrape looks small and feeble, as if the animals haven’t even tried. I carry on, conscious off the noise my boots make in the snow, conscious of the rustling of my clothes, learning to move in an environment that is new to me. If the Innuit have many words for snow then the British have as many for mud. I am at home in mud, my eyes trained to spot tracks and sign but in the whiteness of the woods it becomes difficult to see and harder to concentrate.

2010-11-28T12:44:00.001Z

I stand at the bottom of a steep slope, silent and still. In front of me is a noisy congregation of birds – blackbirds, a robin, a tree creeper and a chaffinch. Why would such a number of birds gather in one spot in the winter woods? What is drawing them to this place? The blackbird flies off, the robin ticks and the tree-creeper rises and begins another spiral dance up a tree. As I stand watching the tree creeper, trying to plot its journey against the bright sun a roe doe walls to the edge of the glade and looks down at me. I am still, my outline broken by my clothing, my scent masked as much as I can. I lift my camera and take a picture. I have found that animals usually take fright from the sound of the camera but this doe seems to be curious. It comes forward for a better look. I take another picture. It lifts and drops its head, sniffing the air. If there is any wind in this deep cover I can’t feel it and the deer can’t get my scent. It looks straight at me, its eyes locked to mine. These animals see people every day but they are usually lumbering along paths, walking their dogs or making a noise. Here is something new, and close. I take another picture and the animal begins to walk down the slope towards me. This is the closest and longest encounter I have had with a roe deer all year and I have my camera in my hand. Finally something spooks the deer, my camera or my scent or maybe it realised what I am and it turns to its right and bolts. I can hear it breaking branches and upturning the snow as it runs. By the time I get up the slope it its long gone.

Thrilling though the encounter was what I find most interesting is the interaction between the deer, the birds and me. At the top of the slope I find a large scrape over a metre long. Last winter I found scrapes twice this length but they were cold – here I had found a deer in the act and just as crows and seagulls follow tractors the woodland birds were waiting for the deer to open up the woodland floor. It was the presence of so many birds in one place that alerted me to something unusual and maybe it was the birds, who noticed me before the deer, that alerted the doe to me. This is the first time I have been able to use the behaviour of one species to locate the presence of another in such a direct and intimate way. It is a satisfying and affirming experience.

Winter Woods: The Blizzard

2010-11-28T12:41:00.001Z

With the deer spooked and running for miles I take another turn and decide to try a cover several miles away across open farmland. The sky is looming and threatening, changing from an almost tropical blue with wispy thin clouds to a dark threatening black. Out in the open the cold is sharp and painful. High in the sky a crow mobs a kestrel, which turns and flicks it’s talons at the insolent attacker. The kestrel is half the size of the crows and obviously a bird of stronger will. It will not be put off and continues to try to hover above the snowbound field but a second crow joins the game and the kestrel is unable to hunt, it swoops away – flying in seconds a distance that will take me half an hour to cover. Satisfied at the outcome the crows swirl and circle over the winter fields, flying low and calling to each other. The open fields are no place to be caught in the teeth of a snow storm so I make for the cover of a small spruce plantation. Here, amongst the blue barrels of corn raised on their wooden tripods and the croaking calls of game birds I wait it out.

Winter Woods: The Wild Geese

2010-11-28T12:38:00.001Z

Somewhere to the northwest I can hear shooting, shotguns discharge like an artillery barrage. I am predisposed to trespass like some people are predisposed to checking their mobile phones, frequently and without thought, but I have no fancy for walking into the middle of a rough shoot. The guns sound a long way off, perhaps on the other side of the river. The sky is already darkening, a blizzard sweeps in from the north, but before it arrives the sky is thick with skein after skein of geese. Some fly over in small v’s or five or ten birds then a massive armada of geese crosses the fields, a hundred birds in a ragged formation, noisy and chaotic. I don’t know if they are fleeing the blizzard or the shoot.

Winter Woods: Down By The River

2010-11-28T12:35:00.001Z

After ten minutes the sky is that lovely Bahamas blue again and I carry on, down to the river. Otter and mink are found along this stretch but I am wary of the steep snowy river banks. I really don’t want to fall in so I leave their tracks for another day. As I walk through a deeply snowed willow thicket long tailed tits fly past making their high seee-seeee calls. I count twelve birds; they bob by, taking no notice.

Down by the river there are more people; dog walkers, mountain bikers and even a hardy angler testing out the black water. This is not what I want – I want isolation, solitude and communion. None of these can be had with people around. I head back through the woods. I am at the furthest point of a loop that will take all day and cross seven or eight miles of farmland and woodland. I plan my course back to take in as much cover as possible.

Winter Woods: Tunnels Of Light

2010-11-28T12:32:00.002Z

On the return leg of the walk I am looking into the sun. It shines through the trees and makes glittering rainbows in the icy air. Sometimes the strong wind blows the power snow off the trees and the woods are dusted with waves of air-bourn snow crystals. To be alone in this place that I have known all my life yet to experience an aspect that I have never seen before is a magickal and humbling experience. I walk through a glowing tunnel of light, a pathway to Elphame and the Tole Deol.

Winter Woods: Towards Home

2010-11-28T12:25:00.003Z

It is cold and getting colder. My decision to dress for mobility rather than warmth is starting take its toll and I begin to think about the comforts of home. The lane leads through hedges of dog rose and sloe, both berries now blackened by the frost. A fat thrush sits sullenly in the hedge, refusing to move as I trudge by. I am too cold to take his photo, it will only frighten him off and we are both trying to keep as warm as possible. The winter woods are left behind as I cross the last fields up the hill to home, the sun shining pale and white through the afternoon sky.

miasma.org

2010-11-17T19:09:00.004Z

In the summer of 2010 I was inteviewed for an article in the Finnish magazine Miasma. I am sure my many Finnish fans [....cough....] will waste no time in ordering a copy of this fine publication. Aanimyrskyn Todistajana!

www.miasma.org

www.myspace.com/miasmamag

side-line.com

2010-11-16T19:04:00.002Z

Christopher Walton entered into history as member of the dark ritual Endvra project. Right after the new millennium he started his very own project, which got some recognition in the darkest corners of the underground music. "Hunts & Wars" is the 3rd full length of TenHornedBeast released by Cold Spring. Walton invites us to join the gates of hell. "Reaching For The Stars We Blind The Sky" seems like the point where these gates get open leading us through dark corridors of obscure ambient music. The sonic manipulations are moving crescendo while some kind of martial percussion join in to create a ritual effect. "Hilnaric" is the next track from this mysterious voyage where you get the feeling to be surrounded by birds living in a haunted forest. It's a short, but anguishing track. The icy ambient "Father Of The Frosts" is an appropriated title for its atmosphere. This is another track appealing for some visual strength. Some cymbals are accentuating this evil vision. A few more short duration cuts like "Ironborn" and "Cimmeria" follow. "Ironborn" is an excellent piece of dark ambient with some repetitive drones. It all sounds a bit like a prelude for the absolute masterpiece coming at the very end entitled "Hunts & Wars". The title track sounds like the darkest and most horrified part from the trip. I especially like the kind of guitar effect (if it's a guitar) on this cut. It all ends in a real dark apotheosis, bringing this album to a good end. "Hunts & Wars" is a quite diversified recording moving on the edge of dark ambient, ritual and martial music. Christopher Walton is an experienced artist in the genre, which here again illustrates his genius to compose a remarkable album in the genre.

Genius Loci: The secret place

2010-11-14T19:20:00.001Z

Once I dreamed that I was the first man to enter Europe. There must have been somebody who was the first to see the virgin forests and rivers. Some hunting band from the south or the east that pushed on over the next ridge, beyond the next river and found a place with no footprints. This dream has stayed with me for many years and I strive to find places that has stood. Hidden groves and secret hollows that have escaped the modern world because they are too far away, too hard to get to or just too small to be noticed.

Even in England there are still places where it is possible to feel as if you are the first to stand in that place. These places are few and far between, lost deep in the hills where nobody ever goes but if you look hard, if you fly over the moors with the eyes of the lapwing or the gamecock, if you follow the paths made by badgers that are the mothers of the paths people use today you will find them, waiting in their eternal presence with their faces turned out from rock and wood, whispering in their forgotten tongues. These are the sacred places of Old Britain. These are the places were we find the roots of the land and the sources of its mystery.

In a deep canyon lined with ancient oak woodland there is a place that is so special it glows in my memory like a beacon. A place that I return to with each season, a place that is always new and changing yet unspeakably old, a shard of the wildwood that once enveloped the land. In this place the river extends its tributaries back into the hills, rivers become streams and then becks then finally small runnels of water that seep down the heathery slopes and into the blanket bog. This visit will be my last of the year, this place is too far to attempt in winter, the drive in is too steep and the roads impassable to all but four-wheeled drive vehicles, the walk across the wild upland fells not something to attempt with the depth of the snow that falls here. Today I will see the place in autumn and fill myself with its presence until I can return again.

Genius Loci: The walk in

2010-11-14T19:16:00.001Z

To do the place justice one should make the effort to get as far upstream as possible, press on up high up the moor, above the last tree then descend into the gill and follow the stream back down to the pasturable fields. This is a long day’s walk. You approach from the east, slowly and with great labour, swimming in a sea of bracken that wraps itself around you like the weeds of a river. There is no clear track, only a small pale line that threads across the moor, faint and easily lost. You press on, gaining and losing the line, aiming for the hanging stone on the western horizon. In the distance, if the weather is good, you may see climbers on the exposed crags. If the weather is wet or cold you will we certainly be alone on this empty hillside far from the last farm.

I have walked towards this place in the spring and seen ten thousand oak trees in leaf shining like an emerald serpent. Today the green has been replaced with brown and in the vastness of the autumn moors the hidden groves are shedding their cloak and preparing to sleep.

At the upper end of the gill, where the last tree gives way to heather and bilberry, I descend down to the stream. The world has changed. You are no longer walking on the moors with the sun and wind in your face. Down here your senses shift in their priority. In a place where the sound of water rushing over rock is omnipresent ones sense of hearing becomes uncertain and fey. The sound of the stream is a constant echoing babble, water against water, sloshing against the bank, rolling and gurgling over rounded boulders and slapping against tilted slabs of millstone grit. Sound bounces along the steep sided gill, reverberating and growing, imitating voices and sounds that are both familiar and strange. You turn because you thought you heard a deep rumbling voice, a calling ululating voice that rises up and swells and you find yourself quite alone in a sliver of wilderness, in a place where perhaps nobody else has stood in for years.

Genius Loci: The shining path

2010-11-14T18:48:00.002Z

There are no paths in this place. You move like the water in the stream – jumping and running from side to side, stepping on boulders, falling down rocks. Water is everywhere, swirling in deep dark pools of peaty blackness, sparkling in tinkling sprays and dripping from beards of moss and lichen. You always get wet. Walking in this place is not always comfortable, the sides of the gill are steep and the strain tells on the feet and knees. The cold water seeps into boots and the river worn boulders, green and mossy and slippery, threaten to spill you into the stream in falls that will crack skulls and break bones.

Water is everywhere in this place. Its coldness fills the air, it seeps through boots and clothes, covers everything with its touch. I sit for a while, immune to the damp and the chill, inoculated by the beauty of small bubbles forming in the dark pool beneath a churning rapid, watching as they flow in line towards the next fall, carried always on and always down stream.

Genius Loci: Leaf and stream

2010-11-14T18:33:00.003Z

Visiting this place in the spring I found deep clear pools where brown trout darted beneath rocks and hung motionless in the current. Now the autumn stream is dark, stronger, faster and fuller and if the trout remain in their depths they are hidden from my sight. Drifts of leaves lie in stacks, sculptured into tightly packed forms by the flow of the stream or covering the surface of slow deep pools, each new gust of wind adding to the assemblage.

It feels natural to be moving in the same direction as the water, travelling with the flowing leaves as if we share a common goal in our need to return to the lowlands of civilisation yet own a common pain in leaving the hills. You are drawn downwards, eastwards towards the lowlands and eventually the sea. This stream will grow and swell, conjoining and merging until it discharges into the brown muddy waves of the Humber a hundred miles to the south east. But now the water is in its youth, rushing and falling with the carelessness of young things that know no limits to their will.

Genius Loci: Lutra lutra

2010-11-14T18:28:00.001Z

From the first I realised this place was a haven for otters and during my earlier visits under green filigrees of spring branches I have found spraint after spraint deposited on the deep mossy pillows along the side of the stream. Crumbling them in my hand I found the tiny translucent bones of fish, proof that the otters were predating the fish in this special, pristine upland beck.

In the upper reaches of the gill birch is the predominant species, bare and silvery in the autumn afternoon, their yellow leaves fluttering in a cold wind. Rowan and bilberry are also present, clinging to steep rocky walls and casting shadows in the water. As one progresses down the canyon sided stream birch gives way to oak, slowly and uneasily but inexorably until the pale yellow of the autumn birch is replaced by the dark rusty brown of the oak. These are not the tall stately oaks of parks and gardens. These oaks are twisted and gnarled into nightmare shapes, low gallows-branches reach out from stocky trunks. The holes and scares left by fallen limbs now homes for tawny owls and woodpeckers. Dried brown oak leaves rattle in the winds like the bones of a year almost dead. These are the trees of druidry and witchcraft. These are the groves of the mysteries.

Those few people who trouble themselves to find this place will see something that marks the midway point between the upper and lower gill – a spectacular waterfall hidden deep in the valley, surrounded by oaks and swathed in ferns and bilberry. At three or four metres high and maybe six or seven across the waterfall is not of the first order but it is a significant barrier to migrating fish and the wandering explorer. A thin path winding up the side of the gill, made perhaps by roe deer, otters or the scraggy hefted sheep that roam the moor is the only option. But if this waterfall marks the highest point that migrating fish can penetrate the gill what are the otters feeding on in the upper reaches of the valley? Their fresh globular spraint deposited on waterside rocks is testament to their presences beyond the falls – there must be enough to eat to make it worth their while to go that far. Crayfish? Amphibians? Slugs?

Genius Loci: The Holt

2010-11-14T18:25:00.001Z

I have found many examples of otter spraint in all its seasonal variations. I have found their slides down muddy banks into the water and occasionally large bold tracks in wet clayey mud but despite many, many hours of searching I have yet to find a holt. If I am ever to find a holt it will be here amongst these narrow miles of boulders and fallen trees. But ones initial excitement at the possibilities of finding their hidden home soon fades when it becomes clear that every step of the journey reveals another pile of rocks, another uprooted tree, and another deep hole into which no light shines. This is not a search for a needle in a haystack; it is a search for a needle amongst a mountain of other needles.

It would take weeks to investigate every hole and small cave. Some are merely spaces enclosed by jumbled falls of rocks whilst others go back deeper into the earth. I have found no fox tracks or sign in this place, perhaps not surprising given the attitude of gamekeepers and farmers to the animal. Whilst the three mile walk in was strewn with viscous oily black badger scat, indicating that a large troupe of the animals had passed along the trail that morning, making a circuit from the spruce plantation to the foot of the crags I have found no badger sign down in the gill. This seems to be otter habitat – a place too wet for badgers and too narrow for foxes.

On a slope overlooking a wide shallow rapid I found an overhanging rock with a bare sandy area beneath. In contrast to the rest of the gill which was dripping with run-off from the moor and splashed with spray here was place that was safe and dry and afforded clear views up and down stream. In a dark corner of this space I found a small black green scat with the twisted shape characteristic of the mustelidae but it’s location in this small dark space caused me to ponder; the low space would suit an animal with short legs and a liking for water but all the otter spraint I have found has been sited in connection with territorial marking on prominent waterside rocks and mounds and along tracks used by the animals. Was this animal marking the space, letting others know of its presence and ownership?

Genius Loci: The lower gill

2010-11-14T18:21:00.001Z

Time is always against me in this place. Down in the dark valley the afternoon light quickly passes and the shadows lengthen. A jay is startled by my presence and flies almost vertically up to the light. Large birch groves, wild and thick, overhang the stream. In a place where there are no paths you are forced to crawl beneath low branches, flat on your belly in the wetness with the smell of mud and leaves filling your senses. I find a cuckoo feather, spotted and neat, lying where it fell on the brown oak leaves.

In the area downstream from the waterfall this place reaches its full splendour. The sides become steeper, in some places precipitous. The sky a thin ribbon of pale grey light glimpsed between branches. Colonies of mosses drip down rock faces. Lichen crust branches, making ancient trees appear green and grey. The bracken has fallen back to a golden brown but down in the gill large ferns, descendents of plants that were ancient when the first animals climbed from the seas, display themselves in vivid clusters of vibrant green. Even in the cold chills of an autumn afternoon their will to live has not been broken and they will not sleep easy like the common bracken.

During the green days of a May spring I had found the gill alive with insects. In one place I had felt a billion billion eyes mark my step. I stood still and heard the tiny roar of an ancient oak wood alive with wood ants, unnumbered legs scratching across the leaf litter, running up and down grass, branch and stem. To stand still too long was to invite their bites, large hinged jaws that close on all flesh regardless of shape or size. Now in the last weeks of the year all silent. No insects, few birds. Sometimes a flock of wood pigeons fly high over head. I do not hear their flight, they come from a long way to the north and cross my narrow field of vision in a blurred instant. They are the only movement I see down in the deep places of the gill. Apart from myself and the water all else is still. I feel like I am walking through a camp of sleeping giants, I tread carefully so as not to betray my presence.

Genius Loci: The final mile

2010-11-14T18:16:00.002Z

Now the valley broadens and the woodland becomes richer. The stunted and fantastically twisted oaks of the upper gill, trees that were almost bonsai due to the thin rocky soil and cold climate are replaced by the tall majestic trees of an established woodland. The sun has crossed to the west and throws golden pools of light onto the eastern slopes of the valley. In some places the bracken is still green, rocks are still warmed by the weakling sun and I imagine sleeping adders ruing the lost opportunity for one last meal before the torpor and living death of winter. But this is an illusion, as the sun is lost the woods are revealed for what they are; sleeping, silent places that have their own funereal beauty and grace but a grace that is to spring and high summer as the widow is to the bride.

By now the waters are moving through well kept fields, mowed by sheep and rabbits and enclosed by dry stone walls. The waters barely babble, they have lost the loud carefree manner they possessed in the wildness of their youth and now move with a self-conscious decorum. The place is no longer a wilderness. It no longer feels as if you have intruded on a place that is content to live apart from people, you are now moving closer to cultivation and civilisation. The woodland changes as well. Ash and poplar mix with the oak, alder and sycamore droop branches into the stream.

I walk through the final mile of woodland in regret and sadness. Climbing the last fence I pass a woman walking her dog along the single track road. We are miles from the nearest village, still deep in a rurality that most modern people can not imagine but to me, after the hours of perfect solitude I have just experienced, it feels like I am in a metropolis. At the place where I parked my car hours earlier there is now a jumble of vehicles parked on grass verges and blocking the access to the farm, cars and vans of the climbers that have come to boulder on the crags round about. A flock of fieldfares, hundreds strong, throng the valley. In their centre a single blackbird, a solitary local amongst an invading army. They strip the hawthorns and holly of their berries and now I see by their presence that winter is almost here and this will be my last visit to this place until the spring.

WAP 8

2010-11-08T14:00:00.002Z

Where would we be without Paul and Barbara Brown’s Prehistoric Rock Art In The Northern Dales? PRAND has become for me something of a bedside companion, never out of reach and always useful for planning trips and treks. I recently made another visit to Colsterdale in North Yorkshire and whilst in the area decided to check out the rock art site at West Agra Plantation (WAP), in the hills west of Masham.

PRAND goes to some trouble to explain that not all the sites discussed are accessible to the public because of land owners reluctance to have the great unwashed traipsing across their grouse moors but as we know, and I have said before, trespass is a civil matter not a criminal offence and they’ve got to catch you first – so, with that in mind and with enough local knowledge not to get caught I set off to look for WAP 8.

In the gazetteer included in PRAND WAP 8 is described as being inscribed on a flat slab measure 5.5 metres by 3.1metres. It is also given a ten figure grid reference but even so during my previous visit in May I was unable to find it. Sometimes this happens to me, sometimes I feel as if I find things when I need to, not when I want to. This time I walked straight up to the rock and immediately found the beautiful design of a central cup with six concentric rings linked by deep grooves. No need for head scratching, compassing gazing or measuring of steps.

In the pale light of a still autumn afternoon, with the cold of an early evening beginning to creep over the land the design was something of a loadstone pointing its way to sacred and special places. The West Agra site is itself special, comprising over a dozen panels with complex art on a south facing slope above the river Burn but for me WAP 8 is the heart of this mystery because of its special location and its simple, elegant design.

Why did people feel the need to mark this place with rock art that would last for millennia? As we know there is a wealth of ancient monuments to the east in the Vale of Mowbray, along the length of the scared river Ure and at it’s confluence with the Swale but why was this site, high in the hills, worthy of making a special effort to mark and remember. PRAND suggests the site may be connected to the Mesolithic flint working site at nearby Little Haw or possibly to the trade in Langdale axe-heads to the lands east of the hills but whilst these explanations may go someway to explain the context of human settlement and movement in the prehistoric Colsterdale I find them unsatisfactory in explaining why West Agra Plantation has so much high quality and complex rock art.

I feel that rock art is as much about the significance of the location as it is about the designs inscribed on the rocks and it is the location and it’s specific Genius Loci that hold the keys to interpreting the symbols. When one stands on the hillside at West Agra the dominant feature of the landscape is the flat topped mountain of Great Whernside to the south west. The peak stands framed in the valley of the river Burn, which draws the eye up across the moors to its summit. All the rock art at West Agra is in this line of sight, up the valley of the Burn to Great Whernside and whilst there are many hundreds of suitable millstone grit slabs along the ridge to both the east and west the artists only chose those ones that had views to the mountain.

How many hours work did it take ancient shaman-artists to mark out each cup and ring, each linear mark? Over how many years or generations was this art completed? Not in a weekend, not in the time a hunting band or a foraging party camped by a spring but over many lifetimes as people returned again and again to the place, to look up at the mountain and experience the genius of the valley. There is a tradition that is all but lost to modern people, a tradition that has echoes in the later lore of later peoples but has been overwritten and watered down with tales more suited to people who work with metal and live in one place but these panels high on the hills still point the way to their mysteries and hold the key to the secrets of an ancient British animism.

Famous People Wearing THB Shirts

2010-11-02T18:56:00.002Z

November 2010 - Reverend Al. Outta Sight!

Lord Dunsany, To The Birds

2010-10-25T20:08:00.007+01:00

Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany died 53 years ago today, 25th October 1957. I visited Dunsany's grave in the church yard in Shoreham in the summer and spent a day walking among the hills and woods that he knew. A series of essays about my Dunsany Pilgrimage will be posted on this blog in time but for the moment, and to mark the day of the death of a man who loved wildfowling as much as he loved writing, I post his poem To The Birds.

TO THE BIRDS

When I am dead and the bird

That through the long reeds go,

Though they hear no man's words,

Those Wandering Birds Will know.

The duck, the snipe, the teal,

All folk of heath and fen,

The news will hear or feel

Before it comes to men.

In ferns where woodcock hide,

By bays where widgeon lie,

And where the bog goes wide

And gleaming to the sky.

By Many a reedy lake

And many a mile of ling

Its speed will overtake

The golden plover's wing;

By glint of moon or star,

Through darkness among trees

The news will wend as far

As the far-travelling geese;

And grouse on windy moors,

Jack-snipe on coloured moss,

And birds the love lone shores

Far north will know the loss.

And nought have I to say

Against their myriad voice

Arising on that day

To sing, "Rejoice! Rejoice!"

MusiqueMachine Interview October 2010

2010-10-20T11:45:00.002+01:00

MusiqueMachine, who made "Hunts & Wars" their album of the month for October have published an interview I did with them some weeks ago. Read all about my undying love for Venom, Dio-era Sabbath and Arthur Machen. www.musiquemachine.com/articles/articles_template.php?id=199

www.metalstorm.net

2010-10-12T18:32:00.001+01:00

From his throne in Country Duhram in North East England, Christopher Walton, the sole arbiter of the entity TenHornedBeast, and also of the perhaps better known Endvra, has overseen numerous exploits of aural intrigue and mystery and his latest work, the third outing on Cold Spring, marks a further step in the evolution of his sound.

As contrived as it may seem on paper Hunts & Wars itself is a sinister, war-themed journey through desolate, windswept landscapes. Such themes typically conjure images of intense battle and bloodshed but THB opts for a different perspective; of the prelude and the aftermath, deriving inspiration from writers Robert E. Howard and Lord Dunsany. Going further beyond Sunn O)))'s well known brand of contorted malevolence, THB delves even deeper into the abyss, concocting surrealistic drones, heavy bass and swirling ambient with the percussion playing a particularly prominent and unusually vital role, never more so than on "I Am The Spearhead" whose thunderous, reverberating beats, emulates, perhaps unintentionally, the sound of blood-fueled jeering amidst the surrounding walls of a coliseum. It's really quite spectacular. Another album highlight, "Ironborn" becomes frightfully distinctive with its alternating war horn and ritualistic drums painting a vivid picture of a monstrous army marching a cold, pilgrimage to battle. There's nothing human about this record. Perhaps wisely, Walton has separated the protracted songs with shorter interludes, allowing for a (slightly) more approachable voyage than the equally superb richness of The Sacred Truth.

What's truly impressive though is Walton's ability to inject a palpable sense of variety into each track whilst maintaining that eerie sense of nothingness and death. It must be difficult to play host to a form of music that generally alienates even the most hardy of extreme music fans. Whilst brutal, mindless metal rakes in the numbers, music based on minimalism and soundscapes rarely finds a decent footing (most continue to toil in obscurity), regardless of the quality or subject matter. In all likeliness Hunts & Wars will remain such a record, despite being at the top of its game.

Special Interests

2010-10-09T12:05:00.004+01:00

The internet is great but you can't read it on the bog. If, like me, you pine for the days of quality printed magazines such as Esoterra, Compulsion, Judas Kiss, Sigill, Omega and countless others you could do no better that pick up Special Interests. #4 includes interviews with Bastard Noise, Brandkommando, Koufar, Sickness, Raymond Dijkstra, Trash Ritual and TenHornedBeast.

www.special-interests.net

www.musiquemachine.com

2010-09-17T19:54:00.003+01:00

“Hunts & Wars” finds this British based dark ambient meets stripped and off-kilter doom project offering up their third and most consistent release to date. With layers of ritual and military percussion, along with noise elements been added to the projects sound to create a grim and sweeping sound canvas that has moments blood stained dissonance/ noise to more subtle and uneasy dwells.

The album is a really a fairly even balance between longer/building tracks and shorter more atmospheric tracks. There are in all four longer tracks that last between just over the seven minute to just shy of twenty minute mark a-piece. And these tracks utilize more of the wavering & stripped sub-bass doom riffs, the ritual and military percussive marches, and the more atmospheric noise elements- all to make epic, often building ,dramatic but very grim pieces. Then we have the shorter tracks which really break up and give you a slight atmospheric breather from the longer epic works and these are a mixture of: bleak/ subtle painted drone matter or darken organ weaves, looped doomed neo-classical dirges, and generally more subdued grimly cinematic moments.

As the albums title suggest there’s more than a whiff of battlefields & conflict running through the album sonic veins, but the wars, battles and deaths that are audibly summoned up here are not of the glamorous or Hollywood variety. No- this is all about exhausted and gaunt soldiers fighting knee deep in mud, blood and excrement. Or soldiers slowly dying all alone in a bleak drizzly soacked forest glades, where birds circle getting ready to pick their flesh when they can no longer fend them off..

Sure “Hunts & Wars” is highly bleak and hopeless listening experience, yet there is light and shade in the sonic suffering and moroseness that makes this so much more replayble and rewarding as a whole. One of 2010’s grim highlights.

www.chaindlk.com

2010-09-10T22:03:00.002+01:00

Can you hear distant horns and drums that make the ground tremble? It's Tenhornedbeast's third album HUNTS & WARS. Recorded over a three year period from 2006 to 2009, the new album sees Christopher Walton redefining Tenhornedbeast sound, introducing, along with the characteristic nightmarish obsessive doom industrial bass guitar riffs, tracks like "Hilnaric", "Ironborn" and "Season Of Wars" which function as interludes between the long percussive suites. Those three are based on treated feedbacks and melodic elements that apparently ease the atmosphere but that really are always hypnotic and only a bit less obsessive. "Ironborn" sounds like a horde of warriors entering into a castle (you can hear the horns announcing them), while "Season Of Wars" has a dreamy hallucinatory atmosphere. The four long suites ("Reaching For The Stars We Blind The Sky", "Father Of The Frosts", "I Am The Spearhead" and "Hunts & Wars") give life to the oneiric visions of Robert E Howard (creator of Conan the Barbarian) and Lord Dunsany (moniker used by Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany for publishing his writings) by creating a blasting atmosphere made of percussions, cymbals, distant grinding guitars and growling bass guitar sounds. Listening to HUNTS & WARS is an experience of sorrow and pleasure and the only thing you are sure of is that... there's no escape.

Abraxas

2010-09-06T15:26:00.002+01:00

Although life is an affair of light and shadows, we never accept it as such. We are always reaching towards the light and the high peaks. From childhood, through early religious and academic training, we are given values which correspond only to an ideal world. The shadowy side of real life is ignored, and Western Christianity provides us with nothing which can be used to interpret it. Thus the young men of the west are unable to deal with the mixture of light and shadow of which life really consists; they have no way of linking the facts of existence to their preconceived notions of absolutes. The links connecting life with universal symbols are therefore broken, and disintergration sets in.

Miguel Serrano, 1966

Night Vision

2010-09-06T13:03:00.002+01:00

Thanks to Jas for his wit. Badgers eh? Here's some scat, track and sign.

www.vitalweekly.net

2010-09-02T07:28:00.002+01:00

With the third launch from Cold Spring reviewed here, we stay in the ambient-side of expressions. Still there is a great difference between the gentle and melodic "Daas"-album of Machinefabriek and the utter darkness on next launch being "Hunts & wars" from Tenhornedbeast. Located in the Northern territories of England, British composer Christopher Walton alias Tenhornedbeast has since 2004 launched one album of apocalyptic dark ambient after the other. As I three years back reviewed the previous album of Tenhornedbeast titled "The sacred truth", I described the music as being death industrial with comparison to Swedish genre-legend Brighter Death Now. On this new album recorded in the period between 2006-09 the harshness has been decreased. What is left behind is seven pieces of black ambience and the result is great and even better than previous album. The expressions on the pieces are repetitive and slowly moving in-between drones of buzzing darkness. Last track is the lengthy 20 minutes title track "Hunts & wars". A great work that opens in pure darkness but halfway through turns into semi-melodic ambient-spheres thus adding some warmth to the otherwise cold and cynic world of the beast.

Hornstang

2010-08-25T06:47:00.003+01:00

An ash pole I raised nine foot long

And on it cut geases ten

Yan for the Black Lad who calls from the woods

Teyan from below the brawns haunted path

Tethera are the becks that feed the flood

Methera is fower footed goat jumpers blood

Tic for the spennies where King Boucca did run

Yan a tic’s a stang I ride to the sun

Teyan a tic trips in the Nicky-Nack race

Tethera tic’s frightened to show us his face

Methera tic the Nidstang a beacon of Hel

Bub for a Hornstang the beast and the spell

I send out Geri and Freki his kin

I set Black Finn on his Throne agin

To hunt the ghost-road by the gallows tree

Beware the woods for now they know thee

By The Gate Of Elphame

2010-08-23T19:07:00.001+01:00

I'm not the Queen of Heaven, Thomas,

That name does not belong to me

I am but the Queen of fair Elphame

Come out to hunt in my follie

A Warning

2010-08-20T19:50:00.002+01:00

A snapping bow, a burning flame

A ravening wolf, a grunting boar

A screaming crow, a rootless tree

A breaking wave, a seething cauldron

A flying arrow, an ebbing tide

A coiling adder, ice one night old

A bride's bed talk, a broken sword

A bear's play, a prince's child

A witch’s welcome, the wit of a slave

A sick calf, a new-slain foe

A brother's killer met upon the road

A house half-burned

A horse too swift

These are never safe. Let no man trust them.

Havamal 84-88

Wot I Did On My Holidayz I: Before The Dawn

2010-08-15T14:13:00.003+01:00

Followers of this blog, and I know there are many, will recall a post some while back describing a 2008 tracking trip I took up the ancient Cami de Cavalls coastal path on the island of Menorca – a trip notable for the discovery of a mysterious scat tentatively identified as that of the Menorcan Pine Marten (Martes Martes Minoriencis). This summer, having engineered another family holiday to the lovely resort of Punta Prima on the southern tip of the island, I took second look at the coastal forest and scrub that lies inland from the Cami de Cavalls with a view to looking for more signs of the marten.

Dawn in the Balerics in early August happens about 6.15am. However, those who are up early enough to take note of such things will know that dawn is not something that can be relied upon to arrive precisely as expected, especially when one is waiting for the sun to rise up from the sea. Rather dawn is a process of change, a gradual lightening of the world and dispelling of darkness that profoundly effects animal behaviour and our changes of witnessing that behaviour. To be up in time to see the world illuminated by a bright and fiery sun, it’s rays shining through the low clouds lying on the edge of the sea is a privileged and a joy beyond price.

The plan was to be up and out whilst it was still dark, to make my way into the forest along the coast and sit quietly, possessing my soul in patience as Holmes was keen on saying to Watson, and wait for the dawn to come. If I were there in good time, and if I could find a suitable vantage point to look out over the forest I reckoned, without any real evidence or experience to back up my theory, that I stood a fair chance of seeing something of the local fauna. It was 5.45am when I left the apartment and made my way to eastern edge of Insotel’s grounds. It was warm and cloudy, the day after a heavy day of un-seasonal rain I was dressed in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, although I had taken the precaution of wearing my Haglofs Trail2 trainers rather than the flip-flops of the first expedition. In addition I had a cheap compact digital camera, my tracking kit (ziplock bags for collecting scat, ruler for scale, magnifying glass for looking at mammal hair), torch and my EDC Mauser folder. I was set, and in the spirit of trespass and knowing that Spaniards, even those that shoot, are not to be found abroad at this hour I climbed the wooded gate that marked the entrance of the Private Hunting Estate and set off into the night.

The night was slowly fading away. In the eastern sky the darkness was paling to pinks and oranges, greens and blues as the clouds began to stand out in darker shades against the sky. Crickets and the insects of the night chirped and called their last songs. The light breeze moved the leaves gently and I tramped as noisily as a giant through the stillness. A short way up the rough dirt road another gate barred the way and to my surprise I saw a Hoopoe (Upupa epops) sitting on top of it watching my approach. It must have been as astonished as I was and in mutual awe and confusion we watched each other from a few metres apart. Rare in Northern England but common in Southern Europe I had seen Hoopoe’s before on both Menorca and Lanzarote but never at such close quarters.

I stealthily slid the camera from my pocket and switched it on, cursing the Japanese perverts that make it necessary for electronics manufacturers to add warning bells and whistles to their products [there was a craze in the early days of the digital camera for men to take up-skirt pictures of women as they commuted on busy trains, hence the warning sounds)and hoped the bird would not fly before I snapped of a shot. Luckily it seemed as shocked and confused as I was but I knew that the hoopoe would not stick around for a second portrait once the flash had knocked the sleep out of its eyes so I brought the camera up to head height, zoomed as far as possible and hoped the wobble would not ruin the picture. The electronic sounds screeched out in the stillness and in the flash I saw the bird turn tail and fly off into the night, making a curious squeaking alarm call as it went. My arrival in the early morning forest was not going to be as covert as I had fancied.

Wot I Did On My Holidayz II: Sunrise, wrong side of another day

2010-08-15T14:05:00.002+01:00

Up the trail I went, the trees getting higher and the bush on each side thicker. At the summit of a low crest that gave a view south eastward towards the sea I stood and listened to the low, rolling drone of Nightjars calling from the depths of the woods. Nightjars make a dull, frog-like call that has been called “Churring” although these birds were not so much making a churring sound as a baaarrrrrping sound. I could make out two distinct individuals, one to my left higher up the slope inland and another to my right, lower down the hill closer to the sea. I stood listening for some minutes as the calls spread out across the darkness and looking around I noticed the bird from higher up the hill flap towards me in the final dark minutes of the night, hawking for moths and insects with its slow stiff winged flapping flight. It soared out of the darkness and flew around the trees, checking me out before returning back into the night, a thing of another world.

I was looking for somewhere comfortable to sit, with a good vantage point that allowed me to see what was going on and so far nothing has presented itself. There were piles of pale grey limestone and broken, tumbled down drystone walls in the bush but none of them offered the elevation I wanted. To the right I could make out a ridge with bare rocks rising above the forest but it was approximately 600 metres as the crow, or Hoopoe, flies through a dense and pathless series of thickets so not much use in secretly sneaking up on the sleeping wildlife. I pressed on up the trail until to the left a pile of white limestone blocks showed through the bush and I made my decision to use this as my perch.

There was no path leading to the structure so I had to do a bit of bush-wacking to get there but on arrival I found that I was on top of a very strange structure indeed. A circular pit had been excavated into the limestone bedrock and the stone taken from the pit had been used to build a wall around the perimeter of the pit. More earth and rock had been piled up around these walls to make an earthwork, with a narrow doorway left open facing the sea. Here I sat and watched the dawn break over the island. The disk of the sun had not yet risen above the edge of the sea but already the world around me was more light that dark. A blackbird began to call, a familiar sight and sound in such an exotic location, and I saw black headed whitethroats (Sylvia melanocphala) rise and shine from the bushes all around me. As the sun began to rise and its rays shone through the clouds on the horizon the Nightjar that I had heard earlier calling from its range closer to the shore took a final flight around its territory, flapping past me with those stiff wing beats, looking more like a giant bat than a bird. I watched as it circled its area, making a wide flight and coming very close to where I sat before losing it as it settled down into the thick scrub between me and the shore.

Wot I Did On My Holidayz III: Pit or Tower?

2010-08-15T14:00:00.002+01:00

I still do not know what this structure is. At first I thought it was a pen for corralling livestock – most likely goats or sheep that had been left to browse through the scrubby coastal forest but it seems a lot of trouble to go to for a few goats, especially as there is obviously better grazing to be had further inland. Another theory is that this may be a shooting cover, similar to the grouse butts found on the moors of the North Pennines, which are often build of local stone and turfed over to provide cover for driven shoots. However, nobody is ever going to get a shot at anything from the bottom of a pit with a 4 metre wall enclosing them – unless the trick is to place oneself at the top of the wall and shoot out over the tops of the low scrub. Either way this is a modern structure and must have a use – answers on a postcard please.

Wot I Did On My Holidayz IV: Flies and Thorns

2010-08-15T13:57:00.002+01:00

On such a small island as Menorca the dominant feature is the sea. It can be heard as it crashes against the rocks and cliffs, it can be smelled as the wind carries its salt breath inland and it is always there as a natural navigation aid, recalling where you have been and how to get back again. The southern and western sections of the island have a limestone geology from the Miocene, resulting in the clint and griek topography familiar in the limestone dales of Yorkshire and Cumbria, with all the weird shapes and exposed pavements from the hills we know. The flora of this southern coastal forested region is made up of heather (Erica multiflora), white rockrose (Cistus albidus), rosemary (Rosemarinus officinalis) and larger trees and shrubs such as the White pine (Pinus halepensis), Wild Olive (Olea europaea)and Myrtle (Myrtus communis).

It is thick and impenetrable. Those used to walking through British broadleaf woodland, with its neat and tidy understory and clear lines of sight, or even the denser plantations of spruce and larch will find a very different habitat. There are no paths, not even game trails to follow. The best one can hope for is to find one of the open spaces that have been burned back by fire but these are not linked, so to make any headway through the bush – or to get from A to B – one must brave the thorns and tangled spiny thickets and push on through. It goes without saying that this is very difficult country to walk through and almost impossible to track. The substrate is a hard baked red gravel lying on top of rock. Finding track or sign is a matter of good luck rather than good judgement and with every thicket and cover concealing a pile of stones that could form the den of a marten I decided that looking for the animal in this place was going to be a futile and thankless task and I may as well make what I could of the day whilst I was out.

I began to push through the dense bush, getting scratched and torn for my troubles as I went. Although I didn’t feel it at the time I was also getting eaten alive by flies. So seldom does anybody venture to this miserable, god forsaken place that every gnat, midgee, cleg and mossy within a mile must have woken up and made a direct line for the back of my neck. The next day I had a bite on my left wrist that had swollen up to the size of a golf ball and three bites on my neck aligned like Orion’s belt. I hope my blood tasted good.

Wot I Did On My Holidayz V: The sign of the upturned rock

2010-08-15T13:51:00.002+01:00

You see strange things in strange places. Here, in a thicket so thick I doubt anybody had been there for years I noticed a large rock had been turned over. If tracking is about seeing small things to make a bigger picture this was something worth noting. The rock was an irregular shaped piece of limestone approximately 30 centimetres in lengths and weighting approximately 3Kg. It had been turned over and now lay with its red stained underside uppermost, the hard baked place where it had laid for however long still bare and visibly cracked. How long had the rock laid like this? Who knows, not long enough for the “top” to become stained or the “bottom” to have its red colour washed and bleached away by the alternate heavy rains and hot sunny days of a Balearic summer.

As to what had turned the rock over – that sets in train a whole new set of questions. The forest was riddled with rabbits, who seemed to lie up under the scrub rather than attempt burrows in the thin hard soil, but who has ever seen a wild rabbit turn over a rock heavier than itself when all they are interested in is green things to eat? The culprit most likely was some insectivorous mammal out foraging for food – and on Menorca that points to either the hedgehog or the marten. One of the local guide books I bought during my stay on the island listed the “porcupine” as a local species, although I fear this may be a poor translation of the English word hedgehog, a north-Africa subspecies of which (Atelerix algirus, or the Algerian Hedgehog) is found on the island. Whether hedgehog or marten something with a taste for looking under large rocks for grubs and bugs had turned this rock over and although I got down on my hands and knees looking for mammal hairs or spines amongst the rock-hard stony ground nothing could be found.

Wot I Did On My Holidayz VI: The Nightjar

2010-08-15T13:38:00.001+01:00

I was now aiming for the coast, which I could hear and occasionally see over the tops of the low shrubs and trees and I knew that my way lay down hill and towards the sun but the going was getting tougher and I was often forced to turn back and look for less difficult paths through the thick and painfully prickly bush. On one of these detours I came to an open area between the higher bushes and here I stopped dead in my tracks as if smacked in the face by a cricket bat because lying under the lee of a bush, it’s tawny brown feathers doing the opposite of what they should in the pale dry grass, was a Nightjar.

I have never seen a seen or heard a Nightjar (Caprimulgus europaeus) in the UK but here, in the space of an hour I had heard them calling, seen two of them on the wing in the last dark minutes of the night and was now face to face with one as it roosted on the floor. Was there ever a less birdlike bird that the Nightjar? As I dropped to my knees and crawled forward it looked more like a winged fish or a hybrid reptile than a bird. Its bill was short and pointed, rising from high on the birds head. Like all ground nesting birds it remained deathly still in an attempt to throw off any would be predators and at first I thought this individual was dead, a trick made all the more plausible by the narrow eye slits through which the animal watched me. My heart pounded as I fumbled for my camera, this was a once in a lifetime close encounter with a bird seldom seen at such intimate quarters and I did not want to blow my chances.

I quickly knocked off a couple of snaps, wobbly and poorly focused so much adrenaline was pumping through me. I crawled closer to the bird, not caring about the sharp rocks and thorns or the ants and ticks and took another picture. Still the bird did not move. I could see the black whiskery feathers that protrude from the sides of the bill, I could see the eyes dilated and glassy behind the closed lids, only the narrowest slits remaining open. I inched closer until I was only a metre away from the bird and took another picture, in greater detail and this time, as the low newly risen sun lit up the small open glad the bird erupted in that sudden, startling burst of flight that ground birds have and flew off, not far – only to the other end of the clearing before landing awkwardly and flapping around noisily with one wing raised in the air. This may have been a ruse to draw me away from what it had been sitting on – two pale eggs speckled with brown and blue lying in a bare circle of hard red earth.

My heart had not stopped racing since I first saw the bird and now, with the added shock of its sudden fright and the elation of finding the nest I quickly rose to my knees and took some pictures of the eggs before getting up and legging it in the opposite direction to the hen. Early August is late in the season to be sitting on eggs, even in southern Europe and I did not want to disturb the bird more than I already had, especially if martens or hedgehogs were in the area foraging for fresh eggs.

Like all the Children of Nyx the Nightjar has acquired a body of lore and myth that paints it as a sinister and malevolent visitor from the Nightside of the Tree. Rural folklore in Britain has it as the stealer of milk from goats and cows (it’s zoological name “Caprimulgus” means “Goat Sucker”), as well as being a trope for Puck and the powers of nocturnal mischief and misrule. The demon-mother of Hebrew mythology, Lilith, is described as “the Nightjar”, and the bird appears in the description of Edom’s utter desolation and of the things inhabiting its ruins. (Isa 34:14) The Hebrew term may be a loanword from ancient Sumerian and Akkadian from the name of a mythological female demon of the air (Lilitu). The Hebrew word (li•lith´) is derived from a root word denoting “every kind of twisting motion or twisted object,” even as the Hebrew word la´yil (or lai´lah), meaning “night,” suggests a “wrapping itself round or enfolding the earth.” Such derivation of li•lith´ may likely point to the nightjar as both a nocturnal feeding bird and one noted for its rapid twisting and turning flight as it pursues moths, beetles, and other night-flying insects.

How many have looked the Nightjar in its slit eye in the first rays of dawn?

Wot I Did On My Holidayz VII: Dustbath

2010-08-15T13:33:00.002+01:00

It was now close to 7.00am and already the heat of the day was mounting. I had a long way to thrash through the spiny spiky thorny undergrowth if I was to get to the coast footpath of the Cami de Cavalls and with constant back tracking to find an easier way through the bush it was looking likely that the easier, and least painful route, was to go back the way I came and use the rough road to get back out. I never like giving up on a walk, no matter how much of a pain it becomes, but I was never going to see anything with the noise of pushing and squeezing through the winnies so I turned round and looked for an easy way back up the hill I had just came down.

Some time later I arrived at the road, running roughly parallel with the coast about a kilometer inland. The sun was rising high, early morning sailors were on the sea and in the distance I could hear the first cars on the road to Sant Lluis. Using the dirt road to walk out rather than the Cami de Cavalls would not bring me to the sea but it would save time and my battered and scratched legs. As I crested one of the rises heading westwards with the sun on my back towards Punta Prima I found a hoopoe, maybe even the same individual I had disturbed roosting on the wooden gate, taking a dustbath in the middle of the road. I had the chance to take a picture, a poor one though it is, before the bird flew off into the bushes. Arriving at the site I was also able to take a nice picture of the dustbath site, not a very inspiring holiday snap for the normal tourist but for somebody interested in sign and track a very nice end to a rewarding walk. The place where the bird had been dusting itself was marked with deep linear markings from its wing tips and was approximately 30cm in length by 20 cm in width.

I would love to spend more time in these coastal forests and gorges on Menorca. The place is a paradise for birds and wildlife, and with most visitors to the island confining themselves to their sun-loungers and swimming pools they are agreeably empty of people. I am still not sure what the law of trespass entails in Spain but as in England you need to get caught first. One of the best couple of hours I’ve ever spent on a family holiday!

Filthforge.org Review

2010-08-15T10:47:00.003+01:00

Many thanks for the support. Check out www.filthforge.org for more post-industrial/noise/drone information.

TENHORNEDBEAST "Hunts & Wars" Cold Spring - 2010 CD

Third full-length for the project of ex-ENDVRA Christopher Walton. Proceeding along the way of pitch black rituals and unsettling atmospheres, this time TenHornedBeast introduces some different elements, achieving more variety and catching the listener's attention much more effectively than in the recent past. We are introduced into the new CD by an excellent 12-minute assault bearing the title "Reaching For The Stars We Blind The Sky", a drone / doom wall of distortions with hammering and mechanical percussions strongly reminding of the best Godflesh, but, of course, without vocals and recognizable riffs. It's a cathartic and powerful piece, showing the definitive evolution from Walton's early electronic noises, of Cold Meat Industry-derivation, to a more contemporary and effective guitar-based inferno.

The short "Hilnaric" is just a gloomy keyboard interlude, placed right before another sonic mammoth probably in order to let our ears rest for a moment. Indeed, the following "Father Of The Frosts" is another deep chasm of suffocating sounds, between distant electronic mists, obsessive guitar drones and echoing cymbals. Another short intermission is represented by the looped dark horns and deaf beats of "Ironborn", whereas "I Am The Spearhead" returns to the familiar Northern industrial atmospheres of early BDN and Archon Satani, with an obsessive machinery rhythm and substrata of haunting keyboards. Its quality is unquestioned, even if its originality not at the top. The last short interlude, this time entrusted to the minimal and almost melodic "Cimmeria", then it's time for the final, monolithic assault, the title-track. The volume rises progressively, just like the noise generated by the guitar strings and drones. Being this outro extremely long (19 minutes!), it needs your whole concentration to be grasped in its deepest essence.

In a scene where things have got mostly static and inexorably repetitive, TenHornedBeast have made significant progress, incorporating sounds and elements of the drone / doom environment to unleash it into the underground caverns and hellish domains conjured by this British necromancer. Listen at high volume to achieve a total wrapping and drowning effect.

Simon V

Neolithic Weekend I: Copt Howe rock art site

2010-07-25T22:28:00.003+01:00

Sunday 11th July was the day of the final match in the 2010 World Cup so what better time to get away from all that shite and drive into the hills of Cumbria looking for scratchings on rocks. As I was also enrolled on a flint knapping course with Woodsmoke, taught by Will Lord of www.beyond20000bc.co.uk which was due to start on Monday 12th I decided to make a weekend of it and head over to the mountains early on Sunday morning.

As soon as I crossed the Tees the weather changed and the bright sunny skies of the east became greyer and wetter until the drizzle became rain and the clouds covered the tops of the hills. Driving into Great Langdale from Ambleside the rain began to get heavier and it seemed certain that today was going to be a classic Cumbrian hill day – wet and cloudy.

The Copt Howe site comprises a series of large erratic boulders on the western fringe of Chapel Stile in Great Langdale. Driving up the narrow lane that leads to Dungeon Ghyll the boulders are to be found in the fields on the right side of the road, there is a narrow and gravelly scrap of land at the side of the road that provides an adequate, if precipitous, short-term parking point and it was here, with cars whizzing past and rain battering the windscreen that I parked.

My first impression of the Copt Howe site was anti-climatic. The setting is truly beautiful and the views up the valley to the summits spectacular but the art does not, in my opinion, live up to the location. Many of the inscriptions are faint and show up only in oblique light or via rubbings so there was little to photograph but more than this the main panel, on the face of a very large boulder, seems to lack a coherent graphic intent and appears to be quite random and confused. Many rock art panels show complexity, with interconnecting channels, cups and rings but there is a difference between complexity and confusion. Copt Howe looks to me to be confused and poorly thought out, a rock doodle site rather than a rock art site.

The site was discovered in 1999 by Paul and Barbara Brown, authors of the invaluable “Prehistoric Rock Art In The Northern Dales” (PRAND), which has been my bedtime reading for the last eighteen months and without which many of my recent trips would have ended in failure but reading around the subject it appears that there is some controversy as to whether the site is what is purported to be. There is a theory, which I found on Julian Cope’s Modern Antiquarian site, that some of the inscriptions at Copt Howe are the work of a local man named Ken Corfe who lived a sort of proto-hippie life in Great Langdale in the 1930s and 1940s. Locals seem to remember him camping in the field close to the boulders and taking a great interest in them. Was Corfe responsible for the rock art?

The central enigma that surrounds rock art, especially the cryptic designs of cups, rings and concentric circles is what does it mean? Theories abound as to how it should be interpreted and I feel that many of these theories say more about our modern minds and ways of thinking than the people who made the art. I am far from convinced that rock art should be interpreted as maps or way-markers to guide people through the landscape. Anybody who has ever walked in the hills will have the greatest difficulty in thinking that prehistoric peoples found it necessary to encode “maps” of their landscape in inscriptions on rocks because there simply is no need – the way is obvious, the valleys are so large and the peaks so prominent that maps carved on stone slabs would be redundant. It may be that rock art is intrinsically linked to landscape, that it celebrates and marks significant points such as high hills and river valleys but I feel that these functions are not to be confused with a “map” anymore than a computer is to be confused with the internet.

Ultimately we will never know if the art at Copt Howe is genuine or fake and we must take from it what we will each according to their views but for me the faintness of the inscriptions when compared to other panels in the north of England, the recent discovery of the site in one of the most visited dales in Cumbria and the haphazard nature of the design makes me wonder if we are looking at a modern pastiche rather than ancient rock art?

Neolithic Weekend II: Pike O’Stickle Axe Factory

2010-07-25T22:24:00.002+01:00

Great Langdale is dominated by the Pikes, a series of peaks rising to around 700 metres from the valley floor. Of all the peaks in the Cumbrian mountains these are the most elegant, the most picturesque and amongst the most visited. I parked in the carpark at the foot of Dungeon Ghyll, paid my £6 to the LDNPA and set out up the track.

What is there to be said for a long climb in wet weather? You just get on with it, head down and arse up. The run off was flooding the streams and crossing some of them was tricky – I was traveling light and had decided not to carry anything up the mountain that was not needed, which included waterproofs. As I carried on upwards and met others coming down, soaked to the skin with hair plastered to their faces, the rectitude of my descision to visit the axe factory began to run through my mind. Not the for the last time that day.

With some effort and after a few stops for water I finally made it to the wide open hanging valley that opens out from Loft Crag. There are sites at both Loft Crag and nearby Thorn Crag that evidence axe manufacture from the Neolithic but I had no time to tarry if I was to see what I had planned to see and I pressed on. From here it was a short and easy walk, along relatively level paths to the Pike O’Stickle and the huge chute that leads back down to the valley floor along it’s eastern flank. This scree chute is comprised of the spoil and debris from the Neolithic quarrys where the band of green hornstone was came to the surfaceand it was down this chute I intended to go, to find the man made cave that exposed the seam of Group IV Langdale Tuff that was prized for the manufacture of axe heads.

The path at the top of the chute was busy with walkers, who rustled past in their waterproofs with GPS clipped to the collars like some sort of outdoor robo-cop. The last time I had been up here the cloud was low and the rain was falling hard, the chute was filled with thick rolling mist and looked like the entrance to some sort of Wagnerian theme park but now the rain had eased, the sky was almost blue and when nobody was looking I stepped off the path and into the chute.

Neolithic Weekend III: The Cave

2010-07-25T22:18:00.002+01:00

The first thing that struck me was how fragile and moveable the scree slope was. I sank past the tops of my boots in the gravel and I noted, with some apprehension, that the boulders around me ranged in size from the size of a mircrowave oven to things considerably larger. It was going to be a delicate and balletic descent, although aided as I was by the superhuman powers bestowed by my Haglofs equipment I had no reason to fear.

My intention was to visit the cave not to cause an avalanche so I moved off the bare slope and proceeded down, as far as was possible, along the grass on the far fringe of the chute. This was easier footing but still dangerously wet and slippy. The rocks in this upper section were mainly reddish, not the dull battleship grey of the Group IV Tuff I had come to see but the only way was down and I meant to continue.

This was not a place to bring your granny for a nice walk in “The Lakes” and as I progressed down the chute I became overpowered by the scale of the landscape around me. The valley floor with its wide obvious path leading up through Mickleden lay a long way below me, the crags of the pikes rose up in vertical walls all around me. The sky seemed to be just in front of me and I experienced that feeling of wanting to launch myself off into the void that people feel on tall buildings or exposed rock.

I saw the cave come into view around a crag on the opposite side of the chute, a dark irregular opening in the rock wall. This was the site. Here, thousands of years ago, prehistoric prospectors who were intimately acquainted with the properties of stone and the uses it could be put to came to quarry the green hornstone, knapping roughouts from the raw material of the mountain before carrying away their loads to be polished into axe-heads that represented the apex-technology of their time.

I crossed the scree slope and entered the cave. It was cooler than outside and wetter, water trickled down the walls and dripped from the ceiling. The floor was made of rough chips of grey-green tuff, mixed in with papers and cigarette ends left by earlier thoughtful visitors. After exploring the cave I re-crossed the scree back to the east side of the chute and found a fairly stable tuffet of grass to eat my sultanas and banana. Later that night around the Woodsmoke camp fire I talked with Will Lord about Langdale axe heads and my trip to the axe factory and he was to express some amazement that I’d bothered to get up there in the first place and he also offered his own experiences of working with the tuff, not least the problem of find somewhere to put your hammerstone so that it didn’t roll down the mountain never to be seen again.

Why come to such dangerous, liminal places to quarry stone when suitable stone for blades could be won elsewhere? Was there something attractive and necessary about accessing such places, in winning blades from the peaks of mountains? Was exposure to risk and hardship part of the process of making the blade, a process that continued when the blade was finished and it was passed on to others, along with it’s lineage and the circumstances of its creation? Up here a threshold has been crossed, even to the herdsmen of the Neolithic this was not home all year long but a place to come to graze their flocks in the long grasses of late summer, a place that afforded views and vistas into other valleys before the clouds came down again and the world withdrew from sight.

How was the stone won from the mountain? By the labour of felling trees and carrying the lumber up to the faces, in the skill of know how to build the right fires that would produce enough heat to crack out the blocks but would not make the stone brittle with too much heat. A skilled and technical process that had to be learned and practiced, experience gained as the rock sang and screamed with the release of steam from trickles of water, a living element that relinquished its secrets slowly and with mystery.

Neolithic Weekend IV: The Descent

2010-07-25T22:10:00.004+01:00

The clock was against me, and though I would have gladly lingered in this place of 45-degree angles and trickling water to ponder the lives of those people who first climbed up – or down – to the site, I had to be back to the car to be on my way to the Woodsmoke rendezvous for 4.30. It was then that I made a descision that was to commit me for the rest of the afternoon – to climb back up the chute and go back down the way I came or to take the direct route down the scree to the Cumbrian Way below and peg it along the valley bottom.

I’ve never been one for sticking to paths and I do like to go to places that few people have been before so with that I tightened my straps and went down the slope. Let this be a word of advice to anybody else who may wish to experience the grandeur of the Pike O’Stickle axe factory – do not go down the scree slope. I was very conscious that I was in the middle of a scheduled ancient monument and that I should tread as lightly as possible but even so, and keeping to the grass as much as possible, I still got knocks and cuts from the sharp edges of the rocks. My progress was painfully slow, each step worked out so as to cause the minimum disruption to the site and to minimize my chances of breaking my ankle. Eventually I reached the tree line, if three scrubby rowans clinging to the crags can be called a tree line but my troubles were not over yet as several hundred metres of scree lay in front of me and now there really was no way back.

I struggled and sweated downwards and I have never been more happy to see bracken. I left the open scree and made my way down through the deep green bracken jungle, but as the fronds reached to chest height and covered what was basically a steep boulder field it was not exactly plain sailing. I still had visions of having to explain to some angry Mountain Rescue team what the fuck I was doing up there but as I pressed on the slope became less steep, the ground underfoot less rocky and it was with a light heart and a blithe spirit that I walked the last hundred metres across the open grass to the path at the foot of the mountain.

On the walk out to the car I pondered the meaning and the importance of this place. It is obvious that as a source of stone to make axe-heads Great Langdale was a special place to the people of the Neolithic. This was a transitional time that saw nomadic hunter-gatherer bands form into more settled communities of pastoralist and agriculturalists and this process of change would have necessitated the clearance of the woodland that covered the islands. These people would have been skilled timber workers used to building structures and were obviously experienced tool makers. Polished stone axe-heads would have been prized high status possessions that endowed their owners with the ability to extract a living from the land and their distribution across the British Isles and as far a field as Poland and Morocco speaks of their importance.

The sites of axe manufacture in Great Langdale have been called the first industrial landscape in Britain. The tracks that we use to move around the valley and access the fells may well be the same that the people used 5000 years ago, indeed it would be strange if they were not – people always want to take the quickest and easiest routes across the landscape.

A study of stone axe heads from all over England and Wales came up with the surprising discovery that 27% were made of Group VI Langdale Tuff and originated from the sites around the Pikes. A number of the axe heads from Langdale have been found deposited in wet places — marshes, streams, pools. and show no sign of having been used. This may indicate that the axe heads were not intended for practical use and that they had been placed in significant spots as some kind of religious offering or it may show that the tuff is harder than wood! The predilection of archeologists to attach ceremonial significance to things they do not understand is quaint and amusing; Will Lord told me that his father had ground a replica Langdale axe-head from the Group VI tuff and had leant it to an archeologist who wished to undertake a practical experiment to see what damage it sustained from prolonged tree felling. When the head was returned, having been used to cut down dozens of trees and having been attempted to be tested to destruction it was as good as new and showed no chipping or flaking from use. This stuff is not called Tuff by accident.

How many man hours went into polishing a finished axe-head? I asked Will this and he estimated approximately 130 if the roughout was to be worked by hand, although this could be reduced to around 40 if one was prepared to do away with authenticity and use a power grinder with a diamond bit. Why did people put so much time and energy into their tools, when a couple of hours knapping a roughout would produce a head that could be hafted and cut timber? The answer is in efficiency – the roughout may cut wood but it will not do it as well or for as long as the smooth lines of the polished axe-head. The shape of the head, with its elliptical profile, is a very efficient cutting tool - so much so that even after heavy use no signs of wear are visible.

There are deep lessons for us to learn in the history of these ancient axe-heads. Lessons about the relationship between form and function and the skills people once had for sustaining their own life and meeting their own needs, lessons about our relationship with the landscape and how our presence on these islands has been sustainable only through the extraction and processing of minerals and materials, lessons about the need that people have had, seemingly since earliest times, to explore their locations and make sense of their presence. To follow in their footsteps is to ask oneself the same questions and look for the same answers. Some things do not change.

Old Interview [June 2009]

2010-07-25T17:29:00.005+01:00

The following interview was conducted with Noah Gadke in May/June 2009. It has yet to be published so for the few people who follow the blog I include it here as a curiosity. 1.You’ve previously stated in interviews that TenHornedBeast did not take its name directly from the Book of Revelations, but does the name or music carry any religious or spiritual connotations for you?

The name was revealed to me one day as I watched light and shadows move on a wall. It literally jumped into my head and I saw it as one word rather than three separate words, as if the concept of a ten horned beast was something that those English words were unable to convey on their own. At first I did not know what the name was or what it meant but it nagged me and would not let me go until I began to work with the current that it contained and began to understand and appreciate it’s meaning. I am interested in tracing things back to their roots, back to the beginning when there was no separation between man, beast and god – when these things were the same. I believe that the books we call “The Bible”, especially the Pentateuch, have echoes and traces of this original and sacred truth. Obviously these texts have been revised and edited so many times to fit in with so many political and social exigencies that it is now barely possible to find the truth but if you look hard, and critically and with your heart as well as your brain things will be revealed. Why did the later Hebrew prophets such as Daniel and Saint John use the imagery of horned beasts to portray earthly power and menace? What is it about horns, horned animals and horned beings that so frightened and upset these people? I believe they were exorcising something from their own history and culture that caused them great distress – the God of the Old Testament is not the kindly, benevolent father or the Good Shepherd, he is a vengeful and baleful storm-god worshipped in mountain-top wildernesses by shaman-prophets. He is a god of massacres, plagues and holocausts. A God of the tophet pit who is appeased by human sacrifice. When Moses spoke with God on the mountain he was marked by horns, when he descended with the Law he found the people worshipping a Golden Calf. The shadow of the horns is long and dark and when YHWH was changed into a God of the Covenant, worshipped in a Temple by a professional caste of priests these former signs and symbols were cast off, demonised and made unclean. Just as archaeologists find more in middens than in palaces I believe that we should look closely at what has been thrown away and discarded if we would find the truth.

2.You maintain a blog where in addition to talking about music and literature you discuss hunting and tracking, how did you become so passionate about this subject? Do you actively hunt? How does this part of your life influence TenHornedBeast?

Tracking is a form of literacy and something that I have always done instinctively, although in recent years I have began to hone the skills needed to do it right. For me tracking is a meditation, one that requires physical activity and a heightened awareness of the weather, landscape, local flora and fauna and the behaviour patterns of the quarry. It is fairly easy to spot animal tracks and signs just as it is relatively easy to distinguish a book from a bucket but being able to read the signs, to be able tell how old the sign is, what sex was the animal that made it, what gait the animal used in making the track and what that tells us about that individual animals behaviour at that specific point in time and how that behaviour fits into the wider context of species, habitat and ecosystem is a much bigger task. Learning to track is actually learning to see the world from a non-human perspective and that provides a window onto a deeply ancient mindset that has been lost by almost every modern human in the developed world. I know people who have tracked with the San bushmen in Namibia and even their tracking skills are being lost – several generations ago people could tell which animals were moving through the bush by listening to the various alarm calls of birds, and as every bird species had several different alarm calls for different kinds of predator a bushman who knew that “language” could accurately deduce that a lion or a black mamba was somewhere in the vicinity by listening to which birds were making which calls. Today the bushmen have all but lost this knowledge, obviously they can tell an alarm call when they hear it but they have lost the knowledge to link the specific call to the specific predator behaviour that caused it. I’m sure our Mesolithic ancestors also knew these languages but they have become lost to us through thousands of years of “civilisation”; trying to re-learn them is a slow and painstaking process. No I don’t hunt. The kind of hunting I am interested in requires stalking and tracking skills, or in the case of Persistence Hunting tracking and running skills, but any kind of hunting in the United Kingdom has become a very difficult and expensive pastime. Successive governments have made it increasingly difficult to own a firearm, as a result of high profile crimes such as the Hungerford and Dunblane incidents where deranged gun-nuts ran amok through communities killing people as they went. I think we can all agree that shooting children in a nursery school is wrong but I also feel that the Government have used incidents like this to ratchet up the climate of fear and to justify the erosion of freedoms. So as nobody is allowed to hunt, except on private land at considerable cost, the population of deer in lowland Britain has exploded and they are doing a lot of damage to woodland. My local woods are crawling with roe deer, I see them every time I go into the woods but as there is no natural predator and hunting is prohibited they are condemned to starve to death in the winter by the same people who think hunting is “cruel”. I am not saying any and every kind of hunting is a good thing – I find the kind of “hunting” where fat liquored-up men sit in trees waiting to shoot bears that have been attracted into a killing zone by the smell of peanut-butter abhorrent – but I also find the battery farming of chickens and orange processed cheese abhorrent. Hunting has been demonised by an urbanised and sedentary population who are now totally disengaged from the methods used to produce their food whilst at the same time hanging on to a view of the countryside that is childlike and sentimental, they have lost all sense of where they fit into the wider ecosystem. I hold a contrary view, I feel that reconnecting with these truths can only be a good thing.

3.Given that many of your references and pictures from the TenHornedBeast blog are related to nature how far removed are you from the larger urban areas? Is this where you have always lived, or a conscious decision to relocate to a more remote environment?

No, I’ve always lived here – other than several years I spent at university when I was younger. My mother has been doing some research into our family history, which she has traced back to 1826 – the interesting thing is for the last 183 years my family have lived within about 5 miles of where I live now. The Germans call this Heimat. I live in the valley of the river Wear, in north-east England. The largest urban areas are Newcastle, which is about 25 miles away and Middlesborough, which is about 20 miles in the other direction. I live on the edge of a small town, the woods are literally outside my back door but these are not woods as a North American or a Scandinavian might think of them – we have very, very little ancient woodland left in the UK and what little we have is a patchwork of small areas hemmed in by fields, roads and houses. I flew over France last year and it was amazing to see how much forest is left there, all the way from Paris down the valley of the Rhone you see huge expanses of wooded hills and uplands. That has gone from Britain – we are small island with a large population, we were the first country in the world to experience both the agrarian and the industrial revolutions and that has come at the cost of our wild places, very few of which are really “wild”. My local woods are a mixture of native broadleaf - oak, ash and beech and planted conifers, mainly spruce and larch. It is not the natural, primeval woodland that our ancestors would have known but it’s all we’ve got left. The paradox is that as people have become more urbanised and sedated by TV, Wii’s and broadband they now go to the woods less than they did a generation or two ago – this has allowed the woods to become wilder and less managed, and for the animals that live in them to expand and re-populate. There are otters in the river now whereas when I was a kid in the 1970s nobody would have believed they would have come back. Last weekend I flushed out a brown hare that was as big as a labrador! Personally I would love to retreat even further away into the hills but you need to strike a balance between isolation and the need to earn a living.

4.How does TenHornedBeast record its songs? Do you have a preference between digital and analog recording technology?

All my songs are recorded digitally. I can not imagine going back to using analog technology, I did that in the early years of Endvra because that was all we had – it was slow, laborious and did not allow for any fine control of the sounds. I’m not a musical purist at all, I don’t get excited about amps, guitars, vinyl or any of that bullshit that supposedly enhances the authenticity of the music. All that matters to me is the end product – the way I get to that end product is matterless, I am prepared to throw out any aspect of the work if it doesn’t fit and to spend as long as it takes to get it right but in doing so I want to be able to work quickly, easily and to have as much control over what’s going on as possible. If other people want to record to tape and splice things by hand let them.

5.How long does a typical TenHornedBeast track take from conception to recording to mixing? Have your refined and improved this process over the years?

Some songs take a very long time. Because I record at home and work alone I don’t have to worry about studio time or fitting around other peoples schedules, this means I can work on as many or as few pieces as I want. Sometimes, if the muse takes me, I’ll complete a piece very quickly other times I will spend months or years revising and tweaking a track, recording many different versions until I am happy that I have caught its essence. The songs on the “Hunts & Wars” album, which I have just “finished” have been in existence since 2005, being worked and re-worked. The process is unrefinable – I know what I want but I don’t always know how to get it, or having got “it” I find that actually I now want something else. I have in the past spent months recording and mixing a piece only to wake up the next day and scrap it all, I’m not interested in just releasing things, it has to be right and I have to be happy with it.

6.On several of your releases you have utilised runic imagery within the artwork of TenHornedBeast. Do these images have any significant meaning?

I have used an inverted Algiz rune on the split CD with Marzuraan and on the remix CD there is a sigil composed of a bindrune and several skulls, the bindrune is two inverted Algiz runes and an Sowilo rune. I find the runes fascinating for many reasons, firstly I took my degree in medieval literature and I am interested in the language and literature of Northern Europe, but secondly I am interested in the layers of meaning and symbolism that have clung to the runes over the years, including the use they were put to in the twentieth century. The runes are like waves, or starlight – they have been travelling for a long time and although the original idea that generated them may no longer exist they continue to resonate with that energy, and other energies that have adhered to them as they travelled. So when I use an inverted Algiz rune I am well aware that it was used by the Allgemeine and Waffen SS to denote death and that the Sowilo rune is as much a symbol of the Hitlerjugend as it is a representation of divine wisdom earthing through the fulguration of a lightning bolt. I think at their most pure the runes are an ur-source of inspiration and symbolic meaning that goes back into the deeps of our ancient northern European past and those who look within themselves will find that they carry them already encoded in their being – just as Havamal tells us Odin hung on a tree and won the runes by sacrificing himself to himself. One of my favourite pieces of rune lore is the myth that the runes reflect the angular, branching shapes of trees; from a palaeographic perspective this is probably erroneous but I can see why the link happened and whilst it is probably true that the futharks that we know today are adapted from Latin and Etruscan alphabets I think that it is also true that at their earliest incarnation the proto-runes were symbolic representations of those things people saw about them – trees, the horns of aurochs, lightning, the sun, serpents, spears, axe-heads, women.

7.Cold Spring Records is set to issue a CD of remixes from “The Sacred Truth”, called “My Horns Are A Flame To Draw Down The Truth”, how does this differ from the original album? How did the idea of remix album come about?

The idea came about because Cold Spring asked me to consider remixing some of the tracks. When I was first asked I didn’t want to do it because I was already sick of that material and had started to work on other tracks with a different tone and character but when I considered again I saw that within some of the pieces were other sounds, other constructs that were buried way down in the mix that I could bring to the fore. The track on “My Horns Are A Flame To Draw Down The Truth” are not straight “remixes”, rather they are re-recordings or even totally new tracks using sounds from the earlier pieces. During the recording of “The Sacred Truth” some of the pieces grew into monsters and became difficult to control, for instance the track “In The Teeth Of The Wolf” just expanded into a very complex and difficult piece that took months to mix down – in the end I was happy with the final version but there were so many things buried in the mix that when I stripped them away and opened the track up so that the two duelling lead guitars could be heard I realised that by contracting and deconstructing the pieces something new could be made, so “In The Teeth Of The Wolf” was taken to bits and rebuilt into “Fenris Wolf”.

8.What can we expect from the new full length album, “Hunts & Wars”?

Something quite different from the material on “The Sacred Truth” and “My Horns Are A Flame To Draw Down The Truth”. If I was a synaesthetic I would describe “The Sacred Truth” in very earthy and telluric terms, it reminds me of blacks and browns and very deep shades where as “Hunts & Wars” – to me at least – is much more epic and golden. With “Hunts & Wars” I was influenced to a large extent by the writings of Lord Dunsany and Robert E Howard, the phrase Hunts & Wars is taken from Howard’s poem “Cimmeria”, where he describes a dream-memory of a land of dark wooded hills. I tried to capture the grandeur and sense of scale of these writers in the music and I also set out to allow the music to be much more “progressive” and structured – I used a lot of percussion, gongs, drums and bass and whilst a lot of the music has ambient textures it is not a dark-ambient album. I “finished” the album in early January 2009 – you never really finish recording anything but at least I came to a point where I felt that any further work would do more harm than good. This will be released on Cold Spring Records.

9.How do you regard the current ease of recording and releasing albums compared to times past? Do you feel this has been better for artists to express themselves or just created a glut of records?

Regardless of what I feel there actually is a glut of records, you don’t need to be Columbo to work out that increased access to recording technology and the ease by which people can duplicate CD-r has lead to a lot of music being “released” and that a lot of this music is not just in limited editions it is also of limited merit. The worst culprits are the so-called Noise and Drone artists, this is probably the easiest music to do badly and a lot of people are doing it very badly - however the best always rise to the surface and those with creativity, passion and something interesting to say will make their mark and get their music released on quality labels using professional formats – the rest can carry on releasing 200 CD-r’s a year in editions of anything from 3 to 15 units. You know who you a

Little Birds Of Lightening

2010-06-20T16:03:00.002+01:00

Walking through the midsummer woods I saw a small wren flitting from branch to branch, ticking noisily at my presence. Wrens nests are sometimes difficult to find and the best method of uncovering their hiding place is to watch the adults and mark where they fly. It wasn’t long before the wren that had been alarming so noisily at my presence flew towards the vertical root-plate of a large tree blown over in the winter storms. Here, amongst the tangle of roots and soil, the wren had built its nest of soft green moss, vibrant in the dull earth colours of the rocks and roots.

This small and unprepossessing bird has associations with kingship, magick and secret knowledge as it’s names in European languages indicate; Latin - Regulus; French - Reytelet; Welsh – Bren (king ) German - Koning Vogel (king-bird), Dutch – Konije (little king), Manx - Dreain, from druai dryw, the Druid's bird.

The wren was considered a "most sacred bird" and is called Drui-en or Druid bird in Gaelic.In Welsh the word Dryw means both druid and wren because the wren, is as the Druid, known to be cunning. It is said that the Druid's house was the wren's nest and that the wren's nest was protected by lightening. Whoever tried to steal wren's eggs or baby wrens would find their house struck by lightning and their hands would shrivel up. Lightning was the weapon of the thunder bull-god Taranis, who often inhabited oak trees, and the wren was sacred to Taranis.

It would be a sorry thing to be struck by lightening on midsummers eve in the woods not a mile from home so I left the wrens to their business and carried on with mine.

Hunts & Wars and the Age of Aquarius

2010-06-20T15:38:00.004+01:00

Known for their hyperbolic reviews small independent San Francisco store Aquarius Records has been a supporter of THB since the earliest days. Here's what they have to say about H&W...fucking shoegaze???

TENHORNEDBEAST Hunts & Wars (Cold Spring) cd 14.98 The return of UK based one man ritualistic doomdrone shamen Tenhornedbeast, and another collection of abject darkness, grim sonic mystery, folk flecked dronemusic and epic black ambience, and as in the past, things have definitely shifted during the extended period of silence between this new record and the last. The very first 10HB record we had heard, was recommended to us as "epic, sprawling primitive doom/drone" which at the time was all we needed to hear, and indeed, that's precisely what it was, but with each record, 10HB's sound mutated and morphed, into something new, not always super dramatic, more an ever evolving sonic darkness, definitely dronemusic, but not so much primitive, a more composed sort of doomy black ambience, a post industrial drift that definitely leaned more toward drone than doom, but also more toward industrial then metal, which makes sense that he's found a home on Cold Spring alongside Toroidh, Laibach, Nordvargr, Prurient, Von Thronstahl, Wicked King Wicker and the like.

And in fact, the first track here, the evocatively titled "Reaching For The Stars We Blind The Sky", finds the sound of Tenhornedbeast definitely moving even further in a sort of industrial direction. It begins like we would have expected, dark and mysterious, spaced out and shimmery, with keening high end drifts, underpinned by deep rumbles, muted downtuned guitar buzz, feedback, all the sounds gauzy and grey, until about halfway through the guitars begin to grind the riffs crumbling and distorted and the drums kick in, not a straight rhythm, and not really free either, a bit martial here and there, but they seem to wander and drift, stumbling through a bleak field of stretched out tones and layered streaks of howling feedback, slipping from minimal and spare to chaotic and aggressive and back again, a little bit doomy, but more like some blackened neo-folk.

A 12 minute jam that really could have stretched out to fill up the whole record. But instead, the rest of the disc drifts into deep, tranquil dronemusic, laced with birdsong and melancholic melodies drenched in reverb, downtuned bass thrum driven creeps, held aloft by skeletal percussion, and again swathed in blurred effects and layered drones, heavy sure, but more mesmerizing and trancelike, string laden neo-folk, with haunting slowed down samples and disembodied voices, clouds of cymbal shimmer, and grinding mechanical guitarscapes, with hypnotic machinelike rhythms, swirling minimal lullaby like interludes, and finally the 20 minute title track, slow glacial riffage pulled and stretched until the riffs becomes long layers of undulating low end, billowing distorted bass like some sort of sonic avalanche, everything washed out and almost shoegazey, instead of getting heavier and heavier, it gets more and more shimmery and fuzzy, booming gongs, swirling effects, all wound around a simple, downtuned bassline, a slowed down doomic anti-groove, that creeps and crawls and finally drifts into the ether. Gorgeous packaging, an exquisitely designed 6 panel digipack, all browns and golds and greys and metallic inks...

The Bird Of Night I

2010-06-13T14:30:00.002+01:00

The bones of woodmice and shrews lay white and bare among the leaves and stones at the top of the crag. The southern edge of this huge ancient woodland is dominated by a steep limestone outcrop that provides a vantage point from which to view the canopy of the oaks, elms and ashes below and beneath that the deep viridian woodland floor, which in early summer is carpetted with dogs mercury, wild garlic and ground elder. It is clear from the white relics among the leaves that this vantage point, a place to look down on the woodland below, is also used by owls.

Dozens of grey owl pellets lie amongs the rocky limestone clints and grikes. Thick and lumpy, misshape, vomited forth from the cruel mouths of predatory, nocturnal psychopomps. In many cultures of the world the owl is an omen of misdeeds and a herald of death. Not only is it a ruthlessly efficient hunter but its eerie, ululating call has that quality which tricks the human mind, so prone to seeking meaning and correspondance where none exists, into believing that it has heard the voice of some wraith or night-gaunt that shuns the day.

Throughout the history of mankind, the owl has featured significantly in mythology & folklore. Owls are one of the few birds that have been found in prehistoric cave paintings and they have been both revered & feared throughout from ancient to modern times, in Cameroon the owl has no name and is only referred to only as "the bird that makes you afraid. Romans saw owls as omens of impending disaster. Hearing an owl indicated an imminent death, the deaths of many eminent figures, including Julius Caesar, Augustus & Agrippa were reputedly preceded by the hoot of an owl, Shakespeare citing in Julius Cease, (Act 1 Scene 3) "And yesterday the bird of night did sit. Even at noon-day upon the market-place, Hooting and shrieking”

While the Greeks believed that sight of an owl predicted victory for their armies the Romans saw it as a sign of defeat. They believed that a dream of an owl could be an omen of shipwreck for sailors or an omen of being robbed. To ward off the evil caused by an owl it was believed that the offending owl should be killed & nailed to the door of the affected house, something one presumes was easier soothsayed than done.

The Bird Of Night II

2010-06-13T14:27:00.001+01:00

Native British beliefs about owls include the Welsh custom that if a owl is heard amongst houses then an unmarried girl has lost her virginity, or that if a pregnant woman hears an owl her child will be blessed. In Yorkshire owl broth is believed to cure whooping cough, which speaks to the barbarism and benighted state of the inhabitants of that county.

The peoples of ancient North West Europe that we label “Celts” had a close association with the earth, evident from their mythologies in which the gods dwelt around them and the landscape, sky and the elements were sacred. Birds feature in Celtic traditions as symbols of divinity and as servants and messengers of the gods and owls are believed to have played a more prominent role in early Celtic cults and could perhaps have derived from a more broadly based deity of a common Indo-European descent (the proto-Germanic word for Owl is “uwwalo”, which I had earmarked for a TenHornedBeast song title until I noticed Chet from Blood Of The Black Owl had got there first).

Predating the Greek cult of Athene, for whom the owl was an animal attribute, were images of these ominous birds in Celtic art. Owls are believed to be a sacred animal to the famed Cult of the Head and they are often depicted with human heads and in company with horned animals such as rams and bulls, all of which have are zoomorphs of the head cult. In modern Scottish and Welsh languages, the owl, by the etymology of the word alone carries negative connotations of death and darkness.

The most famous aboriginal British myth dealing with the owl is in the story of Bloudeuwedd, contained in the "The Mabinogion". Blodeuwedd was created from flowers by the magician Gwydion for the prince Llew Llaw Gyffes. She had an affair with Goronwy & they contrived to kill Llew. On his death, Llew was transformed into an eagle but was healed & returned to human form by Gwydion. Llew returned to seek revenge but rather than killing Blodeuwedd Gwydion turned her into a white owl, to haunt the night in loneliness & sorrow, saying "I will not slay thee, but I will do unto thee worse than that. For I will turn thee into a bird; and because of the shame thou hast done unto Llew Llaw Gyffes, you shall never show thy face in the light of day. And thou shall not lose thy name, but shall be always called Blodeuwedd."

An example of owl imagery in Celtic metal work are the handle fittings found on the famous cauldron discovered at Bra, Jutland, dating to the 3rd century B.C. The cauldron was found in a bog and was believed to have been a votive offering that was broken into pieces before being ceremonially deposited in the water. In the La Tène style it is adorned on the rim with five cast bulls heads and birds head attachments that held the three large iron rings. The front face of the flat semi-circular fitting bears a three-dimensional face of an owl that is constructed of several curved and circular shapes, with the large eyes and sharp beak standing out. Celtic scholars refer to the technique of creating hidden or suggestive faces out of designs as the "Cheshire Cat style" of ornamentation.

The Bird Of Night III

2010-06-13T14:21:00.002+01:00

An object of equal beauty to the Bra cauldron owl fitting is a jade mask carved by the people of the neolithic Hongshan culture of north eastern China, dated from approximately 4700 to 2900 BC. Hongshan jades includes many zoomorphic pieces with pigs, dragons, pig-dragon hybrids, cicades and birds being among the most common. Carved without the aid of the metal tools it is thought that Hongshan jade workers cut the rock using saws of animal sinew primed with sand and grit, drilled holes using pump drills with hard stone bits and polished the jade on river sands and silts.

The mask shows a sweeping, graceful symetry and striking, naturalistic propertions that speak of an artist intimately aware of the form and character of the animal. The jade itself is a deep green flecked with golden bands. Two small holes have been drilled into the piece at the top suggesting its use as mask in some form of ceremonial.

[ Those interested in the exquisite jades from the Hongshan culture are pointed in the direction of the excellent book “From Pig to Dragon and to the Collector - Appraising Neolithic Hongshan Jades” by Mr. Xu Qiang. (ISBN 978-7-80142-865-3/Z.436-08.2007 Hua Yi Publishing House, PRC) In his book Xu also makes reference to the apparent paradox of less than 300 Hongshan jades in official collections yet many more held by him and other private collectors. He explains that, in view of the number of Hongshan grave sites and the average number of jades found therein when tombs were still in pristine conditions, a much larger number of authentic Neolithic Hongshan jades are not impossible. Mr Xu’s explanations are translated into English, alas English of a risibly poor quality which does not always allow the reader to fully grasp the fine details which are probably revealed in the Chinese sections of the text. ]

Such a delicate and expressive object as the Hongshan owl mask is at odds with the inauspiscious character that Chinese folklore assigns to the bird. Traditionally the Chinese do not like the sound or hooting that the owl makes because in Chinese phonetic meaning it gives the expression for digging of a grave. One of the ancient Chinese beliefs was that when a person is about to die one would hear the Owl hoot calling out `dig and dig'.

The Mandarin word for owl uses the same character as “killing a person and placing his head on a pole” and another Chinese name for owl, "xiao", is used in expressions relating to ferocity and bravery. It was also believed that when the young of an owl was about to fledge the next it would dig out its mother's eyes or even eat their own mothers. Erroneous as this belief is owls are known to be violently territorial and to defend their nests against intruders, as the wildlife photographer Eric Hosking found out when he got too close to a tawny owl and paid with the loss of his eye.

As I sat amongst the bones of mice and looked out from the yew-burrowed rocks into the woodland below I wondered where the owl was that had left such ossuarys amongs the leaves. Tawny owls (Strixa aluco Sylvatica – “sylvatica” meaning woodland and denoting the subspecies found in Western Europe and the British Isles) usually roost on branches close to trunks, hidden from sight by both by their excellent camouflage and peoples aversion to sitting still and looking up. Of the countless times I have heard owl call I have seen them on the wing only a handful – and then only briefly as they flash past in the darkness, sometimes illuminated as the pass through clearings or trails.

Tawny Owls pair off from the age of one year and stay together in a usually monogamous relationship for life. An established pair's territory is defended year-round and maintained with little, if any, boundary change from year to year. This site may have been used to regorge pellets for generations. Owls may have sat on the yews that bristle on the crag since before people crossed the landbridge from continental Europe, their pellets decomposing to reveal the bleached bones of their kills, their cries a prescience of death to creatures that walk on two legs and on four.

The Moon And The Yew Tree - Sylvia Plath

2010-06-08T06:27:00.003+01:00

I recently visited the ancient woodland that runs from Hagg Wood to Yewbarrow, on the southern fringe of the Cumbrian hills. Massive, old and spectral yews cling to crumbling limestone cliffs and erupt from the shallow soil like a message of blackness. Deadly in their solitude. Sylvia Plath's poem captures the selenic mysteries of these ancient trees and this hidden stretch of woodland.

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue. The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place. Separated from my house by a row of headstones. I simply cannot see where there is to get to.

The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right, White as a knuckle and terribly upset. It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here. Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky ---- Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection At the end, they soberly bong out their names.

The yew tree points up, it has a Gothic shape. The eyes lift after it and find the moon. The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary. Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls. How I would like to believe in tenderness ---- The face of the effigy, gentled by candles, Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.

I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering Blue and mystical over the face of the stars Inside the church, the saints will all be blue, Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews, Their hands and faces stiff with holiness. The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild. And the message of the yew tree is blackness -- blackness and silence

PYRAMIDS:WVNDRKMMER

2010-06-04T00:19:00.003+01:00

In the spring of 2009 TenHornedBeast used source sounds provided by Pyramids to record a track for the WVNDRKMMER compilation project.

This track, titled "Secret Overlord", is now available on this lavish and genre defining release. 5 cassettes housed in a large format box with colour cover and black card slipcase with silver wax seal.

High Praise to Pyramids and Small Doses for making this dream a reality.

http://www.hydrahead.org/hh/pyramids_site/

http://www.small-doses.com/

Hunts & Waaaarrrgggghhhhhhs

2010-06-04T00:02:00.002+01:00

Never thought I'd see the day.

THE DAY OF THE POLL

2010-05-06T06:13:00.003+01:00

There are things that matter and things that are matterless. Dunsany, that writer who's words run like distilled reality through the minds of those who look beyond the fields we know, captured this beautifully in his short story "The Day Of The Poll". I am removed from politics; science has yet to invent an instrument sensitive enough to measure how little I care about these things so today, when those who would govern us ask us to place our heads in their snares, I shall be reading Lord Dunsany and thinking about what really matters.

The Day Of The Poll

In the town by the sea it was the day of the poll, and the poet regarded it sadly when he woke and saw the light of it coming in at his window between two small curtains of gauze. And the day of the poll was beautifully bright; stray bird-songs came to the poet at the window; the air was crisp and wintry, but it was the blaze of sunlight that had deceived the birds. He heard the sound of the sea that the moon led up the shore, dragging the months away over the pebbles and shingles and piling them up with the years where the worn-out centuries lay; he saw the majestic downs stand facing mightily south-wards; saw the smoke of the town float up to their heavenly faces--column after column rose calmly into the morning as house by house was waked by peering shafts of the sunlight and lit its fires for the day; column by column went up toward the serene downs' faces, and failed before they came there and hung all white over houses; and every one in the town was raving mad.

It was a strange thing that the poet did, for he hired the largest motor in the town and covered it with all the flags he could find, and set out to save an intelligence. And he presently found a man whose face was hot, who shouted that the time was not far distant when a candidate, whom he named, would be returned at the head of the poll by a thumping majority.

And by him the poet stopped and offered him a seat in the motor that was covered with flags. When the man saw the flags that were on the motor, and that it was the largest in the town, he got in. He said that his vote should be given for that fiscal system that had made us what we are, in order that the poor man's food should not be taxed to make the rich man richer. Or else it was that he would give his vote for that system of tariff reform which should unite us closer to our colonies with ties that should long endure, and give employment to all. But it was not to the polling-booth that the motor went, it passed it and left the town and came by a small white winding road to the very top of the downs. There the poet dismissed the car and let that wondering voter on to the grass and seated himself on a rug. And for long the voter talked of those imperial traditions that our forefathers had made for us and which he should uphold with his vote, or else it was of a people oppressed by a feudal system that was out of date and effete, and that should be ended or mended. But the poet pointed out to him small, distant, wandering ships on the sunlit strip of sea, and the birds far down below them, and the houses below the birds, with the little columns of smoke that could not find the downs.

And at first the voter cried for his polling-booth like a child; but after a while he grew calmer, save when faint bursts of cheering came twittering up to the downs, when the voter would cry out bitterly against the misgovernment of the Radical party, or else it was--I forget what the poet told me--he extolled its splendid record.

"See," said the poet, "these ancient beautiful things, the downs and the old-time houses and the morning, and the grey sea in the sunlight going mumbling round the world. And this is the place they have chosen to go mad in!"

And standing there with all broad England behind him, rolling northward, down after down, and before him the glittering sea too far for the sound of the roar of it, there seemed to the voter to grow less important the questions that troubled the town. Yet he was still angry.

"Why did you bring me here?" he said again.

"Because I grew lonely," said the poet, "when all the town went mad."

Then he pointed out to the voter some old bent thorns, and showed him the way that a wind had blown for a million years, coming up at dawn from the sea; and he told him of the storms that visit the ships, and their names and whence they come, and the currents they drive afield, and the way that the swallows go. And he spoke of the down where they sat, when the summer came, and the flowers that were not yet, and the different butterflies, and about the bats and the swifts, and the thoughts in the heart of man. He spoke of the aged windmill that stood on the down, and of how to children it seemed a strange old man who was only dead by day. And as he spoke, and as the sea-wind blew on that high and lonely place, there began to slip away from the voter's mind meaningless phrases that had crowded it long--thumping majority--victory in the fight—terminological inexactitudes--and the smell of paraffin lamps dangling in heated schoolrooms, and quotations taken from ancient speeches because the words were long. They fell away, though slowly, and slowly the voter saw a wider world and the wonder of the sea. And the afternoon wore on, and the winter evening came, and the night fell, and all black grew the sea, and about the time that the stars come blinking out to look upon our littleness, the polling-booth closed in the town.

When they got back the turmoil was on the wane in the streets; night hid the glare of the posters; and the tide, finding the noise abated and being at the flow, told an old tale that he had learned in his youth about the deeps of the sea, the same which he had told to coastwise ships that brought it to Babylon by the way of Euphrates before the doom of Troy.

I blame my friend the poet, however lonely he was, for preventing this man from registering his vote (the duty of every citizen); but perhaps it matters less, as it was a foregone conclusion, because the losing candidate, either through poverty or sheer madness, had neglected to subscribe to a single football club.

Hunts & Wars

2010-05-04T20:31:00.004+01:00

TenHornedBeast’s third album for Cold Spring Records is titled “Hunts & Wars”. Recorded over a three year period from 2006 to 2009 this album introduces subtle changes to the established TenHornedBeast sound with shorter delicate interludes separating longer tracks that rage with heavy distortion and doom-drone barbarism.

“Hunts & Wars” progresses the established TenHornedBeast sound using leaden, sub-tuned bass guitar to create rhythms and riffs that dominate a battlefield of vast ritual percussion and droning walls of electric dissonance, creating epic and expansive textures that by turns burn with frost and freeze with fire.

Heavily influenced by the oneiric visions of Robert E Howard and Lord Dunsany. ”Hunts & Wars” seeks to evoke the elemental, anti-modern fantasias of these writers and is presented in a lavish digipak designed by noted American graphic designer Kevin Yuen (Sunn 0))), Wolves In The Throne Room) to its full grotesque glory.

The days have come when the steel will rule. Titans arise, monuments fall. Ballads of victory and defeat are sung aloud as from the highest steps we are swept on to the eternal Hunts and Wars.

Track Listing:

1. Reaching For The Stars We Blind The Sky

2. Hilnaric

3. Father Of The Frosts

4. Ironborn

5. I Am The Spearhead

6. Cimmeria

7. Hunts & Wars

Released 7th May 2010 by Cold Spring Records. Available for pre-order now.

www.coldspring.co.uk