Spirits of Severn

Michael Dames

Description

The River Severn is Britain's longest natural waterway. It rises in mid-Wales, where it is known as the Hafren. Both these names stem from that of a river goddess, known since prehistoric times as Sabrina. To stop anywhere along Sabrina's course, or on either side of her beautiful estuary, is to risk becoming absorbed and transfixed by her ever-moving, yet timelessly repetitive progress. Throw a net across Sabrina, from side to side, and you might catch a fish, but the body of her stream will pass straight through the mesh. Can words possibly convey the elusive majesty of her current, or adequately describe its multi-stranded sacred story? In Spirits of Severn, artist and mythographer Michael Dames - whose acclaimed work includes The Silbury Treasure, The Avebury Cycle and Mythic Ireland - brings the river's illusive legacy to the surface, while tracing her progress from her pair of sources to the furthest tips of her Mor Hafren estuary.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• Folclore
• Folklore

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Date de parution: 12 décembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528962575
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Spirits of Severn
Michael Dames
Austin Macauley Publishers
2019-12-12
Spirits of Severn About the Author Dedication Copyright Information © Acknowledgements Abbreviations used in this book The Pumlumon Sources Holy Cow Ordovician Era Living Mountain The Indo-European connection Centring Welsh canol Pumlumon as a World Mountain Bogs The Severn’s source Animals Barrows Clywedog’s May Day Voices River maiden May Day Cuckoo Flora Hafodty Sheep Outflow Llanidloes and Lady Jeffrey Pagan Powys The Fleece The Dee Cauldron Regarding River Water Imagined towns, Caersws and Uriconium Uriconium Fords Dolforwyn Prehistoric ritual sites Severn and Dee Sabrinas, Real and Imagined Sabrina in Shrewsbury Milton’s ‘purified’ Sabrina Darwin’s Life Stream Sabrina Life Homo Industrialis Rationalising the Severn Elgar’s River Music Happy Valley Blessed Virgin Mary Vale Devils, Dragons and Fairies Devil, Dragon, and Fairies Fairy Underworld Fairies in river, farm, and home Earthed Hetty Pegler’s Tump Chambered Barrow Outlook Work, Belief and Play Marginal Farming Pagan Bucket and Font Hwicce Beliefs Cheese Rolling Pantheism Rescuing Mabon The Salmon of Llyn Lliw Rescuing Mabon Alney Island Maisemore Eidoel’s Idols Mabon as Son of Mellt Folk Participants The Severn Bore The bore god, Nodens Nodens at Lydney Park The Bore and Llyn Lliw Forest of Dean Aust and the Mythic Pigs Sacred Aust Moon Deity Henwen’s Birth Acts Gray Hill Coll, son of Collfrewy Aust Hill Again Twrch Trwyth Llyr Llediaith Twrch’s Return Journey The Old Crossing The 1966 Severn Bridge Nuclear and Tidal Power Hinkley Point Coastal Barrages and Electric Waters River and Estuary Poets Ivor Gurney Alice Oswald Wordsworth Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner Ends and Beginnings Estuary Islands Lady Ada Estuary endings Sacred Fish World River Water Bibliography Index
About the Author
Born in 1938, Michael Dames was educated at Aylesbury Grammar School and Birmingham University.
He worked in education for much of his career, teaching both Art and History of Art. Between 1976 and 1981 he was Rochdale’s Town Artist. He has had one-man exhibitions of his art works in Rochdale, Hull, Manchester, Oxford, Droitwich, Northwich, and London.
In 1976, he began a long-term investigation of the mythography of the West of England, Wales and Ireland with The Silbury Treasure (Thames and Hudson, 1976; reprinted 2004) and The Avebury Cycle the following year (Thames and Hudson, 1977; 2nd edition 1992). Both books are now regarded as classics of the genre.
Since 1990, he has dedicated himself to writing full-time. His books include: Mythic Ireland (Thames and Hudson, 1992); Ireland, a Sacred Journey (Element Books, 2000); Merlin and Wales (Thames and Hudson, 2002); Taliesin’s Travels (Heart of Albion Press, 2006); Silbury, Resolving the Enigma (The History Press, 2010); Pagans Progress (Strange Attractor Press, 2017).
Dedication
This book is dedicated to my beloved, ever helpful wife.
Copyright Information ©
Michael Dames (2019)
The right of Michael Dames to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The publisher and author of this book have made every effort to trace copyright holders for the use of material still in copyright. The publisher apologises for any omissions that still remain and would be grateful to be notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or new editions of this book.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528919128 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528962575 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2019)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd.
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to acknowledge the substantial help given to him by countless librarians in Wales and in England, and by many members of the public, whose names he does not know, in both countries.

Abbreviations used in this book
ANT Antiquity
AA Archeologia Aelinia
AC Archaeologia Cambrensis
ARCH. J. Archaeological Journal
BAJ Berkshire Archaeological Journal
BAS Birmingham Archaeological Society
BAR British Archaeological Reports
BMQ British Museum Quarterly
CA Current Archaeology
ER Encyclopedia of Religion
FL Folklore
ITS Irish Texts Society
JA Journal of Archaeology
OED Oxford English Dictionary
PRIA Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy
RC Review Celtique
TBGAS Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucester Archaeological Society
VCH Victoria County History
WAM Wiltshire Archaeological Magazine
YGM Y Geiriadur Mawr: The Complete Welsh-English Dictionary
CHAPTER ONE
The Pumlumon Sources

Holy Cow
Britain’s longest river, the 220-mile Severn, rises at 2,000 feet above the sea, from beneath a ridge, named in Welsh Fuwch-wen-a-llo , ‘the white cow and calf’, after a pair of quartz-rich white rocks, deposited here by an ice sheet, 14,000 years ago. They were recognised as the primordial ‘white cow and her calf’. (In Welsh, wen , ‘white’, also means ‘holy’.) Thanks to a deep fissure in her head, the white cow-boulder seems to smile perpetually at her calf. 1 No wonder that ‘eloquent poets’ have descanted upon this pair’, as Thomas Harper affirmed in the 17th century. The ridge on which they are sited stands in the Pumlumon mountainous region of mid-Wales.
On this Welsh outpost of widespread Indo-European languages and beliefs, the cow was regarded as a holy milk-giving epitome of nourishing motherhood. 2 The Severn’s ‘cow rocks’ that overlook the Severn’s main source offer a distant echo of Hindu Indian beliefs, in which the white cow provides a home for all the gods. Along with Brahma, the father of the entire Hindu pantheon, they all nestle inside her. Consequently the white cow was seen as the source of prosperity across two continents. 3 Accordingly, the mighty River Severn, engendered by the white cow, emerges from beneath the ridge named in its honour, to become home to the goddess Sabrina, whose name is said to have derived from the Sanskrit word sab ,
‘milk’, according to E. Eckwall, a place-name expert. 4 After spurting from
the White Cow, the sab in Sabrina’s name secures the sanctity of all her water downstream. 5 Thus imbued with life-giving divinity, thanks to her internationally valid passport, our river was given a good start. Her spirit and substance were combined from the outset.

Yr Fuwch Wen a’r Llo , ‘the White Cow and Calf’ stones. This pair of glacially deposited quartz boulders describe a smiling cow over 6 feet
(1.8m) tall, gazing at her calf. She is ‘ Ceridwen ’, the ‘dear white one’, an Otherworld creature, adored in Celtic myth. Together, as omens of supernatural prosperity, they stand on, and give their names to the ridge from which the Severn emerges.

Despite receiving heavy rainfall, the Pumlumon district of mid-Wales was often termed ‘The Welsh Desert’ by travellers, due to its lack of
permanent inhabitants and dwellings. Today, a Forestry Commission
plantation covers some of the lower slopes, as seen in the foreground of this photograph.
In Ireland, Boand, the cow deity who gave birth to the river Boyne was originally named Bou-vinda, the ‘Cow-white goddess’. 6 In ancient Sanskrit, the magic cow was sometimes known as Sabana, ‘the spotted cow of plenty’, alias Kamadhenu, who was often depicted as having a woman’s head and breasts, combined with her cow’s teat-rich body. 7
The boundary between Sabrina and her mythic cow is as fluid as milk. She can become it, and it may double as her, since mythic and practical truths tend to merge. Until the mid-19th century AD, large herds of white cattle were annually driven on foot from Pembrokeshire and other parts of Wales, to feed along the pastures of the Severn Valley, before their arrival in the London market. 8
Following Celtic nomenclature, Sabrina, as a river deity, was acknowledged by the Classical writers Tacitus and Ptolemy. 9 In doing so, they were following the chief feature of Roman religion, the belief that all important processes in the world were divinely activated, with different gods being in charge of particular functions and spheres of activity. Roman religion was concerned with procuring health and happiness by winning the cooperation of the gods. This pax deorum , ‘peace of the gods’, was also sought through the religious founding of the cities established along Sabrina’s course, as vividly described in A. E. Truman’s Geology and Scenery of England and Wales . 10
Even in modern times, Sabrina reappears in several sculpted images, and in the names of bridges thrown across her river. 11 Thus the supernatural spirit of our longest natural waterway is widely recalled, while her fruitful estuary, and the Bristol Channel remains Mor Hafren , in Welsh where Hafren is derived from Welsh haf , ‘summer’, the season of abundance, and its sea laps onto both the Welsh and the English shores.
In Welsh, as in Irish folklore, the white cow functioned as the Bos Primigenius , the supernatural maternal beast. 12 She took care of her people and symbolised the divine bounty of more than one river valley. In Wales, her connection with water is emphasised by the legend of Llyn Barfog, close to Aberdovey, in Gwynedd. There, often at dusk, some green-clad elfin women would appear with a herd of milk-white cattle. A farmer captured one of these animals. It yielded him amazing quantities of butter and cheese. However, when he fattened the beast prior to its s