Sep 11, 2011, 12:43
Selsley Common is a typical outdoor space around here.
Apparently, when the last glaciers so many thousands of years ago were, er, glaciating, they flowed around areas of harder rock, with the result of nowadays having the River Severn Vale dropping several hundred feet beneath the limestone scarps of the Cotswolds.
Where I live, at the edge of the Cotswolds as the Severn Vale's alluvial plain lies between here and the distant Forest of Dean, is thus punctuated by several hills risng straight out of the plain. Standing here with me now, looking west, we are on one of these limestone hills, each of which has its little microflora and fauna...Doverow Hill in front of us(behind which is Castle Zig, as I call my home when I'm on Shuttertalk) is another.
Imagine these hills, then, standing out of the landscape over the few thousand years of human inhabitation, unchanged save for stone and iron being open-mined from them...their present names similarly rise through the strata of languages spoken by successive waves of immigrés, so that it is possible to hear some of the names given to these hills from 5,000 years ago poking through the overlays of modern tongues...
For instance, a hill near me is called Maidenhill...which is an echo that comes from way back beneath Middle English, beneath the French Normans, beneath the Scandinavian Vikings, beneath the Anglo-Saxon, beneath even the Latin of the Roman occupation: the P-Celtic mai dun, or, the fort on the hill(roughly). Out of shot to the left is a village around a hill called Uley. Uley lies in a bend in the hill system, almost like in the crook of one's elbow: now, in Q-Celtic, the Celtic tongue that even pre-dates Old Welsh and which is the basis of spoken Irish or Gaelic, there is a word uille, which means "elbow". So Irish have their uilleann pipes, so named because their bags are driven by elbow power...like the later bagpipes which are mechanically similar...indeed, we can even hear the very word in our Modern English elbow. Q-Celtic would have been spoken at a guess perhaps way further back than the Iron Age, perhaps even the Bronze Age......Imagine that, names of local hills being essentially unchanged since a thousand years plus, before Christ was born... So, all these hills round here, with seemingly "English" names such as Doverow, Churchdown, Cleeve, Belas Knapp, Selsley, Cam, Uley Bury, have echoes of the languages spoken by those who built the barrows and passage-graves that even today are clearly visible.
And so I wondered how many uncounted thousands of people over uncounted thousands of years have sat up on these hills, facing the far horizon in the westering light, wondering about the passing of life, where the sun goes to once it dips below the horizon, gazing down from a pensive height to look at the small specks of humans and cattle in the fields....
This hill from where I'm taking these shots is still such a place: families with toddlers or old 'uns; courting couples, people nowadays flying kites or showing off by hang-gliding. Some walk their dogs, briskly striding along the sheep-paths and throwing a stick or ball which the dog carries with a possessive and cheeky grin; some merely sit silently in their cars without even getting out of them, listening to Radio 4 and ruminating, staring at the horizon as if it's a TV channel they can't be bothered to switch over...
...and some choose a spot to sit, and just sit, and keep on sitting, lost in a world between within and without, or tracking the clouds and seeing castles, doggies and clowns' faces...and all the while a skylark twittering away, cascading a song from heights unseen.
This old couple for instance: I do hope by the Grace and mercy of God that one day I will be married, and that in the latter years will do as this couple do, to sit and speak a language that has become so refined and love-grown that in special moments, uttered words would never quite convey what unspoken ones might.
So captivated I was by this couple, that I approached them from several angles merely to photograph them; they were as insouciant as teenegers throughout... In fact, even after I'd wandered off, sat for a while, wandered again, and finally sighed my way to my car, they were still there, as was the song of the skylark...so I wondered if the real essence of the two of them was off and away somewhere, singing and cascading in heights unseen...
So, here is my short journey around them and a picture, in half-pictures and as through a glass darkly for certain, of the physical representation of where their eartly eyes were pointed, at any rate!
Apparently, when the last glaciers so many thousands of years ago were, er, glaciating, they flowed around areas of harder rock, with the result of nowadays having the River Severn Vale dropping several hundred feet beneath the limestone scarps of the Cotswolds.
Where I live, at the edge of the Cotswolds as the Severn Vale's alluvial plain lies between here and the distant Forest of Dean, is thus punctuated by several hills risng straight out of the plain. Standing here with me now, looking west, we are on one of these limestone hills, each of which has its little microflora and fauna...Doverow Hill in front of us(behind which is Castle Zig, as I call my home when I'm on Shuttertalk) is another.
Imagine these hills, then, standing out of the landscape over the few thousand years of human inhabitation, unchanged save for stone and iron being open-mined from them...their present names similarly rise through the strata of languages spoken by successive waves of immigrés, so that it is possible to hear some of the names given to these hills from 5,000 years ago poking through the overlays of modern tongues...
For instance, a hill near me is called Maidenhill...which is an echo that comes from way back beneath Middle English, beneath the French Normans, beneath the Scandinavian Vikings, beneath the Anglo-Saxon, beneath even the Latin of the Roman occupation: the P-Celtic mai dun, or, the fort on the hill(roughly). Out of shot to the left is a village around a hill called Uley. Uley lies in a bend in the hill system, almost like in the crook of one's elbow: now, in Q-Celtic, the Celtic tongue that even pre-dates Old Welsh and which is the basis of spoken Irish or Gaelic, there is a word uille, which means "elbow". So Irish have their uilleann pipes, so named because their bags are driven by elbow power...like the later bagpipes which are mechanically similar...indeed, we can even hear the very word in our Modern English elbow. Q-Celtic would have been spoken at a guess perhaps way further back than the Iron Age, perhaps even the Bronze Age......Imagine that, names of local hills being essentially unchanged since a thousand years plus, before Christ was born... So, all these hills round here, with seemingly "English" names such as Doverow, Churchdown, Cleeve, Belas Knapp, Selsley, Cam, Uley Bury, have echoes of the languages spoken by those who built the barrows and passage-graves that even today are clearly visible.
And so I wondered how many uncounted thousands of people over uncounted thousands of years have sat up on these hills, facing the far horizon in the westering light, wondering about the passing of life, where the sun goes to once it dips below the horizon, gazing down from a pensive height to look at the small specks of humans and cattle in the fields....
This hill from where I'm taking these shots is still such a place: families with toddlers or old 'uns; courting couples, people nowadays flying kites or showing off by hang-gliding. Some walk their dogs, briskly striding along the sheep-paths and throwing a stick or ball which the dog carries with a possessive and cheeky grin; some merely sit silently in their cars without even getting out of them, listening to Radio 4 and ruminating, staring at the horizon as if it's a TV channel they can't be bothered to switch over...
...and some choose a spot to sit, and just sit, and keep on sitting, lost in a world between within and without, or tracking the clouds and seeing castles, doggies and clowns' faces...and all the while a skylark twittering away, cascading a song from heights unseen.
This old couple for instance: I do hope by the Grace and mercy of God that one day I will be married, and that in the latter years will do as this couple do, to sit and speak a language that has become so refined and love-grown that in special moments, uttered words would never quite convey what unspoken ones might.
So captivated I was by this couple, that I approached them from several angles merely to photograph them; they were as insouciant as teenegers throughout... In fact, even after I'd wandered off, sat for a while, wandered again, and finally sighed my way to my car, they were still there, as was the song of the skylark...so I wondered if the real essence of the two of them was off and away somewhere, singing and cascading in heights unseen...
So, here is my short journey around them and a picture, in half-pictures and as through a glass darkly for certain, of the physical representation of where their eartly eyes were pointed, at any rate!