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| Silbury
Archive 1990 |
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 Silbury Hill news, views and archive brought to you by Weird Wiltshire Introduction Latest News News Archive Excavations The Hole Beaker People What is it for? What Next? Postcards Forum Wallpaper Links 
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First published on August 9, 1990 The ancient Celtic festival of Lammas took place this week and Lynda Fleming spent a night on Silbury Hill to help celebrate. THERE was only a handful of us on the top of Silbury Hill to mark the festival of Lammas or First Fruits. Two hundred years ago the man-made mound would have been covered in families feasting on figs and celebrating the bringing in of the harvest. Now only a few individuals are conscious that what they buy in the Co-op is directly related to the cycle of the seasons. Even fewer have heard of Lammas. I was not sure what I was supposed to be doing on Silbury Hill on Sunday night or how I was supposed to feel but I hoped to recapture some of the lost awareness of the seasons. I looked to the others for guidance. There was a fey woman with a shawl over her head sitting among the corn looking self consciously spiritual. A middle-aged woman and her companion huddled together against the wind, in a pile of blankets. Between discussing Tarot readings, they were hooting with mirth and having too good a time for me to interrupt but they did seem to be there to celebrate. Then there was a group of young men speaking a language totally foreign to me. I turned my attention to the natural world. We were waiting for the sun to go down and the full moon to rise and travel round the southern side of the hill. We were all lying flat on the ground protected from the wind and the eyes of English Heritage which has prohibited access to the hill because of erosion. Our position afforded a bird's eye view of the rolling green and gold landscape and the cloudless blue sky. Day trippers were peering at five corn circles in a nearby field. I thought the circles were probably created by the aliens with the difficult language. The sun was taking a long time to set but the wind raged unabated. Tentatively, a patently non-aggressive New Man and his partner appeared and erected a video camera facing the setting sun. As the sun was finally going down something set up a regular high-pitched noise behind me. I cursed the omnipresence of what I took to be computerised equipment. When I looked round, however, the woman was walking in circles, lightly touching together two small symbals. I was acutely embarrassed a couple of families in tee-shirts and shorts had appeared with the alien young man and I didn't want to be thought as weird as her. Suddenly, however, Nature took over and cut through all the play-acting. At the very moment when the sun sank below the horizon and turned the few clouds crimson, the moon rose. There was a timeless pause before I was again conscious of the cymbals, sounds, appropriately creepy now. The mother of one of the newly-arrived families took her wide-eyed offspring aside. She bawled: "These people are pagans. Some people still do that sort of thing, you know." The New Man smiled to himself as he began to plait a corn dolly. Back to 1990 index |
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