Baby Bear…

 

Carreg Coetan Arthur

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 Otherwise, ‘Arthur’s Quoit.’

Of which there are a goodly number dotted about our Blessed Isles.

Which makes me wonder…

It is hard not to regard this Arthur as a giant too.

And indeed the folk record cares little whether it be a giant, or a king, or a saint who is responsible for placing the stones, only that their provenance be marked, and their links not forgotten.

The link at our previous site was with an isle and maybe if one were to sail from the isle to the mainland it would be useful to keep the stones, or the mound in sight. And if they couldn’t be seen it might have been unwise to set out at all…

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The link at this one  is with the setting sun on the now obscured horizon.

Now, a quoit is a ring thrown over an upright in the game which, like a lot of games, employs distinctly coital symbolism.

It would be easy to re-construct the ring, perhaps, the earthen mound covering the chamber would only need to have been circular in shape.

But the ‘upright’ might be more difficult…

Unless it were a beam of light?

Such a notion is certainly counter intuitive but it may widen our notions of being up-standing.

We begin to wish we had paid more attention to the ray diagrams of our youth and those interminable physics lessons.

Fortunately, someone else has already done the maths, although quite how is still something of a mystery, to us at least.

According to the estimable Mr Robin Heath, the midsummer sun set of 2800 BC would cast its light through the ‘v’ at what he calls the back of the monument but which we may want to call the front.

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One  has to wonder about a culture concerned enough about its environs to construct such a burial chamber.

A crucible for the last rays of the summer sun.

May it be that the structure was a calendrical instrument long before it was a tomb and that the bones eventually placed in its midst were once those of people connected to its construction and or continued employment?

When appropriate we still sometimes bury the tools of someone’s life long trade, or rather service, with ‘them’.

Such notions have  wide ranging ramifications for recent theories of psychological crystallisation, but that is another story…

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This being such a small portal there was little enough room for the reader so the Companions gathered around the periphery for another recital of the ‘…Prayer’.

The reading caused shivers which, given the designation we had somewhat irreverently foisted upon the structure, seemed curiously apt.

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