[Aik Haw]

kater:-
Welsh culture predated the Romans????? How old exactly is your civilisation? Or are you like the Chinese discovering the harder you look, the older you get? The Chinese has realised to our surprising pleasure recently that our suspicion that we are actually 8000 years old, not 6000 years as our more sceptical scholars in the fifth century BC dated us based upon the assumption that the first city was build during the first standardisation of language, has been archaeologically proven!! This makes us radically older than either the Egyptians or the Mesopotamians or the Indians, and also the only continous culture from that time period :)!! What more, it seems that very advanced technology closer to what you will have in the 1500AD was used in some of the carvings and architecture as well as metallurgy. This indicates that technology such as the forge, the drills etc.. were discovered at a far earlier age and perfected. Only later did the knowledge faded.

The only side problem is that the combined archaeological team that made this discovery are absolutely silent about another disturbing discovery they made on the Anshi site. The Chinese government is surprisingly mute on this new discovery too, which according to mass rumours, had the Dept. of Science and Techno. and government engineers and scientist scrambling. The government announced that it will be made public only after they are 100% sure. I suspect it must be one of the oldest and most fragile forge. Most other people are falling into blissful superstition saying that it is one of the Great Ships!!

Anyway, will post one of the many stories on the legendary Anshi site later tonight or tomorrow. And yes, it had the many stories of the Great Ships/Boats/Chariots, whatever you call them.

[Aik Haw]

In the city of Anshi, there once lived a man called Bountiful. Bountiful was an assistant armourer to the City Council. Every morning, he goes to work and by nightfall, returns back home to take care of his two aging parents.

Now, both his parents were inherently ungrateful beings. For all the wealth their son brings home, they would compare it with the likes of people beyond their league. They would constantly berate Bountiful for being unfilial for not being at home all day to look after them but at the same time berate him for not going out to improve the family's financial standing.

After his parents sleep at night, Bountiful would sneak out of the house and ride his magic disc over to the nearby plain as he watches the Great Ships rise and descend from the sky. Everyday, he sighs, wishing one day to have the oppurtunity to once again tread the heavenly path his ancestors once strode.

Then one day, while forging an armour of great toughness, a shadow fell upon him. Looking up, his eyes were caught by the form of a slender woman wearing the dress of the Celestial Lords. His heart trembled as his knees weakened. When the woman asked him a question, all he could hear was a deep melodic hum. Even the air around the woman seemed to be hazy with effervescence.

In short, Bountiful fell madly, deeply, in love.

And lucky for him, unlike the plight of most of us modern man, she fell instantly in love with him too.

That night, they walked the streets of Anshi, as the woman walked through the parks and pavillion and admired the beauty of Earth, while Bountiful watched the heavens.

As the sun rose, the woman told Bountiful that she is the daughter of one of the Celestial Counts, and she has to return in three days time. As they parted, she gave Bountiful a device that would open the doors to her Great Ship, telling him to meet her on sundown by day two. Saying thus, she disappeared.

Bountiful's parents were infuriated that their son disappeared for one night and were even angrier that he chose to love a girl not of their choosing. That day, they match maked him with a village girl whose face could scare the bees away.

Bountiful was torn in his heart. On one hand, there lies a woman of his dream. On the other, his parents despite their horridness were aging and no one in town wanted to care for them due to their nature.

On day three, his eyes watching the Great Ship ascending to the sky, his heart sinking as the Great Ship send white fire streaking across the heavens, Bountiful kowtowed before his parents as he married the bride of their choice.

[kater]

Originally posted by Aik Haw
kater:-
Welsh culture predated the Romans????? How old exactly is your civilisation?

Wales as a nation/principality is a more recent creation - around the C7th but the celtic people predate what you know as the 'English' in the British Isles by several centuries. When the romans invaded Britain they took most of what is modern-day England but could not make a segway into what is now 'Wales' and thus really had no stable platform to attempt to conquer 'Ireland'. Suffice to say historians are still unsure and thus unwilling to put specifics to a celtic/welsh civilisation but consider that stonehenge was built by the celts and existed well before people even began to consider it as anything other than an odd rock formation in the C5th and C6th - legend has it that King Arthur and Merlin built it, but nothing can truly be known.

[Aik Haw]

Isn't the birthplace of King Arthur still standing over in Wales kater? I really intend one day to visit the birthplace of this legendary being. Should've made a detour into Wales when I had a chance except I got attracted instead by this tour asking us to go to Wiltshire.

I remember while in Cornwall seeing this very strange looking rock carving. It looks so.....unRoman, unEnglish....and looks very very old....and quite scary....and very strangely is not in a museum but in someone's farm near the Eden Project. A horse rider no older than me told me it predates the Romans though she do not have a clue where it comes from.

[kater]

There are quite a few of those all around Britain - there's one on an embankment by the motorway on the way into the town I live in, there's also an immensely old cairn that attracted archaelogical interest about a decade ago when it was partially dug up by a JCB. King Arthur's grave is a hotly contested location, there are so many different villages - even ones in England that have been claiming it for years.

[Hereford Eye]

One summer evening, a little after sundown, a coyote trotting across the plain put his foot down on a tuft of grass wherein a cricket was singing: “Sereno en aquellos campos”* The cricket jumped from the tuft and cried, “But, Brother Coyote, why are you destroying my palace?”
“I really did not know you lived here until you exposed yourself,” the coyote replied.
“You are crude and you insult me," the cricket said. He was ready to spring away.
“Insult you1” the coyote jeered. “Why, you dwarf, I am merely seeking my living and now that I have you, I am going to eat you up. I had rather have a red watermelon or a fat kid but I eat a cricket when it’s handy. Maybe you will fill the hollow in one of my wisdom teeth.”
“But, Brother Coyote,” the cricket said, now in his soothing way, “it is not fair.”
The coyote sat down on the carpet of grass. “Brother Cricket,” he said, “you know that when nature offers itself, it is fair for nature to accept.”
“But, Brother Coyote, you haven’t given me a chance.”
“Chance?” exclaimed the coyote. “Why, what sort of chance do you expect?”
“I want to fight a duel,” the cricket said.
“You fight a duel with me?” And the coyote laughed.
“Yes, fight a duel with you,” the cricket replied. “If I win, then my song will go on. If you win then I’ll fill the hollow in one of your respectable teeth.”
The coyote looked off away across the plain and saw a crow flying down in play at the waving tail of a spotted skunk. “Well,” he said, “perhaps the people need a comedy. All right, we’ll have your duel, Brother Cricket. Now, I sit here trembling at the sight of your weapons and your armor. Go ahead and name your terms.”
It is agreed,” the cricket began, “you go and get your army and I shall raise my army. When the sun is straight up tomorrow you have your army on the crest above the Tank of the Cows. I shall have my army in the thicket next to the Tank of Cows. On the hour, we shall be ready to engage.
That night, in his song, the Coyote summoned his forces, the Lobo, the badger, the panther of the rimrock, the wildcat of the chaparral, the coon, the possum, the sharp fox, and the other animals with fang and claw.
Long before noon, General Coyote’s army assembled on the prairie above the water tank. General Coyote trotted about, this way and that, smelling and listening. The sun stood straight up and still he could not see General Cricket’s army. Finally he called on the fox to scout out the position of the enemy.
With his long nose pointed forward, his ears already erect and alert, his eyes peeled, the fox trotted down the draw, General Coyote watching him. Just as he pointed his snout into a clump of whitebrush to see and smell more closely, General Cricket order a battalion of black hornets to assault him.
They did, all at once. They stuck their stingers in his ears, into the corner of his eyes, into his nostrils, into his flanks, into every spot of his body where hair is short and skin is tender. The fox snapped and pitched but just for a minute. He turned seventeen somersaults on the ground and the black hornets came thicker. Then, the poor fox streaked for the tank of water diving into to escape his attackers. Almost immediately he came back up, sticking his long snout out of the water, crying at the top of his voice: "General Coyote, retreat! The enemy are upon us!”
General Cricket had already ordered the yellow jackets to attack the army of giants on the prairie and the war cries of the bumblebee were in the air.
“Retreat!” the fox shrieked again.
General Coyote tucked his tail between his legs and retreated and every soldier in his army tucked his tail and retreated – all except the bobcat. He retreated without tucking his tail.
That is how General Cricket won the duel with General Coyote. Thus, a person should always avoid being vainglorious and considering himself shrewder than he is. He may be outwitted by his own vanity.


The Voice of the Coyote, J. Frank Dobie * "peacefully in those fields"