Tourist trinkets, Roman-style

Copyright Dominic Coyne (see details below)

See this lovely thing? It’s quite small – 47mm high and 94mm in diameter – but simply glorious. The colours are vivid shades of red, blue, turquoise and yellow, enamelled in a swirling native ‘celtic’ design of roundels, petals, and what the British Museum cutely call, ‘whirligigs’. The metal encasing the enamel is a copper alloy, so it would originally have been a lustrous reddish-gold shade. It’s actually more like a pan than a bowl as it would originally have had a dinky bow-shaped handle. And it’s about 1850 years old.

It was found by a metal detectorist in Staffordshire in 2003, but experts believe that it was made here in Cumbria as a very early visitor souvenir. The writing near the rim is in Latin and says,

The genius cucullatus, or the Original Hoodie

Genius Cucullatus from Tullie House

Picture time! See this fella? He’s a genius cucullatus, to give him his Latin name, but whether he was a Roman import or a native, his original owner wouldn’t have called him that. Genius cucullatus just means, ‘spirit in a hood’. This one, which was found at Birdoswald on Hadrian’s Wall, is the only one in Britain which is a single standing statue. They’re usually carved in relief on a flat stone, and in Britain, they are often depicted in groups of three.I wish it was simple matter to tell you what he represents, but that’s not possible. He’s often linked with

Here come the girls… a 3rdc ‘Celtic’ head

Pottery female head, Tullie House, Carlisle

I’m sorry to say I really do only have time for the picture, not the story, this time but I wanted you all to know I’m still here! This female head is pottery and was probably on a jug handle. It dates to the 3rd century CE, and was found at Burgh-by-Sands. Good, eh?

She is on display at Carlisle’s Tullie House Museum alongside some other heads that are just as interesting but not as female. Go on, pay them a visit.

© Diane McIlmoyle

PS. I had permission to take this photo!

The Bewcastle Cauldron

Here’s a picture I thought you might be interested in. It’s the Bewcastle Cauldron, and it’s in Tullie House Museum in Carlisle.

Bewcastle Cauldron, Tullie House, Carlisle

I wish I’d had a ruler on me for scale when I took the picture – it’s enormous! – certainly big enough to hide a couple of six-year-olds.

Cocidius, the Cumbrian god

Cocidius altar, Tullie House, Carlisle

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that there were people here before the Romans. But they were here, leaving echoes of their lives and beliefs through place names, 5,800-year-old tools and 2,000-year-old weapons. When the Romans first encountered us 2,000 years ago, they wrote down some of the things they discovered. They said that there was a people in northern Cumbria called the Carvetii, ‘the deer people’, who were a sub-group of a large northern tribe called the Brigantes – at least that’s what the Romans called them; we don’t know what

Eveling, Cumbria’s faery king and Celtic god

I can’t honestly say my Cumbrian grandparents ever mentioned faeries. And yet, when I look into Cumbrian History & Folklore, I find them all the time. Normally they’re a clue to a history that has faded from popular memory; faery processions at crossroads and over mountains, treading routes to ancient burial grounds, and Bronze Age barrows that turn into faery halls.

Walls Castle,Ravenglass Copyright Mick Knapton

The coastal village of Ravenglass is pre-eminent amongst these with its claim to be home of Eveling, King of the Faeries. He lives in the ruins of the Roman castle of Glanoventa (Walls Castle) – complete with luxurious indoor plumbing – with his daughter, Modron. His rath or fort is at Mediobogdum, the ruins of a Roman fort located on the hair-raising Hardknott Pass between Eskdale and the central Lake District.

The Crosby Garret Roman Helmet – The One That Got Away

In May 2010,  a metal detectorist from Peterlee in the northeast of England was in a field near Crosby Garrett in the Eden Valley  in Cumbria. He found 68 pieces of folded metal, carefully placed on a face-shaped mask.

Crosby Garrett Helmet at the sale (Flickr)

At first, the detectorist had no idea what he’d found. He’d discovered a handful of Roman coins on the site before – not too surprising given that the field is close to a Roman road – but there was no official record of previous habitation thereabouts¹. The detectorist decided that the metal pieces were some sort of Victorian ornament.

Luguwalos: Carlisle’s ancient roots

Regular readers with be getting major deja-vu here! I’m afraid this post had been mashed in WordPress’s cogs for a while and hence invisible.  But it’s back…

It’s always struck me as odd that the only people who know about our native British gods are either specialist academic historians or wearing a pentacle (or indeed, both). Even those of us in Cumbria who live and work alongside the evidence – as we’ve already seen with Eveling/Afallach of Ravenglass – don’t know about them.

Carlisle Castle copyright Neil Boothman

Well, here’s another one. Carlisle’s oldest-known names are Luguwalos (‘strength of Lugus’) and Luguvalium (‘walled town of Lugus’). Without boring you with the minutiae of how languages evolve and pronunciations change, we go through Caer Liwelyd¹  (‘Fort of Lugus’), Caer Ligualid² (‘Fort of Lugus’), and Caer Luel³ (‘Fort of Lugus’), to end up with ‘Carlisle’. Lugus is mentioned in a number of inscriptions in old Celtic Europe⁴, and Lyons (formerly Lugdunum), Laon (Lugdunum Clavatum), Loudon and Dinlleu are just a small selection of place names also dedicated to him.We don’t have a lot of definite detail on Lugus, because the first people to write much about non-classical deities were the Romans. Their convention was to describe ‘barbarian’ gods by the name of their Roman equivalent. In Lugus’s case, it’s thought that they believed him to be another version of their very own Mercury⁵, and it’s by looking at the version of Mercury described in Celtic nations that we find out a bit more about Lugus.

We get another insight into Lugus with inscriptions that describe him in the plural: ‘lugoues’. There is a Celtic tradition of three-fold things: gods, deaths and trials; we’ve already seen this with Merlin/Lailoken’s triple death and the actual evidence seen in bog bodies. Lugus may be a triple god, comprised of three separate identities, Esus, Toutatis (sometimes spelt ‘Teutates’) and Taranis⁶. Esus was worshipped in Celtic Gaul, and required sacrifice by hanging from a tree. There are records of personal names in Britain which show that he was popular here, too. Taranis, the thunder god, is represented by a wheel, reflecting the idea that sky gods rotate around the earth. The Celtic wheel symbol, with either four or eight spokes, is believed to represent him and is seen across Bronze Age Europe. Toutatis, the ‘protector of the tribe’, demanded that sacrifices were drowned. An inscription dedicated to Toutatis was found right here, at Cumberland Quarries.

Celtic wheel god, Tullie House Museum

The real detail on Lugus comes from studying the Irish and Welsh folklore that derives from the god. The Irish Lugh was one of triplets (three-fold things, again) and he is a legendary ‘high king’ of the Tuatha De Danann, Ireland’s ancient people. His epithet is ‘of the long arm’, which is used in a similar context to our modern ‘long arm of the law’; it refers to his extensive geographical influence. Lugh, like Lugus, was skilled in crafts and had a magical spear, which proved handy when he needed to kill his one-eyed Fomori grandfather, Balor. The Irish Gaelic word for August is named after Lugh, as is Lughnasadh, the harvest Festival held on August 1^st which is popular with modern pagans. The festival of Lughnasadh is said to have been started by Lugh himself in memory of his adoptive mother, who died of exhaustion after clearing Ireland to enable agriculture. The festivals traditionally featured games, bonfires, dancing and engagements.The Welsh Lugus was Lleu Llaw Gyffes, who features in the story of Math Fab Mathonwy in the Mabinogion. The story of Lleu’s birth has a lot in common with the Irish Lugh; he was rejected by his mother and brought up by a foster parent. Lleu ended up raising trees to fight against Arawn, the Lord of the Underworld⁷, and married Blodeuedd, the girl made from flowers who was turned into an owl for her unfaithfulness⁸. He turned into an eagle, but was returned to the shape of a man by the interventions of his beloved uncle.

How could Cumbrians have forgotten about the owls and ravens, the sacrifices, thundering wheeled-chariots and magical spears? Perhaps it’s time that Carlisle re-adopted its ancient British heritage. All hail Carlisle!

©Diane McIlmoyle 15.04.11

1. Taliesin.
2. Nennius.
3. The earliest English reference, c. 1050CE.
4. As seen in Lugo, Galicia, in Spain and Nimes in France, amongst others.
5. Julius Caesar, De Bello Gallico.
6. Described by Lucan in his Bellum Civile.
7. See The Battle of the Trees in the Book of Taliesin.
8. Blodeuedd’s story is wound into the excellent children’s book, The Owl Service by Alan Garner.

Look at this series of posts on Clas Merdin entitled Lud’s Church for more related history and legend.