I began this account with a brief run down of what is known of the British Queen Boudica, the one who fought the Roman Empire because their rules were unwelcome and their disrespect for nature was completely unacceptable.
The Romans brought their vision of a global Empire to Britain’s shores and they started as they intended to continue. They hacked into the forests and created un-natural straight stone-surfaced roads, immediately horrifying the nature loving Celtic tribes who believed the trees were sacred, linked via their roots from north to south, east to west all over this land. The Celts and their spiritual advisors, the Druids, believed that they could communicate through the tree network. It was the trees who ruled and the people were sheltered by them; dependent upon them for sustenance, so the trees grew stronger and more diverse century upon century, loved and revered by all living things.
When the axe cut into a tree the people screamed and attacked the Romans but the Romans had armour and weapons which defended their assault on the land.
The people gathered the Woad, created blue dye from it as their ancestors had always done, painted themselves blue from head to toe and began to hinder the Romans by guerrilla tactics under cover of darkness. Woad is known to be excellent for wounds. It staunches blood flow and aids healing. A fighter could ignore a few injuries, trusting his woad painted skin would seal his soul against the enemy. The resulting blue dyed scars were testament to each warrior’s battle successes. Woad saved many a life, protecting the people who protected the trees.
The warriors sabotaged everything the Romans were doing until, eventually, they sacked and burned the Roman fortresses. Still more Romans came and eventually the Celts were enslaved, robbed of their freedom, transported in cages to Rome to entertain the crowds by their deaths in the Gladiator games at the Coliseum.
Some of the south eastern tribes lost so many that their neighbours had to incorporate the stragglers into their own communities. The rage against the machine of Rome became ubiquitous in the blood of all British Celts.
Eventually, in the 6th century, Rome fell to Germanic tribes and those who were trying to quell Britain gave up and went home. Nothing is known about the next few centuries beyond rumours of dark troubling times in which the winters were unusually dark and long. There is a theory that a meteor tore through Britain from north to south and set the entire islands ablaze, the people fled to Ireland or Brittany or were burned alive. They believed that the meteor was a huge speeding dragon, swooping low over their land, breathing fire until it finally landed in the Irish Sea boiling all living things therein. Huge swathes of forest were burning so hot as to melt stone. There is evidence that this legend may well have happened.
If the Celtic Britons were to time travel to our time what would they think of us?
They would be horrified by the lack of trees for a start! They would rage that we don’t protect our trees, the silent, defenceless Kings of nature! They would wonder why we allowed our land to be appropriated and owned rather than cherished and shared.
They would be horrified and cry out to us, like the famous wild horses of Newbury did when they confronted the police horses.
'The Wild Horses of Newbury' was shot very early on a single morning in February, 1996. The whole episode only lasted a few minutes.. nothing was staged. The bypass security guards and police had circled two very old Oak trees and were preparing to chop them down, when two scruffy, seemingly wild horses appeared and began to interfere with the felling. One of the horses even confronted one of the police horses..... It was a very magical moment.
"I was at the Newbury bypass protests, 10 years ago, filming the evictions on a Hi8 Camcorder. Very early one February morning, I found myself in a field with over 500 security guards and police. They had surrounded a small copse and a couple of huge, old oak trees, and were preparing to chop them down. They had successfully outwitted and outnumbered the protesters. In the chaos accompanying the operation, some hedges and fences had been destroyed and these two horses were roaming virtually free. As the chainsaws started, they didnt run away as you'd expect, but towards the felling. I just grabbed the camcorder and started filming. Nothing was staged, the whole episode only lasted a few minutes, but had quite a profound effect on everyone there. Even the police were dumbfounded, especially by the 'confrontation' between the 'wild' horse and the police horse." ~ Mark Carroll 2007
Our Celtic ancestors would seek out our leaders and who would they find? Craven cowardly obedience freaks whose physical prowess resembles a half starved weasel!
No warrior Chieftains with blue battle scars….
No proud warrior women like Queen Boudica of the Iceni.
Only scurrying pale people, grumbling about the weather, taxes and pollution! Yet doing NOTHING whatsoever to change those things.
Everyone with a bit of knowledge about trees knows that they create a weather system around them especially when they are in densely packed variable forests. Everyone knows that they absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen, but the weak weasel people accept paying ‘Carbon Tax’ on all their purchases rather than demanding that the huge privately owned, mowed lawn aristocratic estates of Britain be forested and made fit for essential wildlife again.
Oh no….. they don’t do that.
Instead they sit in front of their tell-lie-visions and believe that the world is over-populated, that ‘climate change’ is to be feared and that it is perfectly FINE to saturate the atmosphere with a cacophony of electro-magnetic radiation just so that they can get a faster broadband speed for their stupid warmongering video games!
They queue up at the P-Harmacy for toxic petroleum derivatives and they fill their homes with petroleum by-products like plastic, polyester and fake flowers. They drive around in fume-belching status symbol vehicles (if they can afford one) and they compete among themselves for meaningless jobs earning a pitiful pittance which they spend drowning their sorrows with toxic fluoride-laced beer, wine and spirits.
The weak, nutritionally deprived weasel people are sick and getting sicker, so they queue up again for more toxic trash doled out by conscienceless drug dealers who actually believe they are professional health care workers!
Here a jab, there a jab, everywhere a jab-jab! Here a pill, there a pill, whoops another one overdosed….It doesn’t matter because the BBC told us that we are ‘over-populated’ remember?
If we looked up from our screens long enough to notice these strange warrior figures from our past passing by, what would we think of them?
We would wonder why they are so angry. We would shout at them to get a bath and a job. We would laugh behind their backs. We would assume that they are homeless and call the police to arrest them and get them to stop hanging around, messing up our streets.
We would not for a minute think to strip off the polyester clothes and the plastic shoes. We would not pick up a twig, let alone a club. We would not stand silently by their side to show our shame and solidarity.
No. We would ignore the whole spectacle or applaud, imagining that it is a historical re-enactment society out for a day of fund-raising. We might slip them a quid or a few smaller coins.
We would tell our children the stories about Boudica and Caradoc, if we even knew them, and we would tuck them into their polyester foam beds and polythene fibre filled duvets, wishing them sweet dreams of ancient brave heroes who provided the very blood that runs in their veins.
We would settle down in front of our screens in our ludicrously expensive, centrally heated homes and watch our soap operas, play our games and rant endlessly on social media, tutting loudly about how awful this encroaching totalitarian world is becoming.
Meanwhile, our broken-hearted, wounded and defeated warrior ancestors would weep rivers of woad coloured tears for the lost pride, the lost trees and the lost love of all things natural, all things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small.
We would go to bed early, to rise in the morning and do it all again because…. well, we don’t know how to beat the Romans now that they own EVERYTHING.
Bien dit, while the Romans brought some positives such as the ending of human sacrifices, we must never forget the traditions, the bravery and the honour and glory of our Celtic ancestors. We the French, in many places live closer to the sea, the forests and the mountains herein North America and also in France when I have had chance to speak to those across the Atlantique.
It is for this reason that I spend less and less time near the tv, more time with books, in study and also in the forest everyday (between 1-2 hours a day now). I need the woodlands, and need to be in nature with the dog not just to think on how best to proceed with my novels but because I need to have that connection.
It is also why I seek to go back to Japan, for a time as there I went hiking, went down to the lake, went about in the woods every week. I was invigorated, and felt healthier and happier than I've ever felt in the West since my father passed, and so I definitely understand.
We are part of nature, and it is part of us. We of Celtic descent must remember the fire-blood of our ancestors and the honour they naturally had, and the love of nature they had. Trees are crucial, just as the mountains, and the seas are. I find greater joy in seeing an old oak or ash tree than I do in any new buildings.
Thanks for this post Frances. Swampy was the most famous protester from the Newbury trees protest! I know because at the factory I was working in, I got the nickname Swampy due to my appearance lol. It was your post about 526AD that really struck a nerve with me , as I was aware of it before and no one else seems to be factoring in that catastrophe as the necessary ingredient for triggering a Dark Age. All we were taught at school was that The Romans left and we fell to pieces! What a crock of shit that is!! Black Nobs' propaganda gets everywhere. I'd not seen the horses video before. I left the factory and got a job making horse racecourse fencing and did a job at Newbury racecourse plus I later got a job delivering fish from Cornwall to top end restaurants and used to stay overnight at a pub near there. Funniest thing ever was walking into the pub for the first time in white coat and saw the Clerk of Course for Newbury in there. I said "Hey, I know you!" - The look on his face was priceless as he was crapping himself about where he could have possibly met a scruffy dude delivering fish - quite telling !! I fessed up and said and he relaxed , a lot! Ha ha . Thanks for the reminder!