On a winter's morn

The solstice is past. The year has turned. The feeling that the days will get longer,the nights shorter and that winter is in retreat is, of course, false. The worst of the weather may still be to come and the lengthening of the daylight hours won't be apparent for many weeks but it feels that we have made it to the real turn of the year.

To celebrate the shortest day, I went out to visit the Duddo Stones. Five of the original seven still stand on a small hillock surrounded by a panorama of all the major hills in the surrounding area. A perfect site to be at one with the elements.

Sunrise at the Duddo Stones

It was, no doubt, the first farmers who erected the stones, four thousand years ago when the seasonal round of the hunter-gatherers changed to a settled permanence and the land and the people were bound together in one place.

Eroded by wind and rain the stones with deep channels, they are sometimes called the "Singing Stones" when the Northumbrian wind whistles past them resonating in their grooved surfaces.

The deeply grooved "singing stones"

There are what appear to be cup marks on two of the uprights like those seen on so many stones in this area. Perhaps they were already on the stones before they were chosen for this henge. 

Cup marks on one of the stones

They could be from an earlier time but recognised by the circle builders as having such significant powers that they incorporated them into their own sacred site. 

All religions tend to use the trappings and symbols of earlier beliefs .

What the belief system of the people who erected the Duddo Stones was, we cannot know but I'm sure the marking of the solstice would have been part of it. 

Maybe they took evergreens into their homes, ate special foods, lit fires and torches and told ancient tales and exchanged gifts to cheer themselves in the darkness of mid-winter. They would have been just like us, glad to be warm and well fed, waiting for the spring and resolving to do better next year.