Have you ever wanted to go back to an
ancient time in Scotland?
Have you ever wondered if a circle of
standing stones could help you do it?
This is a video for you, incidentally
while you're watching if you're
interested in the people, places and
events in Scottish history
then click the subscribe button at the
bottom right anytime.
In the meantime, let me tell you a story.
I'm just outside Kenmore at the bottom
end of Loch Tay
at Croft Moraig Standing Stones.
Archaeologists tell us that there's been
a stone circle here in one form or
another for
5000 years. First of all
there was a circle of wooden posts with an
open end, a bit like a horseshoe,
and then a ceremonial passage coming
into the centre.
Around 3000 BC, the wooden posts were
replaced
by an oval set of standing stones
aligned
to the midsummer full moon. Many years
later
another set of larger standing stones were
put around the outside
and the direction of entry was changed
with some graves at the opening.
Why the change? We don't know.
If you're Scottish you probably won't
know this but there's a book and a TV
series called
"Outlander", where an English woman Claire
Randall
touches a stone circle and she's
transported from the 1940s
back to the 1740s, just before the 45
uprising. What would it have been like
back then? This would have been Campbell
country.
Redcoat territory. Five miles to the east
is Aberfeldy, where General Wade's
Redcoats built a bridge.
It was also the place where only a few
years before the Black Watch paraded
for the first time. Beyond that
is Atholl, that was more Jacobite. That's
where The Battle of Killiecrankie
took place. Is that
where the stones take you?
It seems more likely that they'd take
you back here.
This isn't Castle Leoch of Outlander
fame, this
is a crannog. Crannogs were common in
Scotland
and Ireland. They're a form a communal living
on the edge of a loch.
Could the Bronze or Iron Age people who
lived in crannogs
have worshipped at those standing stones
two and a half miles along the River Tay?
Could that have been their church and
this
their home? Let me show you inside.
Crannogs were here from as far back as
three and a half thousand BC
right down to the 17th Century, but their
heyday was from the late Bronze Age into
the Iron Age. In the video that I made
called
"How Scotland got its Borders", this was
not long before the Romans arrived okay?
So you can go back and have a check of
that. Now these round houses on stilts
were built without hammer or nails, but
with craftsmanship
and perfection; woven hazelwood
for walls, bracken and ferns for flooring
and the bracken and straw
for the roof, incredible! 700 timbers of
hazel, oak and alder
and a fire in the middle of a large room.
It might be smoky,
but that kills off the beasties in the
straw roof.
A crannog like this would house a large
extended
family. Imagine sitting around the
central fire
hearth cooking, eating, talking, telling
stories.
The cuisine wasn't French, but it was
probably more sophisticated
than you think or you imagine. You know
that thing at Christmas,
where the family gather together around,
and everyone eats together
and chats and laughs and exchanges their
news?
Here sitting around this fire, every meal
would be like Christmas. Of course you'd
also have animals around about as well,
just like the Baby Jesus in the stable.
It would be fantastic!
A Scottish winter can be cold, but
there's no need to worry about elements
in a place like this, and as the evening
wears on you might drift off
to the side of the crannog and climb into
your bunk bed.
Maybe in the background you can still
hear music. We know that even back then
they could make flutes
and lyres. In fact archaeologists found
the bridge of a lyre
that came from the Mediterranean in 500
BC.
Music was part of their life but stories,
stories were the essence of life.
Stories were woven in the fabric of life.
It was how
information was passed on. This was an
oral culture,
an oral culture that continued right
through the days of the Jacobites and
Claire Randall. From mouth to ear, the secrets passed of
how to build these structures.
There were no architects' drawings, just
stories.
They probably would have told their
stories in a Brythonic language, a bit
like
Welsh. Stories of how to make fire,
stories of how to weave cloth. What were the
best herbs for cooking?
What were the best herbs for healing?
What was the best strategy for hunting?
What was the best strategy for farming,
and of course if needs be,
what was the best strategy for fighting?
When the Romans invaded under Agricola in 83AD,
the people of the crannogs were here.
Some of them may have left this place
and joined with other tribesmen to face
the Roman Empire
at Mons Graupius, the first recorded
battle on Scottish soil.
Farming and protection were two of the
reasons that the crannogs existed.
Out in the water you had some protection
from wild animals,
also you could bring tame animals onto
the crannog, and live in the water freed up
precious growing land
in a mountainous area like this, but
remember not everyone
had a crannog. This was life
in the leafy suburbs.
It's easy to think of these Iron Age
people as being cavemen, but they were
much more sophisticated than that.
They've been trying to reverse engineer
the weaving pattern of some cloth
the archaeologists discovered, but with
all our modern technology
they can't quite master the technique of
how our ancestors
did it. That's the archaeologists, let me
explain;
these crannogs are common around
Scotland and Ireland.
Here in Loch Tay, they found the remains of
18 around the loch,
but further up the loch on the other
side near Fearnan, underwater
archaeologists found a collapsed crannog
fantastically preserved anaerobically
beneath the mud.
They meticulously put together the lives
of our ancestors who lived there;
what they ate, what they drank, how they
cooked,
they even found the preserved pieces of
cloth that I mentioned they're using
to re-engineer the weaving process, and
if you come here and visit the crannog,
you can see how they lived and
experience
the technology that they used back in
the Iron Age.
They were able to work out how these
early Perthshire people
could take all the trees and drive them
into the mud
before binding them together with tenon
joints to build a home to last.
Of course eventually every house wears
out and crannogs too.
You might have to replace one stilt that
rotted, shore up another
and gradually over several generations
of use is just worn out and has to be
abandoned.
Without maintenance decay really sets
in;
stilts shatter, floors fall, ceilings
crumble
and the edifice tumbles into the loch.
Over time this silts up to form a mound
which seeds.
Plants and trees grow, and in time it's
just another little island that nobody
remembers a crannog was ever there.
I often drive past a loch and see a
little island and a clump of trees and
wonder
was that a home to a Bronze Age man or
an Iron Age family?
Thankfully due to some underwater
archaeologists and lots of volunteers
we can experience what life was like for
one of those families.
Sometimes when I make these videos I
want to tell you a specific story
about some special person or a
particular monarch or event that I found
interesting.
To be honest, today I just wanted to
bring you
to a special place. Loch Tay is one of my
favorite places in the world,
and somehow there's a feeling about the
crannog that I don't get anywhere else.
I can never communicate to you all the
details that you learn
from the archaeologists and the
storytellers in this living museum.
None of the images that you'll see on
screen will ever quite get over
the beauty of this place, or for that
matter, the taste of the cream scones in
the Ferryman's Inn at this side of the loch
or the Paperboat on the other side of
the loch. If you want those things
I've left information in the description.
You'll have to come here
and experience it for yourself.
Tha mi an dochas bum bith lath math leibh
Tiorridh an drasda
