Fascinating, thank you! I’m from the Western Isles of Scotland and was particularly interested in what you mentioned about the Martinmas ox. In modern Scottish Gaelic, “mart” is just one of the words for “cow”, especially for beef cattle; “beef” is “feòil mairt”, “meat of the cow”. I have no idea whether there is an etymological connection to St Martin (“Martin” is “Màrtainn”, with a much longer “a” sound) but it would be fascinating to find out, so I was wondering if you could point me to a source for the info about the Martinmas ox? If it’s not readily to hand don’t worry about it though!
Hi, that is so interesting. Thank you so much for sharing. The four books that I have that mentioned the Mart are Maypoles, Martyrs & Mayhem by Quentin Cooper, A Dictionary of British Folk Customs by Christina Hole, The Silver Bough Volume 3 (A Calendar of Scottish National Festivals - Halloween to Yule by F. Marian Mcneill and The Celtic Calendar by Brian Day. I would highly recommend getting in touch with Scott from Cailleachs Herbarium on Instagram he has always been a great source of info whenever I have reached out to him. I hope this helps and good luck!
Thank you for this piece of writing, covers a lot of ground in one go. I found your work through Michael Martin, 'Druid Stares Back' substack, much of history is currently being replaced with plugging into 'the now' or current thing, we are missing some very deep connections with our past & thus where we are headed. I wonder why in the primary & secondary schools I attended as a child I was not taught much of the stories told here, am grateful it survives
Hi Martin, thank you for taking the time to read and connect. I could not agree with you more. When I was in primary school the only brief British history we had was visiting Maiden Castle. That is all that I can remember. As for secondary school, much of the history was focused on other parts of the world which is the same as they do today. Heritage is not a priority anymore and this severance is damaging on so many levels.
Fascinating, thank you! I’m from the Western Isles of Scotland and was particularly interested in what you mentioned about the Martinmas ox. In modern Scottish Gaelic, “mart” is just one of the words for “cow”, especially for beef cattle; “beef” is “feòil mairt”, “meat of the cow”. I have no idea whether there is an etymological connection to St Martin (“Martin” is “Màrtainn”, with a much longer “a” sound) but it would be fascinating to find out, so I was wondering if you could point me to a source for the info about the Martinmas ox? If it’s not readily to hand don’t worry about it though!
Hi, that is so interesting. Thank you so much for sharing. The four books that I have that mentioned the Mart are Maypoles, Martyrs & Mayhem by Quentin Cooper, A Dictionary of British Folk Customs by Christina Hole, The Silver Bough Volume 3 (A Calendar of Scottish National Festivals - Halloween to Yule by F. Marian Mcneill and The Celtic Calendar by Brian Day. I would highly recommend getting in touch with Scott from Cailleachs Herbarium on Instagram he has always been a great source of info whenever I have reached out to him. I hope this helps and good luck!
Thanks!!
Thank you for this piece of writing, covers a lot of ground in one go. I found your work through Michael Martin, 'Druid Stares Back' substack, much of history is currently being replaced with plugging into 'the now' or current thing, we are missing some very deep connections with our past & thus where we are headed. I wonder why in the primary & secondary schools I attended as a child I was not taught much of the stories told here, am grateful it survives
Hi Martin, thank you for taking the time to read and connect. I could not agree with you more. When I was in primary school the only brief British history we had was visiting Maiden Castle. That is all that I can remember. As for secondary school, much of the history was focused on other parts of the world which is the same as they do today. Heritage is not a priority anymore and this severance is damaging on so many levels.