By your deeds shall ye be known........

 

Matthew 7:15.  I hesitate to get into Biblical quotations, buy hey, it is a Sunday, and it's the first day of the 2021 digging season on Preseli..........

At the beginning of Matthew Chapter 7 the King James version says: "Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves."  There is a lesson in there somewhere, and no doubt there have been many thousands of sermons over the years based on verse 1 or verse 15.

Why this?  Why now?  Well, yesterday I got a rather graphic account of some of the things that have been going on down at Rhosyfelin, and I did not like what I heard.  It's time to remind ourselves that for the last ten years MPP and his merry band have been flagging up Rhosyfelin as a "special place" -- significant enough to attract a large work-force of Neolithic quarrymen intent upon excavating innumerable slabs of bedrock from the flank of the crag in the middle of the valley, significant enough to build revetments and riverside quays, loading platforms and sledge trackways on the floor of the valley, and significant enough to have created a routeway along which great monoliths of rock were exported either to Stonehenge or to some intermediate parking place like "the lost circle of Waun Mawn."  It's all nonsense of course, but apparently nobody in the archaeological establishment wants to let the truth get in the way of a good story.

So the archaeologists have speculated in print and in media interviews as to WHY Rhosyfelin was so special.  Something to do with the colour of the rock?  Was the foliated rhyolite specially prized because of its hardness or fabric?  Was it deemed to have healing properties?  Was is prized because somewhere in the vicinity was a resting place of the ancestors?  Was its astronomical position the reason for its inherent power and magical properties?

The latter-day quarrymen who dug up the site with such enthusiasm over a period of five or six years knew exactly what they were doing in extolling its virtues and preaching about its Neolithic / Bronze age "significance" -- and to their eternal shame the National Park and all sorts of other august bodies like Cadw, Visit Wales and Literature Wales have assisted in the promotional efforts.  

Anyway, predictably the roosters are coming home to roost, and I have been picking up on reports of "river treasure hunters" turning up at Rhosyfelin in four wheel drive vehicles and trawling up and down along the river bed in the hope of finding artefacts associated with the quarrying activities that have been so graphically described.  No doubt they are stimulated by the Sky TV series called "River Hunters".  There have also been sightings of "ceremonies" somewhat akin to the goings-on at Stonehenge, with groups of people in robes attracted by -- and no doubt worshipping -- "the power of the stones".  Not sure whether Druids may have been involved.........  Otherwise the sheer number of visitors to the site (where there is hardly any roadside parking) is now a major source of concern to those who live nearby, with cars parking on private property and occupants caught urinating in a nearby garden. On certain parts of the social media Rhosyfelin is already spoken of with reverence and even awe.

It's difficult to get authentication for some of the things I have heard, and to separate out rumour from fact, but clearly the National Park is worried --  as I have reported before -- and has been moved to issue press releases pleading with the public to respect private property, not to take away rock samples, and not to camp or light fires at Rhosyfelin and other "sacred sites".

Many metaphors come to mind, including the one about stable doors and bolting horses.......