An extraordinary cross-shaped setting of stones erected 5,000 years ago. They predate Stonehenge and more than two thousand years olde the Egyptian pyramids, they are thought to have been an important place for rituals.
Lewis is the lower-lying part of the island: the other part, Harris, is more mountainous. Due to its flatter, more fertile land, Lewis contains three-quarters of the population of the Western Isles, and the largest settlement, Stornoway
[Wikipedia’s article is under ‘Seonaidh’, but I read about it under the name ‘Shion’ in Mark Williams’s book.]
So, in the early 1700’s book A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland by Martin Martin (yes, that is his name) describes an annual nighttime ritual on the Isle of Lewis, in the Hebrides, in which the local church community would get together, pick someone to hold a cup of ale, and then wade into the water and dump it in while declaring it an offering to Shion or Shony to have a prosperous harvest. Now Marty-Mart thought that this was a holdover from an old pagan religion. It was popularly believed by scholars that ‘Shion’ must have been some old Celtic deity of the sea, whose cult was long forgotten, but that this one little island off the coast of Scotland remembered, if only for this one little holiday. Wikipedia even calls this ‘likely’, though it doesn’t have a citation for that sentence.
Welp. Probably not, according to Mark Williams.
In his book Ireland’s Immortals, Mark Williams talks about Marty-Mart’s records, and his own research. He also brings up that acclaimed scholar Ronald Hutton (famous debunker of New Age nonsense) independently came to the same conclusion, and that is this: this probably isn’t a pre-Christian ritual that survived. This is probably a pre-Reformation ritual that survived. After all, ‘Seonaidh’ is close to the Scottish Gaelic form of ‘Johnny’, in the same way that ‘Sean’ is the Irish take on ‘John’. Williams suggests that, given there are a ton of weird little festivals for saints all over the world, and the prominence of water, this is probably a ritual feast celebration to Saint John the Baptist, and it somehow survived the Reformation in this remote corner of Scotland.
Back in 2014 I had the privilege of visiting the Isles of Harris and Lewis because one of my family members was intending to visit the Harris Tweed location as part of their Degree that they were studying in the Northbrook College near Worthing. We stayed in a very nice residential location in the Isle of Harris and spent the whole week visiting a number of people and locations in both Harris and…
I'd read and written about this many years ago, 11 to be exact, but this is the first time I have witnessed it.
A pre-wedding ritual done here in the Islands, Highlands and some rural parts of Scotland.
The blackening is where a groom and/or bride are taken out in public (often in the back of a truck) and doused in a range of unmentionables: treacle, flour, feathers, custard, fish guts, cow dung – anything goes. Ideally a mix of as many as possible, the more disgusting the better.
I got a couple of pics on my camera and will post them at a later date.
Today’s Flickr photo with the most hits - a close up of one of the standing stones at Callanish, Isle of Lewis, showing their formation (Lewissian Gneiss)