Monday 7 March 2011

Goings On At Craggy Island


An Island Parish, the scottish TV successor to its cousin in the Scillies has been more than a little creepy at times following the three priests on Barra and the surrounding islands.

Last week was far more interesting watching a local wedding, which could have taken place on the islands going back 3 000 years.

After the Catholic marriage ceremony, the newly wed couple came out of the church to the firing of shotguns. We have just had the samehere in somerset, the firing of guns to scare away the bad spirits and to bring fertility to the apple orchards. I suspect before gunpowder it was drums and shouting.

The wedding party retired to a Holy Well, for a blessing and for luck, again a ritual that predates Christianity, then to a communal feast for the whole village.

Continuity and change, the assimilation of the old ways into the new.

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