Here Comes The Sun
By David Kaiser from Northern Earth 83
Archaeology has gradually widened its focus on ancient sacred sites to encompass the surrounding landscapes. Past issues of Northern Earth have brought attention to the rolling sun phenomenon, in which the sun is seen to rise or set along the side of a hill or mountain when viewed from a prehistoric monument. The rolling sun effect was first noted by Gerry Bracken at Croagh Patrick on the west coast of Ireland, where it can be seen when viewed from a natural rock outcrop decorated with cup and ring markings1.
Certainly the image of celestial bodies appearing to roll along a horizon was known to the megalith builders. At some of Scotland's recumbent stone circles the moon appears to skim along the top of the circle's large horizontal stone when the moon is at its southerly extreme2.
The sun's movement in relation to significant skyline features has been noted to mark the passage of the year or the hours of the day when viewed from certain spots in traditional horizon clocks and calendars3. Observed from certain stone circles, the sun can be seen to set into or rise from prominent hills on important days in the sun's cycle, such as the solstices and equinoxes4.
There is evidence that the rolling sun effect can likewise be observed to occur at significant times in the solar year5. The equinoctial sunset can be witnessed rolling down nearby hills from the recumbent stone circles of Balquhain and Easter Aquorthies6. The Samhain sunset can also be seen to set along the flank of Cairn William when viewed from Kirkton of Bourtie, another recumbent circle7. At Ballochroy on the Mull of Kintyre, a possible summer solstice rolling sun effect may also be witnessed. The axis of the middle stone in the row of three standing stones is aligned to the most northerly peak of the Paps mountains on the isle of Jura, where the sun sets along the slope of the mountainside8.
It is possible that these observations may have been ritually re-enacted. Hilltops and fires were frequently associated with traditions marking events in the solar calendar, such as Midsummer. Across northern Europe until the nineteenth century, it was common for a flaming wheel to be rolled downhill towards a river on Midsummer's Eve. Moreover, the spoked wheel was commonly used as an image of the sun throughout prehistoric Europe9.
The earliest account of the rolling of the fire wheel goes back to the fourth century with the pagans of Aquitaine in southern France. Here its burnt remains were placed in a temple of Apollo, the sun god10. This shows the undoubted antiquity of the custom.
Could this custom, even then, have been a survival of earlier solar observances? Fifteen centuries later, at Buckfastleigh in Devon, the recorded fire wheel customs of the nineteenth century Christians still closely parallelled those of the fourth century pagans.
On Midsummer's Eve in the Vale of Glamorgan, a wheel covered in straw was set alight and rolled downhill. If the fire wheel was extinguished before it reached the bottom of the hill, it was believed that a poor harvest would follow. The longer it continued to burn the more abundant the harvest would be.
This custom was kept on Mam Tor at Leudon, Devon, up to the 1950s, when the practice finally seems to have died out in Britain11. In 1954 Dartmoor villagers at Widdecombe tried to revive the custom, but the wheel was not set alight and the revival was not long lived.
The earliest recorded British example of fire wheel practices was at Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, in the fourteenth century12. It is near here that a similar custom of cheese rolling still exists at Cooper's Hill, Brockworth. There is no fire, but the sun may still be seen symbolically as a large yellow disc of cheese. This eight-pound cheese, sometimes protected in a round wooden frame, is rolled down a steep hill, traditionally topped with a maypole. At their own peril people chase after the speeding dairy product. Due to the number of injuries sustained by participants in 1997, the official cheese rolling was cancelled the following year; however, a private rolling of the cheese took place on the morning to maintain continuity and the public event was reinstated in 1999.
This event, associated with maintaining grazing rights, formerly took place on Whitsun Monday (it now occurs on Spring Bank Holiday Monday). Whitsun, or Pentecost, marks the time in the Christian calendar when the Holy Spirit descended on the apostles in tongues of flame13 and became the focus for many spring customs.
Cheese rolling was also known, from at least 1776, at Uffington, in connection with the scouring of the White Horse. Here a cheese was rolled down the even steeper slope of the Manger below the chalk figure. In the 1857 race people chased a cartwheel down the hill, the cheeses serving only as a prizes.
Other British traditions may also echo the rolling of the sun along the skyline, such as the carrying of flaming tar barrels at Ottery St. Mary and Hatherleigh in Devon. The swinging of fireballs on ropes was also once widespread. Previously practised on Midsummer Eve in Cornish fishing villages, it now survives as a nineteenth-century import at Stonehaven in north-east Scotland on New Years Eve14.
Perhaps, more tenuously, the rolling of eggs and sometimes oranges downhill at Easter may also be a faint remembrance of the rolling sun. In the past, people would also rise before dawn and climb up hills to see the sunrise, because according to tradition the sun dances on the horizon on Easter morning15.
So here we have seen disks or wheels, sometimes on fire, rolling down hills, mimicking the rolling sun phenomenon. Could these rituals, some undoubtedly ancient, perhaps carry the distant memory of observations made by the megalith builders so very long ago?
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