Manannán's Cloak

On a recent expedition into the rusted hills of the Isle of Man, Samuel Hurt was waylaid by an otherworldly phenomenon; a sudden blanket of mist that advanced from the Irish Sea, claiming almost all sight and sound within a matter of seconds and abandoning him in an unfamiliar realm. He had become enshrouded in Manannán's Cloak.

Commonly occurring in the early summer months before the sea has warmed, sea fog (or haar) forms when a parcel of warm air passes over cold water. Unable to hold any moisture due to the drop in temperature, liquid water is released through condensation and carried away by onshore winds, forming a haar. 

Depending on the temperature of the earth once it reaches land, the fog will linger in the cold or be chased back to the shore by sunlight. The Isle of Man being is surrounded by the incessantly icy Irish Sea, so it is small wonder that the mythical island boasts regular appearances of the infamous haar.

In Irish mythology this is no mere fog, but rather a féth fíada – a magical veil that enshrouds the island. It was gifted from Manannán mac Lir, a sea deity and the first ruler of the nation who put the 'Man' in the Isle of Man.

Blurring the borders between the world of the mortal and that of the Sidhe, Manannán's Cloak acts as a conjuncture of the Earth and Tír na nÓg – a place that no mortal may trespass.

Whichever theory you choose to believe, there is no denying that once within a haar, you cannot help but feel as if you have wandered into a supernatural realm in which the world falls away into the unknown, leaving us to imagine a land beyond the fog.

Reared in the wilds of the Scottish Highlands and the mysterious Isle of Man, Samuel Hurt grew to possess an insatiable yearning for all forms of adventure. "Whether it be through text or image, I want to take the fascination, awe and inspiration I find in our world and share it with others. Fortunately, there is no real substitute for the wilderness, so I merely aim to offer a nudge out of the door."

Gorse flower pancakes

Gorse flowers – those small yellow blooms you find on prickly bushes on scrub and moorland – are ripe for picking most of the year. Rosie Hazleton, founder of Wild Rose Escapes in the Highlands, shares a recipe that makes full use of their coconut and almond flavour

Gorse flower pancakes make a hearty breakfast, especially after a night under the stars

Gorse (Ulex europaeus) is a fast-growing shrub that was traditionally used as fuel for fires and kilns before the Industrial Revolution. The coconut aroma of its vivid yellow flowers always lures me in, and I like to infuse its flavour in salads and ice-cream. I once tried making gorse flower wine but my uncle, who is a bit of a wine-making expert, says it’s one of the hardest to get right. Are you up to the challenge?

But one of my favourite things to make with this wild ingredient is gorse flower pancakes, which my children love warm with butter and blackberry jam. We cook them on a griddle over the fire, but a pan over embers works well, too.

Photos: Chris Blott

Ingredients

1 cup of spelt flour
1 egg
1 dessert spoon of honey
1/4 pint of milk
A handful of gorse flowers (or other edible flowers, such as violets or red clover)

Method

To make the batter, mix the flour and egg, add the honey (as much or as little as you like depending on how sweet your tooth is). Stir in the gorse flowers, then add a little milk at a time – you may not need it all – you want it to be the consistency of thick cream. Grease the griddle with a little oil and then put on 4 or 5 small ladlefuls of batter. Get ready to turn as they cook pretty quickly. They’ll only need a couple of minutes on each side. Eat them hot with butter and whatever else you fancy.

*Always take expert advice when picking wild food; only eat what you’re sure is edible!

For more prehistoric cooking techniques – pit cooking, pot boiling and clay baking –pick up a copy of print issue three.

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The Maidstone Iguanodon

Glimpse quickly at the Maidstone coat of arms and at first you may not notice the strange haughty-looking lizard wielding a shield with a lion. Guy Lochhead shares the curious history behind this strange beast, with a spike for a thumb, which was found embedded in Kentish rock in 1834.

Nineteenth-century painting showing Iguanodon in a tripod pose.

In the early 1800s, there was a spate of paleontological discoveries that pushed our understanding of dinosaurs to new levels. Fossil collector Mary Anning’s 1811 discovery of a huge crocodile-like monster at Lyme Regis led many amateur geologists across Britain to fervently reassess their finds. While in 1824 clergyman and geologist William Buckland accidentally undermined his faith with the discovery of a “great lizard”– megalosaurus – in the Cotswolds. 

Further east, physician Gideon Mantell was examining giant leg bones he’d found in Tilgate Forest sandstone, wondering if they might also be from one of these new prehistoric beasts by examining the age of the stone they were embedded in. While Mantell worked as a doctor, his wife, Mary Ann Woodhouse, would also go fossil-hunting. One day, in 1822, she found some large teeth in that same layer of sandstone. Gideon noticed that they had a strange resemblance to those of the extant iguana, but 20 times larger. He called this giant “Iguanodon” – the second dinosaur to ever be named – and proposed a huge, herbivorous reptile. The announcement was met with derision, since plant-eating reptiles were so rare, and it took three years for his findings to be accepted.

In 1834, a more complete skeleton was discovered at Bensted’s Quarry in Maidstone, reaffirming Mantell’s ideas. The significance was enormous – for the first time, palaeontologists could begin to speculate as to the form of these monsters. Friends of the Mantells bought the rock from the quarry master for £25 and named it the “Maidstone Slab”. Gideon examined the bones embedded in the rock alongside the old teeth and drew a massive iguana, perched incongruously on a branch, quadrupedal, grinning madly, wielding a stubby horn at the end of its nose. This strange assemblage gave the first glimpse of what our planet’s previous tenants might have looked like.

After providing this insight, Mantell’s life became tragic. He moved to Brighton and his medical practice failed. The council intervened and turned his house into a museum, but Mantell’s generosity and enthusiasm for fossils meant he waived the entrance fee to the point where the project was unsustainable. Within five years, he’d sold his entire collection to the British Museum for £4,000, Mary left him, his son moved to Australia, his daughter died and he suffered a carriage crash that left him with a spinal injury and chronic pain. He became addicted to opium and overdosed in 1852, fell into a coma and died. He was credited with naming four of the five known genera of dinosaurs at the time of his death.

The Iguanodon features on the Maidstone Coat of Arms

In the Maidstone coat of arms, his marvellous beast stands erect on its hind legs, with the fossils he’d drawn as a horn worn proudly as thumbs – quite different to that first rough sketch. As more finds emerged, we have been able to augment and clarify his work. We have learned that iguanodon is a genus, not a species; that they did walk mainly on all fours, though they may have stood to feed; that they were indeed herbivores; and that the “horn” was in fact a thumb spike, though we still don’t know its function.

Proudly anachronistic beside the petty symbols of patriotism and governance, the Iguanodon stands for something far greater. Through the medieval language of heraldry we can look back a 150 million years, past the Victorian scientists who gave us this perspective, to the Late Cretaceous period. It gives us a perspective beyond our pomp and ceremony and shows that we are just this land’s current tenants. This hasn’t always been Maidstone, and nor will it always be.

You can visit the Mantell Monument at Whiteman’s Green in West Sussex, and see the Maidstone Slab in the Dinosaur Gallery of the Natural History Museum

Words by contributing editor Guy Lochhead

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Lingua Pluvia

A nation obsessed with all things meteorological might be expected to have more than a few words and phrases for rain, and Britain doesn't disappoint. Here is a light shower of words for precipitation

Is it siling down or is it merely a haar? freeimages.com

haar

Also known, rather poetically, as a sea fret, haar is sea fog accompanied by very fine drizzle that creeps inland from the North Sea to the east coast of Scotland and northeast England. Undeniably atmospheric, a thick, chilly blanket of haar can hang around for days or disperse within hours.

siling down

Probably derived from sila, the Scandinavian word for sieve or strainer, siling down is a Yorkshire dialect phrase for heavy rainfall. In Ross Raisin’s 2008 novel God’s Own Country, Sam Marsdyke observes,“You’d have to be proper daft to go on a wander while it was siling down like this.”

raining cats and dogs

This oft-said phrase is believed to derive from the sight of dead cats and dogs being carried along the filthy streets of 18th-century London after heavy rain; a sight recorded by Jonathan Swift in A Description of a City Shower.

roostan hoger

The rain-sloshed, wind-lashed, almost treeless Orkney Islands off the north east tip of Scotland offer at least 20 descriptive terms for rain. Roostan hoger describes a steady, light drizzle. Other Orcadian words for describing the same type of rain include a murr, a hagger and a drivv.

dringey

Although one of the driest counties in Britain, Lincolnshire dialect is awash with words for rain, including dringey; a term that describes the kind of light rainfall that, despite your best efforts with umbrella and waterproofs, still somehow manages to leave you thoroughly soaked.

Brian Chapman is a freelance copywriter based in Kendal, Cumbria. He doesn’t climb mountains, swim in lakes or cycle uphill. He likes cities, people-watching and looking busy in coffee shops. He should probably live in London.

 

 

Lingua Pluvia featured in the third print edition of Ernest Journal, on sale now

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