The Ring of Gullion team welcome Stuart McHardy to south Armagh to provide us with an introduction to Geomythography. Stuart is a storyteller and author of thirty books. He is a published poet, an accomplished musician/singer and has been lecturing on Scottish History and Folklore for Edinburgh University’s Centre for Open Learning since the early 1990s.
He was a founder member and is a past President of the Pictish Arts Society and through much of the 90s was Director of the Scots Language Centre in Perth. An experienced broadcaster he has recently produced MYTHOGRAM1, a new way of telling stories for the digital age. He has published and presented his work in many parts of the world.
Drawing on his extensive work on the Scottish landscape and ritual traditions, his presentation will focus on the interpretation of prehistoric and later societies through a combination of oral tradition, place-names, landscape analysis and archaeology.
Stuart’s presentation will be multi-dimensional, comprising his rich store of visuals, stories, ritual traditions, and landscape. A particular focus of the talk will be relating Stuart’s findings in Scotland to the Irish heritage.
The process of Geomythography is rooted in the awareness that the passing on of tradition in pre-literate societies is predicated on certain realities. In many cases, such as Scotland, communities have survived within the same environment over remarkable periods of time. This has created a rootedness, not just in terms of physical environment but in socio-psychological terms that have led to considerable depths of continuity between the generations. This can perhaps be understood as an ongoing cultural relationship with the physical environment which exists simultaneously at an individual and communal level.
Stuart will be speaking on Saturday 15th in Dublin on the Cailleach and Brigit in the Ritual Landscape of Scotland: gateway to understanding the past, and ourselves. Click here for more information.
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