The Dark Ages’.

[ramonmercado]

An ancient Pagan Festival continues into the 21st Century. A goat is crowned King and a 12 year old girl is his Queen.

The protests relate to cruelty to animals though.

King Puck cage ritual ‘out of the Dark Ages’, say animal welfare groups

Hoisting a wild puck goat in the air in a small cage for three days above noisy crowds and loud music terrifies the animal and is in breach of new animal welfare legislation say anti-cruelty organisations.

The animal welfare groups are calling on Kerry County Council to step in and prevent the puck ritual at Killorglin this Sunday.

One organisation said the use of a live animal “pulled from the wild” for amusement in this manner was something “out of the Dark Ages”.

Puck Fair say the animal is well-treated and this year’s goat — the 401st — will have five inches of standing room between roof and horns and will be checked by a vet.

They added that wild goats were accustomed to heights. However ARAN, the Animal Rights Action Network, said Kerry County Council, which licenses the fair, should cancel the raising of the goat. The puck goat will be 60ft up in the air in “varying weather conditions” and will be “confined, terrified and confused among thousands of party-goers and drunken revellers”, John Carmody, spokesman for the animal group said.

Using a terrified wild animal in such a manner is in all likelihood a breach of the Animal Health and Welfare Act 2013, he warned. “The act includes freedom from fear and distress,” Mr Carmody said. ...

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/ki ... 78773.html

No kidding, new book explores Puck's pagan roots

Michael ‘Butty’ Sugrue, once Ireland’s strongest man, as a goatcatcher in Killorglin. Killorglin Archive Society

IT is Ireland's oldest traditional fair but the well-known annual Puck gathering goes back way further than the recorded 401 years.

A new book on the Killorglin festival that takes place from August 10-12 explores Puck's pagan roots that its author believes dates back to the 4th Century.

Growing up just six kilometres away in Glenbeigh, Co Kerry, Jerry Mulvihill (28) has only missed one Puck Fair and that was when he was travelling in Australia.

Like most people in the area, Puck is a part of life for him and a time when a lot of emigrants choose to visit home rather than at Christmastime.

His new book, 'The Puck Fair – Ireland's Oldest Celebration' is a salute to the event.

"If you're from Kerry, and especially near Killorglin, it's a very exciting time and a real reunion," said Jerry who has been working on the book for the last two years and has used old photographs from Killorglin Archive Society and MacMonagles in Killarney, a family-owned agency that has captured Puck for three generations.

In the lead-up to the festival, a feral goat must be caught from the MacGillycuddy Reeks.

One of the best-known goat catchers was Michael 'Butty' Sugrue, once known as Ireland's strongest man. ...

- See more at: http://www.independent.ie/entertainment ... sWVog.dpuf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puck_Fair

http://www.irishcultureandcustoms.com/A ... kFair.html

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

I've wanted to go to Puck Fair ever since I was in my early teens.

 

[ramonmercado]

I've wanted to go to Puck Fair ever since I was in my early teens.

Me too, ever since I was a kid.

 

[ramonmercado]

Why the Dark Ages were really dark. An Icelandic volcano again, only grounded flying carpets in those days though.

Ask medieval historian Michael McCormick what year was the worst to be alive, and he's got an answer: "536."

Not 1349, when the Black Death wiped out half of Europe. Not 1918, when the flu killed 50 million to 100 million people, mostly young adults. But 536. In Europe, "It was the beginning of one of the worst periods to be alive, if not the worst year," says McCormick, a historian and archaeologist who chairs the Harvard University Initiative for the Science of the Human Past.

A mysterious fog plunged Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia into darkness, day and night—for 18 months. "For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year," wrote Byzantine historian Procopius. Temperatures in the summer of 536 fell 1.5°C to 2.5°C, initiating the coldest decade in the past 2300 years. Snow fell that summer in China; crops failed; people starved. The Irish chronicles record "a failure of bread from the years 536–539." Then, in 541, bubonic plague struck the Roman port of Pelusium, in Egypt. What came to be called the Plague of Justinian spread rapidly, wiping out one-third to one-half of the population of the eastern Roman Empire and hastening its collapse, McCormick says.

Historians have long known that the middle of the sixth century was a dark hour in what used to be called the Dark Ages, but the source of the mysterious clouds has long been a puzzle. Now, an ultraprecise analysis of ice from a Swiss glacier by a team led by McCormick and glaciologist Paul Mayewski at the Climate Change Institute of The University of Maine (UM) in Orono has fingered a culprit. At a workshop at Harvard this week, the team reported that a cataclysmic volcanic eruption in Iceland spewed ash across the Northern Hemisphere early in 536. Two other massive eruptions followed, in 540 and 547. The repeated blows, followed by plague, plunged Europe into economic stagnation that lasted until 640, when another signal in the ice—a spike in airborne lead—marks a resurgence of silver mining, as the team reports in Antiquity this week. ...

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/201...ly_2018-11-15&et_rid=394299689&et_cid=2490907

 

[Xanatic*]

No meteorites? For shame!

 

[Naughty_Felid]

Is this the place all the Daily Mail harumphers from the Political Correctness Rides Again thread come to live when they finish being outraged for the day?

 

[INT21]

Yes, you're late.

INT21.

 

[Coal]

Yes, you're late.

INT21.

*harumphs and tuts*

 

[ramonmercado]

Interesting Dark Ages Burials.

Dark-Age Skeletons Uncovered With Buckets on Their Feet And Rings Around Their Necks​

A female skeleton found at the site. (Vyacheslav Baranov/National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine)

Archaeologists discovered human remains ceremonially adorned with buckets on their feet and rings around their necks in a 1,000-year-old cemetery, reports say. Archaeologists discovered the mass grave holding over 107 skeletons in what is believed to have been a pagan-era cemetery near Kyiv, Ukraine.

The mysterious burial site provided a glimpse into the Dark Ages, the 1,000 years of European history between the fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Italian Renaissance.

Researchers unearthed axes, swords, spears, jewelry, bracelets, and food remains such as eggshells and chicken bones alongside the bones of the long-forgotten people.

https://www.sciencealert.com/dark-a...ts-on-their-feet-and-rings-around-their-necks