Hills Of Myst - Enaid & Einalem

Love & light
Brightest of blessings in this new year to you all
Traceyanne x

You are loved x

You are loved.....
peace, love & light....
Traceyanne x

A personal message from Father Christmas ...

This free application allows you to send a child a personalized video message from Santa – Santa will mention his name, his age, the gift he asked for and many other exciting details! A hilarious « grown-up » version also allows you to send messages to your family and friends. A must-see!

Father Christmas message

message from santa to my son - sample

Love & light
Trace x

If tomorrow never comes.....video

Sir Edward Burne - Jones

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet (28 August 1833 – 17 June 1898)
was a British artist and designer closely associated with the later phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement,

who worked closely with William Morris on a wide range of decorative arts as a founding partner in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and Company.

Burne-Jones was closely involved in the rejuvenation of the tradition of stained glass art in England.

Aesthetics

The Golden Stairs, 1880

Burne-Jones's paintings were one strand in the evolving tapestry of Aestheticism from the 1860s through the 1880s, which considered that art should be valued as an object of beauty engendering a sensual response, rather than for the story or moral implicit in the subject matter. In many ways this was antithetical to the ideals of Ruskin and the early Pre-Raphaelites.

Burne-Jones's aim in art is best given in some of his own words, written to a friend:

I mean by a picture a beautiful, romantic dream of something that never was, never will be - in a light better than any light that ever shone - in a land no one can define or remember, only desire - and the forms divinely beautiful - and then I wake up, with the waking of Brynhild.

No artist was ever more true to his aim. Ideals resolutely pursued are apt to provoke the resentment of the world, and Burne-Jones encountered, endured and conquered an extraordinary amount of angry criticism.

In so far as this was directed against the lack of realism in his pictures, it was beside the point. The earth, the sky, the rocks, the trees, the men and women of Burne-Jones are not those of this world; but they are themselves a world, consistent with itself, and having therefore its own reality. Charged with the beauty and with the strangeness of dreams,
it has nothing of a dream's incoherence.

Yet it is a dreamer always whose nature penetrates these works, a nature out of sympathy with struggle and strenuous action. Burne-Jones's men and women are dreamers too. It was this which, more than anything else, estranged him from the age into which he was born.

Burne-Jones exerted a considerable influence on British painting.
Burne-Jones was also highly influential among French symbolist painters, from 1889.
His work inspired poetry by Swinburne —

Swinburne's 1886 Poems & Ballads is dedicated to Burne-Jones.

On 16 June 1933, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, a nephew of Burne-Jones, officially opened the centenary exhibition featuring Burne-Jones's drawings and paintings at the Tate Gallery in London.
In his opening speech at the exhibition, Mr Baldwin expressed what the art of Burne-Jones stood for:

In my view, what he did for us common people was to open, as never had been opened before, magic casements of a land of faery in which he lived throughout his life ...
It is in that inner world we can cherish in peace, beauty which he has left us and in which there is peace at least for ourselves.

The few of us who knew him and loved him well, always keep him in our hearts, but his work will go on long after we have passed away.

It may give its message in one generation to a few or in other to many more, but there it will be for ever for those who seek in their generation, for beauty and for those who can recognise and reverence a great man, and a great artist.

Victorian Art & Design

Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1828-1882

D.G. Rossetti was born in London, England and originally named
Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti.
His family and friends called him "Gabriel"

English poet, illustrator, painter and translator.
He was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 and was later to be the main inspiration for second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement.
He was also a major precursor of the Aesthetic movement.

(The Aesthetic Movement is a 19th century European movement that emphasized aesthetic values over moral or social themes in literature, fine art,
the decorative arts, and interior design.)

Rossetti's art was characterised by its sensuality and its medieval revivalism.
His early poetry was influenced by Keats.
His later poetry was characterised by the complex interlinking of thought and feeling.

Rossetti was very upset by the attacks on the Pre-Raphaelite paintings in 1850 and 1851.
He decided not to exhibit again.

Rossetti's sonnet sequence The House of Life, a complex series of poems tracing the physical and spiritual development of an intimate relationship.
Rossetti described the sonnet form as a "moment's monument", implying that it sought to contain the feelings of a fleeting moment, and to reflect upon their meaning.
In 1881, Rossetti published a second volume of poems, Ballads and Sonnets, which included the remaining sonnets from the The House of Life sequence.

love & light
Trace x

Fairy Mounds....

The name 'Fairy Mount' evokes thoughts about the Celtic Otherworld, folklore and the romance of the "little people".

Its use as the label for this fine earthwork is therefore all the more striking when one considers that it was built in the late 12th century when they Anglo-Normans seized land at the expense of the native population.

How it actually got this name is therefore of some interest.

It is tempting to suggest that it may have been the result of the romantic imagination of some 18th century Anglo-Irish landowner rather than some timeless lore of the local people.


Fairy Mount is undoubtedly one of the by-products of the Anglo-Norman colonisation of Louth in the 1180s.

The early ecclesiastical settlement at Louth was initially held by the King but was granted to Geoffrey de Lusignan in 1254.

The motte is likely to have been built before 1196 for the medieval documents record that the 'castle' of Louth was burnt in that year.

Wright's plan and section of the monument show the classic profile of an Anglo-Norman motte-castle: a circular flat-topped mound (c.29m in diameter at base, 11m at top) encircled by a fosse (Mount Ash - Knockbridge for details on motte-castles in general).

Though Wright provides no details on the history of Fairy Mount, he does make one important statement regarding its design, describing his plan view (his Fig. 2) as 'Ichnography of same with part of the town trench'.

This is one of only a handful of documentary clues that indicate that the Anglo-Normans established a borough at Louth.

The reason for their choice of Louth was its importance in pre-Norman times as a monastic and diocesan centre.

From the sheer size of the ecclesiastical enclosure (diameter 640m by 320m) that marked its precinct, Louth appears to have been a very large ecclesiastical settlement. Analysis by John Bradley (1985) and others shows that the motte was actually built on the line of this pre-Norman monastic enclosure.

'Borough' is here used in the sense of a legal framework for the creation of an urban settlement, in terms of a plot-pattern of living spaces, fixed rents, rights to hold markets, and legal privledges for its citizens, e.g. burgesses.

Orkney fairy mounds

Fairy Mounds feature heavily in the folk lore of Britain and Ireland. The mounds are believed to be the dwelling place of fairies (or faeries), elves or the sidhe. Fairy favour could bring prosperity and happiness but woe betide the miserable mortal who offends a fairy!

Just one of the many creative ways fairies chose to wreak revenge was by leaving a changeling in place of a human baby.

It’s no wonder that, for fear of angering their supernatural neighbours, Medieval people made offerings and referred to them euphemistically by terms such as ‘the good folk’ or the ‘good neighbours’.

Archaeologists are interested in Fairy Mounds for quite a different reason. When excavated, they usually prove to be interesting sites from the neolithic era. Many of them, like

Maeshowe in the Orkney Islands, are burial chambers but any circular building covered with soil and grass could create the appearance of a fairy mound. If the roof has fallen in, the mound will be solid; if the roof remains, then it will be hollow. Superstition aside, there was a practical reason for keeping yourself and your livestock away from a so-called fairy mound – you might fall in!

Killashee - longford in Midlands

Killashee or Cill na Sidhe when translated means
‘The Church of the Fairy Mound’ or ‘The Wood of the Fairies’.

These translations could be linked to the existence of a number of forts throughout the parish and mounds or hills which overlook the village, notably ‘Carrig’, known locally as ‘Burke’s Hill, ‘Crochans’ on the Lanesboro road, ‘an Culighan’ at the old Rectory.

The earliest references to Killashee as a parish are in the Roman Annates of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

Here Killashee is referred to under an astonishing variety of spellings, such are Killacythe, Kylnascyth, Kilnasichigi and under the names indicative of the titular of the Church Kilfegalen, Kilfylan and Kilfulan.

In 1302 Dhomnal O Farrell, Chieftain of Annaly, founded the convent of St John the Baptist at Middletown. But perhaps the most historic religious site was the Grey Friars monastery of Ballinakill, Middletown and Clonough, know as the land of Cluaindoeochra.

Its patron was Ernan and this foundation is almost as old as Clonmacnoise.

There are other very interesting historical reminiscences to note about Killashee. In 1430 Ballyclare Castle, the ruins of which are still to be seen today.