Alba gu brath!!!

Celebrate your Scots Heritage on this, the National Day of Scotland.
Blue beer anyone?

All Roads Lead to Rosslyn

Don’t Lose Your Head

“Highlander“, a reboot to Russell Mulcahy’s 1986 film, will see a collaboration of the “Fast and Furious” director-producer duo once again. On Tuesday, September 22, Summit Entertainment announced that it has signed in helmer Justin Lin and producer Neal Moritz to work on the remake project.

“We are privileged to have this amazing opportunity to reinvent one of the great franchises,” the studio’s co-chairman Patrick Wachsberger said when revealing the joining of the two filmmakers to the project. “Neal and Justin have proven more than once that they can deliver an entertaining and exciting blockbuster.”

“Highlander” will offer a new take on the story of immortals who battle for supremacy while living seemingly normal lives in the contemporary world. It will expand on the original Highlander’s core mythology of the immortals. “Iron Man” scribes, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, have been tapped to pen the script.

My take: The original movie, directed by Russell Mulcahy and starring Christopher Lambert, Sean Connery, and Clancy Brown, is one of my favorite films, and the series starring Adrian Paul had moments of sheer brilliance. To say that I am wholly devoted to the “idea and spirit” of Highlander is an understatement. The potential in this franchise is awesome in scope, but ultimately the caretakers of Highlander have time and time again chiseled away at the core of its greatness to leave bits of rubble littered about. The less said about any of the sequel films, or the final season of the television series, the better.

Can a reboot of the franchise work, ala the recent relaunches of Battlestar Galactica or Star Trek? Of course it can, but one must also remember that these things most often times fail. The attempts at rebooting Night Stalker and Bionic Woman spring immediately to mind.

What the new shepherds of Highlander must do is adhere to the essence of what instilled it with magic to begin with. The original film had its problems to be sure, but I found that the series was able to iron out some of its rough spots. First things first… establish the rules and stick to them and steep your tale in character-building flashbacks and epic, swashbuckling action…

And do not forget… Highlander is a romance in the classic application of the term.

If I were an optimist I would be looking at this as an opportunity to elevate the franchise, treating what has come before with respect and viewing the whole of it as a trial run that can now spread its wings and truly fly.

If these new shepherds are to succeed remains to be seen, but dammit, I’m pulling for them.

The Face of Ancient Alba

By FRANK URQUHART

AT FIRST glance, it appears little more than a tiny fragment of sandstone with a few crude scratches on the surface.

Yet this precious object is one of the most exciting archaeological discoveries made in Scotland – the earliest representation of a human face and body ever found north of the Border.

The face and its lozenge-shaped body – measuring just 3.5cm by 3cm – were carved on the Orkney island of Westray between 4,500 and 5,000 years ago.

The enigmatic figurine had lain undisturbed in the earth at the Links of Noltland – one of Orkney’s richest archaeological sites – until just last week.

That was when archaeologists, carefully brushing away the mud from the fragment of sandstone, found Scotland’s earliest human face staring back at them.

Yesterday, as the tiny object was displayed in public for the first time, Scotland’s culture minister Mike Russell was the first to hail the importance of the remarkable discovery.

He said: “This is a find of tremendous importance – representations of people from this period are incredibly unusual in Britain.

“What we are seeing here is the earliest known human face in Scotland. It once again emphasises the tremendous importance of Orkney’s archaeology.”

The figurine was unearthed by Jakob Kainz, one of a team of archaeologists working at Historic Scotland’s excavations on an ancient farmhouse at the Links of Noltland site – a prehistoric settlement in the dune system flanking Grobust Bay, on the north-west coast of Westray.

Historic Scotland senior archaeologist Richard Strachan said it was a find of “astonishing rarity” – the only known Neolithic carving of a human form to have been discovered in Scotland.

He said: “It was one of those ‘eureka’ moments. None of the archaeology team have seen anything like it before. It’s incredibly exciting.

As some of the mud crumbled off, Jakob saw an eye, then another and a nose, then a whole face staring back.”

Careful examination revealed a face with heavy brows, two dots for eyes and an oblong for a nose. A pair of circles on the chest are being interpreted as representing breasts, and arms have been etched at either side. A pattern of crossed markings could suggest the fabric of clothing.

Mr Strachan said: “There is a strong possibility that it has been a votive offering to mark the abandonment of the site. It may have been for ceremonial purposes.”

Dr Gordon Noble, a Neolithic expert at Aberdeen University, said: “This is certainly a significant discovery. We have some Neolithic art in Scotland, but it is all abstract art designs.”

Uri Geller purchases Lamb Island

Television presenter and world-famous mystifier Uri Geller revealed today that he is the new owner of a mysterious and enigmatic island claimed to be one of the Great Pyramids of Scotland.

Lamb Island, a volcanic outcrop in the Firth of Forth north of Edinburgh, is one of three rocky outcrops which mirror the layout of the Pyramids at Giza, near Cairo in Egypt.

“I am fascinated by the connection between the pyramids and these islands,” said Geller, 62, who is currently filming in Holland and Germany his reality TV show for mentalists, The Next Uri Geller.
“The connection has been known for centuries — you can read about it in a fifteenth century manuscript called the Scotichronichon, by the Abbot of Inchcolm, Walter Bower. So when I heard Lamb Island was for sale, I felt a strong instinctive urge to buy it — and the more I delved into the history and the archaeological lore which surrounds it, the more certain I became that this is one of the most significant sites in Britain.”
Geller was first alerted to the existence of Lamb Island by a story in the Times on October 19, 2008, which said a Brazilian-born internet entrepreneur, Camilo AgasimPereira, who owned the title of Baron of Fulwood and Dirleton, was planning to sell the island. He had been bequeathed it in 2002, and had never set foot on it. Agasim-Pereira now lives in Florida.
“The asking price was £75,000, but after negotiations we were able to settle on a fee of just £30,000,” Geller said. “This island has links not only to the pyramids, but to King Arthur, King Robert the Bruce and to the ancient Kings of Ireland too. It might seem forbidding, and it is certainly uninhabitable, but it is also one of the keystones to British mythology, and I am thrilled to be its owner.”
The connections to myth can only be understood by tracing leylines, the mysterious invisible paths which dowsers claim to be able to sense as flowing lines of energy. To many dowsers, leylines are as real as streams of underground water — but unlike water, leylines follow rigid patterns and run in straight lines. They link most of the world’s significant archaeological sites, such as Stonehenge, the Pyramids and the great temples of south-east Asia,
as well as obscure monument and buildings connected to powerful religious societies from long ago, such as the Knights Templar.

According to research published by a historical investigator named Jeff Nisbet, in the magazine Atlantis Rising, in September 2002, there are three crucial Templar sites in the UK: the village of Temple, Rosslyn Chapel and the Isle of May. This last is believed by some Arthurian scholars to be the real location of Avalon, the island where King Arthur was laid to rest and await his return as the Once and Future King.
Lines drawn between the three points cut through a pair of islands in the Firth of Forth, called Craigleith and Fidra. And lying between these is a third outcrop: Lamb Island.
What Nisbet realised is that the three islands are arranged in precisely the same crooked line that marks the layout of the Pyramids at Giza, built by the Pharoahs 4,500 years ago.
That layout famously matches the three stars known as Orion’s Belt, and Nisbet discovered that anyone standing on the battlefield of Bannockburn, where Robert the Bruce defeated the English army in 1314, on the anniversary of the battle on June 24, would see the three stars (Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka) rise exactly over the three islands of Craigleith, Lamb and Fidra.

And if the royal connections to Arthur and the Bruce were not enough, a line extended from the Isle of May through Lamb Island will cross Tara, the burial place of the ancient Irish kings. More improbable yet — but nevertheless true — is the name traditionally given to the stars of Orion’s belt: the Three Kings.

“I am a deep believer in what Carl Jung called synchronicity, the power of connections between things which are linked by forces we don’t understand,” said Geller, who lives with his wife Hanna in a manor house in the Berkshire countryside, beside the Thames. “And there are many clear synchronicities that come together on Lamb Island. I have heard it said that the bloodline of the Scottish Kings — and so that of Queen Elizabeth II herself — can be traced back to the pharoahs and to the Jewish patriarch Noah, of Noah’s Ark, through an ancient Prince and Princess called Gaythelos and Scota. I like to think that when they landed in Scotland, the first place they moored was in the Firth of Forth, off Lamb Island.

“I am proud to have this opportunity to preserve it, not just for its mythological and historical connections but for its conservation value — Lamb Island is part of a Site of Special Scientific Interest. I can’t build there, of course, but it is home to countless seabirds, and perhaps to seals too. And before long, I hope to pay it a visit. I might need a helicopter, but I am determined to set foot on my island soon.”
In April of 2002 Falkirk–born historian John Walker initiated my interest in Scotland’s history when he asked me to find the site of the Battle of Falkirk of 1298, in which Edward I defeated the Scots in revenge for Stirling Bridge the year before. Despite many theories, its location has never been verified. No artifacts have been uncovered, I believe only two bodies were unearthed.

I would love to investigate further some of the country’s historical and modern mysteries.

For further amazing information please visit http://www.mythomorph.com

What surprised me is that The Firth contains several small islands, the more significant of which are the Bass Rock, Cramond, Craigleith, Eyebroughy, Fidra, Inchcolm, Inchgarvie, Inchkeith, Inchmickery, Lamb and, farthest out, the Isle of May which = 11 islands!