Glastonbury Thorn Felled

[Osweo]

I'm not well known for being a tree hugger, but the felling of old trees disturbs me on a very deep level. It's one of the only things I do, think, or feel which I cannot yet fully rationally explain.

I'm outraged.

I know what you mean. Part of it's the time and effort... Hundreds of years of growth, all gone to waste in an hour or so.

Reminds me of the Mote Hill in Warrington. A great burial mound which had stood there since the 600s if not longer, 'had to be razed for the sake of progress' in the 1800s, to build a school. A hundred years later, and the same plot is now waste land. More than a millennium survived, cut short by something so fleeting.

The tree was already a replacement, but why shouldn't it have been allowed to grow to the age and stature of its predecessor? Every day, we lose more and more ancient things, until one day, all we'll have around us is the new and temporary. We need ROOTS.

[Wyn]

Payback for Donar's Oak?

I don't think it was the Chatti that did this.

Anyway, this is a real shame. The tree was very old (regardless of Christian associations or any religious associations) and this is simply an act of desecration against something natural and beautiful that had a kind of folk-importance.

[Murphy]

As Wyn said, I don't care if this tree was pagan, Christian or fucking Martian. This was an assault on a deep part of local English history and culture and the vandals should be locked up.

No, we should introduce slave-labour for criminals. Tax-payers shouldn't have to keep these people in comfort which assuredly is what life in prison will be like. If they even get that far!

[Cato]

a small degree of vengence
against the semitic fremdkörper
for daring to trammel the native european religion.

I was just saying.. A tree is a tree to me, regardless of whichever deity it's dedicated to.

My ideas of a native European religion are probably something closer to deism than anything else. Trees of Jesus or trees of Thor belong to what Tom Paine called "the heathen mythology". While I believe in God, or the divine, I'm beginning to understand (yet again) why I fell away from Christianity in the first place (its obsession with guilty feelings, for example).

[Cato]

Addition: Old trees, unless rotting or infested with termites or whatever, ought to be left standing.

[Beorn]

And having English nationalists dismiss it as 'only a tree' shows a woeful underappreciation of the importance of such symbols in building a healthy and emotive sense of local and national identity.

I'd have wept like a child if they had torn down the church or the very Tor itself, but a tree I can only muster a sad frown and shrug of the shoulder.

Another will grow in its place with care and attention.

[Osweo]

I don't think it was the Chatti that did this.

... shit, maybe this IS something of a lead that we ought to pass onto the coppers, though....?

Anyway, this is a real shame. The tree was very old (regardless of Christian associations or any religious associations) and this is simply an act of desecration against something natural and beautiful that had a kind of folk-importance.

Aye

I'd have wept like a child if they had torn down the church or the very Tor itself, but a tree I can only muster a sad frown and shrug of the shoulder.

I'd be fucking fuming, and wishing I was there and knew who to beat the living shit out of. I sort of am now, even.

Another will grow in its place with care and attention.

A sapling instead of a mature tree. And perhaps the same will occur again in a few years time. How inspiring; a twig about an inch in thickness, or an old twisted tree that has been shaped by so many summers and winters, and gnarled by the winds blowing onto the hilltop...

A church is easier to rebuild than a tree, even, and the ruin there HAS been rebuilt several times anyway.

[Beorn]

A sapling instead of a mature tree.

A chance to see how strong it grows alongside a revival in English Nationalism.

How inspiring; a twig about an inch in thickness, or an old twisted tree that has been shaped by so many summers and winters, and gnarled by the winds blowing onto the hilltop...

Or perhaps nothing at all!

Either way, whatever grows out of the stump will adorn my desktop screen as it did when it was a slightly gangly, decrepit old thing... a bit like England in that respect.

I'll be keeping the current one of the Tor for now, what with it being the most iconic to me and my fellow Somerset folk.

[Beorn]

I couldn't find the news report with the wailing New Age Hippies, but this tonight edition goes some way to showing the emotion in Glastonbury over the incident.

http://www.itv.com/westcountry-east/...ed-thorn33015/

[Angharad]

Aw, and I was going to visit the thorn on my next trip to the UK.