アルフレッド・ワトキンス
出典: フリー百科事典『ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
アルフレッド・ワトキンス（Alfred Watkins, 1855年 - 1935年4月15日）は、レイライン学者として有名である。
Hereford生まれ。一家は1820年に同地に移り、製粉業や醸造業を確立した。Watkins travelled across Herefordshire as an outrider representing the family business. また優秀な写真家でもあり、みずから写真機、やWatkins露出計を製作した 。その作例はHereford City Museumにある。
レイラインを発見したとき、66歳であった。This idea is that ancient manmade features of the landscape are placed in precise alignments which were "Old Straight Tracks". On June 30, 1921年, Watkins visited Blackwardine in Herefordshire when his conception of a system of straight lines crossing the landscape since neolithic times came to him in a visionary flash. He presented his ideas to a meeting of the Woolhope Club of Hereford in September 1921年, and published 『Early British Trackways』 in 1925年. Henceforth he spent a major part of his life developing his theory. He published several books on ley lines and participated in the Old Straight Track Club from 1927年 to 1935年 (the papers from this organisation are also in the Hereford City Museum).
Watkins ideas were not accepted by contemporary archaeologists. One reason for this was that the prevailing opinion was that the ancient Britons were too primitive to have devised such a suggestion. この見解は has largely changed nowadays. Others claim that there is no reason to ascribe intentionality to the lay out of ancient monuments as such alignments would be produced by a random distribution of points. Watkins was sensitive to such arguments and argued for caution. He also drew up a list according to which landscape features could be given values between 1/4 and 1 point, five points or more being required as evidence of a ley line.
Watkins was a member of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and a fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and was involved in the preservation of Pembridge Market Hall.
Watkins' work was revived and popularised from the 1960s following John Michell's publication of 『The View over Atlantis』 1969. There is a journal, 『The Ley Hunter』 which discusses leys and other Earth mysteries.
More recently, Watkins has had a ビール named after him, "Alfred Watkins' Triumph", brewed by Wye Valley Brewery Ltd, on a one-off basis.
目次 |
[編集] 著書
[編集] 『The Old Straight Track』
『The Old Straight Track』（1925年）は、イギリスでレイラインを記述した最初の書物である。
完全書名は、『The Old Straight Track: Its Mounds, Beacons, Moats, Sites and Mark Stones』であり、本書は1925年に刊行され、"Abacus"によって1994年4月2日、ISBN 0-349-13707-2として再販された。 Editions or reprints were published in 1925, 1933, 1945, 1948, 1970, 1974 and 1994. The Abacus edition of 1970 was reprinted up to 1999 at least, and carries a copyright dated 1970 "Allen Watkins and Marion Watkins".
序文、30章、4付録、索引、からなる。多数の図版、著者撮影の写真がある。
Watkins presents a methodical and thorough exposition of his theories of "leys", following an earlier much shorter publication, "Early British Trackways" in 1922. He shows the straight "Roman roads" were based on earlier ancient tracks.
Ancient tracks or "leys" criss-cross the British Isles: these were already very old when the Ancient Romans first came to Britain. Some churches in London appear to have been place along alignments, such as St Martins-in-the-Fields, St Mary-le-Strand, St Clement Danes and St Dunstan-in-the-West in Fleet Street. Watkins notes:
London church alignments are many, but should not be accepted as final until the structural history of each church is verified as being on an ancient site.
[編集] 原版への序文
序文は次の言明で終る。
What really matters in this book is whether it is a
humanly designed fact, an accidental coincidence, or a
"mare's nest," that mounds, moats, beacons, and mark
stones fall into straight lines throughout Britain, with
fragmentary evidence of trackways on the alignments.
A.W.
ハーフォード
1925年8月
[編集] 第1章 "Mounds"
第1章は
Unlike tracks, mounds remain unaltered in site down the ages; in many cases practically unchanged on form. Their antiquity is undoubted, as for the past half-century a concentration of archæological energy devoted to exploring their burial contents has proved most of them to be pre-Roman.
と始まる... それは
Lasting through scores of centuries of unwritten and written language, it is natural that many different names have become attached to each structure, and they are accordingly known by the names - Barrow, Burf, Butt, Cairn, Cruc, Garn, How, Knapp, Low, Mary, Moat, Moot, Mound, Mount, Toot, Tump, Tumulus, Twt. Also less distinctively as Burgh, Bury, Castle, Knowl; these last names being also used in other senses.
と続く...
[編集] 第2章 "Aligment of Mounds"
第1段落は:
In the district under investigation the mounds, or "tumps" as they are called on the Welsh border, are, as a rule, few and far between. But they do align with each other and their fellow-structures - moats - and also with other sites of antiquity.
Later:
Two alignments, chiefly of earthworks, cross on a ring mound at an acute angle...
[編集] 第3章 "Leys in Radnor Vale"
20ページからの短い引用 (Abacus 1974年版)。
Ley M was discovered by noticing that Old Radnor Church aligned in the distance with a piece of the road up to Burlands...
[編集] 第11章 "Ley-Men"
King Cole was King before the troubles came, The land was happy while he held the helm. Beneath the light arch of the heaven's span He chose to wander earth, the friend of man. Man hear him on the downs, in lonely inns, In valley woods, or up the Chiltern Wold.
Quoted by Watkins, from John Masefield's "King Cole" (London: William Heinemann, 1921; New York: The Macmillan Company, 1921).
この章で、ワトキンスは、 takes a different tack. He looks at names, the names of people and corresponding place names. In particular, "Cole" ("Coleman"), "Black" ("Blackman") and "Dod" ("Dodman). これらの名前は、 were associated with the highly skilled and knowledgeable men who created the leys, such as the dodmen.
"Cole"はまた"cold"でもあるが、しかしこの根に関係する、多くの他の名前がある。Cole Abbey, Colebatch, Colebreen, Colebatch は、are just a few of the names he lists. In all, there are about hundred names in the list! Cold Ash, Cold Ashby, Cold Ashton, Coldborough are a few of the names starting with "cold".
He gives "cole" as being a rare term for juggler and also makes reference to Old King Cole. Watkins stated that Pugh's Welsh dictionary gives a meaning for "Coel" as omen or belief: one example is "Coelfain" meaning "the stones of omen".
[編集] 付録 A "Ley Hunting"
付録 A は、"Ley Hunting"と題名づけられ、ヘンリーVIからの引用で始まる:
All the country is lay'd for me
and then continues:
Both indoor map and outdoor field exploration are necessary. Field work is essential. It is surprising how many mounds, ancient stones, and earthworks are to be found which are not marked, even on the large scale maps. I often feel sure from small indications - such as the knowl marked by a tuft of trees, the two or three Scotch firs in straggling line, the conformation of a road with a footpath and then a hedgerow, the general "lay of the land" - that a ley exists in a certain direction. But nothing can be done without the map, and for working directions I repeat those given in my earlier book with little alteration. You must use Government Ordnance maps. One mile to the inch is the working scale. Other maps of two or four miles to the inch are quite useless, save for checking long leys.
ワトキンスは続けて言う:
Maps cut in sections are useless for this exact work.
Watkins searched for ley lines with great precision, using maps and charts. 21世紀初めに、 a hand held GPS device can be used to map a path, and the results analysed by a computer in seconds.
[編集] 参照項目
- Alfred Watkins ley
- Old King Cole
- Onomatology
- Nazca Lines
- List of ley lines
- Position lines
- Early British Trackways, at sacred-texts.com
