Sitting at the top of the hill in the sun, I’m surprised to notice a stone circle. It feels very old. I knew it when I was at school here, but largely unremarked at the time. I was still making sense of the practical observable world. Ancient places of power barely registered. Mum used to drag us to a dolmen in Jersey and it was just a fucking rock.
Eight fucking rocks in a circle, near the top of the hill but shaded. What’s the etymology of Harrow? Is it from Hare? Perhaps, I have seen it argued, it comes from a heathen shrine. Heathen Shrine on the hill.
I sat with the rocks for a while sharpening my paganism once more. I asked them their names. The Hare Stone presented itself. Marking clockwise from there I found them to be Finnstone, Beestone, Flystone, Rollstone, Shadstone, Edgstone and Boystone. How had I not been talking openly with them as a boy? They’re eloquent. Neglected. Off on a limb.
This area though was generally pretty important for stones. We are near the Weald Stone. It’s a hill in a flat area, these places have been important since people were people. They’re places where the earth power comes up and raises us with it. The school was founded when everyone was busy pretending it was all about the Jewish myth and the Nazarene prophet, which largely ignores stones. I suspect someone left it out of a vague inherited respect for the ancient, but nobody attached any great significance to it. My tiny memory of it is someone saying: “If you challenged someone to a fight, they waited in the circle and you had to jump in from the wall.” Dull. But that’s boys and I’m sure the stones would have liked a bit of blood and emotion. Gotta charge up somehow.
I lay on my back in there a while. Have just been doing the funeral oration. Friends Romans Countrymen. God it’s wonderful to do. It feels like home. Muscular, emotional, full of life and joy and pain and rage. It’s a hell of a piece of writing. Charged myself up in the stone. It’s a nice way to spend the weekend, and now with the students away I can appreciate this extraordinary old and strong place that I ignored as a teenager.
AlBarclay 