Tea at Trianon: Ancient Pictish Hillfort

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, February 29, 2020

Ancient Pictish Hillfort

From Ancient Origins:

According to Perth and Kinross Heritage Trust ( PKHT.org), King's Seat Hillfort is situated on a prominent hill top above an important bend in the River Tay at Dunkeld, overlooking Strath Tay to the north and south. While the fort has been known about for at least the last century, only basic plans of the surviving earthworks have been made and no previous archaeological investigations have ever taken place, until now.

The archaeological project was conducted by PKHT, Dunkeld & Birnam Historical Society and AOC Archaeology Ltd with around 30 community volunteers, secondary school pupils from Pitlochry High School and students on archaeological fieldwork training from the University of the Highlands and Islands . These new results from the King’s Seat dig follow the trust’s successful five-year project in Glen Shee, studying a prosperous Pictish farming community dating to the late 6th century to the mid-9th century. (Read more.)