Merin - Bollocks

A late start again but off into town to the Moffat museum. We do so love these small, local museums, labours of love and home to the curious and unusual. 

Moffat was mainly local history and had a focus on the railway that used to run through the town. But the highlight was an exhibition on the druid Merlin. The Scots believe that Merlin was actually the local wise man Laoloken who also went by the names Merlyn or Myrddin. Back in those days the Scottish lowlands were under the rule of the Rheged tribe, Welsh speakers who controlled the NE, so Merlin/Laoloken would have spoken old Welsh  

But then came Geoffrey Of Monmouth who, with no real evidence, wrote "Historia Regnum Britanniae" (History Of The Kings Of Britain) which established Arthur, Camelot, Tintagel, a Welsh Merlin and the whole myth culture eventually leading to to T. H. White's Once And Future King (where Disney took The Sword in the Stone from) and Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave quintet 

Anyway if anyone is as fascinated as me, the talks from the Moffat based Merlin: Fact or Fake conference can be found here.

 https://merlintrail.com/merlinconference/

And the crudity in today's title? When I first saw this I thought "gosh, aren't the Scots specific in their weapons" but, of course, I knew it was to do with the shape of the handle

A last mooch around town, into the sweetie shop (that also has a wide range of beer and spirits) for some van sweeties (sherbet lemons and liquorice drops) and then to the one shop we'd not discovered previously, the local community shop, a charity shop in the premises of the recently vacated police station. A large haul of eight CDs (Dave Gilmour, Joni Mitchell, Marianne Faithful, Joan Baez etc al) and a knitting pattern came to the princely sum of £2.50. When I announced that I like to haggle in charity shops the elderly scots woman bristled and started to say "Oh noo" until I continued by saying that I thought the goods were worth £5 to me and would she be happy with that? I do love haggling upwards, it confuses so! 

At last it's warm enough to sit outside, so back to the site, pull up a chair, pop the cap off a beer and set the world to rights with friends. Y'know it don't get much better than that!