On some of the most mysterious divine beings, and on Summer Solstice at the River Duddon, publ. on the 15/07/2026

I've tried to understand a lot about the ancient languages and history of Cumbria, but sometimes I need to engage with the landscapes of Cumbria in more direct terms of what I feel and am most obviously able to perceive and connect to. 

The Duddon Valley is a very sacred place to me. I have researched and published about its languages before, its place names, and Celtic or pre-Celtic, Norse or pre-Norse elements. The valley itself, and the river, are very special. 

I feel that, the spirit of the River Duddon would be an elegant and kind elven lady, whilst the spiritual guardian of the Atlantic forests that flank and rise above the river, would be a wise old man, leaning up against a tree, and silently watching over Travellers, his wisdom seeping into the roots of the ancient trees and into their voices in the wind. 

When I went to the Duddon Valley on the Summer Solstice this year, 2026, I felt or imagined, interpreted, all these - the aforementioned spiritual energies. 

I sat by the river just above Ulpha, in the shade of oak trees and rowans, the grass and rocky outcrops beneath the canopy were illuminated by the changing lights and areas of glowing air, where the bright sun shone down through the leaves at different densities, and illuminated the moss in a green fire. 

The gentle music of the river washed over me, and blended with the choruses of small gusts of wind in the leaves. I put my feet into the river and allowed its coolness, the movement, the physicality of its song, to wash over me. 

Photo below: a self portrait taken on that day in the forests near to the River Duddon, just upstream from Ulpha, the photo represents the meditation of taking in the healing of the forest and river, and of the spiritual elements behind them which I deeply discuss in this blog post. 

In the complexity of leaves, green light, the ancient bark of trees and the twinkling of the water, I imagined a wise old spirit, in the form of a bearded old man, his form glittering into my perception out of the bark, leaves and ancient stones. 

I felt that I had come to this valley on that day in order to be taught by this guardian. To disappear into the glowing forest for a few hours and for its calm gentle wisdom to seep into me; to sit by the river and to let its music wash over me and to wash away the pain, to allow the healing and good to shine through. 

In many ways, this forest guardian that I envisioned is archetypally similar to Tom Bombadil, the mysterious character from J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. This idea of a mysterious bearded figure, joyous as the sun shining through the trees, and the sound of birds, out of vision in the woods, but always there, eternally. 

The wisdom of this archetype is in my opinion so beautiful and special, because this archetype, just like the archetype of the Elven river goddess, are both so mysterious, but also, always there. We can return to the forest, the right, safe forests anyway, and find them, no matter how many millions of years they might have been there, even if they existed before and outside of other things; their music and spirit is “good”, it brings us home, heals our souls and makes us smile. 

It is perhaps no coincidence that I should conceptualise the spirituality I feel of the Duddon in terms of a wise, joyous old man, and a female river spirit. I had forgotten at the time that in Lord of the Rings, Tom Bombadil's wife Goldberry, is also known as the “River Woman's Daughter”, implying that she too is connected with water, and perhaps with healing, nature, and the summer solstice for example. 

Photo below: a magnificent oak close to the River Duddon, outstretched as though encompassing reality and the universe on its own fractal level, its branches and leaves waving in the light and wind (of course, it is a photo and not a video of a tree which is below). In Old Norse and likely also in the Nordic language of Cumbria, an oak was known as eik, whilst another indigenous Germanic form gives us the Cumbrian dialect word for "oak", which is yak. Whilst we do not know other words for "oak" used in this valley in other ancient languages, i.e. in what may be pre-Celtic or extra-Celtic languages, it is worth noting that in Welsh an "oak" is derwen and in Irish an oak is darach, and it is entirely possible that an indigenous Cumbrian form would have existed with this der- root.