The Guardian today, amongst all the coverage of the government's imminent collapse and certain creatures falling on their swords, is this fascinating letter in the obits, about John Michell in 1968....... leyline haters don't have to read it....
"Joe Boyd writes:
One day in 1968, I mentioned to John Michell (obituary, 6 May) that I was driving to Pembrokeshire that weekend with Robin Williamson of the Incredible String Band. John asked if he could get a lift as far as the Welsh borders, so four of us set out on a cloudless summer Saturday. John came equipped with a compass and some maps and asked if we would be interested in helping him conduct an experiment.
He took a map and drew the most important English ley line, connecting Glastonbury Tor with Bury St Edmunds, which passes through a remarkable number of towns named St Michael or St George. John proposed that we leave the A4 and attempt to follow this trunk route of ley lines across the Wiltshire downs towards Avebury.
We followed a dirt road out on to the downs, turning on to smaller and smaller tracks and eventually continuing on foot. Then, from the top of a rise, Avebury lay below us. The line we were following cleaved the stone circle below directly in half. More remarkable still was a long barrow placed at right angles on the crest of the hill. In the centre of the barrow, exactly where the line crossed, stood a stone dolmen. Standing with our backs to the dolmen, we looked west along the line. At 45 degrees to the left, our eyes could follow an absolutely straight road. At 45 degrees right, the same thing was clear: verges of fields, roads and avenues of trees stretching in a die-straight line as far as the eye could see.
John's explanations included the prosaic fact that Romans built roads along the existing tracks, and Anglo-Saxon wagons followed suit, as did 19th- and 20th-century road-builders. But, that afternoon, and, I confess, to this day, his explanation for the geometric string of St Michaels and St Georges seemed almost as plausible. Those names indicate "dragon-slayers", John said, and saints often originate in pre-Christian mythology. The ancient Celtic word for dragon, he explained, was derived from root words meaning "fiery, flying, coiled serpent". If you were an ancient Celt, how else would you describe a flying saucer? And how else, he asked, would UFOs travel around our planet except by following magnetic paths?
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