Events on Site - The Stones and the Stars: Building Scotland's Newest Megalith - page 229

8 Events on Site
We know by the Moon that we are not too soon,
We know by the sky that we are not too high,
We know by the stars that we are not too far,
And we know by the ground, that we are within sound…
- “ Gower Wassail” (traditional) [ 1 ] .
In my Radio Clyde interview, Dave Jamieson had asked when
the first visible event at the circle would be. Midsummer solstice,
was the reply - June 21. But if the stones were set in concrete,
what if the midsummer Sun didn't rise in line with them? “Well,”
I replied, “I don't know about the rest of them, but I'm for South
America. I might be able to flannel it with the Parks Department,
but not with Professor Thom.”
To use the circle, the observer is supposed to stand on the far
side from the event, so that the center stone occults the marker
stone and he or she sees the heavenly body rise or set above it. The
shadow of the marker stone would fall on the center stone, and the
shadow of the central stone towards the observer, demonstrating
the event even to a large number of onlookers. The ground falls
away on the south side of the circle, and to raise the observers to
the correct positions there, the intention was to create a low bank,
so incorporating in a sense at least one feature of Stonehenge. In
completion of the park the center of the circle, the perimeter and
the four segments leading to the stones were to be paved with
“cossie sets” of granite (Fig. 8.1 ), between four arcs of grass, cor-
responding in a way to the beds of stone found by Mackie in his
excavations at Kintraw and Cultoon, also found in the small stone
circle at Temple Wood (Fig. 8.2 ) .
The crucial test (weather permitting) would be the midsum-
mer solstice. The geometry of the situation is such that if even
one solar alignment was correct all the solar and lunar ones should
be correct (but see below!), and only the Rigel alignments would