Three years and three days after our first handfasting, Dan and I chose the 3,000 year old site of Navan (just outside Armagh) to celebrate another handfasting.
At Navan there is a reconstructed Iron Age wooden round house which we were invited into by three iron age women. It was beautifully made with a faux-fire in the middle and floored with sheepskin and deerskin. I could have moved in on the spot.
The ladies (in character the whole time) told us about their lives, how they hunted in iron age times and also about how when people wished to marry they had a handfasting which lasted for a year and a day - a trial marriage of sorts. After this time they could agree to part or to stay together.
We said 'but that's what we're doing here!'
They told us that must be the reason the sun god Lugh was shining down that morning after so much rain, and apologised that their bards and druids were not around to carry out the binding for us.
The ancient hill was mentioned by Ptolemy's geography of the 2nd Century AD, so it's a pretty important place even though most people I mentioned it to have never heard of it.
Most wonderful of all the hill was deserted the whole time we were there and we were able to sit down on my coat, renew our original handfasting vows and tie our hands together before walking around the perimeter of the hill to make a binding circle.
Just married, yet again!
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