It was the subject of Ghosts that got us started. There are a couple of haunted holiday cottages on Tresco, although I'd never dream of telling you which ones. "Why is it" The Editor had asked, "that ghosts usually come from the last few hundred years? We never seem to be visited by our earliest ancestors." This intrigued us, and I think that it was during the first quarter of the bottle that we decided that Early, or Neolithic, Man touches us in a subtler way, through the works he has left on the landscape. A message written large. On Scilly you will see the remains of our ancestors' works from over 4,000 years ago - the most concentrated grouping in Europe. Some are utilitarian, like field systems - but most are ritualistic, like graves, mounds, spine walls and standing stones. These constructions have lasted in a kind of sacred landscape which is most evident on the North End of Tresco and on Shipman's Head on Bryher. Although Mesolithic Man left his mark on West Cornwall from around 4000 BC, Scilly's chambered cairns and entrance graves are Neolithic - dating from about 2500 BC onwards.

Sympathetic and spiritual magic

"Can you imagine" mused the Editor "the effort that they expended in shifting those huge slabs of granite onto the top of each cairn? And some of them never contained a burial". These chambered cairns were similar, we decided, to churches - communally built stone structures where the burial of the dead was a subsidiary event. Like churches they were focal points to signal the affiliation, piety and wealth of the groups who built them - and the core of a sympathetic and spiritual magic linked to the land and its fertility.

The North End, where many of these constructions are located is wild and uncultivated. The field walls define burial grounds, and possibly link family sepulchres in a network of relationships.... on the landscape as in life. The Editor claims to be able to start at Piper's Hole and trace a line marked by stones that leads through several tumuli, The (Victorian) Monument, Oliver's Battery and on to Star Castle on St Mary's. Here was an Early British society that believed strongly in life-after-death and the immortality of the soul.

Archaeologists have never found evidence of any social hierarchy on Scilly before the 17the century. For centuries, Scilly may have been a place of burial, a ritualistic landscape occupied by priests, priestesses and the spirits of ancestors who - it was believed - were unable to cross water to haunt their descendants on the mainland.

Scilly was a single land-mass (except St Agnes) until Norman times when the sea started its invasion, and it wasn't until Tudor times that all the various islands were created. The Romans used a harbour in between what is now St Martin's and the Eastern Isles. A significant Romano-British shrine or beacon was found nearby on Nournour - probably dedicated to Vesta.

Did those Feet in Ancient Times...?

Bronze age grave at the north end of Tresco

It was during the last half of the Malt bottle that the Editor spoke of one of the oldest of British legends - the visit of the youthful Jesus to Cornwall and Somerset with his Mother and great-uncle Joseph of Arimathea. "Documents in many great libraries speak of it" said the Editor "which doesn't mean it's true. But who says there is never any truth in folklore?" Here's just part of the old story he told me as we sat by the fire - a tale that inspired William Blake to write "Jerusalem":

After invading Britain, the Romans discovered the tin mines in Cornwall, and lead and pewter in the Mendips. Until then they had dealt through middle-men - Jews or Phoenicians. The many Jewish place-names in Cornwall and the West Country hint at an ancient connection. British chieftains, or Kings, controlled the mines, and St Anne - mother of the Virgin Mary - is said to have been a Princess of Cornish or Breton royal blood. Joseph of Arimathea, Mary's uncle, was described as a "noble decurion" - a rank sometimes applied to a powerful official in charge of mines and metal-trading.

St Joseph, The Grail, King Arthur....

The Druid religion with its emphasis on the soul's immortality may have had a profound effect on the family. Grail legends focus on Glastonbury and Cornwall - sites for metal trading and both centres of much older Druid traditions. Was Jesus introduced to the Old Ways - Druidism - by his great-uncle and relatives of his Celtic grandmother?

After the Crucifixion, Joseph of Arimathea is said to have been sent by St Philip from Gaul to Britain with the Cup from the Last Supper.... the Holy Grail, the Sangraal, the Royal Blood. It is said that he was welcomed with 12 of his followers by King Arviragus - ancestor of Lear and Coel - and was granted land at Glastonbury where he built the first church and converted the Britons to Christianity. The Druids apparently accepted this new Celtic religion seamlessly, 450 years before St Augustine came to convert a later invader - the pagan Saxon. Later the Celtic Church was overwhelmed by the Roman Church's stern doctrine of unquestioning faith and obedience to an infallible Pope. But the older, gentler quest for truth through knowledge of oneself -gnosis - still echoes through the Grail Legends.

The Celtic Church clung to life in the far west of England, in Ireland, in Wales, on Scottish islands, and here in Scilly. King Arthur, and every one of the Knights of the Round Table, were said to be blood descendants of Joseph of Arimathea - inspired to seek his Grail, and thus self-knowledge.