The Secret History of Here

by Alistair Moffat

  I have also taken to writing it down as I find it, as I go along, and when it seems that a journey has ended (it is rare for me to think it is completed) I try to organise a narrative. The most attractive aspect of looking to make sense of the past in this way is that I am often surprised; I often come across a notion that would never have occurred to me as I sat at my desk.

  This diary is a record of things I came across in a tiny area, no more than eighty acres of hill, field and stream in the Scottish Border country, and yet it has turned out to be a much richer and wider story than I could ever have anticipated. The whispering land has given up tales of hunter-gatherers and the prehistoric fauna of the painted caves of the Pyrenees, of Irish lords who marked their territory in stone, of crusader knights and the wars of the Holy Land, of the War of the Three Kingdoms, of the fall of the Stuart monarchy, the agricultural revolution, of romantic Polish soldiers, world wars and much else. The debris of history was strewn everywhere; these stories were sparked by a flint arrowhead in a furrow, a cigarette lighter lost in a field. None of this was predicted or premeditated, it just happened as I walked and took flight when Rory and Walter walked with me.

  History should not be thought of as rows of books in a library or a bookshop, or the subject of drowsy double periods on a Friday afternoon. History is us, it is what made us, the only reliable means of understanding the present or making any sense of the future. And all that is needed to make it come alive is curiosity, and a pair of stout, waterproof boots.

  28 December

  Walter Elliot likes to dream of the past. A child of the Ettrick Valley whose eighty-five summers have been spent in or near the hills and valleys of the high country, he can read the land instinctively, understanding how it was seen by the hundreds of generations before us. He taught me the importance of vantage and visibility. When we went with divining rods to look for the Anglian settlement at the north end of the Doocot Field, he knew immediately where to begin. Without a word, Walter walked up the slight slope to a ridge I had not noticed. In the millennia before good drainage, and in a landscape with many fewer trees, people often preferred to build and live on higher ground, and on vantage points that offered good visibility of the surrounding countryside. With the divining rods, we came upon the outlines of old buildings in only a few minutes.

  The patient quartering of likely ground, the precise recording of find-spots and an encyclopedic knowledge of old coins, medieval in particular, has meant that Rory Low’s discoveries have complemented Walter’s perceptions and conjectures perfectly. When the metal detector buzzes and an object is brought back into the light, history finds its way into the palm of Rory’s hand. Coins, brooches, the base plates of hand grenades, a sword pommel, lumps of lead – all of these objects carry the fingerprints of the past. The last person to touch them before Rory was the person who lost them – in the seventh century, the thirteenth, the seventeenth and the twentieth. Edek and Rita, Otto de Grandson, Edward I and a little boy who could not find his toy cannon in the Doocot Field all lift the veil between us and their long-ago lives.

  This account of a year in the valley is dedicated to Walter and Rory not out of good manners or even gratitude for sharing all they know, but because they made many of its pages sparkle and sing of the past.

  29 December

  Eight days after the solstice, time seems to turn slowly, like an old-fashioned record player running at 33 rpm for a 45 rpm single. The words slur into echoic slow motion, so slow that no forward movement seems possible. Perhaps after the year turns the days will stretch out and the tempo will brighten.

  30 December

  At the foot of the Long Track, where it meets the C road, winter has not been kind. Despite our neighbours at Burn Cottage putting down tarmac planings, many puddles have turned into wide, sharp-edged holes. And the junction of the old track with the smooth road surface has a broken seam of potholes, humps and frayed edges. Perhaps that is as it should be at the precise place where the past bumps into the present. Roman legions marched past that junction of history, armoured knights and their esquires reined their horses there, and David Leslie’s covenanting cavalry passed silently by on their way around Howden Hill to charge into the rear of Montrose’s royalists. Rough edges are no more than appropriate.

  The foot of the Long Track is also an annual beacon of warmth and conviviality, a welcome light in winter. Usually in the afternoon of the day before Auld Year’s Night, our neighbours at Burn Cottage hold an old-fashioned soiree. All of the people in our little valley are invited to this Christmas-lit house, where tables groan with food and the pantry shelves and fridges are full of bottles, some of them with wine in them. Held between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. so that guests can come and go before the descent of the black-dark of midwinter, this party can be a review of the year. Conversations often revolve around change and plans. The year that is passing is reviewed and the one to come discussed. Tomatoes figured in one exchange, how the year’s crop was and what needed to be improved, the best varieties, the dangers of over-watering, growing from seed as opposed to buying potted plants and much else.

  I do not think of these everyday things as trivial, just everyday, the stuff of lives, the routines that sustain us, the work we do and our effort to be as productive as possible. What Walter Scott called ‘the big bow-wow stuff ’ also gets a careful airing at the soiree in discussions of politics, and this year I noted more talk than ever about the climate emergency. On this morning’s news sites, a headline jumped out at me: ‘Thousands flee to the sea as fires race to the ocean’. As temperatures soar to new highs, millions of acres of woodland and bush are burning in Australia. Across New South Wales and Victoria a 310-mile-long blaze is being fanned by winds and is impossible to put out. The news reports carried pictures of red skies and ash-filled air, as frightened people wearing facemasks fled to the beaches and quaysides. I did not have to scroll down far to find the word ‘apocalyptic’.

  Perhaps attitudes in at least one country will be shifted, but equally it may be that more apocalypses are needed elsewhere. Strangely, I am becoming slowly more optimistic about combatting the climate emergency. Action to save our planet will not come from government or big business, but from below, from voters and consumers, from the terrified people on the beaches in Australia, and they will force change.

  31 December

  In the Deer Park, Adam and I came across a symbol of royalty. It scampered up a bank above the Nameless Burn and then disappeared into a hole in the old ash tree that had had its crown broken off by a storm in the summer of 2018. And then, appropriately, it poked its head out of the top of the hollow trunk where the crown should have been. Adam had spotted a pure white ermine, a stoat whose coat had turned from brown to its snowy winter colours. Very clearly visible against the grey wrack of the ruined tree and the dieback around the burn, the ermine seemed busy, preoccupied, perhaps even ferreting around after something. Adam reckoned that its territory probably included the southern flanks of the Deer Park and especially the track that runs along the fences of the East Meadow. He has seen many voles darting into the long grass, the stoat’s principal prey.

  Because ermine pelts are small, the white fur was mostly used as a trim or a collar for ceremonial robes. Not only monarchs wear ermine, it is favoured by Popes. Many portraits show capes known as mozzette and berets fringed by the stoat’s winter fur. White is, of course, intended as camouflage in the snow, and perhaps the busy little ermine knows more than the Met Office about the winter we can expect next year.

  It is the last day of the old year, and the last entry in this diary of a year in our valley. A brilliant sun shone all day, and after darkness fell the light in the western sky glowed pale blue for a long time, stencilling the black line of the horizon I have come to know so well. Out in the early evening with the dogs, I began to think of the first time we saw this place. In the summer of 1990, we bumped down the Bottom Track and parked outside a grey ruin in the corner of a field. Biscuit-r
ipe barley billowed in the warm breeze, growing to within a few yards of the front door. The roof was caved in and the old porch half-collapsed. Inside was chaos covered in pigeon shit and pheasant droppings. The advertised stables had all but fallen down and the garden was a jungly mess.

  We had looked at many properties in the Borders, some on the edge of villages, others very remote, hidden in hill valleys, and one was even in England, just over the border. But this unloved, abandoned ruin at the bottom of a bumpy track whispered to us. My wife and I exchanged looks and began walking around the old house, barely able to see where we were going in the overgrowth. Neither of us were thinking much about what it might become, about what estate agents call ‘potential’. Instead, without much prior knowledge, we began to intuit what this place had been, began to be aware of its spirits. Most of all we immediately understood why a house had been built in this out-of-the-way corner. It was not only the wide and long views, especially open to the south, it was also its place at the foot of a slope, above the banks of a little stream. The house felt like a destination, somewhere we sensed we should like to stay.

  The Henhouse took a long time to rebuild and was finally completed in May 1994, but in the intervening summers we often came down from Edinburgh, sometimes with a picnic on a sunny Sunday. And, slowly, we found that we did not want to leave, return to the noise and the bustle of the city. Even before a brick was laid or a nail hammered in, we knew that this was our place, somewhere we would make together, somewhere we would live, perhaps permanently. In those summer afternoons, the peace of the old house and the fields around it began to settle on us.

  When building work began in 1992, we came down to see what progress had been made (too often none) but always stayed longer than we meant to. One afternoon, I thrashed through the tall nettles and willowherb at the bottom of the garden and, close to the banks of the burn, I slipped on a stone. After clearing away the tangle, I saw that it was a big, oblong stone that had once stood upright. In falling, it had kicked out earth along one side of a small slot where it had originally been set. With a fence post and a shovel, we heaved it up and it resumed its position, slipping easily into the slot.

  The stone started me thinking. Was it a small, prehistoric standing stone? Was it a boundary marker? It was the first time I dreamed of what this place had been, the first time I heard the rustle of the leaves, and the first time I looked over my shoulder.

  Acknowledgements

  Simon Thorogood was a vital guiding hand in the writing and shaping of this book and I want to thank him very much for all his creativity and tact. His skill as an editor made a big difference.

  Walter Elliot and Rory Low added great sparkle and their willingness to share their knowledge and perceptive judgements make them as much the authors of this book as I am. But I should say immediately that any mistakes are mine alone.

  Andrew Crummy came down for a day on the farm and the beautiful drawings and map he made adorn the book.

  My agent, David Godwin, kept faith with this project as it developed and changed. Thank you, David.

  I always carry a notebook and, being forgetful, write things down when I see them or think of them. On several pages there is a long line as my pen slid off and often fell to the ground. These scores on the paper are a record of the times when my dog, Maidie, saw a rabbit and yanked the lead hard, sometimes almost pulling me over. But I would like to thank my little Westie for all the times she stood still while I scribbled something about the weather or the land.

  ‘Will leave you spellbound’

  Countryfile

  ‘A triumph’

  Herald