To the Island of Tides

by Alistair Moffat

  Inscriptions on gravestones and elsewhere show Christianity advancing up Liddesdale and crossing the watershed hills to the Yarrow Valley and Peebles. Place-names add to the sense of early conversion. In Old Welsh, eglwys meant ‘a church’ and it is cognate to the Latin ecclesia. Ecclefechan in eastern Dumfriesshire is an ancient name and it means ‘little church’. Much further east, Eccles in Berwickshire and Eccles Cairn near Yetholm in Roxburghshire were the sites of pre-Anglian churches, the former the centre of an early shire. By the sixth century, it is highly likely that there existed an organised ecclesiastical structure of some kind in the Tweed Valley. The impression given in Bede’s work and the Anonymous Life that Cuthbert and other saints and monks were preaching to communities ignorant of Christ needs qualification. The native British, certainly their elites, had heard the word of God for a century and more before the invaders came, and it seems more likely that it was pagan Anglian settlers who were in need of salvation. Faint echoes of the prayers of British priests whisper along the banks of the Tweed. Perhaps Cuthbert heard them as he passed.

  * * *

  Two bats were feeding, swooping around the porch and the track when I took the dogs out on an early September dawn. Only the crows were croaking, like heavy smokers coughing when they wake up, and all the other birds were still roosting. But once again, after only ten minutes and as the sky brightened, the little pipistrelles had crawled up and under the wooden fascia on the terrace to sleep for the day. It is not difficult to see how the Dracula association came about, but I like the wee bats and their flickering, frantic way of flying, making it very obvious even in the half dark that they are not birds.

  On the eastern, leeward side, behind the stables, the old oak’s leaves were turning brown and the young wood on the western side of the Bottom Track was opening up as its canopy began to fall. The rabbit and deer tunnels were much clearer and my little dog’s sniffing showed where they led. If I had let her off the lead, I would never have seen her again. By the gate into the Deer Park track there is a stand of sweet poplars, and each spring and autumn they give off a powerful scent, slightly chemical like some women’s perfume. It was strong this morning as the wee dog and I came back from checking the old horses, the mares and the mini Shetlands in the East Meadow. Bright in the east, with some shafts of weak sunlight, the sky was leaden over in the west and since that was where the wind was coming from we quickened our step to beat the band of rain. It moved through quickly.

  There are different sorts of sunshine. This morning, the clouds streaked diagonally across the eastern horizon and the angle at which they moved allowed the western hills of Ettrick to be lit. Not strong or high enough to be dazzling, the sun made the heather glow and the greens of the upland pasture seem richer and more subtle. By the time the tideline had washed down the hills to our valley, the trees took on a luminous quality. It was perfectly still but with some moisture in the air; the land seemed to be still and peaceful.

  I could hear no engine noise of any sort, only the lowing of distant cows in the fields behind the Top Wood, the cawing of the crows strung out on the power lines and the songs of a few early birds. Sounds as well as sights are a transport to an older Scotland, a slower Scotland whose colours were glowing this morning. It seemed like a good time to get my walking boots on and, my sore back willing, follow the banks of the Tweed and the shadow of Cuthbert rowing through the river-mist for as long as I could.

  When I reached Benrig, clouds had darkened the day again and rain was gathering in the south, over the heads of the hills. I parked by the gates to the cemetery and, having changed into rain gear, I followed a narrow path that snaked between a wall and a fence down which an avenue of mature trees marched. At the top of a high bank above the river, a steep, dark, damp and slippery set of wooden stairs led down to a narrow flood plain choked with hogweed and willowherb.

  There was little or no breeze, but in a moment, the weather changed once more, like a light switch. The sun suddenly lit one of the most beautiful reaches of the River Tweed I had yet seen. In my notebook, I see that I have breathlessly scribbled ‘Stunning! So rich!’ Downstream from Mertoun Bridge the Tweed is wide, with pattering shallows and a little flush of white water as the level of its bed suddenly drops close to the bank I was standing on, while on the far side the deeper pools swirled like liquid silk. I was standing below a heavily wooded high bank and on the other side biscuit-ripe cornfields led my eye eastwards. Just as there are below Mertoun Bridge, there are rows of ramrod-straight poplars in four ranks, their roots drinking deep from the constantly moist earth. The sun blinked between high clouds, alternately darkening the landscape and then flooding it with light, and the river glittered as it ran southeastwards to turn north again below Maxton Bank. I had been fretting about how sore my back and left leg would be after the scrapes and japes of climbing up to Old Melrose, but the glories of a stretch of the river I had never seen before drove all of that detail out of my mind.

  As I walked on a good, if muddy path, I met only two dog walkers and reflected that in the seventh century, when Cuthbert rowed his curragh, I would have been standing on the banks of a busy highway. Fourteen centuries later, the shift has been dramatic. Only half a mile from the Tweed, the A699 carries all of the traffic now. I have driven that road many hundreds of times and yet had absolutely no sense of the secret beauties that flow so close to it.

  Dug into the western bank above my path I noticed two stone archways closed by iron grills. At first I thought they might be limekilns, but a helpful bronze plaque explained that I was at the Crystal Well, or more correctly, a pumping station built to bring up the water from a lower well. Below the arches was a picturesque artificial grotto of the sort built by landscape gardeners in the eighteenth century and inside was a powerfully flowing little spring. I cupped my hands to taste sweet water and, as I bent down, noticed in the granite basin below the outflow that there were a few coins, something that is commonly seen in fountains and even below bridges over rivers. When people who throw coins into the water are asked why they do it, the general response is ‘for luck’. But in fact what they are doing is a distant echo of an ancient ritual.

  At Duddingston Loch, at the foot of Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh, archaeologists have recovered prehistoric swords, spear tips and a great deal of other military and domestic ironmongery from its silty, anaerobic depths. To the peoples of the first millennium BC and before, these were very precious, even prized items that appear to have been deliberately thrown into the water. At sites in the Borders and at watery places all over Britain, similar, smaller caches have been found. Historians believe that all of these objects were the deposit of ritual. Jetties were built out into lochs and rivers so that priestly figures could ceremonially cast these valuable swords, spears, shields and cauldrons into the water with no intent to retrieve them. These were in all likelihood acts of propitiation, of sacrifice to the water gods who lurked in the darkness of the depths, whose anger or ill nature could send flood and tide to play havoc.

  Natural springs and wells also received deposits of metal, as well as other signs of reverence around them. Some years ago, I visited Madron Well in Cornwall, one of the most famous and most visited of these ancient springs. Tangled in a dense copse of thorn trees and other snagging undergrowth, the well was at first difficult to see as a single source, but its presence could not be mistaken as muddy streams trickled around the roots of the bushes. I eventually found what seemed to be the well, a spring surrounded by a set of squared-off kerbs, and tied on almost every available branch or twig around it were scraps of cloth, ribbons, small cuddly toys, a teddy bear and even bits of supermarket plastic bags. Some had messages or names on them, and I was told that many young girls and women come to make wishes at Madron. I saw no one attach any of these rather bedraggled, sad-looking favours, but I suspect the response as to why they did it would have been the same as the coin throwers’, ‘for luck’, and maybe something to do with marriage or having chi
ldren.

  In fact, those who throw coins and other metal objects into water are also committing an act of propitiation, not so much for good luck as the avoidance of bad. And for me, the discovery of the Crystal Well held infinitely more fascination than the elaborate construction of a pump to supply water to the big house at the top of the bank, complete with its plaque. I am certain the sweet water has bubbled out of that bank for millennia and more, that it was venerated as a holy well long before there were monks at Old Melrose. Water could be got from the Tweed, twenty yards away, and in the many centuries before main drainage and industrial effluent it would have been pristinely clear. But wells like this had their own elemental magic; they were spontaneous sources of the earth’s bounty and places where that could be blessed and celebrated. Perhaps Cuthbert pulled his curragh over to the bank below the Crystal Well, said a prayer and drank the holy water.

  After spending time listening to the sounds of the river, so peaceful they were almost hypnotic, I climbed back up the slippery steps, the business of going up much easier than coming down. The Pathfinder had plotted the ruins of St Boisil’s Chapel in Benrig Cemetery and on a knoll to the south-east I could see an outline of very low walls, little more than foundations. But before I reached it, I walked through the rows of gravestones, noticing that several were recent, one set up in 2016, and towards the edge of the high bank I had climbed plenty of room had been left for more. Closely cropped grass waited for the dead to be planted. In my ignorance, I had imagined that because the old chapel had been demolished in 1952, the cemetery would have closed its gates to more funerals. But instead it seemed that families still wanted to bury their dead at Benrig, even though there was no longer a kirk and the nearest lies about half a mile south of the village of St Boswells. A small information board explained that the Church of St Boswells (using the modern spelling of Boisil) had been established in 1153 for Lessudden, the old name of the village. But it did not explain why it had been built so far from where most of its parishioners lived. I suspect the attraction of such an inconvenient site was that the new church would be raised on ground that had been sacred for centuries, a place where saints walked. Perhaps the medieval church was built over a much earlier structure.

  Places often seem not to lose their sanctity and sense of peace when formal worship ceases and I spent longer than I intended looking at the headstones, recognising one or two names, saddened by some that commemorated younger people, one a woman who had died in childbirth. Her baby had been buried with her and it reminded me of a prehistoric grave found in Denmark. A mother had probably also died in childbirth and her baby had been laid on a swan’s wing and nestled in her embrace. Another headstone made me smile. Jeremy Church had died in 2000, only fifty-nine, and the inscription read: ‘A witty, loving and unconventional man’, with the second ‘n’ in unconventional reversed.

  The demolition of the chapel dedicated to Cuthbert’s soul-friend looked surprisingly complete. Only one or two courses of rough-hewn stone had been left above ground and some debris piled on top of those, but I noticed that several very old gravestones, their inscriptions long since faded, had been set into the old walls as the dead hugged close the sanctity of the ancient precinct, hoping their sins would be cleansed by the sacred earth. On the far side of the chapel were the higgledy-piggledy rows of much older stones, some lurching at drunken angles, others fallen. Around the southern edge of the cemetery were arranged the lairs of the local gentry, some of them surrounded by iron railings, setting them apart from the rest of us, even in death.

  The path by the Tweed and the steep steps were part of St Cuthbert’s Way and I rejoined it over a stile in the cemetery fence. It led through a dark wood dripping with last night’s rain to more echoes of Old Melrose. Up on a mound, perched high over the river, stands the solid, foursquare block of Maxton Kirk. Dedicated to St Cuthbert, its existence has been noted in the written historical record for almost a thousand years and was probably a place of worship long before that. Maxton’s location is suggestive of a pagan past. Old churches are often found on the sort of man-made mounds that may have formed the core of prehistoric monuments of an uncertain sort, perhaps burial places, perhaps the centre of a ditched perimeter. The dense wood of tall, mature broadleaf trees that stands between the kirk and the river mask how dramatic this eminence looked in the past. Standing high above the Tweed, it will have been visible from the north and west from long distances, what archaeologists call a statement in the landscape.

  Unlike St Boisil’s Chapel, and only half a mile distant, Maxton is still an active kirk. As I walked back to Benrig and my car, it struck me that this atmospheric reach of the Tweed and the churches and cemeteries on the high eastern bank are more than a long, lingering memory of the relationship between two saintly men, with their poignant dedications to Boisil and Cuthbert. I suspected that was a landscape already suffused with an older sanctity, and as I climbed over the stile back into the cemetery and walked over to my car, I could see Eildon Hill North through a gap in the trees, looking down benignly on this beautiful place. By the fence, the person who mowed the grass and kept the headstones tidy had piled the wreaths and spent flowers of recent ceremonies to rot on a green heap of clippings. But instead of reflecting that all is decay, I was warmed by and felt part of the continuity I found at Benrig and Maxton: the sense of continuing life in a place of death, as the twenty-first century still venerated what was believed to be holy by the uncounted generations of the past.

  * * *

  The swallows are leaving. Too intent on sheltering from the rain this morning, I did not notice until later that most of them have gone. Last night, they swirled around the stable yard and the house as usual, delighting us with their soaring and swooping, like the cadences of choral music. But this morning I could see none. Lindsay told me that there is still one pair feeding chicks in Blossom’s box down in the stable yard. I fear for them, if they leave their immense, arduous journey to Southern Africa too late and hit bad weather with four young ones barely fledged. A friend told me that her swallows had all gone and she farms twelve miles south of here, in the Cheviot foothills.

  It is a melancholy moment, the end of summer and winter soon to come. The house martins are also feeding a late brood and they are still showing off their awesome aerobatics, but in a short while they will fly south over the hills too. I was surprised that whatever impulse made the swallows begin their great journey took them at night – or perhaps they left at the very first peep of dawn. My knowledgeable friend told me they can fly 200 miles a day with a wind at their backs. Once our swallows cross the Cheviot Hills, they can be across the Channel in two or three days, before passing over western France, the Pyrenees, eastern Spain, Morocco and the Sahara. Over the wide sweep of the desert, there are few flies to be had and many die of starvation, especially young ones. But the survivors, the fittest, will overwinter in the warmth of Africa and come back to us next year. Swallows and martins mostly nest in buildings and I suspect they are tolerated, even loved, because they scoop up at least some of the pesky insects around the farm. I will miss them as we begin to hunker down for the bad weather.

  It was a cold start, the first really autumnal morning, and out with my little dog I could see several trees beginning to turn. But the rain soon relented, and as the sky lifted I drove eastwards, following the Tweed, looking for Cuthbert. Having carved out its course after the end of the last ice age, the river hides itself in the landscape, only occasionally revealed from the road. As the rain spittered again on my windscreen, I was glad to have packed rain gear and put on waterproof boots. Out on the river in a curragh, Cuthbert would have had no such protection. In common with his fellow monks, he would have dressed simply in an undyed woollen robe or habit, and the story of the sea otters spoke of a loin-cloth worn under it. When it rained, Cuthbert would have been wet unless he had an early oilskin with him. These were animal skins smeared with fat or the oil from codfish and others to make them as waterpr
oof as possible. On Inner Farne, the monks used the pig fat brought by the recalcitrant ravens to waterproof their boots. But in bad weather in the seventh century and long after, shelter would have been sought as quickly as possible when it rained. Cuthbert could easily have rowed to the banks of the river and turned over his curragh to keep himself dry until the skies cleared.

  I wanted to walk beside the Tweed near a strange mound I had passed for many years but never stopped to climb. It looks simply plonked at the edge of a cornfield on the opposite bank of the Tweed from Makerstoun House. My dad used to repeat an old tale that its creation was the result of a dispute between rival landowners, the one on the south bank wanting to spoil the view from the windows of the big house on the north. I parked at a nearby farm and walked over a newly cut field dotted with round bales of straw as the sky began to lighten and the rain stopped. Skirting the mound, much bigger close-to than it looks from the road, I reached the high bank over the river and marvelled once more at its secluded, secret beauties. Below were a series of rapids over large shelves of exposed rock and beyond these a long, lazy stretch winding its way towards Kelso. In a grey rowing boat kept steady in the current by a ghillie, a woman sat on the swivel seat in the stern casting a long line over a pool between the rapids. In the prow sat two golden retrievers and they were the first to see me. The ghillie looked up and gave a friendly wave, as his companion focused on making good casts.

  I wanted to get down to the riverbank to see if the mound could be seen from there, but a steep bank discouraged me. Still feeling the effects from my antics on the last one, I looked for somewhere less precipitous. Once on the riverbank, I found walking through the dense and lush vegetation very chancy, with several hidden drops causing problems, but it was certainly possible to see the mound from the river and I climbed gratefully back up to the cornfield.