It may be that the earliest cross was erected after the death of Cuthbert in 687, and it is believed that when the monks left the island in 875, at the approach of the Great Heathen Army, they took it with them. I wondered if there were other crosses or memorials of other kinds beyond the precinct, places that could be visited much in the way that the stations of the cross are in Jerusalem. Forty years ago, I did some consultancy work in that city and took time out to follow this remarkable procession. One of the many elements that made it powerful was that it led to such an immense climax, one that clearly affected people profoundly. Perhaps there was a similar route on Lindisfarne that took people around the island and eventually brought them to Cuthbert’s cross and then his shrine, the place of greatest sanctity. And where did Cuthbert himself walk? As ever on this journey I wanted to follow as closely in his footsteps as I could.
Even before he retreated across the rocks and the seaweed-strewn sands to build his oratory on Hobthrush, I suspected Cuthbert had already begun to go there to seek peace and relief from the bickering with those brethren who would not conform to Roman practices. And so I decided I would start my search for the saint’s secret places there. Once I had clambered up the slippery-stepped approach, I realised I was not alone on the islet. Sitting on the low wall head of the ruined chapel, almost exactly where I had been the day before, was a young and very beautiful dark-haired woman. Her hands stuffed into the pockets of her anorak, she was looking out to sea. When I greeted her, she looked up briefly and smiled, saying nothing. Having always found it difficult to resist conversation, especially with a woman so good-looking, and thinking this situation oddly awkward, I asked her about the howling noise I had heard each night. Without standing up, she turned and pointed to the sandbars south of the causeway. I could see that one was covered with many black shapes, some of which seemed to be moving. ‘It’s the seals. At night they beach on the sandbars and call out.’ I thought of the selkies, the captive seal-folk in the legends of the Northern Isles who long for the sea.
The woman also told me that she came alone to Lindisfarne every two or three years because ‘I feel at home here’. And then she stood up, smiled again and began to make her way off the islet. Later that day I saw her in the queue at Pilgrims Coffee House and we simply smiled at each other without exchanging a word. For her and several others I saw walking alone, who appeared to be by themselves, their visits to the island seemed not to be sociable in any conventional sense. They had come to talk, but only to themselves, and perhaps with their god. Leaving aside the latter, I was the same, realising that I too had joined the community of the uncommunicative.
The Pathfinder map of Lindisfarne shows two wells. Marked by some old and rusty winding gear, the Popple Well lies near the foot of the Marygate and was probably inside the monastic precinct, while the Bridge Well is on the lonnen that ran from the eastern coast of the island to St Coombs Farm, what is known as the Crooked Lonnen. I decided I would walk north out of the village towards the Links, a large area of dunes, and the place where my friends and I had fled to in 1965, and I would come back by way of the Bridge Well.
Almost from the moment I left the tarmac road at Chare Ends, the landscape looked familiar. Over the span of fifty years, trees grow up, buildings are built and perspectives shift, but nothing much had changed since 1965 as I walked up the western lonnen past the fields of the farm. I remembered the half-buried ruins of limekilns, although at the time I had no idea what they were, briefly considering them as good places of concealment. There seemed to be ridges of sand dunes, and between them wide flat areas of grassland with obvious paths leading through them to gaps in the next ridge. The term ‘links’ is now usually applied to golf courses, but it derives from an Old English word, hlinc, cognate to flank. It means ‘marginal land’. Cuthbert probably knew and used the word. The morning was very bright and, in the shelter of the high dunes, walking was warm work. I had read of one visitor spending a day ‘holed up in the dunes with a flask of tea and a book’. It sounded good, but I needed to march on and discover more about the shape and nature of this part of the island, so different from the detail and domesticity of the farm and the village.
Between two ridges of dunes I came across the ruin of a single-storey building with a gable end still standing at one end of long, low rubble-built walls. I later discovered it was marked on nineteenth-century Ordnance Survey maps as the Shiel. Probably a shorter version of shieling, a place where shepherds lived while they summered out with their flocks, it looked old to me. Its shape suggested a medieval longhouse, and perhaps it had been altered and adapted over centuries of use. The walls still standing were wonderfully well-built, each stone keyed into the next to make a strong bond. Mixed with a good deal of yellow sandstone was some grey whin, the same stone the Heugh is made of and the castle stands on, and one or two stones carried some lovely pink veining.
In the summer of 2017 a tall wood of mature sitka spruce and some majestic Scots pines that stood north of our farmhouse and sheltered the home paddocks was cut down. It belongs to my neighbour, and while I was very sad to see the Scots pines go, the scruffy sitka were being blown down by winter winds. The machinery that arrived to cut the trees was awesome in its power, the harvester taking only seconds to saw through tree trunks and sned off all of its branches before dumping it on a stack. With its swinging saw-head, it looked like a dinosaur browsing the primeval forest. The churn of the harvester and forwarder on the edges of the wood unearthed something interesting. There used to be a drystane dyke between it and our track, and one of the foundation stones, a bedder, had been pulled up to the surface. It was beautiful: dark sky grey, with veins of pink quartz running through it. It is characteristic of our valley, and many of the bigger stones in the farmhouse walls have similarly vivid veining, like the longhouse on Lindisfarne. Whin was picked up off the fields and most of the older houses are built from it. Because it is hard and difficult to work, the walls are built drystane style, although old-fashioned lime mortar is used to bind them. This means that, with the exception of gables and corners, only one face has been completely squared and a lot of small packing stones have been used to create level beds for the next course. This is why the walls are very thick. They have a rubble core packed between the inner, undressed ends of the whinstone. It is very beautiful, and this sort of construction takes great skill and a good eye. When I look at the corners of the old farmhouse, they stand straight as a die. And I could see evidence of the same sort of work on the ruins in the dunes.
When I was a student, I worked many of my summers and Easter holidays as a builder’s labourer. Most memorable were several weeks working for two old stonemasons (well, they were a lot older than I was at the time) who were building a high retaining wall at the entrance to a new housing development off the Castlegate in Jedburgh. Willie Hinnegan worked with Johnny Ferguson, and my job was to lift up stones on to the scaffold so that, with their mels and chisels, they could cut them to size. Often they turned a stone over and over, and with only a light tap would lay it open. We were using rubble from a stretch of drystane walling that had been demolished (no doubt too expensive to maintain) and brought to the site. Johnny and Willie would point to one, ‘See’s that bonnie merkit yin’, and as the wall grew higher, so did the scaffold. Johnny Ferguson was also known as Johnny the B because he could be one. And after he had booted three big and heavy stones off the scaffold in ten minutes, in what seemed to me to be a clear attempt to wind me up, I told him that if he did that again he would be joining the rejected stones. Willie calmed us both down and we got on with the job. The wall is still there and has grown more beautiful with age, bonnie merkit.
Near the ruins of the longhouse was a high sand dune and it looked familiar enough to persuade me to climb it. It had panoramic views south to the castle and the village and north and east to the sea, and even though it was flat-topped I could not be sure if it was where we hid ourselves in the summer of 1965. In any case, dunes shap
e-shift a good deal in the wind. From the high vantage point, I could see most of what I had come to call the duneland. And even though it was a clear, sunny day with little wind, I realised I was alone. No one else walked the path I had come, or any of the others that threaded through the sand and the marram grass. The tide was not shut, cars had streamed across the causeway, but it seemed that no one had ventured beyond the village, the harbour or the castle. When Cuthbert walked the island, the population was tiny, perhaps only a few dozen brothers, their servants and some children being taught at a school established by Aidan. And so when he came to the duneland, longed-for peace could often be found.
At that moment, I realised that this empty place will have meant much more to Cuthbert. Surrounded by silence, solitude and sand, he was in the deserts of St Anthony of Egypt. When the sun beat down, such as on a day like this, Cuthbert could have imagined himself walking in the long shadows of the Desert Fathers. Emulation and example were particularly important means of cementing faith for early Christians, and a man born and raised in the green hills and grassy meadows of the Tweed Valley found himself not only where St Anthony had walked but also where Christ had been tempted three times by Satan. And just as on top of the great rock of Cuddy’s Cave, Cuthbert could have climbed the dune I stood on and seen the royal stockade at Bamburgh and all of the kingdoms of the world. Even more than that, he could turn north and east to look out over the empty wastes of the sea and know that his desert, this diseart, was doubly protected by God. The sea, the sands and solitude made possible by Creation meant that the duneland and the whole island was a place where God could see those who loved him.
Beyond the longhouse and its sheltering dunes, I walked down to a long sandy beach, the sort of place that would usually have been crowded with sunbathers, sandcastle builders, splashers in the waves and strollers. But there was no one. I could see for more than a mile from west to east and I was the only person on this beautiful, blessed beach. When Cuthbert came here, no doubt in all weathers, the glories of this place may have inspired him to sing from the psalmody. Biblical in origin, many of these were known by early British Christians, and Old English versions of Psalms 22 and 23 exist. The latter is perhaps the best known of all, ‘The Lord Is My Shepherd’, and even as a non-believer I can still recite the words and sense its power. The Lord was Cuthbert’s Shepherd, and on that crystal day I imagined him singing it:
The Lord’s my Shepherd, I’ll not want;
He makes me down to lie
In pastures green; He leadeth me
The quiet waters by.
My soul He doth restore again,
And me to walk doth make
Within the paths of righteousness,
E’en for His own name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk in death’s dark vale,
Yet will I fear no ill;
For Thou art with me, and Thy rod
And staff me comfort still.
My table Thou hast furnished
In presence of my foes;
My head Thou dost with oil anoint,
And my cup overflows.
Goodness and mercy all my life
Shall surely follow me;
And in God’s house forevermore,
My dwelling place shall be.
Even though these beautiful words will have been blown out to sea in the swirling wind, God heard them.
At the eastern end of the long beach a rudimentary fence and some black-and-yellow striped tape suggested I move inland. Beyond the barrier, the going did look rocky, and very narrow, even when the tide was out. With some difficulty, and careful to do nothing that would restart my back problems – what I had come to call Lindisfarne Leg – I climbed slowly up a very sandy dune, cascading small landslides with each step, and after a struggle found myself on a plateau of thick marram grass. Beyond it, I could see the Back Skerrs and the rocky shore of Coves Haven. The sweep of this bay and the high cliffs of Sandham Bay beyond it are of a different scale, much more dramatic than the shoreline around the village and the priory. On the beaches of each one I found some twisted shapes of driftwood, what must have been a welcome gift of firewood for the monks; they were sometimes so contorted that for a moment I thought one was the skeleton of a cow. At intervals in the duneland there were small rubbish dumps, places where people had gathered up plastic bottles and all sorts of other debris washed up by the tides. In the distance I could see Emmanuel Head, the white obelisk made brilliant in the sun. And when I reached the daymark, as sailors call it, there was company of sorts. Waiting for the breakers were two surfers and they seemed very skilled, pulling themselves upright on their boards at just the right moment to ride the waves. Their heads just above the water, three seals were watching them.
The daily isolation on Hobthrush, his walks through the duneland, where he also kept night-long vigils, did not satisfy Cuthbert’s longing for the hermetic life. Some time in the early 680s, and perhaps before, he persuaded Eata, his abbot, to allow him to retreat completely and lay down the office of prior. He went to Inner Farne, a small rocky island about a mile offshore and seven miles south-east of Lindisfarne. Aidan had gone there on retreat, but the island was uninhabited. Except by demons. So that he could do battle with them, Cuthbert built himself an oratory and a cell where he could sleep, surrounding both with a high wall that screened out the world and looked up only at the heavens. His reputation for piety was growing, so even though he had fled the world, visitors rowed to Inner Farne to seek his blessing and his counsel. Eventually these intrusions became something he had to control. Here is a passage from Bede:
Then, when his zeal for perfection grew, he shut himself up in his hermitage, and, remote from the gaze of men, he learned to live a solitary life of fasting, prayers and vigils, rarely having conversation from within his cell with visitors and that only through a window. At first he opened this and rejoiced to see and be seen by the brethren with whom he spoke; but, as time went on, he shut even that, and opened it only for the sake of giving his blessing or some other definite necessity . . . and for the sake of the sweetness of divine contemplation, [Cuthbert resolved] to be silent and hear no human speech.
Walling himself up in his hermitage, Cuthbert must have depended on the brethren on Lindisfarne supplying him with food and other things like firewood. But despite the extreme austerity described by Bede and in the Anonymous Life, the hermit did not withdraw entirely. Ecgfrith was King of Northumbria and his sister, Aelfflaed, was Abbess of Whitby, and she persuaded Cuthbert ‘to cross the sea and meet her at Coquet Island’, a monastic community further down the Northumbrian coast. And in a journey that sits oddly with the life of an anchorite, whose vow is not to leave his self-confinement, ‘He went on board a ship with the brethren and came to the island’ to talk to the king’s sister. And their discussions were not about matters of piety and prayer. They talked about politics.
Keenly interested in the survival of her dynasty, Aelfflaed tested Cuthbert’s gifts of prophecy and asked him how long her brother would live, and more importantly who would succeed him. These seem to me to be extraordinarily worldly questions for a hermit who sought only to be walled up and left in peace on a wind-blasted island – but again I may be committing the sin of separating Church and State. In both the Anonymous Life and Bede, Cuthbert’s response to the question of Ecgfrith’s longevity reads as more than a little equivocal, but on the second question he appears to have been more precise. Ecgfrith and his sister were descendants of Aethelfrith, but Cuthbert prophesied that Aldfrith, a descendant of the Deiran dynasty of Aelle, would be king. To avoid assassination, he had gone into exile on Iona, but Cuthbert seemed certain that he would take the throne of the twin kingdoms after Ecgfrith’s death. And it turned out he was right.
Perhaps in return for his prophecy or to ally him and his exemplary reputation with the interests of King Ecgfrith and the descendants of Aethelfrith, Aelfflaed then told Cuthbert that her brother had it in mind to make him Bishop of
Hexham. Here is Bede’s fascinating account:
Now she knew that Ecgfrith proposed to appoint Cuthbert bishop, and wishing to learn whether this proposal would be carried into effect, she began to ask him in this way: ‘How the hearts of mortal men differ in their several purposes! Some rejoice in the riches they have gained, others who love riches always lack them. You despise the glory of the world, although it is offered, and although you may attain to a bishopric, than which nothing is higher amongst mortal men, will you prefer the fastnesses of your desert place to that rank?’ But he said: ‘I know that I am not worthy of such a rank; nevertheless I cannot escape anywhere from the decree of the Ruler of Heaven; yet if He has determined to subject me to so great a burden, I believe that after a short time He will set me free, and perhaps after not more than two years, He will send me back to my accustomed rest and solitude. But I bid you in the name of our Lord and Saviour not to tell anyone before my death what you have heard from me!’
It is difficult to know what to make of this. No doubt it would have been awkward to refuse to meet the sister of the king, but she could have come to Cuthbert on Inner Farne. Others did. Why did Cuthbert feel compelled to re-enter the world of politics and exert himself to do so? The consequences of the meeting on Coquet Island were far-reaching and relatively immediate. In 684, King Ecgfrith did not summon Cuthbert but instead went to Inner Farne with Bishop Trumwine and a considerable retinue to persuade him to become a bishop. He had been elected at a synod held on the Northumbrian coast at Alnmouth. But when told of his elevation, he refused to take up office. This feels like another trope, a little like the traditional reluctance of popes or speakers of the House of Commons. Persuaded further, Cuthbert made some conditions. The original offer was the bishopric of Hexham, but the hermit insisted that he become Bishop of Lindisfarne and that Eata transfer to Hexham. Amidst all the rituals of reluctance and unworthiness, some hard bargaining appears to have taken place on Inner Farne.
To the Island of Tides Page 23
