Under the greenwood tree

 The road to Abbey Saint Bathans is winding and narrow as befits a journey into the past.

A cautionary word on a blind bend

Abbey St Bathans is a place of mystery.  Firstly, there isn’t and never has been, an abbey there.  Then there is St Bathan.  Who was he?  There is a St Bothan’s collegiate church mentioned in 1421 in the  nearby parish of Yester but the old name for Yester village near Gifford, was Bothans without its saintly prefix.
St Batheine was the cousin and successor of Columba on Iona and there is a reference to a St Bothan in Shetland in 636 A.D.  Both seem remote connections to the little hamlet nestling along the banks of the Whiteadder.
There was a priory here with twelve nuns and a Prioress. Founded in  the 12th century by Ada, daughter of Wiliam the Lion. Never a large foundation, the priory was damaged in the Anglo-Scottish wars of the 16th century and further destruction visited on the site in the Cromwellian period.

The present kirk incorporates some of the original buildings into the north and east walls and the  surviving effigy of a prioress, found during  the restoration now lies in a special niche.

There was another religious foundation only a mile or so away at Trefontanis, now Strafontaine.  Nothing remains of this site though ruins were recorded up until the seventeenth century.  Whether it predated the Cistercian priory, or was contemporary with it is unknown.
Why all this religious activity in what would have been, even in twelfth century, a fairly sparsely inhabited and poor place?  Perhaps it was all about St Bathan or Bothan. 
Since the time of Oswui and the kings of Northumbria and the Synod of Whitby in 664, the influence of the Celtic church had been waning against the power of the Roman church with its hierarchical structure beloved of kings.  The Johannine, contemplative way of the Columban church was less acceptable and, though not actively suppressed, was allowed to wither on the vine.
 The Culdees,  Celi De, the monastic order of the Celtic church had attracted some previously pagan devotees incorporating some of their beliefs about the natural order of the universe. They allowed their followers to marry and tended to function independently, electing their own abbots.  The term “abbot” was applied to the heads of Culdee establishments though they would not be regarded as abbeys in the Roman church. 
Queen Margaret wife of Malcolm II - Saint Margaret - for all her perceived piety, was a Norman and steeped in feudalism.  The independent nature of the Culdees did not sit well with the rigid structures of feudalism.  She and her sons, Alexander I and David I, were active in  bringing the Culdees under canonical rule and by the end of the 13th century, the order had all but disappeared.
 About half a mile from the kirk at Abbey Saint Bathans, in a field called the Chapelfield, are the remains of St Bathan’s chapel, set deep in a copse of  mature trees.

Chapelfield

Virtually nothing can be seen except a grave slab or altar stone and a broken ring of stone possibly a font or a piscine.
This could have been the site of a Culdee monastery, with its “Abbot” dedicated to the Celtic saint, Batheine, Columba’s successor, revered in the Celtic church.

The chapel almost covered except for a slab of stone

 It explains why there was a need to establish not one but two orthodox religious establishments in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to counteract the influence of the earlier church and why the term Abbey survives even to this day.

Abbey St Bathans held yet another mystery.    While exploring the little wood surrounding the old chapel, I came across a beautiful carving inside a old stone. An arched recess containing a representation of the ancient Tree of Life or the World Tree. *

The stone in the wood

The world tree

The sacred tree, the cosmic tree connecting  heaven and the underworld and all forms of creation is a universal symbol in many theologies and religions.   The carving is certainly not from the sixth century of St Bathan but I’m sure he would have immediately understood its significance.   A wonderful, in the original meaning of the word, experience, it made me wonder.

*  have since discovered the sculpture may have been by John Behm an artist and sculptor  living in the area at the time

Merlin - The Green Man

Merlin is on the telly; Merlin is in comics; Merlin is the prototype for Gandalf and Dumbledore; Merlin is the wizard whose name is synonymous with prophecy and, of course, with King Arthur. Everyone has heard of Merlin


The real Merlin was a historic figure, Myrridin to the Welsh, Lailoken to the Scots, a Druid or bard at the court of one of the small  Brythonic kingdoms under attack from, and eventually being subsumed by, the Anglo-Saxons from the eastern seaboard and the Scots from their Gaelic domain to the northwest.  It is said he went mad after the defeat of the pagan Britons at the Battle of Arfderydd (Arthuret 573 A.D. ) on the edges of what is now Cumbria and fled  back to “live with beasts in the Forest of Caledon”.

The Tweedsmuir hills where Merlin sought refuge  in the  Forest of Caledon

  This is thought to be the magic mountain of Hart Fell with its chalybeate spring of healing waters close to the spot where three great rivers, the Tweed, the Clyde and the Annan arise.  An important site in Druidic lore.
He also appears in the hagiography of St Kentigern otherwise known as St Mungo, the patron saint of Glasgow.   Kentigern is said to have met  Myrriden and found a kindred spirit but the old Druid could not give up his ancient beliefs and the saint in a gesture of tolerance blessed him. 

 “As old Druid wisdom taught me, I have lived and I will die”

The window in nearby Stobo Kirk

The seer then foretold of his own threefold death by being clubbed speared and drowned.   This strange ritualistic death is echoed in the Norse tales of Odin and, perhaps, by the injuries to some of the sacrificed bodies found in peat bogs.
Merlin is said to have been struck on the head whereupon he fell into the river and was impaled on a stake set for fishing nets and thus, drowned.
 His burial site is said to be
“not far from the green chapel where the brook Pausayl flows into the Tweed”

At the little village of Drumelzier, sheltering beneath the Tweedsmuir hills not far from Hart Fell, the Powsail Burn meets the Tweed.

The confluence of the Powsail and the Tweed

The tradition has it that Merlin/ Myrridin/ Lailoken was buried here at the foot of a thorn tree.

Merlin  appears again in the fragmentary Life of St Kentigern where the saint is the grandson of King Lot of Lothian and the nephew of Sir Gawain who in the Arthurian legends fights the gigantic Green Knight.  The Green Knight cannot be slain despite having his head cut off and demands that Gawain meets him again at his castle in a year and a day to receive a similar stroke.  The Green Knight like the greenwood can be cut down but will always recover.

All these stories seem to reflect the struggle for survival of the Druidic, shamanic religion with its emphasis on trees, waters and wild Nature - the Green Man -against the organised power of the Christian church.

Sir Gawain sets off north to meet the Green Knight in his castle but the knight  doesn’t kill him.  The old religion yields to the new.
Merlin is said to have been buried “hardly two miles from the castle of the Green Knight.”  There is an Iron age fort on Vane Law above Drumelzier.  Vane Law means Green Hill.  Maybe this was the castle of the Green Knight, the embodiment of the greenwood.

Vane Law

Are the tales of the death of Merlin; the blessing by St Kentigern; the triumph of Sir Gawain, all folk memories of the supplanting of the naturalistic Druidic religion by Christianity in late fifth and sixth centuries as the petty tribal chiefdoms themselves were overcome and merged into larger kingdoms?

After sixteen hundred years, Merlin the wild prophet, the magician, the green man, still holds our attention.  Things have come full circle and his identification with the wild and the natural  would now be seen as part of green eco-politics.    Just like the Green Knight and the greenwood, Merlin cannot be killed off.   Known as a shape-shifter in his lifetime, capable of assuming different forms, he is still capable of  survival in many guises.

The Greenwood always blooms again

Mosses, stiles and long Scotch miles

I  climbed up the long hill to the moor to see if the local council had cleared the old route to what was once common land.  The Moss Road is at least medieval and  probably much older.  It allowed the villagers to take their stock, their cattle sheep and goats, up to the moor for summer grazing.   It also provided access to the high bog land where they could cut peat.  Many of the farms around the area still have the right to cut peat.    
The old road was as overgrown as ever but I circumnavigated the whins and rank undergrowth and reached the moor.  Eventually, I arrived at the Long Moss now designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest. An SSSI.

Alder carr

It is a raised bog, home to a variety of plants and mosses; alder and willow carrs like small islands in a sea of heather; snipe who spring up from their watery rests with that characteristic zig-zag flight that tempts the shooters and, in the summer, adders and  small copper butterflies.

The beauty of the moss

Our coast has quite a low rainfall and the survival of the bog, its not drying out in the summer, is apparently due to the sea haars, the dense mists that encroach on to the land in July and August just when the sun is at its warmest.  It is true that a few miles inland, folk will be basking in blazing sunshine while we shiver in swirling wet clouds.    Given the continued existence of the Long Moss or a summer free from mists, I  suspect locals would happily do without their SSSI.
Since it persists, we might as well get some benefit from it. In the past it would have been extensively dug for peat for fuel hence its name.
The old Scots word for a peat bank is a moss.  

 Today, it lies alongside giant wind turbines. Where once cows and sheep grazed, the wind is farmed for energy.   Where people dug their peat for fuel, they now capture the wind to provide their heat and light and at a much greater profit.
Ancient cairns and quern stones amid the heather suggest that the bog is at least partially due to the activities of humans.

Quern

 The felling of trees, the subsequent working for peat, and, recently, the legislative preservation of its current state have all contributed to what is there today. What it was like two thousand or four thousand years ago might have been very different.   The lack of grazing means the establishment of scrub trees and heather. The moss will change as it always has in response to the activity or lack of activity from mankind.

Tibbie Fowler sought and found

Tibbie Fowler o' the glen, there's ower mony wooin' at her
 Wooin' at her, pu'in at her
Wantin' her, canna get her
Silly elf, it's for her pelf
A' the lads are wooin' at her

The Logan family had a long  history of association with the Scottish Crown. A Logan had accompanied the “Good Sir James” Douglas on his ill-fated mission to the  Holy Land with Bruce’s heart.  By 1382 the Barony of Leith had come into their possession.   Good and bad, they  ruled over the port and the neighbouring estate of Restalrig until the early 16th century by which time the lands had been divided amongst three branches of the family.  Sir James Logan, Sheriff or “Shirra” of Edinburgh built his mansion where St Thomas’church stands at the top of Sheriff Brae. The church is now a Sikh temple

Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis

The catastrophe of Flodden and subsequent, ill-judged political ventures brought a decline in Logan fortunes until, in the late 16th century, Robert Logan “ ane godles, drunkin and deboshit man” had lost his Restalrig lands to pay his debts. After his death, he was accused of being implicated in the Gowrie conspiracy and the family were outlawed and any remaining lands confiscated. Some of their lands in Berwickshire were later returned to them and the  sentence of outlawry revoked.
Respectability of a sort returned to the family.  Tradition has it that George Logan, a grandson of Robert, married “weel tochered” Isabella Fowler and, with her large dowry, built a mansion at the head of Shirra Brae where he could view all the comings and goings of  Leith harbour.

Isabella was the daughter of  Ludovic Fowler of Burncastle near Lauder.
Burn Castle stood overlooking the Earnscleugh Water  near to where one of the branches of the ancient Herring Road  wound its way from Dunbar to Lauder. Of the castle nothing remains except the name of the farm on the site.

The Herring Road - Burn Castle stood close by

Another version has her as the daughter of a portioner or the owner of a small portion of land at Lochend, now a sprawling housing estate. Lochend House built in 1820 incorporates the gable end of the old Logan stronghold, Lochend Castle.

Lochend House

I think this is less likely given the amount of money needed to restore the Logan fortunes and  rebuild on the old site of Shirra House.
It seems to be the old story of the nouveau riche buying their way into an ancient family name.
One can imagine the folk of Leith, who had not always benefited from their Logan superiors, having a good laugh in the taverns along the Shore as the wags sang their comic songs about the newest lady of the house with her jewels and high heeled shoes and attempts to overcome the deficits of nature

The Shore

She's got pendles in her lugs, aye cockle shells would set her better
High-heeled sheen wi' siller tags and a' the lads are wooin' at her

This must be the Tibbie of the satirical song.

Wilson’s bonny Tibbie Fowler’s five hundred pounds  might have bought a coastal trading boat (blog 30th Jan 2014) but, even in those far off times, it wouldn’t have been enough to build the mansion house in Leith and pay off the Logan debts.
 It is also unlikely that a small-holder at Lochend would have accumulated enough of the  penny siller  to make George Logan throw his hat into the ring with the other suitors.

Ten cam' east and ten cam' west and ten cam' sailin' ower the water
Twa cam' doon yon lang dyke side, there's ower mony wooin' at her

 No, for my money, and for Tibbies’, it has to be Isabella Fowler of Burncastle.