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