" and be a nation again" ?........The Battle of Dun Nechtan 20th May 685..

Not blue woad but green alkanet which gives a red dye

This year is the anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn, 1314 and we are to vote on the status of Scotland as a country.

 In a few days, on the 20^th May, it will be the anniversary of a much older battle, one that decided if the country now erroneously called Scot-land would exist at all...and it wasn't fought by the Scots.

In 685, the Scotti were a small enclave on the west coast called Dal Riata, an extension of their native kingdom in present day Ulster. They had been comprehensively defeated at the battle of Desgastan (possibly Dawston in Liddesdale) in 603 by the might of the regional super-power, the Anglian kingdom of Northumbria.

The Brythonic people of southern uplands, the Gododdin, had long been subsumed into the Northumbrian kingdom, a decline hastened by their disasterous support of their southern cousins from Wales against the all-conquering Angles.

Oswiu, the Northumbrian monarch, had extended his domain northwards into what was the land of the Picts

Bede records that “ Oswiu subjected the greater part of the Pictish race to the dominion of the Angles” He installed puppet rulers and controlled the kingdoms of the Britons of Strathclyde and the Scots of Dal Riada as well.

Aberlemno stone showing a ? hunting scene

The power of Northumbria grew unchallenged in Northern Britain.

Oswiu's death in 670 and the succession of his son Ecgfrith created an opportunity for the Picts. They rid themselves of the Northumbrian vassal king and rose in rebellion in 672. Ecgfrith was furious and savagely crushed the revolt with his army of horsemen on the plain between the rivers Carron and Avon. This is the first record of cavalry being used in British history.

It took twelve years for the Picts to recover under their new king, Brudei or Bridei mac Beli, in the lands north of the Tay.

Given the hostility between the two nations and their cultural and ethnic differences, it is a strange quirk of history that the kings, Ecgfrith and Brudei, were cousins. Due to dynastic marriages made by earlier Northumbrian kings, in more peaceful attempts to control the north, they shared a common ancestor in Aethelfrith of Northumbria.

How history repeats itself or, at least, the desire for military conquest among rulers does. Was not the appalling conflict of 1914 called “the cousin's war”?

Remembering the cavalry and the slaughter of 672, the Picts avoided pitched battle in 685 and feigning retreat, lured the Northumbrians into their trap at Dun Nechtan, also known as Nechtan's Mere or  Lin Garan “the pool of the Heron”. The site is usually taken as Dunnichen Moss, a marshy area beneath a fortified hill-top near Aberlemno in Angus. The marsh ws drained in the ninetenth century but appears on old maps.

The Northumbrians were comprehensively defeated and Ecgfrith slain.

 His body was taken to Iona, the resting place of Pictish kings where Brudei himself was laid to rest some eight years later.

 The power of Northumbria was broken north of the Forth and the policy of aggressive amalgamation of the petty kingdoms of Northern Britain under Anglian rule was checked permanently.

 Had there been no victory for the Picts at Dun Nechtan, their country of Alba which morphed into Scotland as subsequent rulers created their own alliances, conquests and marriages, would not have existed. Northumbria might have gone on to unite the southern half of our island,  the Mercians, and the Saxons with its northern empire. Who knows  what would have transpired and would any of it have mattered?

There is another candidiate for Dun Nechtan. Dunachton in the Badenoch has a fortified hilltop, a symbol stone and has many features in its favour but wherever the battle was fought, the outcome was the same - on Saturday 20th May 685, the Picts prevented the kingdom of Northumbria from annexing the whole of Northern Britain.

Is this a depiction of the Battle of Dun Nechtan?

The carved symbol stone in Aberlemno Kirk-yard, appears to show a battle between two armies, with distinctive helmets. Those with nose guards are very similar to those use by the Angles -a depiction of the Battle of Dun Nechtan perhaps.  The sun appears high in the sky between the two upper horsemen and the battle was apparently fought in the afternoon.

The skills of the stone carvers of ancient Pictland survived in their descendants judging by the quality of the lettering in copperplate inscriptions carved into the eighteenth century gravestones in the kirk yard.

Coppper-plate  writing carved on a grave stone

As is the case with most people, who governs you is not as important as how you are governed.   It was the strain of imposed tribute taxes and slavery that caused the Picts to rise up, not the ambitions of their kings.   Nations are merely accidents of history.

Scots wha' hae

Being in the Trossachs, it was inevitable that when the weather changed from sunny to dreich, we would be drawn to Stirling.   LotH found the Thistle shopping mall was the perfect way to counter the grey skies and I, with time on my hands, headed off to that triumphal(lic) symbol of Scottish nationhood, the Wallace Monument.
 Perched on the  volcanic outcrop of the  Abbey Craig, it dominates the skyline above the site of the Scots victory - the first for many a long year- over the English at Stirling Bridge.

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Delicately scented bluebells in Abbey Craig woods

  Erected in the 1830's, on a wave of Scottish proto-nationalism fanned by Sir Walter Scott’s romantic tales, it must be one of the biggest monuments to one man..
Climbing the narrow spiral staircase, an anachronism even when it was built in the Scottish Baronial style,  you come into a room with all the information about Wallace and his campaigns and subsequent betrayal by the Scottish nobility. The room is dominated by the enormous Wallace sword, a weapon that would have required great strength to use but does look a bit unwieldy. 
 Up another steep spiral stair, is the  Hall of Heroes.
 Filled with  busts of selected notables from history, the choice of Scottish “heroes”  is somewhat  idiosyncratic with a curious bias towards the Kirk.
Some of the "heroes "are -
George Buchanan, moderator of the Kirk and Thomas Chalmers, leader of the Free Church but no St Columba or St Kentigern
Robert Tannahill, songwriter but no James Hogg
William Murdock, inventor, who changed his name from its Scottish spelling, but no John Macadam
David Livingstone but no Mungo Park
Hugh Miller but no James Hutton.

…and, unforgivably, no David Hume.

The Scot who made the greatest impact on the world, who influenced Kant, Schopenhauer, Darwin, Einstein, and thinkers, philosophers and scientists to this day, is not there.   What does this say of the Scottish identity and the influence of the Presbyterian church?

 A final staircase took me out on to the crown with its magnificent views of Stirling, its castle and the Ochil hills.

The loop of the river at the site of  the Battle of Stirling Bridge with the Castle in the distance

I noted there is not a great deal made of the role of Andrew Moray who co-commanded the Scots army at Stirling Bridge.  Moray had successfully led a rebellion against Edward I in his lands in the north-east of the country at a time when Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick and future king was, with many of the Scottish nobility, swearing allegiance to Edward of England.
 The Morays were a long established, wealthy baronial family with a power base in the north, Morayshire.
Trained from boyhood as a soldier and  military commander, he would have brought some much need skill to the armies of the guerrilla fighter, Wallace. He was wounded at Stirling bridge but still able to sign the letters to the mayors of Lubeck and Hamburg of the Hanseatic League requesting trade continue between them and Scotland and letting them know that they would have safe access to ports.
“ Andrew Moray and William Wallace, leaders of the army of Scotland and the Community….”
The letter was dated 11th October 1297 and it should be noted that Moray’s name preceded that of Wallace.
It is believed that Moray eventually succumbed to his wounds and died  later in 1297.
Had Moray survived, it is open to conjecture whether he would have assumed the subsequent Guardian of Scotland role accorded to Wallace. He would have been, after all, much more acceptable to the nobility of Scotland,than Wallace, being their equal in social class.

“Scots wha hae wi’ Moray bled” ?
It still scans

Moray’s son, Andrew,  did go on to become Guardian of Scotland twice, in 1332 and 1335 and married Christina, sister of  King Robert the Bruce.

Funny… the twists and turns of history and much more complicated than the simplistic tales sometimes peddled.

Days in the The Trossachs

A long, long time ago, when I and the world were much younger, I read a Jules Verne story The Child of the Cavern, about  an underground city.  I can’t remember much about it except that it was set in Scotland and was all about a mining community. Somehow I had got it into my head that it was in Fife, a mining area with a history of much digging.
 (Blog April 1st 2014 )

A recent trip to the Trossachs dispelled my misconceptions.  It was Aberfoyle that Verne had in mind with the underground city beneath Loch Katrine.
There never has been any coal mining in Aberfoyle but the man who could conceive of a descent down an extinct volcano to the centre of the Earth, of a giant gun to fire a manned projectile to the Moon or, most famously, of a submarine powered by electricity extracted from seawater, wasn’t going to be put off by a mere geological detail.

Loch Katrine is also the setting for Sir Walter Scott’s Lady of the Lake.   
In the first Canto,the hunted stag seeks refuge...
  
 "By far Lochard or Aberfoyle.
But nearer was the copsewood gray
That waved and wept on Loch Achray,
And mingled with the pine-trees blue
On the bold cliffs of Benvenue".

Ben Venue

In the early nineteenth century  the Trossachs were the just the place for the new Romantic era of Wordsworth and Scott.  Here the literati could revel in the delights of landscape and nature, of mountains and waterfalls, lochs and bens, within easy reach of civilisation in Glasgow, Stirling or Edinburgh and where most people spoke English.
An easy-access Highlands without the dreadful roads, bleak moors, lack of comfort and native Gaelic speakers that would have been the case for most of the country north of the Highland line in Scott’s day.

Scott stayed at Ledard farm and used it  as a setting in Waverley and  Rob Roy, particularly the waterfall above the farm cascading  into what is now called Helen’s Pool.

Ledard farmhouse

 Climbing up the side of Ben Venue to reach the linn, I wondered how Scott, lame from childhood, had managed it, then it dawned on me.  He was a guest at Ledard and, no doubt, would have probably have ridden a garron led by a farm servant up the boggy track.






In Waverley, the beautiful Fiona, seated by the pool below the falls, sings of the clans rising to support the ill-fated Stuart cause.

“Tis the summons for heroes for conquest or death
When the banners are blazing on mountain and heath”

Scott was so impressed with the linn that he used the setting again in Rob Roy  when the narrator, a literary device Scott used to allow him to write in the first person, meets Helen MacGregor, the hero’s wife.

The area abounds in spectacular views.

 Loch Ard like a mirror

"Farewell to the land where the clouds love to rest
Like the shroud of the dead on the mountain’s cold breast
To the cataracts roar where the eagles reply
And the lake her long bosom expands to the sky"

 Another waterfall, the Falls of Arklet at Inversnaid was apparently used as a backdrop in the Kenneth More version of The Thirty Nine Steps

 The Trossachs was the  model for what became the world view of Scotland thanks to Scott and the other Romantics.
It remains a place of great beauty and an inspiration to write …however poor one’s pen.