Passing through Ednam...and stopping for a moment

Ednam Kirk

Ednam's just a wee place. A slow-down road sign, a school, a bend, an old smiddy, another bend then a bridge...and it's past...maybe a minute of your journey. Population - one hundred and fifty or so and some sheep.

Originally, Eden-ham from the Eden Water that flows beneath the bridge, it has become, with typical Borders economy of expression - Ednam.

Most folk wouldn't give it a passing thought when passing through.

Ednam has imprinted itself on the nation's consciousness in a different way.

Anyone who has been to a funeral, especially, it would seem, a cremation, has been influenced by the village. The hymn books in the chapel almost fall open automatically at one particular hymn.

Henry Francis Lyte was born in the Brewer's Cottage. Ednam in 1793 and was boarded out to school in Ireland at an early age. He graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, took holy orders and ministered in the south-west of England and Wales. I don't think he ever returned to Ednam.
 An able musician, he wrote several religious works as well as paraphrases and well known hymns, the most enduring of which is that favourite of the FA cup final crowds and  funerals - "Abide with me.

F.A cup finals and....last nights of the Proms...yet another British institution that owes something to Ednam.

In 1700, James Thomson was born in Ednam, a son of the manse. Educated at Jedburgh and graduating from Edinburgh, he published several poems before taking, like so many of his contemporaries, the high road to London where he became highly successful, his long tetralogy of verse "The Seasons" being well received.
Eventually, he gained the patronage of the then Prince of Wales. It was in a masque "Alfred", written for the prince's entertainment, that the verses of "Rule Britannia" first appeared.

Obelisk to James Thomson

Not bad for a wee place. Birthplace of two purveyors of verses still to the forefront today!

...and Ednam's not finished. It can claim two further poets, minor ones it's true. but still published men o'letters.

William Wright born in 1782 was an invalid who was carried out to the local kirkyard where he wrote nature poems such as "To a Thrush". It also says much for the eighteenth century Scottish education system that enabled the crippled eighth child out of thirteen children of an agricultural labourer, an orra-man, to have the academic grounding that enabled him to do so.

A restful place to write poetry

...with macabre reminders of mortality

John Gibson Smith, born in 1852, who later emigrated to New Zealand, eventually published a large number of poems which are quite enjoyable if derivative. Some in the Scots dialect were obviously influenced by Burns.

Given its population, the output of Ednam's sons must make it, statistically, one of Scotland's literary powerhouses!

I'm glad I stopped.