Pink moons and dark age bloggers

We all gathered in the Glebe field, the field that, in the past, provided grazing for the minister's horse. Amateur metal detector users under the guidance of a few experts. Why? Well, not to hunt for treasure, though everyone must have had a frisson of excitement as the detectors pinged a high note indicating something other than iron.

It was part of the continuing search for the site of the Anglo-Saxon church or monastery founded by Ebba, later Saint Ebba, sister of Oswy and Oswald, Anglo-Saxon kings of Northumbria.

The geophysical survey revealed interesting shapes beneath the surface of the field and dowsing seemed to agree with it.

The next stage would be a dig but, to get a grant for such a venture, community involvement had to be demonstrated hence the turn out for the metal detecting. Any finds that supported the theory would also be useful.

Some coins and a few buckles and artefacts were found, some of them medieval though nothing dramatic. My contribution was woeful - two aluminium cans and the iron bolt from a Victorian iron.

A .303 cartridge case and the copper ring from a canvas tent were reminders of the use of the field as a camp site for local Volunteers of the same vintage as my iron bolt and a toy gun that boys of all ages like to play soldiers.

The next night was spent watching the lunar eclipse and the pink moon. An event that won't occur again in my life time.

The Chronicon Scotorum and the Anglo Saxon Chronicle are really just Dark Age blogs with facts and opinions mixed in with speculation and rumours.

The Chronicum is an extensive list of battles and skirmishes as the Irish settlers -the Scotti - sought to establish their kingdom in Dal Riata and fought with the Britons, the Picts, the Cruithne as they would have called themselves, or sometimes amongst themselves for dominance as the early Irish church tried to establish its form of Christianity among the pagan tribes. The whole record is interspersed with Druidic bardic verse -

Cold is the wind across Ile

Which blows against the youth of Cenn-tire;

They will commit a cruel deed in consequence;

They will kill Mongan, son of Fiachna.

Cormac caem and Illand son of Fiachu die.Ronan, son of Tuathal died:—

The church of Cluain-Airthir to-day—

Illustrious the four on whom it closed:

Cormac the mild, who submitted to tribulations,

And Illann, son of Fiacha.

And the other pair,

To whom many territories were obedient—

Mongan, son of Fiachna Lurgan,

And Ronan, son of Tuathal.

Straight out of Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones or not?

There are occasional allusions to contemporary events other than the violent deaths of chieftains and their followers in what was the heroic age of warriors now so popular in fantasy games and films.

References are made to plagues and pestilences, to leprosy and the murrain of cattle and, to sadly evocative phrases such as" the mortality of children" - no doubt some childhood infection such as diphtheria or scarlet fever that continued to play sad havoc up until immunisation.

Ecclesiastical records such as the death of St Patrick in 489, the birth Colum Cille ( Columba) in 518 and his arrival on Iona in 563 A.D. and the apoointments and deaths of long forgotten bishops and abbots, are interspersed with increasing references to "the Saxons", obviously becoming a greater power as the might of Northumbria increased, but not a word about Ebba even a though her protector in her exile, Eochaid Bruie, is mentioned as is Bede
 Is that because St Ebba was not part of the Columban church , an Anglo-Saxon? She was the daughter of a king and the sister of two others...  yet no mention.

The weather is reported in almost mundane terms - the sea floods of 720 when there was " a rainy summer". How many of those have we had since then?

Celestial events, however, bring out the poet in the chronicler -

A thin and tremulous cloud in the shape of a rainbow appeared at the fourth vigil of night on the fifth feria preceding Easter, extending from east to west through a clear sky.

The moon became the colour of blood

Annal 674 AD

"The moon was as though drenched with blood."
 Simeon of Durham.

Refers to a lunar eclipse of 23 November AD 755, when the eclipsed Moon occulted Jupiter.

An Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that on January 24, 734 CE, "the Moon was as if it had been sprinkled with blood"

Times may change and we live in a scientific age and explanations of such phenomena are available to all. We no longer see them as portents or omens but they still imbue us with a feeling of wonder sufficient to get us out of bed to witness them for ourselves.

The monks and nuns the Anglo-Saxon community in what is now the glebe field would have been amazed like us to see the colour of the moon change as it was eclipsed. Times change but people don't and the celestial cycle certainly doesn't.

Before dawn o' day

We've all known some false dawns when hopes weren't quite realised. They happen more often than we would wish for, certainly more often than once in a blue moon.

There was a blue moon in July this year. An extra full moon. thirteen in the year instead of the usual twelve. All full moons have names ... Harvest Moon, Lenten Moon, the Moon before Yule and so on, so every extra moon has no name but is a blue moon though it's never really blue. Why it's called this isn't really known though there have been some fanciful explanations dating back to the Middle Ages.

The next blue moon will be in 2018.

Not blue

False dawns are easier to see. They occur about an hour before the true sunrise. Many folk will have seen them without realising where the light was coming from, especially at this time of year when people are on the move before the sun is up.

Zodiacal light – or false dawn – is an eerie light extending up from the eastern horizon, before sunrise, in autumn. The light looks like a hazy pyramid of light extending up from the horizon.

Zodiacal light is caused not by the dust in the Earth's atmosphere that causes the colours of the true sunrise or sunset but by space dust .... the zodiacal cloud, a pancake shaped dust cloud out in the solar system. If the night is really dark, no moonlight.. or very little and a cloudless sky, you can see it on the eastern horizon an hour before the true dawn.. 5 a.m. Sleepy-eyed, I had a go. Unfortunately, clouds obscured most of it but it was there -  an eerie light on the eastern horizon, a good hour before the dawn.

A false dawn  more than an hour before sunrise

Red false dawn

Check it out next time you are on the move early. There is an equivalent false dusk in the spring about an hour after sunset.

The light was still there as the clouds parted an hour before sunrise


"The moon was low down and there was a glimmer of the false dawn that comes about an hour before the real one, but the light was very faint..."

Rudyard Kipling - False Dawn

Going Forth

The Hawes Inn has been the starting point of one literary journey in Scott's The Antiquary and a way-point in another, Stevenson's Kidnapped and so it was that we continued in the tradition, starting our little journey down the Forth from Hawes Pier. 

 Fortified with good coffee and a shared oat flapjack, we boarded the Maid of the Forth for our three hour voyage under the bridges, down the firth and down the ages to Inchcolm.

Sailing out under the iconic red structure that is the Forth Bridge, deservedly a World Heritage Site, we gave a thought to those that died in its construction before clearing its shadow and out past the oil terminals towards Inchcolm, - Columba's Isle. -Saint Colmes ynch as Shakespeare would have it.

Originally a Culdee hermit's cell, like its near neighbour Inchmickery, the solitude sought by its sole inhabitant was interrupted by the arrival of King Alexander I, storm bound as he crossed the firth in 1123. His gratitude was such that he established an Augustinian monastery on the island probably the last thing that the Culdee hermit wanted to see, but was in keeping with the royal house of Canmore's promotion of the hierarchical Roman church over the Celtic Columban church throughout their domain.

Despite the attacks of English and Danes, the Scottish religious wars, and being close to the first bombing raid of WWII, it remains the best preserved of Scotland's medieval religious houses.

Cormorant colony

The puffins had left by the time of our trip but the stiff winged fulmars still skimmed the waves and the reptilian eyed herring gulls screamed their raucous threats as we made our way to the island past the cormorant colony on the Haystack, one its rocky outliers.

The abbey has an immediate impact set above a little cove that allows landing access.

A short walk takes you to the buildings and the little hermit's cell or oratory that survives in the grounds of its prestigious successor. We were given a conducted tour and potted history by one of the Augustinian brothers. The chapter-house, cloisters, dormitory, refectory and calefactory or warming-room gave a glimpse of what our own local priory would have looked like before Cromwell's depredations. A few sentences in medieval Latin still adorn a wall. Amongst them, the advice that it is -

Foolish to fear what cannot be avoided

A hog-backed gravestone, typical of Norse burials, was a reminder of the importance of the island as a burial site for chiefs making it the "Iona of the East"

In Shakespeare's Macbeth, Ross, reporting to King Duncan of Macbeth's defeat of the Norwegian invaders, tells of the Norse king, Sweno wishing to bury his dead at Saint Colmes-inch and paying "ten thousand dollars"for the privilege.

Shakespeare's dollars are an anachronism for Macbeth but the term occurs again in The Tempest. Perhaps W.S. meant dalers, Scandinavian coins he would have known about.

Our guide mentioned that the second part of the early Scottish history, the Scotichronicon, started by John of Fordoun in the 14th century, was completed by the abbot, Walter Bower in 15th at Inchcolm.

Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, William Shakespeare, and now a medieval historian compiling "probably the most important medieval account of early Scottish history", Inchcolm has made its contribution to literature as well as history.

With heads teeming with dates and facts, we boarded the Maid of the Forth for the return trip to South Queensferry and watched the seals lazing on gas pipe-line installations and navigation buoys. What do they care about words and histories as long as there are plenty fish in the sea.

A rainbow bridge between the bridges