Solstice sunrise

As is my wont, I rose early on the morning of the summer solstice to see the sunrise. There isn't much true night at this time of year so, just after 4 a.m., I settled on the local hill overlooking the sea to watch the sun making its appearance on the longest day. After several days of clear skies, this one tended to be a bit overcast but I was treated to a display of the brilliant reds and oranges of a sort of false dawn which subsided to a pink band. 

It was an odd phenomenon. Was this the blue hour, l'heure bleu, when the sun is still below the horizon, a time beloved of photographers for its unusual light?

The sunrise, when it did occur, was almost a disappointment.

Having tipped my hat in salute, I returned home for an early breakfast being surprised as always by how many people are on the move even this early in the day...milk, bread and newspaper deliveries, shift workers and maybe some commuters hoping to beat the traffic and parking problems of the city.

The rest of the day was spent strimming the encroaching nettles at the beach hut and watching the terns fishing in the bay.

After my encounter with the Arctic terns on the Isle of May ( Blog 15/06/2017) I was happy to observe them at a distance. These are Sandwich terns...I think. They move so fast it's difficult to keep them in the lens view but from their size, their whiteness and their cries, I reckoned they were Sandwich terns.

They were diving for the fish like miniature gannets rather than skimming and dipping like their Arctic cousins. Arctic terns always remind me of children ducking for Hallowe'en apples in the way they fish. Do children still "dook for aipples" at Hallowe'en? Probably not.

As the sea swallows dived for fish, the true swallows swooped along the shore catching the sand flies. Two truly spectacular aerial acrobats and both long distance migrants. They come back each year to gladden our hearts and think nothing of it.

The Isle of the seabirds

Continuing my enjoyment of islands in general and my nearest ones, those in the Firth of Forth, in particular, I took a trip out to the Isle of May.        (Blogs 6/9/2015, 1/5/2017)

The island is so far out in the mouth of the firth that it is part of Fife. The name probably means the Island of Seabirds - ma'a or maw is Scots for a gull. The word is Scandinavian in origin.

It certainly lived up to its eponym. Terns, puffins, guillemots, razorbills, shags, eider duck, fulmars kittiwakes and herring gulls all nesting in their own environmental niche. The black-back gulls patrolled the island looking for prey. Woe betide any inattentive parent or nestling.

Arctic Tern

Terns are very aggressive when nesting. We were advised to hold something up as they attack the highest point of any intruder. Holding my sun-hat on an extended finger was a mistake as tern beaks are very sharp and my cloth- covered finger became the target for a pin-point assault. With their staccato machine-gun calls, it was like being strafed by a squadron of miniature fighter planes.

They also have another weapon. They can bomb you with excrement which is no fun if you are already hatless !

I suppose if you have flown halfway in a 50,000 mile round trip from the Antarctic to Scotland and back, you are entitled to get a bit grumpy with folk gawping at you.

The puffins are altogether more amiable and seem to enjoy posing for visitors with cameras. The Isle of May has the biggest single colony in the UK. They could be seen waddling about near their burrows, their beaks stuffed with small fish. They are the most lovable of birds with their massive parrot beaks and their sad-eyed clown faces.

Razorbill, Shag and Eider Duck

The island has been a place of sanctity since the seventh century when St Ethernan (Adrian), an obscure Irish bishop or possibly a Scot trained in Ireland, died there in 669 A.D.

He is often conflated with Adrian also called St Adrian, the abbot of the monastery killed by Vikings in 875 A.D.

St Adrian's Priory

The Benedictine monastery, endowed by David I in the 13th century, became a place of pilgrimage along the route of holy sites from St Andrews to Holy Island. Many of the topographical features have an ecclesiastical ring to their names - Alterstanes, Bishops Cove, Pilgrim's Haven, rocks called The Angel and The Pilgrim.

The Angel and The Pilgrim

Holy men expelled the demons and wild beasts from the island of the May and there made a place of prayer*

The abbey was built on the site of a massive prehistoric burial mound dating as far back as the Bronze Age which might explain the "demons" but what wild beasts could there be on the island? Seals perhaps?

A carpet of sea campion

The oldest lighthouse in Britain, a coal burning flame called the Beacon was built on the island in 1635 and there is a light-house there to this day though now completely automatic.

The Beacon now undergoing conservation

Monks and pilgrims, royalty and commoners, fishermen and light-house keepers, soldiers and sailors have all lived on the island over the centuries from as far back as the Bronze Age and, in all that time, the puffins and the terns have returned to breed every year. It is somehow satisfying that apart from a few nosey folk like me, they have it all to themselves again.

The return trip included an approach to the Bass Rock, the largest breeding colony of the Northern Gannet in the world - 150,000 birds crammed on to its bare slopes, a truly amazing sight.

Leaving the Bass and the gannets

* Aberdeen Breviary 1510

Macbeth Trail Part II

Loch Leven

 Before travelling north, I made a foray into Fife to get  a notion of the principal woman in the story of Macbeth

Lady Macbeth has had a bad press since Shakespeare envisioned her as a ruthless, ambitious woman giving support to her sometimes wavering husband.

In fact, Gruoch was as steely as her image and is one of the few woman of her time to have left an impression on history.

She was a royal princess in her own right, being the grand-daughter of a king.

Gruoch ingen Boite (c. 1015–1054) was the daughter of Boite mac Cináeda, son of Cináed (Kenneth) III

Before 1032, Gruoch was married to Gille Coemgáin mac Maíl Brigti, who had killed Findlaích, Macbeth's father to take the title of Mormaer of Moray.

MacBethad mac Findlaích (Macbeth) avenged the death of his father by  killing Gille and his supporters in 1032 and assuming the title of Mormaer.

Gruoch had at least one son, Lulach mac Gille Coemgáin, by Gille. After the death of her husband, she married Macbeth and he adopted her son. This may seem strange to modern eyes but marriages were a matter of dynastic alliances in early medieval Alba.

 Lulach was destined to reign, albeit briefly, as King of Scots

The marriage probably infuriated Malcolm II who was trying to extinguish the tanist tradition and replace it with one of primogeniture in his own line.

The next year, one of her male relatives, probably her only brother, was murdered by Malcolm II as he maintained his hold on the throne by eliminating all who had claims to the throne under the old system of tanistry where the kingship alternated between different branches of the royal family.   Malcolm may also have killed Gruoch’s father, Boite, who was his rival for the crown.

 Grouch had no reason to be loyal to Malcolm or Duncan, his chosen successor.

She seems to have a special attachment to Fife, having lands there from her great-grandfather Duff who had ruled as king from 962 to 966 when succession still alternated between collateral royal lines. Her branch had become Thanes of Fife on their exclusion from the system. A system that collapsed with the accession of Duncan. 

St Serf's Isle on Loch Leven

 Her father Boite and she had made grants of land to the Culdee monastery on St Serf's isle in Loch Leven. Macbeth's name also appears on the ancient charters along with gifts of land in Kirkness and Bogie to the Culdees of Loch Leven.

The remains of the Augustinian chapel on St Serf's Isle

St Serf's Isle is now part of the RSPB reserve and landing on it  would disturb nesting birds. 

 Maiden castle is a motte,  an artificial hill, at one time topped by a wooden palisade. It stands in Kennoway in Fife.

The site is traditionally associated with "Macduff, Thane of Fife".

Maiden Castle, the Motte , now covered with trees

Hector Boece (1526) described it as surrounded by seven ramparts and ditches and as the place where for a long time lived the descendants of the "illustrious" Macduff

The Macduff of Shakespeare's play is an invention designed to please the new Stuart monarch, a dramatic means of contrasting his loyalty to Duncan against the perfidious treachery of Macbeth, the regicide.  It also provided a retelling of the Stewarts’ descent from the mythical Banquo.

Castle Macduff  from a later period

 Macbeth’s reputation was being besmirched by the Canmore dynasty long before the Bard as they too sought to prove the legitimacy of their line.

The Culdee monastery was replaced with Augustinian monks by David I who, with his Norman background, understood the need for hierarchy and structure in ecclesiastical as well as political circles.

 By that time the Gaelic-Celtic society of interlinked kinships and family loyalties had been replaced by feudalism.

Shakespeare did get one thing correct.  Queen Gruoch, his Lady Macbeth, was the equal of any of her male contemporaries in the dynastic struggles of the nascent Kingdom of Alba.