|
The Ettrick |
Shopping
trips to our capital city are a great excuse to spend some time at
the National Museum.
While LotH reconnoitres George Street, I can slip away into the past.
In
search of the Stone Age bow that inspired the Wildwood project
(Blog 28/07/13), I came across this intriguing little carving.
|
The carved stone |
I
just had to go and seek out its origins, a place called Over Kirkhope far up the valley of the River Ettrick.
It
transpires it is a gravestone retrieved from its nineteenth century
role as part of a drystane dyke! A local farmer had saved it when the
site of an ancient burial ground was taken into agricultural use.
|
The Kirk Hope |
It
was recorded that a line of trees was planted to mark the site of
what had been a very early chapel probably from the era of the
Celtic church, in the time of the Brythonic peoples before the
Anglian invasion (Blog 07/09/18)
There is evidence of village settlement in
the same area and a raised bank or grassed-over wall defining the
nearby burial ground.
|
The outline of the chapel |
|
The bank or wall dividing off the burial ground |
The
figure is crudely carved and appears to be dancing but is in fact an
Orans, the raised arms being in a position of supplication or prayer
that was the norm before the adoption of the palms -together style of
today. It is the realisation in pecked stone outline of a saint albeit a
long forgotten one
Over Kirkhope is a sheep farm in the sparsely populated upper reaches
of the Ettrick valley.
The
name is self explanatory... Kirk hope...the valley of the chapel.
Once
part of the lands of Melrose Abbey, it was described as a "free
forest". The valleys would have been thickly wooded, a segment
of the Ettrick forest, itself a residue of the great Wood of Caledon
of Arturian legend.
To
such a place might have come a hermit, an anchorite seeking solitude
in the wilderness. The village with its burial ground and chapel may
have arisen later. The carved figure with the cross on its chest
showing its beatification, was probably raised as memorial to their
patron saint inviting his blessings.
|
The Kirkhope Burn joins the Ettrick |
Now
a lonely place, with a few sheep-grazed mounds to to show where
people had once lived and died, strived to get a living from the
land, to survive and to raise families, to be dispersed and forgotten
and to leave the enigma of the stone carved figure.