The Pech Stane

I went looking for the Pech-stane.    It is still listed in the RCAHMS Canmore website as one of our local standing stones.   A pech stane is an old Scots name for any such solitary stone. It was last visited by reviewers for RCAMHS in 1972 when it still measured 4' x 4' 6''x 4' 6'' - slightly less than the, probably fanciful, drawing in an old book on local history.

Alas, the Pech-stane is no more.  It has vanished, vanquished, after standing for millennia, by the demands of modern agriculture. It was just too much in the way of the tractor and combine harvester.

Fragments of the Pech-stane?

 The stone stood on a ridge in what had been the great Billie Mire. a vast quagmire so difficult to cross that it thwarted the advance of armies from Julius Agricola to Oliver Cromwell.  It is is still recalled in farm names such as Causewaybank.  The Pechstane on its rise may have been a marker for safe pathway through the morass.

The mire was guarded on its northern edge by the castles of Billie and Bunkle (Bonkyl) which sound like characters from a children's television programme. The castles were derelict long before the mire was drained in the nineteenth century.

Billie Castle

Bunkle (Bonkyl) Castle

The mire was the haunt of the bittern, the myre- drum in Auld Scots, a reference to its call, the myre snipe and the horse-gowk or greenshank.

No more the screaming bittern bellowing harsh

To its dark bottom shakes the shuddering marsh

John Leyden Scenes from Infancy

The draining of the bog meant the end for its inhabitants including those supernatural beings, the will o' the wisps and bogles that haunted it.

 From the earliest times folk had held these places in awe, entrances to the underworld. They had thrown valuable offerings into them and even sacrificial victims.

 A folk memory of this superstitious fear is captured in the fragment of verse.

Grisly Draedan* sat alane

   By the cairn and Pech-stane

          Said Billie wi' a segg** sae stout

          I'll soon drive grisly Draedan out

           Draedan leuched and stalked awa

             Syne vanished in a babanqua.***

*       (The) Dread one

**     probably, a bull-rush

***   a quaking bog

Now the Draedan Burn is a harmless watercourse and the great babanqua of the Billie Mire is fertile, productive farmland.

The Draedan Burn

The rich farmlands from the Billie Mire

The dreaded spirits of the bog have all vanished like the bittern and the Pech-stane. 

No sane person would like to return to those times but, wandering along the Draedan Burn  one feels, as Leyden did a couple of centuries ago, a twinge of regret, a fleeting wish to hear the myre-drum booming again among the rushes.

Cramond Island

Cramond Island

We must have passed that junction dozens of times but have always been in too much of a hurry to turn off and explore.  It was always on the to-do list but required so little effort it would always keep for another day.  A simple walk out to Cramond  Island along the causeway across the Forth, it just had to be done.

The causeway is covered at high tide so a little planning was needed but after parking in the village we strolled out to explore the tiny island.

It’s a funny thing about islands, there is always a sense of achievement getting to one, even one as accessible as Cramond.

Three bridges across the Forth

 There have been folk living here since the Mesolithic and probably before, accessing the rich waters of the Forth for fish and shellfish which are still an attraction for waders such a curlew and oystercatchers.

 How long was he living and growing in the rich ooze ...

 ...before he dug him up and opened him up?!

The causeway, erected in wartime as a barrier to shipping makes for an easy stroll out to the tiny outlier that would have been accessible across the mudflats long before the concrete pathway was laid.

Causeway and WWII  defence pylons

A walk round the island affords some great views up and down the firth -west to the three bridges, two road and one rail and east to the islands of Inchmickery and Inchkeith with the volcanic cone of Berwick Law in the distance. (Blog 12th Sept. 2016)

Inchkeith

The abundance of shells along the shore gives a hint of why this spot has always been occupied.

The Romans had a camp here and the famous Cramond lioness sculpture, now in the Museum of Scotland, was pulled out of the mud of the Forth.

Remains of Roman barracks  circa 142 A.D.

 Cramond was where Robert Louis Stevenson in Kidnapped, imagined the House of Shaws to be sited, the home of the hero’s treacherous uncle who later has him abducted on a ship sailing from the pier at Hawes Inn just up the coast (Blog 6th Sept. 2015)

A walk round the village, a look at the Roman ruins and that was Cramond Island ticked off the list but I’m sure I’ll be back.

Cramond Kirk built  in 1656 on the site of the Roman fort

 I'm slowly visiting the accessible islands of the Firth of Forth,  Isle of May and the Bass next!

Hadden Rig revisited

Participation in a curling tournament brought our previously victorious rink into contention with one from across the border. Skill and luck deserted us and we were defeated by a better side.

Returning from the fray, we were diverted from our usual route giving a lift home to our third - he who plays third in the rink. Curling positions are simple - lead, second, third and skip. There is a paucity of nomenclature in curling. Each team is referred to as a rink and they play against another rink at the ice rink on the ice. Not too many technical terms!

As the rest of us made our way home from defeat, we passed Hadden Rig, site of the Battle of Hadden Rig.

An old trig point  and a line of ash trees break the bleakness of Hadden Rig

In June 1542, Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, accompanied by Sir Robert Bowes, invaded Scotland at the head of an army of 8,000, including some Scots, the Douglas supporters.
 The Earl of Huntly, and Lord Home met the invaders, and scored a decisive victory.

 The Eildon Hills and Hume Castle from Hadden Rig

Similarly, our curling opponents, from over the border, had Scots in their ranks.

The result of our battle on the ice was more akin to Flodden than Hadden Rig.

Scotland hasn't much of a track record in wins over the Auld Enemy

1297, Stirling Bridge; 1314, Bannockburn; 1967, Wembley; 1990, Murrayfield...... and 1542, Hadden Rig.

Sadly, we were unable to add to that list of victories.

Alas, not today!

On a winter's morn

The solstice is past. The year has turned. The feeling that the days will get longer,the nights shorter and that winter is in retreat is, of course, false. The worst of the weather may still be to come and the lengthening of the daylight hours won't be apparent for many weeks but it feels that we have made it to the real turn of the year.

To celebrate the shortest day, I went out to visit the Duddo Stones. Five of the original seven still stand on a small hillock surrounded by a panorama of all the major hills in the surrounding area. A perfect site to be at one with the elements.

Sunrise at the Duddo Stones

It was, no doubt, the first farmers who erected the stones, four thousand years ago when the seasonal round of the hunter-gatherers changed to a settled permanence and the land and the people were bound together in one place.

Eroded by wind and rain the stones with deep channels, they are sometimes called the "Singing Stones" when the Northumbrian wind whistles past them resonating in their grooved surfaces.

The deeply grooved "singing stones"

There are what appear to be cup marks on two of the uprights like those seen on so many stones in this area. Perhaps they were already on the stones before they were chosen for this henge. 

Cup marks on one of the stones

They could be from an earlier time but recognised by the circle builders as having such significant powers that they incorporated them into their own sacred site. 

All religions tend to use the trappings and symbols of earlier beliefs .

What the belief system of the people who erected the Duddo Stones was, we cannot know but I'm sure the marking of the solstice would have been part of it. 

Maybe they took evergreens into their homes, ate special foods, lit fires and torches and told ancient tales and exchanged gifts to cheer themselves in the darkness of mid-winter. They would have been just like us, glad to be warm and well fed, waiting for the spring and resolving to do better next year.

Just passing by

Early morning at the beach

This morning, the dog walkers alerted us to the arrival of dolphins off shore at the beach. Sure enough the black fins were breaking the surface out in the bay. Too far out to be sure how many there were and, indeed, whether they were dolphins or their smaller cousins, harbour porpoises.

On balance, I think they were dolphins by the size of their fins.

We often see both coming into the bay. The surfers in their wet suits seem to attract the inquisitive porpoises but a quick appraisal seems to be enough to satisfy them and they are off to chase the fishes again. Porpoises, dolphins, even the occasional minke whale or orca, occur as visitors... just passing by, en route to some other destination.

The winter migrants are arriving every day with long skeins of geese honking across the evening skies. Birds of passage, some stay awhile to refresh themselves for the long journey south, others spend the winter around us before going back in the spring to Scandinavia and Russia but all add to the enjoyment of the change of the seasons.

Leaf change from green to gold and scarlet

This is the time of spectacular sunsets in the west accompanied by the more subtle pinks and grey-blues of the opposite, the zodiacal light of the eastern evening sky.

This is the season of the fungi in the woods that make their own transitory appearance before disappearing into the leaf litter of the forest floor.

On a trip to the North East, I was coming home from walking a tireless cocker spaniel, when I came across a man and a camera equipped with a giant lens. In conversation, he pointed out his quarry - a barred warbler. Another migrant on its way to East Africa, I wouldn't have known what it was and would have described it as an LBJ...a litle brown job, little guessing its amazing journey from Ukraine or Khazakstan to Kenya. A true bird of passage.

We are all birds of passage in one way or another. Everyone wants a place in the sun and some have to journey far to find it.

....A warm, soft vapor fills the air,

And distant sounds seem near,

And above, in the light

Of the star-lit night,

Swift birds of passage wing their flight

Through the dewy atmosphere.

I hear the beat

Of their pinions fleet,

As from the land of snow and sleet

They seek a southern lea.

I hear the cry

Of their voices high

Falling dreamily through the sky,

But their forms I cannot see.

.....This is the cry

Of souls, that high

On toiling, beating pinions, fly,

Seeking a warmer clime,

From their distant flight

Through realms of light

It falls into our world of night,

With the murmuring sound of rhyme.

*  "Birds of Passage"
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A place in the early morning winter sun