A snippet of Scotland's History (after Bayeux) by Margaret Skea

A snippet of Scotland’s History in Tapestry (after Bayeux)

There has been a great deal of excitement and media attention focused on the loan of the Bayeux Tapestry to the British Museum in London – the first time this tapestry has been on display in the UK since it was made. It is believed to have been commissioned in the 1070s by Bishop Odo of Bayeux, who was the half-brother of William the Conqueror, and tells the story of the conquest of England culminating in the Battle of Hastings in 1066. The tapestry is 70metres long, but despite its name is actually an embroidery, stitched in wool on linen, and though the perspective of the story is French, it is believed to have been stitched in England in the Canterbury area. 

In the late 1800s a lady called Elizabeth Wardle, the founder of the Leek Embroidery Society, following a visit to France, felt that England should have its own copy of the tapestry.  Using drawings of the original, Elizabeth and 35 other women, many of whom were members of the Leek Society stitched a copy, replicating the woollen threads of the original.  Each panel carried the name of the lady who stitched it with Elizabeth’s name at the end and the date of completion  - 1886. As a community arts project it was a success and today it has a permanent home in Reading Museum.          

The beginning section of the replica tapestry. 
              

Fast forward to 2010 when the author Alexander McCall Smith, having seen the tapestry depicting the battle of Prestonpans, and perhaps thinking also of the Bayeux Tapestry, initiated the ambitious idea of a tapestry which would present the history of Scotland from the Ice Age to the present day. In collaboration with author Alistair Moffat, who agreed to write the historical narrative and artist Andrew Crummie, commissioned to draw the panels; the community arts project called the Great Tapestry of Scotland was born. Like the Bayeux it is actually an embroidery, but using wools. Stitching began in the spring of 2012 and it was unveiled at the Scottish parliament in September 2013.

It has 160 panels, and is over 130 metres long and has been stitched by more than 1000 volunteers from all over Scotland.  Each panel depicts a significant historical event, movement or period in Scotland’s history. The group I joined was given the panel depicting ‘The Border Reivers and the Rescue of Kinmont Willie’. This was the panel as we received it – leaving space for us to add to the initial design. 

   

                                                         

But who were the ‘reivers’ and why are they significant in the history of Scotland?

They were ‘a people who lived beyond the laws of England and Scotland, who ignored the persistent efforts of central government to impose order, who took their social form and norms from the ancient conventions of tribalism, who invented ever more sophisticated variants on theft, cattle rustling, murder and extortion…

…And they spoke and sang beautiful, sad poetry and told a string of stirring, unforgettable stories.’

Alistair Moffat: ‘The Reivers’

Many of the notable ‘reiver’ surnames including Armstrong, Elliot, Graham, Scott, Johnstone, Kerr and Maxwell are still common in the Scottish Borders today.

Central to the reivers’ activities was an area delightfully termed the ‘Debatable Land’. Straddling the border between Scotland and England, for over 300 years its inhabitants effectively answered to neither government.

Beyond the Debatable Land a wide stretch of territory on both sides of the notional ‘border’ was divided into ‘marches’ and officials, called ‘wardens’, were appointed by both governments. Thus, for example, there was a warden of the English middle march and a corresponding warden of the Scottish middle march. Equally disregarded by the reiving families, the wardens sometimes co-operated across the border in seeking to maintain order.

Customary law forbade the building of any permanent dwelling in the Debatable Land. But one of the methods used to enforce this was interesting, to say the least. In 1551 the Crown officers of England and Wales made the declaration:

‘All Englishmen and Scottishmen, after this proclamation made, are and shall be free to rob, burn, spoil, slay, murder and destroy all and every such persons, their bodies, buildings, goods and cattle as do remain or shall inhabit upon any part of the said Debatable Land without any redress to be made of the same.’

More likely to add to rather than reduce the lawlessness, it didn’t clear the area of inhabitants: one notable family: the Grahams, who were present in large numbers on both sides of the border, are known to have had five tower houses there and they were not the only ones.

The sandstone tower on our panel (the part that I embroidered) depicts one of the Armstrong fortified houses – Gilnockie – belonging to Johnnie Armstrong, hung on the order of James V along with thirty or forty (depending on which account you believe) of his followers at Carlanrig, near Hawick.

The circumstances are unclear of what seems summary justice (all the records state that they were hung on growing trees rather than gallows), though it was likely to have been an impulsive and possibly dishonourable act. 

One result was a spawning of ballads that turned a ruthless thug into a Robin Hood figure of almost heroic proportions.

 

                                                                    

The grey tower on the opposite side represents Hermitage, an isolated but imposing castle, home to James Hepburn, Lord Bothwell, who later became Mary Queen of Scots’ third husband.

In 1552 a compromise solution to the vexed issue of jurisdiction was proposed – to draw a straight line from east to west where Armstrong and Graham land met. The result was the building of ‘ The Scots Dyke’: a four-mile long earthwork approximately nine feet wide and eight feet high. It would have been hard to miss, but whether it had any positive effect is another matter. Especially as it wouldn’t take very long on horseback to ride around either end!

Far from the wardens being in control of the borderland, it was the heads of local clans who were the authority, their power in proportion to their numerical strength. Which in some cases was considerable – George Macdonald Fraser, in his book ‘The Steel Bonnets’, suggests that the Armstrongs alone could muster 3000 men. Not a force to be lightly challenged.

The number of reivers involved in an individual raid, would of course be much smaller, but still considerable, typically anything from thirty to around a hundred men. In the centre of our panel are two reivers wearing their normal garb of steel bonnets (hence Fraser’s book title) and padded jerkins,

 

                                                  

                             

                                   

the sheep and cattle imprisoned in their gauntleted fists, symbolizing their core activities of cattle-rustling and sheep-stealing.

Seeing a hundred or more of them thundering across the moor towards your door, one hand on the reins, the other holding the long spears that flank the panel, must have been a terrifying sight.

Interestingly the three-year-old grandchild of one of the ladies involved in sewing the panel stared at them for a moment, then said, before running away, ‘I don’t like those men’.

An instinctive reaction that may be an echo of hundreds of children before her.

The ‘Day of Truce’ mentioned in one of the scrolls at the top of the panel, was a day when Scots and English came together to witness the trials of criminals from both sides of the border. The jury comprised six Scots – chosen by the English; and six English – chosen by the Scots. There were agreed penalties for perjury by witnesses, an attempt at ensuring honest testimony; interestingly the most important and effective wasn’t a fine or imprisonment, but a formal statement that no future testimony would be accepted or believed. Honour among thieves was a part of the reiver code. All witnesses and those who came to the Truce were to be given safe conduct through others’ territory and were honour-bound to refrain from confrontation and not to offend by ‘word, deed or countenance’ as long as the Truce lasted. When large numbers of sworn enemies attended, it isn’t surprising that tempers often frayed, the wardens struggling to maintain order. What is surprising is that most, though not all, Truce Days appear to have passed without major incident.

Although the main design of each panel was done by a wonderful artist called Andrew Crummy, each group was allowed some input. In our case it was the mane and raindrop infill on the horses and most of the wording, shown in the finished version below. 

 The curse which links the two reivers:

‘I curse their heid and all the haris of their heid’

comes from the ‘Great Monition of Cursing against the Border Reivers’ by Gavin Dunbar, Archbishop of Glasgow 1525 – a lengthy and comprehensive ‘cursing’, which should have put the fear of God into all who heard it.

The quotation at the foot of the panel:

‘My hands are tied but my tongue is free and who will dare this deed avow’

comes from ‘The Ballad of Kinmont Willie.’

At sixty-six Willie had, by the time of his capture, been reiving successfully for some fifty years and led a notorious gang called ‘Kinmont’s Bairns’.

                                                             

While his imprisonment in Carlisle castle was undoubtedly deserved, given a lifetime of crime, his seizure was illegal – captured on his way home from a Truce Day in March 1596. One month later a carefully planned and perfectly executed plan to rescue him was carried out by Scott of Buccleugh, himself a law officer on the Scottish side. Buccleugh had first protested the illegality of the capture and requested Willie’s release, but when this was denied, he acted. A clear indication of the flexible attitude to reiving among border folk, even those appointed to uphold the law.

He rode on Carlisle castle and with a small party of men entered the castle by a locked postern door, having levered out the stone in which the bolt was shot. Without discovery or a shot being fired they spirited Willie away – a daring rescue that was to be one of the last significant border raids.

Sir Walter Scott’s ‘The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border’ brought together many of the ballads, including that of Kinmont Willie, along with the tunes to which they were sung. Although the tales are often romanticized, they do provide a flavour of the reiving lifestyle and the superstitions and beliefs of the time.

But the writing was on the wall for the reivers. James I’s accession to the English throne in 1603 abolished the border between Scotland and England. Re-naming the area the ‘Middle Shires’ James set in train a dismantling of the reiver way of life and a bringing of law and order to this most unruly part of Great Britain.

The reivers have left their mark on the border landscape in various ways. In the form of innumerable and mostly ruinous tower houses. In literature and music through the Border Ballads. And on tradition, in the annual festivals in all the major and some of the smaller border towns which commemorate the riding of the marches.

They have left their mark too on the English language: the words ‘blackmail’ and ‘bereave’ derive from their activities. A sombre legacy indeed. 

For those wanting to read more on the reivers and this turbulent part of Scottish history, I recommend The Reivers by Alistair Moffat and The Steel Bonnets by George MacDonald Fraser.

And for those interested in seeing the Great Tapestry of Scotland it has a permanent specially built exhibition home in Galashiels in the Scottish Borders - it is well worth a visit, or two, or three...  

Margaret Skea is the award-winning author of three books focusing on a long-running clan feud in Southern Scotland – between the Cunninghame and Montgomerie Clans who certainly followed the principle of robbing, looting and murdering without fear of official redress for many years. I pick up the story at the point when James VI is attempting to subdue the lawlessness and outlaw clan feuds.  Together they comprise the Munro saga:  Turn of the Tide, (Historical Fiction Winner in the Harper Collins People’s Novelist competition and Beryl Bainbridge Best First Time author Award), A House Divided (Long-listed for the Historical Novel Society New Novel Award) and By Sword and Storm. 

They tell the story of a fictional family trapped in the middle of the conflict, with all the challenges and difficulties it poses for their relationships and their safety; along with the pressure it places on conscience and integrity.

For details of these and Margaret’s other books visit www.margaretskea.com 

Ebooks can be found at https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Margaret-Skea/author/

                        

 

We're going to need a bigger cabinet by Mary Hoffman

On the 30th of each month, when it's not the last day (i.e. in January, March, May, July, August, October and December) a History Girl puts up an extra post about something she would like to put in our virtual Cabinet of Curiosities. This month it's my turn and I'm afraid I'm going to be greedy.

You see, I want the Bayeux Tapestry.

I have already written about it on my Book Maven blog. And Adèle Geras has written her own post here on the History Girls.

You will have to bear with us. We both saw it this summer and it makes a huge impact. But because it is 70 metres long and difficult to stuff into our cabinet, I'm going to concentrate on the Alderney Finale, a brilliant initiative carried out on the Channel Island to complete the Tapestry, which is missing its final panels.

It was the brainchild of Librarian Kate Russell and artist Pauline Black and was unveiled in April of last year. This summer it has been on display in the Bayeux Tapestry Museum and in fact tomorrow is the last chance to see it there. Then it will return to Alderney.

From the 1st February 2012 when Kate and Pauline applied the first stitches 400 people have had a hand in working on the Finale, including Prince Charles and and Duchess of Cornwall.

There are Four scenes. In Scene one, the victorious William of Normandy has a celebration dinner with his half brothers Odo, who is thought to have commissioned the Tapestry, and Robert. The remnants of the Battle of Hastings are shown: corpses, severed limbs, grieving widows. After the battle is when William gets his nickname of "the Conqueror" though this is not shown here. (Formerly he was known as William the Bastard - no comment on his nature, just that his parents were not married).

Scene two shows William at Berkhampstead, charmingly rendered in Latin as "Bercheha(m)steda," accepting the surrender of English nobles, including the Archbishop of York.

Scene three is the climax of the piece and surely a subject very likely to have been in one of the lost panels: the Coronation of William at Westminster. It is Christmas Day 1066.

Scene four is a little tailpiece showing the beginnings of the White Tower at the Tower of London, built with Caen stone, from Normandy, that shines out to this day.

The Latin inscriptions are by Robin Whicker in forms appropriate to the 1070s. And the style and design is satisfyingly close to the original Altogether an inspired piece of work. You can see lots more pictures on Flickr.

Just as in the 11th century work, there are other scenes enacted and symbols added in the strip that goes along the bottom. A big favourite is the one showing the donkey, toad and puffin, representing Guernsey, Jersey and Alderney itself, all encircled by the tail of the lion of England.

Well worth constructing a bigger cabinet, especially since anything is possible in cyberspace.

THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY....which is not a tapestry. BY Adèle Geras

Most people know the main facts about the Bayeux Tapestry. First, that it isn't a tapestry at all but an embroidery. It was made, probably near Canterbury in the years between 1066 and 1077 when Odo, William the Conqueror's half brother and bishop of the Cathedral in Bayeux, released it (I use the word advisedly) as a magnificent piece of Norman propaganda.  The spin (again advisedly used) he put on the story of Harold's death and the subsequent triumph of his half-brother was a firmly pro-Norman one.  During the Middle Ages, it was unveiled once a year to the congregation in  July on the day known as the Fête des Réliques.

Scholars think it was made in England, but no one knows exactly who stitched it. It is made up of 58 scenes (the last few scenes are missing) and is about 70  metres long. It's composed of  nine linen bands sewn together.   The story it tells runs from left to right, like a long, long comic book strip. It is, if you like, a graphic novel in wool.

There are eight different shades of the woollen yarn, dyed naturally by madder, woad and the like. 

The pictures I've put up here show some of the action, and action from beginning to end is what this story is. There are sea voyages, equipping and providing for an army on the march, funeral rites, cooking and much else. There is feasting, and fighting and dying.  There are ships, buildings and landscapes. There are soldiers, priests, women, men in every imaginable position and some of these can not be reproduced in a family blog. All Human Life is There, the News of the World used to proclaim and it's as true of this embroidery as it is of the now-defunct  newspaper. 

The natural world is here too: the sea, animals both real and imaginary, and many trees. The ones shown in the picture above are typical. The intertwined branches of the tree appear over and over again:  a  stylised and extremely beautiful shorthand that says TREE. I am not sure when the municipality of Bayeux chose this image as a kind of symbol, but you see it everywhere in the town  on round  brass plaques set into the pavement. There's a motto that goes with it, too:  La qualité a ses racines.   I'd translate this roughly as : Class doesn't come out of nowhere, and in Bayeux it's true: there has clearly been beauty here from the moment the town was laid out,  centuries ago, and the embroidery is a huge part of that. The Museum is a World Heritage site.

I've chosen two photos, above and below this paragraph, to show off the horses. They are a  striking feature of the whole 70 metres and are seen in such wonderful detail that there is a difference between how they look when they're trotting, walking and, as above, galloping into battle. In the picture below this paragraph, they are falling down in the midst of the battle and the detail throughout is such that in another scene, there's a horse getting out of a Viking ship....leaving one of his legs behind till the last moment. In the 11th century, perspective isn't yet fully there, but still the things and people further away are shown as smaller.  I also noticed that the borders were used in all kinds of modern ways....the dead shown along the bottom of the battle scenes reminded me of  scrolling headlines on television news channels.

Two things struck me as I walked past it twice, very slowly. The first was simply what an enormous undertaking this was for the women ( or maybe men too...monks, perhaps) who made it. It must have involved large numbers of people, each working on a section. That's clear, but something that I also thought was that this was a work of art that had an overriding artist, or designer behind it. Someone. ONE person. An organising intelligence worked everything out in advance. Then, the vision was transferred (by whom? Might it have been Odo?)  into drawings on linen, which was then stitched by the needles of many, many anonymous embroiderers on to its écru background. The writer Sarah Bower has written a  novel called THE NEEDLE IN THE BLOOD which is a wonderful imagining of what might have happened and I will have to read it again because I have forgotten the details, though I remember liking it a lot. There is also a book by Carola Hicks called THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY: history of a masterpiece, which I have only just started reading. She seems to propose  a very convincing argument for the role in the creation of the embroidery of Edith Godwinson, widow of King Edward, sister of Harold and friend of King William of Normandy.  I was very glad to read about Edith, and the other highborn women of the time, because what  I felt most strongly as I walked around was that there was  one person behind the whole thing.  One artist, before the many makers came along, who saw the embroidery whole in her head, (and for the moment I've fixed on Edith)  and who could then supervise the putting of this picture on to the linen for others to bring to life. 

It is worth saying that England (and Scotland too. Queen Margaret was also  a very skilled embroiderer) was famous for its embroiderers and stitchers at this period. Then there must have been those who undertook to deal with  the uniformity of the stitching and the colours: medieval continuity girls who saw to it that what Odo was wearing in one scene matched the clothes in another. That Norman hair was cut short at the back and that the English had mustaches, etc. That the horses were the right colour. And those trees....that they were always depicted in similar fashion. Here they are, below in one of the brass plaques I mentioned. They are supremely beautiful. Someone more recently saw them and created a kind of 'brand' for Bayeux, apart from anything else. Gold star to whoever that was...it's a perfect symbol.

So in conclusion, what can I say? I would urge anyone interested to go to Bayeux and see this masterpiece (not so much a work of art - more a Wonder of the World) for themselves. The Museum that contains it has many fascinating accompanying exhibitions and a film to make a visit even more interesting. It's a model of efficiency and comfort and how to display a real treasure.

This is the Cathedral of Nôtre Dame where the embroidery was first unveiled by Odo. It's most beautiful. I would like to have been in the congregation that day.

And this is the entrance to the Museum. A lovely bank of hydrangeas to welcome you if you decide to go. 

The story of the Bayeux Tapestry continues. On our way out, I picked up a handout about The Alderney Bayeux Tapestry finale, which described how Kate Russell of  Alderney oversaw the making of an embroidery of Jan Messent's Finale to the Bayeux tapestry. She organised the whole community to help to do this and there's even a photo of Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall having a go at stitching themselves. It's a wonderful idea, I think and a fitting ps to the story.

I could go on at great length. To say I was bowled over is putting it mildly. The other phrase that came into my mind as I looked at it, and imagined that congregation of 1077 seeing it for the first time was: rolling news.  All I can say is: BBC, eat your heart out!