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/

                        

 

Speaking Scottish by V E H (Vicki) Masters

'Speak properly,' my mother was forever reminding me as a child. By which, of course, she meant don't use Scots - either the words or the grammar. Fortunately my dad did use it, so I know and understand the language of my country. How much richer is Haud yer wheesht than Be quiet.

On one memorable occasion, when Dad came to pick me up from university I introduced him to some American exchange student friends. His greeting was, ‘Aye, and it’s a gey dreich day the day is it no.’ Blank looks all around – although he was right. It was a damp, dreary day.

Because of the general injunction to speak properly I always thought Scots was a form of corrupted, and inferior, English. When I came to write my first book The Castilians, which is set in St Andrews, Scotland, one of the many things that exercised my mind was what would be considered ‘correct’ speak in 1546.

I soon discovered that Scots is a language in its own right. It seems both Scots and English, are descended from the same Germanic language — Anglo-Saxon, although Scots also contains words from and Old Norse, like bairn and kilt, and Dutch, like haar (a sea mist). From the early 1400s it began to replace Latin in formal documents and statutes. Court poets, playwrights and story tellers also started to write in Scots.

Here’s William Dunbar (1490s) complaining about having a migraine or, as we’d say in Scots, ‘a verrie sair heid.’

Cartoon by George Cruikshank

My heid did yak yester nicht,

This day to mak that I na micht.

So sair the magryme dois me menyie,

Perseing my brow as ony ganyie,

That scant I luik may on the licht

My head did ache last night

And today I could not write.

So sore does the migraine hurt me

Piercing my brow like an arrow

That I can scarce look at the light

(Any errors in translation are entirely mine – and my Scots dictionary)

When Mary Queen of Scots returned to Scotland in 1561 she could barely remember her country’s language after living in France from when she was a small child. French was spoken amongst the nobles but Scots was the principle language and so Queen Mary learned to speak it rather than English.

John Knox, on the other hand, returning to Scotland just in time to make life difficult for Mary, had slipped into speaking English. He’d lived in Geneva for a number of years, where he led an English congregation and also wrote his many works in English, including The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women. 

John Knox in full counterblast

There were two main reasons that contributed to Scots ultimately being considered as not ‘proper’ speak.

After the Union of the Crowns in 1603, when James VI of Scotland departed with all possible speed to wealthy London his language, certainly in papers and letters, becomes anglicised.

James VI and I

Here’s an extract from his Counterblast Against Tobacco… A custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs…  Translated into Scots – ‘smokin’ is verra bad fur ye’. Perhaps a pity he didn’t use his kingly prerogative and ban tobacco at the time, but in any case he increasingly spoke English (no doubt with a good Scottish accent), so the upper classes did, and it rapidly became a sign of wealth, and standing, to speak English – and still is.

Scotland turned Protestant in 1560. A core component of Protestantism was that everyone should learn to read the Bible themselves rather than having the Latin version interpreted by the church. This meant that we needed bibles, and lots of them, quickly. Initially the Geneva version, which was written in English and published in 1557, was adopted. This was closely followed by the King James (sixth and first) version in 1611, also in English. Scotland soon had one of the highest literacy rates in the world – but everyone was learning to read in English, and not the Scots they spoke at home. And surely, the language you are communing with the Lord in must be the correct one to speak…

We did see a revival in the use of Scots in the 18^th century, most famously exemplified by that charming philanderer Rabbie Burns, but it was more an entertaining curiosity for the wealthy than any genuine resurgence. Nevertheless Burns saved lots of songs in the vernacular which would likely have disappeared if he hadn’t written them down. 

Robert Burns

He’s probably most famous world wide for Auld Lang Syne (Old Times Past) sung at countless Hogmanay celebrations and then there’s Burns Night on the 25 January every year when the haggis is stabbed with gusto whilst being addressed in good Scots. 

In writing The Castilians I took the decision, since Bethia’s Mother had lived in England, that Bethia would speak an anglicised Scots although I do have some characters who use Scottish words, (I provide a glossary). Initially, I had far more Scots in it, but I did want the book to be read, and understood, widely. It’s always a balance…

Scots is the language of the Lowlands, Orkney and Shetland, and Northern Ireland (Ulster Scots) and even within that there’s much variation. The accent and some of the words used are quite different between say Fife and the Doric of the North East and then again Orcadian. 

But at least Scottish-speaking children didn’t suffer the fate of their Gaelic counterparts (Gaelic was never the language of Lowland Scotland). In the last century, children in the Highland and Islands were often beaten if they spoke Gaelic in school. I was fourteen before I first heard it, on holiday in the Western Isles. Thankfully Gaelic was saved in the nick of time, and is now more widely spoken. And as for Scots, well we’ve hung on tae it despite aywis being telt tae speak properly.

crabbit; scunnersome; drookit; gowk; oxters; guddle; midden; glaikit; besom

For more information on Scots see https://www.scotslanguage.com and also the Scottish Language Bill which the Scottish government is currently consulting on. 

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SCOTLAND IN STITCHES by Eleanor Updale

We all know about the Bayeux tapestry: a masterpiece embroidered to commemorate the Norman Conquest.


It has endured for nearly a thousand years.

For the past few months, I''ve been involved in the production of a modern narrative tapestry:  The Great Tapestry of Scotland.  At over 500 feet, it's more than twice the length of the Bayeux.  It's the result of about fifty thousand hours of work by over a thousand volunteer stitchers all over Scotland.  Small groups of women (and some men) each tackled a panel depicting an incident or theme from Scottish history. Miraculously, it's finished, and it went on display at the Scottish Parliament this month, before setting off on tour. 

The project was the brainchild of the wonderful Alexander McCall Smith - a serious contender for the title of Nicest Man In the World.  The herculean task of writing the narrative went to the historian Alastair Moffat, and the 160+ panels were designed by the artist, Andrew Crummy.  You can see and hear more about how the tapestry was made at this website:  http://scotlandstapestry.com/index.php

The tapestry tells the story of Scotland from the very earliest times to the present day.  This panel is five episodes in:

All the things you would expect are included in the story (Robert the Bruce, Mary Queen of  Scots,, Bonnie Prince Charlie, etc) but there's lots more, with a firm emphasis on the lives of ordinary people.
Here's the panel depicting the Black Death in the fourteenth century:



The picture below shows part of the panel I worked on (with a group of authors and publishers, including fellow History Girl Elizabeth Laird).  It commemorates the foundation of the ancient universities.

Although some of the stitchers were very accomplished, many of us had very little experience of embroidery, and had to learn as we went along.  We stitched everywhere: at home, at book festivals, at work. I 'watched' all eight episodes of Broadchurch through one long night, without looking at the TV screen (and I guessed whodunnit in Episode One.  Maybe that's the answer).

As the tapestry approaches the present day, it covers the birth of the Edinburgh Festival, the production of the Hilman Imp, and the establishment of the Parliament at Holyrood.  People had to stitch TV cameras, computers, factories, scientific instruments, and bridges.  Not all the episodes are set in Scotland itself.  This is how one group interpreted the Scots' impact on India:

Do try to catch the tapestry if it comes your way.  Seeing it assembled for the first time at the Parliament was a truly moving experience.  As a bit of a dunce on the subject of Scottish History, I found it a very palatable educational tool, too.  I am honoured to have been allowed to play a  part in something that will, we hope, be enjoyed by people for centuries to come.

I've only been able to give you the tiniest taste of what the tapestry is like.
You can see a news reports on the exhibition here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-23958346

We are all hoping that eventually a permanent home can be found for the tapesty in a place where Scottish people and visitors to Scotland can get to it easily.  So if you happen to know someone with a very big hall they want to fill, just get in touch, and I will pass the word on.

www.eleanorupdale.com