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THE coast of Berwickshire
forms a striking and aspiring interlude between the low shores of
Northumberland and East Lothian. Of those qualities appealing both to the
eye and the heart that lift these rugged Northumbrian shores far above the
level of the typical low-lying crumbly frontage that most of East Britain
presents to the North Sea, I have written a good deal elsewhere. Of how East
Lothian redeems its comparative lack of stature in this respect, I shall
hope to say something later in this book. No Southron, to be sure, nor
indeed very many Scotsmen outside the neighbouring districts, know anything
of the coast of Berwickshire. But that means nothing, save that it gathers
from such indifference the further distinction of aloofness from a restive
world, which so well becomes a coast-line that for many miles is awesome
enough in summer calms and positively terrific of aspect when waging its
solitary conflicts with the storm. Yet the world, and that, too, in its
thousands, roars past a section of it, along the very cliff edge, on leaving
Berwick. Such passing glimpses as are caught here, however, are but a faint
indication of what lies northward, when the train has swerved inland to wake
the echoes of the bosky Lammermoor glens and, after twenty breathless miles,
to leap out into the rich red sea-coast plains of Lothian. I doubt if the
passenger takes much note of all this. For my part, I have never lit upon a
friend or acquaintance who has gathered any conception of the sixty miles
between Berwick and Edinburgh from his Northern railway journeys. One might
fancy that the passing glimpse of the fishing hamlet of Burn-mouth, lying
several hundred feet in a cleft of the red cliffs below the train windows,
would catch even a vacant eye, or, again, that the winding wooded valley of
the Eye, with the wayward humours of that delightful stream playing
hide-and-seek for miles along the railway track, would in the course of
years acquire some kind of recognition. It seems strange, too, that the
beautiful tangle of the Pease Pass, which gave Cromwell so much trouble,
with its flowery glades and leaping torrents and overtopping bulwark of
purple moorland, followed by the sudden burst into the plains of Lothian,
radiant in its matchless fertility between the Lammermoors and the sea,
should leave no memory, whether at the end or beginning of so notable a
highway so often travelled. Probably all this is not generally regarded as
being in Scotland. At any rate, it is merely the Lowlands—infelicitous term
of vague, misleading import to the average south countryman, and not
supposed t.o be worthy of notice. Our friend is on his way to Edinburgh and
to the Highlands, which are all mountains and, in fact, alone signify
Scotland, so far as he is concerned. The Lowlands are all flat, and do not
count except vaguely for those who still read Scott and "take in" Abbotsford
on their way to the north. They contain counties the names and situations of
which are the despair of the Southron, who may know Inverness-shire as well
as Switzerland ; names that will always prove a tower of strength in those
geographical encounters which sometimes overtake the unwary wight in the
disguise of a parlour game.
I forget what famous debater it was who used to
drive the last home-thrust into the vitals of a Parliamentary opponent by
addressing him after his second title of Baron Clackmannan, an unfair ruse
which always, it was said, brought down the House and left the luckless
Baron smitten for the night beyond repair. Perhaps the motorist who riots
abundantly at certain seasons on the North Road, which road keeps intimate
company with the railway along these windy cliff edges and through the
Arcadian glens that Iead to Lothian, gathers something more of the quality
of the way. But, after all, neither type of passer-by concerns us, who have
not got to lunch at Edinburgh, nor yet sleep at Perth.
The Great North Road, which leads straight out
through the bounds of Berwick, those half-dozen square miles of farming land
filched from Scotland and assiduously "ridden" every year by the Berwick
burghers as if to flaunt their ancient triumph, should of a surety provide
the most callous wayfarer with something to think about. It is a bleak
stretch, to be candid, this half-mile span of terrace that for some miles
spreads from the cliff edge to the long slope of Halidon Hill and Lamberton
Moor and bears both road and railway northward. Nor is this amiss. For it is
a region of stern as well as of splendid memories, of slaughter as well as
pageant, and it is infinitely to our advantage that we can look all over it
unobstructed by woods and country houses, howsoever gracious in their place.
The long narrow strips of tillage, of grain, or hay or roots that follow one
another from the road to the cliff edge far upon our way would not claim
elsewhere any more notice than as a bright foreground to a boundless blue
sea, flecked with the sails of craft from a half-score of fishing villages
But the commonplace acres gain really some dignity of association when you
remember that they are the individual holdings of the four hundred and odd
hereditary freemen of Berwick. Even the huge sweeping fields of grass or
barley that climb in their rather sad, unadorned economic fashion the
fateful Hill of Halidon, though in truth they need no further story, gain a
little added interest from the fact that they belong to the historic
corporation of that town. It is good, too, to be able to look far ahead
along the wide open road to the famous Lamberton Toll Bar, the Gretna Green
of the Eastern Marches, where another blacksmith or the like tied up as many
runaway couples as crossed the Solway; which, by the way, if for a quite
different reason, is no more the international boundary, though nearer to
it, than is the Tweed here. But these are mere trifles of yesterday, and
Lamberton is incomparably greater as an ancient trystina-place than Gretna,
though the schoolboy in the Antipodes is familiar with the one and probably
no one in Hampshire ever heard of the other. For Lamberton saw many an
Anglo-Scottish pageant. Margaret of England, daughter of Henry VII., was met
here when, as a girl of thirteen, she proceeded northward with unprecedented
pomp to marry the gallant Scottish King, who a dozen years later widowed her
at Flodden Field. Two thousand nobles and gentlemen, riding three abreast,
escorted her to the Old Kirk which once stood at Lamberton, and there handed
her over to an equally gay company from Scotland, who carried her northward
to Edinburgh. 'There were ladies as well as cavaliers on horseback in this
fair company, which is minutely described by John Young, Somerset Herald,
with their jangling bells and persons arrayed in cloth of gold, and horses
frisking in trappings of the same. The Princess herself, in attire laced
with gold and precious stones, was carried in a litter surrounded by
attendants mounted on palfreys. Pavilions were pitched at Lamberton for each
degree, where with more wassail, such as Lord Dacre, Governor and Warden of
the Eastern March, had already indulged them with at Berwick, the merry
travellers made "great chere"; no less than six hundred of them going on
with their Scottish friends to make another night of it at Coldingham. And
how about Coldingham and its worthy monks and villagers, one might well ask,
when this swarm of gilded locusts settled on it; or did they, as was
probable, levy handsome tribute on their wealthy visitors?
Those were surely great times for country folk !
In the intervals of killing or being killed they had no end of spectacular
compensations. Fancy the Royal Family, half the House of Lords, all the
chief Cabinet ministers, bishops, generals, and admirals, blazing in jewels
and radiant apparel, camping out on your village cricket ground! James I.,
too, here first entered upon his kingdom, being met with ceremonies worthy
the occasion by the great ones of the English Border. Mary Stuart, in the
thick of her troubles with the truculent, self-seeking nobles that buffeted
her in such pitiless fashion about southern Scotland, rode on one occasion
to the hill above on her way to Coldingham. She was apparently impelled by
mere curiosity for a distant view of the famous town. But the news had
reached Berwick that she was hovering near, and the gallant Sir James
Foster, then Governor, gave orders for all the great guns to lift up their
voices on the new ramparts, and himself repaired with forty horsemen to the
Bounds. Here he met the Queen with Huntly, Murray, Lethington, and Bothwell,
and five hundred horse, when they all rode up to the top of Halidon Hill,
and the great guns of Berwick, two miles away, roared all that afternoon and
all that night in honour of the hapless and immortal charmer.
Charles I., on his progress to Edinburgh in
1633, after ten days at Berwick, was met at the Bounds by an amazingly
numerous and brilliant company of Scotsmen. Six hundred mounted gentlemen
from the Merse alone, were here, relations or dependents of the Earl of
Home, in green silk doublets with white scarves, and formed but a small
portion of the loyal array, which included most of the nobility and gentry
of Teviotdale and the three Lothians.
But this will never do! We might stand at
Berwick bounds and call up whole centuries of royal and famous pageants,
from William the Lion onward. Lamberton Toll is now represented by a couple
of humble dwellings, apparently quite unconscious of the significance of
their site, facing each other over a lonely bit of highway ; though one of
them, I believe, was once the actual blacksmith's shop which did such a
roaring matrimonial trade in comparatively recent days. There is an air of
melancholy and inconsequence about the once famous spot that to the dreamer
of dreams is not unwelcome. Little is to be seen from it but the hill of
slaughter, rising abruptly inland, where breadths of seeds or barley wave
and turnips flicker in the summer breeze, while the white curving road
trails away to north or south. Gulls from the neighbouring cliffs, but a
couple of fields distant, scream and wheel from England into Scotland, and
from Scotland into England, back and forth, or follow in long restless files
the track of a hind's plough as he turns the red soil of the Corporation
acres. A group of women workers, picturesque in their regulation garb of
blue blouse, pink neck-cloth, and short linsey skirts, come cackling betimes
along the road, or a mournful pair of professional roadsters shamble
southward, shaking the dust of Scotland and its sterner poor-law methods
from off their feet no doubt with joy and renewed designs upon the more
long-suffering ratepayer beyond the Tweed. Motors, branded with the brand of
remote counties, throb past at intervals and fly the Bounds with joyous
unconcern, and little heed or notion that they are raising classic dust.
It was hereabouts that the old road to Edinburgh
left the line of the present one, and climbed up past Lamberton Manse and
the now vanished kirk to the long lofty plateau of Lamberton Hill. Upon this
far-spreading common, renowned in Georgian times for one of the chief Border
race-meetings, lay the Scottish army, while on Halidon, a lower continuation
of the same ridge, towards Berwick, Edward III. drew up that army which was
to avenge his father's unforgettable defeat at Bannockburn. Lamberton Common
is now a delightful mile or so of gorse, bracken, and sward, lifted some 700
feet above the sea, whence you may look out over half southern Scotland, and
more than half Northumberland, while Halidon has been long enclosed and
tamed to the plough. But there is a dip between the two hills, and the
Regent, Archibald Douglas, who commanded the Scots, forgot the precepts of
the dead Bruce never to attack the English in a pitched battle, and forgot
it at a moment when his enemy was in great fighting trim, and furthermore
occupied a strong position.
Edward was investing Berwick, then in Scottish
hands, and articles of surrender had already been signed for an early day,
provided that the city was not in the meantime relieved. This, however, was
just what Douglas and the Scottish army now essayed to do. There was not
much strategy about the battle, and none of the old writers have found very
much to say about it except in regard to the slaughter which ensued. I am
afraid many readers will be surprised to hear that Sir Walter has celebrated
it in a metrical drama, and no doubt for its very paucity of outstanding
detail, borrowed the well-known Gordon-Swinton scene from the later affair
at Homildon. One famous incident, however, preceded the battle and augured
badly for the Scots. For one of the Turnbulls, a gigantic Scotsman,
accompanied by a furious mastiff, strode forth from the ranks and challenged
any warrior in the English army to single combat. Whereupon stepped forth
one Sir Robert Benhale of Norfolk, a man of prowess and great skill in arms,
though of only moderate stature. He disposed of the mastiff's attack by a
single blow, and, after a brief encounter, sliced off Turnbull's right arm,
and then, according to the current etiquette of such proceedings, removed
his head. The Scottish
infantry attacked uphill and were repulsed. The cavalry got mired in a
swamp, and their curiously fashioned horseshoes are frequently to this day
ploughed up, one being in my own possession. It was the old story of the
English archer, now just arrived at the zenith of his fame and skill, whose
terrible volleys were again and again too much for even the valiant North
Briton. It was here as at Homildon Hill, within easy sight of the crest of
Iialidon, forty years later. Whether these archers, like the others, came
from the Welsh Marches, the nursery of the English bowman, I know not, but
it matters nothing, the result was equally fatal. The arrows flew, says an
old chronicler, "like motes in a sunbeam, and no coat of mail could
withstand them." And so also King Edward, in Sir Walter's drama:-
"See Chandos, Percy. Ha' St. George! St. Edward
See it descending; now, the fatal hail shower,
The storm of England's wrath, sure, swift, resistless,
Which no mail coat can brook."
And to Percy, who exclaims that it darkens the
sky and hides the sun:-
"It falls on those
shall see the sun no more.
The winged, the resistless plague is with them.
They do not see and cannot shun the wound.
The storm is viewless as Death's sable wing,
Unerring as his scythe."
It was soon a rout. Only
seven Englishmen fell, says one account, while the Scottish loss is quoted
by various writers, after their hyperbolic fashion, at from 14,000 to
56,000. The stricken host was pursued all the way to Ayton, four miles
distant, and were cut down apparently like sheep, for the entire route, we
are told, was strewn with corpses.
"These men might well
see
Many a Scot lightly flee,
And the English after priking,
With sharp swerdes them stryking."
The slaughter was so great
among the Scotch nobility that the English vainly flattered themselves with
the prospect of no more Scottish wars, since no man capable of leading an
army appeared to be Ieft alive.
Bannockburn seemed indeed to be avenged, and the
triumphant Edward left a sum of money to the nuns of a Cistercian house then
standing at the foot of Halidon Hill, for a perpetual celebration of his
famous victory. The convent, the nuns; the vows of eternal pćans in Edward's
glory, and masses for the innumerable dead, have long vanished in dust and
fantasy, and the bloody, corpse-strewn track of the hapless Scots to Ayton,
which we may now follow, has been washed by ten thousand storms, and turned
over and over by a thousand ploughs.
But Burnmouth, the first gash
in the red cliffs north of Berwick, and that in truth a mighty deep and
narrow one, is well worth the trifling detour from the highway, if only for
a glimpse of the hamlet clinging to the base of the cliff, where from the
heights above there appears no space for what is in fact a whole community
of fisherfolk. It is well worth the steep descent of three or four hundred
feet, by the rough road that gives these hardy sons and daughters of the sea
access to the upper world. Or failing that, there is a grassy platform more
than half-way down which exposes in a way that an artist would surely seize
upon, this really uncommon and quite exquisite picture of a Scottish fishing
village. At any rate this vantage-point comes back to me from a summer
evening not long ago, when the sea was at its bluest, the overhanging cliffs
at their ruddiest, the greenery which hung over their summits and even crept
down their steep sides at its greenest. The red-roofed cottages, thrust into
the cliff-foot or perched about on rocky knolls covered with drying nets,
sent their wreaths of smoke straight upwards in the moveless air, for the
boats had just come in and suppers were no doubt impending. Short-skirted
women were carrying baskets of fish ashore upon their bent backs, for the
males of their kind, when they have beached the boats, hold that their part
in the domestic economy is ended. The gulls swung screaming from side to
side of the great cleft, or floated far below upon the glassy tide that
exposed every rib of the submerged reefs which pave the whole of this
inhospitable shore. For even here, a fishing station, the only refuge for
craft too large to beach is a small artificial harbour, where three or four
herring smacks were on this occasion idly lying.
Nobody would ever dream of suggesting that North
Britain, on either side of Tweed, can pride itself on the osthetie quality
of its inland villages. So it is perhaps just as well that in the
agricultural districts villages are comparatively scarce, the hind and his
family being generally quartered in those rows of low, red-roofed cottages
that cluster round the great farm steadings, and redeem them in some measure
from their rather uncompromising utilitarianism. There are exceptions,
however, and Ayton is one of them, as if conscious that first impressions
count for much, and that some effort is demanded of the first village upon
Scottish soil encountered by the northward-bound stranger. It is but fair to
admit, however, that there is no sign of self-consciousness about Ayton,
unless a large handsome modern kirk at its outskirts, set amid all the
mellow surroundings of grove, stream, and well-tended graveyard that graced
an ancient predecessor, count for such; while within this same predecessor,
it is interesting to remember, was held at least one Anglo-Scottish
conference of import to both kingdoms.
Nature has done a good deal for Ayton, and the
castle perched amid its nobly timbered parklands above, that has been for
all time associated with it, has done perhaps more. The approach to the foot
of the wide ascending village street touches the romantic, for it is made
over a bridge of a single arch thrown across a deep rocky chasm, where,
smothered in foliage, the pellucid waters of the Eye make gentle music.
Below this again they continue to burrow with complaining voice through
three more miles of woodland to the sea at Eyemouth, a little fishing town
of picturesque environment and of much note in that portion of the outer
world concerned with herrings, mackerel, or cod. The castle entrance, too,
stands near the bridge in all that pomp of massive Gothic red sandstone
architecture with which the great Scottish Border mansion is apt to
emphasise its dignity, and when, as in this case, such lordly portals are
overshadowed by stately timber, the effect is admirable.
Nothing of particular note or antiquity stands
out in Ayton village. Helped, however, by its pleasant site, its wide
sloping street, and its quite tolerable dimensions, it has an air of
old-fashioned dignity and consequence that is assuredly lacking in most of
its neighbours. Like every other place with a church and a castle on this
great highway, Ayton has a lengthy chronology and is steeped in historical
incident, which it would profit us nothing merely to tabulate. The present
castle is modern, but no less baronial in aspect for all that—a red
sandstone pile of the typical Scottish type with the characteristic French
affinities. It is beautifully placed high up amid a wealth of verdure, and
altogether so conspicuous from the railway that even our much apostrophised
friend on the Edinburgh mail must acquire in time some acquaintance with it.
It has broken its family as well as its structural links with the past,
which is as chequered a one as you would expect from a Border castle. Surrey
destroyed an early edition of it in the reign of James IV., when he
"continually bet it from two of the clock in the morning till five at
night," and after sparing the garrison, "razed it to the playne ground."
This was in pursuit of the Scottish King, who had espoused the cause of
Perkin Warbeck and raided Northumberland and Durham till, if I remember
rightly, the more tender hearted Pretender, unused to Border amenities,
protested against such wanton ravage. James, says the chronicler Grafton,
lay supinely within a mile of Surrey at Ayton and saw the smoke of the
bombardment. He sent heralds to the Earl offering him single combat with the
town and policies of Berwick as the stake. Surrey replied that Berwick was
the property of the King his master, and not his own to wager away, but
declared himself to be highly honoured that so great a monarch should make
such flattering proposals to a "poor Earl." He awaited, however, the attack
of the Scottish army, till both sides, having exhausted the resources of
that "tempestuous, unfertyle, and barrein region," went their homeward ways.
Surrey would be surprised if he could see the present-day agriculture of the
" barrein region " whose many towers he " razed " on that particular
expedition. So, I might add, however, would a modern south country farmer.
Avton may in a manner be said to form the entry
into that projecting block of Berwickshire which is cut off from the rest of
the county by both main road and railway, that together leave the coast at
Burnmouth and together meet the sea again at Cockburnspath. The old name of
"Coldinghamshire" which roughly covered it might be conveniently revived for
our brief purpose here. Indeed the county, besides its two natural divisions
of the Lammermoors and the Merse, might for purposes of lucidity be
accredited with this as a third one. For it is made up of a fragment of both
the others, and, with the modern road and railroad for a base, forms a
triangle, the point of which is St. Abb's Head, while either side is washed
by the North Sea. The coast sides are each some dozen miles in length as the
crow flies, the base nearly twenty. Eyemouth lies just within it, beneath
the southern horn of Coldingham Bay, which forms indeed the eastern side of
the triangle, and, though fearfully rugged and broken, is comparatively
low-lying. The northern side of the triangle from St. Abb's Head to
Cockburnspath is an unbroken barrier of savage, inaccessible cliffs with
practically no human life in their neighbourhood.
The considerable village of Coldingham, with its
famous abbey, is virtually in the heart of what I shall make free, in the
phrase of the ancients, to call Coldinghamshire, as Hexharn, Norham, and
Bamburgh, with less geographical cause, at any rate, carried the like
honour. The whole triangle, and more besides, like the clearly defined
"shire" of Hexham, was no doubt held in one way or another of the abbey.
Indeed the term Coldinghamshire is as old as the Saxon period, and its
limits were clearly defined Iater on by William the Lion. But as antiquaries
admit themselves baffled by the enigmatic surveys of that energetic monarch,
his primitive landmarks having no doubt disappeared, we need not worry about
such things here, but confine the ancient and convenient term to the limits
described. Coldinghamshire displays a variety of character and scenery that
many a region of its size, trumpeted by railroads, exploited by newspaper
essayists, and laboured at great length by guide-hooks, might envy. Its
eastern half is largely filled by grouse moors and wholly flanked by the
weirdest and most imposing sea-coast that Britain presents to the North Sea.
Upon Coldingham itself lies the atmosphere of a great lire-Reformation
church centre. In Eyemouth and St. Abb's village are most felicitous
examples of the important and the primitive Lowland fishing villages
respectively. Around Ayton and in the western part of the " shire " is the
opulent landscape already alluded to, while the deep woody valleys and
ravines of the Eye and Pease, with their glittering streams, strike yet
another note.
Coldinghamshire owes its qualities to the fact
that it is in great part formed by the seaward extremities of the wild and
lofty range of the Lammermoors. Starting, in name at least, from the deep
channelled country south of Edinburgh, through which the Gala and Leader run
to Tweed, and thence forging eastward to the coast, this great heath-clad
barrier completely severs Lothian from the Merse and Tweeddale, and is in
short the outstanding physical feature of the Eastern March of Scotland.
The road from Ayton to Eyemouth which skirts the
castle is a. short hour's walk, , and well worth doing, if only for the
intimate terms upon which it so frequently places you with the last and
perhaps the most beautiful three miles of the Eye's course. The little river
terminates its career in a remarkably abrupt transformation, within a few
hundred yards, from limpid cascades tumbling over mossy rocks in the
seclusion of inviolate woodlands to a deep channel where fifty or sixty
large fishing smacks may often be seen densely wedged between stone wharves.
The architecture of Eyemouth is undeniably depressing, though quite a number
of summer visitors put up with its sombre aspect for the charm of the rocks
and the sea, the cliffs and the coves which lie around it. For the town has
long outgrown the promiscuously picturesque collection of red-tiled,
white-walled cottages that makes the more primitive fishing village of this
ancient kingdom of Northumbria from the Forth to the Tyne pleasant to
behold. Immense stacks of herring barrels were piled up on the wharves when
I was last there, and a communicative aboriginal, with his hands
suspiciously deep in his pockets, who may, for aught I know, have been the
self-appointed orator of a taciturn breed, and not much more, gave me the
figures of a contract (for Russia, I think), which were of an imposing kind.
Fish-curing employs the lasses of Eyemouth, and their haddocks are quite
celebrated. A century
and a half ago, when the first pier was built at Eyemouth, Berwick received
a disagreeable jar. It seems that the monopoly so long enjoyed by that port
had emboldened its traders to treat the neighbourhood in rather high-handed
fashion. So the lairds and farmers concerned with sea-borne freight, legal
or illegal, turned with alacrity to this new outlet. Thirty years ago
Eyemouth was overwhelmed with a disaster such as has never probably in
modern times smitten a little fishing port, no fewer than 129 of its hardy
sons being drowned in a single storm, and most of its fishing fleet
destroyed. It has enjoyed, too, among some readers of Scott an adventitious
reputation as the scene of the immortal and resourceful Caleb Balder-stone's
raids for the replenishment of his master's empty larder and the saving of
his master's honour at the grim fortress of Wolf's Crag. As some eight
miles, much of which is rugged cliff edge, divide Eyemouth from Fast Castle,
undoubtedly the inspiring original of Ravens-wood's storm-beaten tower, one
must reluctantly forego all temptation to include any of the characters in
that great tragedy among the local genii. St. Abb's indeed would have a
prior claim if precise topography was applicable to the famous drama. But I
think that any one who had tramped afoot between that village and Fast
Castle in broad daylight would abandon all attempt to connect its fortunes
with those of this gruesome stronghold, or to imagine Caleb toddling down
there at night and returning betimes with a lean hen for his master's
supper. Coldingham,
some four miles away, lies, as already noted, where the lower and the higher
regions of its shire meet. It is a place of no infrequent pilgrimage for the
people of Edinburgh and the Eastern 'larch generally, and of resolute
antiquarians, of course, from much farther afield. Traps of assorted kinds
meet those slow train: on the main line which stop at Reston Junction and
bear away on most fine summer days a moderate company of tourists over the
three miles of fine undulating highway that bisects the shire and leads to
Coldingham. Adjoining the village, which, by the way, is another welcome
exception to the prevailing North British type, are the remains of the
abbey. The only important and conspicuous portion extant is the original
choir, for the excellent reason that it has been repaired and preserved for
the purposes of a parish kirk, while the other more or less fragmentary
relics of the once great monastery occupy the well-filled and well-kept
graveyard. The
monastery was founded in 1098 about two miles from the site of the primitive
establishment of St. Abb's. This last is attributed to Ebba, daughter of
Ethelbert, King of Northumbria, and sister to the pious Oswald, who under
marvellous circumstances, as some will remember, won the victory over the
heathen hosts at Heavenfield, near Hexham. At all events, Ebba retired here,
before the appointment of St. Cuthbert to the bishopric of Lindisfarne.
Legend tells of this saintly lady escaping from enemies who had made her
captive near the Humber, in a boat, and being safely and providentially
deposited beneath St. Abb's Head, which from this incident derived its
present name. Here Ebba remained in the convent she founded in thankfulness
for her escape, and together with her novitiates, being no doubt unversed in
the ritual and discipline of conventual life, she sent for Cuthbert, *ho,
lately risen from an obscure shepherd boy in the Lammermoors, was now Abbot
of Melrose. The opportunity of being by the seaside for the first time was
seized upon by the holy man, according to Bede, for inventing a new kind of
penance. For when Ebba's flock were all wrapped in slumber he would steal
down to the lonely shore and stand for the whole night up to his neck in the
water engaged in prayer and praise till the time approached for the regular
morning devotions. An innate of the establishment, stirred by curiosity at
these midnight excursions of the pious abbot to follow him and to become a
secret witness of his proceedings, himself reported this to the historian.
He also affirmed that when the saint came out of the water after his long
immersion, two sea-lions (seals) followed him, warmed his feet with their
breath, and dried them with their skins, after which they received
Cuthbert's benediction, and retired again into the deep. Ebba's foundation
continued to be the scene not merely of supernatural marvels, but of
sensational human performances. Once when a Danish raiding party were on the
shore, and the nuns feared for their chastity, they sliced off their noses
and upper lips, which so disgusted and enraged the intending ravagers that
they burnt the building and the nuns within it. This appears to have
happened about the year 870, and was the second and apparently final
destruction of the monastery. The first, according to Bede, was soon after
the death of Ebba, and was a visitation of God, long before seen in a dream,
upon the loose living of the inmates. For this, like most of such Saxon
houses, was in two sections, for men and women respectively, an abbess
presiding over both.
But the priory of Coldingham has only an uncertain connection with the
ancient foundation on the headland, and its chequered tale is modern history
compared to the weird chronicle of the other. It was founded in 1098 by
Edgar, King of the Scots, or of some of the Scots, after his victory over
the usurper Donald, and dedicated to St. Cuthbert for full value received,
if the visions of a Scottish King after dining with the monks of Durham can
be attributed to saintly inspiration. St. Cuthbert himself on this occasion
was the nocturnal visitor to the King, then on his way to recover his
kingdom, and guaranteed that if he carried the Durham banner before him, the
victory was as good as won. So Edgar borrowed the cathedral banner of St.
Cuthbert from the monks and caused it to be borne before his army, a
proceeding which fully justified the promise of the saint, and so
intimidated the enemy that numbers of them changed sides on the spot and
thereby assured the victory to Edgar. In the joyful and grateful mood
natural to his triumph, the King founded the Priory of Coldingham,
introducing thereto Benedictine monks from Durham, as was only right, and
endowing it handsomely with manors. He furthermore laid a yearly tribute to
his new priory on all the inhabitants of Coldinghamshire for the greater
advantage of his own soul and that of his father and mother, brothers and
sisters, a means of salvation that must strike our modern notions as
singularly mean, and as attributing to the Deity a remarkable absence of the
judicial instinct.
So Coldingharn flourished and became the most
powerful monastery between Berwick and Edinburgh. Among its earliest
possessions were many well-known places in the Merse, like Swinton, Lennel,
Earlston, Edrom, and Stitchell, where in due course it erected churches and
established parish boundaries much as they stand to-day. To follow the story
of Coldingham would be to labour the whole stormy sea of Scottish history.
Its position may be referred to, however, as singular—that, namely, of a
Scottish monastery ecclesiastically associated with Durham. More than one
King of Scotland endeavoured to alienate it, James Ill, more particularly,
who lost his life in the attempt. For the Homes, ubiquitous and powerful in
Berwickshire for centuries, and indeed all-powerful in the fifteenth
century, regarded it as their particular care, with the ultimate result that
the King fell in battle at Sauchieburn. His son, however, annexed Coldingham
to the Scottish Crown and placed it under the Abbey of Dunfermline. Several
of the priors in its later days, being members of the great, ever-factious
Scottish families, came, as was inevitable, to violent ends. Hertford in his
devastating march of 1545 set fire to the buildings. Then came the
Reformation, and in 1560 the monastery was dissolved. It had entertained in
its day almost every one who was anybody in Scotland, and in 1648 Cromwell
completed its long list of distinguished visitors, and at the same time,
upon the capitulation of the Royalist garrison, who had fortified it against
him, terminated its physical existence by blowing up all but the two sides
of the church, and undermining a tower which fell later. The memory of Queen
Mary's stay here, like the memory of everything else associated with that
hapless lady, who has so captivated the imagination of posterity, is perhaps
the most familiar in its story to casual acquaintances, and we have already
described how she came here from Lamberton with a great company. Whether the
Queen herself slept at the priory or at Houndswood, four miles away, still
vexes the soul of the antiquary, while a farmhouse near the latter place
called Mount Albion is supposed to commemorate the spot where she mounted
her white palfrey for the homeward journey.
The original church, as the visible remains of
walls and the foundations of others discovered during the restoration
testify, was a large one, consisting of a central tower, a nave ninety feet
long, with aisles and transepts, the latter having eastern aisles or
chapels. The choir, of equal length with the nave, was aisleless, and was,
in fact, the church we see before us to-day. The whole building was used
freely as a stone quarry by the natives of Coldingham in old days. It is
fortunate that the heritors of the parish had both the sense and the taste
to make some reparation half a century ago for the ravages of their fathers
and grandfathers and restore the choir as the parish church—that is, to
build a west and a south wall upon the old foundations on to the north and
east sides, which were still perfect, and to roof them in. They were
assisted by the Crown, which perhaps ensured a structural harmony that
neither the period nor the locality might have been wholly trusted to bear
in mind. A curious English reader may possibly say to himself, "And what is
a heritor?" for the Scottish Church is a subject upon which the average
Southron of intelligence is complacently in the dark. Nor, probably, does
occasional attendance at a Highland Free Kirk in August shed much light upon
the darkness. The heritors, then, to waive technicalities, are, speaking
generally, the substantial men of the parish, whether owners or occupiers.
They are responsible for everything practical connected with the Established
Church of Scotland. Their body, unless voting is required, [Occasionally,
but less often I believe than formerly, two or more selected ministers
officiate in turn, and the choice between them then falls upon the
congregation.] elect the minister, and they are responsible for his salary.
The Scottish tithe is not fixed on a term of years' sliding scale of the
price of grain, as in the English Church, but each year the market price is
settled by a jury, presided over by the Sheriff, who meet and discuss the
matter from the standpoint of their own experience. Mr. Henderson and Mr.
Thomson (without the "p," if you please) quote the prices obtained at
Berwick for their barley, or Messrs. Deans and Logan assess the average
value realised for wheat at Dunbar or Haddington by some such personal and
doubtless sufficiently equitable method. The tithes are collected and paid
to the minister on the responsibility of the heritors. He does not have to
collect his dues like a landlord after the fashion of his English brethren,
though they come, of course, from the same sources, alike inherited from the
ancient pre-Reformation Church. Stay-at-home Scotsmen may marvel that this
last crumb of information should be accounted worth while imparting. If they
knew us in our home they would understand it to be quite urgently so—that
is, if English folk generally were very much interested in things outside
their immediate orbit, which is not, of course, the case. Those who are will
not need telling such elementary facts about the Church of Scotland. Those
who are not—nine out of ten, that is to say—will not in the least care to be
told, but continue to cherish a vague conception of a nation of dissenters
dominated in religious matters by ministers and elders whose ferocious
sabbatarianism is partially redeemed by the wealth of good stories of which
they are the genial heroes.
The style of the work in Coldingham Church is
very beautiful, being elaborate transition Norman. The exterior of the north
side shows an upper storey of eight single-light lancet windows, divided
from one another by broad shallow buttresses. Each window has deep
head-mouldings, springing from banded circular shafts with floreated
capitals. The lower storey, to use an expressive but unprofessional term,
consists of an arcading merely, of Norman arches arranged in couplets. The
same arrangement is practically continuous round the east end, the other
original portion of the church, while the two restored sides of course
correspond externally. At each corner is a slender square tower, barely
higher than the walls, with a low pointed cap. The roof is a low flattish
gable, and the building at first sight, even to an eye familiar with
remnants of mediaeval churches, is undeniably perplexing.
Within the building there has been no attempt,
in the restoration of the two vanished walls, to reproduce the elaborate
beauty of their ancient predecessors, nor indeed could the worthy heritors
of the parish have been expected to put their hands so deep into their
pockets as this effort would have entailed. Nor does it really much matter ;
the beauty lies in the work, its singularity and antiquity, not in the
building as such, since it is a mere fragment of the original, shorn of its
accessories, and without its proper complements. An open arcade, in the
thickness of the wall, is carried round on a level with the windows, making
a kind of triforium, sufficient for perambulation. The faces of the arches,
which are in couplets between the windows, are deeply moulded, while the
arcading of the lower compartment is extremely rich and ornate. That the
pewing and modern fittings are those of an unadorned Scottish village kirk
may have passing interest in the contrast between the unreformed
Presbyterian attitude towards beauty in Divine worship and that of their
ancestors. Two or three mortuary stones of early monks survive. Outside, a
solitary Norman arch, a relic of the south transept, is all that is
conspicuous, though the remains of the walls and foundations of the
monastery buildings are in part plain enough. About a century ago the
supposed skeleton of an immured nun was found in a niche in a part of the
walls that was being removed.
Now you may find a Scotsman in any part of
England, but a southern Englishman other than a domestic in a lowland
country village is an amazing curiosity. I have only encountered such a
spectacle once in my life, and that, too, in the surprising situation of
beadle to a Scottish kirk. For on repairing to the cottage where I was
informed that functionary at Coldingham had his abode, I was confronted by a
young middle-aged south countryman, and upon my astonished ears, attuned for
many weeks to the Doric accents of the Lowlander, there fell the
unmistakable and more dulcet notes of a west-country Englishman. Our friend,
it transpired, was a native of Gloucestershire, and, to his lasting honour,
had volunteered for the South African war, when, drifting into a Scottish
corps, he had returned home with his companions-in-arms to share in their
well-merited honours as a Scottish hero. A likely situation offering itself
on the disbanding of the corps, he had proceeded from that to the beadleship
of this Scottish kirk, and in addition to the acquirements demanded by that
semi-sacred office, had gathered those elements of medieaval ecclesiology
that in this particular one were in frequent demand. The transition from a
west-country trooper to a Scottish Presbyterian official struck me as
altogether delightful, but I did not, of course, betray my appreciation from
this point of view, particularly as I seemed to detect a becoming sense of
gravity in my versatile cicerone. I merely asked him how he got along, to
which he replied, "First rate." I touched gently on the difference in
ritual. "It ain't very different from our own, sir." After all, no more it
is nowadays, assuredly not for an honest, simple soul unvexed by traditional
accessories. Indeed the porch of a Scotch parish church would go far to
reconcile any sound Anglican to trifling discrepancies within doors. For
here are all the familiar notices fluttering on the walls that speak so
comfortingly and eloquently of Church and State, of one venerable
rallying-place of social and religious order, one link with the past still
intact from the raging of schismatics, the onslaught of socialistic dreamers
and schemers. Here are the familiar lists of game-licence holders and
ratepayers, the latest royal proclamation, the notices of parish minister or
Territorial colonel, which, whether in Scotland or in England, always seem
to me so pleasantly if delusively suggestive that all is yet well.
A mile of lane leads you from Coldingham to the
rocky cove where the quaint and characteristic fishing hamlet of St. Abb's
lies tucked beneath the first uplifting of that tremendous headland. Here,
as everywhere else on this inhospitable shore, the rage of the sea is held
back at one point by a massive breakwater, behind which a sheltered harbour
gives refuge to the red-sailed smacks and open cobbles that the village
contributes to the great fishing fleet of the North Sea. Away to the
south-east spreads Coldingham Bay, rocky and reef-ribbed, but the one
low-lying interlude of the Berwickshire coast, with Eyemouth in the neck of
its further horn. Farms and habitations lie thinly scattered behind it, and
here and there a smart summer residence, whose owner is almost certain to
hail from Edinburgh. To the north-westward, on the left hand is a mighty
wall of old Silurian rock falling sheer into the sea and thrusting out huge
fragments to meet the waves. Beyond is chaos and a long succession of
horrors from the sea-going point of view. It would be a calm sea indeed that
would tempt any roving craft landward till it reached the Lothian coast.
Two or three terraces upon the high ground, with
offshoots straggling over the broken declivities seawards, comprise the
village of St. Abb's. If its architecture is not idyllic, the whole air of
the place, fortuitously cast by nature in so rugged a setting, makes this of
less consequence. Coldingham is the annual resort of a few quiet summer
visitors from Edinburgh, who, with the exception of the owners of some
private villas, must be possessed of the happy uncritical temperament that I
am quite sure pertains to the middle-class Scotsman (or perhaps I should say
Scotswoman) in this particular. Another handful of still more adventurous
people of the same type perch themselves at St. Abb's, where the
accommodation is of a far more al fresco description. But if rocks and sky
and sea can anywhere make up for narrow quarters and ingenuous cookery, they
have here their reward. The fishermen in such sequestered havens, with the
freshness of their absorbing and daring life still untouched by contact with
a vulgarising world, are themselves worth cultivating, and far better
company for a sane being than negro minstrels or brass bands. The Scot of
the sea, like his fellow of the Northumbrian coast, has no touch with the
Scot of the land. For generations they have lived apart, though the barrier
of late years has weakened, and local ethnologists, as in Northumberland,
will trace them to different stocks. The Gaelic Scot of the western coast,
such as the Englishman generally sees, and that we all hear a great deal
more than enough about, is both a fisherman and a farmer, and conspicuously
inefficient at both. The Teutonic Scot of the east is either a first-class
fisherman or a first-class farmer (or rather farm labourer, a profession in
these parts far above in standing and in comfort the level of the western
crofter). But he is rarely both, and his respective ancestors have nearly
always been in the same trade. The last occasion on which I spent a few
hours at St. Abb's, striking evidence was exhibited of the peacefulness of
its inhabitants—proved, so to speak, by negation. I was standing on the high
terraced road looking down upon the harbour, where a smack or two were
landing their freight and crew, when of a sudden I became aware that the
village was in a state of electricity. Fisher wives and fisher girls,
abandoning their brooms and ovens, burst from a score of doorways and
gathered on the many points of vantage commanding the little harbour,
cackling loudly with that peculiar note of satisfaction which with the poor
suggests that something exhilaratingly unpleasant for somebody else is going
forward. Other natives of both sexes, and also visitors with winged feet at
the bare thought of something happening at St. Abb's, scurried at best pace
down the rocky ways towards the sea. I thought perhaps a boat had upset, and
vainly scanned the then placid waters of the little rockbound bay for some
sign of misadventure. A heated matron, however, came panting by at this
moment, and in response to my inquiry pointed to the quay below, and with
such breath as she could spare explained in three fateful words the cause of
all this upsetting. "Yon's a fecht!" And taking note of the direction
indicated, I espied a turmoil of the nature of a Rugby football scrimmage on
the pier, which through my glasses revealed the fact that most of the
purging group were not themselves combatants, but wrestling to keep the
peace between the actual gladiators. Anon the word "police" was tossed up
the village from lip to lip, and in due course the Coldingham policeman,
summoned by telephone, dashed into the town on the top gear of his bicycle,
and descended to the scene of the now apparently terminated encounter. When
he breasted the hill again in company with a dishevelled, shame-faced being
the town learned, probably with much more disappointment than relief, that
peace was once again restored. Its disturber, I gathered, was a fisherman
from Eyemouth of militant temperament, who, having landed with a drappie in
his e'e, determined to clean out the town, and, beginning with the first man
he saw on the quay, at once met his match. Hence the prolonged encounter and
this stirring ten minutes for St. Abb's. |
