I went off with Gordon and Bruce the greyhound (with his head stuck out the car window as usual) to Roslyn, just outside Edinburgh, for a good wander around the woodland walk around the glen, then up to the remains of Roslyn Castle and finally a walk past Roslyn Chapel.
Starting from the carpark down in the glen, we crossed the river and started up the steep slopes. The greenery you can see all over the hillside is not grass - it's wild garlic, masses and masses of wild garlic. The entire area is virtually carpeted with garlic plants and even early in the year like now you can smell the pungent aroma - another month or two and it will be much stronger. There's more garlic here than every Italian and French restaurant in the whole of Edinburgh combined.
After walking up the steep, wooded slopes, ducking low branches and clambering over roots and moss-covered rocks and fallen trees we came to the bass of Roslyn Castle and decided to do a circuit. This is the approach to the stone bridge linking the road to the castle.
Looking up towards the bridge above us; this doesn't really do the sense of scale justice, it is a fair old drop from up there, then on the far side yet another drop down to a low river valley where you can see walls of stone eaten out by millennia of water erosion.
On the other side of the stone bridge, looking up; I love the way some of the base stones are just huge boulders with the edges trimmed by stonemasons, then higher up the structure is of more conventional stone blocks cut to shape. Looks several stories up on the left and you will see glass and curtains - this part is still occupied and we'll come round to it in a moment
Roslyn has quite a history, including being attacked by Oliver Cromwell; old warty face stabled his horses in nearby Roslyn Chapel to show his disregard, although at least he didn't destroy the chapel. Much further back Sir William Wallace has associations with the castle and further along the forest walk than we went today is Wallace's Cave. All across Scotland there are sites named for Wallace and associated with folk tales of our hero - I grew up near Wallace's Well on the outskirts of Glasgow and used to cycle to it, it's supposedly the spot where he was betrayed to the English and finally captured to meet a gruesome end. There are far fewer such places now, but they still number in their hundreds, probably a hangover from a pre-literate time when the common folk wanted to remember their hero and so named spots for them and associated them forever after with a tree, a rock, a cave, a well... It may also derive from a deeper, older Celtic heritage and the association of the hero with the land itself.
Reached the summit now and this looks very much like a lovely old Scottish rural cottage, doesn't it? Actually this is the top of the building you saw earlier - the back of this drops down several stories as you saw two pictures back; quite deceiving from this angle though, isn't it?
Another view of the still habited remains of the castle; between the location and the fact it is surrounded by great swathes of wild garlic growing all over the hill and glen it must be the single home most protected against vampire attack in the entire kingdom.
On top of the stone bridge pictured earlier, leading up to the remains of the castle.
Just walking past Roslyn Chapel, which as you can see is still covered in scaffolding and a temporary roof as it is repaired and renovated. As Wallace is associated with the nearby castle so the Bruce is with this building, with a stone carving within said to be a death mask of the greatest of King of Scots. Of course the Chapel is also associated with the Knights Templar, several of whom pledged their service to the Bruce and fought for him at Bannockburn in 1314, where a vastly outnumbered Scottish army shattered a vast, well-armed English army and secured the independence of the nation, changing the future shape of Great Britain as they did so, although they would not have known it at the time. Far distant ancestors of my own clan, the Gordons, also fought alongside Bruce at Bannockburn and this is thought to be where they started their rise to prominence in later Scotland, being granted extensive lands by the Bruce for their services.
Another view of Roslyn Chapel, covered in its repair structure. Somewhere deep within this small structure is said to lie the Holy Grail itself; certainly one of the functions on my new camera was set off today, the special function which lights up in the display to warn you that you are close to an ancient and mythological device (it also works on Arthur's sword and other ancient relics, but I don't use the function much). Seriously though, I have no idea if the Grail is buried within the Chapel at all (Dan Brown includes Roslyn in his pile of second-hand nonsense in the Da Vinci Code) but the carvings within it are of astonishing quality and intricacy.
It is also linked with another mystery, that of early visitors to what we now call America; the Sinclair family who were instrumental in building it were also known as sailors and they hired navigators to sail from the Orkneys westwards. Some local traditions from native tribes in Canada and eastern America tell of their visit, long before that idiot Columbus took a wrong turn. On the roof of the chapel is carved the 'bounty of God's Earth' and among the fruits and vegetables is a representation of the crop of maize, then unknown here, being a New World crop. Does it mean they made their voyage and came back? No-one knows for absolutely certain, although some circumstancial evidence leans in their favour; I'd like to think they did. Next to the chapel is a fine old house which used to be an inn, which saw visits from Robert Burns, Walter Scott, Boswell and Doctor Johnson and Dorothy and William Wordsworth. However, lest we get carried away with mythology, history and nostalgia, I loved this advert one of the local farmers had placed, cashing on on the Dan Brown associations while also pretty much showing what he thinks of it all:
Beautiful photos, but it makes my blood boil that it's nearly impossible for a casual visitor to Rosslyn to get accurate historical information there. Some of the info aimed at tourists is a crying shame.
ReplyDeleteRosslyn Chapel is a 15th century collegiate church, the sort of thing noble families built to go with a team of preists to say as many masses as possible for their souls to get them out of purgatory quick. The richer you were the more bling you could afford with beautiful carvings - much like a high-prestige illuminated mediaeval manuscript. There once were a lot of highly-decorated collegiate churches in Scotland - but it's the only surviving one with a high level of decoration intact which is why it attracts all the legends.
The North American voyage stuff is based on the 16th century Zeno account and map hoax and a later author then interpreted bog-standard medieval carvings to suit.
It's also nothing to do with the Knights Templar, but from the misleading interpretation boards there and the stuff some of the guides come out with, you'd never know that.
The Scottish Knights Templar fought entirely on the English side in the wars of independence. Their master and deputy master were killed pursuing Wallace's men at Falkirk. They rode into a bog and the fleeing Scottish spearmen turned on them. None of them or any other templars fought for Bruce at Bannockburn. What a juicy and priceless piece of propaganda that would have handed to the English chroniclers to keep Bruce excommunicated and Scotland powerless at the Vatican! In fact, the Scottish church in Bruce's reign acted promptly against them back in 1308 (IIRC)
Anyway sorry for pointing that out! Loved the St Giles photos too.
I think it depends what history books you read - I've read some which state Templar involvement with the Bruce and Bannockburn as if it was solid fact, some which deny it utterly - again as if solid fact based on clear evidence - and some, which more reasonably point out the tradition that they did fight was quite possible but there are no documents to back it up, only an oral tradition. The Scottish church was not thought by many to be overly serious about persecuting the Templars after the Pope and the French King launched their campaign against them, largely because King Robert had been excommunicated for several years before this, which weakened Papal authority over Scotland. Certain bishops granted sanctuary to fleeing Templars and it seems likely the Bruce, desperately seeking allies while excommunicated, would have been open to them as well, especially if some of his bishops were leaning towards them. As with much history from this period it is all sketchy and very much open to interpretation since there simply isn't enough surviving documentation to prove it.
ReplyDeleteThe American voyage does have slightly more going for it that one account and a map of dubious origins, but it is all pretty circumstancial - a small swivel gun canon from the period which would match the type on the supposed ships used, found under water in North America, oral tradition in both the Orkneys and among some native Indian tribes, but of course this falls far short of the level of detail required to prove it as historical fact. I guess, like the famed Viking 'Vinland' voyages and the Chinese visits to the Pacific Coast of America we will never be able to prove it properly. Certainly it wasn't out of their abilities to make such voyages, but that isn't proof. I'd like to think they did though since all of those above seemed like better explorers than Columbus :-)
For Roslyn Chapel though the association with Templars comes around more because of the association with the Sinclair family and their links to the order. It would be nice to see a decent history book on the chapel (and the Castle and nearby old inn as well) which actually covered it properly, as opposed to pushing some Masonic-Templar type agenda.
Hi, sorry to take so long to get back to you! Real life has its ways of intervening.
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid I have to disagree with you. I cant think of a single Scots medievalist who would buy Templar involvement in Bruce's Scotland (and I know most of the folk who work on the wars of independence and have read their books). The historical arguments against it are pretty solid, and we know who cooked up the modern Templars at Bannockburn theory (there was no 'oral tradition' supporting that before certain modern people invented it!).
Scots diplomacy in the wars of independence was firmly tied to good relations with France and the papal court (which was effectively in France's power). The Scots' diplomatic aims were to have English claims of overlordship rejected by the Pope and then to have Robert Bruce recognised by the papacy as King in place of John Balliol. At the core of this diplomacy lay Scotland's alliance with France and with Philip IV, the very king who decided to destroy the templars. All this has been established from academic work on primary sources.
Scotland's foreign policy under Bruce was firmly tied to alliance with the very people who acted against the Templars. At home, the evidence shows exactly what you would expect from that, Bruce's bishops act quickly to dissolve the templars and give their lands to the Knights Hospitallers. The combined primary source evidence points without contradiction to Bruce's Scotland being firmly anti-templar and unsafe for Templars by 1309.
Apart from a few masonic origin myths, nobody tries to claim Templar persistence in Scotland until Baigent and Leigh of 'Holy Blood and Holy Grail' infamy come up with a new book 'The Temple and the Lodge'. By deliberate misinterpretation of West Highland gravestones they create a fictional 'templar fleet' which comes to Scotland under Bruce. They also write an entire chapter of rubbish about Rosslyn Chapel. There are various cash-in books on the back of this, one is by Andrew Sinclair who builds on Baigent and Leigh's nonsense and that's the one that comes up with the Templars at Bannockburn myth. Neither of these books has any academic credibility because neither of them can produce contemporary sources which in fact say what they claim they say and back them up, while there is good evidence pointing the other way.
I couldn't agree with you more about the need for a proper book on Rosslyn Chapel without a Templar agenda. One of the huge problems is that people with the relevant academic knowledge simply wont write on the topic and debunk the myths because to them it's the equivalent of asking a biologist to take Creationists seriously. The result is that the public end up shortchanged. The other problem is that the real historical work which contradicts these pseudohistory books is often technical stuff about subjects like the nuts and bolts of papal diplomacy which doesn't make for unputdownable reading material.
(By the way the Sinclair family dont have any links to the Templars either. They do have real and fascinating links to the very early days of Scottish freemasonry in the 17th century, so it's a pity that they're so unscrupulous about gilding the lily)
Anyway sorry for going on at length, I think I'm going to see if I can discover a carving of the Flying Sphagetti Monster at Rosslyn. I think it's time it was linked with the one true faith of Pastafarianism! :-)