Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
As we were driving north today from the Lake District, we passed through the town of Troutbeck, and I was reminded how much of my knowledge of the UK derives from songs and poetry. In this case the song was:
D’ye ken John Peel, wi’ his coat so gray?
He lived at Troutbeck once on a day
But now he’s gone, gone far far away,
Wi’ his hounds and his horn in the morning.
It was in a book of folk songs we had as a kid, along with a picture of John Peel like this one:
As I was living on a cattle ranch in the American West, this represented another planet to me, a world where men rode saddles without saddle horns, and used their horses to chase foxes instead of cattle … so I can’t tell you what a pleasure it was to chance to go through Troutbeck on our way to Scotland. What towns in Scotland do I know from songs?
The only town I can think of is from the Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens, a ballad about the ocean, which begins:
The king sits in Dumfermline town.
Drinking the blude-red wine: O
‘O whare will I get a skeely skipper,
To sail this new ship of mine?’
O up and spake an eldern knight,
Sat at the king’s right knee:
‘Sir Patrick Spens is the best sailor
That ever saild the sea.’
We might get to Dumfermline town, it’s a bit north of Edinburgh. As a sailor, the song impressed me because whoever wrote it knew a lot about ships. In particular, they describe something only a sailor would recognize, a procedure called “fothering”. Fothering is used to plug a hole below the waterline of a ship, and I’m glad I never had to do it.
To fother a hole below the waterline, you tie ropes to the corners of a piece of canvas, and you pull the canvas underneath the ship to where the hole is. The pressure of the water pulls the canvas into the hole, and the ropes from the four corners keep the canvas from being sucked inside. Here’s the description from the ballad.
He hadna gane a step, a step,
A step but barely ane,
When a bout [bolt] flew out of our goodly ship,
And the salt sea it came in.
‘Gae fetch a web o the silken claith [cloth],
Another o the twine,
And wap them into our ship’s side,
And letna the sea come in.’
They fetched a web o the silken claith,
Another o the twine,
And they wapped them roun that gude ship’s side,
But still the sea came in.
O laith [loathe], laith were our gude Scots lords
To weet their cork-heeld shoon [shoes];
But lang or a’ the play was playd,
They wat [wet] their hats aboon [also].
Any mony was the feather-bed
That flattered on the faem [foam],
And mony was the gude lord’s son
That never mair cam hame [home].
But I digress … we rolled north through the pastoral glacier-smoothed countryside to Vindolanda, the Roman fort along Hadrian’s wall, that dates from around the first century AD. It was the perfect day for it, overcast and rainy … I can see why the soldiers might not have cared for the duty along the northern frontier of the Empire. The fort is quite impressive, covering a large area.
It’s easily distinguished from the ancient local stonework because that is mostly laid without cement, that amazing Roman invention, while the walls of the fort and the buildings were all mortared into place.
There is a most engrossing museum at Vindolanda of all of the things that they’ve found excavating the fort. For whatever reasons, much of the leather goods have survived, and are in the museum. And wandering around the museum, the thing that struck me the most is how little our basic human actions have changed in 2,000 years. For example, look at the lovely workmanship on this pair of leather shoes:
With their graceful lines, they’d be high fashion on the streets of Rome today. What I learned was that humans, then and now, have been driven to design things, not just for utility, but also for the sheer style and beauty. Here’s the sole of another pair of shoes:
The Roman cobbler 2,000 years ago could have just put the nails in a random pattern, or in squares, or whatever. But noooo … he put them in a lovely, graceful pattern, so whoever walked with those shoes left lovely footprints.
Here’s an axe, from the same time. Check out the lovely lines. It could have been just an equally functional but ugly chunk of iron, but whoever made it built a thing of beauty:
From the “nothing new under the sun” department, here’s a Roman safety-pin brooch …
… and a brass necklace with an exquisitely wrought chain:
At one time I earned my living making jewelry, and although I’m a decent silversmith, I can assure you that the making of such a chain by hand requires someone with much, much greater skill than mine … and that although you can buy a chain made along the exact same lines today, with equally fine chainwork, it will have been made by machine.
One of the stranger finds was a ladies wig, which the label said was made out of “hair moss”, whatever that might be:
Note the combs. The design of that double-sided comb has remained unchanged until this very day.
The other thing that was amazing were the collection of letters (written on wood rather than paper) that have been excavated. The concerns of the soldiers back then are just the same as the people of today—friends, and debts, and birthdays. They’re all online here, and are fascinating in their ordinariness. Here’s a sample:
… I have sent (?) you … pairs of socks from Sattua, two pairs of sandals and two pairs of underpants, two pairs of sandals …”
My main conclusion from the museum was that while we have come a long way in the last two millennia, the things that impel us and drive us, the things that we value and create for our own use, the things that we care about, haven’t changed much at all—lovely objects, and warm socks …
After that we drove out to see Hadrians wall. The Romans did like straight lines … mostly though, I was impressed by the scope of their imagination. I mean, if I’d been in charge of the northern defenses, I don’t think that my first thought would have been “Hey, how about we build a giant stone wall that cuts the whole country in half, yeah, that’s the ticket … and oh, yeah, we’re gonna complete it in six years. OK, andiamo, boys, we don’t have much time … “
In any case, here’s a section of Hadrians wall …
I can understand why they abandoned it after only a few decades … heck, it’s only about a metre tall, what good would that do against even the shortest of Scottish barbarians? …
We’re up in Glasgow now, tomorrow we’re turning east, off to see the famous Falkirk Wheel. At least it’s famous to me, one of the few places in Scotland I knew much about before coming here.
My best to all, thanks for all of the support,
w.
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wmar said:
“The reason to build the wall initially was two-fold, first, Rome realized that beyond that line, they were not able to maintain any control and would likely be defeated which would have a ripple through the entire empire.”
Very far from the reality, I think. There were, as another commenter here says, outpost forts beyond the wall and there were treaty relations with powerful tribes near to the wall. It was standard Roman practice to develop client relationships with border states and it was cheaper to give them what we’d now call ‘foreign aid’ rather than take on the huge expense of full military occupation and administration. There was little point anyway in extending full control beyond the wall’s position, as little useful taxation could be squeezed from the underdeveloped northern zones, imperial control of which would be far too expensive to maintain over any long period. There may have been a bitter and difficult war in what’s now Scotland not long before the wall was built and it’s still debatable as to whether the VIIIIth legion was actually wiped out in the north, along with its auxiliaries, as a result of that warfare. Modern academic opinion is veering towards that belief again, for a variety of reasons.
“Next, the troops at the edges of the empire had become undisciplined, had largely melded into the local population, and were no longer functioning as legions, and they had very little to do as far as soldiering was concerned. Hadrian saw this and decided that a vast undertaking would be a galvanizing effort from which the soldiers and legions could be placed back into the order Rome expected and had sent out to this remote outpost. The plan worked and order was restored.”
It’s not at this period that the legions, who built the wall, and the auxiliary forces that actually manned it when built became ‘melded’ with the population or became ineffective. The legions, throughout the empire, were still very serious forces to be reckoned with and the auxiliaries were drawn from all over the empire, even if they intermarried with the locals if they stayed in one place for long enough. Please consider the fact that the previous emperor, Trajan, had recently successfully carried out major invasion operations in Dacia (modern Romania) not that long before Hadrian’s accession: these operations involved some ten or more legions (arguably even more), supported by equally vast numbers of auxiliary troops, never mind the mind-boggling logistics needed for such a scheme.
The Roman army had emphatically not deteriorated in the way you suggest at this time. That happened in the later empire, a long time later. The wall is as much a customs barrier and a security line as a military structure and certainly not to be seen as an admission of failure. The forts on the wall are not primarily defences built to withstand siege or hostile attack but tactical bases from which offensive operations could be carried out against any threat from the north. The wall would have been built to increase Hadrian’s prestige as the defender of the empire and a great caretaker of the empire’s infrastructure, not to reflect any diminishing of the glory of Rome.
Willis – I hope you are heading north to the Highlands after visiting the Falkirk Wheel. I suggest north via the A822 and Sma Glen to Aberfeldy, a visit to the Stone Circle at Croftmoraig a few miles west, the reconstructed Iron Age Crannog on Loch Tay at Kenmore, and then over to Kinloch Rannoch via Braes of Foss, passing Schiehallion, perhaps the most important mountain in the world for physicists. (Maskelyne used it to calculate the the mass of the Earth and the Gravitational Constant in the 18th century). The views from the north shore of Loch Rannoch are the best. Ping me and I can show you around the stone circle etc.
@ur momisugly Peter Crawford.
I find that song absolutely shocking and disgusting. The verse should be
“Four and twenty virgins
Came down from Invermuir
And when the ball was over
There were four and twenty fewer.”
(Pedants in Britain have managed to nag the supermarkets into signs that say, correctly, “12 items of fewer”. And more strength to them.)
milodonharlani: to throw in a couple data points, while the toponymic mix in the south part of the island is fairly complex (for example the name of Thetford immediately leads you to such interesting topics as the names of Germany, the Dutch national anthem, Wales, Walachei and walnuts — among a hundred other things), the names of places in Scotland are predominantly Gaelic, except for the lowland areas of Aberdeenshire, Fife, and some in the Borders (where there is a mix that is even more difficult to understand than that in the south). In the Highlands, all names I can recall are consistently Gaelic. For example, there is Loch Earn with River Earn flowing out of it. That’s Éire staring you in the face. And that is a very old name.
When the Romans built the wall, I don’t think they were worried about a few people getting across it. If a large, organized army wanted to cross it that was another story. The wall was a definite impediment to invasion, and would give the Romans enough time to concentrate their forces in defense. More importantly, the wall allowed the Romans to control commercial activity between Scotland and England. You could not get through the gates without paying a toll, or being taxed on your merchandise.
Well we used to sing:-
“But now he is gone, far far away,”
Well we like being non conformists.
Funny all that singing though Willis.
At one time, I could sing the National Anthems of at least 25 different countries; correct words, and tunes. But that was before I was ten. Haven’t sung a word since. Long boring story.
Roha,
Maybe the ungrammatical version I learned was for Sassenachs & Yankees, Bowdlerized & expurgated. But Inverness rhymes with less, so what are you going to do?
Gene,
Re Gaelic & Brythonic place names in the Highlands, true, except of course for Fort William, named either for William III or Stinking Billy, the Duke of Cumberland, aka the Butcher of Culloden. Also some Celtic names in the Lowlands, such as Brythonic Glasgow.
milodonharlani: But, if you pay attention to road signs, Fort William is just a “translation” of An Gearasdan, if I recall. I recognise that some of the original Gaelic names never made it to road signs, but where they did, the translations are sometimes quite funny. Like, for example, “Am Blàr Dubh” translated as “Muir of Ord”
Makes sense, right?
Letters.
If you had to stand on the wall in the Scottish winter, you’d be glad of thick socks and warm underpants as well. (Wearing socks with sandals is, of course, a total fashion fail, but if you had pointed this out to a legionary you would undoubtedly have received a reply in the sort of Latin they didn’t teach us at school.)
When you get back to civilization (England), pop into the British Museum and look at some of the letters written in cuneiform scripts centuries before the Romans had an empire. I recall one asking the local provincial governor if he could find a job for the writer’s nephew, and another (to a different governor) asking why the writer’s three previous letters have not been answered. Scrabbling for jobs and trying to get some action out of the bureaucrats. Civilization as we know it.
RoHa says: “Wearing socks with sandals is, of course, a total fashion fail, …”
And so be it. I’ve been wearing socks with sandals all my life, summer or winter. It makes people laugh, but I haven’t had a callus or a blister in a very long time, and when my socks get wet (say, from walking in wet snow), they dry up on my feet in fifteen minutes as soon as I reach a dry place. Compare that to soggy boots. Mobility beats fashion.
The aforementioned Bill Bryson (a very wise and knowledgeable man) describes fashion in his book titled “A short history of private life” as something that was designed to manifest the total lack of necessity for the bearer of fashionable items to do any work for subsistence, because wearing such items makes all work impossible. Such a disability, of course, projects an enviable social status. So it’s status vs. ability (or, in the case of footwear, mobility).
The Wall.
And the wall itself shows a very familiar feature. It has watchtowers at regular intervals; so regular that some of the towers are in valleys rather than on the peak of a nearby hill. Clearly some high-ranking mucky-muck ordered “milecastle every mile, turret every third of a mile between them”, and the order was carried out with rigid military discipline.
“It says a third of a mile. If we put it on the hill, there, it will spoil the whole symmetry of the thing. More than my job’s worth, that. We build it here, even if you can’t see a blasted thing from it.”
Again. life as we know it.
Damn!
“12 items or fewer’
@milodonharlani
Replace “Inverness” with “Invermuir”, of course. No sacrifice is too great for grammatical exactitude.
Thank you milodonharlani @2.26 for the great show, Britain AD. I will be catching the complete series. Very nice to learn about ones ancestors.
No sacrifice is too great for grammatical exactitude.
Not even my honour.
My post on the Wall should end “Again, life as we know it”.
I was just a bit too far to the right on the keyboard.
Your posts are always stimulating. What is it in us that makes us want to make beautiful things? Is it chance that it is only humankind that indulges in: religious ceremony, figurative art, deductive science and complex grammatic language? How do they relate to each other, and if we lost one would we lose the others? These are fascinating and relevant questions to which answers are now emerging? These are the big questions of the coming decades, this and consciousness studies are going to change us all. Every scientist will find these questions are relevant to their studies and understandings.
You have an open mind. Not everyone on this blog approves of it, but if there is one lesson to be learnt from the catastrophe of modern climate science, it is that closed minds become like blind alleys. They go no where.
Dave is right to warn you of the hazards posed by wandering Haggis in the Falkirk area…the unwary visitor must take extreme care to avoid them.
But the truly terrifying native Scots fauna is the Sporran. Once common in the Brig O’Turk area, they are now rarities. And I am told that the occasional close encounter with a low flying Sporran can be a truly memorable experience.
Legend has it that the best way to see one of these beasties is in the wee small hours when all is still and quiet and the pubs are just closing. They are said to be particularly attracted to the smell of whisky on the traveller’s breath………
For those unfamiliar with another legendary Scots creature, here is the Philosopher King of Scotland in typical flow.
BTW – he is from Glasgow (Govan IIRC) not Edinburgh as another correspondent suggested
You will enjoy the Falkirk Millennium Wheel – a fantastic piece of engineering.
http://ukiwi.blogspot.co.nz/2006/09/500-years-in-day-6-september-2006.html
Willis, if you are traveling along the east coast on the A1 towards Northumberland, a detour to Holy Island whereupon you will find Lindisfarne Priory (in ruins) and an intact Lindisfarne Castle on a large rock (currently). When the Castle was built, it was reportedly near sea level; so much for sea level rise. P.S.- Holy Island is a tidal island, so watch the tidal postings or you will get trapped for a few extra hours like me. However, it did give me some extra time to explore the village and the local pub in the local hotel. Info can be found at: http://www.visitnorthumberland.com/coast/holy-island
Safe travels.
Eat some deep fried haggis. It’s actually a somewhat difficult quest these days. It was much easier about 20 years ago when there were multiple establishments offering this and other deep fried items.
@James Baldwin at 48
Try Glasgow for deep [fried] Mars Bars. I suggest Irn-Bru (without Brasso) to compliment them.
[The mod admits being mystified about the advantages of deep-fried Mars Bars over deep-fired Mars bars… Mod]
[The mod admits no love ever found for Brasso on ANY polished hardware. Mod]
Deep bloody f r i e d Mars Bars.
I wish WUWT had an edit key so I could eliminate my embarrassing typos.
Definitely need the Irn-Bru to chase the grease.
DLBrown says:
September 11, 2013 at 8:08 pm
The monks’ mead is also quite nice, if one wants something unhopped.
Hi Willis,
I recommend Iona on the west coast although it is out-of-the -way – I have been close but have yet to get there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iona
Iona has been called A Beacon of Light Through the Dark Ages.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/scottishhistory/earlychurch/trails_earlychurch_iona2.shtml
Regarding Celtic Metalwork, I suggest a truly wonderful exhibit I saw in the British Museum many years ago:
Youngs, Susan, ed. (1989). ‘The Work of Angels’, Masterpieces of Celtic Metalwork, 6th–9th centuries AD. London: British Museum Press. ISBN 0-7141-0554-6.
North of Iona is Eilean Donan Castle – blown up by the perfidious English in 1719 and rebuilt 200 years later by a kinsman, with English money. 🙂
http://www.eileandonancastle.com/
We stayed at the MacRae-Gilstrap hunting lodge nearby, now a lovely B&B.
http://www.conchrahouse.com/
A bit further afield, I was impressed by Newgrange, north of Dublin.
Newgrange is considered to be the oldest standing structure on the planet. It is about 5000 years old and still has dramatic solar alignment during the winter solstice.
http://www.newgrange.com/
Newgrange is best known for the illumination of its passage and chamber by the Winter Solstice sun. Above the entrance to the passage of the mound there is an opening called a roof-box. On mornings around the winter solstice a beam of light penetrates the roof-box and travels up the 19 metre passage and into the chamber. As the sun rises higher, the beam widens so that the whole chamber is dramatically illuminated.
http://www.newgrange.com/winter-solstice-2011.htm
Enjoy, Allan
The wall was also to cut down on cattle rustling–it had a trench *behind* it to make it harder for Pict raiders (the Scots only came from Ireland after the Vikings had ravaged the Picts) to take cattle back with them north of the wall.
@Mod.
The really hard Glasgow alkeys drink a mix of Brasso and Irn-Bru. I can’t really recommend it.