Travel Stop: Scotland Day 4

Edinburgh was a cesspool back in the day. That's the first thing I learned from our new driver James. We set off on our last day to explore the borders and Hadrian's Wall. It was a lovely, sunny, Scottish morning around 9 am and as we exited the city, James told us the story of how Edinburgh earned it's nickname, 'Old Reeky.' Now in English we understand the word 'reek' as to mean something that smells. Technically, it means smokey but they use it as to smell as well. Edinburgh is essentially built on the giant, steep hill and before the days of indoor plumbing, when everyone would just throw their waste out the window, it would all run down this hill and into a giant pool at the bottom.

So naturally over time, all that waste would just sit there and it'd get warm and just sit and sit and sit. Apparently you could smell Edinburgh before you got to it. I believe someone had recorded (again this was way back in the day) that they knew when they were within 5mi of Edinburgh. Basically, they said, <sniff sniff>, 'ah, we must be getting close.' Now, James went on about this for a good 15-20min. And while I love a good poo story, I will spare you more details.

Our first stop, was Rosslyn Chapel, made ultra famous by Dan Brown's, The Da Vinci Code. 

Naturally, Kerri found a cat.

Rosslyn Chapel was a private chapel built and still owned by the Sinclair family, originally of Normandy a long long time ago. The Sinclairs were cousins to William the Conqueror and knights during the Battle of Hastings 1066AD. There was this woman, St Margaret, who was said to possess a piece of the cross that Jesus was crucified on. The Sinclairs served as cupbearers to St Margaret, so protectors in a way. St Margaret was to go to Scotland to marry the Scottish King and that's how the Sinclair family became connected to the Scottish royalty and to religious artifacts. They were gifted lands and on the lands built a castle, which is in ruins now, and a chapel.

The think perhaps Sir William built the chapel as a possible ticket into heaven. The chapel itself is really only a part of what eventually could have been a small cathedral. The part that is standing today took 40years to build, and Sir William died 38 years into the building of it. Around 1455.

Eventually the Catholicism was out and the Protestants were in. In 1592 they ordered the destruction of the altars. The Sinclairs took everything from the altars and just closed up the chapel. It was over 200 years before the chapel was opened again. Inside the chapel there are quite a few statues missing. No one is sure if they were taken during the Reformation, or buried below in the vaults. Sir Walter Scott referenced this chapel n one of his poems. 

We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the chapel, which didn't stop some people....I was sitting in the back while this man was trying to give his talk and he had said no photos, and be quiet. Well, in the back people were snapping away and chatting away. It was so distracting. I was like a disgruntled museum curator, giving them the finger. Not "the finger" mind you, but the "shhhh! Be quiet!" finger and the "no photos allowed!" finger.

Some of the things believed to be buried in the vaults underneath now or at one time: dead sea scrolls, Knights Templar treasure, jewels of Scotland, Ark of the Covenant, true cross from the 11th C, head of John the Baptist, remains of Mary Magdalene, and most recently, only because of Dan Brown, the holy grail.

Why not just go into the vault and find out? Good question. Well apparently, they can't find the vault door. And the Sinclair family refuses to have even have a little lighted camera go in a small hole to look around. Fair enough. It's a private chapel. They have family remains down there, and who knows if opening the vault could cause massive structural damage. So it seems, the mystery will continue forever. 

There are many other mysteries, the hollow buttresses that seem to have something inside, the patterns on the blocks in Rosslyn that create a song (cymatics). The reason they believe the true cross of Jesus is there, is because they think during Henry VIII's raids on Scotland, they took it there for safe keeping. One reason they believe this is because Mary Queen of Scots is said to have visited the chapel and wrote a letter the the Sinclairs later, thanking them for letting her see "the secrets of the chapel." 

We also learned a lot about the legend of the Knights Templar and their ties to royalty, such as Robert the Bruce. Robert the Bruce had offered them sanctuary when no one else would. In my last post I mentioned the Battle of Bannockburn and Robert the Bruce's win. Though Robert the Bruce and his men were outnumbered and were severely lacking in equipment, it turns out that suddenly they had things like helmets, good swords, etc. And it was reported that on the second day of battle, when things weren't looking good for Robert the Bruce, a group of Knights wearing white robes suddenly rode into battle and pushed back the British. That's where the believed connection came in. The history of the Knights Templar themselves is quite interesting, but perhaps that'll be for another time.

Remains of the Sinclair's castle

After our tour of Rosslyn chapel, we moved on and stopped in a small, but quaint city, called Melrose. It is here that Robert the Bruce's heart was believed to have been buried. He had originally wanted it buried in the holy land, but when his men tried to take it there, they came across a group of Muslims in Spain, fought, and lost. The Muslims noticed these Knights were protecting this box and fought hard for it. So later when another group of crusaders came by, the Muslims gave them the box with the heart. Naturally, the crusaders coming back from the Holy Land did not want to turn around and go back, so the decided to have it buried at Melrose.

Melrose Abbey

After Melrose and some delicious macaroni and cheese, we hoped back on our wee red bus and continued down to the borders. "See that dark spot? That's England. Stay away from there."

He was playing Rockin Robin on the bagpipes...

'Ello Guvna!'

Looking back at Scotland

Now it is apparently near Melrose, from earlier, that the realm of the Faeries exists, in the Hollow Hills. As the story goes, on Samhain (basically our Halloween) the portals between the worlds opens up. Now Thomas of Eckrode was wandering the hills and came across a tall, beautiful woman dressed in all green. They got to chatting and she offered him her hand. He took it and she led him over the hill and into the realm of the Faeries. It's well known that if you are in Faerie, don't eat or drink anything, or else you will fall under their time. Thomas, however, did not know this, and what he thought was a few nights, turned out to be 7 years. When he returned to the human world, he had the gift of prophecy. But every gift has a catch. He could also never tell a lie.


This earned him the nickname, true Thomas. One day, as an old man, he opened the curtains to see a white stag outside. The white stag was a message from the faeries that his time here in the human world was up. So he went back up over the hills never to be seen again. Sometimes, when people go hiking up there, it'S been reported that they come across a strange old man. Is it Thomas?

This is a road built over an old Roman road. In Roman days this route was a huge thoroughfare.

We made it safely across the border into England. It was here we learned a little history of the tartans. Originally, clans didn't really do the tartan thing. Not as we know it today. Now naturally, most of the clans would get there clothes, or wool, what have you, from the same person, so there was some similarities and you might see a group of men from the same clan wearing the same colors, but it was never, well red and black like this is the MacDonalds. Instead, they had a clan badge. It was really Sir Walter Scott who started the whole this tartan represents this clan, and so on.

In the 1800s, the King came to Scotland for the first time in 150 years. The Scottish wanted to create a huge ceremony to welcome him, kind of like the Olympic opening ceremonies.  Sir Walter Scott was in charge of arranging it. The idea was to show the King that the rebellions were over and Scotland was loyal to him. Walter Scott took the idea of the tartans and made the colors brighter so they would create a visual spectacle. Naturally, if a tartan was as bright as you see them today (yellows, reds, etc) the enemy would see you from miles away.  He also thought it would be great if the King would wear a kilt. The King wore a kilt, but supposedly had unsightly legs or something, so Sir Walter Scott gave him some lovely bright pink tights to wear. That didn't go over too well, but oh well. 

THE ROBIN HOOD TREE

We arrived at Hadrian's Wall and took a short drive by the ROBIN HOOD tree, or Sycamore gap, before getting out and hiking along the wall to get to it. I saw hiking, because those were some steep climbs. We also learned that before battle, many times each member of the clan, who was fighting, would take a rock and build a pile. When the fight was over and they were able to walk off the battle field, they would go back the way they came until the pile. Then they would take a rock and throw it away. This way, they could essentially see how well the battle went. Small pile, it went well. Big pile, not so well. 

Hadrian's Wall

It used to be a much bigger wall, but over time it's eroded and well, if you look at the farms around, they also have stone walls...probably take from this wall.

It is believed that the Roman settlements never really went north of the wall, however, its been discovered that there are in fact Roman ruins at least 40mi north of the wall, so it's possible they did settle farther north, but they are just looking into this theory now.

I can picture Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman there now...

After our hike along Hadrian's Wall, we drove back to the safety of Scotland and had a "comfort break" in Jedburgh. There is a lovely old abbey there, and I'm sorry to say I don't know much about its history.

Jedburgh Abbey

 The Mary Queen of Scots house was also in Jedburgh, though she never really stayed there. In the 1500s it belonged to a wealthy family of merchants, the Kerr family. Basically,  she stayed at this house to see her man, the man that was considered to be her one true love, Lord Bothwell. Now a fun story about the Kerr family. They would always build their staircases going in the opposite direction of what we normally see.  If you're going up a staircase, normally your right side would be on the narrow, middle part. It turns out though that pretty much everyone in the Kerr family was left-handed. (go lefties!) and therefore their staircases went the opposite direction. What does that matter you ask? 

I never knew this, but the way spiral staircases were built, was actually for a military advantage. That is, if you are right-handed, and going up the staircase fighting, you wouldn't have a lot of room to maneuver your right hand with that side of the staircase being super narrow. If you were defending from the top down, your right hand and sword would be on the wide part, thus giving you more room to maneuver. In some dialects corrie-dukit (I may have spelled that wrong) means left handed. Corrie, sounding like Kerr (the left-handed family.)  We know the expression, 'put up your dukes' or 'to duke it out'. Dukes means hands in Scottish dialect, so perhaps that's where the expressions comes from!

The last thing I learned before we rolled back into Edinburgh was that the last person to be imprisoned for witchcraft in Scotland was in 1944. It was a woman named Helen Duncan, from Callander (in my last post I have a picture from there.) She was said to have the gift of sight. One day in 1941 a ship, the HMS Barham, went down. A local lad had died on that ship and he appeared to Helen that night and explained how he had died and how the ship had gone down. Helen, being neighborly, told his family what he had said. She passed his message along. Now because no one had heard of this ship going down, because the government had wanted it that way, because they were being shady like governments usually are, they assumed that Helen was spying. Instead of charging her for espionage, they tried her for false prophecy, which was an old witchcraft law. But, she died mysteriously in captivity.  

And that concludes my trip to Scotland. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did! And no. I was never able to get money.