Ada was here (well, she could have been), part II

When Ada de Warenne, the Queen Mother of Scotland, went about her feudal lady business in the 12th century she must have travelled the Lowlands to some extent despite having her household staff and vassals to do her bidding. But where did she go and what did she see there? If Bill and Ted’s excellent time-travelling phone booth went and picked Ada up and brought her to modern day, would she recognise the landscape where she once trod, or any of the buildings still standing today? Hmm. Let’s give it a go.

This is the head of a double lancet window that crashed onto the ground when an entire corner of the tower house that was built on top of a 12th-century hall house at Aberdour Castle in Fife came rumbling down in the 19th century. It may be possible, just possible, that Ada once looked through this window. I’d like to think she did.

If Ada did look through here, her view would have been a bit better than ground and gravel.

After Ada was widowed and her son Malcom IV became king, she was at times present at his court but is thought to have resided mostly in her core lands in Haddington. To get from Haddington to her castle here in Crail, she would have had to cross the Firth of Forth. A century before Ada’s time Queen Margaret, who later became St Margaret of Scotland, had established a ferry to aid pilgrims who travelled from the south across the Forth towards Dunfermline and St Andrews (and presumably returned as well). But perhaps Ada, a posh woman that she was, crossed in more style?

Nonetheless, Aberdour, only a few miles from where the ferry would have come ashore, was in the hands of the de Mortimers. Alan de Mortimer gained Aberdour through marriage when Ada was a toddler. But certainly by the time Malcom IV had passed and Ada’s second son William the Lion sat on the throne, Ada knew the de Mortimer family: Alan’s son William de Mortimer served as a knight for William the Lion (and those two did get into a bit of a pickle with the English), and William de Mortimer also witnessed at least one of Ada’s charters. Besides, Lowland nobility with Norman roots was hardly a bottomless pool of folk at the time. So let us amuse ourselves by assuming Ada visited Aberdour on her way to Crail.

Would she have looked through that window then? Lacking historical record, rock alone doesn’t tell exactly when it was chiselled. Therefore, some sources suggest the first stone building in Aberdour (with that window in the living quarters of the first floor) was built by Alan de Mortimer whilst others say it was built by William or even by Alan’s grandson (might have been a Walter but best not to quote me on that one) well after Ada’s death. But according to Historic Scotland the stone hall house could have existed during Ada’s lifetime, so that’s good enough for now.

At the very least there was St Fillan’s Church on de Mortimer land right around the corner from what ever buildings there were in Aberdour. The church was built probably at the time Ada first came to Scotland as a married woman, and the Romanesque chancel is still much like Ada would have seen it had she ever stopped by.

I would like to think that she did, and looked through this arch.

Although Ada’s support of a variety of monastic houses was a social obligation, not necessarily a certain sign of piety, she would have done the proper thing and visited a local church, if for no other reason than curiosity for the fame of St Fillan’s Well (now disappeared) that was said to have eye-healing water. Don’t you think? Yes. So let’s go with that, shall we?

Good. Now that we have shed the last of the caution any half-decent historian should exercise, let’s take Ada by the arm and (by greatly alarming her with such over-familiarity) walk her to a good spot near St Fillan’s so that she can look over the Firth of Forth. (Oh, yes, she’s alarmed now but a ride in a time-travelling phone booth did not perturb Ada in the slightest…) Right off-shore from Aberdour is Inchcolm. It may have been Alan de Mortimer who gave the island to the Augustinian canons when Ada’s father-in-law David I invited them to settle there. The Augustinians started building their priory (later abbey) in Ada’s time, and the early stone-work resembles that in St Fillan’s Church and Aberdour Castle. No charter survives to show that Ada endowed Inchcolm but perhaps as a Lady of Some Standing she visited the holy island all the same, and perhaps she would still recognise the now roofless nave of the original priory church that was dwarfed by the growth of the monastery in later centuries.

The orginal, 12th-century church of Incholm (the roofless bit in the middle) was built of pretty sturdy-looking stones.

Poor Ada, how bewildered she must be by all this! It is almost comparable to how intrigued I am. But I reckon I’d best leave the lass be for a while. Crossing 850 years into the future takes its toll on Queen Mothers.

(Total count of Williams: 2)

Chimes in the grass

Sometimes I try to imagine what things would be like if they were music. If a cloudless night sky with countless of stars were music, would there be any human voices in it? If so, would they be male voices or female voices? What about quietly falling snow right at the time of a winter sunset? I think it would have a silvery, bell-like quality to it, and a very limited number of instruments. For a long time I was convinced that sunrise would always have to be in a major key but now I think I probably haven’t considered all aspects of sunrises to have a definite opinion.

For these last two weekends the Cambo Gardens a short bicycle ride away have been positively flooding with flowers and colour, and I have by no means failed to enjoy them. It’s just that I have been exceptionally captivated by grass.

If grasses were music, what would they sound like? Some species are trailing, grey, dry and wispy, and should perhaps have the pleasantly raspy sound of a traditional horse-hair jouhikko. But they wouldn’t be folksy dance music. No, I reckon wispy grass music is something more meditative although still in a major key.

A meditative jouhikko tune in a major key. Possibly.

Now that I think of it, other grasses would most likely be slow, simple kantele tunes in a minor key, particularly if it were raining. No catchy melodies, mind, and not too many rich chords. Grass music for the kantele should be almost half-way between music and sound effects: just notes like little drops dangling in the air.

Drops of kantele notes dangling in the air. You have to imagine the rainy weather.

And then there was this wild grass on the woodland floor, twirling from the sunny spot to the shadow and back like a ballet dancer en pointe with outstretched arms:

The hour of chimes in the grass

Now, as a rule I’m not wild about wind chimes. I find their piercing clanks to be slightly to moderately irritating, and their overall effect is perhaps close to having someone repeat in my ear: “You must find me soothing, you must find me soothing!” Nevertheless, I tried a variety of wind chime search terms when trawling the interwebs for the sound of this grass. If this grass were music, I think it would barely have a melody at all. It would have the bright but warm ting of tiny brass chimes in a very gentle wind, all tuned to play intervals from a major key. It would be the kind of a sound that always seems to come from a distance even when you’re standing right next to the source.

I haven’t found it yet but I will recognise the grass chime when I hear it. In the meantime, let us fix our gazes at bigger things. If the Universe were music..?

Park elf

The downside of having science as my day job is that I can never really see the results of my labour. I can’t point at a thing and say “I made that”. Furthermore, what with being at the forefront of human knowledge and all that, what I do does not directly help anyone in an immediate or measurable way: at the end of my working day I haven’t improved anyone’s life, and no-one’s there to say “Thanks, I feel so much better now”.

That’s why I’ve become a park elf.

In the village of Crail, behind the kirk and the cemetery, lies Denburn Wood; a wee park that is pretty much what it says on the tin: it’s a wood with a den with a burn at the bottom. When I first moved here from the land of endless forests I was quite amused by Denburn Wood being called a wood. To me it just seemed like a dozen trees on two sides of a stream. (To be fair, the wood was probably bigger at the time it got its name but still. I confess I sniggered.)

A dozen trees does not a woodland make… unless one stops being such a snob and enjoys them all the same.

But Denburn has since become one of the sling hooks that anchor me to Scotland. Denburn is where I go in the winter with my pockets full of sunflower kernels for the blue tits and great tits. It is where I take part in the Big Garden Birdwatch. Denburn is also where I go to watch the seasons change. For a such a small park it offers a surprisingly rich succession of wild flowers starting with snowdrops and winter aconites as early as the last days of January. Besides, Denburn is where I first learned to know local folk by joining a team of volunteers who come together every month for a couple of hours to rake the paths, pick the litter, trim the shrubs, weed the flower beds and to have an outdoorsy cup of tea.

Denburn Wood is where I stop striding on for long enough to notice the robins lurking in the shadows.

As it turns out, hacking through overgrown bushes, pulling out unruly ivy and snipping away dry branches is precisely the kind of destructive gardening that is a perfect antidote to my job: it is physical and fun, and it comes with an immediate and tangible reward in the form of a formidable compost pile. I can point at it and say “I did that.” And curiously, all the hoeing and sawing has made me feel like a steward of sorts. A woodland park elf. I can no longer walk through the place without scooping up an offending Irn-bru can whenever I spot one tossed into the rockery. I feel pleased when I see little girls sitting in the giant willow tree chattering away and enjoying themselves. I also feel like I’m helping a little.

A few weeks ago on my way to work I sat on the bus next to an elderly couple. When passing Denburn he observed “They’ve got that place looking nice.” She replied: “There’s a group of volunteers looking after it.”