Postcard 75: Tantallon and Bass Rock

I had a 'double surprise' package last Friday. It contained the latest editions from Indigo Dreams Publishing of their magazines, Reach Poetry (issue 144) and The Dawntreader (issue 012).

Each publication contains one of my poems. 'Isabella Tiger Moth greets the Woolly Bear Caterpillar' appears in 'Reach Poetry' (editors Ronnie Goodyer and Dawn Bauling), and 'Tantallon' features in 'The Dawntreader' (editors Dawn Bauling and Ronnie Goodyer).

I have been keen to spot furry caterpillars this last year. I don't think I have actually seen a Woolly Bear. I wonder if others of you always used to look out for what we called Furry Mollies? It seems these creatures are affectionately known as Hairy Mollies. You can see my furry caterpillar page here on my nature blog, Wild and Wonderful.

Tantallon,
looking out to Bass Rock

My Tantallon poem is about the view of the Gannets (short video-clip here) on Bass Rock from Tantallon Castle in Scotland. You can read about my visit to the castle in a previous post, here.

You can read about the history of the castle here. The staff of Historic Scotland do a great job in caring for the ruined castle site. It is sadly ironic in these days of decay to find the following quotation on the Undiscovered Scotland site. The words were written to Henry VIII by an English Ambassador in November 1543:

"Temptallon is of such strength as I nede not feare the malice of myne enymeys..."

We thoroughly enjoyed our visit to this exposed spot. I wonder if you have been following Neil Oliver's (recent) second BBC series on 'A History of Scotland'.

Don't forget to let me know what you call the caterpillars! And do take a look t Crafty Green Poet's North Berwick post ... serendipity?

Postcard 63: Festival of the Trees - The Rufus Stone

Welcome to the UK and to my Festival of the Trees post!

Summer evening in the New Forest:
mare and foal

The three-sided Rufus Stone

"Here stood the oak tree,

on which an arrow shot by Sir Walter Tyrrell at a stag,
glanced and struck King William the Second,
surnamed Rufus on the breast,
of which he instantly died,
on the second day of August, ANNO 1100."

The Rufus Stone, stands in a shady glade in the New Forest in Hampshire, UK, set back from the A31 road, near the village of Minstead.

The stone memorial has three faces (and is a bit like a trig point). It was erected in honour of King William II, aka as William 'Rufus', son of William the Conqueror by John, Lord Delaware (who had seen the oak tree) in 1745. The Conqueror's son died in the immediate vicinity on 2 August 1100 as a result of an arrow fired by Sir Walter Tyrrell. The killing was said to be an accident rather than a murder. On hearing the news, Henry, the youngest brother of the departed monarch, was hurriedly proclaimed king by the barons, in a bid to beat his eldest brother, Robert of Normandy, to the throne of England.

The bones of William 'Rufus' lie in a mortuary chest (press link, then scroll down) in Winchester Cathedral, along with those of other members of the Royal Family, such as King Cnut and his wife, Emma. You may be wondering how the body turned up in Winchester for burial. A man known as 'one Purkis' laid the royal corpse in a cart and took it to the cathedral city. The original Rufus Stone became defaced and hard to read: a replacement memorial was erected in 1841.

The face of the New Forest

The New Forest today is a wildlife paradise. The following species of vertebrates and invertebrates can be found: ponies, deer, cattle, badgers, foxes, donkeys, bats, mice, water voles, adders, grass snakes, owls, warblers, curlews, spiders and butterflies. The ponies, donkeys and cattle belong to commoners, who receive grazing rights for a small fee. I imagine that there is a similar arrangement for pigs and sheep.

Above: a Lapwing
Below: a forest pig enjoys a wallow

There are also many species of tree, e.g. oak, beech, holly, sycamore, alder, ash, silver birch, sweet chestnut, horse chestnut, crab apple, blackthorn, hawthorn, viburnham, whitebeam, pine, redwood and yew. Some of the trees are very special: you can read here about the Knightwood Oak, the Adam and Eve Oaks and the Eagle Oak. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the White-Tailed ('Sea') Eagles returned, albeit with a bit of help? We so enjoyed watching these magnificent birds on the Scottish islands of Skye and Raasay last summer. There was great excitement in 2009 when a new kind of fungus, a yellow form of Phellodon melaeucus, was discovered in the New Forest. The fact that this area has been managed in traditional 'commoning' ways, without the intensive use of artificial fertilizers and chemicals may contribute to the amazing biodiversity and number of rare species.

• What exactly is the New Forest?
  
• What of its history? and here.
  
• Find out about the ornamental and historic trees in the forest.
• The Forestry Commission - and the Rufus Stone
• About 'The Children of the New Forest' by Captain Marryat
• BBC Autumnwatch: the New Forest featured in a number of stories e.g. like these from 2008.
  

Postcard 33: Greetings from Roman Tyneside

Photos above:

• Signing in the Mithraeum, Great North Museum, Newcastle upon Tyne
• Explanatory board in English and Braille at Arbeia, the Roman fort at South Shields
• Reconstruction at Arbeia (owl fresco on walls of commanding officer's house)
• Reconstruction at Arbeia (portico in the commanding officer's house)
• Reconstruction at Arbeia (magpie fresco in the commanding officer's house)
• Arbeia, the site with reconstructed Roman arch and barracks

Those of you who read my Coastcard blog will know that I was back in the North East a couple of weeks ago for the opening of the Great North Museum. One of the attractions for a prospective student of Classical Studies heading for Newcastle University (me!) back in the late 1970s was the close proximity of the city to Hadrian's Wall.

In these days of accessibility, I have a vested interest in keeping an eye out for measures that have been taken to enhance the visit to the various sites and museums of visitors with a mobility or sensory impairment. The audiovisual display in the Great North Museum's Mithraeum made imaginative use, I felt, of an opportunity for sign language. The site of Arbeia had at least a couple of display boards featuring Braille. One board had two trowels attached to it for extra sensory (and visual) impact. The other had samples of the different building materials, which could be handled.

I wonder which of the photographs above appeal to you. The reconstructions of the barracks (somewhat Spartan, if this Greek term can be applied to Romans!) and the commanding officer's house were amazing. The reconstructed frescoes were quite beautiful and reminded me so much of some of the original wall paintings I had enjoyed during my year in Rome back in the 1980s.

Although Arbeia is not actually on Hadrian's Wall, it was an integral and important part of the frontier since it controlled the port at the mouth of the Tyne. The earliest known Roman buildings in Arbeia date from circa AD 125. A new fort was built at South Shields circa AD 158, when Hadrian's Wall was occupied for a second time.

You may be wondering what all this has to do with 'landscape and literature'! The answer is this: while I was in the on-site shop at Arbeia, I bought a fascinating children's book, written by Katharine Hoare and published by the British Museum: V-MAIL Letters from the Romans at Vindolanda Fort near Hadrian's Wall.

Well, you may be thinking, this still does not sound like literature, and perhaps - strictly speaking - you would be right. However, I felt it definitely merited a mention on this blog. Hundreds of small 'wooden postcards' were found on the site at Vindolanda, ranging in content from army memoranda to family letters. I have always been a great believer in the power of the postcard, and it seems to me that these wooden postcards exemplify all that is so special about this particular form of communication. The tablets give us a glimpse into the personal lives of Roman men and women (yes, women are represented) who found themselves posted to the wild and rugged northern limits of the Empire. The tablets even featured in the BBC2 TV programme, 'Our Top Ten Treasures'.

On the subject of these Roman women, Sulpicia Lepidina and Claudia Severa's wooden 'postcards' display the earliest extant examples of women's handwriting in ink in the Latin language. Claudia Severa invites Sulpicia Lepidina to her birthday bash in one of these missives, and in another she explains that there is a matter she wants to talk about with her friend, but it will have to wait until they meet in person. It all sounds very modern to me.

My affection for the Hadrian's Wall area goes back a long way, but this book certainly helped me to view the people in a fresh light. It is, in my opinion, a wonderful resource for children, and I hope that it will bring a smile to their faces and help to ignite a love of the past and its people.

Postcard 24: Neath Abbey, Wales, UK

Neath Abbey

We visited Neath Abbey (founded by the Cistercians c.1130) on a grey afternoon. It was a much larger site than I had remembered from a previous visit; and although it lies in a post-industrial and rather built-up area, it has a certain feeling of tranquillity about it, induced to some extent by the ambience of the canal that runs along the abbey grounds. Gerald of Wales, aka Giraldus Cambrensis, alludes to one of the Welsh poets, Meurig, aka Mauricius Morganensis, whose brother, Clement was Abbot of Neath. It seems likely that Meurig was the author of several books in Welsh, in addition to a volume of Latin epigrams. He appears to have been Treasurer of the Diocese of Llandaff in South Wales. It has been asserted that Meurig was responsible for a Welsh translation of St John's Gospel, but this has not been proved and may not, in fact, be true.

Neath has been described in very different ways over the centuries. You will find two opposing descriptions here, showing how its appearance was radically altered between the 16th and the 19th centuries. The abbey was dissolved in 1539, and copper and lead ores were being smelted on the site during the 18th century. These days, Neath is well known as the home of the singer, Katherine Jenkins.

• BBC: Early Welsh Poetry
• Tolkien and Medieval Welsh Poetry

Postscript: I find it curious that the words ambience and ambiance come under the same entry on the AskOxford site, and yet are given distinct meanings in my copy of The New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors.

Postcard 22: Wordsworth at Tintern

Tintern Abbey on the River Wye

Chris Tally Evans has been presenting a four-part BBC Radio programme on the River Wye, called 'My Mile of the River'. This may be what sowed our seed of thought to revisit Tintern Abbey. We left the traffic on the M4 behind us, and drove on through beautiful countryside until we dropped down into the village. Wordsworth (1770-1850) was much on our minds, and his lines were ringing in my ears, as we enjoyed the 'wild green landscape' he described in Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (13 July 1798). The poem was penned on the poet's second visit to the site. He was in a buoyant frame of mind and was accompanied on this occasion by his beloved sister, Dorothy. Wordsworth's previous visit had not been under such auspicious circumstances. He had travelled alone some five years earlier in the summer of 1793, after the French had declared war on England, shortly after the death of Louis XIV on the guillotine. Wordsworth's daughter, Caroline, had been born to Annette Vallon in 1792: Wordsworth had returned home, leaving his daughter and her mother in France.

A few facts about Tintern

• 1536: the beginning of the dissolution of the monasteries.
• 1566: the iron industry began in the adjoining Angidy valley.
• 1782: the publication of Observations on the River Wye by William Gilpin.
• 1792-1798: Turner visited Tintern on a number of occasions.
  
• 1793: Wordsworth's first visit.
• 1794: Turner painted the ruined abbey in watercolour and Edward Dayes painted Tintern Abbey from across the Wye.
• 1796: Wordsworth left London with his copy of Gilpin's guidebook.
• 1798: Wordsworth's second visit
• 1798: Wordsworth wrote his Tintern poem.
  
• 1804: William Havell painted Tintern Abbey and the River Wye.
• 1815: William Havell's aquatint of Tintern Abbey.

• Stella and Rose's Books in Tintern
• Literary Trail: Tintern to Hay
  

Postcard 14: MacDonald of the Isles

Top photo: 'King' of Inverlochy Castle
Below: Armadale, seat of the Clan MacDonald on Skye

I have been enjoying Neil Oliver's series of programmes, A History of Scotland, and particularly the episode about my distant ancestor, Alexander MacDonald, Lord of the Isles. The Open University has an excellent website for the programmes. During our holiday on Skye last summer, we visited the Clan Donald Centre, which incorporates the inspiring Museum of the Isles and a modern Library and Study Centre. We made some initial enquiries about a more recent ancestor, Ebenezer MacDonald, and hope to return some time to pursue this line of enquiry.

MacDonald resources

• Museum of the Isles (guide) - lavishly illustrated. It contains a number of poems.
  
• The Lords of the Isles by Raymond C. Paterson
• Glencoe by John Prebble
• The Massacre of Glencoe by John Buchan
• Scottish poets (Times online), including Kathleen Jamie and Sorley MacLean
  

Postcard 6: A ripple on Loch Ness

Summer 2008: Urquhart Castle & Loch Ness.
The only monster I saw was a millipede ...
© Caroline Gill 2008

Monster-spotting on Loch Ness became popular in the 1930s, when Bertram Mills offered a £20,000 reward to anyone who could capture the monster. Virginia Woolf visited the loch in 1938, and commented on the monster with 'no head'. Beatrix Potter wrote about its 'humps' (Times Online). John Buchan penned a lean but evocative description of the king's Lieutenant at Loch Ness in his 1928 biography, Montrose.

Books about the monster abound and Edinburgh boasts its own 3D Noch Ness Experience. You can read or listen to The Loch Ness Monster's Song by Scots Makar, Edwin Morgan; and countless other poets have tried to capture something of this elusive phenomenon. Years before Woolf's visit, the monster was afforded special protection under the 1912 Protection of Animals Act for Scotland.

• Lines On The Fall Of Fyers Near Loch Ness by Robert Burns
  
• Loch Ness by William Topaz McGonagall (1830-1902)
• Nessie the Great Big Monster, a poem for children by Gordon Nicol
• Chapter entitled Lough Ness by Samuel Johnson (scroll down a little)
  
• Bartstewart.com - Logic and the Loch Ness Monster
• The Guardian: A Fanfare for the Scots (Sean O'Brien on Robert Crawford)

Castle Urquhart:

• An overview with photographs (www.shubs.net)
• Urquhart Castle (www.usscots.com) - fascinating references to Columba's biographer and a Pictish brooch.
• More on the brooch (or copper alloy pin)
• William Wallace and Andrew Murray. Wallace, known to many from the film, Braveheart (1995), was a 12th century knight, and the inspiration for The Acts and Deeds of Sir William Wallace, Knight of Elderslie by Harry the Minstrel (aka 'Blind Harry'), who lived in the 15th century.
• Wallace: more than a brave heart by Linda L. Crockett
  

Postcard 4: Kilmuir, Skye

Above: Plaque in Kilmuir
Below: Gate to the cemetery at Kilmuir

Jen Hadfield has just been named as the TS Eliot prize winner. She lives on Shetland, so it seemed appropriate to focus on something Scottish for today's postcard.

The cemetery at Kilmuir on Skye's Trotternish peninsula boasts an outstanding position, looking out over the Minch towards the Outer Hebrides. The cemetery is famous on account of the grave of Flora MacDonald, but she merits a later entry in her own right, and is by no means the only person worthy of note.

Seton Gordon's memorial lies just outside the confines of the graveyard. His favourite bird was the golden eagle, and he spent part of his life at Duntulm on Skye. He was given his first camera when he was seventeen in 1907, and was also a talented piper. In 1935 he bought out a book called Sea-gulls in London (link to WorldCat).

When we visited the Kilmuir graveyard, the light was amazing. We looked out over the Skye Museum of Island Life to the sea beyond.

• Seton Gordon on the site for Highland Naturalists
• Seton Gordon's Scotland - an Anthology reviewed by Roddy Lumsden
• Seton Gordon on www.thepeerage.com
• Seton Gordon on the Undiscovered Scotland site
• Photographic portraits in the National Portrait Gallery