The Faded Map: The Lost Kingdoms of Scotland (24 page)

Another Jerusalem

The growing power of the papacy certainly borrowed authority from Rome’s former imperial glories but it had, from the outset, a central role in the origins of the Christian faith. Beyond the city walls and by the side of the Appian Way, the main road to the south, a warren of catacombs was rediscovered in the sixteenth century. Dating as early as the first century
AD
,
these tunnels contained thousands of notches cut out of the rock where corpses were laid. For a long time, it was believed that the Second Coming was imminent and the dead would rise more easily from the catacombs. Next to the
Church of the Catacomb of Basileo,
Rome’s most famous Christian legend is believed to have taken place. As St Peter fled from persecution down the Appian Way, he met Christ on the road and asked the famous question ‘
Domine, quo vadis
?’ ‘I am going to Rome,’ Christ replied, ‘for a second crucifixion.’ Peter realised what he meant and turned back to the city to suffer his own martyrdom. Early Christians believed that Jerusalem, the site of Christ’s death and resurrection, was an earthly gateway to Heaven, where God was close at hand. Rome saw the appearance of Christ and the crucifixion of Peter and had a similarly magnetic attraction for the faithful.

In essence a
maenor
was an estate run by an official known as a
maer
from the Latin
maior
, more colloquially ‘the superior’. The old title still survives in Scotland as the surname Mair and in England as the office of mayor. And in the later Dark Ages, there were
mormaers
in the north, a title for great magnates. Where this apparent administrative tidiness begins to blur is over the question of the source of that authority. By the tenth century,
maers
were probably sometimes royal officials who managed an estate belonging directly to a king and sometimes these men were themselves aristocrats, with traditional title to the land they controlled, or they were the agents of a particularly powerful aristocratic family. Perhaps even a prototype
mormaer
.

In any event,
maenors
tended to comprise twelve or thirteen farms in upland areas and six or seven in the more fertile lowland districts. In the Manor Valley, this ancient pattern is clear. Bounded by the watershed ridges of hills on three sides and
entered where the Manor Water tumbles into the Tweed, the valley supported thirteen farms in 1845, according to the Statistical Account, and now has twelve. It contains all the other elements present in a classic seventh-century
maenor
. As Christianity spread northwards through the high valleys of the Southern Uplands, almost certainly radiating from the ancient church at late Roman Carlisle, the estates began to acquire their own churches, a religious focus for a clearly defined community. St Gordian was the now apparently eccentric choice for the lords of Manor and the survival of the
eccles
place-name shows how early Christian churches were speckled over the map –
eccles
derives from the Old Welsh
eglwys
which, in turn, comes from the Latin
ecclesia
‘church’. Ecclefechan in Annandale means ‘the Little Church’ (probably in contrast to ‘the Great Church’ at the lost monastery at Hoddom), Eccles in Berwickshire retained its early sanctity and became the home of a medieval nunnery and Eaglescairnie in East Lothian, Eaglesham in Renfrewshire and several other sites can still be found. It is likely that all of them were sixth century or perhaps even earlier foundations associated with
maenors
.

The
maerdref
was the central farm and the residence of the
maer
. In Wales, these were often found in the shadow of great fortresses such as those at Dinorben, Dinas Powys and Aberffraw, the principal seat of the powerful kings of Gwynedd. In the sixth century, below the halls of Maelgwyn Fawr, a famous victim of Justinian’s plague, there lay a church, a law court and the house of a
maer
. At the foot of the Manor Valley, near where the Manor Water meets the Tweed, the hill forts of Cademuir rise. Ancient, protected by the prehistoric ditches and stone obstacles known as
chevaux de frise
, these impressive fortifications continued to be garrisoned into the Dark Ages. St Gordian’s sanctuary stood some way to the south, further up the valley, but the cluster of buildings at Manor Hall, Manor Church and Kirkton suggest the presence of a
maerdref
. It may be that St Gordian’s served the upper valley and another church the people who lived at the mouth.

In the stock-rearing society of the seventh century, the farms on the lower ground by the Manor Water and its feeder streams were known as the
hendrefi
, ‘the winter towns’. This name remembered the ancient journey of transhumance, when herdsmen drove their beasts up the hill trails in the spring to the high pastures. To allow the lowland fields to recover and the tender shoots of new crops to grow untrampled and unnibbled, flocks and herds summered in the unfenced grasslands up on the plateaux. The shielings where the herd laddies and their helpers slept and sheltered were known collectively as the
hafod
, ‘the summer town’. With its self-contained geography, the Manor Valley is perfect for transhumance as the hills above Manorhead over towards the Megget Valley offer good and extensive grazing. Even when the wind blew over Black Cleuch and Sting Rig, shelter for men and beasts could be found in the steep-sided hopes and deans between the green and pillowy hills. Their names recall the timeless tradition of summering out – Hog’s Knowe, Shepherd’s Cairn. And two others remind the map reader of one of the dangers faced by the flocks, the herdsman and their dogs – Wolfhope Law rises near the farm of Langhaugh and Wolf Rig stands over towards the Yarrow Valley.

Close to where a shepherd found the hoard of Bronze Age metalwork at Horsehope Craig, the Glenrath Burn joins the Manor Water. The narrow valley of Glenrath Hope reaches into the hills to the east and, even though it is only ten miles to Peebles, feels very remote. Perhaps for that reason, an early Dark Ages settlement has been preserved on its northern slopes. The most extensive yet found in Scotland, the outlines of its fields are clearly visible and the foundations of a cluster of four small houses can be made out.

Protected by a series of elegantly curved enclosing walls, each had a courtyard, a series of pens where animals could be brought inbye for milking, where a midden of their muck might be piled up and where firewood and peats could be stacked. The houses were round and built in a long-lasting and sophisticated style seen in many parts of Scotland. Using only materials close at hand,
their construction was simple and efficient. Once shallow founds had been dug and a drystone wall built up to waist height or higher, a conical set of roof trusses was assembled and jointed at the apex, often using only the weight of interlocking beams secured with cords. Bracken still grows in profusion on the steep sides of Glenrath Hope and this or turf was used for roofing. A beaten earth floor with some stone flags set at the only entrance (to keep the winter mud manageable) was made and perhaps strewn with more bracken. Archaeologists have found the remains of sweeter smelling herbs mixed in with floor debris in roundhouses. In the centre, a hearth of flat and raised stones was set out. There were no windows and the only light came from the doorway. Often this was placed in the east for the first rays of the morning sun or, if advisable, in the lee of the prevailing wind.

Most light and heat came from the downhearth in the middle of the house. It was used for cooking in the winter months and families sat and slept around its glow. Sparks floating up to the roof might be thought a hazard but the perpetually burning fire soon created a layer of carbon monoxide which extinguished them. Smoke filtered through the roof but the interior will have been eye-watering, encouraging people to squat or sit on low benches.

In the blast and ice of the winter these roundhouses will have been snug enough but there can be no doubt that, in the summer and periods of better weather, their inhabitants spent most of their time outdoors. The light was of course much better for the delicate work of weaving, for example, and a beautifully decorated spindle whorl was found on the site. It was used as part of the apparatus for spinning yarn from the wool pulled out of the fleeces of the sheep which grazed around Glenrath Hope.

The inbye fields were marked off by stone dykes whose footings have survived and earth banks which are less clear. Most were laid out on the northern slopes of the narrow valley so that they were canted southwards to catch as much of the warming sun as possible. Crops will certainly have included
grain but not the range of other produce which comes out of modern fields. Milk, cheese, bread, meat (from game as well as domesticated animals) and a wild harvest of berries, fruits, nuts and fungi formed the staple diet of the farmers who lived in Glenrath Hope in the seventh century.

Who were they? A combination of Welsh and Scottish sources offer answers. In the society of southern Scotland around the time of the fateful battle at Catraeth, the most fundamental distinctions were between those who were free, those whose freedom was circumscribed and those who had none. The
Bonheddwyr
, the ‘Well-born’, were the sort of men who rode to battle with the Angles at Catterick on the banks of the Swale. They had what their enemies lacked – lineage – and, because they could trace their genealogy, they also had title to land and privileges. That was why a list of impressive ancestors mattered and why the generations sometimes wound back into myth-history and borrowed authority, like Coel Hen and the Roman prefects of the fourth century. When the bards of the
Bonheddwyr
sang of their lineage, they also reminded listeners of what they owned and controlled. Just as kings could maintain a
teulu
, a war band, the more powerful of the Well-Born could sustain a household which probably included a small cadre of professional soldiers or at least well-armed men trained in the arts of war. On occasion, lineage itself will not have been sufficiently assertive.

The farmsteads at Glenrath Hope were the homes of a lower class of people, the
taeogion
. These men and women were bound to the land they cultivated and tended and owed a series of rents and obligations to the Bonheddwyr. But every
taeog
on an estate had a right to farm and, depending on the nature of the ground to be worked, it could be a good life. There was a system of rotation known as the
tir cyfrif
and it was in the gift of the
maer
.
Caethion
were slaves – men and women who had no rights whatsoever and were the property of whoever had bought or acquired them. It is likely that many
caethion
were war captives.

Society appears to have been rigidly stratified and, while
taeogion
could be productive, they were bound always to remain
farmers. By definition, they were not Well-Born and were automatically excluded from the priesthood, from being trained as a bard – or a blacksmith.

The Law of the Innocents

One of the most outstanding figures of the Dark Ages was St Adomnan. Much more than merely the biographer of St Columba, he was a politician and intellectual of considerable power. Perhaps his most notable initiative was the Law of the Innocents. At the Synod of Birr in central Ireland held in 697, he proposed that women, children and clergy be protected from the brutal realities of Dark Ages warfare. Nothing else like it had been promulgated in Europe. It was underwritten by an impressive list of Irish, Dalriadan and Pictish kings. Adomnan’s protection of women extended further with penalties for sexual assault – ‘If a hand is put under her dress to defile her . . .’, a fine was to be paid – and an attempt to improve their lowly status as
cumalaich
or ‘little slaves’. As a balance, women were not to be treated too leniently if they themselves were guilty of a crime – ‘For a woman deserves death for the killing of a man or woman . . . that is to say, she is to be put in a boat of one paddle as a sea-waif upon the ocean to go with the wind from the land.’ Unusual.

This last prohibition is striking and may be an inheritance from prehistoric times. When metals were first worked in Britain, almost four millennia before the
taeogion
toiled in the little fields of Glenrath Hope, those who had the skills to convert lumps of ore into bright, shiny objects were probably considered to be in possession of magical powers. Certainly they were seen as people of very high status. One of the richest prehistoric graves ever found in Britain, that of the man known as the Amesbury Archer, contained much gold and bronze, and other items showed clearly that he had been a smith.

In the Manor Valley, six leading smelting sites have been found. The carbon dating of the charcoal places their use more than a thousand years ago. Lead has a low melting point and small furnaces were built to extract pure metal from the ore picked up on the valley bottom. Peat and charcoal were used as
fuel. Inside a low, square drystone structure with gaps to allow the wind to act as a bellows, the fuel was layered with ore which had been broken down into fragments. Under this structure a clay-lined pit collected the molten lead. Easy to work, it was used to fashion both everyday objects and exotic ones, like jewellery. When combined with tin, it made lustrous pewter. All of these activities will have been the work of smiths, men of high status in the Dark Ages in the Manor Valley and no little skill.

A Scottish historical document dating back to the tenth century and probably reflecting society long before that, provides fascinating insights into how the society of southern Scotland functioned. Known as the
Leges inter Brettos et Scottos
, it recognised an enduring cultural distinction between the Britons of the south and the Scots of the west and north. The Old Welsh-speaking cultures of the kingdoms of the Gododdin and Strathclyde were still sufficiently vigorous to merit a different and detailed legal status and resist homogeneity.