Arcadia Scotland

Caledonia is the more romantic name for Scotland, and is the name most often used for the country in folk tales and poetic works. It comes from what the Romans originally called the area north of Britannia, reaching back to Celtic words that means something along the lines of “hard feet” (or maybe frozen feet!). “Caledonia” is a curiously Scottish term that has come to be associated with the “spirit of Scotland” and the description of the steadfast Scots. Recently, I got a chance to go visit some other cities and areas of Caledonia that I had not been to as of yet.

Yesterday my program had us go on this short tour to the Borders land, the historically highly contested space between Scotland and England. The Borders is also a deeply literary area, as a lot of Scots literature is set in these natural areas and employs the traditional Scots language that is still closely associated with the area. Sir Walter Scott, the “popstar novelist” of the 1800s, focused his life’s work almost obsessively on the Borders’s history and oral storytelling traditions. On our trip we made four stops: the Traquair Estate, Melrose Abbey, Scott’s View, and the Rosslyn Chapel.

The Traquair Estate is the oldest house in Scotland to be continually inhabited since like 1100. It’s most notable for being the residence of the Stuart family since the 1400s. It has these huge “bear gates” at the front of the really impressive driveway, but they can’t be opened because the last person to ride out of them in the 1700s was Bonnie Prince Charlie. Basically, the Laird at the time said that the gates would only be opened when a Stuart was back on the throne, and I guess they are still waiting for that so everyone (including the current Laird) has to use the side entrance. The house was really cool, but the coolest part was learning all of the insane Jacobite history that the estate and the Stuart family is so closely attached to. Mary Queen of the Scots also spent quite a bit of time there, and they have things like the bed frame and mattress she slept in all preserved, which was actually kind of weird.

Our second stop was Melrose Abbey, which is an old monastery and church. Built in like the 1100s, and also built on the Borders, it kind of got beat up by the English during the Middle ages, and then beat up again by Protestants during the Reformation in the 1500s, so it is very much in ruins. Granted, the ruins are beautiful though, and the whole place is quite eerie. It’s supposedly where Robert the Bruce asked for his heart to be buried, an it’s also rumored to be extremely haunted because of the massive graveyard it’s next to and all the destruction on the grounds. Something I found interesting is that I learned in class that during the Reformation a lot of stained glass windows got broken out, and Melrose is one of the prime examples of a place that was ransacked but then never re-purposed as a Protestant church.

Third stop was the quickest! Scott’s view! This was apparently Sir Walter Scott’s favorite place in all of Scotland to go sit and write and look for inspiration. It was said his horse team knew that he stopped there so frequently that even when they were leading his funeral procession they paused at the top of his view place because it was so in their habit to do so. Unfortunately (and authentically), it was a bit cold and rather windy when we got up to the top of the hill where the view was, so it was not as picturesque as it seems in his novels.

Fourth and final stop was the Rosslyn Chapel, more famously known for its role in The Da Vinci Code. Built in the 1400s, it took about forty years to build, and the chapel itself was not even the whole original plan. The chapel is actually only the original choir building plan, and the church itself was supposed to be hugely impressive. There is no record of why the construction was halted, but the chapel is so ornately carved and meticulously crafted that there are some theories that money ran out to pay all the master stonemasons required to build the place. It was also ransacked by the English and also by Reformers, but because of the mega popularity of Dan Brown’s novel that prominently features the chapel’s crypt (which is complete fiction and doesn’t even exist), they received hundreds of thousands of visitors and donations so that restoration efforts could be undertaken on the whole chapel and grounds. It was absolutely stunning inside, and we spent about an hour and a half in the tiny space looking at all the incredible details. They do not allow ANY photographs of the inside, but here is the outside of the structure.

I really loved getting to see some different parts of Scotland. Living in Edinburgh, it is literally impossible to forget the greater history and past of the country I am in, however it was nice to see in person some of the sites that I hear about so frequently. I am excited to further explore the closer to home sites of the country!

cheers

erin