Borderlands

August 4

It’s somewhat fitting, but depressing nonetheless, that we started our excursion with Hadrian’s Wall and we end with Flodden Field. Back to that question of who do we wall in and who do we wall out? Much blood has been shed trying to answer this through the years. Perhaps the worst of it occurred here in September 1513.

Back to Henry VIII’s time and the ongoing battles between the English and the Scottish kingdoms. James IV of Scotland and the Earl of Surrey met each other here on this borderfield in a battle referred to on the signpost as the “killing fields.” In a slaughter reminiscent to the last southern stand, Pickett's charge, at Gettysburg in 1863, the Scots started the attack and marched across what they thought was a field. Unfortunately for them, due to heavy rain earlier in the day, they ended up wading through muddy boggy ground, falling out of line, and losing 10,000 men, their King and many nobles. It was the end for the Scots. The final wall fell.

4,000 English soldiers died that day, too. And every year since, there is a commemoration of the event on the first Thursday in August. We know this because we were there when a local English couple set up their seats to watch the proceedings. It was pouring rain, but they said they never missed a year. They told us that 200 horses come from Coldstream to this spot, the English ground for a memorial service given by a Scottish priest. Then the procession leads to the far ground (the last horizon line in the photo) where there is a memorial service given by an English priest. The man we met was a hedgecutter and he claimed that the reason the English was due to their weaponry; the Scots had pikes and the English had bills (used to cut hedges).

It was pouring. We wanted to stay and see the event, but it was nearing lunchtime and we knew better than to keep the kids stuck in a car in the parking lot waiting for horses that we would get stuck behind on our way to Scotland.

So, off we went. A few more stops in the bordertowns of Scotland, but not nearly as much as we had hoped for. The weather was getting worse and we wanted to get back safely. We were fortunate in this choice, we found out later that much of the area had severe flooding and some unfortunate deaths in places we had just visited.

I’ll leave you with our last stop on the borderlands; Keslo Abbey. It was built around 1113 by David I and it became one of Scotland’s richest medieval abbeys. Monks of the Tironensian Order, founded in France, woke at 2 AM, attended at least seven services through the day, prayed for the abbey’s benefactors, and went to bed at 7 PM. This abbey suffered during the ongoing border wars, but the monks held out and only left after the Protestant Reformation in the mid 16^th century.

I was struck by the use of this space afterwards. Some of the sandstone graves left little written trace of the Keslo occupants, while others contained such detail. I’m a bit embarrassed at having taken photos of them. Both saddened me, but poignantly, helped remind me of our fortune now in the living. A sentiment I tried relaying to Eleni, but somehow in the beauty of being six, got lost. “I don’t know about that.” Dragging me away, “Come on, Mommy! Let’s play over here!”

And, so we did.

Back to Kathleen's home for dinner.

Our borderlines intact.