and I think he was drawn to Dryburgh because it was already a holy place for the pre-Christian communities who lived along the banks of the Tweed. And that history has not entirely fled. It can be sensed, buried deep on the site of the twelfth-century abbey, where enough of the fabric survives to allow a good reconstruction of monastic life: the bells ringing the canonical hours at dead of night, the chant of the psalms, readings in the chapter house, the whispering as monks gossiped behind their hands, and all the bustle of a busy community going about the business of worship, management and food production. But under the daily din, the silences as the monks shuffled down the night stair to the church for lauds and other intervals of peace, another river runs, one whose course can only be intuited.
I am certain that Walter Scott knew and felt that Dryburgh was different. Of course with his love of romance, he will have felt at home in the old medieval abbey, its scheming abbots, priors, cellarers and novices gossiping, taking part in medieval politics, celebrating the drama of the Latin mass in the presbytery. But in his life Scott was aware, I think, of a strangeness in his own nature, a sensitivity to another world beyond history. In Ivanhoe and others in his vast canon of historical novels, Scott showed a powerful longing for the past that sometimes glows with roseate nostalgia but also connects with the ethereal, the uncatchable, something fluttering on the edge of his imagination. And few novelists have ever captured a pungent sense of place in the long past so well – but sometimes not completely. There is often something of the unexplained in Scott’s stories. Perhaps that was the deeper reason why he chose to be buried at Dryburgh, not just because it is beautiful but because its roots in the long past reached far down into the earth of the river peninsula and were unknowable. Scott knew that ghosts flitted amongst the ruins.
Next to Scott’s solid granite sarcophagus stands the small, simple headstone of a soldier: Douglas Haig, Field Marshal Earl Haig. He wanted the same memorial that was set up to those hundreds of thousands of soldiers who died under his command in Flanders and he is buried at Dryburgh simply because it is close to Bemersyde. As I stood by these two graves in the north transept, it struck me that there was not an obvious and extreme contrast but a clear connection between the unwilling architect of great slaughter on the Western Front and the man whose stories went a long way to inventing the Scotland that many regiments believed they were fighting to protect.
I spent less time at Dryburgh than I expected, perhaps because I was anxious to catch up with Cuthbert and be on my way. In the wooden hut that serves as a ticket office and small shop, I bought a packet of fudge to keep me going on my journey to Old Melrose. I would need it.
* * *
The road from Dryburgh turns sharply downhill to the flood plain of the Tweed and past some trim new houses built not from bricks or breezeblock but a good deal of cut stone. I passed some beautifully squared blocks of red and yellow sandstone sitting on pallets by the roadside. The starkness of these new builds will weather down well as the sandstone mellows with the years and their gardens grow up. I noted high walls and an electric gate around one house and supposed that rural crime penetrates everywhere, even down this half-hidden old road. I passed a footbridge over the Tweed but ignored it. A mile further north was Monksford and I planned a baptism of sorts, to wade across just as Cuthbert and his servant would have done, leading his horse behind them. After the driest summer for forty years, the river should be low.
At the foot of the road, on a small mound that looked artificial to me, stood another imposition from the eccentric Earl of Buchan. His fascination with Greek mythology drew David Erskine into episodes of laughable daftness. Apparently he once held a soiree where he dressed up as Apollo on Mount Parnassus with nine young ladies dancing around him as his muses. Goodness knows what they made of it. On this mound in front of me, at the beginning of a long, straight stretch known as the Monks’ Road, he had masons build a small, circular, pillared structure he called the Temple of the Muses, and in the centre a statue of Apollo was installed. It has mercifully gone now and been replaced by a modern bronze by Siobhan O’Hehir of four naked women facing in four compass directions to represent the seasons. They look well, their poses not frozen but somehow sinuous and liquid. By contrast, I am certain that the original statue of Apollo would have borne a distinct resemblance to the cavorting earl. Littering the landscape in this way, plonking inappropriate objects in it for his own aggrandisement and amusement, is more than irritating. Just because they are relatively old, it should not automatically mean that this ridiculous temple and the monstrous statue of William Wallace should not be demolished. Far better to remember the monks who walked the old road beside these oddities: Modan, Boisil, Cuthbert and other later figures whose stories were of this place, men who searched the big skies above the river for signs of God’s presence and who helped make the land look as it does now.
Beyond the mound, the long straight track of the Monks’ Road headed north. The Pathfinder map showed that it led to Monksford, and my determination to splash across the Tweed in Cuthbert’s wake. Supplying access to a smart wooden hut on the banks of the river, one used by those paying handsomely to fish the pools of the Dryburgh Upper beat, the road was in good repair and I made good time. At the end I could see a much more overgrown track beyond a metal gate. Tree-lined and curving down to the riverbank, it seemed not to be much used.
In my rucksack, I had packed spare socks, pants and a towel. My plan was to stuff my boots, trousers and socks in the pack and towel myself dry after I had crossed the monks’ ford and gained the farther bank. About halfway down the track, I spotted a likely, leggy rowan and, with my penknife, cut a staff from it. As I waded the river and its uneven bed of smoothed stones, I wanted something to steady me and test the depth in front. Shaded and quiet, I noticed that the track had been used recently when I saw the marks of horseshoes in damp places, and as I finished the last of my fudge I wondered how recently someone had ridden here. I was certain I was following Cuthbert on his horse, for the track was old and there appeared to be no other way down to the ford he must have used to reach Old Melrose.
However, puzzlement and disappointment waited once more. Instead of leading to the riverbank, the track simply petered out amongst some broadleaf woodland. Beyond it the banks of the Tweed were overgrown with bushes, nettles and the wide, rhubarb-like leaves of hogweed. I thought I could make out the shallows of the beginning of the ford but no path led to it. And off to my left I could see where the rider had gone. There was another track leading along the river, but it went back the way I had come. It was probably used by fishermen.
Only a little daunted, and of course rationalising that the path must have disappeared long ago since no one had been daft enough to use the ford for at least a couple of centuries, I used my rowan pole to thrash aside the hogweed and also warn me of sudden, unseen, ankle-twisting ditches in the overgrown bank. Of which there were several.
On what seemed like an area of level ground (but not free of nettles), I checked to see that no one was around to watch the crazy person strip to his pants and shirt, then stuffed everything into my pack. When I splashed at last into the river, a family of ducks erupted a little way upstream and the sun came out to glint brilliantly off the water. It was cold but not icy, and I could see where large flat stones had been laid near the bank, clear remains of the old ford. Some were the same colour of red sandstone that had built the Temple of the Muses.
I had reckoned the Tweed was about sixty or more yards wide at Monksford, but after I had carefully gone about twenty-five yards and the water was up to my knees, I found it difficult to see the bottom and judge what was in front of me. The channel by the far bank was in shadow and I had no idea how deep it might be. The surface was flowing smoothly, like a large volume of water, no stone or shallows broke it and the river seemed to be moving much more slowly. The small, wing-like shapes of sycamore seeds were eddying, not flowing directly downstream. Prodding with the rowan pole, I suddenly felt it go down much further and nearly lost my balance. My heavier pack didn’t help and I rocked a little. I reckoned the pole touched bottom at about three feet, waist height. So, no. There seemed to be an invisible shelf rather than a gradual incline. So, not that way.
I
