Midsummer’s Eve (Summer Solstice and the pagan Litha) and what have we got – massive lightning storm that knocked out our telephone exchange (again – do BT use paper to build them?), huge hailstone storm and lashings of rain causing field flooding and a small river to rage down the Lempitlaw road. Sometimes I am glad I live at the top of a hill. The new lambs are learning to swim and I am searching for a boat.

We had a call from an old business colleague for afternoon tea and Kim had one set of direction and I had the other. It was only when we got near the place that we found out that Kim’s directions said turn off the A697 and mine were something to do with stone eagles. So there was a vast tract of countryside to explore and we were now 5 minutes late. Of course I wasn’t a hundred percent sure that it was eagles so we stopped everywhere with a stone statue – first a pigeon, then a cockerel and now two dogs (what is with this place and bloody animal statues). No joy but in torrential rain a couple of folk helpfully directed us and sure enough we came across the stone eagles at last – except he didn’t live at Eagle Hall (no we didn’t have a note of the address to use google maps either as both of us assumed the other knew it). There was noone about so we stopped at a house with stone arches this time and sure enough we had to go to the house with the stone cat (apparently if I had reached the scarey stone eagles I had gone too far). Incidentally he had a stone eagle in the back garden and a wonderful hidden room behind a mirror and a home made scone eating dog.

Read one of the Jules Verne Scottish Novels, Underground City or The Black Indies, all set in a coal mine under Loch Katrine. He was understandably in love with Scotland and the book reads like a Travelogue. From Arthurs Seat, in Edinburgh, he also sees The Green Ray, which was the topic of his next Scottish novel, set to music by Gavin Bryars in our century.

The Ringing of the Balls – out of seven lambs four were male, so with 1 shepherd and 2 apprentices leaping around a field chasing all seven lambs until the 4 males were thrust inverted inbetween thighs and a small rubber ring placed over the testicles and down over the nodules and sprung into place to ensure Maurice’s ram dominance. Just have to catch a few of the older ones for the slaughterhouse now.

Morris Dancing in Wooler – I saw it in a ‘whats on’ guide and convinced Kim this would be a splendid night out, so we turned up early to avoid the crowds and get a parking place. The high street was empty. We dined at the bizarre Italian restaurant (or restarant as they spell it) and staggered out after a large grappa to the still empty high street. We wandered around a bit then Kim spotted a poster in the Post Office window with morris dancers pictured and the address of Main Street. Dagnabbit, that was it- we were on the wrong street – we were on High Street. So we wandered around more finding nothing and listening out for the sound of bells and waving hankerchiefs. Nothing. We asked an elderly Wooler gentleman where Main Street was – doesn’t exist. We said where the Morris Dancers are. He looked at us if we were mad, there are no Morris Dancers around here. We went back to the post office to check if the poster really existed or if we had slipped into an English version of Brigadoon. It was there along with a couple of locals also looking for the Morris Dancers and who told us that Main Street meant High Street. We weren’t going mad, or at least we were in good company. The rain was starting and sure enough the Morris Dancers appeared in the ‘Pay and Display’ car park – of course the clue was in the word Display. An enthusiastic chap with less enthusiastic women, all dressed in ribbon, shaking red hankies, waving sticks and blocking the car park entrance whilst a small band played on with even less enthusiastic spectators (but the dogs were all excited barking away).

‘The Secret Commonwealth, An essay on the nature and actions of the subterranean (and for the most part) invisible people heretofore going under the name of Elves, Fauns and Fairies’ by Robert Kirk, currently imprisoned in the Fairy Tree on top of Doun Hill near Aberfoyle, is a book written in the 17th century with a fascinating set of supernatural experiences in Scotland. Fairies have a fascinating history where they were less than diminutive but attractive lady pilots, ala Conan Doyle and the case of the Cottingley Fairies, and more of the Niebulungenlied mining dwarf look with Rheingold soundtrack.

Literature loves fairies, Shakespeare and Spenser, Arthurian Legends through Walter Scott and Kipling to Jonathan Strange. Frightfully British (and especially Celtic) stuff and yet they seem to have such a bad press these days and poets don’t exactly help -

The Stolen Child
by W.B. Yeats

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats;
There we’ve hid our faery vats,
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances,
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us he’s going,
The solemn-eyed:
He’ll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal-chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
From a world more full of weeping than you can understand.

—

Fairy Land
by Edgar Allan Poe

Dim vales–and shadowy floods-
And cloudy-looking woods,
Whose forms we can’t discover
For the tears that drip all over!
Huge moons there wax and wane-
Again–again–again-
Every moment of the night
Forever changing places-
And they put out the star-light
With the breath from their pale faces.
About twelve by the moon-dial,
One more filmy than the rest
(A kind which, upon trial,
They have found to be the best)
Comes down–still down–and down,
With its centre on the crown

Of a mountain’s eminence,
While its wide circumference
In easy drapery falls
Over hamlets, over halls,
Wherever they may be-
O’er the strange woods–o’er the sea-
Over spirits on the wing-
Over every drowsy thing-
And buries them up quite
In a labyrinth of light-
And then, how deep!–O, deep!
Is the passion of their sleep.
In the morning they arise,
And their moony covering
Is soaring in the skies,
With the tempests as they toss,
Like–almost anything-
Or a yellow Albatross.
They use that moon no more
For the same end as before-
Videlicet, a tent-
Which I think extravagant:
Its atomies, however,
Into a shower dissever,
Of which those butterflies
Of Earth, who seek the skies,
And so come down again,
(Never-contented things!)
Have brought a specimen
Upon their quivering wings.

I was lent a super old book, Marchmont and the Humes of Polwarth, on the history of Polwarth and it included this gem of a ghost story. I haven’t worked out where the fords are to give them a wide berth but I have a sneaking suspicion that we fly over them every time we come down to the Borders.

“THE FOUL FORDS” OR THE LONGFORMACUS FARRIER

About 1820 there lived a Farrier of the name of Keane in the village of Longformacus in Lammermoor. He was a rough, passionate man, much addicted to swearing. For many years he was farrier to the Eagle or Spottiswood troop of Yeomanry. One day he went to Greenlaw to attend the funeral of his sister, intending to be home early in the afternoon. His wife and family were surprised when he did not appear as they expected and they sat up watching for him. About two o’clock in the morning a heavy weight was heard to fall against the door of the house, and on opening it to see what was the matter, old Keane was discovered lying in a fainting fit on the threshold. He was put to bed and means used for his recovery, but when he came out of the fit he was raving mad and talked of such frightful things that his family were quite terrified. He continued till next day in the same state, but at length his senses returned and he desired to see the minister alone.

After a long conversation with him he called all his family round his bed, and required from each of his children and his wife a solemn promise that they would none of them ever pass over a particular spot in the moor between Longformacus and Greenlaw, known by the name of ‘The Foul Fords’ (it is the ford over a little water-course just east of Castle Shields). He assigned no reason to them for this demand, but the promise was given and he spoke no more, and died that evening.

About ten years after his death, his eldest son Henry Keane had to go to Greenlaw on business, and in the afternoon he prepared to return home. The last person who saw him as he was leaving the town was the blacksmith of Spottiswood, John Michie. He tried to persuade Michie to accompany him home, which he refused to do as it would take him several miles out of his way. Keane begged him most earnestly to go with him as he said he must pass the Foul Fords that night, and he would rather go through hell-fire than do so. Michie asked him why he said he must pass the Foul Fords, as by going a few yards on either side of them he might avoid them entirely. He persisted that he must pass them and Michie at last left him, a good deal surprised that he should talk of going over the Foul Fords when every one knew that he and his whole family were bound, by a promise to their dead father, never to go by the place.

Next morning a labouring man from Castle Shields, by name Adam Redpath, was going to his work (digging sheep-drains on the moor), when on the Foul Fords he met Henry Keane lying stone dead and with no mark of violence on his body. His hat, coat, waistcoat, shoes and stockings were lying at about 100 yards distance from him on the Greenlaw side of the Fords, and while his flannel drawers were off and lying with the rest of his clothes, his trousers were on. Mr. Ord, the minister of Longformacus, told one or two persons what John Keane (the father) had said to him on his deathbed, and by degrees the story got abroad. It was this. Keane said that he was returning home slowly after his sister’s funeral, looking on the ground, when he was suddenly roused by hearing the tramping of horses, and on looking up he saw a large troop of riders coming towards him two and two. What was his horror when he saw that one of the two foremost was the sister whom he had that day seen buried at Greenlaw! On looking further he saw many relations and friends long before dead; but when the two last horses came up to him he saw that one was mounted by a dark man whose face he had never seen before. He led the other horse, which, though saddled and bridled, was riderless, and on this horse the whole company wanted to compel Keane to get. He struggled violently, he said, for some time, and at last got off by promising that one of his family should go instead of him.

There still lives at Longformacus his remaining son Robert; he has the same horror of the Foul Fords that his brother had, and will not speak, nor allow any one to speak to him on the subject.

Three or four years ago a herdsman of the name of Burton was found dead within a short distance of the spot, without any apparent cause for his death.

Stuart and I went on a manhunt for Ali most of the day. This came to a head after Kim had visited Sarah’s mum to fill her in on the situation with no holds barred – Ali is now entirely unwelcome at their home.

Highlights have included screaming at him (as prospective buyers were at the cottage up the road)
that we would call the police as he ran down the road; driving at top speed down the Lempitlaw Road and chasing him through a field; stalking him through another field and wood then realising that we were both wearing bright white T shirts so put in an emergency call to Kim for dark jackets, an OS map and binoculars.

Armed professionally we waited for him hidden above a railway bridge as the Kelso new bridge was the only likely spot for him to cross. However, Stuart and I were feeling a bit peckish so went to the Cobbles Inn (that was apparently the time he managed to slip through our net) for a spot of lunch.

We then drove around town searching for him at all the spots where Stuart used to skive off school. At one point dressed in sweaty white T shirts and me a few pints down and wearing sunglasses – went into the local sports shop and asked if they sold any Baseball Bats. I don’t know if they called the police but they were looking particularly edgy but were offering us a bow and arrow instead which I wasn’t too sure about.

We then looked particularly dodgy outside the back of the school gate (being the only ones not smoking) and spotting a friend of Stuart mounting the pavement whilst driving erratically.

We worked out that he would be meeting Sarah so worked which was her bus stop and in the meantime went into the local country store and as I was asking for Rings for my Lambs (she looked suspiciously at me as if I wasn’t the sort of person to be a shepherd) – Stuart was loitering around the till area. Now we were really looking dodgy. No rings and no baseball bats – we were seriously disadvantaged in a fight.

We separated to form a pincer movement from where Sarah’s bus was going to debus and Ali was right in the middle. We then remonstrated physically with him to get him in the car (whilst various people are watching) then take him to a field and rough him up a little (as other people are walking their dogs along the old railway line). He ran off to Sarah’s and I was on the phone to Kim who was on the phone to Karen who had been told that Stuart and I were coming with baseball bats (amazing how news travels). Sarah’s stepdad was being awoken (he is on a night shift) with the words ‘there is going to be trouble’.

Stuart and I cut him off at the pass and stood there like gunfighters in the middle of a housing estate, in the middle of the junction to Sarah’s house. Ali arrived and we had a standoff – we weren’t letting him past us and he wasn’t going to go home. With various choice phrases including ‘I will break your f**king leg and drag you home’ and you come with us now or go to hospital, not noticing the old man cutting his hedges in one garden and the woman washing her windows at the other house. Stuart and I conscious that it would now be us being arrested – walked away saying ’see you in hospital then’ and drove back to see if Sarah’s stepdad had beaten him up yet. Ali was sitting crying at the curb – he said he hadn’t gone up and he wanted to come home. I bundled him in the back of the car and waved to the old chap standing watching in his garden.

If there is a Crimewatch episode on kelso featuring two chaps in white T-shirts brandishing baseball bats – please don’t shop us!