by Ian Crofton
On my way up the hill after the gallopers I met a man on horseback leading a riderless horse.
‘Where’s the rider?’ I asked.
‘In hospital,’ the man said.
At the top of the hill the riders mixed with the crowd. I passed a young girl holding the horse of a man in a red waistcoat. When he came back from the refreshment tent, he slipped her a tenner. The wealthier riders had their grooms and horseboxes lined up waiting for them. Two adolescent riders, a boy and a girl, smartly accoutred in waistcoats, jodhpurs and stocks, dismounted by their picnicking parents. As they rested, their ponies were groomed and watered by another boy and girl of much the same age, dressed in jeans and sweatshirts. The slogan on the girl’s back said ‘FABULOUSLY BRITISH’. I couldn’t make out whether they were family or paid retainers. They all had strong Border accents.
Walking around on foot among horsemen, one is only too aware of one’s own lowly station. There’s something about being on top of a horse that gives the rider an assumption of superiority over lesser mortals. It is not necessarily expressed. It’s just there.
I overheard snatches of conversation. ‘Ah canna believe the view,’ one rider said. ‘I’ve been here once before but I was so pissed I canna remember.’ Another rider, about sixty-five or seventy, gave a loud yawn. ‘Aye, it’s a hard life,’ said his friend as they rode off, beginning the long hack back to Coldstream. I came across a frantic man in a pink jumper, part of the ITV team filming celebrity Geordie Robson Green gallop up the hill for a series about Northumberland life. ‘I can’t find him, basically,’ he whined into his Bluetooth. ‘I don’t know where I am.’
A woman rider passed by with a head-cam attached to her helmet. A young lad wore a pompom on his. A small company of army cadets, both boys and girls, strutted around. I was unclear what their function was today, but they certainly seemed to feel important. Uniform, whether military or equestrian, can have that effect. All around me there were proud men and women on horses, straight-backed, waving to the onlookers. I caught a glimpse of the Coldstreamer himself. He seemed to have lost his standard, but I’ve never seen a happier face. ‘Hip hip,’ he shouted, and the crowd yelled back, ‘Hooray!’
As the riders went off in one direction and the onlookers returned to their cars, we made our way back down the north slope of Branxton Hill in the footsteps of King James and his commanders, Lord Home and the Earls of Huntly, Errol, Crawford, Montrose, Bothwell, Lennox and Argyle. Five hundred years before they’d been at the heads of four or five great pike squares, each some four thousand men strong, sixty files broad and sixty ranks deep. Of the commanders, only Huntly and Home survived the battle, while fully half the Scottish army were slain, together with a great swathe of the nobility, including the Lord Chancellor of Scotland. It was the largest battle ever fought between the two kingdoms.
With the crowds left behind, Flodden Field fell silent. All I could hear was the gentle breath of the wind through the ruins of Branxton Stead.
Ahead of me, on the skyline leading up to the monument, I spotted two men silhouetted against the northern sky. The two men turned out to be a priest and a piper.
Then a procession of some twenty men in dark suits appeared and made their way in single file towards the monument. The piper played a march, bringing up the rear. I thought of the scene in The Seventh Seal where the Reaper leads the peasants and the gentlemen, the priest and the knight in a dance of death against a brooding sky.
The twenty men in dark suits lined up before the cross. Then the priest or minister began to speak, his words sometimes blown away in the wind.
We come as representatives of families, local communities, and of our country, to remember our forebears and predecessors, and also to reflect on the thousands of men who lost their lives in that dreadful battle . . . So that we may, in our own time, plant rather than uproot, build up rather than break down, heal rather than kill, make peace rather than war. Amen.
Then the MC who had spoken after the Earl of Home in the Market Square that morning recited Jean Elliot’s ‘The Flowers of the Forest’, a lament for the dead of Flodden written two and a half centuries after the event.
I’ve heard the lilting, at the yowe-milking,
Lassies a-lilting before dawn o’ day;
Now they are moaning on ilka green loaning,
The flowers of the Forest are a’ wede away.
The Forest in question was the Ettrick Forest, then covering most of Selkirkshire. The flowers were its menfolk, cut down by English bill hooks.
One by one the men in dark suits walked forward to place a single thistle at the foot of the cross. The MC intoned their names as the August breezes whipped around the hill. Some of his words were flung away by the wind, unheard, like the names of all the unnamed dead who fell here.
The People of Berwick . . . Sir David Home and his son George of Wedderburn . . . Sir John Home and his eldest son Cuthbert of Fastcastle . . . Sir John Stuart of Minto . . . John Murray of Bowhill . . . William Hague of Bemersyde . . . David Pringle and his three uncles, John, William and Alexander . . . Patrick Gillies, Borough Treasurer of Peebles . . . The Free Men of Penicuik . . . Sir Andrew Kerr of Cessford . . . Sir William Cockburn and his eldest son Alexander . . . James Stuart of Traquhair . . . The Lord Provost of Edinburgh . . . For all souls buried at Yetholm who fell here . . . For all the Border men who fell . . . For all the Northumbrian men who fell . . . For all the Scots who fell.
When all the thistles had been laid at the foot of the cross, the minister raised his arm and gave his blessing. Then the piper struck up a lively march and the dignitaries processed away, leaving the cross to the silence of the summer day.
Early that evening a sombre crowd gathered on Tweed Green for the Abbey Ceremony. A row of dignitaries faced the crowd, their backs to the river. I recognised several faces from the thistle-laying ceremony at the Flodden Memorial. On one side the Earl of Home was having a smoke and chatting with the minister.
At the far end of the Green the Coldstream Pipe Band was assembling, alongside a small unit of Coldstream Guards in full dress uniform. The band struck up ‘A Scottish Soldier’ and began to march. Then a solo piper played a lament. A speaker read a translation of the Abbey’s charter, then the MC told us just one of the sad tales from Flodden. Among Lord Home’s vanguard was his kinsman, Sir David Home.
Sir David Home from Wedderburn Castle near Duns was accompanied by all of his seven sons, George, David, Alexander, John, Robert, Andrew and Patrick. They were known as the Seven Spears of Wedderburn. It was custom in those days that in time of war the heir would remain at home to continue the family line in case the rest of the family were killed. George was sent from the Scottish camp when the English were first spotted within the vicinity of Flodden Hill. On his way back George stopped at Coldstream Priory, where his mother, Isabella of Pringle, persuaded George to return to his father, safe in the knowledge that the king’s mighty army would never be defeated. Home’s men were the first to engage the English on that fateful day, and during the battle Sir David Home and George were slain. The six remaining brothers wrapped the bodies in the Home banner, which was a green saltire, and carried them back to Wedderburn.
The minister then offered a prayer. He said we were all children in the eyes of God, so sounding that old Scottish egalitarian theme, summed up in the saying, ‘We’re a’ Jock Tamson’s bairns.’ It was a tonic against all the talk of kings and earls, baronets and abbesses, hierarchy and division, a reminder that, to cite another old Scots expression, ‘We’re a’ ae oo’ – we are all woven out of the same wool. I was glad to see an Afro-Caribbean face amongst the Coldstream Guards on the Green.
A soprano sang ‘The Flowers of the Forest’, unaccompanied. Then a solo piper picked up the lament.
In single file and slow march the Coldstreamer and his Right-Hand Man and his Left-Hand Man advanced towards the stone capital of the abbey, positioned on the turf of the Green. The Right-Hand Man in front held
a folded Blue Saltire, the Left-Hand Man behind held the Earl of Home’s standard, while the Coldstreamer himself bore the sod of earth cut that day from Flodden Field.
The Right-Hand Man draped the Blue Saltire over the capital. Then the Coldstreamer bent forward to place the sod of earth upon the Saltire. The Left-Hand Man passed the Home standard to the Coldstreamer, who lowered it over the Blue Saltire in homage to the fallen.
‘By the right . . .’ barked the drum major, ‘quick march.’ And the band broke into ‘Scotland the Brave’. Exeunt omnes, leaving the sod on the Saltire, a poignant relic of Scotland the Foolhardy.
It’s been said that the Scots like to dwell on disaster. That may or may not be true – though I doubt few people south of Newcastle have ever even heard of Flodden. But maybe staring disaster in the face is a way of putting things in perspective, owning up to one’s own fallibility, keeping hubris in check.
There’s a relatively new ritual in Coldstream that upholds this spirit. It kicks off shortly after the Abbey Ceremony, and turns tragedy into farce. It’s been going for perhaps four or five years, according to the young man I found myself standing next to in a little square off the High Street. The place is known as the Stump.
‘Aye,’ he says, ‘this is the ceremony where all the principals from all the Border towns who’ve fallen frae their horses during a ride-out have tae explain themselves in verse. And spray champagne at the same time.’ Apparently about thirty past principals were lined up for humiliation. The first, standing on the eponymous stump, began to sing.
Three men from Carntyne and a bottle of wine went to join the party . . .
‘Do they come clean?’ I asked. ‘Or does everybody just know?’
Three men from Carntyne and a bottle of wine and five woodbine went to join the party . . .
‘As soon as somebody falls off,’ he told me, ‘every rider knows. Everybody finds out. You won’t get away with it.’
Three men from Carntyne and a bottle of wine and five woodbine and a big black greyhound dug ca’d Boab went to join the party . . .
I remembered a snatch of conversation I’d heard on Branxton Hill. ‘This guy was denying it,’ a rider had chortled to his friend, ‘but I’ve got a photograph of him. On the ground!’
Three men from Carntyne and a bottle of wine and five woodbine and a big black greyhound dug ca’d Boab went to join the party . . . AND somebody fell aff and got a sore knee . . .
I asked my friend where he was from. ‘Frae Innerleithen,’ he said. He told me each principal wore a sash with his or her town’s colours. The principals didn’t just come from the Border towns, some came from Lanarkshire or the Lothians, from towns such as Biggar, Penicuik, Musselburgh – even Edinburgh. It turned out that the exception was Innerleithen. ‘We’re bad enough at trying to walk,’ he said, ‘never mind ride.’ So they don’t have a ride-out. ‘Ride-outs are about protecting your boundaries,’ he said. ‘This is ours, this is the town’s, not the laird’s.’
‘Do the principals who’ve fallen have to bring their own champagne?’ I asked.
‘Aye. And if you fall off in your own week’s festival, you need to bring two bottles of champagne. There’s somebody from Musselburgh who fell off in their own week, twice. Cost him four bottles of champagne.’
I’d thought the champagne might be a perk. But it turns out it’s a penance.
The young woman now standing in smiling shame on the stump and spraying the crowd was belting out a pastiche of an old Monkees song. Like those of all the other fallen principals, her rendition was joyful, shouty and tuneless.
Hey hey wur the Dunsies! she might have sung. Or maybe it was Hey hey wur the Kelsies! I never did quite grasp what her excuse was.
Little children scuttled about, squealing and giggling with delight when the spray hit them.
It was the start of a long night, after a long day. All the riders and many of the spectators would be dressing up later for the Grand Ball, commencing at nine. I was told that the Ball rarely came to an end before four o’clock in the morning. I decided to give it a miss. I do not have the stamina of a true Borderer.
Interlude: Friday, 9th August 2013 Things were still going strong in Coldstream the following evening. Everybody was gearing up for the torchlight procession that brings the town’s Civic Week to a close. Down on Tweed Green campers were milling about, getting some cans down them before hitting the pubs. I got caught up in an ever-shifting conversation with some ex-Coldstreamers, some former KOSBs, a couple of teachers from Dumfriesshire and the founders of the 1513 Club. Some belonged to more than one of these subsets, but I never quite worked out who was what.
I asked my usual question about accents along the Border.
‘You go to Annan,’ one man said, ‘and you get yow and my and the backdoor kye.’
‘And if you go to Hawick,’ said another, ‘you’ll get yow and me and I’ll have a cup o’ tea.’
A woman who farms at Old Graitney, where the Lochmaben Stone is, said, ‘You can go just ten miles from Gretna – to Annan, Kilpatrick, Langholm, Longtown – and you have about thirty different accents within that ten miles.’ She herself had a Cumbrian accent, though she insisted she was Scottish born and bred.
The conversation moved on to identity politics in Dumfries and Galloway. ‘An inspector came to the college in Dumfries,’ one of the teachers told me. ‘He asked, “How do your students cope with having other students of a different ethnic background in the class?” “They don’t have to,” I said. “What do you mean they don’t have to?” “Well,” I said, “it’s very, very seldom that they have to. But what they have got to cope with is someone coming from Gretna, or Stranraer, or from Castle Douglas. That’s more of a confrontational situation.”’
‘They’re clans,’ his female colleague told me. ‘Annan, Kirkcudbright, Dumfries, Castle Douglas, Dalbeattie – they’re all just a wee bit insular.’
And so we drifted onto the subject of the Border.
‘I’ve got mates on both sides,’ one man said.
‘I’m actually two hundred yards from the Border,’ another said, ‘but I’m in Englandshire. Born and bred here, though.’
‘And I live in Scotland, though I come from over there,’ an Englishwoman said. ‘It doesn’t make me a bad person.’
The Scotsman who lives just over the Border in Englandshire told me he’d named the place where his house is the Scottish Principality of Howburn – ‘Cos there’s three people live there and they’re a’ Scots. Ma dug’s the queen, ma ither dug’s the prime minister, an’ ma bidie-in’s the royal housekeeper.’ (A bidie-in is a live-in partner.)
I asked what the line-up of activities was for the evening.
‘Drink.’
‘Well obviously that, but any cultural activities of a higher order?’
‘No.’
‘But look here,’ said another man pointing to a third, ‘this man wrote the book about the battle.’
‘More than just the battle,’ the author said. ‘More than just knocking shite out of each other.’
‘Was it the fault of the French?’ I asked.
‘Everything’s the fault of the French.’
‘Was James IV not a bit stupid to invade just cos the French asked him to?’
‘Well, he was in between a rock and a hard place. But how he managed to lose that battle with the tactical position that he had . . . Having said that, had the pubs not been open all bloody day we wouldnae have lost.’
‘Was it not,’ I offered, ‘a lot to do with long pikes and unsuitable ground? Pikes against halberds?’
‘Light cannon against heavy cannon,’ the author said.
‘And he got outflanked,’ said another man.
‘Done over,’ said a third.
‘He wiz nae good.’
‘Na, he wiz nae good at a’.’
‘It’s a bit like Scotland every time it goes into the World Cup. Gets to the first round and then . . .’
‘Anothe
r glorious defeat.’
‘Against the odds we manage to lose.’
‘Aye, another glorious defeat.’
We wandered up to the High Street. If anything, the streets were busier than the day before. As it grew dark, the pavements outside every pub in town grew thick with drinkers. There were a lot of police in evidence, keeping a beady eye out. I asked one young policeman if this was the busiest night of the year. ‘No,’ he said, ‘but it’s the funnest. We had a bit of trouble here last year, but this year we’re going to come down heavy.’ Then he looked at me. ‘I can see you’re not going to cause trouble. You’re a gentleman.’ One has to question the officer’s judgement.
We looked into a Chinese takeaway. There were no customers, only a lad behind the counter. ‘Bit of a quiet night for you guys?’ I asked. ‘Is Civic Week not a good time for you?’
‘Ok I suppose,’ he said.
‘Not too fond of it?’
‘Everybody seems to enjoy it, apart from us. We have to work, don’t we? You enjoying it?’
I reassured him that I was, but said he looked very sad.
‘I’m not really enjoying it. I have to work. It’s a family business.’
He’d been brought up in Scotland, attending primary school in Coldstream and secondary school in Duns. He was now studying sports science at Napier University in Edinburgh. I asked how it felt living in a place that was very Scottish and very English at the same time.