On the journey to Lindisfarne, there were moments when I recognised that Cuthbert had given me gifts and I wanted to think about them. Up on Brotherstone Hill, after I had managed to find it, I remember being overwhelmed by the glories of the Border landscape, my native place. The hills and river valleys were not just stunning scenery but places enriched by experience, made even more beautiful by events and not only things that happened to me. History rumbled down these roads, and lives were passed tilling those fields and tending the flocks on the hills. This place is not only a series of geological accidents but also somewhere made by the back-breaking labour of farmers and farm workers over millennia. Those heaps of years should not be remote, a time of long processes and small events that happened to other people. My family has been in the Tweed Valley for many centuries, their lives unremarked by historians, and they and countless others made the land look the way it does. Long before I walked its roads and tracks, they walked them too. For me, history is not something found in books or in TV programmes, it is deeply personal. Up on Brotherstone Hill, I understood that.
As I walked the banks of the Tweed and Till and across the moors and the Kyloe Hills, I looked at the changing landscape, but also noted how little its essence had altered since Cuthbert’s time. History is about change and loss, but also about continuity. There were times I saw sights Cuthbert had seen and often I felt I could reach out across the centuries to take his hand. He has achieved immortality of a sort, living on through the pages of history, his exemplary life inspiring many pilgrims to keep his memory bright. Mine will fade much more quickly, probably dying with the generation after my grandchildren’s. But it is enough to know that my children and theirs will remember me and understand something of the continuity I cherish as the generations unfurl after them.
Cuthbert’s love of animals and his longing for the coming of the Second Creation also had lessons. To heal itself and avoid the coming cataclysm of climate change, our broken and divided world is going to have to change. We will need to return to having respect for the rest of Creation and not see it only as a background, a context for human dominance. As President Macron of France told the US Congress in 2018, there is no Planet B, and a Second Creation of a secular sort must be undertaken. Despite his speech and sentiments, political leaders will not take initiatives until it is too late. The atavistic chaos in the United States and elsewhere means that communities and individuals have to begin the necessary process of change from exploitation to respect for our world. Cuthbert loved it because it was God’s Creation and we should love it because there is no alternative. The central difficulty is the disunity of purpose and policy across what seem like impossible and impassable divides. While building vast cities that are the toxic engines of pollution, the Chinese appear to be bent on growth at all costs, on dominance even, while other Asian economies are expanding at dangerous and poisonous rates. The President of Brazil seems poised to sanction attacks on the Amazonian rainforest. All of these nations want the standard of living the West has long enjoyed and are unlikely to listen to lectures on climate change and its causes. This is nothing less than the greatest crisis in the world’s history and all we as individuals can do is live simpler, less-consuming lives.
Throughout his adult life, Cuthbert craved solitude so that he had no distractions in his endless quest to move closer to God. He went to extraordinary lengths to achieve a hermetic life. By comparison to the cold and hungry years he spent alone, my time on Lindisfarne was piddling, but it did teach me something important. I had never in all my life spent such a long time alone and largely silent. To my surprise, I not only became comfortable in my own company, but I also enjoyed the peace that descended when I sat alone on the Heugh or out at Emmanuel Head. A simple gift from Cuthbert, but one I shall value in the life to come.
On the journey to the Island of Tides, I thought a good deal about the dead, about Hannah and the life she did not have, and my mum, dad and grannie, and the life they gave me. Instead of shedding more tears (all too easy for me), I found myself learning another lesson. So that we can find comfort in our sense of our lives, we should keep the dead close. They live on in us just as we shall live on in the lives of our children and grandchildren. It is a continuum, a version of an afterlife I cherish.
Part of my mission on the road to Lindisfarne was to focus on the good things in life and try to pull away from darker matters, mistakes, self-criticism, regrets and pessimism. I had also resolved to forgive those people who have hurt me over the years and I will not resile from that.
Reading back through this manuscript, I was struck by how often I wrote about death. Knowing it is almost a taboo subject, I was tempted to edit out some of these thoughts. I resisted for a simple reason: it was an important part of my purpose in walking to Lindisfarne, to confront death and come to an accommodation with myself that would help me when it comes. I am not sure I have yet succeeded, but at least the process has begun. And thinking about my death has certainly had an effect on how I want to live the life left to me.
The night before I wrote this, I interviewed the former Scotland rugby player Doddie Weir in front of an audience of more than five hundred about his recently published autobiography. At Christmas 2016, he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease. He was only forty-six at the time. In what sounded like a cold and clinical manner, the consultant told Doddie that he would not walk into the hospital in a year’s time. After the shock had subsided, all of his competitive, rugby-playing instincts shoved their way to the front of his mind and, appalled at the lack of available therapies and research, Doddie launched a charitable foundation to raise money. At the time of writing, he has given more than £1 million to help those who suffer from this terminal condition and also to pay for further research. And almost two years after diagnosis he is still walking.
In front of a packed audience of fellow Borderers, Doddie put on a bravura performance, even though he was clearly exhausted. I had seen him five months before and it seemed to me that his condition was deteriorating. He was confronting death with humour, some of it dark, and with action, all of it positive. Doddie knows he will die soon, but he is determined to go down fighting. In between laughing at his jokes, the audience repeatedly cheered him, applauding his immense courage. Perhaps it is the certainty that his massive six-foot, six-inch frame will fail and fall that makes his tragedy more poignant. There were moments, little more than glances, when I saw the hurt and the sadness behind his smile. Doddie’s strategy for confronting death works, but not all the time. And for me that too was a lesson. Even if I reach a settlement with myself, there will be days, perhaps weeks, when it falters.
On the same day I met Doddie, I had news of my blood sample. It was mostly good. I do not have prostate cancer and that is a mighty relief, but there is something wrong. I will need to have more tests to investigate whatever it is that is giving me frequent pain in my lower abdomen. I suspect we will never find out, and it will clear up anyway. When I shook Doddie’s hand at the end of the evening, I almost felt guilty that I had had a reprieve and that there would be none for him.
Up on Brotherstone Hill, late on an autumn morning, I looked east down the valley of the Tweed under skies that threatened rain. A southerly breeze was keeping the weather moving but overnight rain had made the grass too damp for sitting. Standing in the lee of the larger of the Brothers’ Stones, I felt I knew more than I did when I last climbed the hill. On my journey I had learned a great deal about Cuthbert and there seemed to be much that he could teach me. I know that his peace will come to me gradually, and in times when it does not I now know where to find it.
Like the people whose names are commemorated on the benches, I have come to love Lindisfarne. As they did, I see it as a haven, a place to run to when life overwhelms me, a place to grieve and a place to find a simple joy in the glories of the sea, the sky and the land. When I walked back down off Brotherstone Hill, I realised that this time I had found the right path.
> Acknowledgements
I want to begin by thanking Simon Thorogood, my editor, for his faith in this unlikely book, and for his astute suggestions on how to improve it. Debs Warner has done a lovely job in editing the text and removing some of the grit and smoothing some rocky passages. Thank you both.
For twenty years, my agent, David Godwin, has been much more than that. Every miserable scribbling drudge needs encouragement, tissues to dry their tears and some firm guidance. No one does all these things better than David.
Walter Elliot read every word before the story went anywhere else. His generosity in sharing his encyclopedic store of knowledge and lore, his gentleness in pointing out blunders and infelicities, and his passion for the stories I wanted to tell – all of these kindnesses were central to my enjoyment in writing about this journey and about Cuthbert.
To the Island of Tides is for Richard Buccleuch in inadequate acknowledgement not only for his unwavering support for what I do but also for all he does to make the Borders a better place. Our talks at Bowhill over many years have sustained me, made me laugh and made me a believer in the fundamental decency of the human spirit. Richard is not grand, but instead a great man, and this journey and this book are dedicated to him with love and friendship.
Alistair Moffat
Selkirk, March 2019
Index
Abrahamsen, Tormod ref1
Ad Gefrin ref1
AD time system ref1
Aebbe, Abbess ref1
Aelfflaed ref1, ref2, ref3
Aelfwald, King ref1
Aelle ref1
Aethelfrith ref1, ref2, ref3
Aethelthryth (Etheldreda), Queen ref1, ref2
Aethelwine, Bishop ref1, ref2
afterlife ref1, ref2
Aidan, St, ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5
and Inner Farne ref1
Alcuin of York ref1, ref2
Aldfrith, King ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5
Aldhun, Bishop ref1
Aldred ref1, ref2
Alexander I, King ref1
Alexander II, Pope ref1
Alexander III, King ref1
America ref1
Angles ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
animals ref1, ref2; see also birdlife
Anthony of Egypt, St ref1, ref2, ref3
Armstrong, Andrew ref1
Armstrong, William ref1, ref2, ref3
Arthur, King ref1, ref2, ref3
ascetics ref1, ref2, ref3
Athanasius of Alexandria, St ref1
Audrey, St ref1
Avenel, Robert, Lord of
Eskdale ref1, ref2
Bamburgh ref1, ref2, ref3
and Castle ref1, ref2, ref3
Bannockburn ref1
Baptised, the ref1, ref2, ref3
bards ref1
Bartholomew of Farne, St ref1
Basil, St ref1
Battle of the Standard ref1
Beal ref1
Bede, St ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
and Drythelm ref1
and Eata ref1
and Ecclesiastical History of the English People ref1
and Inner Farne ref1, ref2
and Metrical Life ref1
and Old Melrose ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5
and On the Reckoning of Time ref1
Beltane ref1, ref2
Bemersyde ref1, ref2
benches ref1
Benedictines ref1
Benrig Cemetery ref1
Bernicia ref1, ref2
Berwickshire Naturalists’ Club (BNC) ref1, ref2
Billfrith ref1
birdlife ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Birgham ref1
Black Death ref1
Blodmonath (Blood Month) ref1
bog bodies ref1
Boisil, Prior ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5
and Chapel ref1, ref2
Boyd, Margaret ref1
Braudel, Fernand x
Brendan the Navigator, St ref1
Bridge Well ref1, ref2
Brisbane, Sir Thomas ref1
Brothers’ Stones ref1, ref2, ref3
Brotherstone Hill ref1, ref2, ref3
Brownmoor ref1
Brownsman Island ref1, ref2
Cadrod, Lord of Calchvynydd ref1
calfskin ref1, ref2
Candida Casa ref1, ref2
Canon Tables ref1
Carham ref1, ref2
Carlisle ref1
Carnais ref1
Catterick ref1
causeway ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Cellach, Abbot ref1
Celtic Church ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Celts ref1
Chester-le-Street ref1, ref2
Cheviot Hills ref1
Christianity ref1, ref2, ref3
Church of Rome ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Cistercians ref1
Clearances ref1
Cliftonhill Farm ref1
climate change ref1
Cnut, King ref1
Coldinghamshire ref1
Coldstream ref1
Colgrave, Bertram ref1
Colman, Bishop ref1
Columba, St ref1, ref2
Columbus, Christopher ref1
Congregation of St
Cuthbert ref1
conversion ref1
Coquet Island ref1
coracles ref1
crosses ref1, ref2
Crossman, Sir William ref1
Cruickshank, Andrew ref1
Crystal Well ref1, ref2
Cuddy’s Cave ref1
Cumbria ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
curraghs ref1
Cuthbert, St ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7
and afterlife ref1
and animals ref1
and banner ref1, ref2
and Benedictines ref1
and Brothers’ Stones ref1, ref2
and Carlisle ref1
and Church of Rome ref1
and churches ref1
and coffin ref1, ref2
and Cuddy’s Cave ref1, ref2
and cult ref1
and death ref1, ref2, ref3
and dunes ref1
and Eata ref1, ref2
and Ecgfrith ref1
and flight ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5
and Inner Farne ref1, ref2, ref3
and lives ref1
and Monksford ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
and Old Melrose ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6
and relics ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
and sainthood ref1
and Synod of Whitby ref1
and Vikings ref1
and Wilfred ref1
Darling, Grace ref1, ref2, ref3
David I, King ref1, ref2, ref3
death ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4; see also afterlife
Deira ref1
Demarco, Ricky ref1
Dere Street ref1
Desert Fathers ref1
Devil, the ref1
Dionysius Exiguus ref1
Doddington Moor ref1
Domhnall Ban Crosd ref1
Donan, St ref1
‘Dream of the Rood, The’ ref1
Druids ref1, ref2
Dryburgh Abbey ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6
Drythelm ref1
Dublin ref1
Duddingston Loch ref1
Dun Airchille ref1
Dunnichen ref1
Durham Cathedral ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6
Eadfrith, Bishop ref1, ref2
and Lindisfarne Gospels ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Eadulf of Bamburgh, Earl ref1
Eardulf, Bishop ref1
Earlston Black Hill ref1
Easter ref1, ref2, ref3
Eata ref1, ref2, ref3
Ebrauc ref1
Ecgfrith, King ref1, ref2
Ecgred, Bishop of Lindisfarne ref1
Eden, River ref1
Ednam ref1, ref2
Edward I, King ref1
Edward I
I, King ref1
Edwin, King ref1, ref2
Eildon Hills ref1, ref2
Elliot, Walter ref1, ref2, ref3
Emmanuel Head ref1
Erskine, David Stuart, Earl of Buchan ref1, ref2
Etal ref1, ref2, ref3
Ethelwald ref1
Ettrick Forest ref1
farming ref1, ref2
Farne Islands ref1; see also Inner Farne
Fenwick ref1
Ferguson, Johnny ref1
Flambard, Ranulf ref1
Flodden ref1, ref2, ref3
Ford ref1
Forfarshire (steamer) ref1, ref2
France ref1, ref2
Francis of Assisi, St ref1
Friga ref1
Gaullauc, King of Elmet ref1, ref2
Gentiles, the ref1, ref2
ghost fence ref1
Gododdin ref1
Gospels ref1; see also Lindisfarne Gospels
Grandstand ref1
Great Dirrington Law ref1
Great Heathen Army ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Gregory the Great, Pope ref1
Guthfrith, King ref1
Haig, Alexander ref1
Haig, Douglas, Earl ref1
Halfdan ref1, ref2, ref3
Haliwerfolc (Holy Man’s People) ref1
Hallowe’en ref1
heads ref1
Hebrides ref1
henges ref1, ref2
Henry VIII, King ref1, ref2, ref3
Herefrith ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Heugh, the ref1, ref2
Hexham ref1
Higbald, Bishop of Lindisfarne ref1
Hinnegan, Willie ref1
Hobthrush (St Cuthbert’s Isle) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4
Holburn ref1
Holloway, Richard ref1
holy ground ref1
Hope-Taylor, Brian ref1
horses ref1, ref2
Horton Moor ref1
Hroc ref1
Hudson, Edward ref1, ref2
To the Island of Tides Page 29