Imagination and Ruins
Wrætlic is þes wealstan, wyrde gebræcon;
burgstede burston, brosnað enta geweorc.
“Wondrous is this wall-stone,
wrecked by fate;
the city-buildings crumble,
the work of giants’ decays.”
From the 10th century Anglo-Saxon
Poem The Ruin
Anna my tour guide and I arrived in Eaglesfield, located in Dumfriesshire around lunch time hoping to find something to eat in this small village stretching out along the road. The only commercial establishment was the local village shop whose business model somehow sold everything one could possibly need-from propane, to picking up mail, to light lunches. Eating our lunches, we caught up on our personal journeys: hers as a tourist guide and very much a local historian of all things Cumbrian, Roman Britain and Border Reivers, and for myself how some simple questions about my family history had led me to this small corner of Scotland to find out some answers.
After lunch, our goal was to find the loaning (Scots: lane) which would take us to Blacket Tower, a ruined pele tower overlooking Kirtle Water that was once the seat of Bell power: economically, politically and militarily. Families on both sides of the border would build fortified structures ranging from smaller ones known as bastille houses to more elaborate towers that were more castle like as a way to protect their cattle and themselves during episodes of violence that dominated this area for close to 500 years. The prominent border families built over 200 pele towers along the borders and today we needed to find the remaining Bell family tower.
Blacket Tower
Blacket Tower is considered a scheduled monument under UK heritage law but its location on private property didn’t necessarily give us the right to visit. Recently the adjacent house had been a B & B which would have made it easier to visit, but it had now reverted to a private residence. But we hoped that a polite request from a Bell ancestor and Anna’s tour guide credentials would give us the access necessary to have a look. After a few knocks we heard a shuffling and an elderly woman opened the door.
She shared that she and her husband had recently bought the land as her husband, a retired farmer, needed some land to putter on. Well, it became readily clear that I was not the first Bell ancestor to have walked down the lane to visit, as she said that every so often a person claiming Bell heritage came to visit. Upfront she very quickly said she knew nothing about the history of the tower other than telling us there was some dates on the lintels and warning us to not go inside as it was not safe.
Well, that was easy. The tower was about 20 metres from the house, so we went to explore. Compared to some of the towers I had seen this was definitely not in great shape. It had over the years been severely damaged by both Henry VIII in the mid 1500’s during the Rough Wooing and by Oliver Cromwell’s forces during the civil war.
As we scampered around the tower we did in fact see a “W.B.” inscribed with a date of 1404. In all likelihood this refers to William Bell, who in 1424 was granted the lands of Kirkconnell by Archibald Douglas, one of the most powerful lords in Scotland and lord of Annandale. We also found sections of the tower dated in the 1600’s and 1700’s to mark the additions that were made over the centuries. Without any archeological training we were trying to put together the sequence of building and destruction when we heard an approaching ATV driven by the husband of the woman we had met. He had the requisite yellow Labrador retriever in the passenger seat. For a moment, I wondered if our impending conversation might be less than hospitable, given he did not know of the reasons for our arrival on his property. But just as his wife had declared, he was used to visitors coming to see the tower, and he could offer little more information than his wife. We did ask him if he had ever gone inside but he said no, seemingly content to not know the interior of the tower. As we were ready to go, he did offer up an intriguing observation: “I wondered who built this…and how they must have been a strong people” which immediately brought back a memory of a quote that was eerily similar to a part of the Anglo-Saxon poem The Ruin (see epigraph) reflecting on the ruins of the Roman Aquae Sulis in the now modern British city of Bath.
When Anna asked me what stood out for me after a day of visiting historical locations I came back to my trip to Blacket Tower. Although it was immensely satisfying to have seen a building that is associated with my family, I was really struck by the couple’s reaction to having a pele tower in their front yard. Just as the Anglo-Saxon poet didn’t know the details of the history of Roman Britain, neither did the couple know the history of the borderlands that created a need for defensive towers. Here I had come from thousands of kilometres away because I knew it existed and wanted to see it to understand it better. And yet, did I walk away with a deeper understanding of a ruin than a 10th century poet or a retired couple?
Five months later
Even after being home for months, I am still mulling over this question. It would be easy to pat myself on the back and laud my curiosity in finding out so much of Reiver history and the role the Bell family played, but the question and observations by a 90-year-old retired farmer when he “… wondered who built this….and how they must have been strong people” resonates with me with not only the honesty, but the awe and wonder wrapped in his comment and the meaning he derives from living next to a pele tower. It is an uncomfortable truth that I often conflate data collection as curiosity, something that I must begrudgingly admit is a trap I fall into. What gets lost with the focus on data is the sense of awe, wonder and imagination in sitting with the mystery of a ruin from the late Middle Ages that is intrinsically related to my family history. And what is so striking is the similarity between the farmer’s questions and observations and the Anglo-Saxon poem The Ruin when the unknown poet from the 9th or 10th century gazed upon Roman thermal spa in modern day Bath.
Walking through the sand of the Critical Desert
French philosopher Paul Ricoeur suggests that as part of our human journey after childhoods’ “naivete” we enter what he calls the Critical Desert. Slowly as we mature, we leave the world of wonder, the world around us demystifies and we enter into the dry middle ground of human awareness where we learn to analyze, dissect and look for the logical explanation. In our modern world it is important, as we use this skill to decide what is believable and what is not. But in the process, we reduce things to their parts to explain how things work, giving us the illusion of mastery. Awe and wonder are lost as our explanations will be able to explain how or why something happened, but not why it matters to you. One is left in a place that feels like the destination but devoid of meaning.
The farmer escaped the critical desert by abandoning the question of who built the pele tower, opting for embracing the wonder of the strength of the people who built it. Having worked removing stones from his field and building all the things that farmers need all his life, he knew the scale and scope of the effort it would take to build a tower.
The Second Naivete
According to Paul Ricoeur there is a way out of the desert. Paul Ricouer argues that there is a second naivete where we once again reawaken to our childhood ignorance. He argues that in childhood since so many things are new experiences we find wonder in the familiar. And this takes practice to re-awaken the eyes of the child. I know that lying on the ground and watching the clouds or the stars reanimates the familiar for me. In the day to day, I try to make a deliberate decision to be courted by wonder again, looking for the poetry of existence.
It is only through wonder that imagination opens to the mystery of the ruins of Blacket Tower. The collapsed stones are fragments of a story, incomplete but open to my wonder. The depth of time is seemingly an unbridgeable chasm, but symbols provide a bridge powerful enough to carry me across the desert to new meaning of what matters to me centuries later. The” W.B.” etching on the stones to the threshold of the pele tower are a symbolic portal that takes me and my imagination back to 1404. What was daily life like for William Bell and his family? What languages did they speak? What violence befell this place and what hopes and dreams remained in this quest for survival? Did he know that in a few short years he would be granted land, the most precious commodity of feudal times, and how it would inexorably tie the Bells to Lord Douglas of Annandale and that their fortunes would rise and fall with the Douglas family? The ruins tell a story of not only a time long ago in Scotland but one that will help explain their journey to the frontier of Upper Canada and ultimately to my family.
