Pentland View

‘Ye shall go out with joy and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the fields shall clap their hands.’ 

This is an anonymous quote in the Call of the Pentlands, A Land of Glamour and Romance, a book by Will Grant published in 1927.  Grant says that he thinks the author of these words is that of of a walker, as he so accurately pictures the mood of the man rising on an April morning with a full day’s holiday before him to tramp across the countryside.  In other words, a man full of the joys of spring.

In this book I’m carried along between Colinton to Carnwath, Mid Calder to Penicuik, West Linton to Ninemileburn, read about spring days, winter days, autumn days, grey days, and every journey and every day is written with poetic beauty, is upbeat and fills you with a desire to experience what the author has.

I’m reading this book for two reasons.  One, to pick up nature writing skills.  Two, to learn about life in the Pentlands, back in the 19^th century, when one of my ancestors and his father were farmers amidst these hills.  They are noted as living at Easter Bavelaw, in the mid eighteenth hundreds. 

Grant talks of men like my ancestors, of shepherds, speaking out at walkers’ complaints about the east mist rolling over the hill.  He writes these quotes in the old Scots dialect.   ‘It weets the sod, slockens the yowes.’  Another quote is a farmer’s words on being asked how the ploughing was going.  ‘The gruns ower weet, seek wi’ sap.’  It’s funny, but I imagine childhood memories of hearing such dialect. 

He writes of sparkling fields in sunny springtime after rain and of ‘Jim Crow strutting so pompously, looks admiringly at his two black feet, expands his breast, nods his head, and shows how he loves his independence.’  There is history too.  He tells of Druids with amulet necklaces and white magic wands, of Cistercian monks in white robes and cassocks, bare footed friars and of Knights Templar in white mantle with Red Cross and Knights of St John in black mantle with white cross, and many more historical people besides.

I have trampled in the Pentlands myself from time to time, namely Turnhouse, Castlelaw,  East Cairn as well as dabbling around the edges of Glencourse Reservoir, and Daisy Dell, an area I knew as a child.  I totally get why Grant writes so poetically about the hills because the feeling of euphoria, when you’ve struggled up a steep path to the top, is second to none.  There’s the magnificent view, the breeze in your hair, the blood pounding around your veins, the freedom, and to use the words of Will Grant ‘the air is fresh and scented with the breath of the heather and the moorland.’

All these walking pursuits were done before I knew I had ancestors living in the hills, I was oblivious of my own personal family history, but now I know of them, I want to climb the hills again.  There’s the Old Kirk Road, between Carnethy Hill and Scald Law, which I might attempt one day soon.  This would be the road my ancestors would walk, from the farm at Bavelaw, to church, in Penicuik and it would be good to try and bring their weekly path to life.  I did go to attempt it once, a number of years ago, but there were cows in the field and I’m no cow whisperer.  I tend to avoid close contact with the bovine group. 

The hills may well have been singing that day and the trees clapping but I wasn’t risking the cows charging.  But one day, soon, I will head for the hills singing All Things Bright and Beautiful to my ancestors as I walk the Old Kirk Road.  In the meantime, I’m away back to The Call of The Pentlands.