History

OUR LADY OF WEDALE

I sing of one so fair and bright

Velut Maris Stella

Fairer than the day is light

Parens et puella

Old Medieval Carol

Several years ago I wrote an article for the Anglican society of Mary's Magazine 'Ave' on the ancient Marian shrine of Our Lady of Wedale which is situated at Stow some 8 miles from Galashiels near to the river Gala. The article was written at the request of Father David W Smith, the then rector of St. Peter's Episcopal Church, Galashiels, whose parish covered the village of Stow. Since then historical research and archaeology have moved on and have focused more light on this very ancient place of pilgrimage.

Of course the medieval church in the Border Counties of Scotland was always rich in devotion to Our Lady. There is the dedication of so many of our parish churches to the Madonna such as St Mary of the Forest at Selkirk, St Mary of Jedworth at Jedburgh (founded by Bishop Egfrith of Lindisfarne in 826AD), St Mary the Virgin at Hawick, St Mary at Bedrule and Our Lady of Pity at Ladykirk, and St Mary at Lauder to mention only a few. In addition there are the dedications of the four great Border Abbeys to the Virgin. The numerous 'Lady Lands' often denote fields attached to an altar or chapel dedicated to the Mother of God. Even entire farms have names that denote a Marian connection. Thus the farm of Marigold at Duns Berwickshire, refers to the rich lands that supported the Lady Chapel of Duns Parish Church in the middle ages.

Of particular importance at this very early date in our area however, is the shrine of Our Lady of Wedale. This site is so ancient that it takes us back to a period from which no contemporary records now survive. The first written mention of the shrine at Wedale is in the History of Britain written by the Welch Monk Nemius in 826AD. According to Nemius, King Arthur, in gratitude to Our Lady for a vision in which she assured him of a victory over the invading Angles, caused an image of Our Lady to be brought from Capadocia to be placed in 'Our Lady's House at Wedale'. This statue was clearly an ancient one and was said to be dark olive in colour, which is highly suggestive both of its early origin and its source in the Christian Eastern Mediterranean. Nemius goes on to say that when he wrote (826AD) the ancient statue was broken due to the wars of the period but it was still held 'in great honour and veneration'. It would seem that Nemius was quoting from Northern British Manuscripts of the period 500 - 600AD, which have now disappeared. The northern legends of Arthur set down in the 9th and 10th centuries such as the book of Taliesssien (taken no doubt by the 'men of the north' who emigrated from South East Scotland to North Wales in the 6th century), also refer to Arthur fighting a great battle against the Angles near to Castle Gunnion, which he won with great slaughter.

Professor Veitch of Glasgow University suggests that this particular battle may well have taken place in the region of the Galawater where there are extensive Romano British fortifications near Torwoodlee and Bow. In this battle King Arthur was said to have borne the device of Our Lady with the Holy Child on his shield in response to a vision in which Mary promised a Christian champion victory. As a result of this victory Arthur brought a fragment of the True Cross itself from the Holy Land, and also the statue of which mention has already been made and placed these in the church which he built in Our Lady's honour at Wedale. So much for legend. The sections in Nemius have been the subject of academic controversy. Some scholars have held that the passage was a later interpolation into the Historia Britonum but others accept the passages are datable to at least as early as 600AD.

Recent published research certainly favours the theory that Stow was sacred to the Virgin at an early date. History books, like fashion, would appear to be in constant need of revision and this would appear to apply no less to church history than to secular history. Most history books trace the introduction to Christianity into what is now Scotland, to the arrival of St Ninian at Whithorn and the founding of his Missionary Bishopric there around 400Ad. The assumption behind this being that when mention has been made of the three British Bishops attending the Council of Arles in 314AD those clergy would have been from the settled southern area of Roman Britain. Modern research has now confirmed that the church existed in England in the second century AD and that the claim of Tertullian (early third century AD) that parts of Britain unreached by Romans had become subject to the law of Christ, was in fact true. Recent excavations plus a reappraisal of the existing evidence indicates that from perhaps 280AD Carlisle was the centre of a Bishopric which covered an area of Cumbria, Dumfriesshire, Wigtonshire and Galloway. There was also missionary outreach to the Tweed Valley and perhaps as far as Fife and Strathclyde. British cemeteries beyond Hadrian's Wall in Dumfriesshire, in the South West, and in the Pictish regions in South Fife of the 4th century AD show Christian orientation, although some pagan burials were still taking place.

Perhaps more remarkable still is the fact that St Ninians Whithorn had been a Christian centre for at least a 100 years prior to the arrival of Ninian himself. Christian grave inscriptions at Whithorn testify to this as do other memorial stones to the early 4th century Christians, including one or two priests at Kirk Madrin in Galloway. Christian memorial stones in the Tweed Valley had been found of similar or slightly later date. The mission of St Ninian now appears to be that of someone sent to restore Orthodoxy (as the early church in Britain was notorious for falling into heresy) or perhaps to reorganise the church on dioceseon lines. After Ninian and his missions, disruptions from the Pictish north, the Irish and pagan Angles, caused immense disturbance and disruption in the British church. The impression the history books tend to give is of Columbus founding Iona (563AD) and the saintly Aidan converting the Angles of Bernicia in 634AD with a style of Christianity based purely on the Celtic monastic tradition with all its individualism and absentmindedness.

Again recent research indicates that this is not the whole picture. The latest research would seem to indicate that by the late 6th century there were at least 4 areas in what is now Scotland that were under Episcopal jurisdiction which could be called dioceses. These were the dioces of Rheged based on Whithorn and covering the Solway area from the Atlantic to Dumfriesshire: Strathclyde, based on the Clyde Valley, Gododin, based on both shores of the Firth of Forth and Bernicia, based roughly on the basin of the Tweed and its tributaries. Who the bishops were we do not know but Rheged and Strathclyde were roughly coterminous with the existing British Kingdoms in the area, Gododin covered a territory inhabited by the British of ManauGododin (around Edinburgh) and the southern Picts to the north of them and Fresian settlers. The Tweed Basin was already largely in the hands of the Angles.

Nothing is too clear for this period but the suggestion must be that other earlier Celtic priests were at work in the Tweed Valley prior to St Aidan and perhaps helping to pave the way for him and for the wholesale conversion of the Bernicicans and Northumbrians. Yarrow Kirk, Old Melrose and Coldingham were very probably eccliastical settlement of the Celtic church which were re-established on a larger scale by the Anglians following their conversion to Christianity; for example a simple hermitage turned into a monastery church or minster.

Some will say it is all so long ago now that it does not matter. I would state that it does. It may be comfortable to live with unchanging tales of the past but the truth so far as we can reach it is always better. I personally find it very exiting that the ancient legend of St Modan being a Bishop of a society of Christian missionaries based at Dryburgh until his death in 522AD might very well be no more than the truth. Let us all hope that further research in the years to come will throw a greater light on this as yet indistinct period of church history in Northern England and Southern Scotland.

Given this background for the area it is quite probable that Wedale was a Holy Place for the Ancient Britons prior to the Anglian settlements. At Stow today there are few visible remains of the shrines past. There is the present Presbyterian Parish Church, which unusually for Scotland bears the title of 'St Mary of Wedale'. That building dates from 1874. Its predecessor in the centre of the village is a roofless ruin of largely 15th and 16th century date. It is surrounded by an old graveyard while the manse garden contains a priests well, which was restored in the 18th century as a grotto. Nearby stand the ruins of the so-called 'Bishops House'. Some half a mile to the south on the banks of the river Gala lies 'The Lady's Acre'. This field contains the remains of the old pilgrim well of Our Lady of Wedale. Nearby existed until the early 1800's, the large boulder that was said to contain the imprint of the Virgin's foot (where she had alighted to speak to Arthur)! This stone was broken up to help repath the nearby turnpike road. Beyond the old curling pond lay the 'bogle wood' thought to be the burial place of the ancient shrine custodians. Further uphill and away from the river there existed until 1963 the scant stone remains of a building popularly called 'The Chapel of Our Lady of Torsonce'. Torsonce is the 18th century mansion of the Pringles of Torsonce. It is perhaps of interest that the Pringles who had several 'seats' In the Vale of Gala or Wedale for a great part of the Middle Ages, derived their name from Pilgrim and their armorial badge is that of the Pilgrim's Scallop Shell! The chapel remains were bulldozed ad used as bottoming for the road into the 'Lady's Park' by the tenant of Torsonce Mains Farm in 1963 despite local protests. The old pilgrim well itself and its ancient thorn tree are both in advanced states of decay. There has been some controversy over the site of the church that contained the ancient statue of Our Lady itself. Some have favoured the chapel site at Torsonce, others the site of the Old Parish Church in Stow itself.

Fortunately, Dr Michael Parker who is in charge of the Border Burgh's Archaeological project has done a great deal of recent work on Stow. I managed to interest Dr Parker, (who is very interested in the Anglian period of our history) in the Stow of Wedale, and as a result he has conducted a dig at the Bishop's House in Stow with a Manpower Services Commission team of voluntary unpaid assistants. He then hoped to excavate the old Parish Church site but was precluded from doing so by the local Community Council who seemed to have formed the erroneous impression that recently interred human remains would be disturbed. Hopefully permission will be granted at a later date. I am indebted to Dr Parker for the following extracts from his paper on the Stow of Wedale, which will be published shortly.

'Stow' is a word from the old English of the Bernician Angles and it means 'The Holy Place', signifying the religious centre for the area. The name 'Wedale' means 'The Valley of the Shrine'from the old English word WICHE meaning shrine and DAHL meaning dale or valley. Dr Parker contends that Stow was the site of a very ancient, (perhaps 7th century) and important Anglian site dedicated to the Virgin. Much of this is of course by inference, but the extreme Rights of Sanctuary (the entire Parish of Stow was a sanctuary from a very early date) enjoyed by Stow, tend to support this. That this was extremely rare is proved by the act of King Malcolm the Maiden circa 1153 - 1165 AD when he granted to the church at Innerleithen the same rights of sanctuary as existed at Stow and at Thinninghame. These extreme rights compared with church only sanctuary that existed at the 7th century monastery of Old Melrose which had contained the remains of St. Aeta, St Bosil and at one time St Cuthbert as well as St Drithelm. Clearly there was some special reason for the high favours granted to the Stow of Wedale by the Kings of Northumbria and Scotland and Dr Parker is of the opinion that if the old church were excavated it might yield the remains of early date Anglian sarcophagus which would resolve the matter.

According to Dr Parker the statue of Our Lady would have held the place of honour in an earlier building on the present church site, while there would have been a Pilgrim's Way to the Holy Well some half a mile to the south. He regards the chapel site of Our Lady of Torsonce as merely that of a Well Chapel, where visiting priests could celebrate mass beside Our Lady's Well. In Dr Parker's view, what seems to have existed at Stow was a complex of church, shrine and adjacent Anglian Manor.

The Lord of the Manor in the pre-Norman conquest period was also the priest of the shrine. These were not celibate clergy but rather the post passed from father to son as priest and thane of Stow. The earliest surviving church records which mention Stow are of early 12th century date. This is not surprising as most of the records of the Archbishopric of St Andrews of which Stow was a parish, were destroyed at the Reformation, just as most of the records of the See of Lindisfarne were destroyed by the Viking invasions. Early mention is however made of some of the hereditary priests of Stow. One was called Gillies (Servant of Jesus), and another was Gilmartin (the Servant of Mary). Others are referred to as the black priests of Wedale. The hereditary priests of Our Lady's house in Wedale were holders of a high place of distinction in early medieval Scotland. They, according to Hailes Annals and Fordham's Chronicles, shared in the 'Privileges of McDuff'. These were firstly; the right of placing the King of Scotland on his throne at the coronation ceremony; secondly, the right to be in the van of the Royal Army when the Royal Standard was unfurled, and thirdly, the right of extreme sanctuary and the remission of the penalty for 'slaughter of a sudden'. The last mentioned privilege takes us back to the early days of the Anglian settlement when each man had his 'bloodworth'.

During this early period the entire parish of Stow from Torwoodlee in the south to Heriot in the north was divided into two large estates. One, based at Stow itself, covered from Crosslee in the south to the northern boundary of the parish and the other based on Caddonlea or Crosslee covered the remainder of the parish.

There appear to have been Anglian memorial or preaching crosses at Corshope (Cross Vale) and at Crosslee (Cross Meadow). The memorial cross at Crosslee is mentioned in 1202 and in 1208. All the tithes for the entire parish were paid at the Parish Church whose guardian received the offerings of the pilgrims at the shrine. In addition to the right of parish wide sanctuary Stow also had a market free of all tolls at the site of Our Lady of Wedale. The library of Kelso Abbey makes reference to this in 1202, when the Abbot of Kelso tried to prevent his tenants from taking cattle to the market at Stow and thus avoiding the payment of tolls to him at Kelso Market.

Our Lady of Wedale seems, according to Dr Parker, to have begun life under the Bishopric of Lindisfarne and after the destruction of that See by the Vikings the jurisdiction was held by the bishops of Durham. However at the Council of Roxburgh in 1125 the Archbishop of York claimed jurisdiction over Wedale. By the early 1200's the Bishops of St Andrews were starting to exercise more effective control over Stow and by 1220 or perhaps a little earlier they had replaced the old hereditary guardians with a Vicar and placed a Bursar or Bailley in the Manor house to run the parish and shrine for their own benefit as Stow was a very valuable source in the form of rents, tithes and pilgrims offerings.

As well as letting grazing for cattle to the Cistercian Monks of Melrose Abbey the Bishop also had many of his own sheep and cattle in the Stow granges. The local people also had some rights however and on 18th October 1184 King William the Lion at Crosslee gave judgement in a pastoral dispute between the Convent of Melrose and the 'Men of Wedale'.

The Monks of St Mary's Abbey at Melrose however continued to cause trouble in Wedale and in 1268 the Abbot and many of the Melrose Monks were excommunicated for breaking the 'peace of Wedale' by invading the houses of the Bishop of St Andrews at Stow, and killing one and seriously wounding other members of the community. Other occasions were however more peaceful. In 1233, the monk Clemens was consecrated Bishop of Dunblane at the Stow of Wedale by the other bishops of the Scottish church. There is a surprising entry on 3rd November 1242 when David de Bernham, Bishop of St Andrews, consecrated the church of Our Lady of Wedale in Stow. This must refer to a rebuilt church on the ancient site or perhaps the bishop merely felt the earlier consecration had been deficient in form as de Bernham was an inveterate consecrator of churches. De Bernham reconsecrated many of the Parish Churches in the Border Counties, which can be traced back to the time of St Cuthbert, in the 1240's (for example, St. Mary's Lauder in 1241, St Mary the Virgin, Hawick in 1242, etc.).

During the centuries of Anglo-Scottish warfare the Vicar of Stow was often used as an emissary for the Scottish Kings and clearly the Parish was staffed by well-educated clergy and not hedge-priests. The Border laws between Scotland and England of 1249 stipulate that the Vicar of Wedale must swear fealty to the King of Scots and to the bishop of St Andrews.

While the bulk of the records of the diocese of St Andrews are lost it would seem that most of the Dark Age and medieval kings of Northumbria and Scotland visited the Stow shrine. King David the first signed a Charter at Stow in 1142. Stow was visited by King Malcolm the Maiden and by King William the Lion in1184 as well as by Alexander the First, Alexander the Second and Alexander the Third. The great of the realm were frequent visitors as well as the more humble pilgrims.

Hugo de Morville, Lord of Lauderdale and High Constable of Scotland signed Charters in Stow. The Scottish Exchequer Rolls for 1329 tell us that the marriage feast for the Earl of Carrick 'an heir to the Scottish throne'was held at Stow, and they must have been extensive as the King had to foot the bill for 1500 sheep and oxen! Amongst later Scottish monarchs to visit the Stow shrine were Queen Margaret Tudor, wife of King James IV in 1513, just prior to Flodden, and King James V in 1526 and 1542. Other famous visitors include the Scottish patriot Sir William Wallace in 1297 and the Duke of Albany in 1401. Another regular visitor was Cardinal David Beaton, Archbishop of St Andrews. He was a frequent resident at his manor house at Bowland some 4 miles from Stow where he was reputed to keep a mistress.

However, that prominent churchman never forgot his ecclesiastical duties. According to the Rentale Sancta Andree for 1541 Beaton gifted 'a silken chasuble with the arms of the Cardinal to the church of Stow'. In 1542 the Chancellor of the diocese 'incurred expenses of £20 for the roofing and tiles for repair of the choir of the church of Our Lady of Wedale'. Stow did not forget the Cardinal however and after his murder by Protestant reformers Wedale sent two stones of purest wax candles for the late Archbishops funeral masses in St Andrews Cathedral.

STOW AFTER THE REFORMATION

As with most parts of the Borders and the North of England the Reformation was slow to take hold. The Tridentine Mass was openly celebrated in the Parish Churches of adjacent Berwickshire until the 1680's. Stow parish, as did the rest of Lowland Scotland, alternated between Presbyterian and Episcopalian forms of belief, but even after the Reformation Stow remained a possession of the Archbishops of St Andrews, finally passing to lay proprietors on the dissolution of the Episcopal church in Scotland by William of Orange in1689. In 1659 the village of Stow was created a Burgh of Barony with market rights. Traces of the old Marian devotions survived for quite some time however. There were witchcraft trials in the 1650's at Stow by the then Presbyterian Kirk session. Some of the culprits were guilty of trying to cure minor ailments by drinking water from Our Lady's well and were attempting to cure diseases by reciting parts of the Latin Angelus and the Salva Regina! After 1660 the medieval church building suffered the demolition of its choir and the restoration of its nave. In 1771 the south windows were enlarged and a gallery added. The old church was abandoned and the present parish church of St Mary of Wedale was built and opened for worship in 1874. The centuries of puritan religion had not however destroyed entirely the old folk memories of the shrine. A local custom that survived the Reformation was the village game of Stow handball. This was played on Fasterns Even.

First comes candlemass

syne the new mune

the first tuesday after

is fastern's e'en

The youngest apprentice shoemaker in the village made the leather ball and the game began at 1 o'clock in the afternoon. The ball was thrown over the parish church roof 3 times. On one side were the married men and the shepherds of the area whether married or single and on the other side all the other unmarried men of the village and surrounding countryside. The 'goal' which the married men and shepherds strove for was Our Lady's Well, into which if they could manage to do so they dipped the ball three times 'in the name of the Father, the Son, and of the Holy Ghost'. The unmarried men aimed at playing the ball to a high point on Craigend Hill. Clearly here we have a survival from ceremonies at the medieval pilgrims well.

The late Victorian period saw a revival of interest in the catholic past, and Professor Veitch of Glasgow University brought the Arthurian legends of Wedale before the public in his two volumes 'History and Poetry of the Scottish Borders'. Since then, with the lessening of tensions between the denominations, that interest has increased. Following my original article, the Scottish Ward of the Anglican Society of Mary paid a visit to Wedale when Father Gordon W Reid the Ward Superior and Rector of St Michael and All Saints Edinburgh led a party of 33 pilgrims who visited the ruins of the old church and then ended the day with Evensong and Devotions at the modern Parish Church by courtesy of the Presbyterian minister. It is hoped it will be possible to celebrate mass at the old shrine site and visit the Holy Well at a later date and perhaps in some measure restore Marian devotions there.

Little survives today in reference to this very ancient holy place thanks to the violence of centuries of border warfare and the destruction n of so many records at the Reformation. As is so often the case in Scotland, we are left with tantalising glimpses of the medieval past. Thanks to the Benedictine Monk Michael Barnett some of these fragments were published around 1910. These include the following prayers.

O Mary, tender-fair, gentle-fair, loving-fair,

Mary beloved! Mother of the white lamb!

Our Lady of Wedale, pray for us!

Another surviving fragment is the sleep consecration or bed blessing.

I am lying down tonight

with Mary mild and her son

with the Mother of my King

who is shielding me from harm

There remains from this long saga the problem of the origins of the Wedale shrine. Was this a British Christian site, whether or not connected with Arthur or some other British warlord, or was it a very early holy place of the newly converted Angles of Bernicia?

Excavation of the ruined parish church might provide an answer. However, as the Angles took over the existing Celtic churches in the Border counties at Eccles, Yarrow, Dryburgh and perhaps Melrose, it seems possible they did the same at Wedale. In any case, we can agree with the Rev'd T Welsh BD who thought 'Our Lady of Wedale was the principle seat of sanctuary in Scotland and perhaps the oldest'.

Ian M Miller

SOURCES:

Nemius - Historia Britonum

Welch Annals - In particular 'The Bookof Tallessian'
Exchequer Rolls of scotland

Hailes Annals

Fordham Chronicles

Ridpath Border History of Scotland and England

Library of St Mary's Abbey Kelso

Library of St Mary's Abbey Melrose

Morton - Monastic Annals of Teviotdale

Craig-Brown - The History of Selkirkshire

St Andrews Diosessian Records

Glasgow Diocessian Records

Rentale Sancti Andree

Barnett - The Ancient Church of Scotland

Northumbria in the Age of Bede

Donaldson - The Teutonic Place Names of South East Scotland

Presbytery Records of The Merse and Teviotdale

Veitch - The History and Poetry of the Scottish Borders

Rev'd T Welsh DB - The Stow of Wedale

The Stow of Wedale by NM - Old Gala Club - Galashiels and District Historical Association

Lloyd Land - The Archaeology of Late Celtic Britain and Ireland (AD400 - 1200)

A Historical Atlas of Britain

St Peters Episcopal Church Galashiels - Magazine Articles

Dr Michael Parker - The Stow of Wedale