The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Romantic honeysuckle scent can help to chase away aggravations of the day
Honeysuckle is quite my favourite wild flower and for the last month it has lit up the hedgerows with its colourful blossom. It has the most romantic scent I know and I take bunches home for the Doyenne. In the evenings when the air is slightly damp its scent fills our sitting room.
Hamish and I take a last walk each night past a beech hedge with honeysuckle growing through it and its dreamy fragrance chases away the aggravations of the day. It will be coming to an end soon but I’ll have the memory of it until next year.
For me July is the most plentiful and productive month. The tallest wild flowers like frothy, cream-white meadowsweet and cow parsley or Queen Anne’s lace dominate the countryside, crowding out the modest red and white campion and blue tufted vetch and yellow meadow vetch, and lots more which struggle to get noticed.
Thirty years ago there was a scheme to rid our countryside of giant hogweed which was introduced to the UK as an ornamental plant. It may look like outsized fool’s parsley but it is a nasty, invasive weed. Its hollow stem has a toxic sap causing blistering if you get it on your skin.
I notice it growing in some profusion alongside the road running from Upper Northwaterbridge past the Stone of Morphie to Marykirk.
Pink spears of rose-bay willow-herb colonise forest clearances with their windblown seeds on feathery sails. Tall, handsome foxgloves grow along the roadsides and in open woodland – mostly pink, sometimes white and very occasionally I’ve come across a yellow flowering one. The gales earlier in the year, which felled so many trees, have opened up large parts of woodland and I expect to see an even better showing next year.
I recently picked up a little book I’ve wanted for years. The Historical Guide To The Edzell & Glenesk Districts published by DH Edwards, Brechin, around 1893 is a mine of information about the locality I grew up in. It’s a lot more long-winded than its modern counterpart would be but it’s packed with anecdotes and history.
In the opening lines the author writes: “A temporary retirement from the bustle of every-day life in the town, to the quietude of rural scenery, is one of the most pleasing solacements of a busy life.” Quaint language but it sums up beautifully the effect Glenesk can have on the weary spirit.
The book is a mine of information – I’m not sure just how accurate some of it is – of the history of the district. For instance there’s been age-old debate about the
history and purpose of the White and Brown Caterthuns, the hilltop Iron Age forts overlooking Glen Lethnot.
Some think the Celts built them as military defences against Roman invaders, others that they were associated with Druidical ceremonies. There’s a reference to sacred oaks below which the “Druid folk” communed. Dates for their construction ranging from 3000BC to 500BC muddy the waters further.
I much prefer the explanation found in the historical guide that the forts were built by local witches as fairy dwellings.
In the course of one morning a “brawny” witch carried stones collected from the bed of the neighbouring Westwater river for the walls, in her apron. She would have collected more but her apron strings broke under the weight of a particularly large stone which still today can be seen where it fell on the north slope of the hill.
Yes, the story we receive, / And the country fouks believe, / Is, that Sin, the
Devil’s mother, / Brought those ragged stones together, / Piled them round and built the Ring; / Till one day her apron string / Broke beneath the mighty weight / Of a stone, that even yet, / From the flowery banks so green, / In the river may be seen.
They were greatly exercised with witchcraft in the 17th Century. An entry in the parish records of Menmuir for 1649 read: “No lecture this week, because the minister was attending the Committee ….
for the trial of witches and charmers (enchanters) in their bounds.”
Ministers played a prominent part in the suppression of witchcraft as recorded in an old minute from Marykirk Church: “Nae sermon here this day – the minister bein’ awa at Fettercairn burnin’ a witch.”
The story inspired Brechin poet James E Watt to write a poem which starts: At
Marykirk, in days of yore / Ae Sabbath morn the auld kirk door / A curious inscription bore, / Addressed to puir and rich, / In whilk the minister made mane / That there that day he could preach nane, / As he to Fettercairn had gane / To burn a wicked witch.
It is recorded the folk of Marykirk heartily approved of their “guid” herd’s actions – nothing like a guid burnin’.
Handsome foxgloves grow along roadsides and in open woodland