week 10 2024

Welcome to Stirling Archaeology’s Monday blog, a weekly summary of all the interesting history and archaeological things happening round Stirling which finishes with a very bad joke and a poem so make sure you read to the end! A second blog is sent on Friday focussing on research. Both are compiled by Dr Murray Cook and are generally free but if you like what I do and want to help please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Regardless we hope you enjoy the blogs and perhaps you’ll come along to a dig sometime!

So some of you will have seen the press coverage on the mystery in the grounds of the University? Now inevitably there was some press hyperbole in this and several people emailed to say that they knew what it was! However, the state did not, its official record was a single line…the structure is both much more impressive and incredibly whimsical and you may have seen my previous blog on it. Regardless….it has been cleared and is an excellent, if a bit scrambly walk and well worth an hour of your time!

One of the people I follow on twitter is an excellent historian who works with raw documents and he posted this little extract here from one of the English Royal Parks. Now I think its fascinating as the Henry here is James VIth’s son, he’s the one who had the incredible feast in the Great Hall in his honour at his baptism and who died with his younger brother Charles getting the throne.

Now its extremely likely that what is being described here also happened in Stirling’s Royal Park but our records are much more spotty.

I’m also starting the volunteers cemetery guided at the Top o’The Town if anyone would like to join us please email me cookm@stirling.gov.uk

Events

Our friends in Bannockburn House have asked for a call to arms to explore some odd features in the garden (which might be a garden feature, a dump of rubbish or a dump of rubbish over an older building!) and I’ll be leading a wee dig there on March the 14th…please let me know if you’d like to come. Cookm@stirling.gov.uk

and we are going to do day at the possible Roman Fort at Manor Powis to begin to prepare the ground on 27th March …please email me if your interested cookm@stirling.gov.uk

Loch Ard Local History Group 

Next meeting is on Wednesday 6th march at 7.30 pm.

Our speaker is Bruce Keith who focus is on 

Are We Nearly There Yet?: A journey celebrating Scotland’s milestones, inspired by The Road and the Miles to Dundee.

Venue is Kinlochard Village Hall.

Annual Membership £15 or £4 per presentation.

SAVE THE DATE THE ROYAL BURGH OF STIRLING IS 900 YEARS OLD AND THE 25TH OF MAY IS THE MARCHES…..ALL WELCOME AND MORE DETAILS HERE.

The week before on the 18th of May (11-1)we will be checking the boundaries and swearing the Birlawmen in the Chapel Royal in the Castle and this is open to all but must be booked cookm@stirling.gov.uk

and remember if you fancy joining me on a dig this year here are the key dates!

The poem this week is Robert Frost

Birches

When I see birches bend to left and right

Across the lines of straighter darker trees,

I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.

But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay

As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them

Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning

After a rain. They click upon themselves

As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored

As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.

Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells

Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—

Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away

You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.

They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,

And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed

So low for long, they never right themselves:

You may see their trunks arching in the woods

Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground

Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair

Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.

But I was going to say when Truth broke in

With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm

I should prefer to have some boy bend them

As he went out and in to fetch the cows—

Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,

Whose only play was what he found himself,

Summer or winter, and could play alone.

One by one he subdued his father's trees

By riding them down over and over again

Until he took the stiffness out of them,

And not one but hung limp, not one was left

For him to conquer. He learned all there was

To learn about not launching out too soon

And so not carrying the tree away

Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise

To the top branches, climbing carefully

With the same pains you use to fill a cup

Up to the brim, and even above the brim.

Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,

Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.

So was I once myself a swinger of birches.

And so I dream of going back to be.

It’s when I’m weary of considerations,

And life is too much like a pathless wood

Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs

Broken across it, and one eye is weeping

From a twig’s having lashed across it open.

I'd like to get away from earth awhile

And then come back to it and begin over.

May no fate willfully misunderstand me

And half grant what I wish and snatch me away

Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:

I don’t know where it's likely to go better.

I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,

And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk

Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,

But dipped its top and set me down again.

That would be good both going and coming back.

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

The joke was stolen from twitter….