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<\/a><\/p>\nThe remains of St. Blane’s monastery was down a long country road, which continued on. \u00a0A couple of cars were parked on the shoulder. \u00a0The sky was gray and the land was green, Scotland’s unofficial national colors.<\/p>\n
We walked up a slope along a “drystane dyke,” an unmortared stone wall. \u00a0It was about four feet high, wide at the bottom and with a single course of large stones on the top. \u00a0The two sides lean against each other and hold each other up. \u00a0Between them is a core of rubble–stones too small to do anything but fill space. \u00a0Every 10 feet or so a flat stone protrudes, a step for someone wanting to climb over.<\/p>\n
A section of the wall was down, giving a glimpse of how it was built.<\/p>\n Going up the slope we passed a boy of about 12.<\/p>\n “Do you know you’re about to enter a monastery?” Paul asked.<\/p>\n “Yes,” the boy said.<\/p>\n “Would you like to be a monk?”<\/p>\n “No thank you, sir.”<\/p>\n At the top, the ground formed several rough terraces. \u00a0Along the highest one was a wall of cliffs, which were mostly hidden by trees and vegetation growing from cracks. \u00a0At the base of the cliffs were jumbles of rock and a few fragments of wall–all that remained of the monks’ cells. \u00a0Overhead, ravens raucously came and went from the trees. \u00a0I took them to be the spirits of the monks, still defending their privacy.<\/p>\n The place was full of mystery, and mysteries.<\/p>\n The monastery was on the edge of sea. \u00a0But the sea could only be seen with difficulty by its inhabitants. \u00a0Was this a strategy against homesickness and distraction? \u00a0Nobody who sailed by could imagine there was a monastery behind the cliffs. \u00a0Was this what allowed it to survive for so long?<\/p>\n Where did the monks sleep as they moved these huge rocks to build their cells? \u00a0What did they eat and how did they cook? \u00a0How did they put up with the cold in winter, the midges in summer, and the rain year round? \u00a0And what makes such walls eventually fall down?<\/p>\n What was the purpose of a large ringed enclosure, which a sign called “the cauldron”?<\/p>\n When was the vallum–a wall separating the monastery from the secular world–built? \u00a0And was it necessary even before there were people outside who might have wandered in?<\/p>\n And all this to let the long-gone inhabitants spend lives in silence and self-denial, praying and copying texts to keep and spread the Word.<\/p>\n Paul did point out that while it seems like a primitive life, these people were among the few \u00a0who could use the most powerful information technology of the day–reading and writing. \u00a0This was the Silicon Valley of Europe!<\/p>\n Exactly who St. Blane was and how he got there is a little unclear.<\/p>\n The version told on a panel at the site says that a man named Catan founded the monastery in the late 6th Century and became enraged when his sister, Ertha, became pregnant out of wedlock. \u00a0He put her and her newborn son to sea in an oarless boat. \u00a0It drifted to Ulster in the north of Ireland. \u00a0There, the boy–Blane–stayed for seven years before returning to Bute, where he eventually succeeded his uncle as abbot.<\/p>\n The version in a witty travel book about the island by a writer named David McDowell is slightly different. \u00a0In it, Catan sent his nephew, Blane, to Ireland to be trained in the faith at Bangor Abbey.<\/p>\n “Seven years later, in about AD 600, he returned allegedly in a boat without oars, a fact which smacks of either the miraculous or the improvident,” McDowell writes.<\/p>\n The monastery was burned by Viking raiders in 790, and rebuilt by their converted descendants about 930. \u00a0The walls of the church that still stand, however, are from about 1135.<\/p>\n Two families–Scottish–were inspecting the ruin. \u00a0Paul engaged them in conversation. \u00a0One included this girl in an American flag sweater.<\/p>\n Inside the church on the grass floor were several flat gravestones, rubbed smooth. \u00a0Outside the walls was a graveyard on two levels, the higher for men and the lower for women.<\/p>\n The place was quiet and devoid of trash and graffiti, but full of presence. \u00a0It was a place where objects become symbols or remind you of other things.<\/p>\n The empty window of the church was an eye through which the people of the present could see what the people of the past saw.<\/p>\n A gravestone brought to mind some lines from Emily Dickinson.<\/p>\n \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0And so, as kinsmen met a night,<\/em> Between the upper and lower graveyards was a sunken path walled in stone.<\/p>\n On one of the facing stones the lichens had made a map of the clans of Scotland.<\/p>\n Dangling down was an inspiration for a drawing a monk might have made in the margin of an illuminated manuscript.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0We talked between the rooms,<\/em>
\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Until the moss had reached our lips,<\/em>
\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0And covered up our names.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n