If Britain is known for one thing, it’s standing stones, and anyone who has read Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series knows you need to be careful near them! Do not bring jewels!
The standing stones featured in the sidebar this next week or two are found in the village of Killin. Like Finlairig, the feature of the last sidebar, these were not on my itinerary. Like Finlairig, our host at the hostel (who was too interesting not to become a character in a future book!) mentioned these standing stones. In a phrase I will forever more associate with Scotland, he told us, like so many other people there, with a smile, that “there are no no-trespassing laws in Scotland.” These stones are actually in a field on someone’s private property, and we were asked to stop at the house to officially ask permission to visit the stones. (I wonder if this is a trial for the owners of the field, having people ask permission, or perhaps why no one answered when we knocked.)
They were one of our first stops on a slightly (very slightly, in fact, only barely–I just like to be accurate!) misty morning that would take us on a five mile walk around Loch Tay, through forest trails, to Finlairig Castle, out to a longhouse and finally all the way up, up the side of Mount…wait, that’s Dr. Seuss…before climbing Sron a’ Chlachain high over the village and Loch Tay.
A light stream of visitors pushed through the light mist, down a long, tree-shaded path to the stones. A few cars parked out in the field, of people who had apparently camped near the stones for the night. The field is a sheep pasture now, so we opened a gate and let ourselves in with the standing stones and the sheep, who kept a good distance between us and themselves.
What surprised me about the standing stones of Scotland was how many there are. As an American, I’m familiar with Stonehenge, and I knew it wasn’t the only stone circle. But I wasn’t aware of just how common they are, or how varied. They seemed to be everywhere, such that we had to pass up others we found near our route, and would have liked to visit, but just couldn’t make time for it all.
These particular ones, although it’s hard to see from the picture, stood maybe 5’8″ or a bit more for the tallest of them. I had an interesting experience there, when I walked inside the circle, which became fodder for Book 2 of The Blue Bells Trilogy and which I think I will save to describe another time! But that experience was unexpected and not repeated at the other set of standing stones, three sets of three, which we visited in the vicinity of the Fortingall Yew tree. It certainly brought to the forefront all the questions about the original purpose and use of stone circles, and made me think that our modern age should not be too quick to dismiss all we don’t understand as myth, legend, or superstition. It made it easy to believe strange things could happen there.
Perhaps, as I do further research on standing stones and cairns, while finishing up the editing of The Minstrel Boy, I will come up with more answers.
To fully appreciate the impact of this moment in Scottish history requires a little backstory. Scotland had long been its own, independent nation, but with the death of King Alexander III in March 1386, and the subsequent death of his only heir, Margaret, Edward I of England (Edward Plantagenet, Longshanks, and Hammer of the Scots, to give him his many names) stepped into the kingless gap to seize a nation. Through the years of the Guardians (including William Wallace of Braveheart fame) and the brief reign of John Balliol, Scotland fought against Edward, experiencing such dark moments as the particularly brutal town-wide slaughter at Berwick-on-Tweed in 1296.
Against this, Bruce had as few as 5,000 men, according to some sources. Others place the number at more than twice that, but what is not in doubt is that the Scots were severely outnumbered. Despite this, Bruce arrived early, chose his ground well, and prepared it for even greater effect, with caltrops and murder pits to stop England’s war horses. He drilled his men to work together in schiltrons, prickly rings of hundreds of spears all pointed outward, that could fell even a charging knight.
