Corey Binns

Special to LiveScience

LiveScience.comSat Mar 3, 12:01 PM ET

Vikings navigated the oceans with sundials aboard their Norse ships. But on an overcast day, sundials would have been useless. Many researchers have suggested that the on foggy days, Vikings looked toward the sky through rock crystals called sunstones to give them direction.

No one had tested the theory until recently.

A team sailed the Arctic Ocean aboard the Swedish icebreaker Oden and found that sunstones could indeed light the way in foggy and cloudy conditions.

Would have worked

Crystals such as cordierite, calcite or turmaline work like polarizing filters, changing in brightness and color as they detect the angle of sunlight. From these changes, Vikings could have accurately determined where the polarized sky light was coming from and pinpointed the direction of the sun, said biophysicist Gabor Horvath.

"Under foggy or cloudy conditions a Viking navigator could have guessed the position of the sun hidden by clouds or fog by determining the sky light polarization in two celestial points ... and could have guessed the position of the invisible sun," said Horvath, of Eotvos University in Budapest. "Although all these are pure hypotheses, researchers can test the scientific possibility of such a polarimetric navigation."

How it works

In previous studies Horvath and colleagues demonstrated that Vikings might have required some kind of device, other than just the naked eye, to accurately guess the position of the sun on cloudy days.

Their latest findings, published in the April issue of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A, suggest that if Vikings were to have sunstones onboard, the Norsemen could have used them to determine where to go.

Lack of evidence

Unlike with Viking sundials, archaeologists have yet to find any remnants of sunstones.

The sunstone theory was first proposed in 1966 by the Danish archaeologist Thorkild Ramskou. Yet the only hint that Vikings used sunstones comes from a mention in a Viking legend, known as a saga.

"Although there is neither archaeological, nor historical evidence supporting this theory, it is so nice and splendid that it can easily trap the fantasy and imagination of both professional and amateur scientists," Horvath told LiveScience.

Along with Vikings, birds and butterflies are also thought to use polarized light to orient themselves, along with other cues such as the planet's magnetic field.

How Weather Changed History Old Ship Logs Unlock Secrets About Earth's Magnetic Field Today in History Original Story: How Vikings Might Have Navigated on Cloudy Days

IAIN LUNDY

EVEN at face value, at its most simple, the story of Rudolf Hess - Hitler's "lone nut" deputy, and his 900-mile wartime flight from Germany to Scotland on an apparent peace mission that ended with his plane crashing into a field in Renfrewshire - is one of the most bizarre and intriguing tales of the 20th century.

The history books tell us that in 1941 Hess, in the so-called lone nut theory, took it upon himself to fly to Scotland and try to meet the Duke of Hamilton in the hope of brokering a peace deal, only to crash his Messerschmitt-110 near the village of Eaglesham before being captured and held as a prisoner until the war ended. He stood trial at Nuremberg and was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in Berlin's Spandau Prison where he committed suicide in 1987.

Debris from Hess's plane is scattered across a Renfrewshire field, May 1941.

Picture: Getty/Hulton Archive

If only it was all so simple. The truth behind the strange and mysterious act continues to baffle people today. What was the real mission of Hess?

The Hess flight took place when wartime espionage was at its height. The need to bolster the country's morale in the early part of the war meant the flourishing of intelligence and counter-intelligence officers with their relentless spread of propaganda and hushing up of military setbacks. In short, no-one could be certain about the truth of anything.

Into this culture flew Rudolf Hess, the Deputy Fuhrer and the man responsible for the organising and structuring of the Nazi Party. Conspiracy theorists went into overdrive. Hess, some said, was lured here by British secret services…..The Duke of Hamilton was a Nazi sympathiser….the man in the plane was not Hess but a doppelgänger…..Hess was trapped by a plan laid by intelligence officer Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond…..The British royal family was "in" on the scheme.

Not unnaturally the theories were dismissed as nonsense. Intriguingly, however, at the Nuremberg War Trials of 1945, Hermann Goering, Hitler's Luftwaffe commander and a man who knew more than most about the higher echelons of the Nazi Party, was asked about the man named Hess who was on trial with him. He replied: "Hess? Which Hess? The Hess you have here? Our Hess? Your Hess?"

Adolf Hitler sits with Rudolf Hess during a Nazi Party meeting, circa 1939.

Picture: Getty/Hulton Archive

Many are convinced that the man who died alone in Spandau was not Hess but a body double and that the entire crash incident was staged. Of the many books that have been written suggesting possible theories, some say the real Hess was interrogated then executed at a house near Fort William, others that he died in the same plane crash near Dunbeath, Caithness, that killed Prince George, Duke of Kent.

The theories blossomed on the back of the British government's refusal to release secret papers on the case until earlier this year. Even when the files were declassified, many were missing, lost or destroyed – adding more fuel to the conspiracy flames.

Lord James Douglas-Hamilton, the son of the wartime Duke of Hamilton, who wrote the book The Truth About Rudolf Hess, recently uncovered previously hidden documents about the case. He claims his findings reveal that neither MI5, the British security service, nor the Duke had any interest in or knowledge of peace negotiations with the Germans.

The Secret Services, Lord James says, did consider using his father as a double agent after intercepting a letter intended for the Duke sent via an intermediary by Albrecht Haushofer, one of Hess's close advisers. The letter suggested that the Duke and Hess should meet in Portugal to discuss peace but the plan was thought too dangerous.

It was a purely unauthorised mission. Hitler did not know about it and was furious when he found out, that is clear from the papers.

-- Lord James Douglas-Hamilton

"The whole thing was a great shock to my father when it emerged. In fact he wrote at the time that he hoped the whole affair would be treated as a four-day wonder. I think he was being a bit optimistic," says Lord James.

"It was a purely unauthorised mission. Hitler did not know about it and was furious when he found out, that is clear from the papers."

Lord James, an MSP for the Lothians, said the claims that his father had been a Nazi sympathiser had not been hurtful to the family but adds: "I was irritated that the government was suppressing documents which I thought was neither necessary nor desirable. As a result, conspiracy theories grew up when the British had such a good story to tell."

He claims his research knocks firmly on the head the theory that Hess was lured here as part of a plot by British Intelligence to engage in peace negotiations. He also clears the name of his father who, even the most ardent theorists agree, was an "unwilling victim" in the whole saga.

What the research will not do, however, is satisfy everyone. Since Hess was found at Floors Farm, Eaglesham, by ploughman David McLean, an industry has grown up around the unprecedented incident.

We have certainly not heard the last of the mystery of Rudolf Hess.

http://heritage.scotsman.com/myths.cfm?id=1802742005

Wed 6 Jul 2005

The Glasgow Necropolis has attracted more than just the dead. Hundreds of tourists walk the vast garden cemetery every year.

Digging into Glasgow's buried past

RONNIE SCOTT

THE ITALIAN cultural historian Carlo Ginzburg has written that "the attempt to gain knowledge of the past is also a journey into the world of the dead". This has certainly been true for me, on my four-year journey of research into the origins of the Glasgow Necropolis, the first garden cemetery in Scotland.

As anyone who has ever undertaken research knows, you begin with what you know you don’t know, then quickly get to the stage of finding out facts and opinions that you didn’t know you didn’t know.

The two most surprising facts that I uncovered about the Necropolis during my research were that a remarkable number of ordinary Glasgow folk are buried there and that the cemetery quickly became a tourist hot spot.

One might think that this cemetery, like most others, is for the great and the good; they are for those with enough money to buy a plot and raise a monument. Certainly, in appearance it is an elite burial place, but scratch the surface (if you'll forgive the phrase) and almost the opposite is true of the Necropolis.

Grave markers at the Necropolis

There are 3,500 tombs, holding from one person to whole families. Some of these, however, are cenotaphs, memorials to people who are buried elsewhere, such as one to the author of Wee Willie Winkie.

William Miller, whose monument in the Necropolis calls him "the laureate of the nursery", was buried in Tollcross church yard, in the east of the city. When his friends and admirers heard the news, they collected funds to purchase a fitting memorial in the Necropolis. It was the place to be seen dead.

In contrast to the modest number of tombs, there have been around 50,000 burials in the Necropolis. Even allowing for an average of five burials beneath each stone, which is a generous estimate, that leaves a considerable number of bodies buried in common graves.

Common graves were constructed with as much care as private lairs. First a long pit was excavated, perhaps 12 feet deep and nine feet wide. This was lined with brick, then a cast iron lip was securely fixed to the inside edge of the top of the lining. As the chamber filled up with coffins, cast iron grilles were riveted onto the lip, securing the coffins against any disturbance.

Everyone buried in the Necropolis, whether in an expensive family mausoleum or in a common grave, is fully recorded in the cemetery burial records. The information is available today in Glasgow's Mitchell Library.

The cemetery quickly became a visitor attraction soon after its official opening in May 1833. Within a few months the Necropolis was in the printed guides to the city and began to be recorded in the diaries and books produced by strangers going to Glasgow.

The first edition of McPhun's Guide through Glasgow, published in June that year, reported that the hill opposite the Cathedral "has been recently very tastefully laid out as a cemetery, and, much to the credit of the citizens, has met with very general support. If the stranger's time admits it, he will be gratified by ascending this interesting spot."

Three years later, the cemetery had its own guidebook. A Companion to the Necropolis was sold, according to the frontispiece, by booksellers in Glasgow, Edinburgh, London and also "at the gates of the Necropolis" – a clear indication of a ready market for the guide, both for the prospective traveller and the curious local.

Visitors, no doubt as gratified as William McPhun hoped they would be, recorded their impressions of the Necropolis. For example, Alexander Campbell, a Scots-born Presbyterian minister in America, visited in 1847 and recommended "the melancholy pleasures of a visit to this capacious and much adorned garden of the dead".

Ronnie Scott is currently completing a PhD thesis on the origins and early development of the Glasgow Necropolis. The journalist authored Death by Design: The True Story of the Glasgow Necropolis (Black and White, 2005), and is founding chairman of the Friends of Glasgow Necropolis.

This article: http://heritage.scotsman.com/places.cfm?id=749572005

Last updated: 06-Jul-05 15:27 GMT

www.lothene.demon.co.uk

Warrior Women in Scotland

These include the Celts, Aife of Alba and Scathach of Skye.

Isabelle of England: (A.D. 1285?-1313?) took up arms against her husband and she was forced to flee to Scotland by Edward III.

In 1297 the Countess of Ross led her own troops during William Wallace and Andrew de Moray's battles with the English.

Isobel MacDuff, Countess of Buchan (1296-1358) fought for Robert de Bruce.

Christian, Lady Bruce defended Kildrummy Castle from the English during the Wars of Independence.

During the same war, the widow of David of Strathbogie defended the island fortress of Lochindorb against three thousand Scots.

Lady Agnes Randolph (1300?-1369?), known as Black Agnes, fought for de Bruce. In 1334, she successfully held her castle at Dunbar against the besieging forces of England's earl of Salisbury for over five months.

Phillipa of Hainault, Queen of Edward III, led twelve thousand soldiers against invading Scots in 1346 and captured their king, David Bruce.

In 1545, Lilliard led the Scots at the Battle of Ancrum.

The Scots army which marched on Newcastle in 1644 during the English Civil War is reported to have included women regular soldiers.

Jean (Jenny) Cameron, Lady Anne Macintosh, Lady Margaret Oglivy, Margaret Murray and Lady Lude were all involved in the Jacobite Rising in Scotland in 1745-6.

December 15, 2005 07:59

Pieces of worked flints excavated from the shoreline near Pakefield, north Suffolk, which have been dated to around 700,000 years ago by scientists with the help of new technologies

THE remarkable discovery of stone tools on the East Anglian coast has shown that human activity was present in northern Europe 200,000 years earlier than first thought, scientists have revealed.

Working at low tides, archaeologists excavated 32 pieces of worked flint from exposed geological beds along the shoreline near Pakefield, north Suffolk.

New techniques have allowed scientists to date the tools to around 700,000 years ago.

Experts believe that at the time the tools were made the climate in East Anglia was balmy and the environment home to a wide range of animals and plants including lions, hippos and elephants.

The findings are published in this week's Nature magazine and have been described as “Stone Age gold”.

About 700,000 years ago, Britain was connected to continental Europe and large rivers that drained central and eastern England meandered sluggishly into the North Sea basin.

Sediments laid down by these lowland rivers are found today along the coastline of north Suffolk and Norfolk.

As the sediments were deposited, remains of animals and plants became trapped inside them.

Archaeologists have revealed that, along with animals more often associated with African plains, early humans were evidently roaming the banks of these rivers.

In the early 1900s these Forest-bed exposures yielded controversial primitive flint “tools”, which were promoted by some specialists as evidence of early occupation, but these ideas were eventually dismissed.

The latest findings probably do not point to a colonisation of the colder temperate environments of northern Europe, but to a short-lived human expansion of range, the magazine reported.

Although the artefacts were discovered in England, the finds are basically still “Mediterranean”, in that they were produced along the balmy shores of what can be seen as an early Middle Pleistocene “Costa del Cromer”, the authors concluded.

Professor Chris Stringer FRS, head of human origins at The Natural History Museum and one of the report's authors, said human fossils originally discovered near Heidelberg, Germany, in 1908 were believed to represent Europe's oldest inhabitants, from about 500,000 years ago.

“However, human fossils from Spain (Atapuerca Gran Dolina) and Italy (Ceprano) have now shown there was a human presence in southern Europe at least 800,000 years ago, with some archaeologists arguing that stone tools in Spain are even older than this,” he said.

Prof Stringer said the discovery of stone tools at Pakefield had pushed back the presence of humans north of the Alps by about another 200,000 years, close to the age of the Spanish and Italian finds discovered in the past.

“The early humans who made those tools were living in East Anglia in a Mediterranean-style climate, alongside creatures such as hippo, elephant, rhino, hyena and lion at least 680,000 years ago,” he said.

“There has been much discussion about what social, technological or bodily adaptations humans would have needed to colonise northern Europe compared with their occupation further south, but the climate reconstructed for ancient Pakefield suggests that these pioneers migrated North in an environment that would have been familiar to them, during a short warm interval.”

Mr Stringer added: “It is likely that severe cold stages repeatedly interrupted human occupation in the North, a pattern that continued even into the last 20,000 years and we do not yet know whether the people at Pakefield were part of a population that gave rise to later heidelbergensis, or whether new people, bearing hand axe tools, came into western Europe and replaced or absorbed the previous inhabitants.

“Perhaps Pakefield and sites like it will one day yield the evidence to help us solve these fascinating questions.”

Steve Barret, Pakefield councillor on Waveney District Council, welcomed the discovery saying it was good news for the area and could provide boost to the tourism industry in north Suffolk.

He said: “Obviously this discovery is very exciting and anything that encourages people to visit Pakefield and Lowestoft is absolutely great because they are wonderful places to come and see. It raises the whole profile of the area and people are more than welcome to come and walk our shores.”

for National Geographic News

December 1, 2005

In July a team of English researchers reported the discovery of human footprints in Mexico that appeared to be 30,000 years older than when most scientists believe humans arrived in the Americas.

Researchers commonly accept that humans came to the Americas some 11,500 years ago. But new dating of the Mexican find suggests that the features are in fact 1.3 million years old.

If the new dates are correct, the footprints could be among the most incredible hominid traces ever discovered—or, more likely, not footprints at all.

"One-point-three million years is a lot older than I expected," said Paul Renne, director of the Berkeley Geochronology Center at University of California, Berkeley.

"I repeated the experiment nine times using different samples, usually single chunks of this basaltic rock, and they all gave the same unambiguous results."

Silvia Gonzalez, a geoarchaeologist at England's Liverpool John Moores University, and a team of colleagues first discovered the features in 2003. The researchers found them embedded in basaltic lava on the floor of an abandoned quarry near Puebla in central Mexico.

The team identified the indentations as footprints and dated them at 40,000 years old.

But if Renne's new dates are correct, the prints may be those of an incredibly ancient hominid, made well over a million years before the Americas are believed to have been inhabited.

Or they may simply be indentations in the rock.

Renne reports his new dating results in this week's Nature.

The First American?

Renne visited the site in June 2004 and noted that it shows the effects of many impacts over time.

"My conclusion is that this is a deeply disturbed surface," he said. "It's been walked on, driven on, walked on by animals. Sleds carrying building stones have been driven over it.

"It has a lot of indentations, and some of them are what has been interpreted as footprints. We found a huge variety of those of different shapes and depths."

In addition to the 1.3-million-year date, Renne's rock samples also revealed reverse magnetic polarity. The Earth's magnetic field reversed its polarity 790,000 years ago, Renne explained, so the rocks must be older than that.

He says he thinks it's very unlikely that the indentations are footprints but that he was keeping an open mind.

"We can't definitely rule out that these are footprints," he said. "I'm a geologist and not an anthropologist. But if that's true, it would be one of the most remarkable discoveries in centuries."

Gonzalez, of the English research team, responded to Renne's report with a written commentary released to the media.

She stressed that the layer of ash in which the features lie has been difficult to date, because it consists of many different materials that may be of different ages.

Her group used lasers to measure radiation in particles of the ash layer and dated them as being about 40,000 years old.

"[Those dates] now need to be explained in view of the new dates obtained by Renne's group," she wrote.

Gonzalez believes that the new dates spotlight the need for further research on the site by other techniques and by independent groups to establish a reliable timeline.

But even if Renne's ancient dates are correct, Gonzalez says, she isn't ready to rule out the possibility that the features could be footprints.

"Even if we are wrong and the … ash is indeed 1.3 million years old, as suggested by Renne et al., that is not automatically a reason to disregard interpretation of the features reported as 'footprints' simply because they are not in agreement with the established models for the settlement of the Americas," she wrote.

IAN MARLAND

Key points

• Did you know that today is St Andrew's Day?

• Scotland is slowly waking up to the significance of 30th November

• 41 events to be celebrated world-wide

"Internally, there is still a reluctance among Scots at home to celebrate St Andrew's Day, perhaps because it is perceived as a Nationalist totem. Leaving that aside, externally, it is important that at every opportunity we market Scotland to the rest of the world." - Kenny MacAskill, of the SNP

THE majority of Scots are likely to go about their business today without a thought for the significance of the date, and without any plans to note either its arrival or passing.

While our churches mark a point on the calendar and while some of the country's schoolchildren may have been primed to reflect on its religious aspects, for the vast majority of the nation, St Andrew's Day will be like any other.

So what is it about Scotland that makes us reluctant to commemorate our saint's day? And why are other countries so successful in using it to mark community and national pride?

There are signs Scotland is slowly waking up to the benefits of celebrating St Andrew, if not with an official holiday, then with cultural and social festivities which set the day apart from any other.

MSPs recently voted against a bill put forward by the independent Dennis Canavan to make St Andrew's Day a public holiday. But they agreed to examine ways that 30 November can be celebrated without the loss of a day's work.

So this year, the Executive hosts festivities in Edinburgh for the first time: a One Scotland Ceilidh playing at an open air stage and an indoor venue in the capital.

And across the world the Executive is supporting 41 St Andrew's Day events, with celebrations taking place as far afield as Australia, the US, Russia and Japan.

The First Minister, Jack McConnell, yesterday circulated a St Andrew's Day message to embassies and consulates around the world raising awareness of what he said were Scotland's achievements.

But academics, politicians and religious leaders said Scotland had a long way to go before it fully embraced the potential of the occasion - and urged the country to go further.

Professor Tom Devine, at the centre for Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen, said Scotland should be learning the lessons of the Irish over the last quarter of a century. "It is no accident that the Irish have raised their national profile above those of their neighbours. That they have raised their profile in such a way, through tremendous marketing guile, has been a major factor in the rise of the Celtic Tiger economy.

"The Irish story is an amazing one. It is a hard one to quantify in terms of Irish punts, but their celebration and marketing of St Patrick's Day has been a huge factor in the Irish economic miracle."

Kenny MacAskill, the SNP's justice spokesman, said Scotland should be doing all it can to market itself as a culturally rich nation.

"Internally, there is still a reluctance among Scots at home to celebrate St Andrew's Day, perhaps because it is perceived as a Nationalist totem. Leaving that aside, externally, it is important that at every opportunity we market Scotland to the rest of the world.

"We do it on Burns Night and Hogmanay and this day should be no different," said Mr MacAskill, who is co-author of Global Scots: Voices from Afar, a book serialised in The Scotsman which examines the nation's diverse diaspora.

"It is important to celebrate the day in Scotland because if you pull your punches at home then you are hardly likely to land a full-force blow abroad."

The Catholic Church in Scotland, which has backed the principle of a national holiday on St Andrew's Day, says it has recognised a movement towards a greater celebration. "People like the idea of St Andrew's Day and it is already marked in a variety of ways, in an unofficial sense, in the way newspapers and media cover it," a spokesman said.

"It has some way to go, but it does appear to be growing in stature. But strangely it seems to be very much a bottom-up campaign. Schools will mark it, or certainly some schools will, but there is not much in the way of official action from the top. While the position overseas is important, I think the way St Andrew and St Andrew's Day is seen abroad should be a reflection of how they are projected at home. If we don't celebrate the day in Scotland, then we can hardly expect our diplomats to market it around the world."

The programme of festivities today includes a performance of songs in the tradition of Robert Burns in Dumfries, the Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Awards in Edinburgh celebrating the best of Scottish talent and a Taste of Scotland reception in Brussels.

Pete Irvine, head of Unique Events, said he sensed a surge of national pride for St Andrew. He said: "I think there is probably a rising swell of opinion that feels we should do something. There is more awareness of St Andrew - the media are going on about it and there is more appetite for such things. In the wake of devolution there is perhaps more enthusiasm for events that define and endorse our cultural identity."

While a start may have been made on raising awareness of St Andrew, Greater strides towards embracing a national celebration may come with a change of attitude towards any political symbolism which may lay behind it.

Prof Devine said: "People suspect that there could be some kind of political agenda attached with St Andrew's Day.

"I don't believe that because the Saltire has been recognised for centuries as the symbol for Scotland, and the fact that it may be regarded by some as a symbol of nationalism is simply nonsense because it a symbol of the Scottish nation and as such has a resonance for people of all political parties and all religions. The same can be said for St Andrew's Day."

Mr MacAskill said: "We have to come to terms with celebrating Scottishness whether or not someone believes in Scottish sovereignty and independence.

"Nationalists have to give an undertaking not to view the day as a Trojan horse and instead see it as an opportunity to promote our people and our culture. We should argue about independence at other opportunities and leave St Andrew's Day for selling Scotland.

An Executive spokesman said: "Scotland's government has always seen St Andrew's Day as a fantastic opportunity to celebrate Scottish culture. It is a chance to demonstrate everything that is good about modern Scotland."

The saint we share with spinsters and singers

• St Andrew was a fisherman in Capernaum, Israel. He became an apostle of Christ and was crucified in 60AD.

• The cross on which he was bound (not nailed) was x-shaped - hence the x-shaped cross on Scotland's flag.

• Around the eighth century, the Church conceived of patron saints as a way of easing converts to the notion of a single god. Saintly relics held in Rome were dispersed.

• Tradition has it that in 733 a monk was warned in a dream to take St Andrew's bones to the ends of the earth. He landed in what would later be called St Andrews, Fife, with a tooth, an arm bone, a kneecap, and some fingers of the saint.

• St Andrew's Day is popular among Scots abroad. This year the Royal Gurkha Rifles will entertain Scots in Kuala Lumpur, whisky will be shared at the Renaissance Hotel in Moscow and there will be skiing plus haggis in Aspen, Colorado.

• St Andrew is also patron saint of Greece, Russia, Amalfi in Italy, fishermen, gout, singers, spinsters and sore throats.

• In Russia, St Andrew's Day was popular before the 1917 revolution and is mentioned in Dr Zhivago. It was banned as a religious holiday but parties with borsch and vodka are making a comeback.

Related topic

Saint Andrew's Day

http://heritage.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=656

This article: http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=2325712005

DIANE MACLEAN

WHEN the last member of the House of Canmore, the Maid of Norway, died on her way to Scotland, the issue of succession was unclear. Six so-called Guardians, representatives of the political community, were elected by a "parliament" at Scone to resolve the dilemma.

Balliol was declared king after the end of the reign of the House of Canmore, having vied for the crown with Robert the Bruce.

After his reign ended, unrest simmered, culminating in the rise of William Wallace.

Of the 13 contenders for the Scottish crown the two strongest were Robert the Bruce (the elder) and John Balliol. Bruce was the son of the second daughter of Earl Henry, the son of David I; Balliol the grandson of the Earl of Henry’s eldest daughter. The issue was far from simple, as both had legitimate and strong claims to the throne.

Unable to make a decision, the Guardians turned to Edward I of England for advice in deciding the succession. The proceedings began inauspiciously with Edward asserting that he acted as overlord of Scotland.

To decide the issue there were 40 arbiters for Bruce, 40 for Balliol and 24 of Edward’s own council. Eventually John Balliol was declared King – not only because of the input of Edward, but because 29 of Bruce’s own arbiters voted against him.

Balliol was crowned at Scone, Perthshire, on St Andrew’s Day, 30 November 1292, the last Scottish king to use the Stone of Destiny as his coronation seat. His price for the crown was high and a few months into his reign King John travelled to Newcastle, in north England, to pay homage to his liege lord Edward I.

King John tried to assert his independence over the coming months, holding a number of parliaments and attempting to manage Scotland’s own affairs. He was continually thwarted, chastened and humiliated by Edward, who treated Balliol as his vassal. By 1293 Edward was at war with France and needed help. He summoned ten earls and 16 barons to come to his aid. There had never been such a demand on such a scale for participation in an overseas war before, and the Scottish nobles balked at the request.

It proved too much, and the King and his Scottish nobles took action. Balliol signed a treaty with Philip IV of France – the first formal recognition of the Franco-Scots auld alliance. This fixed the future marriage between King John’s son and the niece of Philip. It also guaranteed military assistance if either country were threatened by England.

Rather than send troops to Edward to aid the French war, Scotland instead invaded England, in effect starting the Wars of Scottish Independence.

The Scots initially took Stirling and began a siege of Carlisle further south. Edward retaliated by sacking Berwick and slaughtering most of the male inhabitants. Edward then took Edinburgh, Stirling and Roxburgh. After just 17 days the superior strength of the English army and the relative inexperience of the Scots meant that the war of 1296 was effectively over. On 10 July, John surrendered himself and the country to Edward. He was stripped of his kingly regalia and Edward seized the Stone of Destiny and the relics of St Andrew. He then marched north, travelling extensively in Scotland receiving oaths of fealty from his Scottish subjects, which were entered in the Ragman Rolls.

Tower of London, where John Balliol was imprisoned for three years. Picture: PA

King John was imprisoned in the Tower of London and Scotland became a virtual colony.

For ten years various Guardians were appointed to rule Scotland, all of whom did so in the name of king John. Internal unrest simmered and flared periodically, culminating in the rise of William Wallace. Diplomatic pressure was put on England by the Scots, who petitioned France and the Pope to take action against Edward. In 1299, Pope Boniface VIII demanded that King John be released into his custody. Two months later Balliol was banished overseas where he lived out the rest of his life in his French family estates in Picardy.

He died in 1313 never having returned to his country.

This article: http://heritage.scotsman.com/timelines.cfm?cid=1&id=40882005

Much has been written about Wallace, most notably by Blind Harry, a minstrel who frequented the Scottish court in the latter half of the 15thc. He collected the stories of Wallace and attempted to put this into some sort of perspective, and praised his hero to the extent that much of the information can only be described by scholars as exagerrated. Remember he was playing to an audience, and was being paid to entertain and dramatise.

This unreliable source, and the tainted records of his mortal foes south of the border, together with on occasional surviving letter signed by himself and Moray in the aftermath of Stirling Bridge when they jointly governed the country, are all that remain......in writing.

Like the Arthurian legend, Scotland is peppered with sites and tales which allude to events in his life unmentioned in writing.

Wallace's Caves, Wallace's Leaps, Wallace Towers, and within a mile of my childhood home, the Wallace Monument (not the grand one at Abbeycraig overlooking the site of Stirling Bridge) on the site of the barn where he was finally captured and taken to London to be tried for treason against a King to whom he had never sworn allegiance, and who had illegally invaded his country.

Nearby is Wallaces Well, an untidy little monument framing a natural spring, from which it is assumed Wallace must have supped.

Once recent source I picked up, suggested Edward, the English King, had produced letters and documents in an attempt to justify his claim his overlordship of Scotland, and interestingly like the Tudors mentioned elsewhere claimed decent from Arthur, who presumably must have at that time been thought to have had some role in ruling what is now Scotland! It was also about this time that Dumbarton became the more commonly used name of the castle on Clyde Rock (Al Cluyd) , previously one name used was Arthurs Castle.

Anyway, back to Wallace, I'm not going to relate the whole story again, you can all go off and read it elsewhere, otherwise I'll still be typing sometime next year.

But a question to stimulate a discussion as Duncan requested,

would Wallace have been remembered by oral tradition in such heroic terms if he had gone free and faded into the mists, or was his execution and 'martyrdom' why he is now so revered?

A couple of other unimportant points to you which fix local importance for me regarding the Wallace story, I now live not much more than 14 miles from Lanark, and Gilbertfield Castle home of Sir William hamilton,the man who translated Blind Harry's epic story and opened it up to a modern audience, is just a mile away.

The next town to mine along the road is Rutherglen, where Sir John Menteith was attending a church service and was told of Wallace's whereabouts and set off to capture him 5 miles north at Robroyston.

Oh, and anyone starts asking questions based on the screenplay of Braveheart and thinking it was all true, I'll gladly start making valid historical corrections........in the nicest possible way!

Sat 15 Oct 2005

Scotsman.com

CLAIRE SMITH

A HOST of hidden works of art, obscure scientific instruments and paintings has been unearthed in a year-long search of Edinburgh University departments, it emerged yesterday.

The treasures - including an original Robert Adam drawing and a beautiful reproduction of the altarpiece of Cologne Cathedral - were scattered around the university, and now have been catalogued for the first time.

Curators also unearthed a set of illustrations to Tolkein's Lord of the Rings and a mysterious sunshine recording machine, about which very little is known.

Edinburgh University is believed to be the first academic institution to attempt to catalogue its entire collection of diverse and unusual objects.

Collections Support Officer Jacky MacBeath said around 2,000 objects had been catalogued.

A superb nineteenth-century lithograph reproduction of a gilded medieval altarpiece was found in a cluttered storage closet by university maintenance staff. Another surprise discovery was an original pen and ink drawing of a design for Old College Edinburgh, by the building's architect, Robert Adam.

The drawing had hung in an office for years and was assumed by everyone who worked there to be an engraving of the completed building itself. Ms MacBeath said: "That was a real find. This was a drawing done in 1791 and beautifully framed."

A set of drawings by Petal Joan Roberts, inspired by Tolkein's Lord of the Rings and donated to the university in memory of Professor David Talbot Rice, was another intriguing find.

"They are beautiful drawings, and what is amazing is they are very like the Lord of the Rings films, particularly the scenes with Gollum and Gabriel."

The Cromwell Room in Old Moray House, in Canongate, is listed as an item in itself. Dating from 1618, the room, which was part of the old School of Education, was the site for a meeting between Oliver Cromwell and the Duke of Argyll in 1648.

Ms MacBeath said the detective work of the audit had already captured the imagination of people working in the university, who had begun looking at the university buildings with new interest.

Members of the public can take a sneak preview of some of the treasures on the University of Edinburgh Cultural Collections Audit website.

Eventually the plan is to give members of the public the chance to take a look at some of the treasures by mounting an exhibition where some of the most interesting items can be seen.