A'tween Troup Heid and Gamrie Mohr

“a field naturally adapted for fancy to sport in”

If you look carefully at this photo you can seen St John's church - a grey ruin - in the middle distance. 

It is a place of beauty and one can walk up to it from the beach following the line of a little stream, but it has a strange history:

St John's Church

On a high cliff beside Gamrie-mor stands the old Church, said to have been built in 1004. It was dedicated to St John, and, according to tradition, it owed its erection to a vow made by the leader of the Scots in a conflict with the Danes, that if St John gave him the victory this monument of his gratitude would be raised above the foeman's landing-place.

Until the Church became a ruin three skulls were preserved fixed in niches in the wall on the east side of the pulpit. The story is that the defending Scots succeeded in gaining possession of the top of the hill, directly over the Danish main camp, and, by rolling down large stones upon the invaders, obliged them to abandon it and escape by the north-east brow of the hill where many were killed in the fight.

1004 A.D. – Castlehill of Findon/ Den of Afforsk

 “a field naturally adapted for fancy to sport in”  -  (A’tween Troup Heid & Gamrie Mohr 1968.)

  

You and I are sacrilegious in this very

Christian place and yet the thought of Danish invaders

Stabling their horses in the Church of Saint John

Out of spite to the saint favoured by the enemy,

Still shocks.  They regrouped and had another

Set-to with the Scots.  But the Thane had had enough.

So with rolled stones and drawn swords

They bore down on the Danes and

cut them to pieces to a man.

The skulls of the three sacrilegious chieftains

Were set, grinning, in the walls of the church

And the saint had the last, cruel laugh. 

© Sally Givertz 

I have a habit of standing just outside the front door each morning and looking up at St John’s; watching the weather, checking my thermometer and breathing the fresh air. There were rumours that one of the skulls was still on display at the Museum of Banff (MOB) but sadly these are unfounded.  The skulls seem to have been looted and lost but the church still stands and was being used as a burial-place until the last century.  It still holds a certain power - a sort of "stage presence" up on Mohr Head and we are pleased to see it there still. 

Next week I'll focus on some Scottish contemporary poets and the wonderful resource of the Poetry Archive.