Rosslyn

This is the Wood of Celidon,
Where Merlin dwelled with wolves and wild boar,
Nourishing himself with berries and nuts,
Reciting bardic strophes in incantation;
Where druids gathered in hazel groves
And King Arthur rode with his knights
To fight his seventh battle.
The Picts,too,stalked above the Esk,
Faces lurid with blue woad,
Battle-naked bodies a-swirl with tattoos
Of birds,beasts and crescents;
They carved symbol stones
With eagles, snakes, boar, bulls and salmon,
And wheel crosses covered
In intricate knotwork and whorls.

On an outcrop high above the Esk,
In a deep red sandstone ravine,
The broken stones of Rosslyn Castle rise;
Deep beneath the ruins
Extends a labyrinth of chambers and corridors,
Abandoned rooms and dungeons,
Where dwells the Black Dog,
That savage hellhound spectre,
Whose baying can be heard beneath the moon,
Whose footfalls echo in the empty castle,
Sounding portent of doom.
And,there, in that netherworld,
Lives the White Lady, waiting to reveal
A great treasure’s secret hiding place -
She, a maiden of the St Clair line,
Bewitched by an evil spell and doomed
To sleep in an enchanted chamber;
Upon a stately chair she sits and will remain
In white robe, adorned with gold,
Till the bravest of knights should come
To her rescue,taking up the magical sword
And gold hunting horn at her side
To rouse and slay the monster that guards her,
Breaking the evil spell.

A white deer runs from the hunters,
As the horn sounds among the trees,
Horses’ hooves gallop, and panting hounds race;
The terrified hart flees over hills, across burns,
With the pack snapping and snarling close behind.
The woods are full of bogles and nuckelavee,
Boomen, brownies, sheelycoats and fuath,
So fearsome that, on Halloween night, the villagers
Would light bonfires and carry burning torches
Round homes and fields to protect them.
Travellers who walked alone
On deserted roads ,or ventured into fairy rings
Of moonlit mushrooms might be abducted
To Elfland, and never seen again.
Thomas the Rhymer spent seven years
Beneath the Eildon Hills
Among the rivers and meadows of fairyland,
The apple orchards and halls full of feasting and dancing,
When the Queen of Elfland appeared to him
All in green, riding a white horse
With silver bells on its mane
And she stole him away with her
And made him a prophet.

Round the Apprentice Pillar’s base
Dragons chew the vine-roots
To keep wisdom from the unworthy;
At the crown is a carving
Of Abraham, Isaac and the ram in the thicket.
Is this Yggrasil, at the world’s end,
From which Odin hung upside down
For nine days and nine nights, fasting,
In order to achieve enlightenment?
All over the chapel the Green Man
Rears his head,growing old with the seasons,
Clockwise with the year;
Young and beardless in the east,
Mature and barbed in the south,
And,in the north., visages and skulls,
Pegtoothed and decaying,
With vines twisting from between the teeth
And out of vacant eye sockets.
Vines weave over the aisles,
Roses and lilies, oak leaves and wheat
Adorn the walls and window arches,
Earthly paradise, bursting with vegetation.
Each dawn the rising sun shines
Through the Lady Chapel’s east window;
The eightpointed Star of Bethlehem above,
Signifying this place midway
Between the fourfold realm of earth
And heaven’s perfect circle.