Reflection on the last of the Sun on the inspiration of Thomas the Rhymer the fields and flocks of James Hogg the Ettrick Shepherd the banks of Sir Walter Scott and bonnie braes of Robert Burns 1C

From hearthside to hilltop with deep valleys full of waterfalls and lochs holding remote impossible paths and hidden caves and well known places for either a fateful tryst, or a bold engagement with the elements, this bright and also then midnight world within worlds so readily generating the local lore and all framed up with the Church and the Law to give stories of reiving and smuggling, with tales of harsh impressment, worse imprisonment and of free rebellion bringing rightful conclusions of hell and damnation and dutiful fulfilment of sweet salvation. Pictured here is the landscape that within crofts and palaces, from ungovernable lawless banditry to righteous courts the people demanded to hear the stories and to enjoy any additions delicately woven within the weft of the telling such that hearts were set racing and breath was audibly held to hear of the facts and fictions that captivated their audience in the quite fabulous kenning of life and of fantastic love with severe and sweet sentiments flowing in the warp of the stories first told, repeated and crafted and then later collected and eventually published.

There are many lives shaped and even saved by the literature brought to life here in still running and racing heart the Scottish Borders. There are readers, listeners and viewers that have much more than idled their time in these highly praised poetic ballads and the rhapsodic idealised idylls and rather have instead seen the ways of history and remembered the times long gone with heroes and villains only known through the stories as the more formal records that remain lay closeted and less sought after than the fleshed out fanciful and factual literary treasures still selling in written form and in so much else the wonderful notion of this esteemed even venerated land, people and traditions giving a reverence to the continuation of the present informed in that tradition.

So the folklore and the stories have come to be told and retold, published and edited such that our history is focus and finessed from the hearthside through the bards words and the images available to our screens and so much more all across the internet fuelling the first flowering of some interests and fulfilling the passion of a sense of place and feeling of belonging for those that identify with the living and the dead upon this land.

Here the Sun is setting on the locations that were the inspiration of Thomas the Rhymer, here are the fields and flocks of James Hogg the Ettrick Shepherd, the banks of Baronial Sir Walter Scott and the bonnie braes of Robert Burns. This is the landscape that has now been transported around our world and is held in heart and mind and some will find it as soul food for their eternal sense of self. As the Sun sets the stories arise close by shared fires and in so many places and spaces that the light leaving the land sets us on our quest to embrace it all the better as we are shared companions with those that have loved and left it so loved for us to continue in the bright light and dark night aware of the consciousness around us propagating affection and the heat of a passion and of much due appreciation that brings us to great accomplishment.

© PHH Sykes 2024
phhsykes@gmail.com

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Private_Memoirs_and_Confessions...

James Hogg
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hogg#Career

Thomas the Rhymer, Folklore Scotland [SCIO]
folklorescotland.com/thomas-the-rhymer/

Robert Burns
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Burns

Walter Scott
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Scott

Taken in: UK / Scotland / Lanton (show map)

Taken on: June 14, 2024

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Sets appears in: • Reflection on the last of the Sun on the inspiration of Thomas the Rhymer the fields and flocks of James Hogg the Ettrick Shepherd the banks of Sir Walter Scott and bonnie braes of Robert Burns 1

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