Note: Scottish Journal entries are from my 2008-2009 novel research.

September 9, 2008    Got here yesterday, very sleep-deprived but nonetheless Esme and I sallied forth to the Old Town and saw the university and its surroundings. We were in the rain for much of that time and full of that off-kilter feeling that lack of sleep and lack of orientation create. Even so, we managed to blunder into some sense of how the busses work. We bought a very detailed map of the city, which is absolutely beautiful—the city, that is, not the map. Everyone has been kind and helpful, from the bus drivers to the museum docents. Ezz’s friend Laura’s flat is brand new, convenient and cute. We are nearly caught up on sleep. The Scottish accents are understandable and musical most of the time. Now, late in the evening, we are watching a clever reinvention of Pride and Prejudice called “Lost in Austen.” Coz advises that all is fine with himself, Shay and Ty. This is near to heaven, except for lacking internet access and even that I can live without until the weekend when we move into Ezz’s uni flat.

For our “telly watching” experience, we are curled up on love seats.  Ezz is clutching her souvenir of our trip to Dumbarton Rock and Castle today, a stuffed toy Highland Cow puppet whom the manufacturer named Rhubarb and Ezz nicknamed Barbie for short. (Highland cows are hardy, good-natured and cute, but apparently not very bright. Don’t tell Barbie.) The day was made perfect by our fine guide, Jackie Queally. We got to the rock after about a two-hour drive and stopped for lunch in a little place called Scruples where I had a Panini. (The world has gotten a lot more uniform with regard to food—we’ve had very good Italian in the neighborhood for the past couple of nights. The neighborhood pubs looked to be too full of men of questionable integrity and I have a beautiful daughter to think of.)

But back to Dumbarton Rock and Fortress. Dumbarton (ancient Alt Clut or Alcuith) was the capital of the Dark Ages kingdom of Strathclyde, one of the several territories that made up Dark Ages

Scotland. The rock itself is impressive—a sheer drop on most sides. It was easy to see why so many military men wanted it for a fortress. I studied an artist’s interpretation of how it might have looked around the time of my novel’s protagonists, Aidan and Elswit…793 AD. The sketch placed huts—perhaps small barracks for soldiers, perhaps little clusters of civilian homes—at various levels where the earth creates terraces between the twin peaks of the rock. Another cluster was set atop a flattish part of one of the summits. There is a small beach at the foot of the rock where boats moving up and down the Clyde could stop and conduct trade. Or raids.

Having now seen the rock in all its majesty, two things occurred to me with regard to the story—first, it would make more sense that the borrowed reinforcement troops would have traveled back to Cathures by boat. Second, from the summit (554 steps!!) I could see the place where Aidan would have first caught sight of the rock from the road he was traveling alongside the river. It was easy to imagine what an impression it must have made. This is a scene I’ve been at a loss to write until now. At last, I know what to do. Incredibly helpful. I have several booklets about the rock that feature great pictures of it, but I’ve attached a couple images we took for now. The arch was 14th century, obviously wouldn’t have been there in Aidan’s time (late 8th century), but the view of the river obviously wouldn’t have changed much. That funny cave would be the same, too. Must think of some way to use that!

Our next stop was Govan, a burgh in the big post-industrial city of Glasgow. To my great delight, on the way to Govan we drove through the village of Duntocher, my great grandmother Maggie Martin’s birthplace, though we didn’t have time to stop and look at a few remaining stones in the Roman Antonine Wall that runs through it.

Glasgow looks like a somewhat overgrown Bridgeport, CT. Jackie wanted to show us a late 19th century church that boasts many ancient funerary stones. The church was shut down as a parish due to dwindling attendance but lives on as a museum featuring early Christian stones unearthed by an archeological dig in the 90s. Most of them are slabs with carved crosses and woven Celtic designs featuring fantastic animals. There was also a collection of “ hogbacks,” which are large Viking stones laid over graves. They feature end carvings of bears (the fallen warrior’s animal guide to Valhalla) and are shaped like huge stone fish.

Govan is the oldest archeologically verified ecclesiastical site in Strathclyde and the church there was thought to have a lot of influence locally—it may have been part of the territory governed by Dumbarton or Alt Clut (or Alcuith in my story). Later kings of Strathclyde are also thought to be buried here. Govan Old Parish is very close to a place called Doomster Hill, now lost under industrial development. It was a huge manmade mound that served as a sort of stage for royal pronouncements and a moot—a place for the local lord to render judgments and carry out punishments. It would be really cool to work that into the story somehow. Maybe a place for a heart-pounding encounter with the evil Beggar Lord? Mwah-ha-ha! We shall see…

Tomorrow Jackie is taking us to Culross, an ancient spiritual site across the Firth of Forth. The next day it’s Melrose, where an abbey was founded in the 7th century by St. Aidan—another important location in the book. Jackie had never been to Dumbarton before, but these next places are ones where she’s led many tours so it should be fun to hear what she has to say.

More to come from…
Your intrepid Dark Ages neo-Scot, Meg

My Year of Wonders started September 8, 2008, and concluded on August 31, 2009, with Lola and Gav-o’s departure for the UK. Can I have another extraordinary year now, please?

Edinburgh. She spent lots of time with them while she studied philosophy at the University of Edinburgh last year. They just spent a month with us here in Connecticut and became part of our family—whether they like it or not!

So… a year ago this Tuesday, September 8th, Esme and I were on a plane bound for Edinburgh. Esme would stay on there during her junior year abroad. I was on a journey to the country that captured my imagination at about age 9 when I first read about Mary Queen of Scots. It sounds mawkish, but it’s true: once I saw Scotland, part of my heart decided to stay there. It aches every time I think about the place.

Before I ever saw it, though, I chose the Scottish Border Country as the setting for THE RELIC, a historical fiction novel I’ve been working on for the past several years. I had already done much long-distance research on Dark Ages Britain, but with Esme in Edinburgh, I arranged to spend six weeks over two visits and learned so much more. During my first visit in September 2008, I dragged my poor child along with me to every abbey ruin I could find from the Firth of Forth to the Inner Hebrides.

We also did wonderfully ordinary things. We drank tea and made toast each morning at the flat Lola and Gav let us borrow while they were away. We visited museums and watched the incomparable historical programming you can see daily on BBC television.

There were memorable sets of threes—a terrific guide for three days in the first week, three magical days on Lindisfarne (which is actually in England, but it’s where my novel's story begins), three meals at Edinburgh’s Sheep’s Heid Inn (established 1360!), and three days in a bed and breakfast on a working farm near Loch Awe.

We walked for miles upon Scottish miles each day. I loved it all. I’ll post my journal entries from those travels, but suffice it to say that I cried when my plane flew out of Edinburgh. I asked myself how my great-grandmothers could bear to say goodbye to that beautiful country—even though they were each children when they emigrated to the US and had no say in the matter. One of them, who was just four years old, probably had no memories of Scotland. Neither would ever return.

Why did I love it so much? I loved the stark beauty of the varied landscapes; the openness of the people; the cool, drizzly weather; the long, tortured and gloried history of the place. I had to leave it all. Would I ever get to return?

Having Lola and Gav come to Connecticut in August restored the connection, besides being more fun than I am usually allowed to have. Some memories: Gavin channeling his inner 12-year-old while playing video games and laughing at YouTube with my son Tyree… Lola and Esme baking cookies and watching indie movies together—an echo of many evenings in Edinburgh… Gav, Coz and me hacking down weeds on Block Island for the better part of a day to find Tyree’s toy shark after my younger daughter Shay tossed it in there by mistake (?)… tiny Lola mothering tall, tipsy Esme after a 21st birthday celebration that featured the predictable excesses… all of us walking to Scoopy Doo’s to get ice cream… Ezz, Gav, Lola, Cyn, Robert and me doing the wave at a Red Sox game…

Of course, creating these memories made for a sad goodbye at JFK. To console myself, I poured a little nip of the Glenfiddich they brought for me and recalled the delightful phone conversation I had with Gav’s 84-year-old granddad, arranged just so I could bask in the dear man’s thick accent—a mix of lilts from his years in Aberdeen, Dundee and Fife. Lilts that are disappearing as the English-speaking world homogenizes along with the rest of it.

Cheers, Gav and Lola. Thanks for coming here and getting us to rediscover some of the wonderful things about New England, too—Block Island, FenwayPark, the Milford Oyster Festival… chowdah and lobstah. Somehow, Ezz and I will find a way to come back soon. You come back here soon, too.

Lola Miller and Gavin Morrice are my oldest daughter Esme’s very dear friends from

I want to thank my gifted young friend, Gavin Morrice, for creating this gorgeous, atmospheric website for me. (That’s Morrice as in “Morris the Cat,” not “Maurice the Sendak.”) Thanks, Gav! That settled, I will now answer three questions one might well ask. 

Is “Eilidh” really your middle name? Yes, Eilidh is my honest-to-goodness middle name. I use it here because I love it and because it may distinguish me from other, more illustrious Meg Greenes. It’s pronounced “AY-lee.” Eilidh is Scots Gaelic for “Helen.”

What castle is that? It’s Kilchurn Castle on the aptly named Loch Awe in Scotland. I spent three days on a working farm near Loch Awe in the winter of 2009. For more on that, see the “Scottish Journal” posts on my blog. Fans of Kilchurn Castle will note that something’s amiss--the photo is “flopped”—a mirror image of how it actually looks. This just worked better aesthetically for the website. For more on the castle, have a look at Undiscovered Scotland.

Why a castle in Scotland? Dark Ages Scotland is the primary setting for my novel-in-progress, THE RELIC. Scotland is also my favorite place in the world. It’s the birthplace of a couple of Greene matriarchs and the “home” I returned to, never having seen it before.