Yetholm's Festival Week sees the advent of our 2024 exhibition - 'Everything You Needed' - a look at the shops and traders which once made Yetholm the metropolis of the Bowmont valley. Many thanks to Dorothy Sharpe who has collected and prepared the material on display. We also take the opportunity of the summer months (when we can store away the seating used in the winter for our talks) to put up our semi-permanent displays on bondagers and the 'bondage' system in the Borders/Northumberland, as well as a feature about Bob Fraser a prize-winning local shepherd and sheep-dog-trainer. We hope this will make the centre a memorable place to visit for the many Cuthbert's Way pilgrims and general tourists who visit us during the summer months - so far the comments in our visitors book are enthusiastic.
   We will leave the display up until the end of September. Open every day - 10.00-4.30 - Free.

   At some point, probably in the late 1950s, a researcher from St Andrew's University visited Yetholm kirkyard. Her name was Betty Willsher and she was later to published several highly regarded books on Scottish graveyards and gravestones - more information about her can be found on Wikipedia, click HERE. While visiting Yetholm her attention was drawn to a gravestone along the wall of the graveyard, which she photographed. Her photographs can now be found on the Canmore digital archive - click HERE. Her images of the gravestone which intrigued her can be seen above (click on each to expand). The carvings on the back and sides are charming and the text on the front enigmatic. It is clearly in Latin but, as Betty Willsher, notes 'it is . . . very hard to make much of it!'
   The stone has been lost for several years now. Not that it had been removed, but ivy had grown on the wall behind it and engulfed both it and several of the other interesting stones which are adjacent. Since 1929 graveyards around churches have been the responsibility of local authorities rather than the Church of Scotland. Currently this maintainance consists of periodic visits with a motor-mower and health-and-safety surveys resulting in gravestones being overturned (much to local outrage). No attempt is made to cut back shrubbery. Many gravestones in Yetholm kirkyard now have sycamore and holly bushes growing from seeds which have lodged at their base and which remain untouched after a visit from the motor mower. Grave enclosures are never tidied - those for the ministers Rev. Blackie and Rev. Baird are a jungle. Interestingly the photo on the right above shows the yew trees in the background, which surround the old Pringle family enclosure, neatly trimmed - currently these are out of control and that corner is a wilderness.
   Recently we have cut back some of the ivy in order to bring back in to the light the stone which so attracted Mrs Willsher. The photograph below left shows the site before we set to work, while the one on the right shows it after the overgrowth had been cut away. The mysterious stone is marked with an arrow.

   It is clear that at some point someone has collected together many of the most interesting carved stones and lined them up against the wall, but when this was done and where they originally stood is unknown. This may even have taken place when the new kirk building was erected in the mid-1830s. Inevitably all of them show some wear and many are unreadable. The ivy has also done damage, not only eroding the surface, but also pushing them forward or tugging them backwards - several of the stones, including the mystery one, are now leaning at angles which make them difficult to see clearly.
   The Latin gravestone was worn when it was photographed by Betty Willsher and it seems to have degenerated somewhat. We also uncovered adjacent stones and photographed them too. In the early 1990s Elspeth Ewan of Yetholm painstakingly transcribed the inscriptions on every stone in the kirkyard, her results being published by the Borders Family History Society. Thankfully she was able to read some of the inscriptions on some of the other symbol stones, which now seem to be unreadable. Her transcriptions along with the photographs we took will hopefully help preserve these sadly eroding memorials.
   Elspeth noted the stone in question but, like Betty Willsher, was unable to read it. It is stone number 23 in her catalogue, which she describes as 'Symbolic stone with illegible inscription: MA[RIE] [BENN]ETT (?). We hoped to be able to make another attempt at translation and took several photographs from different angles and in different light to see the text could be made more legible. Could it really be for a lady called 'Bennett' - not an otherwise attested surname in the area? And what of the rest of the extensive inscription? One of the photographs is shown below:

   The very top of the stone is so eroded to be entirely unreadable. Most of the rest has a scattering of letters, words and eroded patches, which it is difficult to make any sense of. 'Nocte Cadit', for example, means 'night falls', but the preceding word is worn away. Fortunately the very bottom line has four very clear words: 'Expectans Acta Suprema Dei'.

   Fortunately, too, we nowadays have a tool available which was not around when Betty Willsher or Elspeth Ewan were doing their work - namely Google. A short word-search revealed the source of the entire text.
   In 1685 a French Protestant fled from Roman Catholic persecution when the revocation of Edict of Nantes repealed freedom of worship. His name was Maximilien Misson. He found refuge in England and in the 1690s accompanied the son of the first Duke of Ormond when he went on a Grand Tour. While on this tour he took notes and, on his return, worked them up and published them as A New Voyage to Italy with a Description of the chief towns, churches, tombs, libraries, palaces, statues, and antiquities of that country, published in London in 1695. It became a popular text, much republished - a kind of Lonely Planet guide. When visiting churches Misson often transcribed the Latin epitaphs carved on grave monuments. He noticed one such in a church in Naples, on the tomb of a certain John Alefelt, a Danish gentleman who died while travelling. Misson's picture and his transcription of this text can be seen below:

  It would appear that whoever designed the Yetholm gravestone has copied the first six lines of this epitaph, along with the penultimate couplet, to produce the following poem:

   Ut flos mane viret, tepida productus ab aura,
Languescit flaccus vespere, nocte cadit.
Sic nos mortales orimur, morimurque miselli,
Certaque vivendi, non datur ulla dies.
Praesentis vitae est cursus labyrinthus, in illum,
Ex utero intravi, morte vocante abii.
…………..
Nunc jaceo, Patriae longè tumulatus ab oris;
Judicis expectans acta suprema Dei.

Which can be very roughly translated:

   As a flower grows green in the morning, warmed by the breeze,
It languishes in the evening and falls at night.
Thus we mortals are born, we die miserable,
Wanting to live, no more days are given.
The course of the present life is a labyrinth;
I entered from the womb, I leave, called by death.
…………
Now I lie buried, far from my native land,
Awaiting judgement from the mouth of God Almighty himself.

Thank you to Ian Clark for help with this translation.

   With this Latin text as a guide it is now possible to make out many of the hard-to-read letters and words on the stone - and to fill in blank patches. The Latin text, in fact, scans on to the stone perfectly.
    The opening lines perhaps help explain the motif on the reverse of the Yetholm gravestone. Betty Willsher notes that it is 'perhaps meant to be a tree of life, or the Tree of Temptation and fall. Whatever, it is the most primitive tree ever!' Well, if it is meant to be a stylised flower rather than a tree then perhaps the cutter didn't do such a bad job. The symbol ultimately has its origin in the Bible: “All flesh is as grass, And all the glory of man as the flower of the grass. The grass withers, And its flower falls away, But the word of the Lord endures forever.” (1 Peter 1. 24-5 - and see Isaiah 40. 6-8). Sadly this side of the gravestone seems to have degenrated since Betty Willsher's photograph was taken - and it is very hard to push into the ivy to get an photograph of the now-leaning stone:

   None of of this gets us any closer to identifying the person who was buried beneath this stone. What Elspeth took to be 'Marie Bennett' is actually the words 'Manet Viret'. There seems to be room for a couple of lines of writing above the start of the Latin poem, which more than likely once told us  the name of the person buried, but this area is so badly eroded that nothing can be made out. The stone must date from the first half of the eighteenth century and there cannot have been many in Yetholm at that time who had the learning or the taste for such a Latin memorial. A minister, perhaps? The Rev. Robert Collville died in 1731? A single letter 'E' is visible floating above the Latin text - might it be the final letter of his name? The only other gravestone in Yetholm kirkyard is for the George Story, the village schoolmaster, so a predecessor in the role may also have designed a similarly erudite memorial - ???
   In the absence of a name, the broad edges of the stone contain bone emblems and, on either side, two males figures, dressed in early 18th-century style clothing, which could almost be a portrait. Sadly, they too have degenerated in recent years. The photograph below, which is not as clear as the one taken by Miss Willsher, is the best impression obtainable: