Kirkconnel Church

In the 16th century a tragedy of particular poignancy is said to have taken place very near to the churchyard.

Kirkconnel Church Graves

On the hill to the east of the churchyard once stood a fine example of the Border Keep or Pele Tower which, in the days of the Border Reiver, dominated the landscape of the lands to north and south of the English Scottish Border. Here stood Bell Tower, alas no longer to be seen as its stone has followed that of the church and its wall to a more prosaic use .

Here lived Helen Irving. By all accounts she was a beautiful girl, much admired by the local lads. There were many suitors for her hand yet she loved but one by the name of Adam Fleming. All who loved her reluctantly accepted that her heart belonged elsewhere – all but one. Robert Bell of Blacket House felt spurned by Helen’s rejections, especially as he was favoured by her family. They were hopeful that she would marry within her station: Robert Bell, from a family of prominence, heritage and financial security, fitted their aspirations of a worthy suitor for Helen’s hand.

But Helen loved another.

She would meet the man she loved, Adam Fleming, in the twilight on Kirkconnel Lea or in the churchyard. Their meetings were brief, infrequent and full of the pledge of undying love. Helen was torn between love of her parents and their desires for her future, and the love she could not restrain for her manly and beautiful Adam. Love supersedes all bounds and though Helen was heart sore at the subterfuge which she employed to meet with her heart’s desire, she knew that Adam was the only man she would ever love. Many were the times she headed home after the brief passionate encounters with Adam, dull of pace in her walk to the Bell Tower, sorry that she deceived her parents, yet dreaming of a future where their happiness would reign.

Unbeknown to the two young lovers, they were watched. Robert Bell of Blacket House was insane with jealousy and determined to rid the world of his competitor for Helen’s hand.

Accordingly one night he followed the two lovers to their secret assignation and waited, watched, profuse with an insane desire to confront his rival. He was armed with a gun which made his intentions clear. When he saw the young lovers embrace any caution he might have felt was thrown to the wind. He lost any reason and waited for the lovers to part so he could get a clear shot at Fleming. The opportunity eventually presented itself and he fired off the gun at his adversary.

The two lovers, Helen and Adam, instinct and that inherent make-up which warns of danger, were instantly aware of the ferocity of ill-feeling which confronted them. Helen threw herself in front of her lover and took the full volley of shot in her breast. She fell dead on the spot. The shot was meant for Adam.

Site where Fair Helen was murdered

Adam, riled beyond any reason, knowing that his dear Helen was dead, launched himself down the banks of the Kirtle Water where the murderer Bell was frantically trying to reload his gun. Before he had achieved this Adam was upon him, sword drawn. In his rage he cut Bell to pieces, hacked him to death. There was no sweetness in the insane revenge. All thoughts of Bell immediately dropped from his mind, the sight of his headless body meaningless in his grief, Adam ran back up the slope of the Kirtle’s bank, cradled the head of his loved one in his arms, and sobbed until it felt as if his heart would break. He nursed his dead lover throughout the hours of darkness.

With the light there came some reason. Adam knew he would hang for the murder, that he had little alternative but to leave his home before he was apprehended. The deaths of Helen and Bell would not be easy to explain should he stay and confront her parents. They were aware that Helen had feelings for Adam which superseded friendship. They had tried to discourage them, hoping their daughter would marry a man of better means to support her through life. Robert Bell was such a man, or so they thought. It would not take them long to reach the conclusion that Adam was responsible for such a heinous crime. The discovery of the corpse of their daughter and the mutilated body of Bell which had all the hall-marks of a fierce encounter with a man of strength and resolution born out of intense hatred, would immediately point to Adam Fleming, thought of initially as the spurned lover. Adam Fleming fled the spot, left the country and was not heard of again.

Initially accused of a double murder in his absence, the truth finally came out. Friends of Helen vouchsafed for the integrity of Adam, for his love for Helen. They told of the meetings in the churchyard and the jealousy of Bell.

A few years later a servant of the Bell Tower, visiting the churchyard, was shocked to find the prostrate body of a man lying atop Helen’s simple grave stone. A quick inspection verified what he had thought as he approached the grave. The man was dead; he recognised the still handsome features of Adam Fleming who had lived at the Bell Tower some years before. He ran as swiftly as his old legs would carry him and informed the aged parents of Helen.

In due course Adam was buried next to Helen, a sign that her parents had forgiven the girl for her love of a man who had never forgotten her; a man who had proved after years on the Continent of Europe he had not forgotten his first and only love.

The Graves of Helen and Adam in Kirkconnel-Churchyard.

Afterword.

There is more than one version of the tragedy that led to the death of Fair Helen. In one Robert Bell escaped after he had murdered Helen and was pursued across Europe by Adam Fleming. He eventually caught up with Bell in the streets of Madrid and shot him dead. It was only then that he returned to Kirkconnel, and on seeing the grave of his lover, succumbed to grief at his loss, and died.

Sir Walter Scott, writing at the beginning of the nineteenth century, recorded the Ballad of Fair Helen in his ‘Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border’.

It is a poignant reminder that the aggression and confrontation which was rife for centuries along the English Scottish Border did not erase the finer feelings of all who were trapped in its maelstrom of death and butchery.

I wish I were where Helen lies,

Night and day on me she cries;

O that I were where Helen lies,

On fair Kirconnell Lee.

Curst be the heart that thought the thought,

And curst the hand that fired the shot,

When in my arms burd Helen dropt, (maid)

And died to succour me!

O think na ye my heart was sair (sore)

When my love dropt down and spak nae mair! (spoke no more)

There did she swoon wi’ meikle care, (with great care)

On fair Kirconnell Lee.

As I went down the water-side,

None but my foe to be my guide,

None but my foe to be my guide,

On fair Kirconnell Lee;

I lighted down my sword to draw,

I hacked him in pieces sma’ (small)

I hacked him in pieces sma’,

For her sake that died for me.

O Helen fair, beyond compare!

I’ll make a garland of thy hair,

Shall bind my heart for evermair (evermore)

Until the day I die.

O that I were where Helen lies!

Night and day on me she cries;

Out of my bed she bids me rise,

Says ‘Haste and come to me!’ –

O Helen fair! O Helen chaste!

If I were with thee, I were blest,

Where thou lies low, and takes thy rest,

On fair Kirconnell Lee.

I wish my grave were growing green,

A winding-sheet drawn ower my e’en (eyes),

And I in Helen’s arms lying,

On fair Kirconnell Lee.

I wish I were where Helen lies!

Night and day on me she cries;

And I am weary of the skies,

For her sake that died for me.

A Personal Thought.

Until last weekend, it has been some years since I last visited Kirkconnel church yard. It is a wonderful place, replete with an ambience of former times, of centuries long past. To the romantic, with a knowledge of the story of Fair Helen, it is a place to stand, think and consider her fate and that of her lover, Adam Fleming, their love, and the rash impetuousness of a spurned lover.

Such feelings are naturally tempered with thoughts that the story, though based on fact, has clearly been embellished down the years. The romantic in me, whilst succumbing to the sadness of the story, still readily accepts that parts of it cannot be true.

Imagine my surprise then when I viewed the story board set in front of the graves that are the supposed resting places of Helen and Adam.

Story Board in Front of the Graves of Fair Helen and Adam.

The last sentence runs as follows:-

‘The romantic story of the Ballad might be an 18th century invention, and the association of the monuments in the churchyard is questionable’.

Britain is awash with political correctness. Do we really need to take it to the realms of romance, poetry, folk-lore and legend?

Please think about it!

The post Border Ballads – Fair Helen of Kirkconnel appeared first on ScotClans | Scottish Clans.

Border Reivers following the Hue and Cry

In 1530 James V, king of Scotland, was a mere lad of seventeen. Freed at last from the clutches of those men who endeavoured to reign in his stead, in his minority, he was determined to prove that he was the real power in Scotland.

One area where allegiance to the clan and its leader came before any deference to royal power was the Scottish Border country. There the clans were a law unto themselves, particularly troublesome and unruly.

Accordingly he moved south from his seat in Edinburgh intent on doling out justice and punishment to those who were of particular notoriety. It is said he had six thousand armed followers.

The history of Johnnie Armstrong of Gilnockie, a power in the Scottish Borders, is well recorded. By subterfuge, some say as the result of a ‘loving letter’ he was encouraged to wait upon the king at Carlenrig, south of the Borders town of Hawick. There James, incensed by the apparent affluence of the fierce Border Reiver and his twenty-four followers, ordered their execution without trial. Johhnie had fallen into a trap from which there was no way out. He pleaded with the rash, impetuous youth of a king but to no avail. He resigned himself to his fate but not before saying in the Border Ballad which tells his story:-

‘To seek hot water beneath cold ice,

Surely it is a great folly-

I have asked grace at a graceless face,

But there is none for my men and me!’

He and twenty-three of his followers were strung up on the spot. The twenty-fourth was burned alive in vengeance for the burning of a poor women and her son in which he was the instigator.

In time, when maturity replaced the rashness and callowness of youth, James would regret his actions at Carlenrig. He lost any allegiance the Armstrongs of Liddesdale had for the Scottish monarchy on that fateful day in July 1530. In 1542 at the rout of the Scottish army by the English at the Battle of Solway Moss, the Armstrongs withheld their support for the Scottish cause, even harassed the losers as the terrified remnants of the Scottish army fled the field of conflict and headed back north.

James died shortly afterwards. He was about thirty years old.

Before he arrived in Carlenrig in July 1530, James V was determined to mete out the royal justice against two other Border Reivers of particular renown. One was Adam Scott of Tushielaw, known as the ‘King of Thieves’. Not only did he reive both far and wide; he was feared for the way in which he summarily despatched his adversaries. He strung them up from the trees which surrounded his tower at Tushielaw.

He was soon apprehended by the army of James V, and, it is said, hanged from the very trees from which had swung in their death throes many of the Reivers who had contested his bloody and audacious raids.

The other Border Reiver who was the subject of James’ ferocity was William Cockburne of Henderland (near St. Mary’s Loch). It is said he was hanged over the doorway of his Tower there.

Sir Walter Scott tells us in the ‘Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border’ that ‘in a deserted burial place, which once surrounded the chapel of the castle (the Tower of Henderland), the monument of Cockburne and his lady are still shown. It is a large stone broken in three parts; but some armorial bearings may yet be seen and the following inscription is still legible, though defaced:-

HERE LYES PERYS OF COKBURNE AND HIS WYFE MARJORY.

the grave of Perys and Marjorie Cockburne.

The table-topped grave can still be seen on a little knoll of a hill in what was the churchyard of the Tower.

Following the deaths of Johnnie Armstrong and his followers emotions ran high and truth ran second best to fact; an approach handed down to the writers of Scottish Border history of the nineteenth century, including the rightly well-respected Sir Walter.

Perys Cokburne was not the William Cockburne who suffered at the hands of James V.

Neither Adam Scott ‘King of Thieves’ nor William Cockburne were summarily despatched within the confines of their own Towers. Rather they were taken to Edinburgh, tried and beheaded.

Robert Pitcairn (1797 – 1855) compiled the documents which recorded the fate of the Border Reivers who were tried and executed. The compilation is known as ‘Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials’.

For 1530 he records the following:-

William Cokburne of Henderland, Convicted (in presence of the King) of High Treason committed by him, in bringing Alexander Forester and his son, Englishmen, to the plundering od Archibald Someruile: And for treasonably bringing certain Englishmen to the lands of Glenquhome: And for common Theft, common Reset of Theft, outputting and inputting thereof – SENTENCE. For which causes and crimes he has forfeited his life, lands, and goods, moveable and immoveable; which shall be escheated to the King.- BEHEADED.

ADAM SCOTT of Tuschelaw, convicted of art and part of theftuously taking blackmail from the time of his entry within the castle of Edinburgh, in ward, of John Browne in Hopprow; and of art and part of theftuously taking blackmail of Andrew Thorbrand and William his brother: and of theftuously taking blackmail from the poor tenants of Hopcailzow: and of theftuously taking blackmail from the tenants of Eschescheill: BEHEADED.

Cockburne, it would seem, was convicted for his alliance with Englishmen which, under the Border Law, was treason, Scott for blackmail which was probably the least of his crimes.

And what of the Border Widow?

One of the most evocative of the Border Ballads is that of the ‘Lament of the Border Widow’. It has always been associated with the death of William Cockeburne following his capture by James V. Although this is historically impossible, it admirably portrays the emotion, the futility, isolation and sorrow which followed many a death in the days of the Reivers.

A BORDER WIDOW’S LAMENT.

My love he built me a bonny bower,

And clad it a’ wi’ lilye flour (all) (flower)

A brawer bower ye ne’er did see,

Than my true love he built for me.

There came a man, by middle day,

He spied his sport and went away;

And brought the king that very night,

Who brake my bower, and slew my knight. (broke)

He slew my knight, to me sae dear; (so)

He slew my knight and poin’d his gear; ( escheated to the king)

My servants all did life for flee,

And left me in extremitie.

I sew’d his sheet, making my mane, (grieving and crying)

I watch’d the corpse myself alane (alone)

I watch’d his body night and day;

No living creature came that way.

I took his body on my back,

And whiles I gaed and whiles I sat; (moved, went)

I digged a grave, and laid him in,

And happ’d him with the sod sae green. (covered) (so)

But think not ye my heart was sair, (sore)

When I laid the moule on his yellow hair? (soil)

O think na ye my heart was wae (weary)

When I turn’d about, away to gae? (go)

Nae living man I’ll love again, (no)

Since that my lovely knight was slain,

Wi’ a lock of his yellow hair,

I’ll chain my heart for evermair.

In the reiving times, the 13th to the 17th centuries, the Scottish English Border was a land in turmoil. Endless confrontation and bloody feud spawned a people who were hard both mentally and physically. The ‘Lament of the Border Widow’ shows another side of the relentless strife which dominated the land of which little is said. Sadness and sorrow followed in its wake.

The post James V of Scotland and a Border Widow appeared first on ScotClans | Scottish Clans.