Cover

Title page

Dedication page

For Michael, Linda, Beth, and Stan

PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGED AS A site of pilgrimage from antiquity, the Caiplie Caves, on the coast of Scotland’s East Neuk of Fife, are most consistently associated with the hermit Ethernan. The village and church of Kilrenny, which means “church of Ethernan,” are not far away, overlooking the sea. But despite the distribution of Ethernan’s name on carved stones and in dedications, where he appears in the accounts he is often sketched only briefly, in passing. Upon returning from study in Ireland, he may have become the first bishop of Rathin in Buchan. Sometimes conflated with Adrian of May, murdered with his fellow monks during a Viking raid on May Island in 875, Ethernan is also supposed to have been the “Itarnan” who “died amongst the Picts” in 669, as entered in the Annals of Ulster. Though some sources imagine him travelling the Great Glen from Iona to Fife in the 640s, or the popular route from Iona east towards Lindisfarne, his link with Iona cannot be confirmed. A number suggest he was an Irish missionary to Scotland who withdrew to the Caves in the mid-7th century in order to decide whether to commit to a hermit’s solitude or establish a priory on May Island. This choice, between life as a “contemplative” or as an “active,” was not an unusual one to take up among his cohort.

Inconsistencies are not surprising. What is surprising is Ethernan’s poverty of supernatural accomplishments. Fantastic tales of early medieval saints, hermits and martyrs in Britain — their feats of strength, endurance, and clairvoyance, their animal associates, meteorological interventions, and divinely assisted acts of revenge — are enthusiastic and plentiful. Ethernan, meanwhile, is said to have survived for a very long time on bread and water.

Ethernan’s story still wanders outside the archive, resists a final resting place in the ever-expanding facility of the past. And neither are the Caves the past. As John Berger writes, “The past is not for living in,” and the Caves — known locally as the Coves — are very much lived in. Unlike Fillan’s Cave in Pittenweem, no interpretive or preservational infrastructure attends them; there is no key to be acquired at a nearby café. Nor is there even a commemorative plaque, such as the one marking Constantine’s Cave north on the Coastal Path below the Balcomie Links golf club. People still build fires in the caves at Caiplie, drink, and camp there. Alongside crosses carved over centuries, they record their own symbols and advice, political statements, declarations of uncertainty and love.

Epigraph page

It is reason and wisdom which take away cares, not places affording wide views over the sea.

— Horace, Epistles I, vi, 25–26

“In this foggy, dispute-ridden landscape”

in this foggy, dispute-ridden landscape

thus begins my apprenticeship to cowardice

no leeks sprang where I walked

no stags bore beams for my house