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Back The Caiplie Caves
Chapters (71)
  1. Cover
  2. Title page
  3. Dedication page
  4. PREFACE
  5. Epigraph page
  6. “In this foggy, dispute-ridden landscape”
  7. I
  8. THE NORTH
  9. SAUCHOPE LINKS CARAVAN PARK
  10. CRAIL AUTUMN
  11. A PLENITUDE
  12. NO 59981 05825; 56.24324° N, 2.64731° W
  13. Having abandoned his mission . . .
  14. Efforts are made to dissuade him . . .
  15. Evidence of his own cult in Pictland . . .
  16. “Ethernan” likely derived from the Latin . . .
  17. THE DESERT FATHERS
  18. “WHEN SOLITUDE WAS A PROBLEM, I HAD NO SOLITUDE”
  19. TENTSMUIR FOREST
  20. A MISCALCULATION
  21. THE SPIES
  22. MERCENARIES KNOW THERE’S ALWAYS ROOM FOR SPECIALISTS IN THE MARKET
  23. THE MERIDIAN
  24. WHOSE DEATHS WERE RECORDED OFFICIALLY AS CASUALTIES OF “THE BATTLE OF MAY ISLAND”
  25. SONG
  26. II
  27. NO 59981 05825; 56.24324° N, 2.64731° W
  28. He remembers a friend . . .
  29. Like Cormac Ua Liatháin, he sought . . .
  30. Hostilities were inevitable among the four peoples . . .
  31. Now blood on his lip . . .
  32. Tomorrow, for sure, he will make a start . . .
  33. A vision . . .
  34. He reexamines his practice . . .
  35. A visitation . . .
  36. He enquires of the silence . . .
  37. AN ENTHUSIAST
  38. FROM THE INVERTEBRATE FAUNA OF THE FIRTH OF FORTH, PART 2, 1881
  39. THE SHAGS, WHOSE CONSERVATION STATUS IS “OF LEAST CONCERN”
  40. “GOODBYE TO COCKENZIE POWER STATION, A CATHEDRAL TO COAL”
  41. A TRAWLERMAN
  42. SHE IS BURIED ON THE WEST BRAES
  43. WHITE STRANGERS
  44. ORIGIN STORY
  45. KENTIGERN AND THE ROBIN
  46. TO THE EXTENT A TRADITION CAN BE SAID TO BE DEVELOPED; IT IS MORE ACCURATE TO SAY IT CAN BE CLOTHED IN DIFFERENT FORMS
  47. AN UNEXPECTED ENCOUNTER WITH HE WHO HAS BEEN LEFT ALONE TO HIS PERILS
  48. A RETREAT
  49. SONG
  50. III
  51. SONG
  52. A LESSON
  53. THE INTERCESSORS
  54. CRAIL SPRING
  55. THE SHARING ECONOMY
  56. TIME AWAY WITH THE ERROR
  57. TWO CHAPTERS ON ANCIENT STONES
  58. ANCIENT REMEDIES WITH CONTEMPORARY APPLICATIONS CURRENTLY IN DEVELOPMENT
  59. 56.1833° N, 2.5667° W
  60. The Isle of May lies just outside the western boundary . . .
  61. Its paved road, which has all the appearance . . .
  62. Having once dwelt at Caiplie, “place of horses” . . .
  63. In a purposeful adoption of an ancient burial site . . .
  64. YOU CAN’T GO BACK
  65. STINGING NETTLE APPRECIATION
  66. THE HERMITS
  67. CLARITY
  68. NOTES
  69. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
  70. THE CAIPLIE CAVES
  71. ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

than I’d imagined.

On an afternoon beneath

the Quiraing, we watched

the gannets dive,

looked from the cliff edge

straight through the clear water

to the origins of variety.

NOTES

In addition to the texts noted below, the Preface draws from Peter A. Yeoman’s “Pilgrims to St. Ethernan: the archaeology of an early saint of the Picts and Scots,” in Conversion and Christianity in the North Sea World: Proceedings of a Day Conference, edited by Barbara Crawford (Committee for Dark Age Studies, University of St. Andrews, 1998).

Of valuable assistance for facts and details throughout have been A Sketch of the History of Fife and Kinross, by Aeneas James George Mackay (William Blackwood and Sons, 1857); Bede’s A History of the English Church and People, translated and with an introduction by Lee Sherley-Price and revised by R. E. Latham (Penguin, 1968); and The Place-Names of Fife, vol. 3, by Simon Taylor (Oxbow Books, 2009).

Some phrases and details supporting the passages titled with coordinates appear in the Forth Yacht Clubs Association’s guide to the Caiplie Caves and the Hermit’s Well.

The third couplet of “A Plenitude” owes a debt to Roland Barthes’ The Pleasure of the Text, translated by Richard Miller (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975).

“Efforts are made to dissuade him . . .”: Decisions forbidding belief in vampires, growing one’s hair, wandering, and changing one’s mind following a vow to remain a bride of God, are among the thirty statutes of the First Synod of St. Patrick.

“Evidence of his own cult in Pictland . . .”: The second line adapts a phrase from Simone Weil’s The Need for Roots, translated by Arthur Wills (Taylor and Francis, 2001).

“‘Ethernan’ likely derived from the Latin . . .”: Lines 10–12 revise phrases from Max Picard’s The World of Silence (Eighth Day Press, 2002).

“The Desert Fathers” adapts phrases attributed to Abba Moses (b. 330 A.D.) and St. Anthony (b. 251 A.D.). In 2017, an article in the Independent christened Slab City “California’s most unlikely Airbnb hotspot.”

“When Solitude Was a Problem, I Had No Solitude” is a quote from Thomas Merton’s Thoughts in Solitude (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999). The term “bad infinity” is Hegel’s, from Science of Logic, edited and translated by George di Giovanni (Cambridge University Press, 2010). The italicized line repunctuates Abba Macarius’ response to Palladius, who in retreat complained of making no progress: “Say, for Christ’s sake I am guarding the walls.” The Lausiac History of Palladius, edited and translated by W.K. Lowther Clarke (MacMillan, 1918).

The phrase “tones of the aquatic scale” in “A Miscalculation” is more or less James Frederick Skinner Gordon’s, from his 1867 Scotichronicon, vol. 1.

The first line of “The Spies” is based on Matthew 18:20. The last inverts a line from St. Augustine’s Confessions.