I am a native in this world And think in it as a native thinks

Monday, July 4, 2011

St Cuthbert's Burial Ground





This old cemetery is at the west end of the gardens, below the castle. It must look wonderfully spooky on a misty day, but the weather remained sunny and warm, and the play of light filtered through the trees on the mossy headstones was beautiful.

Most of the headstones are from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and are tragic witness to the short lifespans of the average Scot then, although there was the occasional tough seventy or eighty year old.

The tombstone below lists a daughter who died at age seven, and then two more daughters who "died young." Presumably as infants, because to my modern mind, seven is heartbreakingly young to die. And that's one of many reasons I wouldn't have wanted to be born any earlier than I was, however much fun it might be to imagine living in Shakespeare's London or arguing with James Madison at the Constitutional Convention.


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