But, then again . . . . .

By TrikinDave

The Battle of Roslin.

Today is the 710th anniversary of the Battle of Roslin and the blip is of the commemorative cairn built in 1994. I have a booklet about the battle produced by the local heritage society but not the faintest idea where it is; the account was probably based on what Wikipedia calls "the highly coloured account" by Walter Bower written about 140 years after the event.
According to the booklet, the battle took part in three succeeding stages on three different sites between the Scottish army under Sir John Comyn and Simon Fraser and the English army under Sir John Seagrave during "The First War of Scottish Independence."

Allegedly, the English army consisted of three divisions of 10,000 men each, each one in turn being slaughtered by the force of 6,000 Scots who had just marched over-night from Biggar (23 miles away). Just before the third phase, the monks of Abernethy under the orders of the prior climbed Carnethy Hill and raised an enormous Saint Andrews cross; lit from behind by the low afternoon sun, it took on a fiery appearance and could be seen three miles away in Roslin, it both rallied the exhausted Scots and led the English to believe reinforcements were on the way.

There are many gory details, but some (very) local names survive: Shinbanes Field, Kilburn, Hewan Bog, Stinking Rig and The Stanks (though there is an alternative explanation of the last).
However, knowing the area as I do, I find it impossible to believe that 36,000 men with heavy horses and all the gear that goes with war could have been accommodated in such a small area and, as Wikipedia claims, large military forces could not be maintained in Winter due to the difficulties of provisioning for them.

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