Picture This: Wild Ponies Atop Traprain Law

Traprain Law rises like an earthen whale from the pastoral East Lothian countryside, compelling fishermen to utter its ancient name of Dunpelder under their breath as they pass round the Bass Rock. A thin dirt trail winds up the side of the hill and through the centuries into the capital of ancient Gododdin. There is a haze and a stiff sea breeze in the air as I crest the final slope, but there is no force of nature that can disperse the sense of history peeling from the turf and sun-bleached stones. The law does not give up its secrets lightly. Curie and Cree cut a hoard of Roman silver from the stone like mad surgeons seeking memories from the demented by the scalpel’s blade. 

The crest of Traprain Law is a hard ripple of shorn grass pocked with suggestive lumps and guarded by a herd of wild Exmoor ponies. In all my travels around Scotland I have seen few more beautiful sights. They wander about the law’s crown grazing, lifting their heads to me only when I come too close. I sit for a long time on a stone that once belonged to an ancient curtain wall and listen to the silence of the wind. I hear no truth but the silver drone of the beyond.