DOUGLAS’ PRAYER CELL
Just out of the village, at the northern end, there is a rising footpath that takes you to the edge of red sandstone cliffs where sea birds nest in small numbers and the ground is carpeted with pink campion and scurvy grass. Thrift grows there too, sometimes called Heugh Daisy and in gaelic, neoinean cladaich, which means ‘shore daisy’. This sea pink variety of Thrift was sometime past used to make baskets, the stems of the plant woven together when freshly cut and the baskets used to carry caught fish and lobster and crab. The ground roots of the same plant were sometimes worn around the neck in a bag as a cure for tiredness and malaise suffered by children after a shock.
About a mile from Port Brokeferry, to where the path peters out and the going is much rougher, there is a point called Crianfaich. The reason for the name is not given in any local guidebook, nor is there any obvious translation. It is here that, by a circuitous and at times perilous downwards route, we can approach the entrance to Douglas’ Prayer Cell. There is a need for ropes and climbing gear.
It is very like another cave we have investigated somewhere on the coast of Wales. It was perhaps once a natural cave, the result of wind and high seas cutting into the red stone and finding a point of weakness, but at some time in the not too distant past it has been extended through the use of picks and chisels so that it now forms a chamber some fourteen feet square. The walls remain rough and here and there the words of prayers have been crudely cut into the stone. In places time has erased some of the words of these prayers and elsewhere a black moss that bleeds red when squeezed has begun to cover some of what has been written.
In the centre of the chamber is a small circular altar made of dressed stone and raised up on a platform of three steps. The bottom step is worn so that the stone seems to sag in the middle, giving rise to the idea that someone had spent long years kneeling in front of this altar.
Along one wall and cut from the natural stone is a shelf wide enough and long for a man to stretch out on. There are no further clues as to the chamber’s use or to how it comes to have the name ‘Douglas’ Prayer cell’.
Photographs of the stone-cut words have been logged under reference numbers 15-21 PBDouglas2002. Photographs of the altar and the route to the cave have been logged under reference numbers 22-44 PBDouglas2002.
Locally, little is known about the cave. An older inhabitant of the village talks of a minister called Douglas who lost his wits on account of a blow to the head he suffered. The Balfour Bell that is still used to call children to their lessons and has done so for more than a hundred years, is linked somehow to this accident against the minister. It is said that he was afterwards removed from his position in the church but that he continued to live in Port Brokeferry till his death, disappearing for days at a time, weeks even, and returning very much thinner than he was and unable to speak he was so chilled.
A preliminary search of local historical documents fails to confirm any of this tale, beyond the existence of The Balfour Bell which is indeed used to announce the start of school each day.
(In March 2002 a television research crew spent three nights at The Victoria Hotel in Port Brokeferry. They were in search of stories of interest for a series of programmes that examined the natural and social history of Britain’s coast. This excerpt is from a copy of the report that was filed. The cave in Wales that is referred to in the report was thought to hold more interest – there was an old poem that made reference to the Welsh cave and the descent to that cave was more dramatic, being only able to be reached when the tide was low – and so Douglas’ Prayer Cell did not feature as an item on that episode of the programme that looked at the North-west coast of Scotland.) 
No comments:
Post a Comment