Sweetheart story

The Lady of Galloway and John Balliol. Dumfries, Scotland. They married in 1223 and carried out 46 years of a devoted union. She loved him so much that when he died in 1269 she dedicated the New Abbey Cistercian Monastery in his name. She had his heart embalmed and preserved in an ivory and silver casket which she was never without even to her grave. Rumor has it that his heart was preserved in sugar in that casket. She was buried in the abbey with the casket of her husbands heart. The abbey became known as the Sweetheart Abbey and is today where we have our endearing phrase... sweetheart.

A lil morbid, but cute. We women do weird things.

Scotland is a very surreal and primordial (almost otherworldly) place, even today. So much is still steeped in this eerie mystacism and you can't help but feel the past always encircling you like a palpable and ghostly fog. The phrase, "dead ringer" also comes from Scotland. Centuries ago, before embalming was a common practice, people would sometimes be buried alive (the tell tale signs would be the desperate scratch marks found on some coffins after people were exhumed). So at the Grey Friar's Cemetary in Edinburgh (and prob. elsewhere), people were then buried with string in their coffins which were attached to bells above ground. I'm not sure how it got it's contemporary meaning though.

Taken while driving through Glencoe, Scotland to the Isle of Sky toward the end of winter. The strange colors and the low fog were really otherwordly, it felt almost like being on another planet.









The Castle in Edinburgh on a very foggy day (it sits forebodingly high above Edinburgh and divides the city between "new" and "old" town (at least new and old in European terms).

Thanks Cap, I think I saw Nessie there...