This trip to Stirling was a touristy business trip. My plans were to get on the train, speed walk to the castle, and then just soak it in. Historically Stirling has been a strategic city. The safest fording spot and small bridge for leagues lies within the town limits on the Firth River. The small Stirling bridge connects northern and southern Scotland. Stirling Castle is fascinating in the walkability (liberty with language there) and restoration. The curators, faced with the damage done by decades of military stationing in the castle, decided to opt for showing how it looked in 1540 instead of the ruins. The castle has been an ancestral residence for many Kings and Queens of Scotland. James IV and James V enacted the most notable improvements. The castle is famed for the circular carved wooden pictures that hung on the ceiling in the dining room. The disks were from Polish wood. They were about seven inches thick. Images on them ranged from the court poet, Hercules, Julius Caesar, James IV, or putti. The castle was most impressive in the military design. This was clearly a fortress first. Looking down from the battlements you could see for miles around. To the east near the new bridge, William Wallace had perhaps his most decisive rout of English forces. The sage Blind Harry in 1477 recounts that at last 'Scotland was fre, that lang in baill had beyne, Throw Wallace won fra our fals enemys keyn.' The National Wallace Monument rises up on the Craig Abbey hill behind the ford. Looking down you can see the Church of the Holy Rude, one of Great Britain's best late medieval churches. I am pretty ignorant on architecture in general, but I nevertheless enjoyed the name of the kirk. The castle is famous for the Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries. The ones hanging are recent remakes, hand crafted on the site. John Rockefeller purchased the original Renaissance masterpieces and donated them to the Met in NY, just another whim purchase I am sure. In a primarily pre-literate world, tapestries were powerful speakers through symbols. The seven tapestries show the Unicorn's flight, strength, death, and resurrection as the noble creature was clearly a Christ figure. I like the U.K.'s interpretation of unicorn's better than the U.S.'s.
