The Kingdom of Three Hills is a Changeling Kingdom in Caledonia, what mortals know as Scotland.
Overview
The Kingdom of Three Hills includes the regions known as Dumfries and Galloway, part of Strathclyde and Borders, and even part of England; the northern section of Northumbria. The fae still respect the old border, Hadrian's Wall.
This country has no major towns, but is rich with history and Glamour. This land birthed Sir Robert Scott and Robert Burns. This is the land of deep lochs, misty moors, and flat-topped hills.
The area encompassed by The Kingdom of Three Hills is brimming with mysterious places; ruined abbeys, crumbling castles, ancient brochs, and the prehistoric hill-forts which dot Britain. These forts now appear as circular mounds with concentric rings of grass-covered ramparts.
A Queen of Tentpegs
Aiasdair's invitation took me to Queen Glynis of the Kingdom of Three Hills. To my "normal," even if magickal eyes, the queen and her entourage seemed like a group of lost fox hunters. One dram of Glenfhada, fae whisky from the Highlands, and their staggering beauty was revealed. The red hunting coats of the knights transformed into purple and scarlet armor. The ladies' and advisors' caps bloomed into heather and thistle crowns. Their clothes were right out of Brian Froud's wet dreams: silver mesh capes, silk trains which seemed to turn to blades of grass or fronds of rhododendron. The cloth melded with the ground, rather than rested upon it. The foxhounds stayed the same, although their coats were more shiny, but in their midst were huge midnight-black mastiffs with golden collars made of clasping beetles. Glynis was terribly beautiful. Her horse transformed from a graceful hunter to an ivory Clydesdale with black hair about its silver hooves. When she rode, Glynis dressed in emerald green and purple with red highlights, a huge black-sequined cape shaped like beetle wings flared out behind her.
Niall and Ross see Glynis as the weakest of the fae rulers of Caledonia, and compared to Ross' sidhe army and Niall's clockwork chimera, Glynis' few knights pale in insignificance. Lord Alasdair, my host at this meeting, said that Glynis' Kingdom, while covering more area than the others, does not have any major cities within its borders. Nor does she have a rath, a fortress of her own. Instead, she heads a Progress Court. She travels from freehold to freehold, in no set order. Some of the fae minstrels told me that the nobles of the North call her the Queen of Villages, or the Queen of Tentpegs.
We met in the Lowther Hills, south ofa village called Elvanfoot. Baron Nigel, a boggan, set up a tent in some woods gathered between hills. He, his wife and three boys, one of whom was a sidhe, were scurrying to and fro, bellies bouncing, to see to the needs of the entourage. For the most part, poor Nigel and company were ignored, but at sunset the queen called Nigel and his sidhe son forth, rewarding Nigel fur his service with a torch lit from her balefire and an offer to take Nigel's son as a squire to her household.
I was then called forth to regale the crowds with my music. They eyed me with suspicion at first, but man, playing for the fae is the best. Somewhere during my second set they opened up the wine and let the commoners from the surrounding villages in to party. By the time I was finished, the crowd: boggan, satyr, nocker and sidhe, were twirling each other around like the best of buddies. Queen Glynis even took a spin with old Nigel!
Glynis and her kingdom are underestimated. Her court of progress allows her to keep up with what is going on in her kingdom and makes her hard to find. Her power is not concentrated, but covers the breadth of her lands. Any fae invasion would be faced with an endless series of battles, and based on their faces at court, the commoners would fight side-by-side with sidhe knights.
As you know from what you read, Glynis also has spies in other kingdoms, but it was what I saw last night, after the camp had gone to bed, that convinces me that she is a force to be reckoned with. I let my perceptions flow out of my body and journeyed around the camp, even to the green tent of Glynis. I flew past her guards and through the flap into Glynis' private chamber. There sat a huge black brazier and her balefire, licking menacingly at the fabric of the tent roof. Next to it crouched Glynis, sandwiched between the jaws of an ebony steamer trunk. She chanted over a clay figurine she was fashioning, I could not tell whom the figure looked like, but inside the trunk were several figures I recognized, each carefully set into velvet molds. One had the flaming red mane of Ross. Another had clockwork pieces stuck into its surface: Niall. They were corp creadha, Scottish voodoo dolls...
Cities & Sites
Dryburgh Abbey
See the article Dryburgh Abbey
Closeburn Castle & the Swan-Song Curse, Dumfries and Galloway
Closeburn Castle lies in the middle of a loch northeast of the town of Dumfries and is known for receiving blessing that became a curse. In ancient times whenever one of the Kirkpatrick family grew ill, a pair of swans would alight on the castles' beautiful loch. As they swam around the loch, the sick family member grew strong again.
Robert Kirkpatrick, the heir of the Kirkpatricks, grew curious about the tale of the swan song, the mournful cry of the swan during its death. He shot, killed and buried one of the swans, but heard no cry. The next year the other swan did not return, so he thought no more of it. But the following year a swan appeared with a red stain on its breast, and as it swam around the loch the head of the family soon sickened and died. Thereafter, the swan's return is regarded as a harbinger of sickness and death.
The pooka of Closeburn are a wild and vengeful lot.
Culzean Castle & Fairy Guide, Maybole, Strathclyde
The castle is set on top of a rock 80 feet above the sea. Its original military face was redone into a much more livable structure many years ago. The cliffs beneath the castle contain three caves which are said to be inhabited by the fae.
One day when the laird of the castle was walking outside during a storm, a small child appeared with a wooden cup and asked for ale for his sick mother. The laird agreed and gave the cup to his steward who went to the first tun of ale beneath the castle, and found it had nearly gone dry. Figuring it good enough for the waif, he returned.The laird was outraged when he saw the half-filled cup and demanded that the steward drain every cask in the keep if necessary to fill the boy's cup. The chastened servant came back a little later with a full cup and gave it to the boy. There was a flash of lighting, and the boy disappeared.
Many years later, the laird was in the wars in Flanders. During a storm, his unit was broken and cut down to a man. As he waited to die, the laird heard a voice calling to him. It was the boy with the cup. Taking the laird's hand, he led the man round a bend and the laird unbelievably found himself outside the walls of his castle back in Scotland! The Boy was gone.
Edin's Hall Broch: The Castle of the Red Etin, Duns, Borders
This broch sits upon a hill of pastureland; partway down the slope begins a band of trees, pierced by a quick-flowing bum. But what makes this broch remarkable is that this is the site described in one the oldest Scottish fairy tales from Scotland, The Red Etin.
In the story, a three-headed, red giant (eoten is Old English for giant) lived in a hill-fort where he imprisoned the daughter of the king of Scotland. A young man set off to find her and make his fortune, but being rude and not very bright, failed. The Red Etin (a Fomorian?) captured him and, using his magical mallet, turned the boy, like the princess, into a pillar of rock. The young man's brother decided to rescue his older sibling, but all his mother could give him is a small piece of cake. Just after he set out, an old woman met him on the road and asked for some of the cake. He gave all he had to her, and she gave him a magic wand and the answers to the three riddles of the Red Etin. She turned into a raven and flew away. His generosity rewarded, the boy then had to prove his bravery by not showing fear as he encountered strange beasts with two heads and four horns which encircled the Red Etin's castle. After striding through the beasts, he met the giant and answered his riddles, and took away all of the monster's powers. The lad picked up an ax and chopped off each head. The raven flit in a window and turned back into the old woman, and she showed him how to use the wand to free his brother and the princess from the stone pillars in which they were entombed.
Eildon Hills, Melrose, Borders
The Eildon Hills are actually one hill with three peaks. Several legends have grown up around it. The northernmost peak commands the view of the valleys below and is the site of the largest broch in Scotland. The Romans built a fort nearby called Trimontium (Three Hills) during their efforts to control Scotland.
The three peaks themselves are the subject of one tale. It is said that the hill only had one peak until Michael Scot gave one of the devils he dominated the task of splitting it into three.
The most famous legend concerns how Thomas the Rhymer (Thomas of Erceldoune, True Thomas) met a faerie queen. Thomas, a minor bard at the time, was riding down the grassy side of the hills when he spied a lady of indescribable beauty standing beside a tree. He pledged his love for her and begged her to lie with him under the tree. She said it would ruin her beauty, but heartily consented. She did grow ugly, but also revealed that she was one of the queens of the fae, and asked him to go with her under hill, into the realm of fairy. The journey took three terrifying days, but Thomas never lost faith in his lady and was rewarded by being allowed to stay with her for three days in the realm of wonder. There he learned to prophesy the future, but was also "blessed" with a tongue that could not lie. When he returned after three days, he found that three years had passed. The tree under which he awoke, the same one under which he bedded the fae, was called the Eildon Tree. The site is now marked by the Eildon Stone.
Thomas himself claims of the tale "It's all a lie."
Hermitage Castle, The Nine Stane Ring: Lord Soulis, Castledon, Border
Hermitage Castle is a fortified mansion-house with walls that loom over the fields of Castledon. Former lairds used Hermitage's dungeons for numerous murders before Lord Soulis became warden of the Scottish Marches during the reign of Robert the Bruce. Soulis was a huge and brutish man with a knack for diabolic magic and cruelty. His royal blood gave him protection from his crimes against the local populace and nobles. The fae blood which also ran though his veins bought him a redcap protector who used his Arts to enchant Soulis so that the man could not be killed by forged steel or hempen rope. Soulis' acts of infamy grew so great that one day the king off-handedly said, "Boil him if you please, but let me hear no more of him!" Several knights took the king at his word and seized Soulis and bore him to the Nine Stane Ring, an ancient stone circle near Hermitage castle. There, the knights suspended a huge pot from an iron bar braced on two of the standing stories. Placing Soulis inside, they chained the pot shut and lit a fire. Not daring to look into the pot, when they were done, they buried it on the spot. It is said that the redcap remains in the area, waiting the further commandments from his master.
Spedlin's Tower, Lochmaben, Dumfries & Galloway
Spedlin's Tower is a ruined tower that sits atop a sparsely wooded hill on the western bank of the river Annan. One of the lords of the tower locked a man named Porteus in his dungeon, in a pit closed with a tight iron door. The lord was suddenly called to Edinburgh in the middle of the night. A few days after he arrived in Edinburgh, the lord remembered that he kept the key to the door. He sent the key back by a fast rider, hut it was too late, Porteus was dead. The people who had heard the man's death-throes opened the pit to find the that he had gnawed off his left hand before dying. Porteus' ghost wandered the halls of the tower screaming, "Let me out, let me out; I'm deean' of hunger!" until a priest (a Chorister?) was summoned to banish the spirit. The priest left his Bible with the family, and members found that whenever they took the Bible out of the house, the spirit returned. Before abandoning the house they enclosed the Bible in a strong iron box and locked it away behind the door which sealed the fate of Porteus.
Wormiston, Linton Hill, Borders
The banks of Linton Hill, or Wormiston, are marked with deep furrows and ridges said to be left by the toils of a great serpent. The serpent attacked passers-by and farm animals for years until the lord of Larriston, John Somerville, killed it by ramming a burning lance down its throat.
True Thomas claims the worm was innocent.
References
- CTD. Isle of the Mighty, pp. 104-107.