I have just got back from a couple of days walking on and near to Lindisfarne – joined to the mainland at low tide, and an island at high tide. Lots of people drive there – it’s a short detour from the A1 as it heads up towards Berwick and Edinburgh – but there is something very satisfying about doing the journey on foot. Nowadays most people walk along the causeway which also carries the road, but the older pilgrims’ way branches off at an angle and heads more directly for the settlement and priory (now in ruins). The safe period at low tide is shorter here, and there are always a few places where you have to wade.

Lindisfarne has gone by several names. Holy Island is one, recognising a long history of sacredness. Christian monks and communities have thrived here since the 6th century, but one suspects that its liminal placing and seclusion marked it out for holiness long before then. The old Welsh name of Ynys Medcaut is thought to refer to the medicinal properties of herbs there.

Alongside the island’s sanctity, its location has meant that periods of conflict have washed across it. One of our first historical notes about the island records a time when an alliance of Briton tribes, led by Urien of Rheged (the North Lake District, basically), tried to capture Theodric of Bernicia (the northern half of Northumberland: the southern half was Deira). After an unsuccessful siege, they withdrew again. But with the rather later arrival of the Vikings, and several centuries of border trouble between England and Scotland, this part of the country became familiar with strife.

And that brings us to Cuthbert. He was born in 635 AD – the same year that St Aidan founded the monastery on Lindisfarne – and although details of his early life are scarce, it seems likely that he was born to a family of some rank. Be that as it may, on August 31st of the year that he was 17 – the very day that Aidan died – he had a vision and spiritual experience which led to him joining the monastery at Melrose. He moved around the north of England for the next decade or so – down to Ripon at one stage, for example – and got a reputation as a cheerful, self-denying, compassionate man with a capacity for imparting spiritual direction as well as bodily healing.

664AD was a significant date in British Christianity – the Synod of Whitby required conformity with certain European traditions, at the cost of local ones. Some of the older forms survived in what is now known as Celtic Christianity, but mainland Britain decided that church unity was worth preserving, and yielded to the demands. Cuthbert was caught up in this, and as some of the previous leadership at Lindisfarne went back to Ireland, he stepped in to a new role as prior – second in command. But after another ten years he took a different step and became a hermit, living a solitary life outside the rules of community.

At first he lived in a small cell on an island adjoining Lindisfarne – attached at low tide, separate at high tide, just like Holy Island itself. But after a while he moved out to the more remote Farne islands, inhabited at the time only by seabirds and seals, as indeed it still is today. There are tales of his appreciation of the natural world, with seals coming and resting by his feet as he recited his way through the book of Psalms. Eider ducks are still called ‘cuddies’ to this day in commemoration of him. On good days, boats would set out from the nearby fishing villages to seek counsel, but on rough days, he was left in peace.

After another decade he was, reluctantly, called out of seclusion in order to take up the role of bishop. He tackled this with fervour, once again travelling widely around the north of England and southern Scotland, but feeling death approaching, he withdrew once again to the Farnes. He died there in 687, after a long illness.

Today a long-distance footpath called Cuthbert’s Way has been set up, and you can retrace his steps (more or less) from Melrose out to Holy Island.

But his story was far from over. For many years he was England’s most celebrated saint, and pilgrims flocked to the sites linked with his activities. However, the times became unsettled, and Vikings started raiding monasteries up and down the coasts. The first raid on Lindisfarne was in 793, and the monastery was finally abandoned in 875. It was considered important to preserve Cuthbert’s body, so it was disinterred and carried from place to place, always keeping one step ahead of the looters – Chester-le-Street,Ripon, and so on. This went on for some time, until Cuthbert, presumably weary of his corpse being trailed about, called a halt. The coffin would not move from a spot in the bend of a river: the bearers, accepting the inevitable, built a cathedral there, and the town of Durham grew up around it.

It seemed that Cuthbert had found his final resting place… until the Reformation when the monastic tradition was under fire, and the stories that his body had never decayed were put to the test. Once again he was interred, and a rather confusing series of examinations by (royalist) doctors took place. In the middle of all this a body was declared perfectly ordinary, and reburied… but confusion remained. Had the body of another monk been substituted, to once again keep the sacred bones out of the hands of pillagers? If you believe that version, then the secret of the real location has been passed down within a select band of Benedictines (who had assimilated “St Cuthbert’s Folk” after the Norman Conquest), generation to generation. Perhaps one day he will come back to a restored and reunited church?

North of Grasmere and south of Thirlmere, beside today’s A591, there is a large cairn of stones, known as Dunmail Raise – the name also applied to the watershed between those two lakes. It turns out that there is a considerable collection of history and storytelling around this cairn, and I thought today I’d relate a little of that.

It seems broadly agreed that Dunmail (probably the same as Dyfnwal ap Owain, to give him his Cumbrian name) was a king who was defeated by the Saxon king Edmund, who had allied himself with the Scottish king Malcolm. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle comments “A.D. 945. This year King Edmund overran all Cumberland; and let it all to Malcolm king of the Scots, on the condition that he became his ally, both by sea and land“. This was just one among the endless shifts of allegiance along the borders – a generation earlier, Malcolm’s father Constantine had joined with Owain against Saxon king Athelstan. They lost that battle – Brunanburh, 937AD – and Owain himself was reputedly buried at Penrith.

In the repeated telling of this basic tale, Dunmail attained almost Arthurian status. In one version, his sons were blinded by the victorious Edmund. In another, his loyal followers took his crown – to ensure that the Saxons would not claim it and the kingship – and nipped up the track to Grizedale Tarn (following today’s Coast to Coast trail) and cast the crown into the depths. When the time was right, he and it would be reunited and the ancient kingdom restored.

Another interesting source of variation is in the meaning of the cairn itself. One version simply holds that it was a boundary marker between the old regions of Cumberland and Westmoreland. Another reckons that it marks the burial place of Dunmail himself. But the version I find most appealing is that it recalls an old military tradition, in which soldiers going into battle would pile up “soul stones” as a safeguard. If they survived, they retrieved the stone from the pile… if not, well the number of stones in the pile was the number of casualties.

Observed in the light of archaeology and historical research, there are a great many uncertainties. Did Dunmail actually die as stated? (There is a separate tradition that he died later while on pilgrimage to Rome). What nationality was he? (Contenders include Norse or Celtic as well as Briton). But to elevate his romantic and literary status, I am going for the idea that he was the last king of the British… as William Wordsworth expressed it in The Waggoner,

The horses cautiously pursue
Their way, without mishap or fault;
And now have reached that pile of stones,
Heaped over brave King Dunmail’s bones;
His who had once supreme command,
Last king of rocky Cumberland;
His bones, and those of all his Power
Slain here in a disastrous hour!