InnerleithenScots: Innerleithen Stadium

Innerleithen (Scottish Gaelic: Inbhir Leitheann) is a civil parish and a small town in the committee area of Tweeddale, in the Scottish Borders. It was formerly in the historic county of Peeblesshire or Tweeddale.

History

The area occupied by the town has been inhabited since pre-Roman times. The remains of an Iron-Age hill fort are visible atop Caerlee Hill, in the form of defensive ditchworks. Ditchworks are also visible on the hill of Windy Knowe and, whilst there is some local speculation that these belong to an unusual round Roman hill fort, they are in fact typical of an indigenous Iron Age hill fort. Crop marks from aerial photographs of the 1950s suggest the existence of a semi-permanent Roman marching camp on the flood plain by the river Tweed at Toll Wood (near Traquair) and at nearby Eshiels.

The town is said to have been founded by an itinerant pilgrim monk called St. Ronan in A.D.737, who came to Innerleithen via the River Tweed in a coracle. Monks would certainly have travelled the natural route of the Clyde and Tweed valleys on their way between the religious centres of Iona and Holy Island. A Celtic stone carved with cup and rings/channels, known as the Runic Cross (although there are neither runes on it, nor any evidence that it was a cross shaft) was found on the slopes of the Leithen valley suggesting that a church existed during the Early Middle Ages. The stone can be viewed in the courtyard of the parish church on Leithen Road.

In the local legend of the town's founding "St. Ronan Cleik't the Deil by the hind leg and banished him", possibly a metaphor for the monks bringing Christian learning back into these regions.

The legend was actually formalised by Sir Walter Scott and was later instigated in a town festival called "The Cleikum Ceremonies" in 1901. This was seen as a way to prevent the legends and folktales of the region from dying out. Scott wrote about the town in his 1824 novel St. Ronan's Well.

The Ceremonies continue to this day a