Talk:Eildon Hill

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Military history: Fortifications / British / European C‑class

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Change in "History" section

I propose to change the following sentence, which is inaccurate:

While evidence was not found of a significant population in the immediate pre-Roman period, the Roman geographer Ptolemy recorded the tribe in the area as the Selgovae, and Eildon hill was later thought to have been their capital.

to this:

Evidence has not been found of a significant population in the immediate pre-Roman period. It was once thought that this Trimontium might be the Trimontium of the Selgovae that was mentioned by the geographer Ptolemy, but it was later learned that this information had been based on false information, and no defensible arguement now exists to place the Selgovae or their town in this area.

A look at Ptolemy's map shows the Selgovae in Nithsdale, Annandale, and Eskdale — he never recorded the tribe in this area as the Selgovae. That was done by General William Roy (of Ordnance Survey fame): a forgery of 1757 was thought to be genuine by virtually everyone (including Roy), and it was then the most authoritative source of information on ancient Scotland. The forgery contained "iters" (akin to the genuine Antonine Itinerary), and Roy tried to follow them. Naturally, he could not do so, as he was unwittingly following a fictional account. Believing the fictional account to be valid, he "adjusted" the information in Ptolemy's map and moved the Selgovae to this Trimontium. The fictional account was not debunked until 1845, and continued to be cited for another 50 years after that; even yet, its false information about the Selgovae (and other peoples) has not been rooted out of histories.

Unfortunately, this inaccurate information is still floating around. Notwithstanding the fact that Roy was acting in good faith, we now have the only genuine historical evidence (Ptolemy) discarded in favor of an "adjustment" to evidence that is known to be fictional.

Any comments before I make the change? Regards, Notuncurious (talk) 03:25, 25 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

King Arthur

I grew up in Galashiels in the 1960's, four miles from the hills. We were taught, If Great Britain were ever to be in deathly peril, King Arthur and his Knights of the round table would come out of the centre hill and ride with their armies to save us. In Galashiels at Neitherdale area of the town, there is a very large stone in a wooded area called the "red Stone" where King Arthur's Sword is said to be buried and only he can see and locate it when the sword is needed by him. Now, I do not know the truth of these tales, but older people of the town took it very gravely and younger people of the town at the time should pay heed of what they told us. I would play up in those hills as a child many summer holidays and there were certainly something about them, that gave you the feeling there were more to them than nettles and gorse.

Also there is a small loch located a few miles from Galashiels, it is claimed to be connected to the King Arthur story. No one knows the depth, it is locally know to be a very odd place, it is very still, very little movement of the surface water. You immediately get the feeling something is not okay. Like you are being watched. In the 70's we camped up there, initially all was fine, but at night it rained like we had never seen before. A strong wind started, but we noticed the water on the loch remained very still. We left with all the camping gear behind ,we got out of the wooded area of the loch, where the ground was very dry and showed us it had not rained there for a long while. It was only yards from the woods. I may add for months it was the longest hottest spell of summer over most of the UK. We c0ntacted the Met Office, they had insisted no rain had fallen in Scotland. We went back the next afternoon, the muddy ground, soaked tree leaves, everything drenched, the strong wind still blew and the camping gear we had left behind had been covered in leaves, only the camping gear. We packed up and left. Now you can beleave me or not, I know what happened. I would like to get involved in a proper investigation. As something is wrong there!

Eildon Hills

As the current article says, these Hills are usually referred to as the "Eildons" or the "Eildon Hills".

Having lived close to these hills for almost twenty years I have never heard them called "Eildon Hill".

The only reference to the singular "Eildon Hill" that I've come across occasionally has been to a mythical single hill supposedly back in the times of King Arther and Merlin!

I propose that the article be renamed to "Eildon Hills" and the text adjusted accordingly. Nigel Campbell (talk) 13:59, 31 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]