'The Wesford Knight... Revisited' by Veronica McClure16th Oct 2006 Last Monday, was a holiday here in Massachusetts and my mind wandered back to an intriguing essay – written by welbourn TEKH - that I’d read on The Sons of T.C.-Lethbridge website. I had mentioned The Westford Knight in passing to my friend - Peter - who then asked to see it, so we agreed to go out for a ride on Monday. It was a positively gorgeous fall day so I'm doubly glad we decided to do this. Also, we decided to take the back roads and that was an excellent decision. I printed out some info about the Westford Knight for him and some directions on how to find him/it. We got there, parked the car, and walked over to look. It is an exposed area of sloping more-or-less flat rock on a slant. The town has put granite posts connected by a chain around it, and placed a commemorative stone nearby. I was also glad to be going as I had seen two knightly gravestones of the same age in situ at MacLeod sites (St. Columba and St Clement churches in Lewis and Harris respectively) during my trip to Scotland this summer. The Westford Knight, especially in the drawing which purports to be all the little indentations linked, is very similar. Some are quite skeptical about the stone, saying the markings are merely glacial scratches. Whatever is there, it is rather easy to make out the outline of a sword held vertically in front of the knight's figure. I saw a similar sword, but lacking the last two feet of the blade, at Dunvegan Castle on Skye. So I feel that I was really connecting the dots I experienced on my fabulous trip. In any case, we remain intrigued, acknowledge the possibility of destruction due to acid rain (sigh), and the power of suggestion. Afterwards we meandered along some small roads and found ourselves in Lowell which has a really interesting National Park based on the growth of the first industrial city in America, in turn based on the English mills, and the machinery copied from the English, memorized (no paper, no drawings,) by Francis Cabot Lowell during his visit to England in 1811. Among the many features of the Park is a tour of the canal system that brought water from the Merrimack River to power the mills. I asked Peter if he had been in the park or on the canal tour, he said no, and long story short we were booked on the very last canal tour of the season! I had been before, but the tour varies from time to time depending on a lot of different factors. As we booked our places, the park ranger said in congratulatory tones that we'd be able to go out on the river, because that hadn't been possible until relatively recently this summer. I understood without saying that that comment referred to the very serious floods earlier this year. When we were in the boat and approaching the lock, I remembered and mentioned to Peter that the floodgate incorporated into the lock had been closed during the floods but the guide -- who was very good - didn't mention anything about it. Out on the river, we went through the gate (not lock) to the Northern canal, which hadn't happened on my previous tour, but did not go in the powerhouse, which had. Then we had lots of information about the river and the collapsible dam and got quite close to it - new this time, and much appreciated because I had never understood what this dam was all about. Eventually we headed back to the canals. In the lock from this side, we could see the high water marks for 1852 and 1936, and the guide told about the substitute floodgate (not the original Francis Gate which is still there, but another gate that can be built/dropped into the slots provided when the lock was built) being dropped during this year's flood. Then she told us how the gate was built because the 19th-century farmers upstream insisted that the Merrimack flooded every 70 years - and this year is 70 years from the 1936 flood! I find this exceedingly interesting, especially how did the farmers of the 1820s, 30s and 40s who lived far, far upstream on the Merrimack and who told the men who would build the canal and the lock know that the river floods every 70 years or so, and how did they know that it was due to flood relatively soon? And in fact it did flood in 1852, a few years after the locks and gate were completed. Given the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth in 1620, there may have been English farmers there as early as 1700 (although I don't know exactly when the area was settled), but even then, that's not many generations/occurrences on which to make such a firm statement. Maybe Native Americans told the farmers about this. But we'll never really know, and I find that intriguing. Always something interesting around the corner . . . . Veronica McClure – Malden, Massachusetts - October 2006 |
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