Great Tapestry is a wonderful celebration of the Scottish way of life, by Rosemary Goring

Since that sighting, geese have been passing over every day. Their only rivals at their altitude are the fighter jets on training missions, that split the sky and the eardrum. Three of them screamed towards the Cheviots the other afternoon, flying so low they appeared to pass between rather than above the trees.

I think of them as the airborne equivalent of the great white shark. Their arrival is preceded by an unearthly gathering roar, which reaches a pitch that almost makes the earth quake. Once they’re out of sight, the reverberation rolls on, like an aftershock. Birds flap out of the trees in alarm, disorientated and afraid.

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The geese, by comparison, are stately and calm. The aristocrats of the avian world, they are moving their court here for a few months. And, just as they have headed south to reach us, half of the Borders – or so it seems – is making towards Galashiels.

As you read, you can probably hear the footsteps pounding down the high street, hoping to beat the queues. The lure is the newly opened Great Tapestry of Scotland, housed in a striking modern building that pleases some, such as me, but which others think looks out of place in this grey-stone former mill-town.

Yet while not everybody agrees on the architecture, so far I have heard only paeans for the glories of the tapestry within. It’s hard to think what fault anyone could reasonably find. I met an embroiderer, whose work has featured in Game of Thrones. She was bowled over by it. As are those of us who can barely sew on a button.

Covering key moments in Scotland’s history, the tapestry also features the people and trades that have flourished down the centuries. I particularly liked its angle on Mary, Queen of Scots. The panel devoted to her did not treat us to a prisoner behind bars, or a bloody severed head, but a graceful figure threading a needle. Since the queen was a skilled embroiderer, the stitchers found in her a kindred spirit and a strong link to their own work and the modern world. Less satisfying was the one on newspapers, which placed The Scotsman at its centre, despite The Herald being the longest-running national newspaper on the planet.

A history of dates and big political events leaves many of us cold, but the Great Tapestry’s strongest selling point, for me at least, is its celebration of the Scottish way of life. Fishing, farming, labouring, doctoring, soldiering, parenting, shop-keeping, teaching, politicking – all walks of life are vividly represented. It’s like seeing the past emerge out of sepia into full colour. And it couldn’t have found a better home than Galashiels, where the mills once thrummed and weavers tended their looms as lovingly, and sometimes nervously, as if they were highly-strung racehorses.

From the windows of the gallery you can see out to the hills, a view that embeds the tapestry in the heartland of weaving and textiles. Although one of my favourite panels depicts the pop music boom, including an image of a dolled-up young couple twirling on the dancefloor at Glasgow’s Barrowlands, it’s striking how many of the panels are about country pursuits.

Since the mid-19th century, our history has become increasingly urbanised, but until the arrival of factories, steam engines and trains, most folk’s existence was essentially rural, certainly by today’s standards. Hence a panel devoted to the invention of the swing plough in 1770, by James Small, who came from nearby Berwickshire.

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Although it was Hawick that dominated the Borders’ weaving trade – at one point it was so industrious it was known as the Glasgow of the south – Galashiels was synonymous with its mills. It’s hard to picture the era when it was a hive of industry, employing hundreds, yet within walking distance of the valleys and fields. Some of the once noisy mill-houses are now part of the Borders campus of Heriot Watt university, but others are languishing empty, crying out to be turned into apartments.

Nobody is more critical of Galashiels than those who live there. They mourn its more prosperous days, and the proliferation of empty premises, some of them victims of Covid. Yet while it does have a welter of charity shops, it is far from defeated or woeful. The advent of the Borders railway is gradually improving its prospects and so too, one hopes, will the Great Tapestry.

Throughout the tapestry animals and birds abound, rather as in illuminated manuscripts, where they decorate the margins. In one panel, though, they fill the space entirely. That image depicts the year 8500BC, when humans were as yet still amphibians, and they had the place to themselves. Eagles, wolves, deer, bears, fish, beavers and squirrels are given their due.

Those were the days. At the moment, Hoolet’s squirrels seem to have emigrated. The village green used to be their play park, as was our garden, but none has been seen for months. And while it’s heartening to see the geese arriving, there is a decidedly worrying absence.

A London angler, up for his annual fishing holiday, was bemoaning how low the Tweed is running. It was bad enough last September, on his previous visit, but that was as nothing to now.

In fact, the ghillie pointed out to him a stone that was first used as a marker of the river level in 1953, when the Tweed was at its lowest in living memory. In 2021, the level is even lower, and barely a salmon to be found. Fortunately, things might be about to improve. As the geese beat a path above us, dark clouds gather around them. Rain, one hopes, is finally on its way.

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