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Lammermuir Hills
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Lammermuir Hills, usually simply called the Lammermuirs (An Lomair Mòr in Gaelic) (occasionally Anglicised Lammermoors), in southern Scotland, form a natural boundary between Lothian and the Scottish Borders. They span the council areas of East Lothian and the Scottish Borders. They extend from Gala Water to St. Abb's Head, and offer a traditional site for sheep grazing.
The hills are nowhere especially high, the highest points being Meikle Says Law at 535 m and the Lammer Law at 528 m, but steep gradients, exposure to the elements and a lack of natural passes combine to form a formidable barrier to communications between Edinburgh and the Borders. The hills are crossed by only one major road (the A68), which crosses the shoulder of Soutra Hill between Lauder and Pathhead, and is frequently closed by snow in winter. The main road linking Edinburgh to England (the A1) avoids the hills by following a circuitous route around the coast.
Walter Scott's historical novel The Bride of Lammermoor is set in the area; as is Gaetano Donizetti's opera Lucia di Lammermoor, which is itself based on Scott's novel.
Although the hills are now largely used as rough grazing pasture and moorland, the muir (English: moor) element of the name is in fact derived from the Goidelic word mor, meaning large. The bare, open nature of the modern landscape is due to relatively recent deforestation, and when the hills were named they would have been largely forested.
Two ranges of hills in New Zealand, the Lammermoor Range and Lammerlaw Range are named after the Scottish hills and their second highest point respectively.
This article incorporates text from the public domain 1907 edition of The Nuttall Encyclopædia.
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