A Scottish Fantasy

4 Replies

JUNIOR YEAR ABROAD DEPT.

Early spring, 1985. Over the break, my British Empire History class arranged a traditional ‘reading party’ at a remote country house. I heard ‘reading party’ and my eyes glazed over, but I gleaned it was really a seminar, days-of-Empire-style: we’d be living like stripling lairds and bright young ladyes, home from the ‘Varsity for the hols, padding around the drawing room in woolly jumpers and socks, clutching warm cups of tea and asking each other, “Whither Africa?”



My Prof said “You’re the only Penn student in BEH this year, I think you’d get a lot out of it and bring a lot to the group. Do come if you can.” But the cost was chunky; versus just bumming around for a week on the trains. I had no work-study job that year (by law). I asked a buddy of mine in the class what she thought.

She was a goth-punk pierced Marxist girl from Kirkcaldy, hard as nails, sharp as a tack and sweet as millionaire’s shortbread. She was fun; I thought she’d be eager to go with the reading party. She surprised me with a three minute retort, not at me, but at the British class system: how she wouldn’t be caught dead eating buttered scones from a tray with a lot of twits and toffs, nor poncing along a bloody salmon stream all day, nor would her corpse be seen dancing and singing bloody ol’ Scotch sangs at the ceilidh, nae mair would her whited bains aye be caught chasing up and doonstairs, or fa’in’ into wardrobes, wi’ a ganga grabby-handed public school Yah-boys. Or words to that effect.

Her response came straight from her core principles. I acknowledged that and I thanked her for her honesty:”‘Ta,” and immediately ran to the nearest phone box to call Mom and Dad to beg them for the money. I didn’t get further than “So there’s this reading party up at some old Scottish country house” when Mom said, “Daddy’s writing the check now and putting it in the envelope. What’s the bursar’s postal code?” Thank you, dear parents.

“A late 18th century designed landscape most notable for its semi-ancient woodlands ….The Burn was considered to have outstanding value as a Work of Art in the time of Lord Adam Gordon and today maintains this value although the original design has been lost in places…The Burn has high Historical value due to its associations with Lord Adam Gordon and the presence of his 18th century designed landscape.”

— Historic Environment Scotland’s listing for the Burn
The Laird of the Burn. A career British Army officer who ended up Commanding Generall of His Majestie’s Armies in Scotland. (!) Along the way he served with Lord Cornwallis, though I think not in Virginia; but he did, in 1765 make a celebrated tour of the Colonies. We can View his Lordship’s etchings later…up at the Burn, eh?? He’s got Niagara Falls…wink wink heh heh heh heh…

“The designed landscape of The Burn was laid out from an area of previously barren land between 1791-96 and further embellished by subsequent owners…The lands were part of the Thanage of Newdosk and later of the barony of Arnhall. Lord Adam Gordon, a son of the 2nd Duke of Gordon, acquired the estate in 1780, when he was Commander-in- Chief of the Army in Scotland, at which time it was in ‘the wildest state of barrenness’. He began an extensive series of improvements during which time some 475 acres were cultivated, and 526 acres were planted…In addition, some six miles of walks were laid out which, in many places, were blasted through solid rock.“

— Historic Environments Scotland listing
The mini-muir along the driveway was the first time I ever encountered the vanished native plants of Scotland, even the idea that there even WERE such things as vanished native plants; and that they could be cultivated for beauty and habitat restoration. Anyway, it made a big impression: there’s more color and diversity in there per square inch, than I saw in all the hills of the Highlands and the bonnie braes of the Lowlands, combined.
The Hall. The pipes, faithfully waiting to welcome the Laird hame again.

“The house was built between 1791-96 with the intention that His Lordship would retire there. When he did eventually retire in 1798, he was able to enjoy his achievements at The Burn for only three years before his death in 1801…In 1836, the estate passed to Major William McInroy and, during his time, Queen Victoria is known to have visited the property. Between 1933-35, the house was altered and modernised, and during World War II, it was used as a Hospital. In his time as laird, Mr Russel had made many improvements to the estate but in 1945-46 the lands of Arnhall, Dalladies and part of The Burn, were sold. Large areas of low-lying ground by the village of Edzell were acquired by compulsory purchase for the establishment of RAF Edzell. The mansion house, policies and parts of the woodland (190 acres in all) were gifted to the Dominion Students’ Hall Trust, (now London House for Overseas Graduates) together with an endowment in 1946/47. Since then, The Burn has been managed as a holiday and study centre for students…” 

— Historic Environment Scotland listing

Students chose a book, author or subject, and prepared a more or less penetrating paper, then read it to the group. I might have chosen V.S. Naipaul’s ‘A House For Mr. Biswas,” or Lenin’s ‘Imperialism,’ or the South African court cases of Mohandas K. Gandhi. I didn’t — I chose Banjo Patterson’s Australian bush poetry. I was no dummy! I wanted minimal time reading, and maximal time poncing along the bloody salmon stream. So I read Banjo’s entire oeuvre on the first morning, then went walkabout.



Next day I spent playing the cavernous morning-room piano, rifling the bench for the inevitable scraps of Victorian sheet music. Scots are — clannish — until they suddenly open up. Classmates I had barely known all year for a smile, would be drawn by the tinkling piano, in their woolly jumpers and socks, clutching their tea, and sit down right beside me (Charlie sings!?) for a chorus or two, riffling through the rack for their next favorite. I knew only a few of these songs, so I was grateful they could ‘sing me how it really goes.’



One night I sat in on the VCR showing of ‘The Man From Snowy River,’ with all of us hooting at the screen and throwing popcorn at the ridiculous parts. (We also had ‘Gandhi,’ ‘Chariots of Fire,’ ‘Lawrence of Arabia….’) But most of my time I spent walking the glen, composing my paper in my head. I planned it in verse, like one of Banjo’s bush poems. Well, give ’em a bit of the ol’ Mask and Wig, eh?

One night after dinner, sure enough, somebody suggested “Sardines” — kind of reverse hide and seek, where you all run around and stuff yourselves into wardrobes and cupboards and hall closets. People end up in groups and piles, in all kinds of scandalous tight spots.

Salacious fun with Sardines. That’s not Charlie..

I found a bedroom dark and empty and I dove into the wardrobe. My elbow landed on somebody’s (tight, toned) abs. “It’s Andrew, sorry! Who’s that?” He laughed, his abs tautening with each puff, “Hello Andrreiw. It’s Charrlie, mon.” He pulled me in tighter so we could close the door. We were both breathing hard, chest to chest, and couldn’t stop laughing. If there were one boy at University you’d want to get stuck in dark wardrobe with in a country house, it was Charlie — locks like the raven, his bonnie brow was brent. Was this the farcical free-loving promiscuous upper class decadence of my Kirkcaldy Communist friend’s nightmare? Well, I was ready. Then the warm pile under us shifted. “And Jean! Hi Andrreiw.” She gave a girlish giggle in the dark. “Oh…hi, Jean.” Sardines is a cruel tease.

  • His Lordship’s etchings…here, with King Charles X of France. Ever meet him? No? Blighter of a Frog.
  • This one is from his tour of the Colonies. Come in close to admire it. Ever been to Harlem? Then His Lordship must take you there sometime! Heh heh heh…wild place. Wild!

On the last day, I was scheduled to give the last paper; and at the last minute, I looked around the drawing room and was terrified suddenly that the class — my Professor — wouldn’t get it — that they’d sit stone-faced. This is an academic seminar! How dare he not give a paper with footnotes!? Well, too late: so I struck up my “Ballad of Banjo Patterson,” reciting the doggerel with a brash, vaudeville ‘Strine’ accent. It brought down the country house. I was relieved my hill-walking plan had paid off.

That night was the ceilidh, in the Hall. Many of the Scots came in their Highland dress (boys: kilts and brass-button coats; girls: slim, Empire-waisted pastel frocks, flowery things in their hair, and dancing slippers). The best I could manage was my Harris tweed jacket, white button-down Oxford, and khakis. A grad student coached us through country dances — reels, strathspeys, the Gay Gordon, etc. Another strapping laddie from the history department — in full kit — tuned the bagpipes, and we were off for the next three hours, flinging a Highland fancy. (Since the Penn Exchange students were popular guests at Uni parties, all of us became creditable country dancers.)

The dance took a break; and while the saloon threw off the last skirl of the pipes, and everyone drank punch and cooled off, and the hunky piper sat wiping his brow, I asked him shyly if I could handle the bag. “They all laughed as I gathered the pipes…”

Polite but puzzled, the piper waved, sure, go ahead. I was never terrifically successful as a piper, but I got a wind up, and the drones sounded, and my fingers found the chanter holes, and I croaked into ‘Scots Wha Hae Wi’ Wallace Bled,’ which was the only thing I could think of that I had off by heart. At the end of the first phrase I got flustered, but the stunned piper motioned, “Go on,” so I got the wind back, and the gang hushed, as I played ‘Scots Wha Hae’ all the way through, fumbling to get the grace notes and doublings right. I slyly clocked the dropped jaws in the room, revealing all those British teeth. A New Jersey boy playin’ the pipes? Now they’d seen everything! I got a big hand.

It was an amazing time, like a trip to Brigadoon. I have only these misty pictures, the story, and the best souvenir of my whole year abroad: the old Scottish songs, which slipped into my ear, and my suitcase.

Thanks again, Mom and Dad. I promise I’ll return the book when I’ve learnt the songs.

I

Gin An Invasive, Meets An Endangered, Comin’ Thro’ The Rye

2 Replies

THE TRANSFORMATION OF LOPEZ CANYON, PART 5

Re-View that remarkable meadow in Lopez Canyon, the one recovering from fire. It’s home to oaks, elders, the bear currants, the giant wild rye patch, and in the laurel shrubbery, the spectacular Nevins barberry. These were taken around June 1.

  • What’s that perky little green pyramid in the lower right corner, right…………………………………here?
After seeing and dismissing this stuff everywhere, this specimen, six feet tall, a Julie Newmar of its kind, made me pause and notice it. I noted the fractal growth pattern and the innumerable flowers, about to pop. I saw it covering everything, the currants, the rye patch. This vegetative marvel was about a yard away from the barberry thicket. I got scared and “went online to find out more.”

“Perennial pepperweed (Lepidium latifolium), an introduced plant from southeastern Europe and Asia, is invasive throughout the western United States. It can establish in a wide range of environments and is a common problem in flood plains, irrigation structures, pastures, wetlands, riparian areas, roadsides, and residential site. Recent surveys identify perennial pepperweed as a weed problem in nearly all of California, and both the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) and California Invasive Plant Council (Cal-IPC) list it as a noxious weed of great ecological concern. Populations form dense monocultures that are easily spread by root fragments and seed. Perennial pepperweed has many common names including tall whitetop, perennial peppercress, ironweed, perennial peppergrass, and broad-leaved pepperweed.Perennial pepperweed can rapidly form large, dense stands that displace desirable vegetation. Populations easily spread along waterways and can infest entire stream corridors, riparian areas, or irrigation structures. Flooded streams often wash away roots growing along the streambank; however, new infestations can develop downstream. Once established, perennial pepperweed is persistent and difficult to control in crops, natural areas, and ornamental plantings. Perennial pepperweed reduces forage quality in hay or pasture.

— UCIPM website info on pepperweed (UC Davis Integrated Pest Managment)

The authorities at the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy were alerted, and they seem concerned and I’ve sent them pictures, etc. But in the meantime, as bureuacratic wheels are slow, and pepperweed is lightning fast, I took as much sunburn and backache time last week as I could up there, pu’in’ the gowans fine. Er, that is, pulling pepperweed.

Out of the rye bed, off the currants, out from under the oaks, and especially right off the creek bank and out from under the barberry thicket. The deep taproot is the trouble — they pull salts up from the water table and destroy the soil for anything but it.

The roots are still in there; but they won’t get any more carbohydrates this year: during flower and seed-setting, i.e., summer, the leaves don’t die, but still pass energy down from the leaves to the roots for storage, so they have plenty of moxie to burst into growth again with the first rain. Thus — following the advice in all the state pamphlets I could find — I reasoned now’s a good time to pull them: they’ve used all their carbs up going to flower, but now they’re cut off from next season’s energy, too. So if nothing else, the pepperweed is down by two; meanwhile the native plants have been given quite a leg up for the next few months of what looks like fine weather. But this is a tiny, though sensitive patch, that was lightly enough infested for me to even get at it, and look, there’s tons left. Anyway, I will keep you posted, Patient Reader.

Dunedin, Edinburgh

3 Replies
My Kodak snapshots can’t compete for beauty with old postcards and lithographs. But I wanted to see them posted. I took only a few pictures of the city itself that year — I was very busy studying in Embro,. But mine are a record of the place in the 1980s, the height (or bite?) of the Thatcher Years.

JUNIOR YEAR ABROAD DEPT.

Castle Rock is an extinct volcano. It’s the sibling of Arthur’s Seat, a mile east, in Holyrood Park.

Arthur’s Seat, and Salisbury Crags, taken on an after-class hike through Holyrood Park. (It looks maybe, 4:30 pm.) Auld Reekie got her nickname from Scots “reek,” smoke — the smoke from her breweries — more breweries, ’tis said, per capita, than any place aye in Airth. This picturesque, tangy malty smog was the 1984 remnant of that reek. Today I think the breweries were forced from the Canongate, in anticipation of Parliament moving in there. (Joke)

When the glacier came, it hit Castle Rock and split: The leading edge of each flow turned inwards, dropping mud and gravel symmetrically behind the rock. The overflow shaped it all into the classic “crag-and-tail” geologic formation.

Then the glacier melted, leaving a long sloping tail, and marshy lochs in the suppressed ground at the base of the rock and tailings.

Already in the Iron Age, people lived on the rock. It, and the mile-long earth ramp, and the swampy lochs at its feet, and the fertile meadows stretching to the seafood-rich coastline of the Firth, was a territory, a contiguous oikos, anchored around whomever was momentary King of Hill, for thousands of years.

Spires and domes from Castle Esplanade: northeast to the Scott Monument, Calton Hill, and the Firth of Forth; 1984.
Artwork by A. van Anrooy. Every day at 1:00, in an ancient ceremony, one of these guns would fire a salute. (Cheaper than 12, eh?) Milne’s Court is not far from the Castle, and the shot would resound sharply in our granite canyon, shaking the windies. I loved it, and always looked out the window to the harbor, imagining that Granton was getting the percussion wave just…about…now.

History finds the rock held by the Picts, who called it Maidan; possibly meaning “cut off rock, snub-nose rock.” This got Angled into Maiden-castle, which folks at court four centuries later, garbled into Latin as Castrum Puellarum, the Castle of Maidens. The report that “it’s where the Pictish kings stashed their young princesses” seems to be fantasy folk-etymology provoked by the alluring label on some old maps.

Alexander Nasmyth’s 1824 nostalgic look back at what had already gone, the Nor Loch. Note the rough space, almost an escarpment, between Castle and Toun. That no-man’s land was already, by 1824, leveled and filled in by the Esplanade, the parade ground for the pipes and drums of the Military Tattoo, and the Mound, leading down (or up) hill. Poet Allan Ramsay was born (by tradition) in that first house on Castlehill, with its close running behind it. This had been the ancient townhouse of the Lairds of Cockpen. When the Mound was built Ramsay moved next door, building the NEW first house on Castlehill, atop the new Mound. This, so he could say he still rubbed shoulders with the Castle.
The Esplanade, a lonely but convenient car-park in 1984. Now I believe it holds a state-of-the-art arena and bleachers for the Tattoo.


Dun is a Celtic word for castle rock town. Burgh is an Anglo-Saxon word for castle rock town. Thus Dunedin and Edinburgh mean the same thing; so who’s Edin? Eiddyn, Etin, Edin may have been a Pictish king of the land of Gododdin, which may have been southern Scotland. (The source is a Welsh legendary poem, Y Gododdin). The Anglish Kingdom of Bernicia is known to have overrun Lothian in 603, defeating the local Pictish king Aedan, who might be that namesake. Thereafter, Dun-Aedan, or Dun-Maidan swallowing the m behind the n….(cf. ‘Dun-barton’ v. ‘Dumbarton’) was what the Anglish called the castle fortress of Lothian.

Wait — Lothian? Yes; the place is also anciently “Leugh-dunnan”, the castle rock town of Leugh, or “Lothian.” It may derive from the Scots, the Irish-speaking folk who came in from the west and conquered / merged with the Picts. Pictish and Scottish and Anglish royal clans duked, thaned, and lairded it out over Lothian. In 638 Oswiu conquered Lothian and Edinburgh, and founded the Kingdom of Northumbria. From now on it’s mainly Edinburgh, and mainly an Anglish place.

But hang on to your huids, for here come the Vikings, then the Danes to overrun basically all of England, Scotland, and Ireland. The Scots and Picts retreated to the Highlands, but periodically returned to Dunedin to renew their claims for 1,500 years.

Challenging the Dane-cowed Anglish hegemony, every possible alliance and double-cross played out between the ancient Picts, the confederating Scots, the grasping English petty kings, the Scandis, and the parvenu Norman and French; and right bloodily too (the Macbeth years). Then came the even more bloody Norman Conquest. Both Northumbria and Lothian were pummeled in the “harrowing of the North” by William the Conqueror, who installed Norman vassals all the way up to the Firth.

THE TWO ROYAL BURGHS:

Finally, in 1124, a King of Scots arose who had both Scots and English blood, and the right kind of (Anglo-Norman) education. King David I, Dauid I Mac Mail Choluim, the son of Malcolm III of Scots, and his pious English wife Margaret of Wessex, took control with a modernizing program of feudalizing the land, Norman-style; and supporting Roman clergy and monks trained Canterbury-style (not Irish Lindisfarne-style.) David made the whole thing pay by studding the kingdom with “Royal Burghs,” specialized market-towns with clearly-defined trading monopolies.

The two Burghs, Edinburgh to serve the Castle up top,
Canongate below to serve the Abbey (and Royal Palace).
Edinburgh quickly became very dense and urban.
Canongate remained sleepier, more suburban;
though it still played an outsized role in Scottish history.

David acually founded two Royal Burghs along the mile-long tail: Edinburgh up top; and the “regality” of Holyrood Abbey, which he also founded, down at the bottom. Because of the comings and goings of the monks, the lower burgh eventually got named “Canongate,” gate being Old Scots for street (cognate with German “gasse.”) Both Edinburgh and Canongate had the right to set up a Mercat Cross, i.e., a regulated, bandit-free marketplace where produce could be brought in from the countryside to feed the soldiers, and wine and fine silky undergarments could be sold to the monks. Each municipality later built a Tobooth as administrative center.

The traders would buy from the peasants and the monks, and then sell back to the monks and soldiers, who tendered coins of salary for supplies — a new-ish idea. Out of those coins, taxes and tolls could be easily collected on the King’s behalf. The traders also had to pay the King rents on their tofts — their town lots around the marketplace, keeping up on rent gave them exclusive rights to trade there, and even to subdivide, according to strict survey lines. These “burgages” gave the Old Toun its plan to this day.

“Stone above storms, you rear upon the ridge:
we live on your back, its crag-and-tail,

spires and tenements stacked on your spine,
the castle and the palace linked by one rope.

A spatchcock town, the ribcage split open
like a skellie, a kipper, a guttit haddie…

— from “To Edinburgh” by Valerie Gilles
The dividing line between the Burghs is the Netherbow Port, well fortified.
After the national disaster at Flodden, 1513, Edinburgh built itself city walls.

Burghers had to build on their toft within a year and a day. They were laid out just below the Castle gates, fish-bone fashion with their front doors around the Lawnmarket, and their back gardens running down either side of the hill in walled “closes.” The two Bows, the West Bow and Netherbow, were curved streets running up and down the sides of the hill. The town’s water supply was piped down from a spring on Castle Rock.

The Castle reservoir is the hip-roofed blockhouse, center. The crenelated tower above it, with the white turret, is the Outlook Tower, or Camera Obscura, built as a tourist trap in 1852 atop that ancient townhouse of the Lairds of Cockpen (where Ramsay was born). In 1892, facing demolition, its fine views were repurposed by the pioneer of urban-studies, Patrick Geddes, as the perfect place to educate the public on civics and the built environment. Geddes would lecture, rotating the View for students or citizens observing patterns in Old Toun and New.
in the 1890s, city planner Patrick Geddes bought Allan Ramsay’s 18th century octagon house on the Mound, and enlarged it by his own designs, into Ramsay Gardens — the terraced white townhouses above. They were a (successful) experiment in building upscale, co-op garden townhouses right downtown, to lure “the classes” back to the heart of the city. Geddes, no dunderheid, lived there too. UPDATE: I did catch a shot of Old College dome! It’s that silver flash in front of the Crags.
The View southeast from Castle Hill. Most of this is today the University, though I somehow missed Old College dome.
The Conongate Viewed in 1984 from Calton Hill., with the ruins of Holyrood Abbey and the Palace of Holyroodhouse set against the dramatic sweep of Salisbury Crags and Arthur’s Seat behind.. Look at all the breweries! Though even then, some were going to lofts and redevelopment schemes. Today this same view would be dominated by the new Scottish House of Parliament, which modern structure strikes some as jarring.

Fascinatingly, the early colonists were only a few Englishmen and maybe a few Scots, but preponderantly, were recruited from Flanders –the richly-urbanized textile powerhouse. It was a canny royal move; Flemings had a long history of civic self-regulation, and could find easy markets for Scottish wool. With the founding of the Royal Burghs, Scotland jumped into the mainstream of European civilization, and Castle Rock was set to be the centerpiece of one of the world’s most beautiful cities.

The three happy peasants are on top of Calton Hill, exactly where the ordnance sits in the previous (breathtaking) shot. The meadows at right are where the New Town was sited in the 1760’s; The Nor Loch was drained for Princes Street Gardens beginning in 1771; and the muck was piled up against the rock to build The Mound and level out the Esplanade — all finished by about 1830. In 1846 they began putting in the railways and Waverley Station, right between Old Toun and New.
View of the Gardens, the Nat’l Academy, the Castle and the spires of New College, from the roof of Waverley Station. This photo, including the bus queue, was taken from about where the crease is, in the postcard below from 30 years earlier.
View of Princes Street and Gardens from the Mound; the Castle at left.
Calton Hill, site of picturesque monuments, including the tower of the Governor’s House, all that remains of grim Calton Prison, built in the 1820s to replace the grim Tolbooth.

It’s Juneteenth!

3 Replies

In 1865 Galveston, TX celebrated the arrival of the news of Emancipation. Ever since, it was Jubilee Day, Emancipation Day, Juneteenth, a big summer picnic. Outside the South, it’s only just now spreading in American consciousness, thanks to Black Lives Matter and the thousands of marchers all over the country. America has never had a holiday that said “Hey! Wow, this is it! We’re free! The War’s over and we’re all free!” To celebrate the end of slavery, yearly, together, is bound to bring Americans closer in one another’s hearts

[Ed.: Be grateful, Patient Reader, that our new national holiday means the View doesn’t have to celebrate upon this day, the birth of James VI (James I of England) to Mary, Q. of Scots, in Holyrood Palace, June 19, 1566. Mary had the date stenciled on the wall, below. That’s about all you need to know about that, ever. Go listen to Leslie Uggams.]