JUNIOR YEAR ABROAD DEPT.

“Where hae ye been sae braw, lad?
Where hae ye been sae brankie-o?
Where hae ye been sae braw, lad?
Cam’ ye by Killiecrankie-o?

An’ ye had been where I hae been,
Ye wadna been sae cantie-o.
An’ ye had seen what I hae seen 
On the braes o’ Killiecrankie-o!

— Robert Burns, 1780

In 1773, Dr. Johnson and his Boswell, Boswell, bad farewell to Auld Reekie, and set out on a famous stag bummel around Scotland. Both men wrote books about the adventure.

In 1985, my friend Chaim and I set out from Milne’s Court for an Easter-week tour of many of the same beauty spots of Scotland. View, do:

WARNING: This is Scotland, not Scottsdale. Bring a brolly, and train yourself mentally, not to mind hypothermia.

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First, the Lake District: Lake Windermere, and the hills around.

To appreciate the banter, the belles-lettristic by-play of our two-men-in-a-boating, meet Chaim.

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From one the finest families in the Burgh of Brotherly Love, Chaim is courtly, a gentleman, funny as hell, with a rapier wit. (He was a college fencing champion, then a Philadelphia lawyer, now a Philadelphia rabbi). He loved exploring Britain as much as I did. Chaim read British poetry at Edinburgh, so imagine as we go, the eight-score or so, of his burstings into parodic verse: of Shelley, or Wordsworth, or worse, some limerick about the lass in the hay rick; or Southey, or Byron; while I smoked, admirin’.

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Into the Highlands on the West Highland Line; to Fort William, and Oban, and the ferry to Skye. I didn’t take many pictures of our days of hill-walking, because my Kodak wasn’t submersible. And remember how expensive film used to be? And often, up here, totally unavailable. So I didn’t waste shots. But — to be honest — it all looks like some variation of this:

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Bleak, eh? I had studied the Highland Clearances in BEH; knew about the uprooted crofters, and the enclosures, and the forced depopulation of the place. But wow. From the train, we saw great massive herds of deer moving across the hills, following some huge stag. It was thrilling, especially with the dark clouds behind, and scattered beams of light on the crags.

“My heart’s in the Highlands,
My heart is not here;
My heart’s in the Highlands,
A-chasing a deer.
A-chasing the wild deer, and chasing the roe.
My heart’s in the Highlands,
Wherever I go.

— Robert Burns

Tragically, one of the main reasons it’s so bleak is the heather and native trees have all been browsed off for 200 years. Whole mountain ranges were laid waste by conversion into artificial “deer parks” by jobbing landlords that were — are — empty feedlots monocropping deer.

The land was de-populated to create these huge herds, in numbers far out of proportion to anything in the wild, to attract day-tripper shooting parties eager to live the “Highland Life:”

Imagine 200 or 300 Nigel Incubator-Joneses filling every daily train up from Euston, each demanding a fantasy hunt like the one depicted above. Robbie Burns’s song, sung in parlor after parlor, also did much damage, ginning up demand. Still my God, the space. The air. The clouds. The Lochs…

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Finally, civilization at last! View Inverness, ‘capital of the Highlands.’ (Tip: order Peking Duck 24 years in advance.) The Castle, really Town Hall is — what else? pink and green:

Easter, we finally got sunshine. We gobbled our English Breakfast at the B&B (kippers or salmon, roasted half tomato, bacon and egg, fried bread, toast with jam, grapefruit juice, Nescafe, Sanka or tea). The Landlady said, will ye lads be goin’ to kirk? Chaim was game. I nervously perused the options in the thin yellow pages: “Our faith’s so strong, YOU won’t believe it!” Hmmmm. I feared I might be leading us into some Ranter Separatist Covenanter Fundamentalist sect. I pictured a dour congregation in black suits and frocks, with big lace collars…really, a front for a coven of witches. I held up my finger to Chaim and said “Goyim time out.” I pulled the Landlady over for a conference. I told her I hoped to show my friend a lively, tasteful, flowers-and-choir Easter experience. She said, St. Andrew’s Cathedral. Hallelujah!

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ST. ANDREWS

Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North. Much more interesting to me was ancient St. Andrews. One of the most historic and beautiful cities in Scotland, it was one of the medieval Royal Burghs, with an early international waterfront trade. The medieval town plan was much studied by Patrick Geddes.

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Its monastery, its Cathedral, and its prime archepiscopacy, dominated Scotland’s intellectual and spiritual affairs until the Reformation. The bones of St. Andrew made it a pilgrimmage destination ($$$).

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Its University was founded in 1413 (by the Bull of an Avignon Anti-Pope!) giving St. Andrews primacy in education as well.

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The Castle, built as the fortified seat of the Archbishops, was devastated and rebuilt many times in Scotland’s bloody history.

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All these trends of organic civilization, trends building for centuries — the thriving trade of the waterfront, the prestige and administrative power of the bishops and monks, the growth of the educated population into a middle class — were knocked into a cocked hat in 1559.

One night John Knox, the Luther of the Scots, triumphantly led a torch-light procession to enter the cathedral, and preached a barn-burner of a sermon to the dour congregation of protestants, in black suits and frocks and big lace collars. He decried the Popery and vanity of the ancient cathedral. He exhorted his followers to burn the barn down, and they did. It was the largest church ever built in Scotland. Some of the priceless art and treasures and library was saved by horrified townspeople.

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With no archbishop to restore it, the Castle fell into ruin too. With nobody up top to support the service economy, that fell apart and the clerks and artisans fled; and with nobody to buy luxury import goods, the traders left the Mercat. Royal revenues plunged.

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But, naturally (or, rather, unnaturally) there is the famous golf course, the green carpet of which, simply continues into much of the town. It’s a public course. The whole town was saved by the completely unexpected adoption of the town’s special little links, and the funny game they played there, by the wealthy of the world,

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