A wee nicht of neeps, tatties and haggis to ring in the Bard’s 250th birthday, and on home…
By Cat Delaney
According to the Honourable Ken McAskill, Scottish parliamentarian, there are more McAskills in Canada than there are among the 5 million total population of Scotland. Across the globe, the 250th birthday of Scottish bard, Robert (dinna call me Robbie) Burns was celebrated on January 25th, 2009. Why this global ceilidh? It’s not just another excuse for a party, at which the Scots are adept, but a seemingly unmatched phenomenon: we all either have a little Scotch in us, wish we were Scottish, or plan to drink a little Scotch into us.
The Scottish culture has fascinated for centuries.
Using Burns’ 250th as its launch-pad, Scotland’s tourism folks have labelled this “Homecoming Scotland” year. Playing up Burns, single-malt, golf and pride of clansmanship, a segment of the tourism marketing thrust is put forth as “Great Minds and Innovations”. A helluva a lot was invented by the Scots, including some of their own legends…
My wee mummy grew up in Scotland, mostly Glasgow, Ayr and Peebles, and while her blood was Irish, she always considered herself a Scot. Her brother, Vic, born in Scotland, was a fine bag-piper in his day; her sister, Betty, still melts at the sight of a handsome man in a kilt.
As Mum lay dying in a hospital in SW Ontario in April 2005, with the blessing of her doctors, I went to Scotland for the first time in my life. I had no idea what to expect and feared that mum’s cherished memories of the place were like someone telling you a certain film is the best they’ve ever seen, you go see it and are disappointed, at best. Turns out, they were understated.
Arriving in Edinburgh by train from the Midlands of England, my first snapshot was of countless chimney stacks, grey skies and stark trees blasted by the winds. But when I walked the short block to my hotel, I discovered I was not alone. Certainly throngs of people scurried about on their daily business; it was not that. In Edinburgh, most of the population lives in a spirit (and I don’t mean whisky) world. The sense of history is overwhelming; not just the Castle or Holyrood, but the walking dead, still very much alive in the soul of Edinburgh.
This essential spirit is what is missing in so many other places in which I have set foot. I didn’t find it in Glasgow, not even London. Not even in the Parthenon back in 1972.
The good people at www.visitscotland.com and www.cometoscotland.com have invited me back this summer. I’ll hop the new flight direct from Halifax to Glasgow, operated by FlyGlobeSpan, spend a few days there, leaving half of my mother’s ashes behind. And I ‘ll write of the cultured place that Glasgow has become in its long life. The other half of Mum’s ashes will rest in Edinburgh, swept by the winds up The Cowgate and off to Holyrood. There too, an article I’ll scribe on what is hard to write (the intangible, the arcane). And I’ll finish the research on my novel, Smoke, set there, in The Cowgate in 1858, and write the closing chapters.
And I will be a Scot, for this homecoming his hers, my mother’s, and she would want my tartan soul to feel every fibre of the weave. Lang may her lum reek.
When I Think on the Happy Days
When I think on the happy days
I spent wi’ you, my dearie;
And now what lands between us lie,
How can I be but eerie!
How slow ye move, ye heavy hours,
As ye were wae and weary!
It was na sae ye glinted by
When I was wi’ my dearie.
(Robert Burns)
