Election Day!
- May 5, 2016
- 3 min read
Election day! The struggle for Scotland’s soul continues apace. While my novel ‘Bricks’ is not overtly political, I myself am. And today (in the accompanying audio reading) I have chosen to concentrate on the most overtly political passage in the book. Scotland’s struggle is referenced underneath the deepening struggle of our two (anti?) heroes Bobby and Bricks.
First of all the Jacobites! Scotland and No Union! This was the legend engraved on their broadswords. And this is what is pithy for us! Yes the referendum was lost, but the fight goes on at the ballot box today!
Some people say the Jacobites lost! But I’ve got news for you baby! It’s nae ower yet!
The Jacobites were a long time ago and much of the detail of that struggle is anachronistic and irrelevant! But not the spirit. The spirit endures. And just like all our struggles…the wark gangs bonnily on*.
Scotland isn’t won or lost on one day. Scotland cannot be beaten, because, she just is! We are Scotland.
Yes I make parallel in the novel with Bobby and Bricks’ own struggle. There are only a few reflective spiritual bits in this story. And they are not strictly necessary to the plot. But they are the bits that explain it the most.
Bobby and Bricks have had some shit and there’s a lot more to come. It will be a campaign of battles. So Bobby checks in with his Jacobite ancestor Seamas Greumach at the grave in the old kirk and feels the courage he will need emanating from the headstone of that brave man! Alba gu Brath! And Bobby too!
He takes resonance from, not the details nor the ephemera of the past but the spirit of those gone before and the courage of the country that is them.
And I wanted to set this a St Mary’s Kirk, Old Grantully.
Here there are indeed gravestones to irascible and indomitable old Jacobites who were ‘out’ in the ’45. It is one of those very moving spots. I am not a Christian but I am a spiritual person and the old kirks of Scotland are a hidden resource that has been kept from us. The current building, though old, dates only perhaps to the 16C. But the site was long used before that and its feel is eternal.
Places like St Mary’s are special places of spiritual focus for everyone. They didn’t begin with Christianity – they were sites of special contemplation long before that. But even our Celtic Christianity, which adopted them, was very different from the Catholicism and its corporate politics that later engulfed us our spiritual practice. Anyway I felt our ancient wonders needed namechecking. There are very many of these. They are our old kirks from the Northern and the Western Isles right down to and even over our borders at Lindisfarne. Searching them out is a joy because, Highland/Lowland, East/West, North/South or whatever they are all very special and very Scottish.
We have been subjected to forms of ‘divide and rule’ and in this instance people have tried to split us from our very soul!
In my novel ‘Bricks’ the door of St Mary’s is locked. Maybe Bobby has not yet earned access to his spirituality? But usually it is open and you can check out the amazing ceiling when you visit. It was painted just before such things would be impossible in Presbyterian Scotland. But the Jacobite graves came later. And Presbyterian Jacobites were not really supposed to exist!
When one thinks about Jacobite Graves in a Church that would have been Presbyterian, in the aftermath of the ’45, it is clear that we in Scotland haven’t been told the right story.
Our own story!
*The accompanying image is one by New York based Scots artist Darren Jones. His ragged enduring redoubtable Saltire image is most appropriately titled ‘The Wark Gangs Bonnily On’!
Aye the wark gangs bonnily on.
Indeed it does!
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