Scotland

Peg & Jim Redwine at the Scotland Border, 2017

Robert Burns (1759-1796), Scotland’s best-known poet and farmer, was ploughing his field one day when he upended a mouse’s winter nest. The poem Burns wrote in the original Scots language, “To A Mouse”, is as difficult to decipher as Peg and I found trying to comprehend conversations when we visited Scotland. Therefore, I will cite the English version that in part says to the “Little, sleek, cowering timorous beast”:

“I’m truly sorry man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social union,
And justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes you startle,
At me, your poor earth-born companion and fellow mortal?
….
But Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes of Mice and Men
Go oft awry,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain .…”

Then Burns turns his thoughts inward towards his own fate:

“Still you are blessed compared with me!
The present only touches you:
But Oh? I backward cast my eye,
On prospects dreary!
And forward, though I cannot see, I guess and fear.”

In other words, the mouse may have lost his present home, but it is not burdened with regrets from the past or dread of the future. Shelter alone is the mouse’s concern, but Burns is chained to past misfortunes and the possibilities of future disasters, much as each of us humans are. The mouse’s loss of a temporary home pales in comparison to mankind’s sentient reality.

Gentle Reader, you may wonder what these two conflicting perspectives have to do with anything. Of course, you may not even take note. However, to me the dilemma between the Wee Beastie’s loss of a nest and Burns’ acknowledgement that “ignorance may be bliss” came clearly into my mind when Peg said, “Jim, I smell a dead mouse in the kitchen”. Naturally, the onus was upon me to answer for the mouse’s demise and alter any more future consequences. I am married; I know the drill.

My first response was my fallback position for all domestic quandaries, I ignored it. Unfortunately, Peg was not willing to let nature deal with nature so waiting until the smell was gone was not feasible. Then I searched for a mouse corpse in the usual places, such as under the kitchen sink or near the pantry, nothing. Next, I checked around the outside of our log cabin to see if there was an odiferous source in Peg’s dried flowers, nope.

All easy solutions failed me. The dreaded, “Jim, someone (me) needs to crawl under the house to see if some animal (we have lots of them) died there and is rotting away”. Oh, the glories of flashlights, facemasks, knee pads and possible confrontations with Big Foot or perhaps an upset skunk. I donned my gear and armed myself with a large trash bag and a short-handled shovel.

After about an hour of banging my head and digging up suspect piles of damp dirt I declared a truce with Ma Nature and told Peg I thought the smell was well on its way to dissipation so we should just hang on awhile. You might already know how that resolution was received.

Not long ago Peg and I visited the Isle of Skye in Scotland. We took a bus ride to the small town of Portree and chuckled when we were let off near an intersection with a sign that said, “Caution, Elderly People Crossing”. The sign had a drawing of a bent at the waist old woman holding onto an even more acutely bent old man leaning on a cane. It looked strangely familiar.

Portree is the capital of the Isle of Skye. It has a little more than 2,000 residents, most of whom pretend to speak English, but who really communicate among themselves in Scottish Gaelic. Alcohol is available as long as you do not order “Scotch”. The Scotch drink is “whiskey”. The locals are reservedly polite but do not hide their bemusement at American tourists, especially if the tourists resemble the Elderly Crossing signs.

Just as many other societies, the Scotch have an arcane yang and yin approach to regulating the use and abuse of alcohol. At our hotel the tiny bar was intimate and comforting. Dark walls and heavy wooden furniture were accented by the lone barkeep who was obviously accustomed to explaining the local customs to hapless American tourists. He was of ruddy, bewhiskered visage and a roguishly engaging attitude. He was reminiscent of the 19^th century immigrants who brought their Viking-like culture with them to America. Peg and I were his only customers that bleary afternoon after our bus trip. He put on his best Scottish brogue to disguise the true meaning of his responses to my haltingly timid order for a double shot of Bailey’s as though I were addressing Cerberus guarding the Bar. He scoffed, rolled his eyes and his tongue then condescendingly informed me it was illegal to buy a double for one person. Then, with a twinkle he said, “Now, should you wish to buy a single for your wife and a separate single for yourself, that will work”. So, even though I had already ordered a “Scotch” for myself and received a primer on it being properly called a “whiskey”, I ordered as instructed.

This experience reminded me of my days as an underage American trying to procure 3.2% beer from a drive-through beer joint. It always seemed to me that the only thing the Volstead Act accomplished was to sharpen the imaginations of thirsty Americans and, according to my family’s lore, to keep my Uncle Henry’s moonshine still in business. It looked to me like Scotland had approached alcohol prohibition and regulation in a similar fashion.

Regardless, Peg did get to drown her ennui about “Elderly People”; the two Baileys did the trick. However, we both have remained acutely aware of how our strides might appear; we strive to walk straighter and more briskly, and, of course, without a cane.

A Wee Philosophy

Like this:

Sláinte

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: