Scotland's History Comes Alive in Scotland the Autobiography
SCOTLAND THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY By Rosemary Goring
Viking UK
ISBN: 978-0670916573
By HARRY McGRATH
When I studied at Stirling University in the 1970s there were very few courses offered in Scottish history. Why this should have been the case in Scotland's first new university in almost 400 years is an abiding mystery.
The university didn't do Scottish history and, just as remarkably, the Scottish students didn't insist that it should. And so I was left with the impression formed in high school of a country's history dominated by a handful of unrelated battles, and the stories of a small number of individuals - Bruce, Wallace and Mary Queen of Scots.
Sometime in the 1980s, however, there was a revival in interest amongst Scots in the history of their own country. By 1999 Tom Devine's The Scottish Nation was able, albeit for a brief period, to outsell the adventures of Harry Potter in Scotland.
And the momentum generated in the last 25 years or so is showing no signs of abating. One of Devine's books of the year for 2007 was Rosemary Goring's Scotland the Autobiography which, I am happy to report, is now published in Canada.
Scotland the Autobiography is "history caught on the hoof and the wing by those who were actually there" according to Scottish journalist Andrew Marr. The chroniclers range from Roman historian Tacitus writing that the "the sky is foul with frequent rain and clouds" as Agricola's fleet approaches the Orkneys in AD 80, to First Minister Alex Salmond welcoming "a new Scotland struggling to be born" after the election of May 2007.
In between these chronological bookends the reader has two millennia and hundreds of chroniclers to choose from in a book so wide in scope and rich in detail that it is hard to convey the power of it.
The great and the good are here, kings and queens, bishops and politicians, but so too are the poor and the dispossessed, the cleared Highlanders, child labourers and prostitutes. Goring has done a remarkable job of finding them and illuminating their lives and, sometimes, their deaths.
The romance of Mary Queen of Scots, for instance, will never be quite the same after you read Robert Wingfield's eyewitness account of her execution.
He records that "Her lips stirred up and down for a quarter of an hour after her head was cut off" and that one of the executioners found "her little dog which was crept under her clothes, which could not be got forth by force, yet afterwards would not depart with the dead corpse, but came and lay between her head and her shoulders."
And as the last of Scotland's coal mines are swept away or turned into museums, the testimony of coal bearer Janet Cumming, aged 11, to the Children's Employment Commission of 1840 echoes across the years: "I gang with the women at five and come up at five at night; work all night on Fridays and come away at twelve in the day. The roof is very low; I have to bend my back and legs and the water is frequently up to the calves of my legs. Have no liking for the work. Father makes me like it."
Francis Bacon's famous instruction that "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed and some few to be chewed and digested" is defied by Scotland the Autobiography. This book can be read in every way - in parts, with curiosity, and with diligence and attention. After the first reading, I went back to it several times to satisfy an enquiry or select parts at random or by theme.
If your interest is sports, for instance, you can start in 1447 with James II's instruction that "wapinschawings [the muster of men under arms] be held by the lords and barons, spiritual and temporal, four times in a year, and that football and golf be utterly cried down and disused.." and work your way through numerous accounts of Scottish sporting triumphs and tragedies.
The letter which planned the first official football match is here, as are eye-witness reports of Scotland losing 9-3 to England in 1961 and beating "the auld enemy" 3-2 in 1967. The chronicler for the 9-3 game is player Denis Law who saw the Scottish goalkeeper, Frank Haffey, in tears after the match. Haffey, Law points out, never played for Scotland again, and soon emigrated to Australia.
If university in the 1970s distanced me from my own history, books like this not only bring it closer but occasionally create the feeling that I am not just a spectator but a participant.
I went to primary school in the Scottish Border town of Selkirk which commemorated annually the return of one bloodied local from the 80 sent out to the Battle of Flodden in 1513.
It was a commemoration that meant little to me as a child but is given belated perspective here by the eye witness account of Thomas Ruthell, Bishop of Durham. He records that the Scots lost from a position of considerable advantage, their long spears cut to pieces, and the English "took little notice of taking prisoners but disposed of all those who came to hand."
Again, I attended the "Ibrox Disaster" game between Rangers and Celtic in 1971 where 66 spectators were killed. I was at the other end of the stadium from the scene of the tragedy and away from the terrible silence described here by a Glasgow Herald journalist as broken "by the noise of coins falling from the victims' pockets as they were lifted away."
And there is even a chronicle that touches Vancouver! An extract from a book by Ian Hamilton on the recovery of the Stone of Scone from Westminster Abbey in 1951 has "Gavin" putting his shoulder to the door - a reference to Gavin Vernon, one of four Glasgow students involved in the adventure, who lived in Vancouver for many years.
Everyone who loves Scottish history should have Scotland the Autobiography on their bookshelf. It's a book of the ages, for the ages, and one you will never tire of going back to. [Scotland the Autobiography is published by Penguin Canada]
Harry McGrath is the Coordinator of the Centre for Scottish Studies at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. He is currently residing in Scotland and can be reached by e-mail at: harrym@sfu.ca.
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