I thought I might as well walk you through a "typical" day, so be prepared for a mundane post (since I can't remember if I've done something like this before).
I woke up at seven o'clock this morning, and spent the time until eight o'clock taking care of dressing, devotions, etc. Then I helped Rachel fix breakfast. She flipped pancakes again today, but I was in charge of clearing the tables of last night's debris (tea mugs, pencils, a Bible, a walkman, sweaters, etc.), and setting it. The soundtrack of Missy's "Rigoletto" CD drifted out of the steaming kitchen.
Lucas and Melissa actually arrived for breakfast this morning at eight-thirty. After breakfast, I washed the dishes, with the help of Emily, Michaela, and Virginia. Instead of Lucas leading the team time at nine o'clock, Aaron lead it since Lucas has to work on another sermon for this coming Sabbath. Yesterday we finished Hebrews, so today we started Titus since it has three chapters. We discussed the qualifications for an elder. Lucas and Melissa joined us for prayer towards the end of team time. Emily, our prayer-request-keeper, assigned requests to certain people, and we spent ten or fifteen minutes in prayer.
After team time, Lucas broke us up into groups and sent us out to do distribution. Virginia, Michaela, Aaron, Toby, Rachel, and I walked down to Gartlea just south of Airdrie. Rachel, Aaron, and I were in a group together. Since we're trying to finish things up before we leave, we just shoved the newsletter through the mail slot instead of knocking on the door and handing it to people. I opened endless wrought-iron gates, opening onto scraps of "garden": paving stones and gravel, or overgrown patches of grass, or bright flowerbeds with hollyhocks, roses, Canterbury bells, and hostas. A cold wind scoured the grey houses. The town always has a forbidding, Northern air: cold and empty above, gritty and grey below.
At half eleven (which is the Scottish phrase for eleven-thirty), Rachel and I broke off and walked to Morrisons to buy groceries. We bought lunchmeat, fruit and vegetables, chicken, milk, orange juice, icing, and two sponge cake mixes for Carla's surprise birthday party tonight. We then had to lug the groceries the half-mile back to the church. That was not fun. Twenty bags made ten for each of us, and what with half-a-dozen glass jars of spaghetti sauce, and another half-a-dozen cans of beans and enchilada sauce, our arms were aching as we climbed the hill toward the church, then stumbled down the other side. We pushed through the market square where people were bustling about their midday tasks. Magpies and pigeons fluttered down, their wings churning a cloud of breadcrumbs on the stone walk. We staggered up the steps into the church, laughing giddily to distract ourselves from the throbbing in our arms, and collapsed in the church. "Praise the Lord! They made lunch!" Rachel cried when she saw that Mrs. MacLeod, the wife of one of the deacons, had fixed baked beans and pastry-wrapped sausage for us. We sat and waited for the others to return, so it was about twelve-thirty before we ate. Rachel and I both offered to help Mrs. MacLeod serve the food, but she turned us down and pressed us to sit. When Mrs. MacLeod set down a heaping plate in front of John, he muttered quietly behind her back, “Guys, I don’t like beans.” But he manfully ate them all down. After the meal there were lavish desserts: the Scots remind me of hobbits, especially because they love to "fill up the corners" with sweet things. Beth ate lunch with us. Everyone sat around after lunch talking about bad actors and bad movies. Beth really likes Viggo Mortensen, but Rachel doesn't. Lucas and John tried to outdo one another by thinking of stupid films, and Beth's succinctly mocking spin-offs on certain film plots had us rocking with laughter.
After lunch, we would normally have read and discussed Spiritual Disciplines, spending half an hour reading and half an hour discussing. But Lucas wanted to work on his sermon. Mrs. Robertson, who is having serious complications with her pregnancy, needed someone to come clean her house, so Beth dropped Michaela and Rachel off at the Robertsons' house. Missy and Virginia slept the afternoon away. The rest of us finished painting: radiators and the trim on the doors. We talked about music and movies, the usual topics of discussion when no one wants to think about anything serious. Brenda and Emily turned on rock music in the hall.
While Brenda, Emily, and I were painting the frames of the doors in the girls' bathroom, Carla stopped by to pick up something. She was still in her school uniform. I casually asked her if she'd like to go for a walk tonight. She said she'd swing by between eight o'clock and eight-thirty so that we could go out together. We've been wanting to go for a walk for a long time, and I was planning that we could go out for our walk, then return to the party. Emily and I chuckled conspiratorially together when she was gone.
When the painting was done, John called Mr. MacLeod (who's been supervising our painting) to see what else needed to be worked on. Mr. MacLeod told him that there were several items in the church needing to be taken apart: a desk, the piano, and the ping-pong table. These three large things clutter up the hall. John, Matt, and Aaron set vigorously on the desk. When they'd emptied it, they carried it outside into the cool afternoon sunshine. They quickly ripped the desk into large pieces. Then Matt took a metal crossbar and smashed the wood to bits, while Aaron kicked other pieces, and John pulled the drawers apart bare-handed. The plywood splintered easily, and the metal studs popped as the boys jerked them apart. Missy, Brenda, and I sat on the steps and watched. "When we have our peasant uprising, your weapon should be the battleaxe!" Brenda chuckled when Matt held up the iron bar, which had bent from smashing into the wood.
When the desk had been taken apart, Aaron poked around at the piano, but no one could bring themselves to dismantle it. Aaron and Emily rubbed their fingers over the metal strings, producing an eerily discordant chord. I baked a spongecake for Carla's birthday party (in the process burning my finger, which resulted in a nice blister), and then sat on the steps to the girls' room and read Murder Must Advertise while Missy boiled tea for everyone. The hall filled with a strange combinations of smells: baking vanilla spongecake, fresh oil paint, hot tea, and the strange combined smell of harsh Scottish soap, cleaning fluid, garbage, and people living in a small space.
At five o'clock, Rachel and Michaela returned from the Robertsons'. Rachel immediately started work on broiling fajitas for supper, but Michaela and I walked back to Morrisons to buy cheese and mushrooms for the fajitas, and chips and biscuits for lunch tomorrow. The town was beginning to be quieter as we walked back to the church. The tall buildings cast long, pale blue shadows over the street.
We ate fajitas for supper tonight at about six-thirty. I introduced Rachel to the delights of rice with milk, cinnamon, and sugar. Everyone sat around the table after supper, laughing and talking. I washed the dishes, with Michaela's help. Michaela also iced the cake with strawberry icing, dusted it with sprinkles, and wrote "Happy Birthday Carla!" on it. Missy went around with Virginia’s computer, collecting everyone’s addresses, phone numbers, aim names, and birthdays.
Since the dishes had been done, I sat down again to finish my book. Lucas and Melissa had gone home after lunch, and had returned too late for supper. So when they returned at about seven o'clock, they fixed pasta for themselves and ate it in the kitchen, chatting with John. Everyone else congregated in the office to watch silly videos on the computer. At eight-thirty, Missy and Michaela sauntered over to the Quigleys' house. Carla hadn't come, and it was getting late, so they decided to forego the walk. While they were gone, I whisked about to set out the cake, stack the bowls, and hang up a poster that Rachel had made with glitter and crayons. Just as I was taping it to the bulletin board, Missy, Michaela, and Carla walked in. "Hi, E--! Do you want to go for a walk now? Who else is coming along?" Carla asked brightly. "Well.... I would like to go for a walk... but I think we'll have other plans tonight...." By that time I'd gotten the poster taped up, and I motioned her around so that she could see it. "Oh! Thanks, guys!" she said with a grin. Missy and Michaela giggled and hugged her. "Happy birthday!" they said. "Were you suspecting anything?" "Yeah, sort of. I love you guys," Carla laughed.
We stood around her and sang to her. Then Michaela and I served cake and ice cream, and everyone sat at the table and talked. Lucas asked us to tell our favorite Carla stories, so Brenda and John, who've known her for awhile, told a couple of tales, which made her laugh. Lucas told other funny stories, then shouted, "It's a tradition for people to recite poetry at birthdays! C'mon, let's hear some." Missy stood up and sang a silly song from "The Court Jester". Her tongue moved so fast through the limerick that Carla was crying with laughter. When she was done, Lucas said, "E--, do you have that poem we asked for the other night?" So I stood up and recited Sam's troll poem from The Fellowship of the Ring, delighting in the laughter that exploded as I gave little flourishes to act out the poem. Then Carla opened her presents: a hair straightener from Michaela (Connor had jumped on hers and snapped it), and a basket with towels and soap from Missy and me.
When the cake and ice cream had been consumed, Emily and Virginia washed the dishes while I wiped the table. The others sat around trying to think of games to play. They joked about duck-duck-goose and mother-may-I. After a couple of false starts (it was quite humorous to watch a bunch of college kids trying to play Carla's Irish variation on duck-duck-goose), someone suggested fruit basket. We actually managed to organize the game, and everyone played. It was quite fun. We all took fruit names. One person stood in the middle with a pair of socks wrapped up in another sock. Lucas started off, reciting his own fruit name and then the fruit name of someone else, as fast as possible so that the person in the middle wouldn't swat him with the sock. And so we played, until someone froze up and was swatted. Then they were in the middle. Ridiculous fruit names popped from mouth to mouth: "Cherry kiwi!" "Kiwi banana!" "Banana kumquat!" "Kumquat pomegranate!" "Pomegranate mango!" Lucas was a pickle, Matt a prune, Rachel a cactus (by Lucas's fiat since she's from Texas), etc. As the game progressed, it became more of a contest to see who could swat the hardest. John, Lucas, and Aaron all had smarting red bruises from whacking each other. Michaela always froze up, and every time she froze up when Lucas was in the middle, she whipped him as hard as she could when they changed places. Aaron swung the sock over his head like a lassoo in a ridiculous stance. Matt and Brenda baited Missy by calling her names: "Schloss! Kraut!", which made her laugh and turn red.
We played this for an hour or so. Then Lucas fished a plastic hockey stick out of the craft closet. "Here's a game for you," he said. He cleared his throat, then tapped the stick on the floor. "Funny is the man who can't do this," he said. He stared around at all of us. "Who thinks they can do it?" he asked. Missy and Michaela tried for a long time. Missy was especially zealous, and frustrated. John and Melissa were the first to catch on, and Missy squirmed with frustration until she did figure it out--at which point she giggled like a maniac and thoroughly enjoyed making fun of everyone who hadn't figured it out. I sat and watched. When everyone had solved the puzzle, Carla started a similar game with a pair of scissors. I trailed out of the room: my mind was beginning to shut down, and I felt in no mood to participate. I don't like playing games much, though I do enjoy watching other people play.
At eleven o'clock, Mrs. Quigley called to tell Carla that it was time to come home. The girls all hugged Carla good-bye. She collected her presents, and Matt and I walked her back to their house, which is just down the street. The western horizon was still light, glowing turquoise behind the black trees. We chatted quietly as we walked her through the gates, up the driveway, to the side door, where we said good-night.
Back at the church, everyone was still playing the scissors game. Missy was focused on trying to figure out the hidden rule to passing the scissors, and she persisted with childlike questions and halting attempts until she finally figured it out.
Now Rachel and Michaela are going to bed, but everyone else is still up, too excited to sleep. It's past midnight. The plastic orange chairs stand about idly, in a rough ring of twelve or thirteen, where people shoved them when they got up--with a paper-full of chocolate "biscuits" in the middle.
27 June 2006
pictures
Here are some random pictures, courtesy of Virginia. Copy the links into new windows to see the pictures, or just go to her xanga, which is up on the sidebar.Grassmarket:
http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/2071/scotalnd1332bp.jpg
singing at Grassmarket:
http://img460.imageshack.us/img460/2859/scotalnd1353nt.jpg
singing at Wigtown:
http://img77.imageshack.us/img77/2198/scotalnd1825ra.jpg
packing up the van on the way to a school:
http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/7784/scotalndbrendaandemily0305wy.jpg
http://img224.imageshack.us/img224/993/scotalndbrendaandemily0312zd.jpg
preparing to do our skit about the Red Sea:
http://img224.imageshack.us/img224/7591/scotalndbrendaandemily0299tu.jpg
Brenda and Emily in the church's hall:
http://img273.imageshack.us/img273/8933/scotalndbrendaandemily5eq.jpg
23 June 2006
painting
I'm sorry to have been posting so much and such long posts, too. Hopefully this one will be a little shorter.
This morning everyone woke up later than usual. Rachel fixed wonderful pancakes for breakfast: sweet and thick, even better with juicy peaches. Lucas and Melissa didn't come at all this morning because the car they've been using wasn't working, and because Lucas wanted to work on his sermon for this Sabbath. So Brenda led us in team devotions. After team devotions, we got to work on the task at hand: painting the fellowship hall. Angus, one of the deacons, supervised. He's a tall, elderly man with black-and-white hair and a stoop. Almost everyone took a job: Missy and Michaela presided over the kitchen, where they blasted out "The Phantom of the Opera" and "Newsies". Brenda and Emily took the little hallway between the sanctuary, the office, and the hall. There's no ventilation in that hallway, and both girls joked about getting "high" on paint. Meanwhile, the boys shifted the various odds and ends of furniture lying about the hall into one solid mass in the middle of the room, an island of whiteboard, stacks of chairs, a desk, a piano, a ping-pong table, etc. Toby climbed up onto the piano with a roller to paint the ceiling. Angus set up a pyramid of tables (two on the bottom, one straddling them), and Aaron climbed onto these, also to paint the ceiling. John took the grey trim around the bulletin boards, and the baseboards, while Matt clambered onto a ladder to assist the ceiling crew.
The only people left without jobs were Virginia, Rachel, and me. We hung around, being silly for awhile. Then we cleaned and tidied our room, shifting Missy and Michaelas' things into organized heaps. We giggled and made fun of each other. Next, Rachel and I tackled the bathrooms, while Virginia hunted out a mop and proceeded to wipe up drips that had fallen from the ceiling onto the scuffed hardwood floor. Mr. Knodel, passing through on his way to do distribution of the church newspaper, remarked on our work. "I want to hear you play the harp sometime," he told Virginia. Peeking into the girls' bathroom, where I was scrubbing the shower, Rachel was wiping the sink, and Virginia was mopping the floor, he said, "You have quite a sisterhood here, being willing to tackle such a job!"
Coming to a stopping point, Rachel and I walked down to the corner grocery store to buy chips and bread. We were astonished and delighted to see real cookies, Fritos, and Pringles sold in the store. For lunch, we set food out on a table and let people eat standing or sitting on the floor. Beth ate with us, as did Sarah, who'd stopped by to see if she could help.
After lunch, I tried to wash the dishes, but there was no hot water. All the paint rollers, and ostensibly all the paint brushes, were being used, so I holed myself up in the girls' bedroom to write up yesterday's journal entry on Virginia's laptop. As I sat down to write, a little note popped up on the computer screen, informing me politely that DBaggins83 had signed on. Using Missy's AIM account, I chatted online. It was rather a confusing chat: Stephen was using Laura's account. Then Laura signed onto her account, so for awhile they were using the same account (different computers). Then Stephen signed onto his own account, but my mother took over Laura's... and then my father took over. But it was delightful to get to chat with them, even though it was only online. Stephen told me that they're going to the zoo today, and Laura said that she and Rachel S. are catching spiders and frogs to put in my bed at home.
Emerging from confinement after awhile, I found everyone busy painting away. They had the CD player blasting out jazz and soft rock. It was like stepping into the middle of a family activity--jokes and conversation flying around over the music. Then John put on the Beatles. I finally managed to find a spare paintbrush, and set to work on the baseboards with John and Emily. "Did you notice the white hand on everyone?" Michaela asked. I glanced up. "Yep. I put the White Hand of Saruman on everyone," Matt said proudly as he passed by. "I did notice," I said dryly, "but you'd better not put it on me because I'm a hobbit." Michaela stared at me suddenly. "Were you at the last Calvin conference?" she asked (an international church conference our denomination holds every four years). "Yes," I said nonchalantly. "Did you know the girl who went around in the Frodo cape the whole time?" she inquired. Painting noncomittantly, I said, "I was that girl." Michaela squealed and put her hand to her mouth. "Really?" she asked. "All I remember is this little red-headed girl, and a dark girl who always went around with her." "What was the color of the other girl's cape?" I asked. "Blue," she said. "Oh, that was Anna," I laughed, "yeah, we used to wear those cloaks everywhere. Thought it was fun."
When the Beatles ended, Missy put on the "Jungle Book" soundtrack. Lucas and Melissa showed up. Melissa and Rachel, who had been hibernating all afternoon, started to cook spaghetti for supper. Lucas took over as taskmaster, hurrying us along. Matt settled a stack of half-a-dozen plastic chairs on top of the desk. He then climbed up onto the stack of chairs and stood on it in order to touch up the ceiling. Meanwhile, Toby and Missy climbed up onto the high, broad windowsills to paint the trim around the windows. Aaron and John stood on ladders whose cross-pieces were held together with twine and painted the narrow strip between the wall and the ceiling. I tried to use a roller, but pale blue paint freckled my face and jacket. "It's raining," I groaned as the paint splattered onto the floor. So I picked up one mop, and Emily and I got to work mopping again. (Virginia and Missy were by now in the process of cleaning brushes and rollers.) Lucas went around with a sponge and a strong cleaning solution to scrub paint off the floor. I mopped wearily. No matter how hard I scrubbed, the paint wouldn't come off the fine, dark wood. My bare, wet feet slapped on the slimy boards, picking up bits of lint and flecks of paint. "You all look like you're in a musical or something. You're all standing around with mops, looking dreary. It looks as though you should burst out singing and dancing with your mops," Melissa joked when she stepped out of the kitchen.
We ate supper standing and sitting about. The reek of paint overpowered the smell of the spaghetti. We had to be careful not to sit too close to the walls. Daubs and flecks of sticky paint still stained the floor. Afterwards, I dried dishes while Lucas and Melissa washed them.
The CY of the church showed up at seven o'clock for their outing tonight. A line of cars, plus the minibus, piled up at the kerb outside, and we piled in. We drove to a shopping center on the outskirts of Glasgow, to Hollywood Bowling: a large building with video arcades, DDR, pool, snacks, and bowling. The walls were painted flourescent green and purple. Blue flourescent lighting rippled along the ceiling. There were many little steps up and down to the various activities, which were somewhat partitioned from one another. Thankfully, it didn't reek of cigarette smoke, the way the bowling alleys in the U.S. do. However, a far worse difficulty: between every four TV monitors over the bowling alleys, there would be another TV. And this TV was set to the music video station. The music playing in the bowling alley, all night long, was a cross between rap and rock--the likes of Eminem and Pink. And the music videos which accompanied these illustrious songs (cough cough) were about as stirling as the music itself. I hated every moment of it, but I had to force myself not to watch.
Rachel and I chose not to bowl. We sat with a group of people from the church. I chatted with an older man, and then Rachel and I sat with a bunch of girls, Carla included. One of Carla's friends, a girl named Kayleigh, took a fancy to us. She sat and chatted with us most of the time. She really liked the music (that's the only way I know the names of the "artists"). She talked about school, her family, her break-ups with her friends, etc. "How old are you?" she asked us suddenly. Rachel and I glanced at each other. "Nineteen," I said. Her eyes widened. "Honest?" she asked. "Yeah," I said slowly. "Really? Honest?" she asked again. "Yep. How old did you think I was?" I asked. "Oh, I dunno. Thirteen," she said. Rachel and I glanced at each other again.
When Kayleigh wasn't with us, Rachel and I just sat sombrely together. The music blaring out of the speakers, the buzz of conversation, and the rumble of the bowling balls deafened my ears. I sat tense, trying not to look around too much. The flourescent lighting made everything seem surreal: the pink and purple bowling balls tumbling down the lanes looked like the rough yolks of hard-boiled eggs. People's faces were distorted by the strange, half-green shadows. You had to shout to say anything so that no nuance of emotion or meaning could be conveyed. Rachel and I finally managed to tease each other into a giggly good mood, and in this state I could bear the torment better. All we had to do was to look at each other, and we'd burst out laughing. We laughed at Rob, when he made a strike and picked up Jess, his wife, and carried her around everywhere. (Rob is a tall, broad-shouldered chap, and his wife is a beautiful, slender woman.) We laughed at the antics of the girls bowling with Carla and Kayleigh: they would stand back-to-back with their legs spread, and one person would shove the bowling ball through the tunnel of legs until it reached the lane.
I was most thankful when the last game was almost done. Rachel and I went outside. There was a field beside the shopping center. We poked around through thistles and sweet clover. Rachel stuck a pair of long, droopy grass stems behind her ears: "A happy guinea pig with antennae!" I joked. When the games were done, everyone walked over to a nearby McDonald's (yes, yes, Scotland and the best they could do wa McDonald's!). Rachel and I looked around forlornly: neither one of us had any money. But Lucas and Melissa kindly motioned us over to their table, and Aaron and John joined the little group. Melissa is a tall, slender, tanned woman. She works as a speech pathologist in a hospital with special needs patients.
I was very relieved when we drove back to the church. At the church, Pastor Quigley called the team aside into the sanctuary and thanked us for our work. He gave us kind words for our diligence and our cheerfulness. "Let's pray," he said solemnly, as he always seems to after any important occasion. We prayed, and he hugged us or shook our hands as we filed out of the sanctuary. He's flying to America in the morning to a meeting of the RPCNA synod, as the speaker. Back in the fellowship hall, the team stood around with Rob, Jess, and Carla. Rob asked Aaron if he'd ever been rolled up in a carpet. Aaron protested that it's quite easy to unroll oneself from a carpet, but Rob contradicted. After arguing, Rob persuaded Aaron to try it. So Rob and Matt unrolled the long strip of carpet which lies rolled up on one side of the hall. Aaron lay down, mummy-style, and Rob bundled him up. Everyone watched and laughed. "Ok, unroll yourself now!" Rob challenged, standing on the end of the carpet. Aaron gave a violent twitch, and Rob leaped back--in ten seconds, the carpet was unrolled, and Aaron was standing upright. "That carpet needs to be vacuumed," he said, and Rob rubbed his head.
Michaela, Aaron, and I spent some of the evening trying to figure out where we're going for the free day tomorrow. I was so tired that I could hardly see straight, and the sheer trouble of having to plan a journey without any adult oversight seemed an insurmountable obstacle. We were going to travel up to Fort William to climb the mountain there, but after wading through a maze of bus and train timetables, we finally decided against it. People are going to bed. It's twelve-thirty, and I'm exhausted.
This morning everyone woke up later than usual. Rachel fixed wonderful pancakes for breakfast: sweet and thick, even better with juicy peaches. Lucas and Melissa didn't come at all this morning because the car they've been using wasn't working, and because Lucas wanted to work on his sermon for this Sabbath. So Brenda led us in team devotions. After team devotions, we got to work on the task at hand: painting the fellowship hall. Angus, one of the deacons, supervised. He's a tall, elderly man with black-and-white hair and a stoop. Almost everyone took a job: Missy and Michaela presided over the kitchen, where they blasted out "The Phantom of the Opera" and "Newsies". Brenda and Emily took the little hallway between the sanctuary, the office, and the hall. There's no ventilation in that hallway, and both girls joked about getting "high" on paint. Meanwhile, the boys shifted the various odds and ends of furniture lying about the hall into one solid mass in the middle of the room, an island of whiteboard, stacks of chairs, a desk, a piano, a ping-pong table, etc. Toby climbed up onto the piano with a roller to paint the ceiling. Angus set up a pyramid of tables (two on the bottom, one straddling them), and Aaron climbed onto these, also to paint the ceiling. John took the grey trim around the bulletin boards, and the baseboards, while Matt clambered onto a ladder to assist the ceiling crew.
The only people left without jobs were Virginia, Rachel, and me. We hung around, being silly for awhile. Then we cleaned and tidied our room, shifting Missy and Michaelas' things into organized heaps. We giggled and made fun of each other. Next, Rachel and I tackled the bathrooms, while Virginia hunted out a mop and proceeded to wipe up drips that had fallen from the ceiling onto the scuffed hardwood floor. Mr. Knodel, passing through on his way to do distribution of the church newspaper, remarked on our work. "I want to hear you play the harp sometime," he told Virginia. Peeking into the girls' bathroom, where I was scrubbing the shower, Rachel was wiping the sink, and Virginia was mopping the floor, he said, "You have quite a sisterhood here, being willing to tackle such a job!"
Coming to a stopping point, Rachel and I walked down to the corner grocery store to buy chips and bread. We were astonished and delighted to see real cookies, Fritos, and Pringles sold in the store. For lunch, we set food out on a table and let people eat standing or sitting on the floor. Beth ate with us, as did Sarah, who'd stopped by to see if she could help.
After lunch, I tried to wash the dishes, but there was no hot water. All the paint rollers, and ostensibly all the paint brushes, were being used, so I holed myself up in the girls' bedroom to write up yesterday's journal entry on Virginia's laptop. As I sat down to write, a little note popped up on the computer screen, informing me politely that DBaggins83 had signed on. Using Missy's AIM account, I chatted online. It was rather a confusing chat: Stephen was using Laura's account. Then Laura signed onto her account, so for awhile they were using the same account (different computers). Then Stephen signed onto his own account, but my mother took over Laura's... and then my father took over. But it was delightful to get to chat with them, even though it was only online. Stephen told me that they're going to the zoo today, and Laura said that she and Rachel S. are catching spiders and frogs to put in my bed at home.
Emerging from confinement after awhile, I found everyone busy painting away. They had the CD player blasting out jazz and soft rock. It was like stepping into the middle of a family activity--jokes and conversation flying around over the music. Then John put on the Beatles. I finally managed to find a spare paintbrush, and set to work on the baseboards with John and Emily. "Did you notice the white hand on everyone?" Michaela asked. I glanced up. "Yep. I put the White Hand of Saruman on everyone," Matt said proudly as he passed by. "I did notice," I said dryly, "but you'd better not put it on me because I'm a hobbit." Michaela stared at me suddenly. "Were you at the last Calvin conference?" she asked (an international church conference our denomination holds every four years). "Yes," I said nonchalantly. "Did you know the girl who went around in the Frodo cape the whole time?" she inquired. Painting noncomittantly, I said, "I was that girl." Michaela squealed and put her hand to her mouth. "Really?" she asked. "All I remember is this little red-headed girl, and a dark girl who always went around with her." "What was the color of the other girl's cape?" I asked. "Blue," she said. "Oh, that was Anna," I laughed, "yeah, we used to wear those cloaks everywhere. Thought it was fun."
When the Beatles ended, Missy put on the "Jungle Book" soundtrack. Lucas and Melissa showed up. Melissa and Rachel, who had been hibernating all afternoon, started to cook spaghetti for supper. Lucas took over as taskmaster, hurrying us along. Matt settled a stack of half-a-dozen plastic chairs on top of the desk. He then climbed up onto the stack of chairs and stood on it in order to touch up the ceiling. Meanwhile, Toby and Missy climbed up onto the high, broad windowsills to paint the trim around the windows. Aaron and John stood on ladders whose cross-pieces were held together with twine and painted the narrow strip between the wall and the ceiling. I tried to use a roller, but pale blue paint freckled my face and jacket. "It's raining," I groaned as the paint splattered onto the floor. So I picked up one mop, and Emily and I got to work mopping again. (Virginia and Missy were by now in the process of cleaning brushes and rollers.) Lucas went around with a sponge and a strong cleaning solution to scrub paint off the floor. I mopped wearily. No matter how hard I scrubbed, the paint wouldn't come off the fine, dark wood. My bare, wet feet slapped on the slimy boards, picking up bits of lint and flecks of paint. "You all look like you're in a musical or something. You're all standing around with mops, looking dreary. It looks as though you should burst out singing and dancing with your mops," Melissa joked when she stepped out of the kitchen.
We ate supper standing and sitting about. The reek of paint overpowered the smell of the spaghetti. We had to be careful not to sit too close to the walls. Daubs and flecks of sticky paint still stained the floor. Afterwards, I dried dishes while Lucas and Melissa washed them.
The CY of the church showed up at seven o'clock for their outing tonight. A line of cars, plus the minibus, piled up at the kerb outside, and we piled in. We drove to a shopping center on the outskirts of Glasgow, to Hollywood Bowling: a large building with video arcades, DDR, pool, snacks, and bowling. The walls were painted flourescent green and purple. Blue flourescent lighting rippled along the ceiling. There were many little steps up and down to the various activities, which were somewhat partitioned from one another. Thankfully, it didn't reek of cigarette smoke, the way the bowling alleys in the U.S. do. However, a far worse difficulty: between every four TV monitors over the bowling alleys, there would be another TV. And this TV was set to the music video station. The music playing in the bowling alley, all night long, was a cross between rap and rock--the likes of Eminem and Pink. And the music videos which accompanied these illustrious songs (cough cough) were about as stirling as the music itself. I hated every moment of it, but I had to force myself not to watch.
Rachel and I chose not to bowl. We sat with a group of people from the church. I chatted with an older man, and then Rachel and I sat with a bunch of girls, Carla included. One of Carla's friends, a girl named Kayleigh, took a fancy to us. She sat and chatted with us most of the time. She really liked the music (that's the only way I know the names of the "artists"). She talked about school, her family, her break-ups with her friends, etc. "How old are you?" she asked us suddenly. Rachel and I glanced at each other. "Nineteen," I said. Her eyes widened. "Honest?" she asked. "Yeah," I said slowly. "Really? Honest?" she asked again. "Yep. How old did you think I was?" I asked. "Oh, I dunno. Thirteen," she said. Rachel and I glanced at each other again.
When Kayleigh wasn't with us, Rachel and I just sat sombrely together. The music blaring out of the speakers, the buzz of conversation, and the rumble of the bowling balls deafened my ears. I sat tense, trying not to look around too much. The flourescent lighting made everything seem surreal: the pink and purple bowling balls tumbling down the lanes looked like the rough yolks of hard-boiled eggs. People's faces were distorted by the strange, half-green shadows. You had to shout to say anything so that no nuance of emotion or meaning could be conveyed. Rachel and I finally managed to tease each other into a giggly good mood, and in this state I could bear the torment better. All we had to do was to look at each other, and we'd burst out laughing. We laughed at Rob, when he made a strike and picked up Jess, his wife, and carried her around everywhere. (Rob is a tall, broad-shouldered chap, and his wife is a beautiful, slender woman.) We laughed at the antics of the girls bowling with Carla and Kayleigh: they would stand back-to-back with their legs spread, and one person would shove the bowling ball through the tunnel of legs until it reached the lane.
I was most thankful when the last game was almost done. Rachel and I went outside. There was a field beside the shopping center. We poked around through thistles and sweet clover. Rachel stuck a pair of long, droopy grass stems behind her ears: "A happy guinea pig with antennae!" I joked. When the games were done, everyone walked over to a nearby McDonald's (yes, yes, Scotland and the best they could do wa McDonald's!). Rachel and I looked around forlornly: neither one of us had any money. But Lucas and Melissa kindly motioned us over to their table, and Aaron and John joined the little group. Melissa is a tall, slender, tanned woman. She works as a speech pathologist in a hospital with special needs patients.
I was very relieved when we drove back to the church. At the church, Pastor Quigley called the team aside into the sanctuary and thanked us for our work. He gave us kind words for our diligence and our cheerfulness. "Let's pray," he said solemnly, as he always seems to after any important occasion. We prayed, and he hugged us or shook our hands as we filed out of the sanctuary. He's flying to America in the morning to a meeting of the RPCNA synod, as the speaker. Back in the fellowship hall, the team stood around with Rob, Jess, and Carla. Rob asked Aaron if he'd ever been rolled up in a carpet. Aaron protested that it's quite easy to unroll oneself from a carpet, but Rob contradicted. After arguing, Rob persuaded Aaron to try it. So Rob and Matt unrolled the long strip of carpet which lies rolled up on one side of the hall. Aaron lay down, mummy-style, and Rob bundled him up. Everyone watched and laughed. "Ok, unroll yourself now!" Rob challenged, standing on the end of the carpet. Aaron gave a violent twitch, and Rob leaped back--in ten seconds, the carpet was unrolled, and Aaron was standing upright. "That carpet needs to be vacuumed," he said, and Rob rubbed his head.
Michaela, Aaron, and I spent some of the evening trying to figure out where we're going for the free day tomorrow. I was so tired that I could hardly see straight, and the sheer trouble of having to plan a journey without any adult oversight seemed an insurmountable obstacle. We were going to travel up to Fort William to climb the mountain there, but after wading through a maze of bus and train timetables, we finally decided against it. People are going to bed. It's twelve-thirty, and I'm exhausted.
22 June 2006
Covenanter Tour, Day 3: Battlesites
Today was the last day of the Covenanter tour. The weather cleared, giving way to low, fast-flying clouds with broad bars of sunlight between.
We had a late start this morning because Pastor Quigley had to go to the doctor's office. He's been having troubles with his ear, and he went to have those sorted out. The delay was actually providential. One of the children in my church at home has been seriously ill, and this morning I felt a great burden for him and his family. While we waited for Pastor Quigley to arrive, I asked the team if we could pray for this child. We had a serious, heartening time of prayer. Just after we finished, Pastor Quigley arrived.
Our first stop today was Bothwell Bridge. On this site, 437 years ago today, a party of 5,000 Covenanters foolishly engaged a group of approximately 15,000 royalist soldiers in battle. The leader of the royalists offered the Covenanters a chance to make a military truce, but the Covenanters refused. They were poorly armed and had to resort to using dried peas as ammunition. Many of them were killed or captured, and taken to the Covenanters' Prison in Greyfriars, as we saw yesterday. At Bothwell Bridge, there's a stone memorial of the sort with which I was to become quite familiar by the end of the day: a four-foot tall rectangle, with an eight or nine-foot stone obelisk mounted upon it. The sides of the rectangle are carved with names, history, poetry, and Scripture in commemoration of those who died. While we stood beside the monument, Pastor Quigley quizzed us about the history we've learned over the past two days. Cars whizzed past on the highway, over the bridge where the battle was fought.
Next we drove to Hamilton, just the other side of Bothwell Bridge. In Hamilton, in the old church graveyard, there are several Covenanter monuments. One of them is to four Covenanters who were brutally killed. Their heads are buried in Hamilton, but their hands were sent to Lanark, where one of the National Covenants was signed, as an act of terrorization to those who had signed the Covenants.
After Bothwell and Hamilton, we drove out into the countryside, where we were to spend the rest of the day. We went to Drumclog first. Drumclog is a lonely spot, deep in the countryside, surrounded by deep green, rolling hills and open moorland. Wind-bent trees lined the ridges. We drove through pastures and fields. I saw a field that had just been mown, and it caught my eye as though it had been a living thing. Blue cloud shadows rolled over the short yellow grass so that the hillside shimmered like golden sand under water. The land seemed to be a tawny wave, running up toward the sky. The very air seemed to shimmer--cold and lonely, pale yellow-green and blue. A black raven skimmed low over the field, and the vivid colors rippled before my eyes.
At Drumclog, a conventicle was being held when a lookout on a nearby hill fired a warning shot: a party of royalist soldiers was approaching, ready to attack. The Covenanters stood their ground on the hillside and waited as the royalists approached. The hillside below the conventicle is a peaty bog. As the royalists galloped toward the Covenanters, they had to ride through this bog. Their horses became mired in the moss, and the Covenanters with pitchforks and sickles dragged the royalist soldiers off their horses and defeated them. Claverhouse, one of the cruelest of the men who persecuted the Covenanters, was almost killed at Drumclog.
When we went to Drumclog, we found the scene much the same: a broad hillside, open to the wind, seething with tall grass. Another stone obelisk stood on the spot where the conventicle was held. Turning with our backs to the obelisk, we looked down across the valley and over to the sheer, hog-backed hill on which the lookout had stood. The hill is wooded, but the valley around it is open pastureland. A lookout man could easily have hidden among the trees and seen the soldiers without being seen himself. As we stood there on the hill, cloud shadows rushed towards us across the pasture, like the shadows of galloping horses. The wind boomed in the grass and in a nearby oak grove.
We drove from Drumclog to a small, out-of-the-way restaurant. The restaurant was closed for kitchen renovations, but they allowed us to come inside to see the murals which commemorate the battle at Drumclog.
After Drumclog, the land became more wild. The rolling green hills heightened, broadened, sharpened, and grew into vast heights of brown heather and moss. Only a few trees grew in clumps in the valleys. Grey cliffs slashed through the dreary hillsides. As we drove higher, the day clouded over. Huge, dark clouds rolled over the crags, sending long streamers down through the narrow valleys. The land became proud and cold. Hard brown earth and hard grey stone towered over us. In a few places, sheep grazed in bleak pastures, like white kernels of wheat tossed onto hard ground. A cold wind battered the van, sending spits of frigid rain against the windows. Through my open window (I was sitting at the very back of the bus), I could smell the clear, cold wind. As we drove, the van bumped and leaped over ruts in the road. The last bench, right over the wheels, was more like an amusement ride than a seat. My arms flapped as though I was trying to fly. Brenda nearly tumbled off her seat.
Pausing on the roadside, Pastor Quigley pointed out the place where James Brown, a Covenanter, was shot beside his house. Staring down into a deep valley, we saw a small white house like a fleck on the brown moorside. Pastor Quigley told us, "They shot him there, and then they turned to his wife. 'What do you think of him now?' the dragoons, royalist soldiers, taunted. 'I thought much of him in life, but now I think far more that he is dead,' she replied." Pastor Quigley turned round to us all. "I could take you to ten or twelve villages in this area, and every one of them would have a monument to the Covenanters. Pastor Quigley drove us to Muirkirk, and in the cemetery there was a monument to the Covenanters, "who died for religious liberty". "See, these people got it right," Pastor Quigley said. "The Covenanters weren't fighting a civil battle, the way it said on the monument at Bothwell Bridge. They were fighting for the crown rights of Christ and for their right to worship Him as He had commanded. They didn't mind the king so long as the king did not usurp the rights of Christ." Pastor Quigley also took us to the place where Alexander Peden is buried. In the same cemetery are buried a boy shot while reading his Bible and a man shot while praying, both Covenanters.
We ate lunch at a roadside park in Muirkirk, with the town at our backs and the moors before us. Actually, a field with a few sheep was just across the road. Toby bleated at one particularly large and fuzzy ram, and the ram bleated bewilderedly back. John and Rachel hopped into the field to have Virginia take their picture with the sheep, but the sheep, alarmed by this fence-hopping performance and by the weird, two-legged creatures in flapping jackets, took off running. All Rachel came up with was a clump of ragged wool snagged in the stubbly grass. Most people sat on the little decorative stone bridge in the park, but some of us huddled in the van to eat. My orange dripped juice on the floor of the van, so I had to eat it standing outside in the thin rain.
After lunch we drove on into the moors. Pausing again, Pastor Quigley pointed out across a brown swell of moorland which fell away steeply from the road, which was by now hardly more than a narrow track. In the field, far away, we could see another white obelisk. "That's the spot where Cameron and four other men were ambushed and shot by dragoons," Pastor Quigley said. "They're buried just to the right of that monument." I stared down at the bleak scene. A few scruffy brown cattle grazed close to the fence. Behind them, the moorside tumbled down to the monument, fell steeply away, and rose again into yet another monotonous swell of grass, heather, and bracken. Dull greey and brown surged up to the dull grey sky, with the wind seething over all. Behind that hill, others rose, and on and on into the distance, until brown became grey, then faint blue, then lost, as though the hills had become one with the louering clouds. A bleak place to die.
We must've kept driving for an hour or two through the mountains. The moors slowly disappeared, to be replaced with thick, dark fir woods. Nothing could be seen through their shadow. The fir trees' long arms reached out toward the road, an endless succession of pointed trees, like soldiers lining the narrow way. The hillsides were lurkingly alive with their brooding darkness. Bracken covered the ground in open glens. Ferns dripped down the cuts that had been made to allow the road to pass through the hills. Dark water spurted out of the hillsides, foaming in white waterfalls over fir roots and fern leaves. The vast sweeps of hillside were covered with firtrees, like the spires of a city of cathedrals. Where the woods were made of pine, the darkness lifted somewhat. The ruddy pine trunks glowed darkly in the shadows, their writhen branches blocking out the grey sky. We drove over ancient, arched stone bridges, with dark grey water frothing beneath them. I was reminded of the Trollshaws above Rivendell. A strange stone spire poked out above the trees from a shoulder of rock. In a pasture outside Dalry, we passed a standing stone, jagged, like the stump of an old tree left to petrify in the field. We stopped briefly in Dalry, where the uprising against Charles II began, but there was no monument or any historical marker for the place. So we drove on.
In one field I saw a man riding an ATV toward a cluster of sheep. Streaking out ahead of him, turning the hundred or so white creatures back towards the ATV, was a black-and-white bundle of fur. As the sheepdog nipped the beasts' heels, the sheep skeined out, turning toward the man on the ATV.
At last we reached our destination: Wigtown. We drove down out of the hills. Wigtown sits up on a spur of land, but below it, to the east, its hill falls steeply, and there is a long, broad, flat bay. Above the bay on the other side, the hills (where we had just been) loom, their dark backs thrust up against the sky. Our first stop was the martyrs' monument, on the top of Wigtown's hill. Standing on the hilltop, we could look down onto the red and brown tile roofs of the town, clustered like clods of earth. Beyond that the broad bay opened: green pastureland blending seamelessly into the Solway Firth. A grey arm of the Atlantic shimmered like a sword, white where it touched the flat green land, turning grey far away on the northern horizon. To the east, beyond the arm of the sea, the hills rose, like huge waves, dark green, light-veined.
We drove down to the graveyard beside the old church. The ruins of one church stands beside the building of a slightly newer church. The graveyard itself is very old, many of the monuments unreadable. Yet here there is the monument to the two Margarets, Margaret Lachlane (63 years old) and Margaret Wilson (18 years old). As we stood around the grave, Pastor Quigley solemnly talked about the sacrifice that the Margarets made. We stood in absolute quiet for a long time. The wind boomed in the trees around the graveyard.
Both women were captured by dragoons and imprisoned for being Covenanters. Margaret Wilson's sister was also imprisoned, but the girls' father managed to find enough money to pay for her release. However, he did not have enough to release the other two women. Because the women would not deny Christ's crown rights, dragoons took them out into Solway Firth. They tied Margaret Lachlane to a stake far out in the ocean, and as the tide rose, she drowned. Then they gave Margaret Wilson the chance to recant. "Pray for the king!" they told her. She prayed for Christ's glory to be shown and for His power to be shown in the king's life. "See, look, she prays for the king!" her mother screamed from the bank. "I do not pray for the king, but for God's will to be done in the king's life," her daughter replied. The flat, tabletop monument in the graveyard commemorates her death for Christ's Crown and Covenant.
After the graveyard, we drove down to the place where the martyrs' stake stands. Since the time of the Margarets, the lay of the land has shifted. Though the place is out on that marshy bay of land, which could easily have been covered by the sea years ago, the sea today is some miles away. We climbed down the sheer hillside on which the town stands. Hemlock umbels bowed along the footpath, their delicate white flowers tossing on the wind. At the bottom, the land flattened out completely. A livestock gate at the bottom of the hill creaked as we entered the field. A board walk, raised above the level of the field, kept us from having to slog through the marshy ground. Pools of water glinted through tall green grass. Killdeer and seabirds piped and whistled far out over the muddy flats. Beyond the grass, miles away, I could just see the flash of the ocean, where it came level with the low land. Out in the field there stands a stone block, with a stone stake mounted on top of it, to mark the place where the Margarets were tied. Behind us on the hillside, the wind rose in the oak trees, like the crash of waves on the beac.h In their coveys among the trees, starlings chattered, and doves cooed softly from the eaves of houses on the hill. Away out on the pasture, skimming low over the grass and watery pools, swallows dipped and spun. Their purple wings flashed iridescently in the sunshine. Huge cloud shadows swooped over the field, streaking it grey and gold-green. Vivid ripples of color, shot through with the dancing pattern of the swallows. The wind sighed in the grass and spiderwort growing around the Margarets' stake. A lonely, lovely place.
We stood around the stake, and Pastor Quigley told us the story of the Margarets. After Margaret Wilson refused to pray for the king, she asked a passage of Scripture to be read. In his solemn voice, Pastor Quigley read Romans 8: "Therefore, there is now now condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit...." Tears welled up in my eyes. "After the reading of Scripture, Margaret sang a Psalm. Then the soldiers led her out to the stake. They held her head underwater until she drowned." Pastor Quigley raised his head and spoke seriously to us. "You may not have heard, but recently two American soldiers were captured and brutalized in Iraq by Muslim terrorists. The world tells us to beware of anyone who knows the truth. It lumps Christians and Muslims together because both claim to know the truth. 'Look what the Muslims did in the name of the truth! Beware of those Christians!', the world says. But there's one key difference. Muslims kill others for their faith. Christians die at the hands of others. Yet these women did not die for Christ. They were seeking to live for Him. That is why they went to the conventicles. Their challenge to us is not that we may die for Christ. I do not think that in our lifetime we will ever face that level of persecution. Their challenge to us is that we should live for Christ. When we meet them in Heaven, we may say to them, 'I know what your life was like. Not that I followed Christ to the point of death, but I lived my life just the way you did--without compromise, in the service of Christ.' Christ does not call us to die, but to live." He paused and stared at the stone stake. "This is our heritage," he said at last. "Ours in a general sense, but also in a very specific sense, as Reformed Presbyterians." The wind shivered through the grass around the standing stone.
We sang Psalms 118, 119 ("How shall a young man cleanse his way?"), 73C, 98A, and 116A. The wind whipped our voices. The words whirled away among the darting wings of the swallows.
We climbed the hill in silence.
Back in the car, we drove for another couple of hours. Though there were many sites yet to visit, Pastor Quigley chose not to go to them. "The map I'm using is marked with Covenanter sites. It's covered in little red dots," he said. But the day was late, and we'd had a late start.
We drove through more fir woods, then into a fertile pastureland. Many dark grey and green rivers flowed past the road. Foam flecked the water with vs like skeins of flying wild geese. The fir woods gave way to hardwood forests--oak, elm, maple. We drove by farms nestled in the flat valleys between steep hillsides. We drove under the tall stone arches of railroad bridges spanning narrow green valleys. Gold light flowed over the green fields and blue hills.
Suddenly, we came out of the mountains. Two last tall heads of stone, grey cliffs cut through their grey sides, stood on either side of the road. And there was the sea, spread before us beside a long, flat shore. We drove through the town of Givan, a town much like Ayr, and through others of the same sort, strung along the seashore. Glimpsing the sea between the houses, the sun on the water dazzled my eyes. To the west, the sky was black with clouds. The sea was deep grey, streaked blue and aquamarine where the wind ruffled it. The sun was moving toward the west. It flashed on the waves so that sun, water, and sky became a wall of shining silver glass.
We drove past the ruins of a red sandstone castle in a green field, with the dark hills behind. Finally, at about six-thirty, we stopped for supper at Monkton Lodge, a hotel and restaurant built beside the highway toward Airdrie. The people sitting at the front of the bus (Virginia, Missy, Rachel, Aaron, and John) had been singing silly songs for the past two hours from Wigtown. Mostly variations on, "And he threw it out the window/ The window/ The second-story window/ With a heidy-ho and a hefty throw/ He threw it out the window." Brenda, Matt, Michaela, Emily, Sarah, and I had sat at the back of the bus and suffered through this nonsense the whole way. Lucas asked the singers to stop at the restaurant, but they were still being silly as we filed into the dining area. The restaurant was a warm, homey sort of place with plain, wholesome food.
When the food came, it was delicious. I had a square beef-onion-mushroom pie, with thick crust. Afterward, Pastor Quigley ordered one huge sundae for each table (he was sitting with Sarah, Brenda, Toby, and Matt at another table; Lucas and Melissa were off in their own corner). We passed ours around, everyone taking a spoonful or two of the creamy cake-and-ice-cream.
We returned to Airdrie at about ten o'clock. Michaela wanted to watch the new "Pride and Prejudice", so Virginia and I settled down with her in the girls' room. Michaela tipped her cot up on its side so that we could lean against it. The movie was pleasant to watch with Michaela (who'd never seen it before), and Virginia (who put in funny comments every now and then).
We had a late start this morning because Pastor Quigley had to go to the doctor's office. He's been having troubles with his ear, and he went to have those sorted out. The delay was actually providential. One of the children in my church at home has been seriously ill, and this morning I felt a great burden for him and his family. While we waited for Pastor Quigley to arrive, I asked the team if we could pray for this child. We had a serious, heartening time of prayer. Just after we finished, Pastor Quigley arrived.
Our first stop today was Bothwell Bridge. On this site, 437 years ago today, a party of 5,000 Covenanters foolishly engaged a group of approximately 15,000 royalist soldiers in battle. The leader of the royalists offered the Covenanters a chance to make a military truce, but the Covenanters refused. They were poorly armed and had to resort to using dried peas as ammunition. Many of them were killed or captured, and taken to the Covenanters' Prison in Greyfriars, as we saw yesterday. At Bothwell Bridge, there's a stone memorial of the sort with which I was to become quite familiar by the end of the day: a four-foot tall rectangle, with an eight or nine-foot stone obelisk mounted upon it. The sides of the rectangle are carved with names, history, poetry, and Scripture in commemoration of those who died. While we stood beside the monument, Pastor Quigley quizzed us about the history we've learned over the past two days. Cars whizzed past on the highway, over the bridge where the battle was fought.
Next we drove to Hamilton, just the other side of Bothwell Bridge. In Hamilton, in the old church graveyard, there are several Covenanter monuments. One of them is to four Covenanters who were brutally killed. Their heads are buried in Hamilton, but their hands were sent to Lanark, where one of the National Covenants was signed, as an act of terrorization to those who had signed the Covenants.
After Bothwell and Hamilton, we drove out into the countryside, where we were to spend the rest of the day. We went to Drumclog first. Drumclog is a lonely spot, deep in the countryside, surrounded by deep green, rolling hills and open moorland. Wind-bent trees lined the ridges. We drove through pastures and fields. I saw a field that had just been mown, and it caught my eye as though it had been a living thing. Blue cloud shadows rolled over the short yellow grass so that the hillside shimmered like golden sand under water. The land seemed to be a tawny wave, running up toward the sky. The very air seemed to shimmer--cold and lonely, pale yellow-green and blue. A black raven skimmed low over the field, and the vivid colors rippled before my eyes.
At Drumclog, a conventicle was being held when a lookout on a nearby hill fired a warning shot: a party of royalist soldiers was approaching, ready to attack. The Covenanters stood their ground on the hillside and waited as the royalists approached. The hillside below the conventicle is a peaty bog. As the royalists galloped toward the Covenanters, they had to ride through this bog. Their horses became mired in the moss, and the Covenanters with pitchforks and sickles dragged the royalist soldiers off their horses and defeated them. Claverhouse, one of the cruelest of the men who persecuted the Covenanters, was almost killed at Drumclog.
When we went to Drumclog, we found the scene much the same: a broad hillside, open to the wind, seething with tall grass. Another stone obelisk stood on the spot where the conventicle was held. Turning with our backs to the obelisk, we looked down across the valley and over to the sheer, hog-backed hill on which the lookout had stood. The hill is wooded, but the valley around it is open pastureland. A lookout man could easily have hidden among the trees and seen the soldiers without being seen himself. As we stood there on the hill, cloud shadows rushed towards us across the pasture, like the shadows of galloping horses. The wind boomed in the grass and in a nearby oak grove.
We drove from Drumclog to a small, out-of-the-way restaurant. The restaurant was closed for kitchen renovations, but they allowed us to come inside to see the murals which commemorate the battle at Drumclog.
After Drumclog, the land became more wild. The rolling green hills heightened, broadened, sharpened, and grew into vast heights of brown heather and moss. Only a few trees grew in clumps in the valleys. Grey cliffs slashed through the dreary hillsides. As we drove higher, the day clouded over. Huge, dark clouds rolled over the crags, sending long streamers down through the narrow valleys. The land became proud and cold. Hard brown earth and hard grey stone towered over us. In a few places, sheep grazed in bleak pastures, like white kernels of wheat tossed onto hard ground. A cold wind battered the van, sending spits of frigid rain against the windows. Through my open window (I was sitting at the very back of the bus), I could smell the clear, cold wind. As we drove, the van bumped and leaped over ruts in the road. The last bench, right over the wheels, was more like an amusement ride than a seat. My arms flapped as though I was trying to fly. Brenda nearly tumbled off her seat.
Pausing on the roadside, Pastor Quigley pointed out the place where James Brown, a Covenanter, was shot beside his house. Staring down into a deep valley, we saw a small white house like a fleck on the brown moorside. Pastor Quigley told us, "They shot him there, and then they turned to his wife. 'What do you think of him now?' the dragoons, royalist soldiers, taunted. 'I thought much of him in life, but now I think far more that he is dead,' she replied." Pastor Quigley turned round to us all. "I could take you to ten or twelve villages in this area, and every one of them would have a monument to the Covenanters. Pastor Quigley drove us to Muirkirk, and in the cemetery there was a monument to the Covenanters, "who died for religious liberty". "See, these people got it right," Pastor Quigley said. "The Covenanters weren't fighting a civil battle, the way it said on the monument at Bothwell Bridge. They were fighting for the crown rights of Christ and for their right to worship Him as He had commanded. They didn't mind the king so long as the king did not usurp the rights of Christ." Pastor Quigley also took us to the place where Alexander Peden is buried. In the same cemetery are buried a boy shot while reading his Bible and a man shot while praying, both Covenanters.
We ate lunch at a roadside park in Muirkirk, with the town at our backs and the moors before us. Actually, a field with a few sheep was just across the road. Toby bleated at one particularly large and fuzzy ram, and the ram bleated bewilderedly back. John and Rachel hopped into the field to have Virginia take their picture with the sheep, but the sheep, alarmed by this fence-hopping performance and by the weird, two-legged creatures in flapping jackets, took off running. All Rachel came up with was a clump of ragged wool snagged in the stubbly grass. Most people sat on the little decorative stone bridge in the park, but some of us huddled in the van to eat. My orange dripped juice on the floor of the van, so I had to eat it standing outside in the thin rain.
After lunch we drove on into the moors. Pausing again, Pastor Quigley pointed out across a brown swell of moorland which fell away steeply from the road, which was by now hardly more than a narrow track. In the field, far away, we could see another white obelisk. "That's the spot where Cameron and four other men were ambushed and shot by dragoons," Pastor Quigley said. "They're buried just to the right of that monument." I stared down at the bleak scene. A few scruffy brown cattle grazed close to the fence. Behind them, the moorside tumbled down to the monument, fell steeply away, and rose again into yet another monotonous swell of grass, heather, and bracken. Dull greey and brown surged up to the dull grey sky, with the wind seething over all. Behind that hill, others rose, and on and on into the distance, until brown became grey, then faint blue, then lost, as though the hills had become one with the louering clouds. A bleak place to die.
We must've kept driving for an hour or two through the mountains. The moors slowly disappeared, to be replaced with thick, dark fir woods. Nothing could be seen through their shadow. The fir trees' long arms reached out toward the road, an endless succession of pointed trees, like soldiers lining the narrow way. The hillsides were lurkingly alive with their brooding darkness. Bracken covered the ground in open glens. Ferns dripped down the cuts that had been made to allow the road to pass through the hills. Dark water spurted out of the hillsides, foaming in white waterfalls over fir roots and fern leaves. The vast sweeps of hillside were covered with firtrees, like the spires of a city of cathedrals. Where the woods were made of pine, the darkness lifted somewhat. The ruddy pine trunks glowed darkly in the shadows, their writhen branches blocking out the grey sky. We drove over ancient, arched stone bridges, with dark grey water frothing beneath them. I was reminded of the Trollshaws above Rivendell. A strange stone spire poked out above the trees from a shoulder of rock. In a pasture outside Dalry, we passed a standing stone, jagged, like the stump of an old tree left to petrify in the field. We stopped briefly in Dalry, where the uprising against Charles II began, but there was no monument or any historical marker for the place. So we drove on.
In one field I saw a man riding an ATV toward a cluster of sheep. Streaking out ahead of him, turning the hundred or so white creatures back towards the ATV, was a black-and-white bundle of fur. As the sheepdog nipped the beasts' heels, the sheep skeined out, turning toward the man on the ATV.
At last we reached our destination: Wigtown. We drove down out of the hills. Wigtown sits up on a spur of land, but below it, to the east, its hill falls steeply, and there is a long, broad, flat bay. Above the bay on the other side, the hills (where we had just been) loom, their dark backs thrust up against the sky. Our first stop was the martyrs' monument, on the top of Wigtown's hill. Standing on the hilltop, we could look down onto the red and brown tile roofs of the town, clustered like clods of earth. Beyond that the broad bay opened: green pastureland blending seamelessly into the Solway Firth. A grey arm of the Atlantic shimmered like a sword, white where it touched the flat green land, turning grey far away on the northern horizon. To the east, beyond the arm of the sea, the hills rose, like huge waves, dark green, light-veined.
We drove down to the graveyard beside the old church. The ruins of one church stands beside the building of a slightly newer church. The graveyard itself is very old, many of the monuments unreadable. Yet here there is the monument to the two Margarets, Margaret Lachlane (63 years old) and Margaret Wilson (18 years old). As we stood around the grave, Pastor Quigley solemnly talked about the sacrifice that the Margarets made. We stood in absolute quiet for a long time. The wind boomed in the trees around the graveyard.
Both women were captured by dragoons and imprisoned for being Covenanters. Margaret Wilson's sister was also imprisoned, but the girls' father managed to find enough money to pay for her release. However, he did not have enough to release the other two women. Because the women would not deny Christ's crown rights, dragoons took them out into Solway Firth. They tied Margaret Lachlane to a stake far out in the ocean, and as the tide rose, she drowned. Then they gave Margaret Wilson the chance to recant. "Pray for the king!" they told her. She prayed for Christ's glory to be shown and for His power to be shown in the king's life. "See, look, she prays for the king!" her mother screamed from the bank. "I do not pray for the king, but for God's will to be done in the king's life," her daughter replied. The flat, tabletop monument in the graveyard commemorates her death for Christ's Crown and Covenant.
After the graveyard, we drove down to the place where the martyrs' stake stands. Since the time of the Margarets, the lay of the land has shifted. Though the place is out on that marshy bay of land, which could easily have been covered by the sea years ago, the sea today is some miles away. We climbed down the sheer hillside on which the town stands. Hemlock umbels bowed along the footpath, their delicate white flowers tossing on the wind. At the bottom, the land flattened out completely. A livestock gate at the bottom of the hill creaked as we entered the field. A board walk, raised above the level of the field, kept us from having to slog through the marshy ground. Pools of water glinted through tall green grass. Killdeer and seabirds piped and whistled far out over the muddy flats. Beyond the grass, miles away, I could just see the flash of the ocean, where it came level with the low land. Out in the field there stands a stone block, with a stone stake mounted on top of it, to mark the place where the Margarets were tied. Behind us on the hillside, the wind rose in the oak trees, like the crash of waves on the beac.h In their coveys among the trees, starlings chattered, and doves cooed softly from the eaves of houses on the hill. Away out on the pasture, skimming low over the grass and watery pools, swallows dipped and spun. Their purple wings flashed iridescently in the sunshine. Huge cloud shadows swooped over the field, streaking it grey and gold-green. Vivid ripples of color, shot through with the dancing pattern of the swallows. The wind sighed in the grass and spiderwort growing around the Margarets' stake. A lonely, lovely place.
We stood around the stake, and Pastor Quigley told us the story of the Margarets. After Margaret Wilson refused to pray for the king, she asked a passage of Scripture to be read. In his solemn voice, Pastor Quigley read Romans 8: "Therefore, there is now now condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit...." Tears welled up in my eyes. "After the reading of Scripture, Margaret sang a Psalm. Then the soldiers led her out to the stake. They held her head underwater until she drowned." Pastor Quigley raised his head and spoke seriously to us. "You may not have heard, but recently two American soldiers were captured and brutalized in Iraq by Muslim terrorists. The world tells us to beware of anyone who knows the truth. It lumps Christians and Muslims together because both claim to know the truth. 'Look what the Muslims did in the name of the truth! Beware of those Christians!', the world says. But there's one key difference. Muslims kill others for their faith. Christians die at the hands of others. Yet these women did not die for Christ. They were seeking to live for Him. That is why they went to the conventicles. Their challenge to us is not that we may die for Christ. I do not think that in our lifetime we will ever face that level of persecution. Their challenge to us is that we should live for Christ. When we meet them in Heaven, we may say to them, 'I know what your life was like. Not that I followed Christ to the point of death, but I lived my life just the way you did--without compromise, in the service of Christ.' Christ does not call us to die, but to live." He paused and stared at the stone stake. "This is our heritage," he said at last. "Ours in a general sense, but also in a very specific sense, as Reformed Presbyterians." The wind shivered through the grass around the standing stone.
We sang Psalms 118, 119 ("How shall a young man cleanse his way?"), 73C, 98A, and 116A. The wind whipped our voices. The words whirled away among the darting wings of the swallows.
We climbed the hill in silence.
Back in the car, we drove for another couple of hours. Though there were many sites yet to visit, Pastor Quigley chose not to go to them. "The map I'm using is marked with Covenanter sites. It's covered in little red dots," he said. But the day was late, and we'd had a late start.
We drove through more fir woods, then into a fertile pastureland. Many dark grey and green rivers flowed past the road. Foam flecked the water with vs like skeins of flying wild geese. The fir woods gave way to hardwood forests--oak, elm, maple. We drove by farms nestled in the flat valleys between steep hillsides. We drove under the tall stone arches of railroad bridges spanning narrow green valleys. Gold light flowed over the green fields and blue hills.
Suddenly, we came out of the mountains. Two last tall heads of stone, grey cliffs cut through their grey sides, stood on either side of the road. And there was the sea, spread before us beside a long, flat shore. We drove through the town of Givan, a town much like Ayr, and through others of the same sort, strung along the seashore. Glimpsing the sea between the houses, the sun on the water dazzled my eyes. To the west, the sky was black with clouds. The sea was deep grey, streaked blue and aquamarine where the wind ruffled it. The sun was moving toward the west. It flashed on the waves so that sun, water, and sky became a wall of shining silver glass.
We drove past the ruins of a red sandstone castle in a green field, with the dark hills behind. Finally, at about six-thirty, we stopped for supper at Monkton Lodge, a hotel and restaurant built beside the highway toward Airdrie. The people sitting at the front of the bus (Virginia, Missy, Rachel, Aaron, and John) had been singing silly songs for the past two hours from Wigtown. Mostly variations on, "And he threw it out the window/ The window/ The second-story window/ With a heidy-ho and a hefty throw/ He threw it out the window." Brenda, Matt, Michaela, Emily, Sarah, and I had sat at the back of the bus and suffered through this nonsense the whole way. Lucas asked the singers to stop at the restaurant, but they were still being silly as we filed into the dining area. The restaurant was a warm, homey sort of place with plain, wholesome food.
When the food came, it was delicious. I had a square beef-onion-mushroom pie, with thick crust. Afterward, Pastor Quigley ordered one huge sundae for each table (he was sitting with Sarah, Brenda, Toby, and Matt at another table; Lucas and Melissa were off in their own corner). We passed ours around, everyone taking a spoonful or two of the creamy cake-and-ice-cream.
We returned to Airdrie at about ten o'clock. Michaela wanted to watch the new "Pride and Prejudice", so Virginia and I settled down with her in the girls' room. Michaela tipped her cot up on its side so that we could lean against it. The movie was pleasant to watch with Michaela (who'd never seen it before), and Virginia (who put in funny comments every now and then).
21 June 2006
Covenanter History Tour, Day 2: Edinburgh
Now Playing: Guess what? "Stealing Second", by Chris Thile. Track 1, "Ah, Spring!" Yes, yes, my only excuse for listening to this over and over is the fact that it reminds me so strongly of home before I left. Clear blue sky, green oak trees, the sword-blade grey kite, Mandy stalking through the zinnia sprouts, pulling weeds with my mother, going leaf-hunting with Laura, bike riding with Stephen....
This morning, as usual, I helped Rachel with breakfast--setting the table, clearing up odds and ends of dishes from last night, etc. The hall was painfully cold. Rachel turned on a Toby Keith CD. The singer blared out, drawling familiar Texas names. "Now you've made me homesick, too," I growled with a grin at Rachel, and she giggled.
Today we went to Edinburgh on the Covenanter Tour. Carla and Connor Quigley were going to come with us, but there wasn't enough room in the bus. Lucas's wife, Melissa, arrived yesterday, and both Lucas and Melissa were coming along with us, as was Sarah. So our trip got off to a dismal start as Pastor Quigley had to ask them to go home.
It was raining again this morning as we drove to Edinburgh. A day of scattered heavy rain, with blue sky between the thick clouds. We drove around behind the castle and up into Grassmarket. Pastor Quigley first took us inside St. Giles's Cathedral. The wind blew cruelly cold from the east. Inside, the cathedral was crowded with people and with pews, displays, and other furniture, so we never really got a chance to look around (I still think my favorite part of the whole trip was going to Glasgow Cathedral). The cathedral seemed smaller than Glasgow Cathedral. Some of the windows had historic scenes on them: John Knox, the Earl of Murray, etc. Ragged banners hung above the windows, below the clerestory. As Pastor Quigley took us around the cathedral, a choir was practicing, filling the cathedral with ringing music. The clear echoes shivered like bells from every arch and windowpane so that it was hard to hear Pastor Quigley's soft voice.
Moving around the cathedral, Pastor Quigley took us to important spots: Archibald Campbell's burial place, the sepulchre of the Earl of Murray, and the National Covenant. Campbell was beheaded by Charles II outside St. Giles in 1661. The Earl of Murray was the first national leader in the world to be assasinated with firearms. He was a Protestant, and during his time Scotland had peace. John Knox was very influential under the Earl of Murray, and Knox died two years after the Earl. It was in St. Giles that Jenny Geddes threw a footstool at a prelate who presumed to read the Book of Common Prayer. Her action sparked an uprising against the Episcopal system.
Leading us out through a side door, Pastor Quigley took us over to the parking lot beside St. Giles. As we left the church, the sun came out briefly, and the gilded cock on the top of the crown spire of St. Giles flashed. (St. Giles has a tower shaped like the golden arms that hold up the velvet of a crown.) In this parking lot, in slot 23, John Knox is buried. Only a yellow brick marks his burial spot. Pastor Quigley's voice grew soft and harsh with angry intensity. "Look over there. That's a statue of Charles II," he said, pointing to a grand bronze statue of a man on horseback. "And all they can give John Knox, one of the most influential men in Scottish history, is a grave without even his name on it." Even as we turned away, a van backed into the spot, covering John Knox's grave.
Next we went into the Scottish High Court, which is right beside the cathedral, its tall grey buildings forming a half-moon courtyard against the cathedral's straight wall. We had to go through security for a brief peep into the High Courtroom. The courtroom is hung with age-dulled paintings. Dark wooden beams, interlaced with many downward-pointing spires, like stalactites with gold bosses on their tips, supported the roof. A British chap in a business suit rattled away on a cellphone, and people in gowns hurried in and out. "This is where the National Covenant was drawn up. It shows that there was a legally binding aspect to the Covenant. It wasn't just something made by religious fanatics--it was created by the government of the people, to bind the nation of Scotland to God," Pastor Quigley said. "It is my personal conviction that subsequent generations were blessed by the Covenant. If you look at the history of many industries after the 1600s, Scotsmen are prominent. And it is my conviction that Scotland's hardened, darkened state today is God's judgment on the land for not keeping the Covenant."
Leaving the courtyard between St. Giles and the High Court, we walked down the street to the Scottish National History Museum. The museum is fairly new, state-of-the-art. Pastor Quigley strode ahead determinedly, and we straggled behind. I lingered for a moment, with a quick glance of delight as we passed the Monymusk Reliquary--a little gold-and-silver box which was carried into the Battle of Bannockburn.
Pastor Quigley took us to the Middle Ages church history display. We looked at elaborate croisers, crosses, chalices, broken cathedral corbels, fragments of pews and painted ceilings, and other relics. Then he led us into the Reformation display. "What was missing from the Middle Ages displays?" he asked us. "The Bible," Missy said. As soon as we stepped through the doorway into the Reformation, we saw a Bible, and a Psalter. "Why did the Scottish Reformers focus on the Psalter?" Pastor Quigley asked. "Because it got people singing God's Word. You remember what you sing," I offered. He pointed out the simplicity of the communion cups and Bibles. We walked past a pulpit, and under frayed Covenanter banners. Pastor Quigley pointed out the brown velvet suit that Andrew Henderson had worn, and the eerie mask that Alexander Peden wore to disguise himself when he was preaching in conventicles in the late 1600s.
Our next stop was up the street: Greyfriars Kirk. Pastor Quigley led us briskly up the street, through the narrow gate between two buildings, and into the kirkyard. He took us inside the Kirk and showed us where preaching had been given before the signing of the Covenant. A simple church, for the most part. Its windows are elaborate geometric designs, beautiful as illuminations from the Lindisfarne Gospels. Pastor Quigley took us outside to the Covenanters' Prison. In 1660, Charles II was restored to the Scottish throne. He burned the National Covenant, which he had signed. In May 1679, Archbishop Sharp, Charles II's henchman, was knifed by the Covenanters. On June 1, 1679, a Covenanter conventicle at Drumclog was attacked by Charles II's soldiers. The Covenanters defended themselves skillfully. However, on June 22, 1679, the Covenanters foolishly engaged the king's men in battle at Bothwell Brig. Here many Covenanters were captured. They were put into the Covenanters' Prison in Greyfriars kirkyard during the winter of 1679. The Covenanters' Prison is an open alley in the graveyard. It's shut off from the rest of the graveyard by a high stone wall with an iron gate, but there's no shelter inside the prison--only open tombs and monuments. Across from the Covenanters' Prison, on a flat stone table, the National Covenant was signed. Charles II was essentially taunting the prisoners: he let them see the place where the great spiritual and secular victory of the National Covenant had been won, and flaunted before them the question as to whether that Covenant was worth dying for. In the spring of 1680, these Covenanters were put on board ship for Barbados, to become slaves. But the ship foundered near the Orkneys. The sailors battened down the hatches so that the Covenanters could not escape, and the ship sank with all the Covenanter prisoners on board.
Though the sky over the graveyard was clear, rain spat down over the Covenanter Prison, staining the tombstones and the iron gate with silver water.
Pastor Quigley led us down to the low stone slab where the National Covenant was signed. If you see pictures from this time of the signing of the Covenant, it's this spot you'll see: a row of tombs along the high wall, thick elm trees standing in the background, and this low, flat tombstone, where the Covenant was signed. Next we walked down to the Covenanter corner, where the corpses and ashes of many Covenanters were tossed as refuse with the corpses of common criminals. A monument on the stone wall above the corner stands to commemorate the Covenanters, to remind us that we belong to Christ. We cannot negotiate our lives, for we were bought with the price of Christ's blood, and Christ's commands to us are non-negotiable. Pastor Quigley told us that some scholars from Glasgow came to try to persuade the Covenanters to compromise. The Covenanters stood firm with Scripture proofs to back up their arguments. They refused to compromise, and the scholars were amazed by their erudition and steadfastness. As Pastor Quigley stood and talked to us about these things, the one o'clock canon boomed from the castle on the hill.
We bowed our heads in prayer beside the monument. Pastor Quigley asked God to give us the strength to live for Christ, for we do not belong to ourselves, but to Him.
Pastor Quigley had to go and feed the parking meter, so we waited in the graveyard. It began to rain heavily. Michaela, Rachel, Virginia, and I sheltered under a maple tree. Rain rustled on the lush leaves, but the thick branches kept us fairly dry. It was freezing cold, though, and we huddled together.
When Pastor Quigley returned, we walked back to Grassmarket, to the Covenanter monument in Grassmarket: a simple, low stone platform with an X on it to mark where the stake stood to which Covenanters were roped and burned. Behind the platform is a stone wall, with a ledge and a plaque dedicated by the Church of Scotland and the Reformed Presbyterian Church. The sun came out, a pale, luminous sunshine. Everyone sat around on the stone platform and pulled out their lunches. I perched on the ledge of the stone wall--it seemed disrespectful, somehow, to eat lunch on the spot where so many faithful men and women had given up their lives. As we sat and ate, a girl with flaming pink hair walked past. "E--'s hair is naturally that color, but she dyes it," Lucas jokingly told Melissa. I wrinkled my nose at him.
After lunch, we stood and sang Psalms around the stone platform: 84B, 98A, 67, 116A, 73C, 72C. People stopped and stared at us. Voices and sunshine poured out like clear oil on the place where the martyrs were burned. "On hilltops sown a little grain, like Lebanon with fruit shall bend. New life the city shall attain. She shall like grass grow and extend...." We sang the last verse of 72C as we climbed onto the minibus.
Pastor Quigley drove around through the shops and back alleys of downtown Edinburgh for awhile, trying to find the Covenanter barracks, I think, but he never did succeed, so finally we started back toward Airdrie. The luminous sunshine was covered with heavy clouds again, and it began to rain hard. I drowsed, listening to the "Chronicles of Narnia" soundtrack. I woke up as the minibus jolted down a narrow back road on the edge of Airdrie. It was raining very hard again. Grey mud splashed up over the minibus as we turned down a dirt track. The track ran through a young firwood and out onto the open slope of a moor. Sheep bounded away from the track, white haunches leaping and heaving in the rain. A cluster of shaggy brown cattle stood by a gate and eyed us hungrily. Pastor Quigley pulled up in the field at the end of the track and turned the minibus around. "I'm almost sure that it's out there somewhere," he said. He told us that out on the moorside there was a monument on the spot where Alexander Peden had preached. After 1672, the Covenanter ministers were thrown out of their pulpits. So they roamed around the countryside, hiding in friends' houses and in the fields. They held their worship services in open fields, on the moors, and Covenanters would gather from miles around.
I stared out at the tall grass bowing under the cold wind and the rain. Bleak hills sloped down and up again, endlessly, crested in places with small, low-growing groves of fir and spruce and pine. The cold wind shook the minibus, and rain rattled like gunshot against the glass windows. I shivered. Our warm breath fogged the windows so that I could only see a blur of green and grey outside. The moorside rippled with lush grass, and I remembered Psalm 72, "On hilltops sown a little grain...." It is said that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Gospel. Here we are, centuries later, and this is our heritage: "For Christ's Crown and Covenant".
We drove back to the church, reaching it at about four o'clock. Rachel, John, and Emily started to fix supper. Missy French-braided Brenda's hair, and they played cards. Lucas and Melissa played basketball with one of the little plastic balls lying around the room. Rachel's Toby Keith CD blared out from the kitchen until Lucas put on some sort of soft rap.
Rachel, John, and Emily fixed creamy potato soup for supper. After supper, Lucas led team time on the second half of Hebrews 11. Then the Hannas, Missy, and Rachel went to the grocery store. I washed the dishes, and Aaron and Emily dried them and put away the food. We had a brief prayer time, in which we lifted up Calvin F, who's been seriously ill, and the F family, and also Alisha and Tara, who are going on a missions trip to South Africa. It was still raining hard outside.
Now people are just fooling around. They've cleared the hall and are playing some sort of sport in it--hockey or basketball, I think. (The hall has two stand-alone plastic basketball goals.) There's a lot of clattering, thumping, and shouting. Virginia is sitting in our room, tuning her harp. While we were in Edinburgh today, after lunch, she exchanged the harp she'd bought on Saturday for a new one since the one she'd bought on Saturday had a serious crack in it. She's been playing sweet, simple tunes on it--Christmas carols, hymns, medieval tunes that make me think of "Greensleeves".
This morning, as usual, I helped Rachel with breakfast--setting the table, clearing up odds and ends of dishes from last night, etc. The hall was painfully cold. Rachel turned on a Toby Keith CD. The singer blared out, drawling familiar Texas names. "Now you've made me homesick, too," I growled with a grin at Rachel, and she giggled.
Today we went to Edinburgh on the Covenanter Tour. Carla and Connor Quigley were going to come with us, but there wasn't enough room in the bus. Lucas's wife, Melissa, arrived yesterday, and both Lucas and Melissa were coming along with us, as was Sarah. So our trip got off to a dismal start as Pastor Quigley had to ask them to go home.
It was raining again this morning as we drove to Edinburgh. A day of scattered heavy rain, with blue sky between the thick clouds. We drove around behind the castle and up into Grassmarket. Pastor Quigley first took us inside St. Giles's Cathedral. The wind blew cruelly cold from the east. Inside, the cathedral was crowded with people and with pews, displays, and other furniture, so we never really got a chance to look around (I still think my favorite part of the whole trip was going to Glasgow Cathedral). The cathedral seemed smaller than Glasgow Cathedral. Some of the windows had historic scenes on them: John Knox, the Earl of Murray, etc. Ragged banners hung above the windows, below the clerestory. As Pastor Quigley took us around the cathedral, a choir was practicing, filling the cathedral with ringing music. The clear echoes shivered like bells from every arch and windowpane so that it was hard to hear Pastor Quigley's soft voice.
Moving around the cathedral, Pastor Quigley took us to important spots: Archibald Campbell's burial place, the sepulchre of the Earl of Murray, and the National Covenant. Campbell was beheaded by Charles II outside St. Giles in 1661. The Earl of Murray was the first national leader in the world to be assasinated with firearms. He was a Protestant, and during his time Scotland had peace. John Knox was very influential under the Earl of Murray, and Knox died two years after the Earl. It was in St. Giles that Jenny Geddes threw a footstool at a prelate who presumed to read the Book of Common Prayer. Her action sparked an uprising against the Episcopal system.
Leading us out through a side door, Pastor Quigley took us over to the parking lot beside St. Giles. As we left the church, the sun came out briefly, and the gilded cock on the top of the crown spire of St. Giles flashed. (St. Giles has a tower shaped like the golden arms that hold up the velvet of a crown.) In this parking lot, in slot 23, John Knox is buried. Only a yellow brick marks his burial spot. Pastor Quigley's voice grew soft and harsh with angry intensity. "Look over there. That's a statue of Charles II," he said, pointing to a grand bronze statue of a man on horseback. "And all they can give John Knox, one of the most influential men in Scottish history, is a grave without even his name on it." Even as we turned away, a van backed into the spot, covering John Knox's grave.
Next we went into the Scottish High Court, which is right beside the cathedral, its tall grey buildings forming a half-moon courtyard against the cathedral's straight wall. We had to go through security for a brief peep into the High Courtroom. The courtroom is hung with age-dulled paintings. Dark wooden beams, interlaced with many downward-pointing spires, like stalactites with gold bosses on their tips, supported the roof. A British chap in a business suit rattled away on a cellphone, and people in gowns hurried in and out. "This is where the National Covenant was drawn up. It shows that there was a legally binding aspect to the Covenant. It wasn't just something made by religious fanatics--it was created by the government of the people, to bind the nation of Scotland to God," Pastor Quigley said. "It is my personal conviction that subsequent generations were blessed by the Covenant. If you look at the history of many industries after the 1600s, Scotsmen are prominent. And it is my conviction that Scotland's hardened, darkened state today is God's judgment on the land for not keeping the Covenant."
Leaving the courtyard between St. Giles and the High Court, we walked down the street to the Scottish National History Museum. The museum is fairly new, state-of-the-art. Pastor Quigley strode ahead determinedly, and we straggled behind. I lingered for a moment, with a quick glance of delight as we passed the Monymusk Reliquary--a little gold-and-silver box which was carried into the Battle of Bannockburn.
Pastor Quigley took us to the Middle Ages church history display. We looked at elaborate croisers, crosses, chalices, broken cathedral corbels, fragments of pews and painted ceilings, and other relics. Then he led us into the Reformation display. "What was missing from the Middle Ages displays?" he asked us. "The Bible," Missy said. As soon as we stepped through the doorway into the Reformation, we saw a Bible, and a Psalter. "Why did the Scottish Reformers focus on the Psalter?" Pastor Quigley asked. "Because it got people singing God's Word. You remember what you sing," I offered. He pointed out the simplicity of the communion cups and Bibles. We walked past a pulpit, and under frayed Covenanter banners. Pastor Quigley pointed out the brown velvet suit that Andrew Henderson had worn, and the eerie mask that Alexander Peden wore to disguise himself when he was preaching in conventicles in the late 1600s.
Our next stop was up the street: Greyfriars Kirk. Pastor Quigley led us briskly up the street, through the narrow gate between two buildings, and into the kirkyard. He took us inside the Kirk and showed us where preaching had been given before the signing of the Covenant. A simple church, for the most part. Its windows are elaborate geometric designs, beautiful as illuminations from the Lindisfarne Gospels. Pastor Quigley took us outside to the Covenanters' Prison. In 1660, Charles II was restored to the Scottish throne. He burned the National Covenant, which he had signed. In May 1679, Archbishop Sharp, Charles II's henchman, was knifed by the Covenanters. On June 1, 1679, a Covenanter conventicle at Drumclog was attacked by Charles II's soldiers. The Covenanters defended themselves skillfully. However, on June 22, 1679, the Covenanters foolishly engaged the king's men in battle at Bothwell Brig. Here many Covenanters were captured. They were put into the Covenanters' Prison in Greyfriars kirkyard during the winter of 1679. The Covenanters' Prison is an open alley in the graveyard. It's shut off from the rest of the graveyard by a high stone wall with an iron gate, but there's no shelter inside the prison--only open tombs and monuments. Across from the Covenanters' Prison, on a flat stone table, the National Covenant was signed. Charles II was essentially taunting the prisoners: he let them see the place where the great spiritual and secular victory of the National Covenant had been won, and flaunted before them the question as to whether that Covenant was worth dying for. In the spring of 1680, these Covenanters were put on board ship for Barbados, to become slaves. But the ship foundered near the Orkneys. The sailors battened down the hatches so that the Covenanters could not escape, and the ship sank with all the Covenanter prisoners on board.
Though the sky over the graveyard was clear, rain spat down over the Covenanter Prison, staining the tombstones and the iron gate with silver water.
Pastor Quigley led us down to the low stone slab where the National Covenant was signed. If you see pictures from this time of the signing of the Covenant, it's this spot you'll see: a row of tombs along the high wall, thick elm trees standing in the background, and this low, flat tombstone, where the Covenant was signed. Next we walked down to the Covenanter corner, where the corpses and ashes of many Covenanters were tossed as refuse with the corpses of common criminals. A monument on the stone wall above the corner stands to commemorate the Covenanters, to remind us that we belong to Christ. We cannot negotiate our lives, for we were bought with the price of Christ's blood, and Christ's commands to us are non-negotiable. Pastor Quigley told us that some scholars from Glasgow came to try to persuade the Covenanters to compromise. The Covenanters stood firm with Scripture proofs to back up their arguments. They refused to compromise, and the scholars were amazed by their erudition and steadfastness. As Pastor Quigley stood and talked to us about these things, the one o'clock canon boomed from the castle on the hill.
We bowed our heads in prayer beside the monument. Pastor Quigley asked God to give us the strength to live for Christ, for we do not belong to ourselves, but to Him.
Pastor Quigley had to go and feed the parking meter, so we waited in the graveyard. It began to rain heavily. Michaela, Rachel, Virginia, and I sheltered under a maple tree. Rain rustled on the lush leaves, but the thick branches kept us fairly dry. It was freezing cold, though, and we huddled together.
When Pastor Quigley returned, we walked back to Grassmarket, to the Covenanter monument in Grassmarket: a simple, low stone platform with an X on it to mark where the stake stood to which Covenanters were roped and burned. Behind the platform is a stone wall, with a ledge and a plaque dedicated by the Church of Scotland and the Reformed Presbyterian Church. The sun came out, a pale, luminous sunshine. Everyone sat around on the stone platform and pulled out their lunches. I perched on the ledge of the stone wall--it seemed disrespectful, somehow, to eat lunch on the spot where so many faithful men and women had given up their lives. As we sat and ate, a girl with flaming pink hair walked past. "E--'s hair is naturally that color, but she dyes it," Lucas jokingly told Melissa. I wrinkled my nose at him.
After lunch, we stood and sang Psalms around the stone platform: 84B, 98A, 67, 116A, 73C, 72C. People stopped and stared at us. Voices and sunshine poured out like clear oil on the place where the martyrs were burned. "On hilltops sown a little grain, like Lebanon with fruit shall bend. New life the city shall attain. She shall like grass grow and extend...." We sang the last verse of 72C as we climbed onto the minibus.
Pastor Quigley drove around through the shops and back alleys of downtown Edinburgh for awhile, trying to find the Covenanter barracks, I think, but he never did succeed, so finally we started back toward Airdrie. The luminous sunshine was covered with heavy clouds again, and it began to rain hard. I drowsed, listening to the "Chronicles of Narnia" soundtrack. I woke up as the minibus jolted down a narrow back road on the edge of Airdrie. It was raining very hard again. Grey mud splashed up over the minibus as we turned down a dirt track. The track ran through a young firwood and out onto the open slope of a moor. Sheep bounded away from the track, white haunches leaping and heaving in the rain. A cluster of shaggy brown cattle stood by a gate and eyed us hungrily. Pastor Quigley pulled up in the field at the end of the track and turned the minibus around. "I'm almost sure that it's out there somewhere," he said. He told us that out on the moorside there was a monument on the spot where Alexander Peden had preached. After 1672, the Covenanter ministers were thrown out of their pulpits. So they roamed around the countryside, hiding in friends' houses and in the fields. They held their worship services in open fields, on the moors, and Covenanters would gather from miles around.
I stared out at the tall grass bowing under the cold wind and the rain. Bleak hills sloped down and up again, endlessly, crested in places with small, low-growing groves of fir and spruce and pine. The cold wind shook the minibus, and rain rattled like gunshot against the glass windows. I shivered. Our warm breath fogged the windows so that I could only see a blur of green and grey outside. The moorside rippled with lush grass, and I remembered Psalm 72, "On hilltops sown a little grain...." It is said that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Gospel. Here we are, centuries later, and this is our heritage: "For Christ's Crown and Covenant".
We drove back to the church, reaching it at about four o'clock. Rachel, John, and Emily started to fix supper. Missy French-braided Brenda's hair, and they played cards. Lucas and Melissa played basketball with one of the little plastic balls lying around the room. Rachel's Toby Keith CD blared out from the kitchen until Lucas put on some sort of soft rap.
Rachel, John, and Emily fixed creamy potato soup for supper. After supper, Lucas led team time on the second half of Hebrews 11. Then the Hannas, Missy, and Rachel went to the grocery store. I washed the dishes, and Aaron and Emily dried them and put away the food. We had a brief prayer time, in which we lifted up Calvin F, who's been seriously ill, and the F family, and also Alisha and Tara, who are going on a missions trip to South Africa. It was still raining hard outside.
Now people are just fooling around. They've cleared the hall and are playing some sort of sport in it--hockey or basketball, I think. (The hall has two stand-alone plastic basketball goals.) There's a lot of clattering, thumping, and shouting. Virginia is sitting in our room, tuning her harp. While we were in Edinburgh today, after lunch, she exchanged the harp she'd bought on Saturday for a new one since the one she'd bought on Saturday had a serious crack in it. She's been playing sweet, simple tunes on it--Christmas carols, hymns, medieval tunes that make me think of "Greensleeves".
20 June 2006
Covenanter History Tour, Day 1: St. Andrew's
Now Playing: "Stealing Second" by Chris Thile. Track 1, "Ah, Spring!", on my "bug", courtesy of Philip.
Rachel fixed pancakes for breakfast this morning: delicious thick, sweet pancakes, some of the best I've ever had. After breakfast, I spent fifteen minutes writing e-mails on the computer before Pastor Quigley arrived with the bus. Sarah, a girl who's visiting the church here before she goes to college in the fall, came along with us, but Lucas stayed behind. His wife, Melissa, is flying in today. With Sarah, we were twelve, and led by Pastor Quigley (making thirteen), we marched out to the minibus and set out on the first day of the Covenanter tour.
Today our destination was St. Andrew's, a town about two miles northeast of Airdrie, on the North Sea. We sang Psalms in the bus for part of the way, all the Psalms we could remember: parts of 119, 98, 19, 8, 116, 1, 4, 150, 148.... I pulled out my Bible and used it to guide me through Psalms 19 and 98. After awhile, Michaela fell asleep on Missy's shoulder, and Sarah fell asleep on Virginia's shoulder. The bus fell quiet.
The morning was partly cloudy. Lances of light struck through the clouds, giving a gold foil shimmer to the pastures and lush fields of barley and wheat. We drove up toward Stirling. Above the trees, I could see the tower of the Wallace Monument. We drove straight toward the Highlands, then turned to drive along the foot of the hills. The hills marched along the left of the highway--rough brown shoulders, dull green, open scars of grey rock. To the right the land was flat fields, richly green. In places the road ran through thick fir and spruce woods, shadows deep blue.
We drove through an endless chain of small towns strung along the hills. Town names: Strathkiness, Cupar, Dundee, Drum, Glenrothes, Strathmiglo, Falkland. Even the houses have names: Eyvern, Glenlea. Houses snuggled behind high walls and thick rhododendron, roses and ivy climbing up their walls.
St. Andrew's is down by the sea, where the land levels out. The town itself stands up on a ridge of rock with the beach falling away on either side. Pastor Quigley led us first to the spot where Patrick Hamilton was burned at the stake. This place is in the heart of St. Andrew's, near the town church and the college, right on the edge of a busy main street. Students in black-and-red gowns were walking down the street: college graduation today. Hamilton was burned at the age of twenty-four on February 29, 1528. He visited Germany, where he fell under the influence of Martin Luther. He then returned to Scotland, where he proceeded to teach. The bishop accused him of heresy and burned him at the stake. A set of bricks in the initials "PH" marks the spot on the sidewalk where he was burned.
Then Pastor Quigley led us down the street. We darted down an alley and came out on a road running along the edge of the cliff on which the town is built. We stood looking out northward, over the sea. Between the road and the edge of the cliff is the remains of a castle where Mary, Queen of Scotts used to live. On the edge of the road there's another bricked set of initials: "GW", for George Wishart, who was burned at the stake by the nephew of the man who burned Patrick Hamilton. Wishart's martyrdom sparked a Covenanter rebellion. The Covenanters took the castle and established a brief reign there. John Knox took part in the government until the French, allied to Mary, attacked the castle. They took John Knox captive as a galley slave.
We walked along the road, along the edge of the cliff above the sea. Rocky ridges ran out into the water far below. The dark rock was stained with lichen and salty growths. Poppies and purple flowers nodded in the tall grass growing along the edge of the cliff. We turned away from the cliffside and walked to the tip of the cliff, the east end of the town. Pastor Quigley led us into the remnants of the cathedral, an immense structure. Only the west tower, the east tower, and the north wall are left, as well as part of the transept and the enormous round foundations of the original supporting pillars. Some of the pointed clerestory windows of the north wall have begun to crumble, the stone lacing that once held the stained glass crumbling into broken fingers. We scrambled among the rocks and ruins, masonry weathered into sand-swelling shapes, like a beach moulded by the tide. Pastor Quigley led us to a spot under the north wall and described for us the darkness of Scotland under Popery. Standing there on the short grass, with the wind scouring the stones around us, a great solemnity settled over us. Away in the center of the town, a churchbell tolled. Above us in the air, seagulls cried and called endlessly, their voices whistling harshly silver on the wind.
Pastor Quigley led us out into the cemetery, to the tomb of Samuel Rutherford. Tall tombstones leaned like the grey trunks of felled trees and lined the walls of the cemetery. Rutherford was instrumental in writing the Westminster Confession of Faith. He died peacefully in St. Andrew's College before he could be martyred. His tombstone is carved with a poem in his honor, describing how now he is seeing with his eyes what he once saw "in vision".
After the cathedral, we walked into the town, to the town church, where John Knox once preached. The guard at the gate would only let us step into the entry area for a few minutes. So we walked down to St. Mary's College, where Samuel Rutherford once taught. An arched doorway with "In Principio Erat Verbum" opened onto a quiet green cloister--an open area surrounded by tall buildings, with gardens running around the edge of the lawn. Peach and gold roses bloomed against the grey walls.
It was twelve-thirty, so Pastor Quigley led us down the street, past lines of shops, restaurants, and businesses. A young woman sang, wailing mournfully, in the square beside the town church. We pushed through crowds of well-dressed parents, tourists, and students. We went to The Eating Place, one of Pastor Quigley's favorite restaurants. It would be thirty minutes before they had an open space large enough for all of us, so Pastor Quigley turned us loose to wander for thirty minutes before lunch. Missy and I decided to return to the ruins of the castle. Along the way, we found a shop called the Jumper--a store selling fine-quality sweaters. We stepped in and had a look at the soft, thick cotton shirts before moving on. We walked along the road where the castle is. The road runs past St. Andrew's College: high, grey stone buildings, thick rhododendron peering over tall walls, roses blooming in faculty gardens. Coming out on the castle, we climbed down the steps to a small beach, nestled in a slender half-moon under the cliff. Black rock gave way to white sand, which in turn gave way to still, turquoise water running in gentle ripples along the beach. A heron flew slowly up the beach, crying throatily. Gulls bobbed on the low swell. "It's as though nothing else is happening in the world," Missy said softly. A stab of sunshine struck aquamarine on the water, gold foam lipping the tops of the little waves. Long grass hissed in crevices on the cliffside.
We hurried back to the restaurant after our thirty minutes was up. We sat at a table with Pastor Quigley, Rachel, and Virginia. Pastor Quigley spread out a map and explained the lay of the geography to us. We ate a hearty lunch: pancakes for me, a hamburger for Rachel, and an apple crumble for Pastor Quigley, etc. After lunch, Pastor Quigley gave permission for us to have another half-hour to ourselves. Missy and I ran back to the Jumper, where Missy bought a luxurious, pale blue sweater, and I bought a jade green sweater with a delicate pattern of openwork running down the front.
Before we left St. Andrew's, Pastor Quigley drove us down to the main beach, where the opening scene of "Chariots of Fire" was filmed. Michaela and I stripped off our shoes and socks, and sprinted across the sand. The soft white sand was hard to run on, and I labored as my feet sank in, shells and bits of wood pricking my toes. As we ran toward the water, the sand firmed and became wet and brown. The beach sloped down on a long, flat incline to the water. The afternoon had become cold with spits of rain. A cruel west wind sent white sand skirling over the brown, whirling in skeins like the wings of white seabirds. The smell of salt came faintly from the teal-grey water. I sprinted along the sea and Missy took my picture--"Oh, that's wonderful!" as I flung my arms out, flying. It felt wonderful to run in the cold wind, barefoot on the firm, cool sand. Sky and sea were grey-blue, heron colors.
After five minutes, we had to race back to the bus. Along the way, I snatched up odd shells that I found nestled in the sand. Michaela and Sarah came back later than everyone else. Michaela had found long, copper-brown tube worm shells, seaweed, and the arm of a dead crab. It stank.
I sat in the front seat with Pastor Quigley, where Toby had been sitting before. Toby complained about how nasty women are these days, with Pastor Quigley joining in. I retorted that "If you give a man an inch, he thinks he's a ruler." Pastor Quigley laughed and winked at me.
We drove up to Leuchar, to the town church. By now it was raining in earnest. The wind drove the rain before it, and we hurried to take refuge in the church. The rain drummed on the old glass windows and the wooden beam roof. There's an RAF base near Leuchar, and as we entered the church, a jet roared like thunder, making my ears ring. Missy grinned delightedly at the familiar sound.
Pastor Quigley told us that the church at Leuchar is the place where Alexander Henderson preached. He led the action against the Book of Common Prayer. With a gifted young lawyer, Henderson was instrumental in producing the National Covenant. Charles II signed the Covenant, was booted out of Scotland, and when he returned to the throne, he burned the Covenant. Pastor Quigley also told us that the front part of the church is one of the only Norman buildings in Scotland, built around 1100 A.D. (The Norman invasion of England was 1066 A.D.) The rest of the church dates from the 1500s and is plastered white on the inside, with a roof of wooden beams. I stared in awe at the massive Norman architecture of the apse, the sanctuary, behind the pulpit--two bays of uncovered stone, arched doorways leading into each other. (Note about church architecture: A typical medieval church is made with a vestibule (entry area), leading into the nave, which is the long part of the church. The nave is typically crossed by the transept. Then comes the quire, where the choir would stand to sing the service. Beyond the quire is the pulpit, and behind this is the sanctuary/apse, where the altar is.) Shallow carving, zigzags and spirals, decorated the doorways. Under the narrow windows in the farthest bay stone faces of monsters and knights were carved. Their heads were round, like shield bosses, and their eyes were huge and staring, like the eyes of deep sea creatures.
While I admired the architecture, John climbed into the wooden pulpit and gave a mock-sermon. "You silly people! Don't you see the cloud of fire that God has placed between us and the Egyptians?", his lines from our play. (He's Moses.) Everyone stood and laughed. Missy and Virginia sang Psalm 19, their voices echoing clearly from wooden beams and stone arches.
Our next stop was Magus Muir. We walked through a thick wood of young birch trees. In open areas, nettles waist-high lined the path, but under the trees, the ground was covered with lush ferns, also waist-high. Their fronds held lacy fingers to the falling rain. We walked along the edge of the wood. Beyond the trees was an open barley field. The thick stalks bowed under the rain, making a sound like rushing water. Four or five yards into the field were the graves of five Covenanter martyrs, who were hanged in the field. They were taken captive at the Battle of Bothwell Brig and killed on November 25, 1679: Thomas Brown, James Wood, Andrew Sword, John Weddell, and John Clyde. Their deaths were partly in retaliation for the killing of Archbishop Sharp. Pastor Quigley led us down a path through the woods. In a little clearing we found a triangular stone monument to Archbishop Sharp, set up by Charles II, with an inscription in Latin. Sharp was a Covenanter. The Covenanters sent him to negotiate with the king, but Sharp turned on the Covenanters for personal gain. He was the main instrument in Charles's persecution of the Covenanters. The Covenanters knifed Sharp in these woods on Magus Muir. After his death at the hand of the Covenanters, a stiff persecution ensued.
We continued our walk through the woods. Silver rain trickled through the trees, or fell heavily when the wind shook the branches. Pale pink bark curled off the birch trees, and the fern leaves were glossy like green taffeta.
After Magus Muir, we drove to Falkland, back toward Airdrie. We drove past Falkland Castle, where the Stuarts reigned. Pastor Quigley took us to the birthplace of Richard Cameron, a white two-story house in a row of houses. It's still in use as a house, and only a small plaque over the door commemorates the great man. We peered at the house through the falling rain.
Pastor Quigley told me that he went into the pub, The Covenanter, down the street, to ask the people if they knew where Cameron's house was. The workers in the pub knew it was nearby, but they had no idea as to the precise location. One of the young men asked the manager, but not even the manager knew (and he running a pub called The Covenanter!). It just so happened that at that moment, someone stepped in who said he thought the house was down the street, and so Pastor Quigley managed to find it.
We drove back to Airdrie. Along the way, Pastor Quigley stopped at a small shop so that people could buy snacks. Rachel and me stayed behind in the car. We were both very tired. I asked her how she like the tour. "It's a little boring," she admitted. "Like listening to family history even though you're not in the family," I laughed. I told her about the Two Margarets, and she gave a sigh of amazement. I also explained the Blue Banner to her. "I wondered what that was hanging from the pulpit," she said. (The Blue Banner is what the Covenanters carried into battle against the king's men. It is embroidered with the words "For Christ's Crown and Covenant", and symbolizes the fight of the Covenanters not for civil liberties (as some erroneously claim), but for the kingship of Christ and the "right" of people to obey Christ's laws.) We also talked about the amazing staying power of the architecture here. "In Texas, they build everything out of wood, so it doesn't last very long," Rachel giggled.
When everyone came back, we started off to Airdrie. Missy had bought a whole parcel of chocolate chip cookies, which she shared with Rachel and me. Rachel fell asleep in the bench beside me. I dozed and read Murder Must Advertize, by Dorothy Sayers. Behind us, everyone else wrote a round story on a scrap of paper, with ridiculous results. They also sang campfire songs. Aaron squirted water down Missy's back, and Missy promptly retaliated. The bus was rather lively.
Outside, the rain fell more heavily. I stared at the caterpillars of water crawling over the windows. Behind them, the fields were dark green under the sullen sky. Great clouds rolled down over the shaggy slopes of the Highlands, like white armies riding over the brown bracken, gonfalons a-float on the cold wind.
Back in Airdrie, Pastor Quigley left us at the church. It was cold and empty. The rain still falls heavily outside.
Rachel fixed pancakes for breakfast this morning: delicious thick, sweet pancakes, some of the best I've ever had. After breakfast, I spent fifteen minutes writing e-mails on the computer before Pastor Quigley arrived with the bus. Sarah, a girl who's visiting the church here before she goes to college in the fall, came along with us, but Lucas stayed behind. His wife, Melissa, is flying in today. With Sarah, we were twelve, and led by Pastor Quigley (making thirteen), we marched out to the minibus and set out on the first day of the Covenanter tour.
Today our destination was St. Andrew's, a town about two miles northeast of Airdrie, on the North Sea. We sang Psalms in the bus for part of the way, all the Psalms we could remember: parts of 119, 98, 19, 8, 116, 1, 4, 150, 148.... I pulled out my Bible and used it to guide me through Psalms 19 and 98. After awhile, Michaela fell asleep on Missy's shoulder, and Sarah fell asleep on Virginia's shoulder. The bus fell quiet.
The morning was partly cloudy. Lances of light struck through the clouds, giving a gold foil shimmer to the pastures and lush fields of barley and wheat. We drove up toward Stirling. Above the trees, I could see the tower of the Wallace Monument. We drove straight toward the Highlands, then turned to drive along the foot of the hills. The hills marched along the left of the highway--rough brown shoulders, dull green, open scars of grey rock. To the right the land was flat fields, richly green. In places the road ran through thick fir and spruce woods, shadows deep blue.
We drove through an endless chain of small towns strung along the hills. Town names: Strathkiness, Cupar, Dundee, Drum, Glenrothes, Strathmiglo, Falkland. Even the houses have names: Eyvern, Glenlea. Houses snuggled behind high walls and thick rhododendron, roses and ivy climbing up their walls.
St. Andrew's is down by the sea, where the land levels out. The town itself stands up on a ridge of rock with the beach falling away on either side. Pastor Quigley led us first to the spot where Patrick Hamilton was burned at the stake. This place is in the heart of St. Andrew's, near the town church and the college, right on the edge of a busy main street. Students in black-and-red gowns were walking down the street: college graduation today. Hamilton was burned at the age of twenty-four on February 29, 1528. He visited Germany, where he fell under the influence of Martin Luther. He then returned to Scotland, where he proceeded to teach. The bishop accused him of heresy and burned him at the stake. A set of bricks in the initials "PH" marks the spot on the sidewalk where he was burned.
Then Pastor Quigley led us down the street. We darted down an alley and came out on a road running along the edge of the cliff on which the town is built. We stood looking out northward, over the sea. Between the road and the edge of the cliff is the remains of a castle where Mary, Queen of Scotts used to live. On the edge of the road there's another bricked set of initials: "GW", for George Wishart, who was burned at the stake by the nephew of the man who burned Patrick Hamilton. Wishart's martyrdom sparked a Covenanter rebellion. The Covenanters took the castle and established a brief reign there. John Knox took part in the government until the French, allied to Mary, attacked the castle. They took John Knox captive as a galley slave.
We walked along the road, along the edge of the cliff above the sea. Rocky ridges ran out into the water far below. The dark rock was stained with lichen and salty growths. Poppies and purple flowers nodded in the tall grass growing along the edge of the cliff. We turned away from the cliffside and walked to the tip of the cliff, the east end of the town. Pastor Quigley led us into the remnants of the cathedral, an immense structure. Only the west tower, the east tower, and the north wall are left, as well as part of the transept and the enormous round foundations of the original supporting pillars. Some of the pointed clerestory windows of the north wall have begun to crumble, the stone lacing that once held the stained glass crumbling into broken fingers. We scrambled among the rocks and ruins, masonry weathered into sand-swelling shapes, like a beach moulded by the tide. Pastor Quigley led us to a spot under the north wall and described for us the darkness of Scotland under Popery. Standing there on the short grass, with the wind scouring the stones around us, a great solemnity settled over us. Away in the center of the town, a churchbell tolled. Above us in the air, seagulls cried and called endlessly, their voices whistling harshly silver on the wind.
Pastor Quigley led us out into the cemetery, to the tomb of Samuel Rutherford. Tall tombstones leaned like the grey trunks of felled trees and lined the walls of the cemetery. Rutherford was instrumental in writing the Westminster Confession of Faith. He died peacefully in St. Andrew's College before he could be martyred. His tombstone is carved with a poem in his honor, describing how now he is seeing with his eyes what he once saw "in vision".
After the cathedral, we walked into the town, to the town church, where John Knox once preached. The guard at the gate would only let us step into the entry area for a few minutes. So we walked down to St. Mary's College, where Samuel Rutherford once taught. An arched doorway with "In Principio Erat Verbum" opened onto a quiet green cloister--an open area surrounded by tall buildings, with gardens running around the edge of the lawn. Peach and gold roses bloomed against the grey walls.
It was twelve-thirty, so Pastor Quigley led us down the street, past lines of shops, restaurants, and businesses. A young woman sang, wailing mournfully, in the square beside the town church. We pushed through crowds of well-dressed parents, tourists, and students. We went to The Eating Place, one of Pastor Quigley's favorite restaurants. It would be thirty minutes before they had an open space large enough for all of us, so Pastor Quigley turned us loose to wander for thirty minutes before lunch. Missy and I decided to return to the ruins of the castle. Along the way, we found a shop called the Jumper--a store selling fine-quality sweaters. We stepped in and had a look at the soft, thick cotton shirts before moving on. We walked along the road where the castle is. The road runs past St. Andrew's College: high, grey stone buildings, thick rhododendron peering over tall walls, roses blooming in faculty gardens. Coming out on the castle, we climbed down the steps to a small beach, nestled in a slender half-moon under the cliff. Black rock gave way to white sand, which in turn gave way to still, turquoise water running in gentle ripples along the beach. A heron flew slowly up the beach, crying throatily. Gulls bobbed on the low swell. "It's as though nothing else is happening in the world," Missy said softly. A stab of sunshine struck aquamarine on the water, gold foam lipping the tops of the little waves. Long grass hissed in crevices on the cliffside.
We hurried back to the restaurant after our thirty minutes was up. We sat at a table with Pastor Quigley, Rachel, and Virginia. Pastor Quigley spread out a map and explained the lay of the geography to us. We ate a hearty lunch: pancakes for me, a hamburger for Rachel, and an apple crumble for Pastor Quigley, etc. After lunch, Pastor Quigley gave permission for us to have another half-hour to ourselves. Missy and I ran back to the Jumper, where Missy bought a luxurious, pale blue sweater, and I bought a jade green sweater with a delicate pattern of openwork running down the front.
Before we left St. Andrew's, Pastor Quigley drove us down to the main beach, where the opening scene of "Chariots of Fire" was filmed. Michaela and I stripped off our shoes and socks, and sprinted across the sand. The soft white sand was hard to run on, and I labored as my feet sank in, shells and bits of wood pricking my toes. As we ran toward the water, the sand firmed and became wet and brown. The beach sloped down on a long, flat incline to the water. The afternoon had become cold with spits of rain. A cruel west wind sent white sand skirling over the brown, whirling in skeins like the wings of white seabirds. The smell of salt came faintly from the teal-grey water. I sprinted along the sea and Missy took my picture--"Oh, that's wonderful!" as I flung my arms out, flying. It felt wonderful to run in the cold wind, barefoot on the firm, cool sand. Sky and sea were grey-blue, heron colors.
After five minutes, we had to race back to the bus. Along the way, I snatched up odd shells that I found nestled in the sand. Michaela and Sarah came back later than everyone else. Michaela had found long, copper-brown tube worm shells, seaweed, and the arm of a dead crab. It stank.
I sat in the front seat with Pastor Quigley, where Toby had been sitting before. Toby complained about how nasty women are these days, with Pastor Quigley joining in. I retorted that "If you give a man an inch, he thinks he's a ruler." Pastor Quigley laughed and winked at me.
We drove up to Leuchar, to the town church. By now it was raining in earnest. The wind drove the rain before it, and we hurried to take refuge in the church. The rain drummed on the old glass windows and the wooden beam roof. There's an RAF base near Leuchar, and as we entered the church, a jet roared like thunder, making my ears ring. Missy grinned delightedly at the familiar sound.
Pastor Quigley told us that the church at Leuchar is the place where Alexander Henderson preached. He led the action against the Book of Common Prayer. With a gifted young lawyer, Henderson was instrumental in producing the National Covenant. Charles II signed the Covenant, was booted out of Scotland, and when he returned to the throne, he burned the Covenant. Pastor Quigley also told us that the front part of the church is one of the only Norman buildings in Scotland, built around 1100 A.D. (The Norman invasion of England was 1066 A.D.) The rest of the church dates from the 1500s and is plastered white on the inside, with a roof of wooden beams. I stared in awe at the massive Norman architecture of the apse, the sanctuary, behind the pulpit--two bays of uncovered stone, arched doorways leading into each other. (Note about church architecture: A typical medieval church is made with a vestibule (entry area), leading into the nave, which is the long part of the church. The nave is typically crossed by the transept. Then comes the quire, where the choir would stand to sing the service. Beyond the quire is the pulpit, and behind this is the sanctuary/apse, where the altar is.) Shallow carving, zigzags and spirals, decorated the doorways. Under the narrow windows in the farthest bay stone faces of monsters and knights were carved. Their heads were round, like shield bosses, and their eyes were huge and staring, like the eyes of deep sea creatures.
While I admired the architecture, John climbed into the wooden pulpit and gave a mock-sermon. "You silly people! Don't you see the cloud of fire that God has placed between us and the Egyptians?", his lines from our play. (He's Moses.) Everyone stood and laughed. Missy and Virginia sang Psalm 19, their voices echoing clearly from wooden beams and stone arches.
Our next stop was Magus Muir. We walked through a thick wood of young birch trees. In open areas, nettles waist-high lined the path, but under the trees, the ground was covered with lush ferns, also waist-high. Their fronds held lacy fingers to the falling rain. We walked along the edge of the wood. Beyond the trees was an open barley field. The thick stalks bowed under the rain, making a sound like rushing water. Four or five yards into the field were the graves of five Covenanter martyrs, who were hanged in the field. They were taken captive at the Battle of Bothwell Brig and killed on November 25, 1679: Thomas Brown, James Wood, Andrew Sword, John Weddell, and John Clyde. Their deaths were partly in retaliation for the killing of Archbishop Sharp. Pastor Quigley led us down a path through the woods. In a little clearing we found a triangular stone monument to Archbishop Sharp, set up by Charles II, with an inscription in Latin. Sharp was a Covenanter. The Covenanters sent him to negotiate with the king, but Sharp turned on the Covenanters for personal gain. He was the main instrument in Charles's persecution of the Covenanters. The Covenanters knifed Sharp in these woods on Magus Muir. After his death at the hand of the Covenanters, a stiff persecution ensued.
We continued our walk through the woods. Silver rain trickled through the trees, or fell heavily when the wind shook the branches. Pale pink bark curled off the birch trees, and the fern leaves were glossy like green taffeta.
After Magus Muir, we drove to Falkland, back toward Airdrie. We drove past Falkland Castle, where the Stuarts reigned. Pastor Quigley took us to the birthplace of Richard Cameron, a white two-story house in a row of houses. It's still in use as a house, and only a small plaque over the door commemorates the great man. We peered at the house through the falling rain.
Pastor Quigley told me that he went into the pub, The Covenanter, down the street, to ask the people if they knew where Cameron's house was. The workers in the pub knew it was nearby, but they had no idea as to the precise location. One of the young men asked the manager, but not even the manager knew (and he running a pub called The Covenanter!). It just so happened that at that moment, someone stepped in who said he thought the house was down the street, and so Pastor Quigley managed to find it.
We drove back to Airdrie. Along the way, Pastor Quigley stopped at a small shop so that people could buy snacks. Rachel and me stayed behind in the car. We were both very tired. I asked her how she like the tour. "It's a little boring," she admitted. "Like listening to family history even though you're not in the family," I laughed. I told her about the Two Margarets, and she gave a sigh of amazement. I also explained the Blue Banner to her. "I wondered what that was hanging from the pulpit," she said. (The Blue Banner is what the Covenanters carried into battle against the king's men. It is embroidered with the words "For Christ's Crown and Covenant", and symbolizes the fight of the Covenanters not for civil liberties (as some erroneously claim), but for the kingship of Christ and the "right" of people to obey Christ's laws.) We also talked about the amazing staying power of the architecture here. "In Texas, they build everything out of wood, so it doesn't last very long," Rachel giggled.
When everyone came back, we started off to Airdrie. Missy had bought a whole parcel of chocolate chip cookies, which she shared with Rachel and me. Rachel fell asleep in the bench beside me. I dozed and read Murder Must Advertize, by Dorothy Sayers. Behind us, everyone else wrote a round story on a scrap of paper, with ridiculous results. They also sang campfire songs. Aaron squirted water down Missy's back, and Missy promptly retaliated. The bus was rather lively.
Outside, the rain fell more heavily. I stared at the caterpillars of water crawling over the windows. Behind them, the fields were dark green under the sullen sky. Great clouds rolled down over the shaggy slopes of the Highlands, like white armies riding over the brown bracken, gonfalons a-float on the cold wind.
Back in Airdrie, Pastor Quigley left us at the church. It was cold and empty. The rain still falls heavily outside.
18 June 2006
Edinburgh
On Saturday, we visited Edinburgh. Pastor Quigley drove us to Bathgate, to the train station, but the trains to Edinburgh were canceled for the day, so we had to take the bus. We waited for the bus in a shelter while fine rain spat down from the low, grey sky.
As we drove into Edinburgh, the theme from the old BBC “Chronicles of Narnia” production started to run through my head. The bus trundled down narrow streets with buildings leaning over on every side, four or five stories tall. Brick and stone, with shops on the first floors and flats above. Many of the shops were very fancy, and trendy cafes spilled tables out onto the street. Peering over the buildings, my senses began to thrill: the art museum, the spire of the Walter Scott monument, and the turrets of Edinburgh Castle, standing like a huge ship of stone on the highest point of the hill of the Royal Mile. Flags flew from the battlements. The bus at last drove down into Edinburgh train station, a large underground station by the river, with an expansive open area down below around which shops, restaurants, and terminals crowded. Here we disembarked, then climbed up to the level of the street. We crossed the road, climbing the side of a hill, and dived into the maze of buildings that lines the Royal Mile. We hurried through the small, hidden square of St. Anne’s Close, past the Writers’ Museum, where quotations from famous Scottish authors were engraved on large paving stones. Through a narrow door, and out onto the Royal Mile. Old buildings marched up and down on either side of the Mile. Carla and Brenda led us across the Mile to St. Giles’s Cathedral. The Cathedral is undergoing construction for refurbishment, so the front entrance is blocked, but Carla and Brenda hurried us around to one side of the Cathedral. Cars were parked in a paved area under the shadow of the Cathedral. “Stay here, you guys. We want to show you something,” Brenda said. She and Carla started to scurry around among the cars, peeking under them. Finally, after looking under a sleek silver sports car, Brenda announced, “Here it is. John Knox’s grave.” No marker other than a rather larger stone showed the place where the great soldier of the faith is buried. Standing there by John Knox’s grave, we split into groups, and from there we scattered over Edinburgh.
John and Emily decided that they wanted to go to the castle with me. The three of us climbed the Royal Mile towards the castle.
When we reached the castle, we found that bleachers had been set up in preparation for a military parade. The tall bleachers obstructed the view of the castle and made the whole place rather ugly, but we pressed on. In order to get into the castle, we had to pay for ten pound tickets. So we stood in line for the ticket booth. As we stood in line, it started to rain. John and I unfolded our umbrellas. The three of us pulled out sandwiches and proceeded to eat our lunches standing there in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle in the rain. We bought our tickets, then walked up to the castle. A guard at the gate took our tickets. On either side of the bridge over the moat, in little green guard boxes, stood a soldier. Their faces were straight, but their eyes shifted from side to side, watching the people passing by. The castle was very, very crowded—much more of an attraction than Stirling, it has a commercialized, touristy feel which ruins the meditative, medieval atmosphere that hangs over Stirling. We climbed the bridge over the moat, through the lower square, up the causeway, and through the main gates, up to the second square. Canons peered like single eyes out of the loopholes along the walls. I stared in awe at the masonry, which had been artfully woven into the rock of the cliff so that the castle seemed to have grown out of waves of rock. The second square curved around the side of the cliff. Along the way there was a timeline with dates of occupation of the cliff. My eyes lit up when I saw a plaque for Din Eiddin, King Mynnydog, in 600 A.D., and his Shining Company. In the second square, something was happening—dignitaries spilling out of a luxurious café, and the blare of a military band. We paused on the side of the hill and watched as a band came marching up the square. Drums, brass, and clarinets blared brazenly. Green uniforms with kilts and plaid berets blended with the misty hills behind.
We climbed on up to the third and highest level of the castle. We went into the war memorial. Though a plaque outside the memorial asked for “reverent silence to be preserved”, the memorial was hot and rather noisy with the voices of the crowd circulating through. I walked slowly, lingering over the names engraved on the walls, memorials to soldiers mostly from World War I, and to numerous divisions of the army, navy, and airforce. A beautiful quote from Thucydides on the wall of the airforce monument, and Scripture running around the room where the tomb of the unknown soldier. Stained-glass windows shed patterned light onto the stone floors. After the war monument, we visited the Great Hall. Delicate woodwork, fine as lace, panelled the walls. Above the panelling, the walls were painted deep red. Spears were arranged in a fan above the doors, steel-bright peacock’s tails. Held in sheaths along the walls were all manner of weapons: old guns, rapiers, sabres, scimitars, daggers, knives, swords, pikes, and gigantic claymores with handles at least eighteen inches long and blades at least four feet long. In bays along the walls were windows with the crests of noble houses—names of Covenanter houses, and names of their arch-enemies. After the Great Hall, we visited the Stone of Destiny and the Crown Jewels of Scotland. Quite an elaborate display had been set up in the tower around the Crown Jewels—murals, signboards, movies, and mannequins. The Crown Jewels themselves were in a small, crowded room. I only glimpsed them—flecks of diamond, deep reds and blues, gold and ermine flashing on crown and sceptre.
After the Crown Jewels, we clambered around on the battlements for awhile. Emily and I peered through a loophole, on either side of a canon, to see Arthur’s Seat, which stood out like the rough shoulders of a war-horse from the surrounding country. Then we went up to St. Margaret’s Chapel, the oldest building on the rock, built in 1100 or so. A humble, rough building, with only a few small lancet windows. It should have been a quiet, reverent place—small and sweet, but instead it was crowded with people, noise and laughter and the shuffle of impatient feet. Then we climbed down into the dungeons to see the “Prisons of War” exhibit. The dungeons had been fitted up as they would have been in the 1800s during the Napoleonic Wars. Hammocks slung from rough beams, graffiti of clippers and man o’wars carved into old wooden doors, the reek of mould, and something like stale oatmeal, and something sickly-sweet. A wooden ship was on display, made by a French prisoner from that time, perfect in every detail—painted, even to gilt on the prow, and the rigging neat with every knot and piece of tackle. The exhibit was set up with “dramatic” lighting throwing anthropomorphic shadows on the walls, and recordings of actors sounding like prisoners. We poked around for awhile more over the castle, climbing down the Lang Stairs and looking out over Edinburgh—the harbour, with islands and mountains beyond, the city, and Arthur’s Seat.
After the castle, we strolled down into the city. We spent most of the rest of our time on the Royal Mile, window-shopping. While John and Emily went into one store, I stepped briefly into a shop that sold woollen goods, to see if they had any sweaters. They had a beautiful blue-grey sweater, but I didn’t buy it then, remembering Mrs. Bruce’s promise—if I can, when we come back, I’ll buy it. So I walked down to join John and Emily. They had gone into a knives-and-daggers store. Claymores, swords, sabres, rapiers, knives of all shapes and descriptions, spears, pikes…. Shirts of chainmail, glimmering like the Milky Way, polished helmets from Roman and medieval eras, Celtic-knotted shields…. John asked one of the salesmen to look up his family crest on the computer, and the young man cheerfully did so. MacGill, the Scottish version of John’s Irish name, came up with a phoenix as the crest. After the sword shop, we went into endless Scottish Heritage stores. Tartans, Celtic jewellery, cashmere, scarves, full kilts, claymores, and all variety of small touristy gifts. We fingered the plaids, exclaimed over the delicate filigree of rings and necklaces, and found our family colours. I used the Anderson line, which is Grammy’s heritage—a beautiful grey-blue plaid, just the colours I like. :o) Because John has a liking for strange Scottish foods, we also visited various whisky shops—bottles full of amber liquid gleaming in the dim light. He also wanted to buy a pipe, so we visited a hole-in-the-wall tobacconist’s shop. On either side of the door stood a carved Indian with feather headdress and tomahawk, and inside there were shelves crammed with boxes of fine cigars, the smell of rich tobacco hanging on the air. As we strolled down the street, we passed a variety of attractions: at one place, an artist had hung out watercolors of the area for sale; at another place, a couple of booths sold cheap metal jewellery. A woman perched on a wooden box braided fluorescent thread into a girl’s long hair, and someone else offered tattoos. A bagpiper stood under the lea of a church and droned “Amazing Grace”. Under St. Giles’s Cathedral, a jester with a lute played Bach. Various costumed ragamuffins offered their services as models for pictures. At one place, I stopped in amazement. “Look! Games Workshop! Man, if I’d known this was here, I’d have bought something for Stephen here instead of at the castle. C’mon, sorry guys, I have to go inside.” John and Emily followed me doubtfully into the shop, which was crammed with teenage boys around a long table. The shop reeked of paint, plastic, and lead, and along the walls there were racks full of miniatures. I headed directly to the back wall, where the LOTR miniatures were kept, and looked over the plastic packages of unpainted Elves, Rohirrim, and Gondorian soldiers. “Thanks, guys,” I apologized to the other two when we left. “Like a bunch of fanatics,” John growled, and Emily and I laughed—I had to explain about J.D. and Stephen, and the Elven Standard Bearer.
Further down the street, we came to John Knox’s house. We just stepped onto the first floor and looked around the bookshop. I found a beautiful book with pictures and brief stories of Scottish fairytales. There was another tartan shop just next door, so John and Emily went inside. I sat out on the steps leading up to a second-story flat and peeled open a setsuma. Juice welled over my fingers from the leathery skin, the peel trickling through my hands in orange flakes. I offered slivers to John and Emily when they came out of the tartan shop. Continuing on, we came to a line of less ritzy stores. We stopped to peer into the windows of a map store. Maps of everywhere from Cancun to San Francisco to Cathay, and gorgeously detailed lithographs of Edinburgh and London. Next door there was a hole-in-the-wall used book store, mostly children’s books. John bought a second edition (late 1800s) biography of L.M. Alcott. I fingered a beautiful little copy of The Princess and the Goblins. A British man had just bought a set of books, and I heard him exulting over his find in a cultured Oxford accent. I admired a set of Arthur Ransome prints in the window, Art Noveau fairies and trees branching into slender veins across the pages. We stepped into a fudge store next, just for laughs, and joked about buying a pound of the rich, creamy chocolate. Across the street, we could smell chocolate brownies baking in a tea shop. Returning up the street, we found Missy and Michaela in a small, elegant tea shop, enjoying their second tea of the afternoon. They embraced Emily and me as though we were long-lost relatives, which made John laugh at them. They’d spent the whole day shopping.
For awhile we walked around some more. I was amazed at the number of people moving about everywhere. Listening to the languages being spoken was like returning to Babel: German, Russian, French Canadian, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, Asian. Slender little Japanese girls; Indian women in flaming saris the colour of rhododendron flowers; Eastern Europeans with long necks and elegantly-draped scarves woven with metal thread; Goths in black with heavy eye makeup on men and women alike; Africans with close-cut, curly hair. And the smells of restaurants added to the mix—sweet-n-sour Chinese food, garlic and olive oil from an Italian restaurant, jalapeno and chilli drifting from a Mexican shop, the smell of curry hanging around a kebab store, tea shops leaving their peculiar, rose-sweet taste on the air, and an “authentic American pizza” shop trailing the smells of sausage and baking bread. God certainly does like diversity!
As we returned up the Royal Mile, wandering aimlessly toward the Castle, we met up with Beth and Sarah, who had decided to drive down for the day. They showed Emily and me some silk scarves which they’d bought down at a shop in the Grassmarket. “Ok, we have to go to the Grassmarket,” I exclaimed, and Emily heartily concurred. John, having nothing better to do, and behaving like a gentleman, trailed behind. We left the Royal Mile and walked down the curve of Victoria Street. Tall building leaned over the narrow road. Car tyres rattled on the paving stones. Along the way, we stepped into Bacchus Antiques—like walking into a museum. A set of cavalry rapiers, a grandfather clock, dressers, Victorian jewellery, old books, a battleship model, glass eyes…. As we turned the corner to Grassmarket, we had to step around a person sitting on the ground, bundled in black, holding out a baseball cap and shaking the few coins in it dolefully, endlessly. At last, we came out onto Grassmarket square at last—mostly restaurants and antique shops. I immediately spotted the scarf shop. A booth had been built out from the shop itself and hung with silks—rugs, belts, hangings, and scarves of all shapes and sizes. Emily and I slipped in through the small door. The walls were covered with cloth, and the back of the store was covered with cloth as well, so that it was like walking into a silk flower—silk like petals unfolding on every side. Luxurious swathes of colour. Peacock blue, beetle green, magenta, violet, purple, orange, saffron, crimson, black, grey. Cloths woven with metallic threads, silver and gold. Flowers, vines, diamonds, and strange animals intertwining. On the shelves, nestled among bolts and packets of cloth, were incense sticks, little round stone animals, bone rings, bracelets, loops of beads, necklaces, sparkling pens, hair pins, and a variety of useless but glittery and colourful items. The shop smelled of curry and cinnamon and other spices. I bought an iridescent grey-blue scarf, with long silvery tassels. It shimmered luxuriously. When Emily and I came out, we rejoined John. Briefly, we visited the monument to the Covenanters in Grassmarket—a low stone enclosure, with a round pattern of stones and a cross in the middle. I nearly wept—even this humble place was desecrated and abandoned, the grass scraggly and trodden-down, littered with a greasy pizza box and some crushed Coke cans. The place where so many saints and giants of the faith gave up their lives for the sake of Christ’s Crown and Covenant has become nothing more than a smokers’ hangout. While we stood there in quiet, sad reverence, a mariachi band (yes, really and truly—dark-skinned Hispanics with little black moustaches) strolled up to the tavern across the way. A bunch of drunk college students sitting outside the tavern called for a song, and the guitars immediately broke into a painful rendition of “When the Saints Come Marching In”. We walked down to the foot of Grassmarket and turned up along the other side. We stepped into a shop which sold mostly glass antiques, then continued on. For a moment, we lingered to stare at a shop which sold only fossils. “How much do you want to bet that they’re all fake?” John asked as we looked through the window at a tray of sharks’ teeth, trilobites, sand dollars, and dinosaur bones. We turned up a side street, past a tattoo parlour, a hair salon, and a witchery store, the window of which was full of skulls, black curtains, and strange instruments. (“Let’s be good Covenanters and smash the windows with the hilts of our claymores,” I muttered.) We followed the signs for Greyfriars Kirk, past the statue of Greyfriars Bobby, the little bronze dog standing faithfully on its pillar at a crossroads.
We finally found Greyfriars, and turned in at its narrow gate. Greyfriars is mostly surrounded by tall stone buildings. It is quiet and neglected, just like the Covenanters’ monument, but because it is secreted away, it is reserved and untouched. The green cemetery is quiet, the tall buildings which stand around it blocking out the buzz of the city. Where the backs of the stone houses line the kirkyard, the wall has been turned into a line of monuments, monuments shaped like doors with lintels and carving. We strolled quietly around the kirkyard, drifting away from one another into solitude. Emily and I put our faces up to the metal gates which bar the Covenanters’ Prison. Elm seeds, like downy feathers, drifted over the sidewalk, rustling gently. I strolled alone past endless tombs, where architects, opticians, jewellers, pastors, Covenanters, children, and wives slept serenely. A tomb to a girl named Penelope. Monuments mounted on the wall of the church itself to a woman named Margaret and her daughters. After awhile, the three of us drifted together again and clustered on the roots of an old elm tree. We sat in silence for a long time. The rough, creamy yellow walls of the kirk stood out against the subdued green of trees and grass, and the grey of the tombstones and the walls. Tree trunks were grey as tombstones in the late afternoon dim. We sat still for a long time, and eventually a flock of pigeons sidled up to us and started to poke among the elm leaves on the sidewalk. They flicked the leaves away, nibbling the seeds. John tossed fragments of a pink strawberry wafer at them, which sent them scuttling away. A male pigeon bobbed its head and ruffled up its neck feathers, green and purple rippling iridescently down its breast. We talked reverently, in low voices, about the Covenanters and the sacrifice they made.
Finally, we walked back to St. Giles’s Cathedral, where we met up with the rest of the group. Waiting for Rachel, Virginia, and Aaron to come back, we sat on the stone rail of one of the buildings in front of the Cathedral. A ragged-looking man approached us and begged for money, but Beth, who was with us, shook her head and turned him away.
When the group had assembled, we debated about where to go for supper. Grassmarket has the most restaurants, so Grassmarket was the place we chose. As we walked, everyone shared their experiences and adventures of the day. People admired the kilt that Aaron had bought, and Toby’s set of miniature bagpipes. Michaela showed me some clothes she’d found. Virginia had the most beautiful thing of all: a harp. A small harp, not full-size, but wooden and with Celtic patterns carved all around the wood. As we passed the scarf shop, Serenity, Michaela and Missy darted in to buy scarves. We ate at the “authentic American pizza” restaurant, almost at the foot of Grassmarket. We had to crowd around two small tables in the little room, but the food was excellent—piping hot pastry, spicy tomato sauce, fresh vegetables (olives, wonderful mushrooms, bell peppers) and hearty meat. The walls were plastered with crude, silly paintings of people making pizza, and with posters advertising reggae and rock bands. But it was a very good meal, and we cleaned up all the pizza.
After supper, Beth drove three people, plus Sarah, back to Airdrie, while the other nine of us hurried to the train station to catch the 6:18 train to Bathgate. We marched up Victoria Street, across the Royal Mile, through St. Anne’s Close, past the Writers’ Museum, past the art gallery, along the park above the river, past the Walter Scott monument, and down into the bowels of the train station. We were just in time. John bought tickets, and we climbed aboard. I saw a lush green pasture, stained crimson with poppies, and fields of yellow rape. flash past the windows. A black-and-white foal suckled from its mother under the lea of a hedge. At Bathgate, Pastor Quigley picked us up and drove us back to Airdrie. It was a lovely drive, through the countryside. This time, the clouds had lifted, and darts of daffodil-pale sunshine flecked the shaggy green hills. Sunshine like fool’s gold on the grass and small, grey ponds. A little, weather-blackened stone bridge spanned a narrow valley. Cottages leaned into the hillsides. Cattle grazed by the road. Then Airdrie, and the city again.
As we drove into Edinburgh, the theme from the old BBC “Chronicles of Narnia” production started to run through my head. The bus trundled down narrow streets with buildings leaning over on every side, four or five stories tall. Brick and stone, with shops on the first floors and flats above. Many of the shops were very fancy, and trendy cafes spilled tables out onto the street. Peering over the buildings, my senses began to thrill: the art museum, the spire of the Walter Scott monument, and the turrets of Edinburgh Castle, standing like a huge ship of stone on the highest point of the hill of the Royal Mile. Flags flew from the battlements. The bus at last drove down into Edinburgh train station, a large underground station by the river, with an expansive open area down below around which shops, restaurants, and terminals crowded. Here we disembarked, then climbed up to the level of the street. We crossed the road, climbing the side of a hill, and dived into the maze of buildings that lines the Royal Mile. We hurried through the small, hidden square of St. Anne’s Close, past the Writers’ Museum, where quotations from famous Scottish authors were engraved on large paving stones. Through a narrow door, and out onto the Royal Mile. Old buildings marched up and down on either side of the Mile. Carla and Brenda led us across the Mile to St. Giles’s Cathedral. The Cathedral is undergoing construction for refurbishment, so the front entrance is blocked, but Carla and Brenda hurried us around to one side of the Cathedral. Cars were parked in a paved area under the shadow of the Cathedral. “Stay here, you guys. We want to show you something,” Brenda said. She and Carla started to scurry around among the cars, peeking under them. Finally, after looking under a sleek silver sports car, Brenda announced, “Here it is. John Knox’s grave.” No marker other than a rather larger stone showed the place where the great soldier of the faith is buried. Standing there by John Knox’s grave, we split into groups, and from there we scattered over Edinburgh.
John and Emily decided that they wanted to go to the castle with me. The three of us climbed the Royal Mile towards the castle.
When we reached the castle, we found that bleachers had been set up in preparation for a military parade. The tall bleachers obstructed the view of the castle and made the whole place rather ugly, but we pressed on. In order to get into the castle, we had to pay for ten pound tickets. So we stood in line for the ticket booth. As we stood in line, it started to rain. John and I unfolded our umbrellas. The three of us pulled out sandwiches and proceeded to eat our lunches standing there in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle in the rain. We bought our tickets, then walked up to the castle. A guard at the gate took our tickets. On either side of the bridge over the moat, in little green guard boxes, stood a soldier. Their faces were straight, but their eyes shifted from side to side, watching the people passing by. The castle was very, very crowded—much more of an attraction than Stirling, it has a commercialized, touristy feel which ruins the meditative, medieval atmosphere that hangs over Stirling. We climbed the bridge over the moat, through the lower square, up the causeway, and through the main gates, up to the second square. Canons peered like single eyes out of the loopholes along the walls. I stared in awe at the masonry, which had been artfully woven into the rock of the cliff so that the castle seemed to have grown out of waves of rock. The second square curved around the side of the cliff. Along the way there was a timeline with dates of occupation of the cliff. My eyes lit up when I saw a plaque for Din Eiddin, King Mynnydog, in 600 A.D., and his Shining Company. In the second square, something was happening—dignitaries spilling out of a luxurious café, and the blare of a military band. We paused on the side of the hill and watched as a band came marching up the square. Drums, brass, and clarinets blared brazenly. Green uniforms with kilts and plaid berets blended with the misty hills behind.
We climbed on up to the third and highest level of the castle. We went into the war memorial. Though a plaque outside the memorial asked for “reverent silence to be preserved”, the memorial was hot and rather noisy with the voices of the crowd circulating through. I walked slowly, lingering over the names engraved on the walls, memorials to soldiers mostly from World War I, and to numerous divisions of the army, navy, and airforce. A beautiful quote from Thucydides on the wall of the airforce monument, and Scripture running around the room where the tomb of the unknown soldier. Stained-glass windows shed patterned light onto the stone floors. After the war monument, we visited the Great Hall. Delicate woodwork, fine as lace, panelled the walls. Above the panelling, the walls were painted deep red. Spears were arranged in a fan above the doors, steel-bright peacock’s tails. Held in sheaths along the walls were all manner of weapons: old guns, rapiers, sabres, scimitars, daggers, knives, swords, pikes, and gigantic claymores with handles at least eighteen inches long and blades at least four feet long. In bays along the walls were windows with the crests of noble houses—names of Covenanter houses, and names of their arch-enemies. After the Great Hall, we visited the Stone of Destiny and the Crown Jewels of Scotland. Quite an elaborate display had been set up in the tower around the Crown Jewels—murals, signboards, movies, and mannequins. The Crown Jewels themselves were in a small, crowded room. I only glimpsed them—flecks of diamond, deep reds and blues, gold and ermine flashing on crown and sceptre.
After the Crown Jewels, we clambered around on the battlements for awhile. Emily and I peered through a loophole, on either side of a canon, to see Arthur’s Seat, which stood out like the rough shoulders of a war-horse from the surrounding country. Then we went up to St. Margaret’s Chapel, the oldest building on the rock, built in 1100 or so. A humble, rough building, with only a few small lancet windows. It should have been a quiet, reverent place—small and sweet, but instead it was crowded with people, noise and laughter and the shuffle of impatient feet. Then we climbed down into the dungeons to see the “Prisons of War” exhibit. The dungeons had been fitted up as they would have been in the 1800s during the Napoleonic Wars. Hammocks slung from rough beams, graffiti of clippers and man o’wars carved into old wooden doors, the reek of mould, and something like stale oatmeal, and something sickly-sweet. A wooden ship was on display, made by a French prisoner from that time, perfect in every detail—painted, even to gilt on the prow, and the rigging neat with every knot and piece of tackle. The exhibit was set up with “dramatic” lighting throwing anthropomorphic shadows on the walls, and recordings of actors sounding like prisoners. We poked around for awhile more over the castle, climbing down the Lang Stairs and looking out over Edinburgh—the harbour, with islands and mountains beyond, the city, and Arthur’s Seat.
After the castle, we strolled down into the city. We spent most of the rest of our time on the Royal Mile, window-shopping. While John and Emily went into one store, I stepped briefly into a shop that sold woollen goods, to see if they had any sweaters. They had a beautiful blue-grey sweater, but I didn’t buy it then, remembering Mrs. Bruce’s promise—if I can, when we come back, I’ll buy it. So I walked down to join John and Emily. They had gone into a knives-and-daggers store. Claymores, swords, sabres, rapiers, knives of all shapes and descriptions, spears, pikes…. Shirts of chainmail, glimmering like the Milky Way, polished helmets from Roman and medieval eras, Celtic-knotted shields…. John asked one of the salesmen to look up his family crest on the computer, and the young man cheerfully did so. MacGill, the Scottish version of John’s Irish name, came up with a phoenix as the crest. After the sword shop, we went into endless Scottish Heritage stores. Tartans, Celtic jewellery, cashmere, scarves, full kilts, claymores, and all variety of small touristy gifts. We fingered the plaids, exclaimed over the delicate filigree of rings and necklaces, and found our family colours. I used the Anderson line, which is Grammy’s heritage—a beautiful grey-blue plaid, just the colours I like. :o) Because John has a liking for strange Scottish foods, we also visited various whisky shops—bottles full of amber liquid gleaming in the dim light. He also wanted to buy a pipe, so we visited a hole-in-the-wall tobacconist’s shop. On either side of the door stood a carved Indian with feather headdress and tomahawk, and inside there were shelves crammed with boxes of fine cigars, the smell of rich tobacco hanging on the air. As we strolled down the street, we passed a variety of attractions: at one place, an artist had hung out watercolors of the area for sale; at another place, a couple of booths sold cheap metal jewellery. A woman perched on a wooden box braided fluorescent thread into a girl’s long hair, and someone else offered tattoos. A bagpiper stood under the lea of a church and droned “Amazing Grace”. Under St. Giles’s Cathedral, a jester with a lute played Bach. Various costumed ragamuffins offered their services as models for pictures. At one place, I stopped in amazement. “Look! Games Workshop! Man, if I’d known this was here, I’d have bought something for Stephen here instead of at the castle. C’mon, sorry guys, I have to go inside.” John and Emily followed me doubtfully into the shop, which was crammed with teenage boys around a long table. The shop reeked of paint, plastic, and lead, and along the walls there were racks full of miniatures. I headed directly to the back wall, where the LOTR miniatures were kept, and looked over the plastic packages of unpainted Elves, Rohirrim, and Gondorian soldiers. “Thanks, guys,” I apologized to the other two when we left. “Like a bunch of fanatics,” John growled, and Emily and I laughed—I had to explain about J.D. and Stephen, and the Elven Standard Bearer.
Further down the street, we came to John Knox’s house. We just stepped onto the first floor and looked around the bookshop. I found a beautiful book with pictures and brief stories of Scottish fairytales. There was another tartan shop just next door, so John and Emily went inside. I sat out on the steps leading up to a second-story flat and peeled open a setsuma. Juice welled over my fingers from the leathery skin, the peel trickling through my hands in orange flakes. I offered slivers to John and Emily when they came out of the tartan shop. Continuing on, we came to a line of less ritzy stores. We stopped to peer into the windows of a map store. Maps of everywhere from Cancun to San Francisco to Cathay, and gorgeously detailed lithographs of Edinburgh and London. Next door there was a hole-in-the-wall used book store, mostly children’s books. John bought a second edition (late 1800s) biography of L.M. Alcott. I fingered a beautiful little copy of The Princess and the Goblins. A British man had just bought a set of books, and I heard him exulting over his find in a cultured Oxford accent. I admired a set of Arthur Ransome prints in the window, Art Noveau fairies and trees branching into slender veins across the pages. We stepped into a fudge store next, just for laughs, and joked about buying a pound of the rich, creamy chocolate. Across the street, we could smell chocolate brownies baking in a tea shop. Returning up the street, we found Missy and Michaela in a small, elegant tea shop, enjoying their second tea of the afternoon. They embraced Emily and me as though we were long-lost relatives, which made John laugh at them. They’d spent the whole day shopping.
For awhile we walked around some more. I was amazed at the number of people moving about everywhere. Listening to the languages being spoken was like returning to Babel: German, Russian, French Canadian, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, Asian. Slender little Japanese girls; Indian women in flaming saris the colour of rhododendron flowers; Eastern Europeans with long necks and elegantly-draped scarves woven with metal thread; Goths in black with heavy eye makeup on men and women alike; Africans with close-cut, curly hair. And the smells of restaurants added to the mix—sweet-n-sour Chinese food, garlic and olive oil from an Italian restaurant, jalapeno and chilli drifting from a Mexican shop, the smell of curry hanging around a kebab store, tea shops leaving their peculiar, rose-sweet taste on the air, and an “authentic American pizza” shop trailing the smells of sausage and baking bread. God certainly does like diversity!
As we returned up the Royal Mile, wandering aimlessly toward the Castle, we met up with Beth and Sarah, who had decided to drive down for the day. They showed Emily and me some silk scarves which they’d bought down at a shop in the Grassmarket. “Ok, we have to go to the Grassmarket,” I exclaimed, and Emily heartily concurred. John, having nothing better to do, and behaving like a gentleman, trailed behind. We left the Royal Mile and walked down the curve of Victoria Street. Tall building leaned over the narrow road. Car tyres rattled on the paving stones. Along the way, we stepped into Bacchus Antiques—like walking into a museum. A set of cavalry rapiers, a grandfather clock, dressers, Victorian jewellery, old books, a battleship model, glass eyes…. As we turned the corner to Grassmarket, we had to step around a person sitting on the ground, bundled in black, holding out a baseball cap and shaking the few coins in it dolefully, endlessly. At last, we came out onto Grassmarket square at last—mostly restaurants and antique shops. I immediately spotted the scarf shop. A booth had been built out from the shop itself and hung with silks—rugs, belts, hangings, and scarves of all shapes and sizes. Emily and I slipped in through the small door. The walls were covered with cloth, and the back of the store was covered with cloth as well, so that it was like walking into a silk flower—silk like petals unfolding on every side. Luxurious swathes of colour. Peacock blue, beetle green, magenta, violet, purple, orange, saffron, crimson, black, grey. Cloths woven with metallic threads, silver and gold. Flowers, vines, diamonds, and strange animals intertwining. On the shelves, nestled among bolts and packets of cloth, were incense sticks, little round stone animals, bone rings, bracelets, loops of beads, necklaces, sparkling pens, hair pins, and a variety of useless but glittery and colourful items. The shop smelled of curry and cinnamon and other spices. I bought an iridescent grey-blue scarf, with long silvery tassels. It shimmered luxuriously. When Emily and I came out, we rejoined John. Briefly, we visited the monument to the Covenanters in Grassmarket—a low stone enclosure, with a round pattern of stones and a cross in the middle. I nearly wept—even this humble place was desecrated and abandoned, the grass scraggly and trodden-down, littered with a greasy pizza box and some crushed Coke cans. The place where so many saints and giants of the faith gave up their lives for the sake of Christ’s Crown and Covenant has become nothing more than a smokers’ hangout. While we stood there in quiet, sad reverence, a mariachi band (yes, really and truly—dark-skinned Hispanics with little black moustaches) strolled up to the tavern across the way. A bunch of drunk college students sitting outside the tavern called for a song, and the guitars immediately broke into a painful rendition of “When the Saints Come Marching In”. We walked down to the foot of Grassmarket and turned up along the other side. We stepped into a shop which sold mostly glass antiques, then continued on. For a moment, we lingered to stare at a shop which sold only fossils. “How much do you want to bet that they’re all fake?” John asked as we looked through the window at a tray of sharks’ teeth, trilobites, sand dollars, and dinosaur bones. We turned up a side street, past a tattoo parlour, a hair salon, and a witchery store, the window of which was full of skulls, black curtains, and strange instruments. (“Let’s be good Covenanters and smash the windows with the hilts of our claymores,” I muttered.) We followed the signs for Greyfriars Kirk, past the statue of Greyfriars Bobby, the little bronze dog standing faithfully on its pillar at a crossroads.
We finally found Greyfriars, and turned in at its narrow gate. Greyfriars is mostly surrounded by tall stone buildings. It is quiet and neglected, just like the Covenanters’ monument, but because it is secreted away, it is reserved and untouched. The green cemetery is quiet, the tall buildings which stand around it blocking out the buzz of the city. Where the backs of the stone houses line the kirkyard, the wall has been turned into a line of monuments, monuments shaped like doors with lintels and carving. We strolled quietly around the kirkyard, drifting away from one another into solitude. Emily and I put our faces up to the metal gates which bar the Covenanters’ Prison. Elm seeds, like downy feathers, drifted over the sidewalk, rustling gently. I strolled alone past endless tombs, where architects, opticians, jewellers, pastors, Covenanters, children, and wives slept serenely. A tomb to a girl named Penelope. Monuments mounted on the wall of the church itself to a woman named Margaret and her daughters. After awhile, the three of us drifted together again and clustered on the roots of an old elm tree. We sat in silence for a long time. The rough, creamy yellow walls of the kirk stood out against the subdued green of trees and grass, and the grey of the tombstones and the walls. Tree trunks were grey as tombstones in the late afternoon dim. We sat still for a long time, and eventually a flock of pigeons sidled up to us and started to poke among the elm leaves on the sidewalk. They flicked the leaves away, nibbling the seeds. John tossed fragments of a pink strawberry wafer at them, which sent them scuttling away. A male pigeon bobbed its head and ruffled up its neck feathers, green and purple rippling iridescently down its breast. We talked reverently, in low voices, about the Covenanters and the sacrifice they made.
Finally, we walked back to St. Giles’s Cathedral, where we met up with the rest of the group. Waiting for Rachel, Virginia, and Aaron to come back, we sat on the stone rail of one of the buildings in front of the Cathedral. A ragged-looking man approached us and begged for money, but Beth, who was with us, shook her head and turned him away.
When the group had assembled, we debated about where to go for supper. Grassmarket has the most restaurants, so Grassmarket was the place we chose. As we walked, everyone shared their experiences and adventures of the day. People admired the kilt that Aaron had bought, and Toby’s set of miniature bagpipes. Michaela showed me some clothes she’d found. Virginia had the most beautiful thing of all: a harp. A small harp, not full-size, but wooden and with Celtic patterns carved all around the wood. As we passed the scarf shop, Serenity, Michaela and Missy darted in to buy scarves. We ate at the “authentic American pizza” restaurant, almost at the foot of Grassmarket. We had to crowd around two small tables in the little room, but the food was excellent—piping hot pastry, spicy tomato sauce, fresh vegetables (olives, wonderful mushrooms, bell peppers) and hearty meat. The walls were plastered with crude, silly paintings of people making pizza, and with posters advertising reggae and rock bands. But it was a very good meal, and we cleaned up all the pizza.
After supper, Beth drove three people, plus Sarah, back to Airdrie, while the other nine of us hurried to the train station to catch the 6:18 train to Bathgate. We marched up Victoria Street, across the Royal Mile, through St. Anne’s Close, past the Writers’ Museum, past the art gallery, along the park above the river, past the Walter Scott monument, and down into the bowels of the train station. We were just in time. John bought tickets, and we climbed aboard. I saw a lush green pasture, stained crimson with poppies, and fields of yellow rape. flash past the windows. A black-and-white foal suckled from its mother under the lea of a hedge. At Bathgate, Pastor Quigley picked us up and drove us back to Airdrie. It was a lovely drive, through the countryside. This time, the clouds had lifted, and darts of daffodil-pale sunshine flecked the shaggy green hills. Sunshine like fool’s gold on the grass and small, grey ponds. A little, weather-blackened stone bridge spanned a narrow valley. Cottages leaned into the hillsides. Cattle grazed by the road. Then Airdrie, and the city again.
15 June 2006
Glasgow: Cathedral and John Piper
June 14, 2006
The train ride to Glasgow took about thirty minutes. We piled off the train at the Glasgow Queen’s Street Station. I stared around. We were in an underground station and had to climb a flight of stairs to get to the ground level. People bustled around us. We left the station and stood on the long, broad covered porch outside. People were hurrying everywhere. “Weird Europeans,” I growled, watching the crowds circulate past. A soldier in a black beret and fatigues. Businesswomen in knee-short, tight skirts. Loungers with long hair, grizzled beards, and flapping trousers. Girls with enough mascara to paint a black-and-white version of the “Mona Lisa”. Tall, dandified men with very tight slacks and half-open shirts, gold necklaces dangling down their chests. It was quite a crowd.
Lucas turned us loose, telling us to be back at the train station at five o’clock. My group wandered away aimlessly. We crossed George Street into a large open plaza. Statues of kings and queens mounted on horseback lined the edges of the plaza: stern faces, upraised swords, crowned heads. Gulls flapped and circled around. The buildings surrounding the plaza were all different from one another. In Stirling, we had seen a small slice of architecture two hundred years old, all crowded together. But in Glasgow, you see architecture from every period and style, built up on top of one another—a zoo of buildings. Most of the buildings in this part of Glasgow seemed to be built out of red sandstone, perhaps in the 1800s—five or six stories tall, with rows of windows staring down on the streets, and lines of carving on the corners. There were the usual suave green-glass-and-steel office buildings. There was an odd building, which had overtones of Frank Lloyd Wright, except that offices occupied the top story, a parking garage the second story, and dirty shops the first story. At the far end of the plaza was a magnificent red sandstone building, covered in wreaths and statues, with vaults and corbels and domes in the best baroque style. A pair of lions guarded a tall obelisk in the middle of the plaza. People lounged around the plaza. John stopped to stare at a greasy-looking man who was offering a small, hand-pushed cart in which to drive tourists around the town.
We wandered down one side of the plaza to a set of triple gates, where we stood and took pictures for awhile. Then we had to decide where we wanted to go. Some people wanted to go to the harbour, but that was too far away. There were science museums, art museums, and other attraction, but they also were out of walking distance. “I’d love to go see a cathedral,” I offered. “I would, too,” John said, and Emily added that she was game for the attempt. So Aaron and Rachel pulled out the map and stared at it for awhile. Then Aaron led us on our trek to the cathedral. It was actually just down the street, several blocks from the station, but we had taken a detour to visit the gates, so it took us longer to reach the cathedral. We walked past a construction zone where they were building some sleek postmodern buildings, all slanted roofs and blue glass and woodwork. We climbed the hill toward the cathedral, walking between narrow rows of grimy shops, which were crowded together like dirty pigeons. Tanning salons, insurance firms, the Cathedral Nearly New shop, hair salons, chemist’s (pharmacist’s), candy stores, clothing stores…. We walked by the campus of Strathclyde University, which was jumbled among the businesses and shops. At last, reaching the top of the hill, I spotted the cathedral: windows like stone flowers opening above the trees. We hurried forward.
Instead of entering Glasgow Cathedral through the front doors, the tourist entrance is through a side door. Everyone else went on ahead, but I lingered behind to get my bearings. Judging from the position of the sun, the cathedral was oriented, like all proper cathedrals, with the front doors facing west (west is the traditional direction of death—and it is interesting to note that when God closed the Garden of Eden to Adam and Eve, He set angels on the east side, but not on the west—it is by “going west” that we return to God). On the south side of the cathedral was a cemetery. The high wall built around the cemetery consisted of large plaques and stone mausoleums. There were many stones laid flat in the ground of the cemetery, so many that the ground was almost paved. Maple and chestnut trees had thrust some of the stones upward with thick roots. On the walls of the cathedral, gargoyles glared out over the graveyard: snarling boars, smiling women, growling dragons, sea-beasts with flowing whiskers and sharp fangs. For a moment, late afternoon sun flashed on the green slates of the cathedral, making them gleam like fishes’ scales. The golden weathercock at the top of the spire glinted. (Weathercocks are often symbolic of reawakening and repentance—think of Peter and the cock crowing three times.)
Opening the small wooden doors, I stepped inside the cathedral. And my eyes shot upwards. Trunks of stone towered above the stone floor, splitting into branches which intertwined far, far overhead. Their tracery held the clerestory windows like leaves, shimmering high above the floor, shining clear, uncoloured daylight into the dim nave. On either side of the nave, aisles ran under the stone columns. Stained-glass windows depicting saints and Biblical figures marched along these aisles—Moses, St. George, windows commemorating the Cameronians, etc. The sun shone straight through the rose window at the front of the church so that all the tiny, intricate pieces of glass glowed in their lead tracery.
In awe, I walked slowly down the nave. The sheer weight and power of the cathedral was overwhelming, almost like being inside a living creature. High, high overhead, the wooden ceiling beams were painted and gilded. Crests and shields bossed the points of the vaults and the places where stone pillars intersected with wooden beams.
Of course, I wasn’t the only person in the cathedral (though in my awe-struck state it sure seemed that way). There were other tourists—Germans, Asians, elderly folks with big cameras. There were costumed guides wearing tartans and cloaks, and a pair of blue-surpliced priests sitting at a table.
I moved down the nave. In the middle of the nave, a flight of steps led up to the body of the church itself. However, this part of the cathedral was separated from the rest of the nave by a wall of woodwork. Through an open door, I could see rows of chairs set up, the pulpit, the altar, two vases of flowers spraying lavishly beside two columns. Before the wooden wall, there were two flights of stairs leading downward into the crypt of the cathedral. I turned aside and followed one of these down, to the right. My feet clicked softly on the smooth, swaybacked lips of the steps. I found John down there, and we wandered around the crypt, staring at the stonework. Arches met and intersected continuously. The stone seemed to have been water once, with light rippling through it—then stone and light froze into pointed vaults and fine, interwoven tracery. The crypt smelled musty, and there were tombs along the walls, and shrines in the middle of the crypt. A plaque on the wall bore a memorial to Covenanters who had been killed standing up for the covenant (odd thing to find in a Catholic cathedral), complete with a victorious poem. The last two lines of the poem ran resoundingly, “They shall know on judgment day/ To kill the saints was no sweet play.”
Down in the crypt, we rejoined Virginia, Rachel, and Aaron. For awhile, I stood with Virginia, looking at an exhibit of old stones found around the cathedral, fragments of statues and gargoyles and other work. Some of the stones had traces of their original paint. Virginia patiently let me talk her ear off about the cathedral. “It looks magnificent now, but imagine what it must have looked like then. All this bare stone that we see would have been painted,” I said, and Virginia’s eyes widened. “This place is so incredibly magnificent. When I come to such a place, I’m reminded of just how small we are as human beings.” “It reminds you that there’s something greater,” Virginia said. “Yes, and look at the stones. No two of them are the same, yet if you pulled one out, this whole magnificent building would come crashing down. And the builders chose and shaped each one of them. It reminds me of the passage that speaks of us as living stones in Christ’s house,” I said. We stood silently for awhile, staring around the crypt. Standing there in the dim, I felt the sheer immensity of the cathedral, the weight of it, bearing down on me. Tons and tons of stone, like huge towering waves of water, frozen in place—power and weight, burden, groaning stone.
After awhile, we went back upstairs. I walked through the wooden partition into the main church. Strolling down one of the aisles, I saw Lucas and Michaela ahead of me. I joined up with Michaela. The soft murmur of people whispering in the seats of the church scurried down the long aisles. The spicy smell of incense made the air tangy. Michaela sat down at the piano behind one of the columns and played a couple of flowing bars from a hymn. The music echoed, gentle at first, then magnified by the stone and glass so that the silence seemed to gather in close and stare down forbiddingly at us.
We entered one of the two small chapels in the apse. Pointed windows told the story of the birth of Christ. A narrow lancet held fragments of glass in the shape of bread, cup, and crown.
I went outside into the cemetery and scrambled among the stones. The stones set in the ground were weathered so that most of them were blank, with only traces of carving. Deep green shadows gathered under the huge trees and under the lea of the wall. John stretched out in the green lawn of one grave while Aaron climbed around taking pictures and Rachel, Emily, Virginia, Michaela, and Lucas sat up at the other end of the cemetery. The others eventually went on ahead to the necropolis on the hill above the cathedral, but I lingered behind again. In that moment of loneliness in the cemetery, I suddenly had the strange feeling that I was not alone. It seemed as though a crowd of people had surrounded me, shadowy shapes in the fleeting sunlight that glanced through the clouds. Just as the sheer weight of the cathedral had overburdened me, so now the throng made me shiver. The hair rising on the back of my neck, I hurried out of the cemetery.
At the gate of the necropolis, just around the corner, I found Emily, Rachel, and Virginia waiting for me. The three of us walked down the road leading to the necropolis. On one side it was lined with paper aspens and rose bushes. The roses are just beginning to bloom, and the sweet smell of the enormous pink flowers vaguely perfumed the air. We crossed the bridge which spanned the valley between the cathedral’s hill and the much higher necropolis hill. We walked up a winding road around the necropolis. Straight stones stood on either side, carved in the shapes of doorways and crosses. Names, dates, scraps of Scripture and poetry. Stones marching up the hill under the thick green shadow of the trees.
To get from one level of the necropolis to another, we had to scramble straight up. The necropolis was built in terraces, with graves along the terraces. Stone retaining walls held back the terraces, and these were covered with ivy. Setting our feet in stones protruding from the wall, we clambered up behind a flat stone monument to the top level of the hill. There we found Lucas, Missy, and Michaela sitting at the foot of a large stone monument with a cross on top. And at the peak of the hill stood a gigantic stone column with a statue of John Knox mounted on its peak. John Knox stood on the highest point of the city, thundering down on the cathedral across the narrow valley, one hand upraised. We walked around the column, which had a large stone block as its base, and around the block was carved the story of Knox. Standing on the grass below the Knox monument, I looked out over Glasgow. On the hill immediately around me, grey monuments stood upright like the quills of feathers trapped upright in the grass. Tombstones, obelisks, crosses, and statues gazed sombrely out over the city. Over one monument, an angel with an upflung face stared hopefully at the sky, held forever in a moment of longing--until "the graves shall open and give up their dead". Across the narrow valley, the cathedral stood shimmering, its green roof like the flicker of wind over a dark grey pool. Lancets of silver light struck through the high white clouds and caught flecks of gold, green, and grey from the roofs of houses and shops below. Red brick and stone were dull under the sunlight. The distant hills marched away onto the hazy horizon. The others started off pretty soon, but I lingered behind again. The cemetery was wrapped up in itself, aloof from the city, looming above the shops and homes. No sound, no smells, no touch save the cool wind--only hazy sight, greys and greens and dull browns. I found myself having to return to the train station with only John and Aaron for company. When we finally decided to get moving (it actually wasn't all that long after the others left), we had to hurry. We jumped down the terraces of the cemetery and walked briskly down the street leading to the necropolis. Passing through the metal gates which at night bar the road, I was reminded of the scene in the "Phantom of the Opera" where Christine visits her father's grave. The cemetery had the same eerie, unearthly feeling of self-enclosure. We marched back to the train station down George Street, pushing through crowds of "weird Europeans". Ahead of us through the crowd, I could see Missy's pink beret. We reached the train station just after the others, and hung around waiting for Toby, Matt, and Brenda. Lucas stood leaning against a pillar with his arms folded, looking like a person I would not want to meet in a dark alley. When they arrived, Lucas said that he had decided not to stay and go to the John Piper lecture, but instead to return to Airdrie for a MET at the Quigleys' house. He left Toby and me in charge of everyone. The next order of business was to find some supper. Brenda offered that she knew a good place to eat, just round the corner, so we followed her to Waxy O'Connor's, which was in fact only across the street from the station.
We had to find our way around back since we weren’t interested in the pub. A pair of braziers burned above the doorway, flames fanning in the breeze. The waiter (who looked like Billy Boyd) led us down to a side table. Wooden legs scraped on the tile floor as the waiter pushed the tables and chairs together. We sat down along the table, and the waiter brought out drinks (water, irn bru, tea, etc.) and took our orders. I ordered fish-and-chips. Emily and Rachel both ordered burgers. While we waited for the food, everyone talked. Rachel sat and read her book of Scottish fairy and folktales, which she'd picked up in the cathedral. The usual queer, unchancy stories which sound as though they were made up on the spur-of-the-moment to frighten recalcitrant children. Virginia and Emily browsed a book of Scottish songs, Emily humming bits of the ones she recognized. The restaurant was dim, lit by a few lamps in our part. We were on the top level. Below us, the restaurant was dug down into the ground two or three stories and half-stories. The stories were open to one another in places, and enclosed in other places, so that the whole restaurant/tavern had the feel of a rabbit warren--or of a place in the Shire, though I felt more like Frodo at Bree, for I'd never been in such a place before, and the half-light and the unintelligible burr of the Scottish accent made everything seem strange. Lots of funny little bits of stairs ran between the stories, with unexpected halls, and flecks of stained-glass windows let chinks light in through odd scraps of windows. The ceilings were low, and the rooms were narrow. The beams supporting the roof and the stairs were carved like tree's limbs, and glowed satin and ruddy in the dim light. From the story below us, we could hear a World Cup game being played on TV. The faint sweet, malt smell of beer and the more bitter, unpleasant tang of cigarettes drifted up to us. When our supper came, it was quite delicious. My fish-and-chips were just as they should be, without the disgusting American grease. John and Toby both ordered haggis, neeps, and tatties (haggis, turnips, and potatoes). John said that the haggis tasted like low-grade hotdog meat, but Toby liked it. None of us ordered black pudding. We sat around talking for awhile, telling stories about squirrels and other things. At about six thirty, we left the restaurant. Virginia paid at the long bar across from the door where we'd come in. I stood behind her: since Lucas had made me one of the two responsible persons, I felt it my bound duty to be the last one of the group out of any place, sheepdog style. Behind the counter, in glass refrigerators, were kept bottles of Irn Bru (a weird orange soft drink which smells something like a cross between bubblegum and cream soda), Coke, and various sorts of golden beer. Bottles and glasses of all shapes and sizes gleamed along the wall behind the counter. Outside in the street again, we walked down a narrow alley between two buildings, down a short street, past a pizza parlor on the corner, and over to St. George's-Tron.
The church stands on a sort of peninsula where three or four streets come together, with a small plaza in front of it. There was a group of people already standing outside, but when the doors of the church were opened, we were the first to enter. Missy led us down to the second row from the front, and we settled in to wait for forty-five minutes until the service started, at seven thirty. The church inside was rococo, with lots of shells and columns painted and carved in the woodwork. Gilt, white, and shades of turquoise and aquamarine made the church feel elegant. A huge multifoliate chandelier hung from the ceiling. Ruffled gilt leaves stood out flat around its base in a large circle where it was attached to the ceiling. The pulpit was built in the old style, at the front of the church with a curving flight of a dozen steps leading up to it. On the stage below the pulpit, an ensemble was warming up to lead the worship: two violins, a flute, a pair of clarinets, a couple of trumpets, a French horn, and a bass guitar, supplemented by a piano on one side and an organ on the other. They played hymn tunes while people entered the church. By the time the service started, the church was warm. Approximately seven hundred people had crowded into the pews downstairs and the large balconies upstairs. When everyone stood to sing the first hymns, the acoustics were wonderful. The sound of that many voices in that small space was so resounding that the instruments were quite drowned out. But I would have prefered them to sing Psalms.... The focus of attention was on John Piper, of course. After prayer, singing, and an offering, all led by a British chap in a pink shirt, John Piper came out and began his lecture. John Piper is a slight older man with curly, fluffy white hair and a sweet, smooth, ruddy face. When he speaks, he uses many broad, emphatic gestures. People around us obviously enjoyed it. There were murmurs of agreement at his main points and appreciative laughter at his anecdotes. He was much less serious than I expected, but quite a good speaker. The main point of his sermon was that we should have courage to evangelize. He took Matthew 10:24-36 as his text. After the message, I felt like singing "All People Clap Your Hands for Joy", but of course we sang "Onward Christian Soldiers" instead.
There was a great press to get out. We inched slowly forward down the aisles and finally spilled out onto the plaza in front of the church. Everyone hung about waiting to speak with John Piper, but our team gathered on the far kerb. Michaela was the last to make her way through the crowd. While we waited, I watched the sunset. Gold and blue glinted in the sky on the fringes of the big, white clouds, so that the sky was like a soft opal. Seagulls flew between the high buildings. Shop windows across the street advertized expensive clothing, stylish short skirts and sweaters in the strangest modern shades of lime green and teal. Taxis, ambulances, cars, and vans rumbled along the brick street. When our group came together at last, we marched down the street to the train station. The guard at the station directed us to the proper platform for Airdrie.
On the ride back, Virginia and I got stuck in a bench separate from the rest of the group. I asked Virginia about her school. She told me that she enjoys being a music major (harp), but that she has many interests, and she's considering switching to an Elementary Ed degree because so many people have told her that she's good with children. She's also interested in training service dogs. She and her siblings worked in 4H, and her last dog project was a service dog. She also enjoys sewing, and she and her siblings showed goats in 4H. She asked about my school, and I told her about some of my frustrations with Anglo-Saxon lit. We talked about the lecture. The rails clicked by under the train, and the sun set over the dismal buildings and scrubby trees. Back in Airdrie, we left the station, which is constantly haunted by the faint, sharp scent of hot metal and cinders on gravel. We walked back to the church in a long, straggling group, like a flock of starlings flying home.
The train ride to Glasgow took about thirty minutes. We piled off the train at the Glasgow Queen’s Street Station. I stared around. We were in an underground station and had to climb a flight of stairs to get to the ground level. People bustled around us. We left the station and stood on the long, broad covered porch outside. People were hurrying everywhere. “Weird Europeans,” I growled, watching the crowds circulate past. A soldier in a black beret and fatigues. Businesswomen in knee-short, tight skirts. Loungers with long hair, grizzled beards, and flapping trousers. Girls with enough mascara to paint a black-and-white version of the “Mona Lisa”. Tall, dandified men with very tight slacks and half-open shirts, gold necklaces dangling down their chests. It was quite a crowd.
Lucas turned us loose, telling us to be back at the train station at five o’clock. My group wandered away aimlessly. We crossed George Street into a large open plaza. Statues of kings and queens mounted on horseback lined the edges of the plaza: stern faces, upraised swords, crowned heads. Gulls flapped and circled around. The buildings surrounding the plaza were all different from one another. In Stirling, we had seen a small slice of architecture two hundred years old, all crowded together. But in Glasgow, you see architecture from every period and style, built up on top of one another—a zoo of buildings. Most of the buildings in this part of Glasgow seemed to be built out of red sandstone, perhaps in the 1800s—five or six stories tall, with rows of windows staring down on the streets, and lines of carving on the corners. There were the usual suave green-glass-and-steel office buildings. There was an odd building, which had overtones of Frank Lloyd Wright, except that offices occupied the top story, a parking garage the second story, and dirty shops the first story. At the far end of the plaza was a magnificent red sandstone building, covered in wreaths and statues, with vaults and corbels and domes in the best baroque style. A pair of lions guarded a tall obelisk in the middle of the plaza. People lounged around the plaza. John stopped to stare at a greasy-looking man who was offering a small, hand-pushed cart in which to drive tourists around the town.
We wandered down one side of the plaza to a set of triple gates, where we stood and took pictures for awhile. Then we had to decide where we wanted to go. Some people wanted to go to the harbour, but that was too far away. There were science museums, art museums, and other attraction, but they also were out of walking distance. “I’d love to go see a cathedral,” I offered. “I would, too,” John said, and Emily added that she was game for the attempt. So Aaron and Rachel pulled out the map and stared at it for awhile. Then Aaron led us on our trek to the cathedral. It was actually just down the street, several blocks from the station, but we had taken a detour to visit the gates, so it took us longer to reach the cathedral. We walked past a construction zone where they were building some sleek postmodern buildings, all slanted roofs and blue glass and woodwork. We climbed the hill toward the cathedral, walking between narrow rows of grimy shops, which were crowded together like dirty pigeons. Tanning salons, insurance firms, the Cathedral Nearly New shop, hair salons, chemist’s (pharmacist’s), candy stores, clothing stores…. We walked by the campus of Strathclyde University, which was jumbled among the businesses and shops. At last, reaching the top of the hill, I spotted the cathedral: windows like stone flowers opening above the trees. We hurried forward.
Instead of entering Glasgow Cathedral through the front doors, the tourist entrance is through a side door. Everyone else went on ahead, but I lingered behind to get my bearings. Judging from the position of the sun, the cathedral was oriented, like all proper cathedrals, with the front doors facing west (west is the traditional direction of death—and it is interesting to note that when God closed the Garden of Eden to Adam and Eve, He set angels on the east side, but not on the west—it is by “going west” that we return to God). On the south side of the cathedral was a cemetery. The high wall built around the cemetery consisted of large plaques and stone mausoleums. There were many stones laid flat in the ground of the cemetery, so many that the ground was almost paved. Maple and chestnut trees had thrust some of the stones upward with thick roots. On the walls of the cathedral, gargoyles glared out over the graveyard: snarling boars, smiling women, growling dragons, sea-beasts with flowing whiskers and sharp fangs. For a moment, late afternoon sun flashed on the green slates of the cathedral, making them gleam like fishes’ scales. The golden weathercock at the top of the spire glinted. (Weathercocks are often symbolic of reawakening and repentance—think of Peter and the cock crowing three times.)
Opening the small wooden doors, I stepped inside the cathedral. And my eyes shot upwards. Trunks of stone towered above the stone floor, splitting into branches which intertwined far, far overhead. Their tracery held the clerestory windows like leaves, shimmering high above the floor, shining clear, uncoloured daylight into the dim nave. On either side of the nave, aisles ran under the stone columns. Stained-glass windows depicting saints and Biblical figures marched along these aisles—Moses, St. George, windows commemorating the Cameronians, etc. The sun shone straight through the rose window at the front of the church so that all the tiny, intricate pieces of glass glowed in their lead tracery.
In awe, I walked slowly down the nave. The sheer weight and power of the cathedral was overwhelming, almost like being inside a living creature. High, high overhead, the wooden ceiling beams were painted and gilded. Crests and shields bossed the points of the vaults and the places where stone pillars intersected with wooden beams.
Of course, I wasn’t the only person in the cathedral (though in my awe-struck state it sure seemed that way). There were other tourists—Germans, Asians, elderly folks with big cameras. There were costumed guides wearing tartans and cloaks, and a pair of blue-surpliced priests sitting at a table.
I moved down the nave. In the middle of the nave, a flight of steps led up to the body of the church itself. However, this part of the cathedral was separated from the rest of the nave by a wall of woodwork. Through an open door, I could see rows of chairs set up, the pulpit, the altar, two vases of flowers spraying lavishly beside two columns. Before the wooden wall, there were two flights of stairs leading downward into the crypt of the cathedral. I turned aside and followed one of these down, to the right. My feet clicked softly on the smooth, swaybacked lips of the steps. I found John down there, and we wandered around the crypt, staring at the stonework. Arches met and intersected continuously. The stone seemed to have been water once, with light rippling through it—then stone and light froze into pointed vaults and fine, interwoven tracery. The crypt smelled musty, and there were tombs along the walls, and shrines in the middle of the crypt. A plaque on the wall bore a memorial to Covenanters who had been killed standing up for the covenant (odd thing to find in a Catholic cathedral), complete with a victorious poem. The last two lines of the poem ran resoundingly, “They shall know on judgment day/ To kill the saints was no sweet play.”
Down in the crypt, we rejoined Virginia, Rachel, and Aaron. For awhile, I stood with Virginia, looking at an exhibit of old stones found around the cathedral, fragments of statues and gargoyles and other work. Some of the stones had traces of their original paint. Virginia patiently let me talk her ear off about the cathedral. “It looks magnificent now, but imagine what it must have looked like then. All this bare stone that we see would have been painted,” I said, and Virginia’s eyes widened. “This place is so incredibly magnificent. When I come to such a place, I’m reminded of just how small we are as human beings.” “It reminds you that there’s something greater,” Virginia said. “Yes, and look at the stones. No two of them are the same, yet if you pulled one out, this whole magnificent building would come crashing down. And the builders chose and shaped each one of them. It reminds me of the passage that speaks of us as living stones in Christ’s house,” I said. We stood silently for awhile, staring around the crypt. Standing there in the dim, I felt the sheer immensity of the cathedral, the weight of it, bearing down on me. Tons and tons of stone, like huge towering waves of water, frozen in place—power and weight, burden, groaning stone.
After awhile, we went back upstairs. I walked through the wooden partition into the main church. Strolling down one of the aisles, I saw Lucas and Michaela ahead of me. I joined up with Michaela. The soft murmur of people whispering in the seats of the church scurried down the long aisles. The spicy smell of incense made the air tangy. Michaela sat down at the piano behind one of the columns and played a couple of flowing bars from a hymn. The music echoed, gentle at first, then magnified by the stone and glass so that the silence seemed to gather in close and stare down forbiddingly at us.
We entered one of the two small chapels in the apse. Pointed windows told the story of the birth of Christ. A narrow lancet held fragments of glass in the shape of bread, cup, and crown.
I went outside into the cemetery and scrambled among the stones. The stones set in the ground were weathered so that most of them were blank, with only traces of carving. Deep green shadows gathered under the huge trees and under the lea of the wall. John stretched out in the green lawn of one grave while Aaron climbed around taking pictures and Rachel, Emily, Virginia, Michaela, and Lucas sat up at the other end of the cemetery. The others eventually went on ahead to the necropolis on the hill above the cathedral, but I lingered behind again. In that moment of loneliness in the cemetery, I suddenly had the strange feeling that I was not alone. It seemed as though a crowd of people had surrounded me, shadowy shapes in the fleeting sunlight that glanced through the clouds. Just as the sheer weight of the cathedral had overburdened me, so now the throng made me shiver. The hair rising on the back of my neck, I hurried out of the cemetery.
At the gate of the necropolis, just around the corner, I found Emily, Rachel, and Virginia waiting for me. The three of us walked down the road leading to the necropolis. On one side it was lined with paper aspens and rose bushes. The roses are just beginning to bloom, and the sweet smell of the enormous pink flowers vaguely perfumed the air. We crossed the bridge which spanned the valley between the cathedral’s hill and the much higher necropolis hill. We walked up a winding road around the necropolis. Straight stones stood on either side, carved in the shapes of doorways and crosses. Names, dates, scraps of Scripture and poetry. Stones marching up the hill under the thick green shadow of the trees.
To get from one level of the necropolis to another, we had to scramble straight up. The necropolis was built in terraces, with graves along the terraces. Stone retaining walls held back the terraces, and these were covered with ivy. Setting our feet in stones protruding from the wall, we clambered up behind a flat stone monument to the top level of the hill. There we found Lucas, Missy, and Michaela sitting at the foot of a large stone monument with a cross on top. And at the peak of the hill stood a gigantic stone column with a statue of John Knox mounted on its peak. John Knox stood on the highest point of the city, thundering down on the cathedral across the narrow valley, one hand upraised. We walked around the column, which had a large stone block as its base, and around the block was carved the story of Knox. Standing on the grass below the Knox monument, I looked out over Glasgow. On the hill immediately around me, grey monuments stood upright like the quills of feathers trapped upright in the grass. Tombstones, obelisks, crosses, and statues gazed sombrely out over the city. Over one monument, an angel with an upflung face stared hopefully at the sky, held forever in a moment of longing--until "the graves shall open and give up their dead". Across the narrow valley, the cathedral stood shimmering, its green roof like the flicker of wind over a dark grey pool. Lancets of silver light struck through the high white clouds and caught flecks of gold, green, and grey from the roofs of houses and shops below. Red brick and stone were dull under the sunlight. The distant hills marched away onto the hazy horizon. The others started off pretty soon, but I lingered behind again. The cemetery was wrapped up in itself, aloof from the city, looming above the shops and homes. No sound, no smells, no touch save the cool wind--only hazy sight, greys and greens and dull browns. I found myself having to return to the train station with only John and Aaron for company. When we finally decided to get moving (it actually wasn't all that long after the others left), we had to hurry. We jumped down the terraces of the cemetery and walked briskly down the street leading to the necropolis. Passing through the metal gates which at night bar the road, I was reminded of the scene in the "Phantom of the Opera" where Christine visits her father's grave. The cemetery had the same eerie, unearthly feeling of self-enclosure. We marched back to the train station down George Street, pushing through crowds of "weird Europeans". Ahead of us through the crowd, I could see Missy's pink beret. We reached the train station just after the others, and hung around waiting for Toby, Matt, and Brenda. Lucas stood leaning against a pillar with his arms folded, looking like a person I would not want to meet in a dark alley. When they arrived, Lucas said that he had decided not to stay and go to the John Piper lecture, but instead to return to Airdrie for a MET at the Quigleys' house. He left Toby and me in charge of everyone. The next order of business was to find some supper. Brenda offered that she knew a good place to eat, just round the corner, so we followed her to Waxy O'Connor's, which was in fact only across the street from the station.
We had to find our way around back since we weren’t interested in the pub. A pair of braziers burned above the doorway, flames fanning in the breeze. The waiter (who looked like Billy Boyd) led us down to a side table. Wooden legs scraped on the tile floor as the waiter pushed the tables and chairs together. We sat down along the table, and the waiter brought out drinks (water, irn bru, tea, etc.) and took our orders. I ordered fish-and-chips. Emily and Rachel both ordered burgers. While we waited for the food, everyone talked. Rachel sat and read her book of Scottish fairy and folktales, which she'd picked up in the cathedral. The usual queer, unchancy stories which sound as though they were made up on the spur-of-the-moment to frighten recalcitrant children. Virginia and Emily browsed a book of Scottish songs, Emily humming bits of the ones she recognized. The restaurant was dim, lit by a few lamps in our part. We were on the top level. Below us, the restaurant was dug down into the ground two or three stories and half-stories. The stories were open to one another in places, and enclosed in other places, so that the whole restaurant/tavern had the feel of a rabbit warren--or of a place in the Shire, though I felt more like Frodo at Bree, for I'd never been in such a place before, and the half-light and the unintelligible burr of the Scottish accent made everything seem strange. Lots of funny little bits of stairs ran between the stories, with unexpected halls, and flecks of stained-glass windows let chinks light in through odd scraps of windows. The ceilings were low, and the rooms were narrow. The beams supporting the roof and the stairs were carved like tree's limbs, and glowed satin and ruddy in the dim light. From the story below us, we could hear a World Cup game being played on TV. The faint sweet, malt smell of beer and the more bitter, unpleasant tang of cigarettes drifted up to us. When our supper came, it was quite delicious. My fish-and-chips were just as they should be, without the disgusting American grease. John and Toby both ordered haggis, neeps, and tatties (haggis, turnips, and potatoes). John said that the haggis tasted like low-grade hotdog meat, but Toby liked it. None of us ordered black pudding. We sat around talking for awhile, telling stories about squirrels and other things. At about six thirty, we left the restaurant. Virginia paid at the long bar across from the door where we'd come in. I stood behind her: since Lucas had made me one of the two responsible persons, I felt it my bound duty to be the last one of the group out of any place, sheepdog style. Behind the counter, in glass refrigerators, were kept bottles of Irn Bru (a weird orange soft drink which smells something like a cross between bubblegum and cream soda), Coke, and various sorts of golden beer. Bottles and glasses of all shapes and sizes gleamed along the wall behind the counter. Outside in the street again, we walked down a narrow alley between two buildings, down a short street, past a pizza parlor on the corner, and over to St. George's-Tron.
The church stands on a sort of peninsula where three or four streets come together, with a small plaza in front of it. There was a group of people already standing outside, but when the doors of the church were opened, we were the first to enter. Missy led us down to the second row from the front, and we settled in to wait for forty-five minutes until the service started, at seven thirty. The church inside was rococo, with lots of shells and columns painted and carved in the woodwork. Gilt, white, and shades of turquoise and aquamarine made the church feel elegant. A huge multifoliate chandelier hung from the ceiling. Ruffled gilt leaves stood out flat around its base in a large circle where it was attached to the ceiling. The pulpit was built in the old style, at the front of the church with a curving flight of a dozen steps leading up to it. On the stage below the pulpit, an ensemble was warming up to lead the worship: two violins, a flute, a pair of clarinets, a couple of trumpets, a French horn, and a bass guitar, supplemented by a piano on one side and an organ on the other. They played hymn tunes while people entered the church. By the time the service started, the church was warm. Approximately seven hundred people had crowded into the pews downstairs and the large balconies upstairs. When everyone stood to sing the first hymns, the acoustics were wonderful. The sound of that many voices in that small space was so resounding that the instruments were quite drowned out. But I would have prefered them to sing Psalms.... The focus of attention was on John Piper, of course. After prayer, singing, and an offering, all led by a British chap in a pink shirt, John Piper came out and began his lecture. John Piper is a slight older man with curly, fluffy white hair and a sweet, smooth, ruddy face. When he speaks, he uses many broad, emphatic gestures. People around us obviously enjoyed it. There were murmurs of agreement at his main points and appreciative laughter at his anecdotes. He was much less serious than I expected, but quite a good speaker. The main point of his sermon was that we should have courage to evangelize. He took Matthew 10:24-36 as his text. After the message, I felt like singing "All People Clap Your Hands for Joy", but of course we sang "Onward Christian Soldiers" instead.
There was a great press to get out. We inched slowly forward down the aisles and finally spilled out onto the plaza in front of the church. Everyone hung about waiting to speak with John Piper, but our team gathered on the far kerb. Michaela was the last to make her way through the crowd. While we waited, I watched the sunset. Gold and blue glinted in the sky on the fringes of the big, white clouds, so that the sky was like a soft opal. Seagulls flew between the high buildings. Shop windows across the street advertized expensive clothing, stylish short skirts and sweaters in the strangest modern shades of lime green and teal. Taxis, ambulances, cars, and vans rumbled along the brick street. When our group came together at last, we marched down the street to the train station. The guard at the station directed us to the proper platform for Airdrie.
On the ride back, Virginia and I got stuck in a bench separate from the rest of the group. I asked Virginia about her school. She told me that she enjoys being a music major (harp), but that she has many interests, and she's considering switching to an Elementary Ed degree because so many people have told her that she's good with children. She's also interested in training service dogs. She and her siblings worked in 4H, and her last dog project was a service dog. She also enjoys sewing, and she and her siblings showed goats in 4H. She asked about my school, and I told her about some of my frustrations with Anglo-Saxon lit. We talked about the lecture. The rails clicked by under the train, and the sun set over the dismal buildings and scrubby trees. Back in Airdrie, we left the station, which is constantly haunted by the faint, sharp scent of hot metal and cinders on gravel. We walked back to the church in a long, straggling group, like a flock of starlings flying home.
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