Travel Diary by Dave Abbott
Great Scots Going Home
In January this year Scotland raised its glass to their beloved poet Robert Burns born 250 years earlier. And using the Burns anniversary as a springboard the Scottish Tourist Board encouraged Scots from all over the world to 'come home' to the Homecoming.
And it is working. Reaching out to the Scottish diaspora (an estimated 4.7 million Canadians describe their origins as Scottish) the country has been in a party mood all year long.
Thousands of Scots from all over the world flocked to Edinburgh in July for an international clan and family gathering. Like many of its current inhabitants Edinburgh has a colourful past.
Over 2,000 years ago settlers resided on the steep rock where Edinburgh Castle scowls down on the city today. It was hard living on the rock and while early residents had lovely views, they also had the added advantage of seeing their enemies coming.
Edinburgh may look great to the tourist but they don't know the secrets of its painful past. No one speaks of the human horror that went on below and above the savage streets. The blood from Castle cruelties dried up long ago.
But, Edinburgh is a township raised in the teeth of cold winds from the east, a city of meandering streets and proud pillars; a city of dark nights and candlelight and intellect. This is not Glasgow with its soft western light and its proximity to Ireland and the Highlands. It is a landscape of ambiguities.
In the Eighteenth Century Edinburgh was a 'hotbed of genius'. Only London and Paris could compete as intellectual centers. A city erected on rigid hierarchies and the deep convictions of Scottish Presbyterianism.
It was a city for tough-minded self-directed men of letters that called themselves 'literati'. It's a 'highly-refined' city, where outsiders committing social bon mots find themselves pariahs. A city built on hypocrisy, it's where Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were conceived.
Good food and drink was an effortless indulgence. The city flowed with alcohol but the drink of choice was not whiskey, which was considered crude and provincial, but claret, a legacy of Scotland's ties to France.
One Eighteenth Century magazine described Scotland as "the most drunken nation on earth worse even, it confessed, than the Irish."
It was also home to Edinburgh's putrid past. At one time 14-storied tenements were commonplace in the Old Town and with coal the main source of fuel, fires created smelly stinking clouds above the city along with the fear of fire in overcrowded tenements.
Then the inevitable finally happened. In November 1824, Edinburgh had its Great Fire. The slums burnt to the ground which actually proved to be a blessing for there was no hygiene or plumbing and the smell from the crowded houses was 10 times worse than any school toilet.
'Potty' laws did exist to prevent the residents from emptying their toilet pots from the high Edinburgh flats into the road below, but no one paid a blind bit of notice. They were still emptying their stinky chamber pots well into the 1700s.
Today, passing the city's elegant historic homes it's difficult to imagine such days for it is a city with an unprecedented number of splendid churches and private boys' schools (Watson's, Herriot's, Fettes) that determine one's social standing.
However despite deceptive modern-day trappings, it remains home to Miss Jean Brodie and her crème-de-la-crème girls of Brian Moore's Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne.
And the foundation home to the Scottish Enlightenment and David Hume, Robert the Bruce, John Knox, Mary Queen of Scots, Robert Louis Stevenson and talented men like Adam Smith and Sir Walter Scott.
A 'snobby' city, I suspect, but not without good reason. The architecture, the gardens, the Georgian houses, squares and monuments set this city apart. Gracious is a word that springs to mind and seems suitably descriptive.
As the first modern nation and culture, the Scots have by and large made the world a better place.
One lasting image of Edinburgh was the sight of a lone bagpiper, attired in a moth-eaten kilt of many colours, standing on a street corner playing his bagpipes sounding as if he was expelling all the pain of the city's history. His black ankle socks and scruffy runners made an excellent exclamation mark.
Edinburgh still leads the way!
Homecoming Scotland 2009: From now until November 30 in Glasgow there are Highland Games, Celtic Festivals and historical re-enactments. For more information: www.homecomingscotland2009.com. Other sites to explore: www.visitscotland.com or www.cometoscotland.com.
[Dave Abbott is a Dublin-born travel writer and broadcaster. Visit his website at: www.irishlaughter.com.]
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