A Tall Story?

Well, dear reader, if there are any of you out there, I'm back from my virtual hibernation that was going to last a couple of weeks but somehow went on a bit...I'm hoping to blog just a tad more regularly from now on, which is hardly a challenge given my posting rate to date. But while I may have been absent from the blogsphere, I have still been occupying actual space on the planet in the last year, and as Christmas looms ever closer I've been reflecting a little on what I've been doing in 2009. This reflection was precipitated chiefly by the need to finish off our annual Christmas letter which we still cheerfully inflict on friends and far-flung family. For any of you out there who happen to receive said epistle, consider this a sneak preview and the chance to decide whether you'll bother with the rest when it comes, or just put it straight in the "Burn before reading" pile....

One highlight of 2009 came last March, when on a visit to London with my dear spouse, I finally visited the Victoria & Albert Museum for the first time. What a treasure trove of delights it turned out to be, and we didn't see even half of what was there. When we first entered the museum we encountered the stunning Dale Chihuly glass chandelier. To see what I'm talking about, look here That name may not mean anything to you, and if I'm honest, I couldn't have named the artist either, but his style was instantly recognizable because we had first seen another wonderful piece by Chihuly last year in Michigan, in the atrium at the entrance to the Frederick Meyer Sculpture Gardens in Grand Rapids. Anyway, we worked our way round the galleries in the ground and lower floor of the V&A, moving from the Asia galleries through sculpture and objects from the Roccoco period.

Now when I was two years old, my parents took me to the zoo. Everything was going well until we got to the giraffe compound. Apparently when I looked up from my pram, then up, then up some more at these fantastic animals towering over me I just shook my head, looked away and kept saying "No!" my head fixedly pointing in the opposite direction. Their size was was just too much for my wee brain to take in. That's the sort of brain-popping feeling I got when we we moved from marvelling at the intricate, minutely detailed carvings of the Japanese netsuke. of which this is one of my favourite examples, to the gargantuan wonders of the fabulous cast room at the V&A.... Not only does it contain a vast nineteenth-century plaster copy of the Portico de la Gloria from the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, but also a cast of Trajan's Column taken from the original 1st century AD monument. The gallery can’t accommodate the column in one piece even without St Peter on top , so it’s in two separate sections. The cast was made in sections of plaster reliefs each individually numbered to make up a giant jigsaw and these were attached to a brick built inner chimney. You have to hand it to those Victorians. Why settle for a souvenir postcard when you can laboriously and painstakingly reproduce huge chunks of European architecture? But what really struck me during our visit was that both the netsuke and the casts are diverse expressions of our shared human creativity and ingenuity, a creativity which points, for me at least, to a Creator God in whose image we are all made, and whose astounding love for his creation we celebrate at this time of year...Or as Charles Wesley put it, "Our God, contracted to a span, Incomprehensibly made man."

It's comin' yet, for a' that...

So today's the big day, a day many thought they wouldn't live to see. Ronald Brisbon, a New York resident questioned earlier today about the build up and the palpable sense of anticipation and of history in the making is quoted on the BBC News website as remarking " Dr King said it might take 40 years. It's been 45 years, I can wait another hour."

When he takes office as the 44th President of the United States of America, Barack Obama will swear an oath on the same Bible used by Abraham Lincoln in 1861. Lincoln was a lifelong fan of Robert Burns: in 1859, Lincoln had attended the Springfield Centenary celebration of Burns’ birthday, and he gave a formal toast to his memory, although exactly what he said has not survived. Since Scotsman Alexander Williamson, who tutored young Tad and Willie Lincoln, also served as Secretary of the Washington Burns' club, he had special access to the president. On January 24, 1865, Williamson asked Lincoln for a “recognition of the genius of Scotland’s bard, by either a toast, a sentiment, or in any other way you may deem proper.” Lincoln penned a hasty note that was dutifully read at the celebration. It read: “I cannot frame a toast to Burns. I can say nothing worthy of his generous heart and transcendent genius. Thinking of what he has said, I cannot say anything worth saying.” Perhaps he had in mind one of Burns' most famous works, "A man's a Man, for a' that" which has as its final verse:

"Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a' that,)
That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree and a'that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
It's coming yet for a' that,
That Man to Man, the world o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that. "

Maybe we're not there yet. But today perhaps inches us one little step closer to that vision of the recognition of our common humanity. And so I'll leave you with the words of a contemporary Scots performance poet, written for BBC Radio 4's Saturday Live, the one and only Elvis McGonagall:

Against All Odds

Armed to the teeth, an invincible Philistine
Let Goliath, the bully, do what he may
For with five stones in a sling eternal hope springs
Every underdog will have his day
With backbone, pluck and cojones
Nerve of steel, heart of oak, iron chin
The hangdog Hancocks in homburg hats
Will take on the world and win
The minnows will slay the giants
Owned by oligarch, sheikh and tycoon
All the Persians will die at Thermopylae
The Greeks will be over the moon
Eddie the Eagle will fly like an angel
Samson will fall to Rocky Balboa
Captain Scott will get to the South Pole first
The All Blacks will lose to Samoa
Basil Brush will score a ton against the Aussies
Scotland will hammer Brazil
Wimbledon will be won by John Sergeant
Hull will beat Chelsea six nil
The underdogs will overcome
The downtrodden will rise up and sing
And the son of a Kenyan goatherd will be
The next American King

Watch the dust fly....

An invite came across my desk this week to a St Andrew's Night Celebration, sponsored by Castlereagh Borough Council and the Ulster Scots Agency. Sometimes it seems the closest many people here get to Scotland is tussling with the lid of a Marks & Spencer seasonal shortbread tin embellished yet again with a picture of Eilean Donan Castle. (Honestly! There are other places in Scotland, and some of them even have people). Anyway, the phrase "Ulster Scots" has a peculiar resonance for me. I'm from the south-west of Scotland. Throughout my school years, we had to learn and recite Burns' poetry and songs. I worked in Burns' Cottage for two summers, taking money from harried Americans who had scheduled a full 20 minutes to appreciate the life and times of the ploughman poet, but who generally wanted just to use the rest rooms and buy something tartan before zooming up the coast to reach Stornaway by nightfall. Our Christmas parties and school formals were always ceilidhs, and that meant practising Strip the Willow, the Dashing White Sergeant and the Gay Gordons (sic) for weeks on end. We had a ceilidh at our own wedding, where we birled and reeled the evening away in a hotel that overlooks the Brig o' Doon. A couple of generations back from my dad, his family originally came from the Ards Peninsula but left to find work in the coal fields of south Ayrshire. I've lived in Ulster for eighteen years now, and...well, you get the picture.

I'm not even going to begin here on the hijacking or contrivance made of Ulster Scots that goes on for reasons of political expediency, parity of esteem or desperate claims of identity. But it's helfpul just to observe that the first edition of Burns' poems, the Kilmarnock edition, was printed in Lallans, or Lowland Scots. Ulster-Scots is derived from, and has its closest linguistic parallels with this same tongue. Such was the impact of Burns in Ulster that the first edition of his poetry printed outside Scotland was in Belfast, and the centrality of his position within the Ulster-Scots literary tradition is beyond doubt. But when I read in my invite that the Risin' Stours were playing at the St Andrew's night party I fell about laughing. I think someone needs to go and check a dictionary. I'm happy to be corrected, but guess that whoever named the band thought they were calling themselves the rising stars. If so, surely it should be Risin' Sterns. But "Stours"? Stour (always used in the singular) is what you get when you hit a carpet with a broom, or what you find when you lift the cushion seats off the sofa . (In my house, at least, domestic goddess dna being absent from my own genetic code.) Of course it could be that they are trying to strike a more literary note, or perhaps even wanting a more martial overtone, as stour can mean strife or conflict - but mainly in the Banffshire area. Or perhaps they meant storm or wild weather as Shetlanders and Orcadians would use the word....But in Ulster Scots? I don't think so!

Well, here endeth the lesson. But for an appreciation of Burns and his influence on Ulster Scots, check out this link to hear Seamus Heaney's own warm and wonderful tribute. Enjoy!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/7209402.stm