Thoughts on the Scottish Highlands
July 11, 2009
Written 27 June 2009
Highlands: Day One
Wee Jacobites square off against the hirry coos in a battle to determine the best Scottish colloquialism. Gill officiates. Jacobites drop out; disqualified for excessive historicity. The wee merges with the hirry coos to form a juggernaut of endearing pronunciation.
Gill officiates as I struggle to determine how I can be an Anglophile when I know the Jacobite tale. David Balfour makes a guest appearance; Gill takes it as an affront and orders him from the field of honor. David Balfour is my struggle to make myself reconcile English interests with Scottish love and lore and honor. David Balfour is bound and gagged and suppressed and stuffed in a closet somewhere in the back of my mind; David Balfour comes into his kingdom of dusty money to realize it is shallow and without honor.
Gill officiates the turmoil as the Highlands take precedence as definition of Scotland. Edinburgh is David Balfour is something might as well be London when viewed in the face of the lochs, bens, waterfalls, crags, glacial activity effacing all of a landscape that lacks severity and beauty. Campbell’s soup tastes like shame.
David Balfour, aged 37, ranting wrapped in a tartan and fingering one silver button and dreaming of hospitality without reservation. Gill officiates the decline of the Whig and resurrection of the Jacobite.
Notes:
David Balfour: protagonist of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped and a relentless Whig (and wanker).
Jacobite: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobitism
Hirry coo: a hirry coo
Gill: our tour guide in the Highlands; a major cutie with a wicked Scottish accent; promugator of the use of the word “wee.”
Campbell: Shameless backstabbers and allies of the filthy Whigs
Me: Somehow passionately a supporter of a cause that’s been dead for over two centuries (maybe a little enamored with Gill).
