Memoirs of William Fowler of Edinburgh: Student, Trader, Makar, Conduit, would-be lover in the early days of our Reform.

Riverrun, 2021, 458 p

Greig has been described as Scotland’s first post-Calvinist writer. With this book it seems he has decided to run with that designation. In many ways a companion volume to Fair Helen, this is the second time he has examined the genesis of the country’s immersion in that stern, moralistic creed. We also find references to Montaigne again, not to mention Walter Scott of Branxholme and Buccleuch. For added measure we are given a glimpse of Giordano Bruno and extended encounters with George Buchanan, Jamie the Saxt and the political struggles of the times.

Above all though, as a novelist Greig is the great expositor of love, the grand theme that runs through all his prose work, but with a poet’s eye for its joys and sorrows. And of course, where would literature be without it?

The love in question here is that of narrator William Fowler of Anchor Close, Embra (“Fowler” always designates Edinburgh in this way,) for Rose Nicolson, the sister of his companion scholar, Tom, at the University of St Andrews, to whom he is drawn one day as he sees her mending fishing nets, down by the harbour. He becomes a friend of the family but Rose has an understanding with John Gourlay, a fisherman with boats and, more crucially, prospects. He also discovers Rose’s remarkable intellect, which distances her from her peers, and her unusual views about God, which could threaten her survival.

Given their times the book shows us debates about free will and predestination and Fowler says that “Humanism and the Reform were brothers locked in a deadly embrace, for one was destined to destroy the other.”

This historical era, for so long unexamined, has become ripe for novelistic consideration. It was a more foundational moment for Scotland than the Jacobite rebellions much more harped on by Scottish literature. It was the time when the country plunged into the dark umbra of Calvinism from which it has only emerged, blinking – and astonished at itself – during the last fifty years. As Will says in his last words to Rose, “‘But you’ll be back some day? …. When times are fit?’” She replies, “‘In five hunner years they may be fit.’”

The book also encompasses 16^th century Scotland’s JFK moment – hearing of the death of John Knox. Of that firebrand preacher’s style Tom says, “‘Aye, he was the great rebuker,’” before adding, “‘It’s a sair fecht, to keep men rightly building our New Jerusalem.’”

The politics were dark and messy. Adherents of the old faith – Will’s mother for one – have a strange belief they work towards that the exiled Queen Mary might return at the head of a French army and be restored, perhaps to share the throne with her son, Jamie Saxt. In his minority various regents had come and gone; most by violent or nefarious means. Even the great survivor, Regent Morton, will fall while Jamie Saxt is forever prey to threats of kidnap and manipulation.

The fanaticism of statements like, “‘This is now a Protestant nation. Dissent will not be tolerated,’” is contrasted with the situation in England. “We had no theatre in Scotland, on account of the Kirk.” Fowler asks, “A Reformed Kirk indeed, but of what kind? And who would limit its reach? The King?” On his trip to Paris he notes the sumptuousness and brilliance of the stained glass in Paris churches. All such fripperies had been stoned out of Scotland, and the Cathedral in St Andrews pillaged of its stone. The town’s once thriving economy, dependent on pilgrims, has vanished, the University is on its uppers.

Nevertheless, that reform, since it believed women had souls, had ensured the teaching of girls up to the same age as boys. (Much good it did them. They were still liable to be denounced as witches or pawns of the Devil.)

But human impulses always survive. “What a piece of work I am,” Will says, “that can encompass fleshly desire, tenderness, sorrow and soul, and the impulse to violence, all within one afternoon. Did Aristotle know of this? Did the risen Christ?” The melancholy that rests in the Scottish soul is expressively conveyed in his response to a song. “I kenned the bleak melody and the story, as did everyone in the hall, for it was ours.”

Though he denies it to his mother, “‘No. Absolutely not,’” the text could be read as if it was Will rather than Gourlay who fathered Rose’s child. “But a stranger I must be.” He certainly exhibits a fatherly interest in Lucy. But he was in love with her mother and notwithstanding her comment to him about her marriage, “‘There were pressing reasons,’” their later conversations argue against that interpretation.

Will’s life, though, and much of the narrative, becomes embroiled in the machinations of the high heid yins and affairs of state, his profession of trader allowing him to be a conduit (a spy in plainer terms,) Walter Scott of Buccleuch’s indebtedness to him for the loan of a dirk on their first meeting and for a subsequent intervention a major factor in his – and eventually Rose’s – fortunes. Lives can be messy and unpredictable. Only in fairy tales does everyone live happily ever after.

Yet some tranquillity can be found. Tom says, “‘Our Stoic masters spend o’er much attention to making a good death, and not enough to living beforehand.’” On which the later in life Will, narrating from the vantage point of old age, reflects, “I felt those words lodge, quivering, somewhere near my heart. Despite everything, they remain there still.”

There are sly allusions; such as to Shakespeare “‘I had not dreamed of such philosophy’” and Larkin “Love and memory remain, to hurt us into life” and many incidental pleasures, little vignettes of Scottish habits and attitudes. When greeted after a beating with, “‘Man, ye look an awfy mess,’” Fowler tells us, “This was what passed for affection in these parts.” It still is.

Greig is always good on what it is to be human. “Perhaps the course of one’s life is made by the particular manner in which we never quite resolve ourselves.”

Rose Nicolson is a magnificent, learned, wise book, imbued with sensitivity and grace, and in its elegiac sense of loss, Scottish to the core.

Pedant’s corner:- “One of the old woman” (women,) “Slainte var” (Usually spelled Slainte mhath.) “For a while I believed there was some sounds behind us” (were some sounds,) Averroes’ (Averroes’s,) “window of main house” (of the main house,) Lucretius’ (Lucretius’s,) “he’d auction his grannie were she were still alive” (that second ‘were’ is superfluous,) “before agreeing marry to young Bothwell” (either ‘before agreeing marriage to’ or, before agreeing to marry’,) “but none were her” (none was her.) “Now she truly looked me at me” (the first ‘me’ is superfluous,) “we all dreamed off” (of,) maw (used in the sense of mouth; a maw is a stomach,) our gang were back (was back,) a missing comma at the end of a piece of direct speech, a missing end quote mark at the end of another, “Kirk o Fields” (usually Kirk o Field,) uses the Scots word ‘baffies’ in its correct sense of ‘slippers’ in the text but the glossary has a baffie described as a golf club, Ulysses’ (Ulysses’s.) “The kirk had lost one of their own” (one of its own.) “The recent intake of Kirk ministers were poorly trained and credulous” (the … intake … was poorly trained,) “the Presbytery were resolved” (was resolved,) Tollbooth (Tolbooth,) “came through the St Andrews” (came through St Andrews.) “We crossed the Forth by boat” (the previous scene was set in St Andrews. Starting from there to go Perth – especially going via Falkland as they do – there is no need to cross the Forth. Indeed had they done it once, they would have had to do it again, in reverse,) a missing full stop.) In the glossary; supervisr (supervisor,) narow (narrow.)

Stained Glass with Scottish Royal Coat of Arms:-

Dining table:-

Thrones in throne room:-

King’s bedchamber:-

A small chamber:-

The Long Gallery. Another ornate ceiling and many portraits of Stuart monarchs:-

The separate Stuart room also contained many portraits:-

Including James VI*:-

A smaller room further contains portraits of the so-called Pretenders to the throne subsequent to the “Glorious Revolution.” These kings who weren’t, from left to right here, were Prince Henry Benedict Stuart, James ‘VIII and III’ and Bonnie Prince Charlie. The first and third were brothers. Their portraits flank their father’s:-

*James I of England, Wales and Ireland.

BCA, 2003, 603 p.

Valentin Raoul Rochefort is a duellist, even though it is illegal, and a spy for the Duc de Sully, who in turn is right hand man to Henri IV of France. In order to protect his patron he is suborned by Henri’s wife Marie de Medici into procuring the King’s assassination. He means to fail by hiring an incompetent to carry out the killing but by chance the assassination succeeds and Rochefort is forced to flee. In attempting to make his escape he encounters a M. Dariole who had previously humiliated him in a duel. As a result of a further defeat (and a sexual humiliation) Rochefort and Dariole end up travelling together. The sparring between Rochefort and Dariole is of the verbal as well as the fencing kind. On a beach in Normandy they rescue a shipwrecked man, Tanaka Saburo, the only survivor of an embassy from the Shogun of the Japans to King James I (of England) and VI of Scotland. Saburo immediately sees M Dariole is in fact a woman. She is Arcadie Fleurimonde Henriette de Montargis de la Roncière, runaway from a premature marriage and much more at home as a sword wielder.

In London the three come under the influence of Robert Fludd – a historical figure here a practitioner of the Nolan Formulae learned from Giordano Bruno who can therefore calculate the future and who wishes (in order to create conditions so that humankind might prevent the impact of a destructive comet in 500 years’ time) to replace King James with his son Henry, Prince of Wales, and asks Rochefort to devise a plan to kill the King. The plan having been deliberately sabotaged with the help of another of Bruno’s disciples and spymaster Robert Cecil many further adventures ensue (including a trip to the Japans) before events are set on a more familiar keel with Prince Henry’s fatal swim in the Thames. We also meet in these pages Armand Jean du Plessis, to whose career our heroes give a boost.

We are presented all this as a found manuscript of Rochefort’s memoirs, partly burned and reconstructed via computer image-enhancement. It is perhaps too convenient that other accounts found in the same box, an extract from the cipher journal of Robert Fludd, two excerpts from Saburo’s report to the Shogun, an account of Roncière’s rape when captive by Fludd, fragments of a play by poet Aemilia Lanier, Roncière’s reflections from old age, so precisely fill in the gaps in Rochefort’s, though the “translator’s note” at the beginning states they are included for that purpose.

For all its glorying in the details of everyday life in the early 17^th century (the black mud of Paris, the unwashed state of westerners, the fiddly business of clothing,) the minutiae of sword fighting – and the concomitant outpourings of blood and death – the toying with matters of history, the brushes with hermeticism, in the end this is a love story, peopled with eminently believable characters, replete with human passions, flaws, desires and misunderstandings.

Aside: I find it interesting that since 2000 Gentle has taken to setting her stories in the past (or alternative pasts Ash: A Secret History, Black Opera.) Is there something about the future or the present that she finds inimical to sweeping storytelling?

Pedant’s corner:- de Vernyes’ companion (de Vernyes’s,) laying (lying; also lay for lie, multiple instances,) sunk (sank; ditto,) swum (swam,) “I am not used to be manhandled” (being,) one instance of “amn’t I?” “No woman neither.” (The no is already a negation so “no woman either,”) “ought else” (aught, several instances,) Neopolitan (Neapolitan – which appeared later,) swum (swam,) one instance of Fontainebleu (Fontainebleau occurs elsewhere,) “cowardice on his own behalf” (on his part makes more sense,) Louis Capet (this is usually used to denote Louis XVI after his dethronement in the French Revolution – nearly 200 years after the events of this novel – but since all later French Kings were descended from the first Capetian, known as Hugh Capet, I suppose it may have been a common epithet,) I thought Bedlam might have been another possible anachronism but it seems the word did enter everyday speech in Jacobean times as a synonym for chaos, wernt (went,) Prince of Wales’ (Prince of Wales’s,) “All men do not travel in groups, with firearms” (Not all men travel in groups.)

A veritable account of ‘Fair Helen of Kirkconnel Lea’ scrieved by Harry Langton.
Quercus, 2014, 368 p. Borrowed from a threatened library.

After all these years, all those novels, you’d think there would not be much more to say on the subjects of love, sex and death. But they are the human driving forces; or fears. There isn’t really much else to write about. And Greig has a heart and a talent to match anyone’s.

In Fair Helen Greig adds himself to that long line of Scottish authors who have illuminated the byways of the country’s history, in this case the last gasps of the Border reiving tradition. James VI – referred to as Jamie Saxt in the text – sits in Holyrude awaiting the death of “the Auld Hag” (as our narrator Harry Langton calls Elizabeth of England) to fulfil his destiny and incidentally ensure the end of the border feuds. Langton, though flawed, is an engaging guide to the times; discursive, reflective, and prone to the occasional footnote. If the setting and vocabulary were not enough (an appended “Scots Guide” defines some of the non-English words used: my favourite of these, houghmagandie, is given as sexual shenanigans but that fails to recognise the connotations of exuberance) the attentive descriptions of landscape and evocations of other works of Scottish literature, “Timor mortis conturbat me, indeed,” “a mere mouse running before the coulter blade,” “‘How can they stay sae fresh and fair?’” would anchor Fair Helen firmly. (That some of these references post-date the novel’s times only makes them the more redolent.)

Early on we have a warning about the trustworthiness of text, “What is the point of gossip and story if not to exaggerate our lives to the scale we believe they should be rather than the small affairs we fear they truly are?” – and there is that “veritable” in the strapline – yet the tale purports to be the true story of the tragedy described in the border ballad ‘Fair Helen of Kirkconnel Lea’. Greig’s choice of narrator is subtle, being none of the three main actors in the events that led to balladry. Harry was cousin to Fair Helen (Irvine) and friend of Adam Fleming, her lover, though not so close to the man whom she is contracted to marry, Robert Bell. Langton’s presence at, and contribution to, the outcome of the affair is approached via his entanglement not only with the lovers but also with the coming man, Walter Scott of Branxholme and Buccleuch. Langton notes that, “Rarely is it fortunate to come to the attention of the high heid ones.” But Helen has words of advice when, “‘I am much changed,’ I said, ‘And the world has grown ugly.’ Her hand squeezed my wrist. Her grip was strong and urgent. ‘Think that and they have won.’”

Through Langton, Greig is also overly modest. “I contemplated my Thucydides. The wars of Greek city-states did not seem so distant. If they appeared more noble, perhaps, it was just they had better writers.” The meat of his quote from Montaigne, “‘The public weal requires that men should betray, and lie, and massacre,’” is alas followed too closely to this day.

Greig has been described as a post-Calvinist author. This is explicit here in passages such as, “The rediscovered voices of Antiquity have offered a vision of a greater, kinder, more humane and playful life (scarcely in Scotland, ma foi, not till the hoodie craws of the Reformed Faith back away from the carcass of this my only true home!)” The older Langton reflects, “There is no dancing in the inn courtyards now, religious fanatics denounce and rule, witches still confess under torture and our songs are all grim or piously false as ‘Fair Helen of Kirkconnel Lea’,” and, “Women have become douce-like, modest, eyes downcast as though feart to trip on their own feet, and men are penitential. The flesh is sinful and chastity rated far higher than charity,” adding cuttingly, “It is a wonder that bairns still get born at all.” The women and men Langton knew in the borders in the far-off days of his youth, “were … otherwise.” He tells his latter day patron, Drummond of Hawthornden, (in whose library he leaves a copy of Love’s Labours Won, a gift from a strolling player in London, another knowing authorial touch,) “‘Reform may have banished corruption,” (of the church.) “It would also banish wit and laughter, music and dance and kindliness.’” And thinks to himself, “And fornication.”

As to the country itself, “Here all about lay Scotland, dark and dreich and dear. Cloud-shadow scurrying over hill and burn, cold wind and dry branch, our hard humour and hidden hurts. Here affection came wrapped in insult as sweet fruit in burnt pie-crust. Tenderness was hidden under armoured jacks, with only keening pipes and fiddle and human voice to tell the heart’s ways.”

The novel is threaded with a sense of loss. This could perhaps arise only in that the story is narrated by an old man, “My soul is an old horse-trough that lies forgot in a field, its rotting boards mottled with fungus and moss,” remembering the past – were it not that this sort of deep nostalgia is a familiar strand in Scottish literature. And the Scottish fixation with death is marked by, “The skull and hourglass we Scots inscribe on our tombs to counter any pious suggestion of the life to come.”

The hyper-critical might carp that the story is merely (merely!) a recapitulation of Romeo and Juliet – the Fleming and Irvine families are after all in feud when they first get together – but star-crossed lovers are a literary staple and here there are complications; an end to the feud is negotiated but Helen’s engagement to Bell is announced at the celebration which marks the reconciliation. Fair Helen is a delight and, despite any lack of Calvinism, still Scottish to the bone. As in That Summer and Electric Brae Greig makes you care about his main characters and portrays the others as rounded.

Pedant’s corner:- That mention of high heid ones looks odd as it is usually rendered as high heid yins. We have maw as mouth rather than stomach, hung at times (when hanged is used elsewhere,) Lucretius’ (Lucretius’s.) “As we forded the stream I look off to my left,” (looked,) Longshanks’ (Longshanks’s,) snuck in (sneaked? tucked?), their force were (was,) had began (had begun; or merely, began,) snuck (definitely sneaked.) I also thought I caught a continuity error when Langton hands Mrs Smeaton’s packages to Jed Horsburgh, who is in custody for protecting Adam Fleming.

I watched the first episode of The Stuarts on BBC 2 tonight.

It seemed, like on its first showing on BBC 2 Scotland earlier this year, an odd decision to start with James VI (or James I if you prefer.) There were no less than eight Stuart monarchs before him. In the year of the Scottish Independence Referendum that could be interpreted as a slight, another piece of English ignorance/dismissal of Scottish History.

That the first episode dwelt on James’s desire to unite the two kingdoms as Great Britain might also seem like a dark Better Together plot as the Guardian noted today.

Yet (some, though not all, of) James’s ancestors were spoken of in the programme so the ignorance/dismissal angle can on those grounds be discounted. And the differences between the two countries that then existed (of religion principally,) and in some respects still do, were not glossed over but I was left wondering who on Earth thought broadcasting this was a good idea now. It can only lead to accusations of bias

I had another such disjointed TV experience with the BBC recently. Janina Ramirez in her otherwise excellent Chivalry and Betrayal: The Hundred Years War – on BBC 4 last week, this (and next) but also a programme that has been screened before – kept on emphasising how the events she was describing played a large part in how the country “we” live in now came to be as it is. (Note also the “us” on Dr Ramirez’s web page about the programme.)

Yet that country was/is England. Ramirez seemed totally unaware that her programme was to be broadcast not on an England only channel but one which is UK-wide. Indeed that the country all the BBC’s principal audience lives in is not England, but the UK. [Except for powers devolved to the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh and Northern Irish Assemblies legislation at Westminster is for the whole of the UK. No English elected body oversees the equivalent powers to those devolved elsewhere (arguably there ought to be one;) it is the UK Parliament that performs that function.]

Two parts of the UK share none of the history Dr Ramirez was outlining. Wales (having been incorporated earlier) was involved directly in the Hundred Years War but neither Scotland nor Ireland were. Yet she spoke as if that circumstance didn’t exist.

This sort of thing does contribute to a feeling among many Scots (and I suspect Welsh and Northern Irish viewers too) that the BBC is a broadcaster with a mind for England only and too often forgets the three other constituent parts of the UK.

Today is the 500^th anniversary of the most disastrous encounter between the forces of Scotland and England in history. (Bigger even than the 9-3 reverse at Wembley only 50 years ago. But that was a mere football match.)

On the 9^th Sep 1513 14,000 men died on a battlefield in Northumbria. 10,000 of those were Scots – including most of the Scottish nobility and even the King, James IV, himself, the last British king to die in battle. The Battle of Flodden Field was at one and the same time the biggest clash of arms between the two countries plus it was the last mediæval and first modern battle on British soil. Never again was the longbow to be a major weapon, never before had artillery been employed.

My memories of reading about this were that it was an unnecessary tragedy as James had only invaded Northumbria as a sop to the Auld Alliance between Scotland and France. England’s king, Henry VIII had gone to war with France and Louis XII had appealed to the Scots king. One of the peculiarities of this situation is that James’s wife was Henry’s sister, Margaret. She had apparently asked him merely to “break a lance” to honour his obligations. I doubt that she thought he would not return.

Reading the BBC History magazine a couple of weeks ago it turns out that Henry VIII’s father, Henry VII, aware of his tenuous right to the English throne had foregone the English claim to Scotland and signed the Treaty of Perpetual Peace. Henry VIII had no such inhibitions – or else was eager to bolster his own position – and had recently reasserted England’s overlordship over Scotland. James, then, in effect, had no option but to stand up to Henry.

His initial efforts were successful, taking three castles in short order. He then set up a strong fortified position on Flodden Hill and awaited the English forces. The English commander, Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, apparently accepted battle on James’s chosen ground. However, being out of favour with Henry, he was desperate for a victory and instead of attacking at Flodden Hill, he made a flanking manœuvre, interposing his army between the Scots and the border. James was furious at this unchivalric behaviour and had to make a quick redeployment to Branxton Hill instead. Perhaps it was this anger that led to his lack of judgement in the battle. Wikipedia has the details of this dispute over the proposed battleground slightly differently.

Flodden Memorial from path.

The plaque reads, “Flodden 1513. To the Brave of Both Nations.”

The Scots artillery was heavier but more cumbersome and so less effective but at the beginning of the battle the Scots left completely overran the English right (if only!) and retired from the battlefield expecting the rest of the army to achieve overall victory. In the centre, however, things did not go so well. From their position on Branxton Hill the Scots could not see the boggy ground in the declivity between the lines.

Flodden Memorial. View to Branxton Hill. From English start line.

Flodden Memorial from Scottish line. Memorial is just left of centre here.

The Scottish start line at Flodden.

The Scots infantry, armed with long pikes, whose efficiency had been proved in European battles, soon lost the essential formation necessary for success as they slipped and slid on the uncertain footing. The pikes also could not be anchored securely due to the underground conditions so were useless defensively. The English infantry, armed with much shorter billhooks, waded in to bloody effect. Dead bodies and blood soon made the conditions even worse.

To their credit, as one of the information boards on the Battlefield Trail says, the Scots did not cut and run, but bravely fought on.

The memorial, built in 1910, is inscribed to the brave of both nations. I have been told the only other battle memorial to acknowledge both armies is at Quebec but cannot confirm this.

There is an information centre – in a red telephone booth – in Branxton village. It claims to be the smallest information centre in the world.

James had been making his court and kingdom one of the most cultured in Europe, and Scots into a major European language. That process came to an abrupt end on his death.

The result of the battle at Flodden, the subsequent decline of Scotland’s influence, is probably the main reason why this post is being written in English rather than Scots.

The irony is that, despite the result of the battle, it was not Henry VIII’s descendants that would unify the crowns of Scotland and England and be monarchs of the UK but rather James’s, through his marriage to Margaret, their son James V and granddaughter Mary Queen of Scots, down to her son James VI and I.

The disaster is said to have inspired the traditional Scottish lament for the fallen, Floo’ers o’ the Forest,” sung here as The Flowers o’ the Forest by Isla St Clair.