Choir Singing

Although the great delight of the Museum of Scotland is observing how the sunlight does different things to the building throughout the changing seasons (several of which can occur in one day in this city) sometimes, the museum treasures are not so well illuminated.  Some never see the daylight, which means that the humble mobile-phone camera cannot capture my chosen artefact.  So for today, the picture is from a shop-display in Glasgow (and elsewhere).  

Bob, Stitched-Up.

“I’ll sing for my supper,”

he said, peeling the potatoes.

“I’ll sew,” she replied,

winding the bob in.

He took the basso;

she tacked an upper line

on while the sewing-machine

chuckled and whirred a major third.

Closer harmony stirred.

Strands were spliced:

as the singer sowed another seed,

the potatoes stayed unsliced.

But at least they had wild oats for breakfast.

Somebody

One of the things l love to do is eavesdrop on people as they wander round galleries and museums.  Modern art is such that the responses of Joe Public are as valid an interpretation as the experts’.  Things ancient can be misconstrued also; here is a story of a small boy who didn’t quite ‘get’ the point of blessing the people with a piece of Jesus.

Today, the feast of Corpus Christi celebrates the institution of the Eucharist. But relatively few churches, Anglican or Roman Catholic, perform Benediction, let alone strew the streets with rose petals as they parade the Host in glorious procession.  More’s the pity, I say: it’s one of the greatest pieces of Street Theatre… and hugely entertaining to see the bemused faces and listen to the passers-by.

I guess we’re lucky that, nowadays, in this country, people are able to carry out their devotion in public, however weird it may seem to others.

Corpus Christi

They jostled into a hole.

The heather-priest screwed the stem onto his travelling chalice.

“Too late: no time.”  He grabbed the reserved sacrament.

“What’s that clock for?” the boy asked, perplexed.

“It’s a monstrance,” he said, as he placed the Host into the casement, and lifted up the Body of Christ.

“A monster!”

“Benedicamus Domino,” he pronounced, as protestant footsteps angrily approached.

Sporting Pride

So, the Olympic Torch has arrived, and today the Edinburgh Marathon

took place, thanks to the tram-works, mainly outwith the city. It

should have been called the East Lothian Marathon.  Yesterday I cycled
the route along the coast, stopping to take photos, scribble notes,
and eat a fish supper by the seashore; then ended the day with a pint
on Portobello Promenade as the pink sun sank through purple skies over
Fife.  Surely a better way to celebrate being in Scotland than running
for 26 miles!
           I care little for sport, so feel disinclined to write much about it.
But a quick glance around the Sporting Hall of Fame in the Museum of
Scotland demonstrates how Nationalism and sport are hard-wired into
the collective psyche.  Wouldn’t it be better to define these fine
people by their sporting prowess or achievements, rather than by their
Scottishness?  But there are rules; conditions of entry to such a
hallowed place: you have to be Scottish – whatever that means.

           Having recently read Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, his story
about not quite walking the Appalachian Trail with an over-weight
reformed alcoholic called Stephen Katz, I thought it might be
interesting to ponder what Bryson might ask Captain Robert Barclay
Allerdice, whose claim to fame was pretty unimpressive on the surface.
He walked.  Well, I suppose, given Scotland’s unhealthy reputation, a
good walk wouldn’t be such a bad thing. 
           (and that’s from someone who just waxed lyrical about fish & chips 
and beer, albeit soaked in sunshine, if not salt & sauce….)

A Walk in the Woods?

“And what did you do?” inquired Bryson, post-mortal in the Hall of Fame.

“I walked, in the main.”

“Hey – me too! Did you do the Appalachian Trail?”

“No, the West Highland Way,” came Allerdice’s nippy reply.

“Any Bears?” asked Bill, hopeful.

“We’ve had no bears for 600 years. My dog was my only companion.”

“Ah. I had Katz,” said Bill, realising his mistake.

A Perigee of Creativity

It’s strange that when things are thought to be greatest they are described at being at their height; their apogee, perhaps.  Yet the moon, when at its perigee, that is, when it is lowest in the sky, looks greater, fuller, brighter, and generally lovelier to us on earth; who feel its pull on our tides, our blood, and the creative seeds of our unconscious.

Two years ago, I blogged a year-long sequence of poems about the moon.  Without wishing to revisit that theme, tonight the moon is what can be described as ‘super-full’ – as if there can be degrees of fullness.  Of course, we know there can; at least when it comes to the battle between the supposedly opposite poles of optimism and pessimism, which give us differing-sized half-glasses.  Six of one, half a baker’s dozen of the other. 

So it is with the hour-glass, which, when spent, can only have one of its chambers filled, and then, not even fully.  Sir Walter Scott used this half-hour-glass, apparently, to give himself a word-count-target for every turn of the time-piece.  Perhaps he should have attempted a simple sestute.  Here, then, is my 62-word attempt at a potted history of yet another great artist who died in poverty.

An Unlucky Charm

         This year boasts an unlikely, or unlucky, abundance of Fridays the Thirteenth.  I’m not superstitious, but looking around the Museum of Scotland, it seems that plenty of folk have been in the past.  So I have taken for the next of my 26 Treasures a tiny piece that seems to have ‘luck’ woven into its name.

            ‘Luckenbooths’ were originally lockable market-booths selling cheap trinkets along Edinburgh’s Royal Mile: so no luck there.  But this little brooch provided protection from supernatural forces (such as the ‘evil eye’ that I alluded to on the last Friday 13^th) and was intended to help charm a nursing mother’s milk.

            Legend has it that Queen Mary gave a luckenbooth charm to Lord Darnley... .

            Tomorrow, someone I used to know quite well is getting married.  I can’t deny a pang of envy, but wish them luck all the same.  A. E. Housman said, ‘give crowns and pounds and guineas, but not your heart away.’  If only I’d heeded that advice those years ago, as I sat drinking gin on a warm sofa with a certain soprano.

The Talisman

“Here: take it my dear;

pop it inside your lapel.

Let the delicate heart press

against your white breast,

to charm or sustain you;

no evil can harm you,

from this day forth

for the rest of your life.”

So she took it.

And he took her for a wife.

I locked up my booth, heavy-hearted.

Out of luck, love-locked-out, I departed.

Good Friday

How do Christians cope with Good Friday?  They proclaim that Christ was killed on the cross and pretend for a day or two that this was the end.  And then, hey presto, up he pops again, conquering death – allegedly.  To take this myth as literal is absurd and yet, the power of the Easter Narrative has given us some of the greatest works of Art.  If I have any belief in eternal life, it is that the truths behind the Gospel stories remain as vital as they have always been.

The Fetternear Banner dates from the 16^th C. and has remained in remarkably good fettle for some 500 years.  Most of the dyes, using vegetable dyestuffs, have retained their vibrant colours; and the double-sided stitching (a costly process) using silk threads has only been eroded where iron dyes were used for creating black thread.  There are many familiar symbols – the scallop shell, the dice, the reed, the cockerel – but the most striking element is in the characters. And it is these people with whom we continue to identify, to this day. 

Christ’s flagellated body is gruesome; Judas’s purse around his neck becomes a noose as he dolefully contemplates his fate; and the scornful look of the Spitting Jew as he puckers up to hurl his insult at Christ is pitiful, on many levels.  I cannot hope to compete with John Donne’s Holy Sonnet XI, but have attempted, in the spirit of the metaphysical, a pun on die/dying/dye.  Even if we don’t believe in what some think the church calls God, we still have Art, for all eternity.

Casting Die

Christians shouted loud Hosannas.

Railing against a cruel world,

I raised the Fetternear Banner.

Stitched up, whipped against a pillar,

flayed and frayed I felt his wounds.

Cockerels crew against the clamour

of spitting Jews; I gobbed my phlegm

at the Kirk by the Heart of Midlothian.

Pincers ripped out nails secured by hammer;

a Dove descended as the dye was cast.

Mothering

On one of my many maunderings around the Museum of Scotland, I saw a young pregnant woman who was wearing, stretched across her gravid abdomen, a blue tee-shirt.  On it was printed a rotund cartoon character swaddled with bandages and plasters, beneath which I read, Mr BUMP! Oh, how amusing, I thought, and went off in search for another of my 26 Treasures to write 62 words about, to coincide with my birthday (which was last Wednesday) and Mothering Sunday. 

And here it is: an architectural stone from a church in Kirknewton, depicting a mother giving birth, firmly supported by another person. Presumably, the father. But if the last blog-entry is anything to go by, you can never be too sure.

      Voussoir

The Medieval Church took childbirth

   more seriously than we do now.

Call it ‘gravitas’ – engraving a gargoyle

   on a wedge; carving out an entrance

on a jutting, stone protuberance

   the contorted, grotesque, strangled

limbs of a woman in the throes of her travail.

   I marvelled at their chiselled pain;

the mortal immortality of giving up a life…

   while I sculpted a sestude.