Ian Hamilton QC

By Mike MacKenzie

I went with an open mind, sun on my back and heather in my ears to find and view the much criticised award winning parliament after the construction dust and the clamour had settled. A country boy, I lost myself in fine Edinburgh streets, dripping with history, but no cute little wrought iron signs to point the way. There were closes where Scott and Stevenson had walked. There was a door whose lock was picked by Brodie. There was a sentimental symbol to a wee terrier. I walked as a builder does with an eye for a well built chimney, a neat flashing, a nice bit of joinery. I saw a lot that pleased me. I went as a man who lives in a small two hundred year old cottage to see the biggest and newest and proudest house in the land.

I had defended this parliament building on the grounds that £400m wasn’t really all that much for a building as ambitious as this. I felt that somehow our national identity and confidence were tied up in this building. I wanted to be impressed. I had avoided the photos and the film because I wanted to see it in the flesh without first having formed any opinion at all.

When I did find it I thought there must be a mistake. Was this it? I walked around it looking for the entrance. I was going in to take the tour but in the end I had to ask a policeman where the door was. I paused before going in. What was that bamboo stuck on the walls? What was it for?

The tour guide had very strong pink tinged spectacles. She pierced me with a purple beam when I had the effrontery to point out the defects in the concrete and the joinery. She was at pains to point out the architectural symbolism; the concrete vaulted ceiling, the reworked saltire motif, the crowstepped windows! It seemed self conscious; a desperate attempt to embellish something quite drab. It was a confusing collection of interlinking spaces and futile striving for iconography. It was  chaotic, a cacophony competing for the attention of my senses. The debating chamber was closed because the roof had collapsed. I like some modern architecture. It fills me with hope. I like some old architecture. It reassures me. I don’t like this. It reminds me of a heap of straw thrown on a desk.

I like the famous foyer desk. I like the desk for £8k not £88k. I like Gillian Forbe’s stone wall with bedrock piercing it and stone from every part of Scotland. I touched the piece of Easdale slate that I had helped choose. I touched the only part of the building that touched me. I like the idea of this stone wall and I like the execution. I don’t like poetry etched on it. Stone can speak for itself.

I walked around the building. I tried to get some distance from it and frame an elevation. I hoped I could find something that worked; something to admire or be impressed with. Rarely have I seen a building so poorly sited. Perhaps the elevations do import something meaningful but you cannot see them. You cannot get a sense of the building as a whole. The model is not so bad but it presents the god-like viewpoint of someone at 10,000 feet. Is this ego? Is this a monument to a monumental ego?

They tell me the building grows on you. They tell me the occupants love it. If so it is a building for those who wander those ill defined corridors of power. It is not a building for those who will never get to know it so well. It is not a building for the Scottish people.

by Ian Hamilton

Scotland’s judges are the best in the world.The reason is they’re called lords (or more recently ladies.) Throughout the United Kingdom success is measured in the title you bear. This is one of the oldest of human vanities. By being a Lord you stand out from your fellows. Furthermore it makes the woman you married a lady. Not many jobs work that miracle. You may be the worlds’ best brain surgeon, but you won’t become a Lord. It comes inevitably with success in Scots Law. The best brains aim for a title and membership of the New Club and are content. It fulfils their ambition. What a waste!

Compare the advocate with his English counterpart. What distinction is there in becoming Mr Justice Smith, and Mrs Smith?  Who’s Mrs Smith? The highest peaks of the English legal profession carry the title ‘Lord’ but very few reach that height. Outside Scots law if you want a title you have to buy one from the Labour Party. The only other way is go into politics, fail and presto, my Lord, here’s your ermine. The House of Lords is la sale des pas perdues of British politics, but in Edinburgh a law lord is really somebody. We lift our hat to a lord.

This is peculiar. Commoners want to be lords but real lords pretend to be commoners. Those with inherited titles hide them. Michael Ancrum was born posh. Once a mere lord he is now a marquis, yet his real name is Kerr. He travels bravely in second class, but with a first class ticket in his wallet. Lord Ancrum is too good for the electorate: Mr Kerr is not good enough for the Athenaeum.

But back from the Athenaeum to the Edinburgh Lords. They are a waste and so are their wives. It doesn’t take much intelligence to be a judge. I know. I’ve been a Sheriff. Even charging a jury is easy. This is to give them the framework within which to consider the evidence. Contrary to what you might think this is not directed at the jury. It doesn’t matter a damn if they go into a dwam. They usually do. The charge is directed at the appeal court. The judge has to say certain things so he uses sample charges that have been passed as kosher on appeal. Beneath him sits the clerk of court. The clerk has a check list. He ticks off the things that God up there must say. It’s as easy as that. What a waste! All that intelligence is reduced to a clerk’s check-list, and that’s called success.

That’s how the best brains in the capital city of our wee country are consumed. Their wives crawl along the same rut. They are truly Stepford wives, a glory to be seen. They have become ‘ladies’ and have lost all ambition. It is a generation since Lord Avonside’s wife, under her own name, made a major contribution to Scottish unionist politics. Why are judges’ wives silent? Why does not one sit at a desk in Holyrood?

When you look at Holyrood you realise what I mean by waste. As Holyrood draws in more power so will it draw in more people of ability. Meanwhile the Labour back benchers are a disgrace to our country. Unknown, unknowable, ill-educated, they have been selected only for their ability to press the right voting button and never rebel. Can you remember any of them? Can you quote any of them? No! But you’ve seen them read their halting speeches, with a big, glazed, blinking eye on the end of their forefinger, stumbling over every polysyllabic word, carefully hyphenated for them by their speech-writer. These are our back-bench lawgivers. That is why I rage at our men and women of ability who see success in a title, a pair of green wellies, and a cottage in the country.

These are honourable aspirations, and I do not denigrate the many who achieve them. I name others, not because they are not good enough, but because they are too good. There is one who could have been Scotland’s representative to the United Nations, who could have adjudicated between countries, and saved much blood-shed. Yon one could have worked beside Bob Geldoff on a famine relief committee and fed millions. Another could have sat at Holyrood guiding, with his/her wisdom and experience, the law-making enthusiasm of inexperienced legislators. Instead they have settled for a tip of the hat from their fellows, and a title. 

What has gone wrong with the Scottish middle class? The last time I looked at Edinburgh Academy’s web site they advertised as their alumni only James Clerk Maxwell and a journalist. Clerk Maxwell is one of the three great geniuses the west has produced, and would have been a genius anywhere. The school founded by Sir Walter Scott, that for 200 years has had the pick of Edinburgh’s middle class pupils, has nothing to show but a slough of judges. What a waste!

The waste need not happen. The Tory Party is finished. The Labour Party is an empty shell of professional politicians supported by fraudulent donations from big business. We must have new parties of the left and right for our new Scotland. In the incestuous stew of the Old Parliament House there must surely be a new generation, not hypnotised by the prospect of a title, that can raise its eyes from its law books and waken to a wider responsibility. Is there not even now a Stepford Lady who will put aside the chatter of coffee-mornings to take up the responsibilities of government? Is this the town that lit the enlightenment, and wrote the constitution of a new world?

By Ian Hamilton
I have a dear friend who has went places. She says I done things, and indeed she’s right: she has. Just as the footballer done good, so has she. It’s all true. She’s went and done good. She has! It’s her! It’s me! It’s youse.

I assert that there is no such thing as ‘proper’ speech. For example there is nothing wrong with the toff’s pronoun, yet it is the commonest breach of the grammarians’ rule. We all use it, as has often been pointed out to my wife and I. A grammarian would sniff at that last sentence and say that a preposition (to) should be followed by ME. Don’t ask him why. If you do he’ll tell you. Yet you may well ask why one usage should be preferred to another. 

I will tell you why. The difference is of social importance to the dull, and it affects the timid. It strikes some to silence. They fear the laws of grammar. Rather than speak in breach of what’s proper they grunt. What a loss! What a futility! The spoken word is a wild beast, and will stay wild for ever, despite all attempts to tame it. The written word evolves from the spoken word. The grammarians try to put barriers in the way of evolution. How dare they!

Think of the child going to school for the first time and left to the tutored savagery of an ignorant teacher.

‘And what did you see coming to school?’ asks the teacher.

I seen two boys,’ says the child….and before she can get out another word she is interrupted.

‘No, Jean’, says the teacher severely, ‘You saw two boys,’ and from then on the child knows she’s dealing not with her own people, but with a stranger. Her mother and father know that when you seen two boys you say you seen two boys. Now the only grown-up she has ever spoken to outside her family tells her not to say that she has seen them. In her heart she knows she seen two boys, and she mutinies and closes down all systems. A gulf is dug between the demotic and the ‘proper’, and the digging hurts.

For it is hurtful to a child to be told that the way her people speak is wrong. It happened to the Gaels. It still happens in our schools, although I’m told differently. Listen to children when they’re among their own kind and note their fluency. Listen and realise that there is no worse preparation for life than being told to communicate in a tongue none of their family speaks. It matters not if it is received English, or Edinburgh Academy English. It places a hideous restraint on the fluent demotic tongue. Tutored speech is for dullards. Who from the much tutored ‘Eccies’ can speak as fluently as a football commentator?

Take Alan Hansen. He is fluent beyond all politicians. Yet Alan seen, and Alan done and Alan has went. Do you think he cares? Do you think Shakespeare cared? ‘For this relief much thanks’ I quoted in the company of my linguistic betters and was immediately corrected by a school teacher. He had learned the ‘rules’ of grammar, but didn’t recognise Shakespeare. Pompous ass!

I plead for I seen and I done. I hold two fingers up to youse who think better. I plead to let kids find their own fluency. To hell and torment with those who try to bridle the brave, gay, galloping, runaway beauty of the glorious demotic tongue.
 

You can sponsor a word with the Concise Scots Dictionary for £20, and give it to a friend for Christmas. An example is FITBA. But don’t try to get FITBA.  I’ve got it.

The first mention of the game anywhere is in a Scottish Act of Parliament of 1424. I’ve been keeping the certificate of sponsorship to give to Wembly should their stadium ever be finished. It’s as well to remind them that we invented the game, even if they once won the world cup. In  1966 I think, or so they often say.

I’ve got the jambos as well. That went to a much loved grandson, whose only aberration is to support Hearts instead of St Mirren.

For myself I’ve sponsored NYAFF. I’ve been called ‘yon wee nyaff Hamilton’ all my life, so I’ve taken the word for my own.

Truly word-sponsorship solves many Christmas present problems. Readers of Maggie Scott’s wonderful column in every Saturday’s Herald will know how. More information from Scottish Language Dictionaries 27 George Square Edinburgh. mail@scotsdictionaries.org.uk

Issue Two - November 2006

Adam and Eve and all that.

by Professor Sparelock Jones, Professor of Polytheism at Divinity Hall.

In the Garden of Eden there were not enough women to form a Rape Crisis Unit. If there had been they would have formed one. Even if Eve enjoyed the old Adam they would maintain she was being raped. If she didn’t know what was happening how could she consent to it? It is as simple as that. Adam raped Eve. Don’t think this is a daft proposition. The Appeal Court, (Lord McLuskey dissenting) went along with one very like it.

The proposition has its genesis in the Rape Crisis Unit. Their proposition is simple. Whatever happens to a woman is a man’s fault. From this they have deduced two infallible facts. The first is that men are responsible for prostitution: the second is that in Scotland rape happens ten times a week, and men get away with it.

PROSTITUTION
Let’s start with prostitution. So far from men being responsible it is caused by women’s greed. Women know that men have a strong sex urge so they take financial advantage of it. They put up a stall in the market place, sit behind it and sell. By some twist of feminine logic they blame men because they buy. My thesis is easily proved. Hit Captain 66 on the web. You will see that there’s a whore in every hamlet, and that every little dear has her price.
It’s men who pay that price. Of course, just like any other profession prostitution has its abuses. Everyone, including myself is against pimps and bullies and women selling themselves for drugs. Apart from these abuses there are swathes of women for sale. Who can blame them? Their ugly unsaleable sisters perhaps, but not I.

RAPE CRISIS. WHAT CRISIS?
How often have you heard that there is a rape crisis?  There is no such thing. Young women go out at night in a state of near nakedness. Then they pour drink down their throats and go home with men they don’t know. That they are not raped is a tribute to the basic decency of every man who meets them. Man’s strong sex urge is balanced by an equally strong instinct to protect the vulnerable`. It is young men who have taken over the traditional feminine roll of saying ‘no’. Women now offer maximum temptation and maximum opportunity and yet there is no increase in rape.

Shout that out loud. NO INCREASE IN RAPE.  Do you want the figures? In 1985/86 there were 44 convictions for rape. In 2004/5 there were 41. These are Executive figures. Twenty years ago there was no DNA evidence. Now there is. Twenty years ago the law hadn’t been twisted in favour of the prosecution. Now it has. Never has rape been more easily detected and more easily proved yet there is less of it. Where is the crisis?

The crisis is in the harm done to women by the Rape Crisis Unit. It constantly tries to force the Lord Advocate to bring unprovable cases. The woman who cries ‘RAPE’ is not named, while the accused is given full publicity. A charge of rape affects a man’s womenfolk. He knows he’s innocent. They don’t. He may lose his wife, and his job. His children may lose their father. Then he will be found innocent as the majority are. In 1985/86 out of the 88 charged 47 were acquitted. Thus the very people the harpies seek to protect are terribly harmed. Why do the harpies do this to other women? It is difficult to think that they are not sex-obsessed. They are the bogey-women of Scottish society.
 
Women and sex are funny things. I am the only person in Divinity Hall to mention them.  ‘Sex,’ I say to the young ministers, ‘is one of the few things that is cheaper to buy by the nip than the bottle.’  But I mustn’t say anymore. I’ve got my job to think of.

£££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££
Shortly after writing this Professor Sparelock Jones was found in bed with one of his senior students. He has lost his job. She has gone to be Minister of a Cathedral. We cannot name her for legal reasons. A rape charge is pending. Her claim with the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board has already been filed.
£££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££

When the Professor’s article came in I had grave doubts about publishing it. He seemed to be writing from a sense of grievance. Then I began to wonder how the next generation would be conceived. The harpies have so fenced women round that they seem unable to find mates.

Mating is not only one of nature’s functions. It is fun.

Yet the initial stages of mating seem now to be classed as SEXUAL HARRASSMENT. In any place where young men and young women meet there used to be a sexual frisson . Miss A from accounts would give Mr B from sales a look that would cause him suddenly to be excessively pleased to see her. Nowadays if he showed his pleasure he would be run in for sexual harassment.

The look young women give is the strongest weapon in the mating game. I haven’t had it myself in the last few years on account of being 81, but I well remember it. It is carnality rampant. George MacDonald Fraser describes it with magnificent accuracy as slantendicular. It is given with bright eyes half hidden by lowered eyelids, and when seen from over a retreating shoulder it means, ‘Come and get me. I’m ready.’ The trouble is if you misread the signs you might get your name on the Sex Offenders Register. With my generation the rebuff was a stab on the instep with a stiletto heel, or the public humiliation of a slapped face. We risked it.

But do young men risk it today? For that matter do young women still give carnal glances?  Maybe human nature has changed. Maybe beauty cannot use her lustrous eyes, nor young men pine for anything beyond tomorrow’s football results. Maybe young women suppress their honest carnality and end up as frustrated harpies in the Rape Crisis Unit.

Whatever! The mating game has changed its rules.

Never, as the Professor points out, has there been more temptation and more accessibility, yet never has there been so much loneliness. Advertising for a mate is very new. It is less than twenty years old. Yet the mating-page is always full. It is not caused by an urban population. It is not caused by a decline in church-going. Does anyone out there know what has caused it. Why do we need partner-finding agencies? Are we going back to arranged marriages, arranged by the newspapers, or by a dating agency? What has happened to honest lust? I ask that in great perplexity because I always loved lust. Long live lust, I shout, but who is left to hear me?

Sam Sneckit decided to go on a Highland Experience so he pressed a button on his computer. He chose The MacGregor Experience with a few extras. At the Airport he stood in the queue marked with the MacGregor tartan. After several hours he turned to the fat woman, and said, ‘It’s a long wait.’ And she said, ‘It’s all part of the holiday’.

At last they reached Scotland and Sam asked the guide, how do we know when we’re in the Highlands?

The guide replied automatically, ‘When in purple hue, distant hills we view, we know we’re on the banks of Loch Lomond.’
Sam looked out the bus window and saw that the hills were purple and that they were on the Banks of Loch Lomond.

‘I paid extra for the Rob Roy Experience,’  Sam pointed out, and was immediately transported to a wild heather mountainside. Bagpipes played: there was a thatched cottage and a smell of peat reek. A red-headed figure ran from the cottage and up the hill. A file of redcoats fired their muskets and missed. Sam smelled gunsmoke. He went back into the bus well satisfied.

They stopped at a hotel for lunch. ‘Are you the twelve-thirty early, or the twelve fifteen late?’ asked the hall porter.
Sam ordered stag-burger and chips. ‘It’s aff,’ said the waitress.

Their next stop was Culloden. ‘These are the graves of the Clans,’ said the guide, and they looked at the graves of the Clans.

‘Are there any Highland Chiefs left? asked the fat woman.

‘Aye,’ explained the guide, ‘but they’re called lairds now.’ The fat woman looked disappointed.

‘Why was he called the Young Pretender?’ another asked.

The guide scratched his head. ‘Because he was aye pretending he was someone else,’ he said.

A few days later they reached Glasgow. Everyone had paid for The Glasgow Experience. They got out the bus and crowded into an enclosure. Soon a number of young men appeared, kicked one of their number to death, shouted, ‘Here’s the polis,’ and ran away except for the dead one.

They ate the pizzas they had ordered five minutes earlier, and forty-five minutes later an ambulance and the police arrived. Then they got back into the bus and drove to Edinburgh.
           
In Edinburgh they were taken to the Castle and into the crown jewel room.

‘Yon’s the Stone of Destiny,’ said the guide.

‘Is it the real one? Sam asked.

‘Naw’ said the guide. ‘The real one’s got lost,’ and they all trooped out.

‘That’s the Scottish National War Memorial’ pointed the guide.

‘Can we go in, someone asked? ‘My grandfather was killed in the war.?

‘Naw,’ said the guide. ‘We haven’t time’.

Then they went back to their hotel.

Sam knew that it was his last night and that he had paid extra for a girl. He rang reception.

Shortly a bonnie pink-cheeked Scots lassie knocked at his door and came in.

As she threw her fur coat over a chair and undressed Sam noticed she was wearing no nether garment, and  remarked on it.

‘It is contrary to Edinburgh’s perceived tourist status to wear such things,’ said the girl primly.

When Sam had finished she asked, ‘Did you enjoy that?’

‘Yes, thank you,’ said Sam tendering a wad of money.

The girl was indignant. ‘Do you take me for a Glasgow hoor?’ she hissed. ‘I’m proud to work in the tourist industry of my country’s capital city’. She slammed the door as she went out.

Sam lay back and went to sleep, content with his Highland Experience. He knew he had really got to know the country.

Reviewed by Professor Sparelock Jones, (former) Emeritus Professor of Polytheism at Divinity Hall.

VOICES FROM THEIR AIN COUNTRIE

The poems of Marion Angus and Violet Jacob. Edited by Katherine Gordon
 
£10.95 including postage from Association for Scottish Literary Studies, (ASLS) 9 University Gardens, Glasgow, G12 8QH
402pp paperback.

I cannot praise this volume too highly. Why anyone who pretends to love poetry, or any other voice of our country, does not immediately send off £10.95 to ASLS is beyond comprehension. Cheques or postal orders are acceptable. Buy now.
But let me start a little earlier.

Fifty years ago it was fashionable to maintain that Scotland had ceased to exist. Even Scott, who invented much of our nation, was an avowed Tory Unionist, and said we had only survived the better to be eaten by England. Despite such nonsense a still, not so silent, voice continued to sing quiet songs, and I don’t mean the illiterate rubbish collected by  Hamish Henderson. Glance at any anthology of Scottish poetry and you will see whom I mean. Jane Elliot (1727-1805), Lady Anne Lindsay (1750-1825), Lady Nairne (1766-1845), and now in this collection Marion Angus (1865-1946) and Violet Jacob (1863-1946). Not to forget Helen B Cruickshanks, who is, I think, still out of print.

You will note that these are all educated women. Of the two I revue the first was a daughter of the Manse, and the second a toff married to a soldier. God knows what songs ordinary disenfranchised women sang. Wonderful songs like this poetry? Songs which were never written down, and are lost to us? One thing is plain. Hugh MacDairmid did not invent Scottish Lallans literature. He planted in a soil well tilled by these ladies who had gone before him. The mystery of why vernacular poetry was kept alive by so many women writing in the tradition of Burns and Fergusson is something that should be investigated.

BUT OH WHAT LOVELY POETRY. Some of it is well known. You will find ALAS! POOR QUEEN  here. A lament for a woman who was never hard enough to be a queen, unlike the savage Elizabeth Tudor, whose murder of gentle Mary still shrieks for revenge. But to the poem. I give you a little of Marion’s poetry, missing out a few lines and some verses which you must get for yourself.

She was skilled in music and the dance
And the old arts of love
At the court of the poisoned rose
And the perfumed glove……
And she loved little dogs
And parrots
And red-legged partridges…….
And a pigeon with a blue ruff
She had from Monsieur d’Elboeuf.

And may my soul rot in Hell for truncating Marion Angus’s wonderful poetry. Pray for me but read her true lines, or you too will be for ever damned to dullness.

Another famous poem, and one greatly to my taste, is TAM I’ THE KIRK  by Violet Jacob. Remember it? You will when I give you the first line.

O Jean, my Jean, when the bell ca’s the congregation

Read the third verse twice. This poem is a glorious celebration of the victory of carnality over Calvinism. Carnality will always triumph, so long as there is loveliness and lust to dream of it. Aphrodite haunts these lines. Yet they suggest a permanency that poor Aphrodite has never known.

There is so much more. The other world that lurks in the shadows of the ballad singers sits in the shade of these two also. There is personal loss, too poignant to read except with tears, as in Ms Jacob’s To A.H.J. It is her elegy to her son killed in France. Perhaps because she wrote in Scots, but not exclusively so, she is not numbered among the Great War poets.  There are bitter tears to be shed on so many of these pages. And for an old bitch gone in the teeth, for a botched civilisation. Although with these lines I wander to another poet.

Yet over all speaks the sheer joy of living. It speaks in a tongue that is still with us. Chris Grieve did not reinvent our language. This volume shows it never died. There is scarcely a word that you will need to look up in the glossary. Even sitting silent on my shelf this book still sings. For those who like staring into the bodies of corpses, the ENGLIT BRIGADE, there are copious notes. At the end, thank God. They do not interrupt the text.

I am going to finish this review with one of the least consequential verses. Yet it could have been written by the young Fergusson, not that he ever grew old. I wish I had written these lines. Any wordsmith would. Now try to finish the poem, and see what a hash you make of it.

When spring comes loupin’ doon the braes
And nakit trees are getting’ claes,
The sun—ill-gettit devil—seeks
Tae shame the patches in my breeks.

This book is joy, fun, and profundity. You will read it with a sad smile of recognition for beauty long past, and beauty yet to come. It is stoutly bound, even in paperback. The jacket is printed with a landscape with bee-hives by who else than Joan Eardley. A great Angus painter has put her arms round two great Angus poets.