On A Pub Stay

Most of my regular readers know that, almost two and a half years ago, I left the United States to travel in Europe and the UK. That wish to travel was made possible, in large part, to my good friend, Danielle, who helped me get a part time remote job that I can do anywhere there’s WiFi or a decent cell phone signal. Also, I found the TrustedHousesitters website, a place that connected me with people who needed someone to stay with their animals whilst the family were away on vacation or whatever. Thus, I’ve lived out of a couple of backpacks for this entire time. And, in the course of my travels and experiences in meeting people and their pets and seeing a good deal of the UK and France, some special memories have been made. This story is an example of that.

I was headed to the Scottish hinterlands, a village outside of Perth called Dunning. Supposedly, some saint killed a dragon there once upon a time. Anyhoo, I planned to come in an afternoon early and get a chance to meet the owners and the pets before the family left on their annual vacation. The owners were happy to invite me to supper that evening so that we could all get acquainted. Two lovely old pointers awaited me, by the way, but this story isn’t about them. I made plans to stay in a local pub on that Wednesday evening and booked a room there.

Arriving by train into Perth, I took a taxi the 12 or so miles out to Dunning. The brogue on the taxi driver was so strong that I barely understood him as he chatted away. I must have nodded at the right places in his monologue because he was grinning the entire way, He dropped me and my bags off in front of the pub and made his way back to Perth. I went up to the door of pub and saw a sign in the corner of the window that said CLOSED. But next to the sign was a little hand lettered note that read, “If we’re closed, go around the corner to the tee room (Note: tee as in golf, not the drink) and ask there.” So, I did so. The manager of the tee room made a call and said something unintelligible to me and put the phone down. “Go back and wait out front,” he advised, “and someone will be along shortly.”

Sure enough, about ten minutes later, an older lady wearing an apron in front of her jeans came jogging up the street. As she approached, she said, loudly, “You’re not supposed to be here until tomorrow!” She came up on me, and I said, almost in defense, “But it’s Wednesday.” She laughed. “Is it? I have my days mixed. No matter. Welcome!” She held out a large ring of keys and rapidly gave me the instructions. “Front door. Bathroom down the hall is this one. Your bedroom is upstairs, second on the right. If you go out, lock the door behind you. The bar will open sometime around 7pm. Enjoy your stay!” With that she jogged back to what ever task she’d left. I turned towards the pub and surveyed it with pride as if I were the publican and not only an overnight guest.

The room was small but fine, ditto the bed. The bath was one of those old ones with the claw-footed tub and rope-pull commode, green tiled and tired but classic. Dinner was to be at 8, but I left early, before the bar opened, to walk around the village a bit before meeting the family and pets. The dinner was wonderful, and we got all the details of the dogs’ routine settled. It was shortly before 11pm when I made my way back to the pub. The yellow glow from the windows greeted me as I went up the path. And then, I heard the music.

Coming into the low-beamed ceilinged room, the fire took the chill off the evening, even though it was May. Behind the bar was a woman I later learned was the daughter of the woman who’d entrusted me with the keys earlier. She nodded greeting to me as she dried a pint glass with a bar towel. A young-ish couple chatted with their heads together at one table. In a corner booth, a man sat with a small dog of indeterminate breed on his lap. He had a half-finished pint of some ale in front of him. He was petting the dog and had tears streaming down his face. At another, larger table, sat four musicians. One of them, a woman, played the squeezebox. A man had several flute-type recorders in front of him, and he would change instruments as the foursome played different tunes. The other two musicians, one older and obviously the dad of the younger, were strumming small guitars. And the singing–the singing was wonderful, as you’d expect in a rural Scottish pub.

Well, there was no way I was going to retire to my bed with this scene before me. I went to the bar and ordered a pint of Scottish cider (Forgive me, I’m merely an amateur drinker). I took my pint and sat at the table nearest the quartet. They ran through several wonderful old Scottish tunes seamlessly, a group who’d obviously played together often and knew who was to do what and when. And the harmonies, ah! Having grown up in a church tradition of acapella music, and having learned to listen for harmonies in Simon and Garfunkel, the Beatles, and Elton John, I though I knew a thing or two about singing. But this wasn’t Pepsi; this was the Real Thing.

After a few songs, the older guitar player turned to me and asked me what brought me to Dunning and to the pub. I told him the basic outlines of what was going on. “Oh, aye?” he said with a grin, and with no prompting, he added “D’ya sing at all?”

Well, I CAN sing, I said. We then began trying to find a song that we would all know. Squeezebox woman said that, having been a vicar, I must know Amazing Grace. Sure. I know it. And the group began to play. At the appropriate cue, I began to sing. All the verses. Several choruses. And repeated the first verse. Maybe it was the cider. Maybe it was the magic of the cold night in a Scottish pub surrounded by a scene that you can’t get anywhere else. For whatever reason, it worked. When I finished, the seven people in the room clapped, even Dave (they told me his name later) in the corner dried his tears a moment and showed his appreciation.

That’s when the barkeep brought over a shot of whiskey and a small pitcher of water. “We pay the talent with drinks of our finest,” she said. Now, I’ve spoken to large audiences, led singing in chapel at college as well, received some accolades from various groups across my various careers. But I don’t think I’ve been prouder of any acknowledgement as I was with that.

Along about midnight, the barkeep told us that she was going to start closing down. The couple headed for the door. The man with the dog finished his pint in one large gulp, stood up with the beloved dog in his arms like a baby, and headed out as well. “Dave lost his wife a few months ago,” the younger guitarist explained. “He comes here to cheer himself up.” The group stayed for a few more songs, played for each other of course, but it seemed that they were playing for me. Finally, they left, and I locked the door to my pub behind them and headed up to a good night’s rest.

And when people from both the US and Europe ask me why I’m doing what I’m doing, I tell them this story, and they begin to understand.

And now you know the rest of the story…

On an Astute Doctor

Joseph Bell comes to us as another of those people we know about but don’t readily know who he is specifically. Bell was a Scottish physician who was most active in the late 1800s in and around Edinburgh. His reputation and ability was such that, when Queen Victoria visited Scotland (which was often since she loved it so), Bell acted as her personal doctor there. For most of his career, however, Bell was a lecturer and mentor at the University of Edinburgh’s school of medicine.

Born in 1837, Bell grew up in a family of doctors at a time when the medical profession was undergoing radical changes. The old, traditional, and often-unscientific and unhygienic medical methods were being discarded in favor of scientific theories and cleaner, safer, practices. And the University of Edinburgh was on the forefront of this new, better, and more scientific approach to the practice of medicine. For example, the school pioneered such advances as the use of chloroform in surgery (Dr. James Simpson) as well as the adoption of antiseptics in medicine (Dr. Joseph Lister–the creator of Listerine).

Bell attended Edinburgh’s medical school and quickly earned a reputation as a thorough, keen observer of a patient’s symptoms. He was one of the first to consider a patient’s lifestyle and personal history as being a key to unlocking the secrets of a diagnosis, looking into the person’s background to help determine what the cause of a particular ailment might be. He receives credit for employing medicine in the solution of crimes, something we call forensic pathology today. A corpse, he said, could tell an keen investigator as much if not more than a living person can. In fact, the Edinburgh Police Force consulted with Bell on several important cases over the years.

One of Bell’s favorite things to do was to attempt to “read” a person simply by observing them. He would take students to the streets of the Scottish capital and point out passersby. For example, Bell might point out one person and tell his students that the man who had walked past them had recently come from China, or that the woman crossing the street towards them was the wife of a sailor. The students would then chase down the person and ask them if Bell’s instant diagnosis were correct. And the students found that Bell was almost perfect in those little exercises. The key, he said, was to be aware of the little things. The man who Bell had said had come fresh from China had a new tattoo on his hand that one could only get in Shanghai, for example. Bell even had the ability to tell a person’s occupation simply by looking at a person’s hands.

Such a teacher who was an astute observer of people and the little tells that could help a doctor in a diagnosis was certain to leave an impression on his students. One such student who was lucky to win a position as an assistant to Bell at the university went on to immortalize some of Bell’s characteristics in a series of stories in popular magazines of the time. In fact, a fictional character this student created, based in part on Bell, is one of literature’s most notable.

Of course, the student who admired and was inspired by Dr. Joseph Bell was Arthur Conan Doyle, and his character is the immortal detective, Sherlock Holmes.

On a Loyal Companion

John Gray moved from the countryside of Scotland into the city of Edinburgh in 1850. With him came his wife, Jessica (Jess) and his son, John Junior. While the easy job to get would have been to get work in a factory or workhouse, John opted for less money but, to him, a better job by joining the Edinburgh City Police. He was made a nightwatchman. Now, a nightwatchman’s job, as you probably know, is to walk a route that would take the person around to various businesses and streets where the nightwatchman would check to see if doors were locked, properties secured, and the streets as safe as they could be. If there were any trouble, he would sound the alarm and summon policemen to come investigate or deal with any disturbances.

Sure, it was an entry-level job, but it was one that John enjoyed. Like most who come to Edinburgh, he loved the city. It was the place that birth a cultural revolution, with new ideas and architecture and art being produced in what is now known as the Scottish Enlightenment. New buildings and infrastructure were changing the city from a medieval one known as Auld Reekie because of the close, foul-smelling town into a modern, cleaner, more open and safer city. And John felt that his job was to help, even in a small way, to make the city better. He took pride in the work. Besides, he liked walking the empty streets at night; it gave him the chance to truly appreciate the beauty of both the old town and the newer parts that were undergoing change. A tall man, he strode around the neighborhood purposefully but with a slight and friendly smile on his face, keeping things in order and keeping it safe. He took pride in that.

John’s assignment put him in the neighborhood where he lived, mostly, the area that surrounds the Greyfriars Church and not far at all from the New College, the University of Edinburgh campus. Part of his watch area was Candlemakers Row and what once was the edge of the old town, but now, the area was being rebuild and built up into a bustling section of the town south of the Royal Mile. The George IV Bridge road had leveled the old, sloping and narrow closes that ran off the Royal Mile and replaced them with a new, wide, open, and efficient street. So, John worked this job for almost a decade.

Now, many nightwatchmen had canine companions with them on their rounds. The dogs acted as both protection of a sort and also somewhat of an alarm in case something was amiss as the watchmen made their rounds. John’s “co-worker” wasn’t the usual working dog, however. John chose the family pet as his assistant, a Scottish Skye Terrier named Bobby. Bobby would trot beside John as they went around during the night trying door knobs and peering down side streets. The pair made an almost comical sight as they walked–the tall, angular nightwatchman and the little terrier–and the locals who saw them would smile and nod as the passed the pair. Clearly, the two were connected.

Well, sometime in early 1858, John contracted tuberculosis. Scotland, as you know, is a wet place. Tuberculosis was a common issue among the population. In any case, John died in February of that year. He was buried in the Greyfriars Churchyard, not too far inside the gates of the old cemetery. Soon, people in the neighborhood began to notice that John’s dog, Bobby, began to show up at the cemetery. Bobby would lie on John’s grave as if to say that he was still keeping his job, still watching over his master in some fashion. Now, that’s not too unusual. Dogs often grieve over an owner’s departure. But Bobby was different. It’s not that he stayed at John’s grave. It’s how long he stayed there. Locals began to feed him and try to care for him. One local barkeeper would take him in at night, but he would let him out in the mornings to go back to his place at John’s grave.

In fact, Bobby stayed at John’s grave until he died.

For the next 14 years.

On a Witch Trial

We’ve spoken about the history of witches in the western world before, but this story caught my attention because of its ties to Scotland. Many of us are aware of the beginning of Macbeth, the Shakespeare play, where three witches begin the story with the infamous incantation, “Double, double, toil and trouble; fire burn and caldron bubble…” Scotland has had a long association with witches, and Shakespeare knew that the new King James was Scottish; he knew his audience. But one real-life Scottish witch is peculiar for her supposed ability to read people’s minds and discover secrets that no one knew.

As late as 1735, Britain passed something called the Witchcraft Act. It made it a crime for anyone to either practice witchcraft or to claim the powers of a witch. Now, while that seems odd or harsh, the law was actually fairly forward-thinking. You see, rather than punish witches with death or allow for vigilante groups to go on witch hunts, the Witchcraft Act imposed a penalty of imprisonment. And, rather than be based on the idea that witches are real, the “new” law worked off the supposition that witches were charlatans, people who preyed on the weak-minded or the desperate. Think of it as more of a consumer protection law rather than a desire to punish based on any kind of religious belief. And, it was under this new act that a woman named Helen Duncan was arrested.

Helen lived in Edinburgh, a town that has a long history for being somewhat spooky, especially the Old Town part with its narrow closes and wynds. It seems that Helen had been conducting sessions in her home where she would contact the spirits of the dead. During a period of war in Britain, many people who lost loved ones in the conflict came to Helen, and she would speak to the dead and communicate the messages she received back to the grieving relatives. Some people today would say that she was a medium or someone performing what we might call parlor tricks. On one hand, this seems to be somewhat comforting to the relatives of the deceased and possibly harmless.

But then, Helen reached out to some people who had relatives onboard a certain British warship. While Edinburgh isn’t on the water per se, it uses the nearby port of Leith and has a long history of providing sailors for Britain and for merchant ships. And it seems that Helen told several people that their relatives had died because of the sinking of a British warship named the HMS Barham. Now, no one in the government had said that the ship had been sunk. As you can imagine, these relatives were horrified. They bombarded the government with inquiries regarding the safety of their loved ones onboard. A minor scandal arose. British officials were caught with no good option. If they reassured the families of the sailors that all was well, but then it turned out that the ship had indeed been sunk, then they would look either incompetent or dishonest. If they admitted that the ship went down, then they might be revealing war news that might embarrass the government and then questions would arise about why the government was keeping the deaths a secret.

It was a lose-lose. What do to?

The government decided to blame the messenger. Citing the new Witchcraft Act, the government ordered the arrest of Helen Duncan. The newspapers of the day printed details of Helen’s trial, and the public proclaimed her a hero for telling the relatives the truth when the government wouldn’t. Eventually, however, Helen was convicted under the provisions of the law and sentenced to jail. It was determined that she had heard a war-time rumor of the sinking of the ship and had parlayed that into a way to make money from the relatives of the sailors. And, also eventually, the public outrage about the scandal and seeming coverup died down.

But Helen Duncan would be the last person convicted in Britain of being a witch…in 1944.

On a Stone Obsession

You can call them stone collectors, petrographers, or, if they are people who seek out their formation, geologists, but many people refer to them simply as rock hounds. They love rocks and collecting them, studying them, classifying them, and sometimes simply looking at the rocks in their possession.

Then, there are those in a rare category of rock hound who seek the perfect stone, that one special mineral, the holy grail of their particular desire. Robert Gray was one of this latter category. He had his eyes on one special stone, and he spared no expense in tracking it down and bringing it home. Now, Gray was trained as a stonemason, so his love of rocks came to him as a vocation as well as an avocation. But there was one stone that was special to Robert Gray.

As a mature man, Gray had served in the army during World War 2 and had made good money in his masonry business. In addition, he wielded influence before and after the war as a politician, getting himself elected to the Glasgow, Scotland, City Council. He also served as a board member of the Glasgow Corporation, the organization that ran one of the largest and most efficient public transportation systems in the UK.

It was because of these commitments that Gray couldn’t leave Glasgow and pursue his desire to obtain the stone. So, he did what anyone in his position would do; he hired someone else. He paid four Glasgow University students to go get the stone for him. He provided all expenses and the planning for them to go to London, obtain the stone, and bring it back home to him.

Now, if you’re thinking that it sounds like Robert Gray paid some college kids to go to London and steal the stone he desired, well, frankly, you’d be correct.

In December of 1950, that’s exactly what happened. The foursome went to London and stole the stone. Except, to Robert Gray, the group of thieves weren’t really stealing the stone for him. Rather, they were returning it to its rightful place. You see, Gray didn’t want the stone for himself. He felt that it belonged to all of Scotland. When the students returned with their prize, they brought the stone to Robert Gray’s masonry yard. There, according to some, Gray made a copy of the stone before arranging for it to be returned to London and the care of King George VI.

The stone in question had been the one upon which, for centuries, kings and queens of Scotland and England had sat when they were crowned. And, about a week from now, when King Charles III of the United Kingdom is crowned, he may or may not be sitting on top of the original Stone of Destiny.

That’s because some say Robert Gray hid the original one somewhere in its rightful home of Scotland.

On a Marvelous Hoax

Dr. Robert Wilson’s word was impeachable.

My interest in the good doctor goes back almost thirty years now even though he passed away in the late 1960s. Several years ago, I made the acquaintance of a wonderful older woman of Scottish descent named Evina Montgomery. Evina was born before World War 2 and has lived a full and thoroughly adventurous life, finally settling in Brentwood, Essex, near London. When I knew Evina, she was doing volunteer work in Romania when I lived there in the mid-1990s. Today, she’s still active in her local community even though she’s in her 90s.

One night in Romania, Evina told me a wonderful story over several glasses of Romanian plum moonshine known as tzuica. You see, she has spent the summers of her youth in the north, in her family’s home near Inverness. For Evina in the late 1930’s, Scotland was another world, a wonderful world, and she made it sound much like filmmaker John Boorman’s memories that he chronicled in Hope and Glory–trips on the lochs, walks in the woods, adventures around every corner.

Well, Evina told me the story about how Dr. Robert Wilson was chosen to take part in one of the greatest hoaxes in history. Seems that one night in a local pub, several Scots were bemoaning the fact that the economy was still in the doldrums. The effects of the Great Depression that hit the United States had yet to end in the Scottish hinterlands. Farmers found that prices for their goods were still low. Most people lived from month to month. Many farms had been abandoned because young people were leaving rural Scotland to find work in the Scottish cities like Glasgow and Edinburgh and even further south in England.

Some of Evina’s relations thus sat in the pub, drank their ciders and ales, and discussed what course they could take that would reverse their economic fortunes. Relying on the government was right out of the question, they realized early on. What they needed was something that would bring money to the area. But what would draw that money to them?

Some of their group remarked that some London newspapers had sent some reporters their way to investigate rumors about a resident of the Inverness area. Now, according to Evina, everyone in the pub knew the rumors weren’t true, but, they reasoned, what would it hurt to pretend that the rumors were, in fact, real?

That’s when some of the group hit upon the idea of using Dr. Wilson to publicize their stories. People would be less likely to believe them–a bunch of local (possibly drunk) Scots–about the veracity of the rumors, but they would be much more likely to believe a respected surgeon like Dr. Wilson, a man who often came to the area to hunt and fish. And, since Wilson had received his medical education in Edinburgh, he was also familiar with the area somewhat. So, the group decided to approach Wilson and his hunting and fishing guide to see if they would support their story about the “truth” regarding inquiries concerning the local resident.

Wilson thought the idea was novel. He was also a good sport. He agreed to back the locals’ stories. The idea was that Wilson would take the information fed to him by the Scots to the London papers. His reputation would give their stories gravitas. And, according to Evina, that’s exactly what happened. Wilson took his “evidence” to London, and it was published in the Daily Mail and made headlines world-wide.

Soon, people began coming to that part of Scotland to see for themselves what Wilson had reported. Evina told me this story with the same twinkle in her eye that I imagine her relatives had when the tourists began pouring into the area, bringing their money with them. And I’ve been one of those tourists, as well, albeit over 80 years when Wilson’s tale first made the London papers.

Yes, even though I know now that it’s a marvelous hoax, I, too, have gone to Loch Ness to look for the monster.