Come with me to Scotland! (Part One)

In advance of Burns Day (25th January, I have been posting some articles on Robert Burns. This article is not directly about Burns. It does, however, continue the Scottish theme.

—–

Sir Alexander Gray (born 1882) describes Scotland as a land of rugged Highlands and wide-open spaces.

“Here in the Uplands The soil is ungrateful; The fields, red with sorrel, Are stony and bare. A few trees, wind-twisted – Or are they but bushes? – Stand stubbornly guarding A home here and there.”

The Scottish is, in Gray’s words, land which is, for the most part, “Despising the plough.”

Gray is not looking down on the Scottish countryside with contempt. He is not disowning his native-land. He writes:

“The marsh and the moorland are not to be banished”.

Affirming his love for Scotland, Gray writes,

“This is my country, The land that begat me. These windy spaces Are surely my own. And those who here toil In the sweat of their faces are flesh of my flesh And bone of my bone.”

Scotland, and its people, may well be, for the most part, somewhat unsophisticated. There is, however, to be ashamed of Scotland and its people.

Scotland’s capital city, Edinburgh, is described thus by Alexander Smith (1830-1867):

“Living in Edinburgh there abides, above all things, a sense of its beauty, hill, crag, castle, rock, blue stretch of sea, the picturesque ridge of the Old Town, the squares and terraces of the New – these things seen once are not forgotten.”

This, says Smith, “makes residence in Edinburgh more impressive than residence in any other British city.”

Concerning Edinburgh’s main street, Smith boasts:

“What a poem is that Princes Street! … The New is there looking into the Old. Two times are brought face to face, and are yet separated by a thousand years … There is nothing in Europe to match that I think.”

Although these words were written a long time ago, they still provide us with an apt description of Edinburgh. Edinburgh’s first impression on the visitor is that it is a beautiful city. The visitor is still impressed by Edinburgh’s combination of the Old and the New.

Glasgow is not so often described as a beautiful city. It is more frequently spoken of as an industrial city.

This is not to deny that Glasgow, like Edinburgh, has its fair share of beauty-spots. Glasgow is richly blesses with a considerable number of very beautiful public parks. Glasgow can, however, be rightly described as primarily an industrial city.

Tobias Smollett (1721-1771) described Glasgow as “one of the most flourishing (towns) in Greatt Britain … a perfect bee-hive … of industry.”

This is not to say that Glasgow is simply a huge, impersona, industrial machine. Glasgow is ‘home’ to over half a million people.

By their warm friendliness, the people of Glasgow have frequently made the city “a beautiful city” for its visitors.

The response of visitors to the people of Glasgow is somewhat mixed. Some are put off by their lack of sophistication, Ithers are attracted by their openness.

“Some critics complain of a low level of general manners, and others find the rough and open ways of the Glasgow folk enchanting. (A Canadian visitor said, ‘These people are quite incapable of hypocrisy’” (George Blake, Scotland’s Splendour, p. 16).

Glasgow is an industrial city, inhabited by people, characterized by the openness of their personalities rather than their sophistication.

From these sketches of Scotland and its major cities, we may make some general observations:

(a) Lack of sophistication is nothing to be ashamed of.

(b) The old and the new can be combined attractively.

(c) The attractiveness of a place is not unrelated to the attractiveness of its people.

—–

In my next posts on Scotland, we will go on a brief journey through the history of the Church in Scotland. In the final post of the series, we will return to the three general observations which have emerged out of this introductory post, emphasizing the present relevance of the Church’s history.