The Drunken Ape
It’s quite a few years ago now, since I positioned a half leg of lamb over my fire on the shore of Loch Etive and sat tending my slow roast while snacking contentedly on the mussels and the mackerel I’d collected on the way.
It had been an easy day, my kayak going in the water near Taynuilt and paddled north into the loch towing a couple of beaten-up looking flies. The one and only knock I got was a good one which put me off my stroke, as the line was tied to the paddle shaft... and it was a good fish which died valiantly and certainly wasn’t wasted on me, roasted on oak with a knob of butter, salt, pepper and wild mountain thyme. So, as you’ll understand, I was in no hurry for the lamb to cook as I set my camp to rights, browsed along the shoreline and the birch and oak woods, collected firewood and selected a few sprigs of thyme, visited my cache of mussels flushing in the burn from time to time, munched a little bit of this, a little bit of that, chucked a couple more logs on the fire and generally admired the stunning scenery. This is an ancient landscape, you can feel it, smell it in the air and the visual evidence is everywhere you look, from the ancient hut circles, burial mounds and standing stones to the high fortified settlements, rig and furrow field systems, and the puzzling remains of a small circular wall I found in the woods next to the burn.
It was into the end of April and the nights were drawing out. As daylight began to fade and the short “gloamin” of April passed, the pull of the fire-glow drew me in and it wasn’t long after that the whisky bottle made its appearance as I turned or adjusted the height of my half leg of lamb to the condition of the fire between the crooning of ballads in Lallan Scots and a few Border battle songs to keep the Bogles at bay.
As you do, I pondered the relationship between man, fire, shelter, roasting meat, an ancient landscape, and the ease with which a fine malt whisky slips neatly into that equation. There was the slightly niggling question of the purpose of the rough circular wall I’d found earlier until the amber warmth and beneficial effects of The Macallan informed me that it had been a bothan for the making of illicit whisky.
A short time later, sometime after midnight, I was eating slices cut from the roasted half leg of lamb inside warmed pitta-bread and having a wee giggle to myself at the thought that this drunk could find a kebab anywhere.
Leaping forward in time and space, last year, just a few miles up the road from me and on the edge of a certain woodland I frequent, my eye was drawn to an almost imperceptible hump in the ground which, on closer inspection, revealed limestone chips intermingled with charcoal, a later inspection identifying signs of burning/melting of the limestone similar to that seen on vitrified Bronze/Iron Age forts, such as East and West Lomond which, turning to face south west, I could see behind me. Now this is on the edge of my woodland, which terminates with a dry stone dyke, but on the woodland side of the dyke from the “mound” is what seems to be part of a curvilinear foundation wall about 3 metres long - giving a theoretical diameter of some 4 metres- and consisting of erratic glacial/water worn boulders, possibly whinstone. The dry stone dyke, I should say, is of angular, quarried limestone (from 1700-1800, my best shot at an educated guess - agricultural improvements - industrial history - style and configuration of dry stone walling in the immediate area, being roughly 300 metre X 45 metre enclosures.)
Once again, it was when sitting in my woodland at an ash-wood fire, my hammock hung at the ready, sipping a fine Highland malt and singing the Bogles away - I‘m a Fifer- that the similarity struck me between the “structure” not 30 yards from me and that circular wall I’d found on Loch Etive-side those years ago, and the notion that it was probably something to do with whisky!
During the summer past (he jokes), I was stravaiging around Annandale, on the margins of the legendary Debatable Land, the legacy, supposedly, of the war-mongering whims of successive English and Scottish monarchies, -"Some say that they won, and some say that we won, and some say that nane won at'a, man."-, although I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that this was always a War Zone; before The Stewarts; before The Bruces and the Normans arrived; before the Saxon incursions; before the Roman Empire and before the best part of Romulus and Remus was left on the mattress: The propensity for violence of the natives is evident in the staggering number of defended and fortified Bronze Age settlements, and suggests a conflict of cultures before iron became the dominant weaponry, and the stone mace-heads suggest possibly pre-dating that of the bronze, to the arrival of cheeky wee New-wave Celts intruding into the ancient Homeland.
Anyway, it appears to me that the problem was established long before it drew the attention of Gavin Dunbar, the Archbishop of Glasgow in 1525...
I curse their heads and all the hairs of their heads; I curse their faces, their eyes, their mouths, their noses, their tongues, their teeth, their necks, their shoulders, their breasts, their hearts, their stomachs, their backs, their wombs, their arms, their legs, their hands, their feet, and every part of their bodies. I curse them from the top of their heads to the soles of their feet. I curse them front and behind, inside and out.
I curse them walking and riding; I curse them standing and sitting; I curse them eating and I curse them drinking; I curse them waking and sleeping, rising and lying; I curse them at home; I curse them away from home; I curse them inside their houses and outside their houses; I curse their wives, their children, and their servants who help with their evil deeds. I curse their crops, their cattle, their wool, their sheep, their horses, their swine, their geese, their hens and all their livestock. I curse their halls, their rooms, their kitchens, their stalls, their barns, their cowsheds, their barnyards, their cabbage patches, their ploughs and their harrows. I curse all the goods and every building necessary for their sustenance and well-being.
http://web.mac.com/jamesdwithrow/iWeb/Site/Blog/DC5B0726-B97F-4F75-B786-B21D4A1D56BA.html
The rendition in Standard English loses something in translation, but the above site provides a link in which the full raw venom is retained in guid Scots.
Considering that Dunbar’s favourite pastime seems to have been the burning of heretic Reformers, and is recorded as having bitch-slapped Cardinal Beaton in St Andrews, the man seems to have had a serious Anger Management Problem which, as we know, is very often associated with strong drink!
According to Ritchie Hall in The Dirty South, the Borderers simply exported their skills to North America, although their Ridings of the past made the Wild West look like a Sunday School picnic.
I digress, Ah cannie help it -Ah’m a Fifer- But it was that digression that drew me from the determined limits of researching the C16th, the “Long Good Night” of the Johnstones, Maxwells, Irvings and Bells, et al, of Annandale, to the “almost imperceptible hump in the ground” near Lockerbie, scattered with fragmented angular chips of stone and charcoal, the presence of which resulted in an obviously different hue to that of the the surrounding ground. It brought to mind the “almost imperceptible hump in the ground” I’d discovered in my beloved woodland, and on doing a simple web-search at home, discovered the Annandale site to be recorded by the Royal Commission for Ancient and Historic Monuments Scotland as a pre-historic “Burnt Mound”, of which I’d heard but knew little of, the purpose of which seems to be a contentious issue amongst those most pressed for answers. And then I found this...
http://www.diggingthedirt.com/2011/06/09/past-orders-part-2-the-great-beer-experiment/ ... and thought, I knew it had something to do with drink!
But sitting here today and considering the subject in the comfort of my centrally heated living room and using the hi-tech super highway to convey my thoughts, my mind wanders off again to the far away green oasis of a long disused oil-field camp-dump in the Libyan desert, watching golden jackals staggering around, apparently drunk to the point of leglessness, after the careful and consumption of over-ripe figs and melons. Which makes me wonder how long we've carried our affection for alcoholic beverages and just how deeply seated it really is in Human Cultures. We may well have brought it with us out of Africa.
Cheers,
Pango.
It’s quite a few years ago now, since I positioned a half leg of lamb over my fire on the shore of Loch Etive and sat tending my slow roast while snacking contentedly on the mussels and the mackerel I’d collected on the way.
It had been an easy day, my kayak going in the water near Taynuilt and paddled north into the loch towing a couple of beaten-up looking flies. The one and only knock I got was a good one which put me off my stroke, as the line was tied to the paddle shaft... and it was a good fish which died valiantly and certainly wasn’t wasted on me, roasted on oak with a knob of butter, salt, pepper and wild mountain thyme. So, as you’ll understand, I was in no hurry for the lamb to cook as I set my camp to rights, browsed along the shoreline and the birch and oak woods, collected firewood and selected a few sprigs of thyme, visited my cache of mussels flushing in the burn from time to time, munched a little bit of this, a little bit of that, chucked a couple more logs on the fire and generally admired the stunning scenery. This is an ancient landscape, you can feel it, smell it in the air and the visual evidence is everywhere you look, from the ancient hut circles, burial mounds and standing stones to the high fortified settlements, rig and furrow field systems, and the puzzling remains of a small circular wall I found in the woods next to the burn.
It was into the end of April and the nights were drawing out. As daylight began to fade and the short “gloamin” of April passed, the pull of the fire-glow drew me in and it wasn’t long after that the whisky bottle made its appearance as I turned or adjusted the height of my half leg of lamb to the condition of the fire between the crooning of ballads in Lallan Scots and a few Border battle songs to keep the Bogles at bay.
As you do, I pondered the relationship between man, fire, shelter, roasting meat, an ancient landscape, and the ease with which a fine malt whisky slips neatly into that equation. There was the slightly niggling question of the purpose of the rough circular wall I’d found earlier until the amber warmth and beneficial effects of The Macallan informed me that it had been a bothan for the making of illicit whisky.
A short time later, sometime after midnight, I was eating slices cut from the roasted half leg of lamb inside warmed pitta-bread and having a wee giggle to myself at the thought that this drunk could find a kebab anywhere.
Leaping forward in time and space, last year, just a few miles up the road from me and on the edge of a certain woodland I frequent, my eye was drawn to an almost imperceptible hump in the ground which, on closer inspection, revealed limestone chips intermingled with charcoal, a later inspection identifying signs of burning/melting of the limestone similar to that seen on vitrified Bronze/Iron Age forts, such as East and West Lomond which, turning to face south west, I could see behind me. Now this is on the edge of my woodland, which terminates with a dry stone dyke, but on the woodland side of the dyke from the “mound” is what seems to be part of a curvilinear foundation wall about 3 metres long - giving a theoretical diameter of some 4 metres- and consisting of erratic glacial/water worn boulders, possibly whinstone. The dry stone dyke, I should say, is of angular, quarried limestone (from 1700-1800, my best shot at an educated guess - agricultural improvements - industrial history - style and configuration of dry stone walling in the immediate area, being roughly 300 metre X 45 metre enclosures.)
Once again, it was when sitting in my woodland at an ash-wood fire, my hammock hung at the ready, sipping a fine Highland malt and singing the Bogles away - I‘m a Fifer- that the similarity struck me between the “structure” not 30 yards from me and that circular wall I’d found on Loch Etive-side those years ago, and the notion that it was probably something to do with whisky!
During the summer past (he jokes), I was stravaiging around Annandale, on the margins of the legendary Debatable Land, the legacy, supposedly, of the war-mongering whims of successive English and Scottish monarchies, -"Some say that they won, and some say that we won, and some say that nane won at'a, man."-, although I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that this was always a War Zone; before The Stewarts; before The Bruces and the Normans arrived; before the Saxon incursions; before the Roman Empire and before the best part of Romulus and Remus was left on the mattress: The propensity for violence of the natives is evident in the staggering number of defended and fortified Bronze Age settlements, and suggests a conflict of cultures before iron became the dominant weaponry, and the stone mace-heads suggest possibly pre-dating that of the bronze, to the arrival of cheeky wee New-wave Celts intruding into the ancient Homeland.
Anyway, it appears to me that the problem was established long before it drew the attention of Gavin Dunbar, the Archbishop of Glasgow in 1525...
I curse their heads and all the hairs of their heads; I curse their faces, their eyes, their mouths, their noses, their tongues, their teeth, their necks, their shoulders, their breasts, their hearts, their stomachs, their backs, their wombs, their arms, their legs, their hands, their feet, and every part of their bodies. I curse them from the top of their heads to the soles of their feet. I curse them front and behind, inside and out.
I curse them walking and riding; I curse them standing and sitting; I curse them eating and I curse them drinking; I curse them waking and sleeping, rising and lying; I curse them at home; I curse them away from home; I curse them inside their houses and outside their houses; I curse their wives, their children, and their servants who help with their evil deeds. I curse their crops, their cattle, their wool, their sheep, their horses, their swine, their geese, their hens and all their livestock. I curse their halls, their rooms, their kitchens, their stalls, their barns, their cowsheds, their barnyards, their cabbage patches, their ploughs and their harrows. I curse all the goods and every building necessary for their sustenance and well-being.
http://web.mac.com/jamesdwithrow/iWeb/Site/Blog/DC5B0726-B97F-4F75-B786-B21D4A1D56BA.html
The rendition in Standard English loses something in translation, but the above site provides a link in which the full raw venom is retained in guid Scots.
Considering that Dunbar’s favourite pastime seems to have been the burning of heretic Reformers, and is recorded as having bitch-slapped Cardinal Beaton in St Andrews, the man seems to have had a serious Anger Management Problem which, as we know, is very often associated with strong drink!
According to Ritchie Hall in The Dirty South, the Borderers simply exported their skills to North America, although their Ridings of the past made the Wild West look like a Sunday School picnic.
I digress, Ah cannie help it -Ah’m a Fifer- But it was that digression that drew me from the determined limits of researching the C16th, the “Long Good Night” of the Johnstones, Maxwells, Irvings and Bells, et al, of Annandale, to the “almost imperceptible hump in the ground” near Lockerbie, scattered with fragmented angular chips of stone and charcoal, the presence of which resulted in an obviously different hue to that of the the surrounding ground. It brought to mind the “almost imperceptible hump in the ground” I’d discovered in my beloved woodland, and on doing a simple web-search at home, discovered the Annandale site to be recorded by the Royal Commission for Ancient and Historic Monuments Scotland as a pre-historic “Burnt Mound”, of which I’d heard but knew little of, the purpose of which seems to be a contentious issue amongst those most pressed for answers. And then I found this...
http://www.diggingthedirt.com/2011/06/09/past-orders-part-2-the-great-beer-experiment/ ... and thought, I knew it had something to do with drink!
But sitting here today and considering the subject in the comfort of my centrally heated living room and using the hi-tech super highway to convey my thoughts, my mind wanders off again to the far away green oasis of a long disused oil-field camp-dump in the Libyan desert, watching golden jackals staggering around, apparently drunk to the point of leglessness, after the careful and consumption of over-ripe figs and melons. Which makes me wonder how long we've carried our affection for alcoholic beverages and just how deeply seated it really is in Human Cultures. We may well have brought it with us out of Africa.
Cheers,
Pango.
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