Scotland The Brave Quotes

There is no glory in ruin; it only matters because of what comes after.

The long warm light that came just before the night shimmered like water. As fall approached, the sounds of bellowing red stags punctuated the woods, fierce as bears. The leaves were not yet changing, but there was something substantial and weighty to them, a fullness that could be heard when the breeze lifted them. Summer was building, building, until it had to collapse into fall, and the effort was breathtaking to watch.

There is a type of pie strongly associated with Scotland which has aesthetic and health dangers that justify its inclusion here amongst the sinister pies. It is the Fried Pie - which is just what it says, a baked pie cooked a second time by frying. Scotland is not called the Land of the Brave for nothing.

The first god, the Cailleach, was very old. In fact, one of her other names was the Old Woman of Scotland, although most humans never saw her in that form. Instead, those with the Sight merely felt her invisible presence in a wild storm or a rushing waterfall or even in the melted snow that pools in fresh-plowed spring fields. The Cailleach was a goddess of creation. She made trees bud. Grass thicken. Calves grow inside cows. Fruit ripen on the vine. Her work was the ancient business of making and renewing.

It is sometimes remarked that, whilst Scotland has become a distinctive polity since the Scottish Parliament's re-establishment, it is still regarded 'down south' as a territory and possession of the British state to which it remains beholden. This is certainly true in the field of defence where the military bases, weaponry and other assets in Scotland are regarded by London, and even by Washington and NATO's other member states, as the British state's necessary territories and properties - its intrinsic entitlement - in both a physical and politico-legal sense.

XII.—LOCHINVAR. Oh! young Lochinvar is come out of the west, Through all the wide Border his steed was the best; And save his good broadsword, he weapons had none, He rode all unarmed, and he rode all alone; So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war, There never was knight like the young Lochinvar. He stayed not for brake, and he stopped not for stone; He swam the Esk river, where ford there was none; But ere he alighted at Netherby gate, The bride had consented, the gallant came late; For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war, Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar. So boldly he entered the Netherby Hall, Among bride's-men, and kinsmen, and brothers, and all; Then spoke the bride's father, his hand on his sword - For the poor craven bridegroom said never a word - "Oh! come ye in peace here, or come ye in war, Or to dance at our bridal, young Lord Lochinvar?" "I long wooed your daughter, my suit you denied; Love swells like the Solway, but ebbs like its tide; And now am I come, with this lost love of mine, To lead but one measure, drink one cup of wine. There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far, That would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar." The bride kissed the goblet: the knight took it up, He quaffed off the wine, and he threw down the cup. She looked down to blush, and she looked up to sigh, With a smile on her lips and a tear in her eye. He took her soft hand, ere her mother could bar - "Now tread we a measure!" said young Lochinvar. So stately his form, and so lovely her face, That never a hall such a galliard did grace; While her mother did fret, and her father did fume, And the bridegroom stood dangling his bonnet and plume: And the bride's-maidens whispered, "'Twere better by far To have matched our fair cousin with young Lochinvar." One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear, When they reached the hall-door, and the charger stood near; So light to the croup the fair lady he swung, So light to the saddle before her he sprung. "She is won! we are gone, over bank, bush, and scaur; They'll have fleet steeds that follow," quoth young Lochinvar. There was mounting 'mong Graemes of the Netherby clan; Forsters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode and they ran: There was racing and chasing on Cannobie Lee, But the lost bride of Netherby ne'er did they see. So daring in love, and so dauntless in war, Have ye e'er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar?

I am in awe of Sam's decision to abandon capitals and punctuation but am not brave enough to do the same. I like to imagine the day he, as the Americans say, made the change he wished to see in the world. I like to think it came to him suddenly. Perhaps he was swimming - no, too active - or napping indoors on a hot day - no, too bourgeois - probably he was in Scotland during the midge season and he left the desk lamp on and the window open when he went out for a meaningful walk. It was dark and the midges were drawn to the lamplight and - thinking it was the moon - fried themselves against the bulb, falling in their tens and tens, cooked on the pages of Sam's poems. So when he returned some time later, with bites on his neck, he found his poems loaded with punctuation, asterisks, grammar lying dead on his manuscript and his instant reaction was disgust, a feeling that then infected his whole aesthetic.

The vestiges of a once large and mighty army lay in scattered ruins. Its leaders had abandoned it – fled, to save their own lives so they might go back to England and live off the fat of their lands. The brave sons of Scotland had won their battle. Not because they were more – no, they were outnumbered four-fold. Not because they were better armed or paid. They won because, in order to live, they had to.

These long northern summer days stretched out forever and ever, turning into a short gray night for just a few hours before rolling right into another bright day. The trees were every color of green: the warm ashes, the blue pines. Birds were everywhere. Since they'd left the castle, they'd encountered dramatic capercaillies with their high-spread tails, V-tailed kites, long-legged corncrakes, dire-faced rooks, and cheery little swallows.

She had been a storm that didn't move roofs, but she'd spent a year watching storms that did. Instead of striking off on her own, as she'd always done, she decided to learn to listen. In spring, she went to Eilean Glan, and she listened to the old queen teach girls to heal. In summer, she went to Ardbarrach, and as the bells rang, she listened to the value of order. In fall, she returned home long enough for her mother to prepare for the journey, and then, as they rode around a new and fragile Scotland, she listened to her mother talk about peace. In winter, she returned to DunBroch to think about all she had learned over the long, dark season.

Let us be honest. Did all the priests of Rome increase the mental wealth of man as much as Bruno? Did all the priests of France do as great a work for the civilization of the world as Voltaire or Diderot? Did all the ministers of Scotland add as much to the sum of human knowledge as David Hume? Have all the clergymen, monks, friars, ministers, priests, bishops, cardinals and popes, from the day of Pentecost to the last election, done as much for human liberty as Thomas Paine? What would the world be if infidels had never been? The infidels have been the brave and thoughtful men; the flower of all the world; the pioneers and heralds of the blessed day of liberty and love; the generous spirits of the unworthy past; the seers and prophets of our race; the great chivalric souls, proud victors on the battlefields of thought, the creditors of all the years to be. Why should it be taken for granted that the men who devoted their lives to the liberation of their fellow-men should have been hissed at in the hour of death by the snakes of conscience, while men who defended slavery—practiced polygamy—-justified the stealing of babes from the breasts of mothers, and lashed the naked back of unpaid labor, are supposed to have passed smilingly from earth to the embraces of the angels? Why should we think that the brave thinkers, the investigators, the honest men, must have left the crumbling shore of time in dread and fear, while the instigators of the massacre of St. Bartholomew; the inventors and users of thumb-screws, of iron boots and racks; the burners and tearers of human flesh; the stealers, the whippers and the enslavers of men; the buyers and beaters of maidens, mothers and babes; the founders of the Inquisition; the makers of chains; the builders of dungeons; the calumniators of the living; the slanderers of the dead, and even the murderers of Jesus Christ, all died in the odor of sanctity, with white, forgiven hands folded upon the breasts of peace, while the destroyers of prejudice, the apostles of humanity, the soldiers of liberty, the breakers of fetters, the creators of light, died surrounded by the fierce fiends of God?

The next aircraft to appear were a pair of Mirages which attacked the anchorage at 9.45 am. Thereafter raids seemed continuous, except for a short break for lunch. The helicopter pilots, landing-craft and Mexeflote crews bravely continued with the offload. It was uncanny to see a Sea King helicopter, with a gun or pallet of ammunition slung underneath, purposefully flying to its appointed landing site, while a pair of jets flashed by pursued by missiles and streams of tracer. The scenery and the bright sunshine, like a glorious day in the Western Islands of Scotland, added to the air of unreality.

It may seem strange to call this slow collapse invisible since so much of it is obvious: the deep uncertainties about the union after the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 and the establishment of the Scottish Parliament the following year; the consequent rise of English nationalism; the profound regional inequalities within England itself; the generational divergence of values and aspirations; the undermining of the welfare state and its promise of shared citizenship; the contempt for the poor and vulnerable expressed through austerity; the rise of a sensationally self-indulgent and clownish ruling class. But the collective effects of these inter-related developments seem to have been barely visible within the political mainstream until David Cameron accidentally took the lid off by calling the EU referendum and asked people to endorse the status quo. What we see with the mask pulled back and the fog of fantasies at last beginning to dissipate is the revelation that Brexit is much less about Britain's relationship with the EU than it is about Britain's relationship with itself. It is the projection outwards of an inner turmoil. An archaic political system carried on even while its foundations in a collective sense of belonging were crumbling. Brexit in one way alone has done a real service: it has forced the old system to play out its death throes in public. The spectacle is ugly, but at least it shows that a fissiparous four-nation state cannot be governed without radical social and cconstitutional change.