toward the lawn where a Border Collie demonstration is in progress. A haunting skirl of bagpipes floats to us on the breeze. The song will inform our awareness—now quiet and distant, now strong and near—throughout the day of these competitions. We join spectators ringing the fence where a small black dog with white markings chases shorthaired sheep. In the midst stands a tiny slat pen where the shepherdess stands, long bright ribbon from her hand tethering a gate of this pen. Shrilling, her small silver whistle pipes out a song of degrees—signals for the dog. The Border Collie runs this way and that as the shepherdess peeps and shrills, funneling sheep in the manner commanded by these high-pitched sounds.
The Collie drives them close against the fence under our noses. Furious breathing of these small cloven-hoofed woolly creatures fans our knees in passing. Now the song (with its various peeping) sounds again, the dog comes round driving them off the fence.
The Collie’s ears are pricked; its long-haired coat sleek and glossy-looking as though brushed with care, but its stance reveals sentience, and intent of the rangiest predator. Agile, it scurries with head low and poised, alert to the whistle or words of the shepherdess who often commands the dog to “lie down!” At this command the dog drops to its belly, crouched, ready to scramble at the next signal. Then, tearing the ground, it comes round and we feel the predatory power as its nails grip the turf. The dog pivots. Its breath is quick, excited. It spins away, cutting out two sheep, herding them into the slat pen. At once the handler closes the gate and loops the pink tether over its posts.
This green stifling lawn beneath shore pines is a far cry from the rugged and rolling distances of the Scottish Highlands where such sheep roam. There the dogs are signaled over vast distances, handily moving the wool-bearers while a shepherd stands his or her ground. In this heat today I sense the discomfort of these beautiful sheep in the hurly of being so gathered, so harassed.
“Why do sheep run from the dog?” Someone has asked from the sidelines. Answer: It is a primordial response from an age when predators roamed the hills in packs. The quick would run the sheep silly then head them back toward slower pack members. There jaws would powerfully tear them to shreds, sustenance for hungry wolves. Sheep are still highly sensitive to the born predator who, through breeding and training, has become their guard and now serves for their good. Through the healthy instinct of fear.
Wandering away we follow the path past a competition ground. Here strong muscular men toss the camber. Shotput and tossing-the-sheaf are also powerfully executed. It’s a contrast to the adjacent domestic camp of six or eight white canvas tents with canopy and fire pit. Smoke billows up on the breeze: smoke of buckwheat scorching on the griddle. Women are clustered in homespun gowns, petticoats, and linen headdresses—preparing food. Allen and I wander on, looking about at curiously attired folk, including children, who are dressed in the tartan of another time and an older culture not our own.
We come up toward the parade ground, neatly compassed by a ring of pavilions and concessions. There’s a big old double-decker bus (blazoned with a Union Jack) that has been converted to a fish-n-chips stand. (We note its enclosed top deck with curtains, hints of homey furnishings in the windows—converted living quarters?) There are concessions for meat pies and bridies, for shish kebabs and sausages and buns, for rich and unScottish-looking desserts. A sign promises scones, but, when I receive one from Allen where I sit in the shade, it turns out to be strawberry shortcake with whipped cream, thawed syrupy strawberries, and costing four dollars!
Other concessionaires sell faces carved in walking sticks. Some sticks are long and peeled, cedar sticks still covered in ragged bark. A face is carved in each, complete with crows feet round the eyes, representing ancient mythological protectors of the forest. Booths sell true woolens, tartans, weaving, glengarries, and cotton runners with homespun mottoes. Here’s a plastic-covered carryall decorated with thistles: petaled purple heads with great prickly ovaries. At the bottom of the bag is a warning—and a welcome. I had been trying to recall the significance of the thistle and now it’s written here in purple before my eyes. Complete with ugly coating of petroleum-based plastic, one of the wonders-run-amuck of our age.
I read somewhere recently that the molecular structure of plastic, a polymer, has been reproduced organically. A good thing, that? Saves petroleum for energy? Ordinary potatoes can be made to yield plastic grains in place of starch grains. The resultant tuber would contain polymers but still look like a potato. It wouldn’t taste or nourish like one but provide a renewable source of plastic plates. Before the organic polymer-potato is commercially sown, some of the bugs will have to be worked out. Things like the inadvertent assimilation of the world’s potato crop, evoking the cataclysm of Kurt Vonnegut’s Ice-9 in Cat’s Cradle. Bees are disinclined to distinguish between polymer potato blooms and starch potato blooms, thus potentially converting whole fields of food into fields of tubular plastic. Who knows what we’ll have at our disposal with more tweaking of our scientific genius? Soon we’ll be growing wax fruit to fill bowls on our coffee tables.
The words on this plastic-coated bag tell of the thistle tradition and its motto. Gardeners, bird-lovers and landscapers may admire the rich coloring of this flower but thistles are elsewhere considered a nuisance and covering of waste places, fit to be yanked and discarded. The motto before me in Latin reads: “Nemo me impune laccessit”. That is, “No one provokes me with impunity.” Or, more fittingly, “Wha duar meddle wi me.” A not inappropriate motto for this prickly plant which is honored for its aid in defeating eighth century Danish raiders. The barefoot invaders’ stealthy nighttime approach was thwarted when thistles growing about the camp brought forth such cries of pain that the sleeping Scots were alerted. It has since been an emblem of guardianship.
Nemo me impune laccessit is a warning whose power to convince is contingent upon the power of the speaker. It’s what renders the motto believable. Today with our glib high-tech weaponry we might find threats of sword and broadaxe borne on bare feet ridiculous or romantic. They belong to an age when every man was a warrior that he might protect his family, community, land. But given the might of our contemporary weaponry we must go beyond the wielding of known armaments to find a speaker worthy enough to fear. We must think big, really big—of prodigiously polluted earth, of mighty yet intricate ecosystems unbalanced, of the once-kindly atmosphere now filled with mountains of carbon, of ultraviolet radiation pouring down on flesh. Think of great Nature when Nature is wronged.
Out of a blue and white pavilion comes the melancholy song of the folk singer. He sings of a berm beside a loch where a young woman stood, long ago . . . bereft but sensing the loving presence of her lost young man. Now the music changes. The singer yields up a rousing song of the Shakers who danced and quaked—to the glory of God. “I am the Lord of the Dance, sang he—dance, dance, whatever ye may be.”
Allen and I move on for our own dance of sorts: a walk along the pitched row where each clan presents its genealogy: names like Kincaid MacBean MacPherson MacThomas Moffat, Hannah and Scot. Names moving with substance inside the mouth. Names to stick a bit in the throat and curl the tongue as they pass out to the listening ear. A roll call of clans, sons of the ancients, whose system dominated Scotland for nearly 700 years. According to The Clans and Tartans of Scotland by Robert Bain, chiefs of these clans took their oaths standing, with both feet upon a stone, promising to preserve the ancient ways. Chanting the noble exploits of their forebears, bards exhorted clan members to “emulate” the example of its past.
Hot asphalt curves round the parade ground and we follow beyond genealogical booths, feeling the heat of this fiery path through the soles of our 20th-century shoes. Here are booths for the handiwork of a bygone age. I can’t help but stop to stare. On the table before me is a fabric of chains. Heavy fabric of metal-work, pieced together a ring at a time. This, then, is chain mail. I slip out a hand, touching it.
A man in ancient garb stands by, ready to instruct us. He takes two tiny rings and spreads one open with pliers, hooks it to another, pinches it closed and picks up a third. This mesh of three is in turn hooked to a fourth. Dimension develops, thickness,
