Standing here, listening but seeing little of the pipers because of the press in this sweaty gathering, I notice a young man in front of me wearing a faded T-shirt with motto: the cure/the prayer, in black letters on a pattern of faded foliage. I continue to stare at it as the pipes drone, sensing some metaphoric significance . . . but then the moment passes, its meaning gone with it. Signs and symbols strike upon the intellect, engaging it briefly and darting away. Or they live on breathless, bemused. Did I really see something in my anxiety—or is it just an old shirt?
But I can take this burning no longer. Agreeing, Allen and I break from the crowd and plunge toward the shade of the pines. Here we find ongoing dance competitions in progress and sit down to watch from an out-of-the-way bench. It’s harder to see the dancers from our oblique position but we must stay out of the sun. I am relieved by the cool grace of the offshore breeze.
Three little ones dance on the sheltering wooden stage, leaping like sprites. One-legged, toes pointed, each wee dancer reaches a poised hand on high as though in refined praise. The skirling and droning of a lone piper helps them, and they are light and finely formed in their pleats, argyles and laced up slippers. White puffy sleeves, lacy ascots and velvet vests complete the lassies’ outfits. The little legs kick back, the arms akimbo. They pivot, they leap, they dance dance dance. The piper, who pipes obscurely in a rear corner of the stage, is also a marvel. I recall Blaine telling me about the piper who played incessantly from nine in the morning till six at night for the competitions last year. He emphasized the quality of this feat in saying that the bag must continue full of breath.
I look now toward the open field before the stage where a lone judge sits. She is raised to an elevated position by a canvas chair set high on a picnic table. On her lap rests a clipboard. She watches and writes as dancers in groups of three perform the hornpipe before her critical gaze. The diminutive dancers begin and end each dance with a bow to her. Grace. The music beats faster and faster but the judge, wearing a yellow sun dress with spaghetti straps, sits still in the burning sun as they leap.
I begin to marvel more at the judge than the dancers who are shaded and sheltered. Later, as I roam the grounds while the day wears, I will marvel still more. For whenever I look in the direction of the dancers there will be the judge . . . watching and writing, seated, as though for eternity, in the fiery sun.
Rested, we stand and make our way past dancers down toward the white tents of domestic encampment which we passed on our way to the parade ground earlier. Approaching, I hear a young woman telling a few listeners about historical roles. They are camp followers, respected young women chosen by lottery to follow the Highland soldiers. They prepare foods such as scones on the griddle. They wash linens and care for the children they bring.
I sense movement at my feet and look down. There is a sweet babe, in a long white gown, sitting in a wooden tub draped in wool. She looks up at me with direct trusting blue eyes and a wet smile. The babe sucks on a smooth wooden orb held in her dimpled hand. And as she sucks, she hums. Her humming is dulcet and dreamy although she smiles at me with true awareness in her heaven’s eyes. It is long before I look away.
Beside her is another tub toward which she leans, dropping her orb. The tub holds a few inches of water afloat with smooth wood-turnings of various shapes. The babe reaches down and splashes the water, watching the turnings bob in its ripples. Then she picks out a spindle and begins gumming it. The young woman working at the table notices my interest and tells me the baby’s name is Kelsey.
I step over to watch the women’s preparation of food, and to ask questions about their attire. Now I see genuine scones heaped in a steaming plateful. Some are scorched from the iron griddle. Scones look like triangular buckwheat biscuits, homely, not high or light. Does the word derive from the place called Scone, where the Stone of Destiny became the coronation stone in 843 A.D.? Or is it the other way around? Websters says that the word comes from the Dutch schoonbrood, meaning pure clean bread.
On the women’s table are crockery, stone jugs and pewter tankards. On their heads are long white scarves with folds binding their crowns. The linen is held in place with a neat gold pin in the midst of the head. Historically, the scarves indicated that the women were married. The cloths were treasured for this, says the baby’s mother. Beneath the gowns and petticoats they wore linen shifts in which they slept. Linen was considered precious, probably because being homespun and woven of homegrown flax it was difficult to make. The top of one bodice is held in place by a three-inch black thorn. She tells me this is a hawthorn, from a hawthorn tree. It is authentic as part of the camp follower’s dress: fierce, like the spirit of a camp follower. As with the thistle, this three-inch black thorn epitomizes this life in the Highlands, where pipers call. “Wha duar meddle wi me?”
Down the facing rows of white tents are highland soldiers from the time of bonnie Prince Charlie: their garb is not ancient—no chain mail here. They wear tartans, carry flintlock muskets and swords with basket hilts. One soldier gives us a demonstration on the proper loading and firing of the flintlock using shot, powder, ramrod and pan. Wearing maybe six yards of tartan, he shows how the clansmen pleated their long tartans on belts—belted long or short, depending on the terrain and weather. The leftover length was used as a cloak during cold weather, as hooded cloak when it rained, or it could be slung over a shoulder out of the way and fastened with a brooch. The whole thing could be used as a blanket when sleeping on the ground. Six yards of wool was the rule, and the saying, “the whole nine yards” originated with that particular length.
In The Clans and Tartans of Scotland, Robert Bain writes that the original tartans were dyed with indigenous plants of the various regions of the Highlands and Western Islands. They were woven in simple check patterns. Folk, and the regions of their birth, were identified by indigenous colors and patterns of the tartan they wore. These patterns were carefully preserved by town weavers, who kept wooden sticks with numbered threads for each tartan they wove.
So strong was the meaning of each pattern to its wearer that these became patriotic emblems, eventually provoking their English overlords to outlaw the wearing of tartan by an Act of Parliament. The tactic to defeat this tradition worked because forty years later, when the Act was repealed, there was little interest on the part of the new generation. Knowledge of the correct identifying patterns was lost in the intervening years. It took the interest of Britain’s George IV to reawaken tartan joy in Highlanders. In 1822, nearly 80 years after the prohibition of patterns, the King’s visit to lowland Edinburgh brought a revival of traditional dress. Patterns used were largely recent creations, however.
Allen hefts the musket held out to him. The soldier talks on about fighting methods of the Regiment. A glimmer of reflected light from nearby shadows captures my eye. In the shade of nestling pines I spy baby Kelsey at her mother’s breast: a picture of nurturing grace, yielding forth a quiet spirit.
Allen and I walk to the shore. The tide comes rippling in. We watch spartina grass, bent in the breeze. The view here opens out between long arms of shore, hinting of open sea beyond. An offshore breeze blows upon us, as though a base drone, with smaller fitful gusts as of tenor pipes. The mighty concert of Nature, sun, sea, and shore, all consort to orchestrate these convection currents. I think of the breath of the Piper, whose playing coaxes the Dance. Somewhere behind us, distantly, haunting skirls of the bag, chanter and drone, drift back to us. Through this sounding wind.
Departure
A pale morning outside the window. Light just beginning to show among green leaves. I sat in bed, sipping coffee and reading the fiery Book of Ezekiel. A few days before I had read about the departure of the Glory of God from Jerusalem. Now the prophet was carried in a vision to the New Gate where stood the house of God remade. Looking eastward he saw the Glory of God returning, descending toward him and toward that new temple. “And his voice is like a noise of many waters, and the earth shined with his glory.” Is such radiance after all a feminine attribute, as the Shekinah, the settling of God, has been described?
I looked up from the old words and tried to visualize a sight I would see from