Unlikely Stories Mostly

by Alasdair Gray

  Sir Andrew Gray

  Sir John Seatoun

  Sir John Fularton

  Sir Patrick Moray

  Colonel Erskin

  Colonel Lindsay

  Colonel Morison

  Colonel Hume

  Colonel Mouatt

  Colonel Liviston

  Colonel Leslie

  Colonel Forbes

  FOR VENICE AGAINST THE GERMAN EMPEROR

  Colonel Dowglas

  Colonel Balantine

  Colonel Lyon

  Colonel Anderson

  FOR VENICE AGAINST THE TURK

  Captain William Scot, vice-Admiral of the Venetian fleet, the onely renowned bane and terror of Mahometan navigators, for he did so tort and ferret them out of all the creeks of the Adriatic gulph that many of them, for fear of him, did turn land-souldiers or drovers of caravans.

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  From this list I have omitted all mention of gallant Scottish duelists such as Francis Sinclair, natural son to the late Earle of Catnes, who performed this notable exploit in the city of Madrid: Eight Spanish noblemen being suspicious of Sinclair’s too intimate familiarity with a kinswoman of theirs, did altogether set on him at one time, which unexpected assault moved him to say:

  “Gentlemen, I doubt not but you are valiant men, therefor my entreaty is that you take it as becomes men of valour, by trying your fortune against mine, one at a time.”

  The Spaniards pretending to be men of honour, swore by an oath made on their crossed swords that they should not faile therein; in a word, conform to paction, they fell to it, and that most cleverly, though with such fatality on the Spanish side, that in less than the space of half an hour he killed seven of them apassyterotically, that is, one after another; gratifying the eightth, to testifie that he had done no wrong to the rest, with enjoyment of his life. As for pricking down here those other Scots renowned for valour and for literature, I hold it not expedient; for the sum of those named doth fall so far short of the number omitted, that apportioned to the aggregate of all who in that nation since the year 1600, have deserved praise in arms and arts, jointly or disjunctly, either at home or abroad, it would bear the analogy, to use a lesser definite for a greater indefinite, of a subnovitri-partient eights; that is to say, in plain English, the whole being the dividend, and my nomenclature the divisor, the quotient would be nine, with a fraction of three-eights; or yet more clearly, as the proportion of 72 to 625. But let me resume the account of my especial self by inditing:

  ARTS

  LORD NEPER OF MARCHISTON. The artificial numbers by him first excogitated and perfected are of such incomparable use, that by them we may operate more in one day than without them in the space of a week; a secret that would have been so precious to antiquitie, that Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Archimedes and Euclid would have joyntly concurred in deifying the revealer of so great a mystery. My country is more glorious for producing so brave a spark, than if it had been the conquering kingdom of a hundred potent nations. Neper also had the skill (as is commonly reported) to frame an engine which, by virtue of some secret springs, implements and substances inclosed within the bowels thereof, could clear a field of four miles circumference or more (proportional to its bigness, for he could make it any size at all) of all living creatures exceeding a foot in hight, by which he was able to have killed thirty thousand turkes, without the hazard of one Christian. Of this, upon a wager, he gave proof on a large plaine in Scotland, to the destruction of a great many herds of cattel and flocks of sheep, whereof some were distant from other half a mile, some a whole mile. When earnestly desired by an old acquaintance, at the time he contracted the disease whereof he died, not to take the invention of so ingenious a mystery with him to the tomb; he replied, That for the ruine and overthrow of mankind there were already too many divices framed, which, since the malice and rancor in the heart of man would not suffer these to diminish, by no conceit of his would their number be increased. Divinely spoken, truly.

  CRICHTON * AGNAMED THROUGHOUT EUROPE ADMIRABILIS SCOTUS OR THE WONDERFUL SCOT:

  who in one day at the Sorbonne in Paris, from nine in the morning to six at night, did argue in Hebrew, Syriack, Arabick, Greek, Latin, Italian, English, Flemish, Dutch, Spanish, French and Sclavonian, in prose and verse, at his disputants’ discretion, thereby resolving the knurriest problems propounded to him by the choicest and most profound philosophers, mathematicians, naturalists, mediciners, surgeons, apothecaries, alchymists, civil law doctors, canon law doctors, grammarians, rhetoricians and logicians in that greatest of all cities which is truly called the Abridgement of the World; and ilucting the most umbraged obscurities, and prostrating the sublimest mysteries to the vulgar capacity, by the easie and accurate promptness of his speech. When the Rector of the University awarded him a purse of gold and a diamond ring, the nimblewitted Parisians raized such thundering plaudities that the rarified air over the echoing concavities of the colleges could not support the birds in flight, who fell from the sky in a feathered showr. And the very next day to refresh his brains, as he said, went to the Louvre in a buff-suit, more like a favourite of Mars than one of the Muses’ minions; where in the presence of the Court and great ladies, he carryed away the ring fifteen times on end, and broke as many lances on the Saracen. The picture of Crichton, with a lance in one hand and a book in the other, is to be seen in the bedchambers and galleries of most of the great men of the Italian nation, where he was murdered in a fitte of jealous rage by the Prince of Mantua; and most of the young ladies likewise, that were anything handsome, had his effigies in a little oval tablet of gold hanging twixt their breasts, for many yeeres that intermarnmilionary ornament being held as necessary for the setting forth of their accoutrements, as either fan, watch or stomacher.

  DOCTOR SEATON: made Professor of the Roman Colledge of Sapience by Pope Urbane the eighth, but falling at ods with the Jesuites, he retired to France where I have seen him circled about at the Louvre with a ring of French Lords and gentlemen, the greatest clerics and churchmen, the albest barristers and advocates of the Parlement of Paris, all in perfect silence the better to congest the pearls of discernment falling from his lips into the treasuries of their judgements. Le Sieur de Balzac, who for eloquence was esteemed to surpass Cicero, presented to Seaton a golden pen, in token of his infinitely greater supereminency in that art. Many learned books were written by this Seaton in the Latin tongue, which, to speak ingenuously, I cannot hit upon.

  HUGO DE GRIEVE: whose nativity in a dank border-town engirdled by many torrents so impressed his mind with the axiom everything flows, that he firmly fixed himself in those operations by which mind is changed, and made some 32 books of verses wherein antique and demotic tongues, political rhetoric and all the natural sciences are by violence yoked together to deny, prophetically simultaneously and retroactively, every conclusion he arrives at, excepting this: that the English are a race of Bastards. He thus engendered a manifold of grandly meaning sentences without system, for the which I did honour him, until compelled to bring against him a suit-at-law for his barefaced plagiarism of my LOGOPANDECTEISON, which suit requires but the enscrieving and publishment of the said LOGOPANDECTEISON to have this scheming and scurrilous succubus of other men’s genius brought low, and costs awarded to pursuer.

  CAMERON, AGNAMED THE WALKING LIBRARY: who being renowned through all the provinces of France for his universal reading, took occasion to set forth an excellent folio volume in Latin intituled Bibliotheca Movens.

  MASTER ALEXANDER ROSSE: who hath written manyer books, both in good Latine and English, prose and verse, than he hath years, and whose Poeticus proveth, that the Pagan Gods are but names for the separated faculties of our TRIUN GOD, so that Christians need no longer lie under the reproach which the Oriental nations fixe upon us, of seeing with but one eye, for Master Rosse hath so vindicated in matter of knowledge our Western World, as to make the Chineses, by force of reason, of whose authority above them they ar
e not ashamed, glad to confess that the Europaeans, as well as themselves, look out of both their eyes and have no blinkered minds.

  MELVIL: who has six hundred ducats a year, for translating into Latine or Spanish, some hundred few books of these six hundred great volumes, taken by Don Juan de Austria at the battel of Lepanto from the Great Turk, which now lie in the great library of that magnifick palace the Es-corial near Madrid.

  DEMPSTER: who is chiefly recommended to posterity for his Latin index of five thousand illustrious Scots from the earliest ages to the last liver whereof dyed above fifty years since.

  CHALMERS: bishop of Neems.

  CHIZUM: bishop of Vezun.

  TYRY: assistant to the General of the Jesuites, and second person in that vast ecclesiastical republick, which reaches beyond the territories of all Christian kings to cover the continent of the World.

  KING JAMES 6th AND 1st: History cannot afford us (Solomon and Alfonso of Aragon being laid aside) any monarch who was near as learned as he, as is apparent by that book in folio intituled, “King James His Works”; despite that peevish remark by the young king’s old tutor, the republican pedagogue George Buchanan, that the king’s faculty as a scholar, equalled his notorious deficiency as a souldier, since by skelping the arse of the Lord’s annoynted the best he (Buchanan) had been able to make of poor Jamie was a pedant, as the Royal Steward lacked substance to shape anything better.

  PRO ME

  Deeds Armorial: In my early years, to ripen my brains for eminent undertakings, my heart gave me courage to adventure through foreign climes, wherein it thrice befell me to enter the lists against men of three several nations, to vindicate my native country from the slanders wherewith they had aspersed it. God was pleased so to conduct my fortune that, after I had disarmed them, they in such sort acknowledged their error, and the obligation they did owe me for sparing their lives, that in lieu of three enemies that were I acquired three constant friends both to myself and my nation, which by several gallant testimonies they did later prove, in many occasions. Thus I outdid the Gasco-nad of France, Rodomontad of Spaine, Fanfaronad of Italy, and Bragadochio brags of all other countries, who could no more astonish my invincible young heart, than could the cheeping of a mouse a bear robbed of her whelps.

  Then in the May month of 1639, when 1200 Covenanters of the North assembled at Turrif, I with a loyal force of but 800, did altogether repel, route and disperse them, with no advantage on our side but complete surprize and four brass cannon. Thus was quelled the first armed mustering against the monarchy since Mary Steward fled Langside field. Thus issued the first battel in this most uncivil War. Would to Jehovus the loyalists had done so well since.

  CONTRA ME

  Deeds Armorial: Nothing, in that never was I in any fight defeated, though sometimes obliged to withdraw before overwhelming power, as hath befallen Scipio Africanus, Robert de Bruis and Adolphus Maleus Caesarorum.

  PRO ME

  Deeds Minerval: (completed and potential) whereby my name will resound to the end day of alltime, by reason of, these shining books which will work huge reformation, transformation and revolution in every branch of human tecknics, politics and thought.

  1. EPIGRAMS: DIVINE AND MORAL

  The Muses never yet inspired sublimer conceptions in a more refined style, than is to be found in the accurate strains of these most ingenious Epigrams. Printed in London, 1641.

  2. THE TRISSOTETRAS

  Wherein I set forth, with all possible brevity and perspecuity, orthogonospherical and loxogonospherical tables which permit the easy application of Neper’s logarythms to every dimension of space and any volume of bulk, and by resolving those cranklings, windings, turnings, involutions and amfractuosities belonging to the equisoleary system, I facilitate and reform the work of all artists in pleusiotechny, poliechryology, cosmography, geography, astronomy, geodesy, gnomonicks, catoptricks, dioptricks, fortification, navigation and chiaroscuro. Printed in London 1645, last week.

  3. TTANTOXPONOXANON

  A peculiar promptuary of time, wherein is recorded the exact lineal descent of the VRQUARTS since the beginning of motion. Unprinted.

  4. ISOPLASTFONIKON

  Demonstrating the cubification of the sphere through Pythagorean acousticks, whereby a well-tuned fiddle or taut kettledrum may be perswaded to yield the exact side of a squared solid equal in volume to any symmetrical rotundity whatsoever. Unprinted.

  5. FOINIXPANKROMATA

  or, the Rainbow-Phoenix, wherein is counter-blasted Signor Galileo’s contention that colour is meer sensation, by proving that the boundless prime matter of the universe is not the Water of Thales, Air of Anaximenes, Fire of Heraclitus, Atoms of Democritus or Quadressential Porridge of Trismegistus, but white light; that gold, green, azure, deep-sea blue, violet, purple, crimson and pink are light in decay; that self-colours through the Macrocosm creates, not just its appearance, but its tangible, fructible, frangible bodies; and that darkness is light. travelling backward too fast to be catched by the eye. Unprinted.

  6. ALETHALEMBIKON

  or the True Alembick, demonstrating that a quin-cunxial chamber of reflecting plates, mathematically disposed, will enable to be wrought, at no cost, identical solid duplicates of any object laid therein, by the admission to it, at a point a beam of midsummer noonday sun. Unprinted.

  7. TΗΕ HEROICK DEEDSANDSAYINGS OF THE GOOD GARGANTUA AND HIS SON PANTAGRUEL

  a translation from the French, which,. since their lexicons hold but three quarter of the words we can use, will be one third longer than the original, as if Doctor Rabelais had writ in English, with my resour ces. Not begun yet. 8. I recall not what this is Cocks crow, sky pales, I may now sleep a little pethaps.

  CONTRA ME

  Deeds Minerval: Lacking Scots printers my texts amass till convoyed South.

  CONTRA SCOTIAM

  ARMS

  What have we here? A Scotland racked, retching and rampant with intestinal dissent. How may a politic body rampantly menace others while bloodily rending itself? Regard us and know. Four armies prowl this realm prepared to fight 1. For King and Covenant, 2. For King against Covenant, 3. For Covenant against King, 4. Against both Covenant and King. This rebelion, here begun on a point of liturgy by Scottish blatterers of extemporaneous prayer, spread hence to the English who took to it on a matter of taxation and, fighting a two-sided rectilinear war, soon concluded in a clear conquest for the Cromwel parliament last year on Marston Moor. But the Northern Realm, where the Royal Steward was first betrayed, still holds the last loyalists to fight for him victoriously under that lapsed Covenanter the Marquess Montross. This fills me with a confusion of pride and regret. When will our turmoyles cease to involve us in stultifying self dissent? May we only win glory by serving the foreigner? If so our best hope is to be integered into one united Brittish Imperium, by imblending the Scottish Lords and Commons with the English as hath been done with the Welsh equivalent. But should that fail to grant us long prosperity of achievement, then our last hope is an enemy of the sort Cromwel is to the Irish, but less cunning; an enemy so crass, antagonistic and dully ignorant of Scotland’s state that we must needs all confront it together or sink into total penury and nonfunction.

  ARTS

  At home our arts have come under the scourge of an uncontrolled Kirk whose hierarchical jurisdiction is neither monarchical, aristocratical or democratical, but a meer Plutarchy, Plutocracie or rather Plutomanie; so madly do they hale after money and the trash of this world, which I here ensample by but one instance. The great Doctor Liddel, astronomical disciple of Tycho Brahe and professor of the sciences of sensible immaterial objects in Heidelberg, bequeathed fourty pounds English money a year to Aberdeen university for the maintenance of a mathematical professor, with this proviso, that the nearest of his own kinsmen, caeteris paribus should be preferred before any other. The chair falling vacant when the Doctor’s nephew, Master Duncan Liddel, was of sufficient age and skil to exercise that duty, did the good Senat
ors of Aberdeen attend the honest doctor’s will? No, forsooth, the oracle must first be consulted with; ministerian philoplutaries, my tongue forks it, I have mistaken it seems one word for another, I should have said philosophers, decide his uncle’s testament must be made void; for, say they, Master Duncan Liddel hath committed the hainous sin of fornication, he hath got a young lass with childe! Which presbyterian doctrine, had it bin enforced in the daies of Socrates, would have pearched him up on a penitentiary pew for having two wives at once (neither whereof, either Xanthippe or Myrto, was as handsome as Master Liddel’s Concubine) and cast all the later ages of man kind under a cloud of ignorance by quenching the light of Plato, Aristotle and Euclid, who would have betaken themselves to some other profession than philosophy, if the presbytery of Athens had supplyed the academical chair thereof with the bum of a more sanctified brother, whose zealous jobbernolism would have mudded and fowled at its source the world’s first clear fountain of pure learning. Such a sort was that covenanting gentleman who burnt a great many historical and philosophical books thinking they had been books of popery, because of the red letters he saw on their titles and inscriptions. The nation of Scotland hath produced many excellent spirits whose abilities, by the presbyterian’s persecutions, have been quite smothered, and hid as a candle under a bushel; while many excellent books have perished for want of able and skillful printers, the author happening to dy; whereupon the wife and children, to save a little money, make use of his papers, without any regard to the precious things in them, to fold perhaps their butter and cheese into. So unfortunate a thing is it that good spirit should be struck by presbytery into penury and have their writing fall into the hands of ignorants. That poverty is an enemy to the exercise of vertue, is not unknown to anyone acquainted with the sovereign power of money; and if the great men of the land would be pleased to salve that sore, which, possibly would not be expensive to them as either their hawks or hounds, then per-adventure by such gallant incitements, through a vertuous emulation who should most excel other, Scotland would produce, for philosophy, astronomy, natural magick, poesie and other such like faculties, as able men as ever were: