Whisky, Kilts, and the Loch Ness Monster

by William W. Starr

  A few miles from Stirling Castle, near a bridge which is not the bridge where the battle was fought, is a five-story monument erected in the midnineteenth century commemorating Wallace. It’s an impressive sight. Nearby is a smaller adornment that appears to celebrate Mel Gibson. Much less impressive.

  So let’s go ahead and confront the colossus that is Mel Gibson’s Braveheart. That figure is an inescapable fact of life in Scotland these days, the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in contemporary Scottish history and the biggest thing since Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobite Rising over two and a half centuries ago. The 1995 film Braveheart won five Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director for Gibson. It made a mint worldwide and was a huge box-office smash in the United States and Scotland. It spawned a jump in the sales of kilts, brought hundreds of thousands of visitors to Scotland, and stoked the worst instincts of Scottish tourism entrepreneurs. (The Braveheart Museum at Loch Ness is in its own category as the most ghastly museum in the world, but please hold your eagerness to read about it until Boswell, Johnson, and I get to that vicinity in a few more chapters.)

  The film was fun, I suppose, and informative in a way, but in the view of historians it emerges as a horrible concoction of half truths and total untruths, not entirely surprising given the paucity of genuine historical information. It was drawn in part from a poem about Wallace written in the late fifteenth century by a poet known colorfully as Blind Hary. The poem apparently had little truth to it, making it a fabulous source for the film. One historian recently observed that Blind Hary’s creation “is the greatest single work of imagination in early Scots poetry.” But before we all jump on the poor visually impaired scribe, I should note that other historians think there may be some factual elements in Hary’s work, though they concede his first name probably wasn’t Hary. (You can see some of the trouble with Scottish history here.)

  No matter, and whatever the truth, lots of Scots and lots of others have praised Gibson and his film. It did neatly encapsulate one perspective on how the English have mistreated the Scots over the centuries, and it certainly gave new life to the Scottish Independent Party. The English may be forgiven for wondering why Gibson had it in for them since the film is unsparing in its treatment of English savagery, suggesting the Scots were bloody nasty only to pay back the English for their cruelty. History tells us that no one came away with clean hands. Nonetheless, Gibson, who has no family ties to Scotland, by the way, would seem to have assured Wallace—the man of the people—a preeminent position in the grail of Scottish mythology, a cup is already filled to overflowing.

  And what of Robert the Bruce? For a long period, he was what Wallace has become today—the greatest national hero—having proclaimed himself king of Scotland in 1306 and having won the battle at Bannockburn over the King Edward II’s English army in 1314. The battle was one of the most decisive in Scottish history, and certainly one of the most decisive battles that Scotland actually managed to win. It led to Scotland’s independence, though before that conflict there had been questions about Robert’s devotion to Scottish freedom. Bruce himself died in 1327, and the shortlived Bruce dynasty ended a few decades later. Historians commemorated Bruce’s achievements with honor and praise, though declining support for the Scottish monarchy over the centuries continually eroded his reputation. The battlefield today boasts a visitor center and large equestrian statue of Robert that is viewed against the skyline of Stirling Castle. Incidentally there is still discussion about the precise location of the battlefield; things are seldom what they seem to be when it comes to getting a tight grip on history.

  Back at my lodging, I was tired after a day of exploring. It was already evident that Scotland has a lot of history that I was going to need to digest to get the most out of my experience. But as long as there are gift shops selling single malts, I was confident that I was up to the task. As I fell asleep, I remember hearing the rain start up again. I pulled the blankets up a little closer and thought about the next morning’s forecast of snow. I think I dreamed about already experiencing six different climates in my mere twenty-four hours in Scotland.

  2

  Loch Lomond

  At breakfast the next morning, the weather was overcast and quite cold, and the remnants of a light snow were on my car’s roof (actually called “roof” in Scottish English). My host offered more eggs, sausage, tomatoes, and tea, and I learned that her mother had been a Druid. Well, after learning about Wallace and Bruce, I’m just relieved she wasn’t English.

  I was off to Inveraray, where I planned to pick up the trail of Boswell and Johnson for the first time. But there were a few sights to attend to before I got there, starting with Doune Castle, a mere fifteen minutes or so north of Stirling. Before arriving at Doune, however, I got another lesson in driving through Scotland. I was on a narrow road, sufficiently wide for one and a half cars, when, entering a curve, I spotted a sign that cautioned me about a bridge and oncoming traffic. As I rounded the curve, I realized that the road narrowed to one lane, and there were two cars on a bridge headed straight toward me, one after the other. On an instinct of survival I swerved onto a dirt road on the left just as the other cars whipped by me. I stopped, caught my breath, and wondered what the heck had just happened. That road sign apparently was telling me something I didn’t quite get. I backed out to the road very carefully, saw nothing coming, and continued on my way across the bridge. I knew I had absorbed a very important driving lesson that would pay dividends throughout my trip; unfortunately, I had no clue what it might have been. I still don’t. But I started paying a lot more attention to road signs.

  Doune Castle sits on a high, easily defended promontory at the River Teith. The Roman governor Agricola’s legionnaires put up a wooden fort near the current site in the first century A.D., on land now used by the local cricket club. The castle’s construction began in the fourteenth century when it was envisioned as a dream home by a would-be king, Robert Stewart, duke of Albany, also known (I’m not kidding about this) as a “big spender.” Alas, Albany died in 1420 before the castle was completed; his successors didn’t keep their heads on—literally—long enough to enjoy it much either. Situated so close to Stirling Castle, it eventually lost its role as a fortress and became a really nice hunting lodge for royals and their families. It fell into disrepair centuries ago and lost its roof. The walls are imposing still, however, and inside there is some restoration in progress.

  The castle has been the scene of some bloodshed over the centuries, nothing more outrageous than what occurred in 1974 when Sir Launcelot conducted a wholesale slaughter of men, women, babies, and nuns in the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail within these walls. That film is the reason Doune is popular today. Everyone wants to see the parapets over which cows, fowl, and a large wooden badger were hurled in French defiance of King Arthur and his invading Knights of the Round Table. In the film the castle was variously identified as Camelot and Castle Anthrax, but never simply as Doune.

  It was well worth my stop in spite of very cold, blustery weather and occasional showers. Once again, given the off-season and the inclement weather, I found myself the only visitor, walking freely around the castle, up and down the chilly, medieval stone steps. The attendant preferred to stay intimate with a portable heater in her small office at the castle entranceway. When I spoke to her I couldn’t help but notice that in addition to the guidebooks for sale there were bottles of “Holy Grail Ale” and some single malts. I was disappointed that John Cleese and Eric Idle didn’t step out and smile at me.

  Loch Lomond, a relatively short distance to the west, blocked my path to Inveraray, and I couldn’t resist a stop at the largest stretch of fresh water in all of Great Britain. So close as to be practically a suburb of Glasgow, the loch is famous for its “bonnie, bonnie banks.” In the driving rain (I’m driving, it’s raining), however, it was difficult to see any sort of banks or even the loch itself. I could tell it was off to one side as I crept through the blinding rain, an
d I was glad there was little or no traffic on the narrow road. It was definitely time for some hot tea or a little Scotch, and I wound up on another of those extremely compressed two-lane roads to a tiny village on the eastern shore named Balmaha. I was grateful that no one was coming toward me because it seemed certain one of us would have to pull into a field to allow the other to get by. I got soaked running from the car into the small inn, but I dried out quickly once I reached the cozy pub, warmed by a hot peat fire and some strong drink. While I calmed down, I looked for someone to join me, but only two men and their female companion at the other end of the pub were around, and no one gave any notice of me. I finished my tea, saw the rain had slackened, and decided to walk out to the loch for a view.

  It was still cold, and I yanked my jacket closer around me and pulled on my gloves as I walked the hundred yards or so to water’s edge. In the dank, gray afternoon light Loch Lomond did not sparkle. In fact it looked downright bleak. Only one person appeared on the water, a man in a wetsuit windsurfing in the distance. The rain began falling once again. I had a melancholic moment, and I thought of the famous ballad the chorus of which goes,

  “Oh ye’ll tak’ the high road

  An’ I’ll tak’ the low road

  And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye,

  For me and my true love

  Will never meet again,

  On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.”

  It’s a beautifully sad song that could wring tears from a stone, though it is sometimes treated rather offhandedly by singers, as if it were a little story of lovers by the banks of a pretty lake. Its origin and meaning, however disputed, give great emotional weight to the song for it connects to terrible times in Scottish history. No one seems exactly sure who wrote it; it appears in print for the first time in the mid-nineteenth century, and the lovely tune has been appropriated widely by many performers. I can remember one ghastly version by the 1950s rock ’n roll group Bill Haley and the Comets titled “Rock Lomond.” In any event, in one version the ballad’s story goes back to the first half of the eighteenth century and the Jacobite Rising when the Scots tried to put Bonnie Prince Charlie on the English throne (more about this later). The insurrection failed and some of the leaders were taken to London for trials (the English again). Their wives, sweethearts, and friends followed them the only way they could: on foot, trudging along poorly maintained roads. The trials were mostly for show; the men accused were convicted and put to death in vile ways. Their heads and other body parts were displayed on spikes along the “high road,” the main road between London and Edinburgh. The families of the dead returned to Scotland the only way they could: on the “low road.” Very grim stuff.

  Or some maintain that the ballad is more centrally about a Scottish prisoner in 1746, about to lose his head to the English, who believes he will return to his homeland only in death (the low road). There are other versions, but whatever interpretation you prefer, it is evident the song is not a frolic, and singers who treat it as such are misunderstanding the background, whatever the details of that background might be.

  Back in the pub, no one was talking to me yet, though the place was much more crowded for dinner. I couldn’t even get the man behind the bar to chat with me in spite of using my most obvious Southern American accent (lots of y’alls and soft, slow slurring, and dropped g’s). I suppose I must have sounded too much like someone from the neighborhood, like maybe from south Balmaha? Dinner was pretty good, but I just couldn’t seem to feel dry. I went to bed early, disappointed with Loch Lomond and a little discouraged. I’ll bet Boswell would have been ashamed of me. If he’d been here he’d have been back in the bar, knocking back a few and talking boisterously and cleverly, maybe grabbing the wench at the other end of the bar for a little shagging. Thinking about it really left me depressed.

  I woke up early. It was still dark outside, and the room was cold. I wanted to get on the road and get closer to Boswell and Johnson for the “real” portion of my journey. I read some in Johnson’s Journey and then went to breakfast. The tea was hot and good, and the food was cold and inedible. It was hard to taste the difference between the eggs and the beans. The mushrooms seemed to have been freshly hauled in from the outdoors right after the inn owner’s truck ran over them. Bad food and rain; ah, this was the Scotland I expected.

  But in fact the morning turned absolutely gorgeous: sunny, eggshell blue skies and a brisk, uplifting wind. It was as if I had stepped onto another planet. As I drove around the southern tip of the loch and then began to ascend the A82 along the popular western shores, I begin to appreciate why the loch has such a storied name. The waters gleamed in the light, not a ripple in view, the snow-capped mountains reflected in mirrorlike images; it was a gorgeous view. I pulled the car over to get a better look and encountered an older, white-haired gentleman from Nottingham, who told me he’d been to South Carolina—Myrtle Beach, of all places, which he called “the hottest place on the face of the earth.” He also had visited Chicago, which he found to be “the coldest place on the face of the earth.” We separated before he had an opportunity to tell me about the rainiest place on the face of the earth, though I suspect we were already there.

  My drive continued, slowly, as I enjoyed the views, the loch on my right and dozens of small but breathtakingly lovely waterfalls on the left. The road began climbing slightly, signifying the beginning of my arrival into the higher lands of Scotland. I wanted to stop for a late lunch in the picturesque little village of Cairndow at the northern tip of Loch Fyne. It was situated at the bottom of a very narrow one-lane road (I know this is getting repetitive, but it’s true) angled down a steep hill, and I confidently headed in that direction.

  Everything was fine for a hundred yards or so when I suddenly met an oncoming truck. Both of us were in the middle of the road because there was no where else to go. Even so, I immediately and instinctively tried to turn my car over to the right. Wrong thing to do. The truck also pulled to the right. We faced each other ever closer. I hit the brakes and stopped, bewildered and scared. The truck driver angrily swerved to my left and raced his engine as he whipped by me, passing within millimeters of my vehicle. I could feel his disgust. I resumed my trip down the hill, but my driving confidence plunged lower than Nessie’s belly.

  At the same time it seemed to me once more that I was having something of a twenty-first century adventure replete with surprises not unlike those Boswell and Johnson found on their eighteenth-century journey. That realization was a reminder that a trip isn’t about the planning; it’s about what happens while you’re busy planning. Yes, I know that’s a hoary cliché, but that’s because it’s true. This was, for me—even with experience traveling in the country previously—a largely new, unexplored land with new sights and challenges. The weight of Scottish history bears more strongly on me, and the joy of meeting up with Boswell and Johnson in Inveraray awaits. And if I can just remember to drive on the left I should be able to get there pretty soon.

  3

  Inveraray

  Boswell and Johnson arrived in Inveraray, one of the most important and entertaining stops on their journey, on the evening of October 23 following a rain-soaked trip from the west-coast village of Oban. The trip, the first leg of their eventual return to Edinburgh and the end of their journey, provoked some of Johnson’s most majestic and vivid prose:

  The weather was tempestuous.… The night came on while we had yet a great part of the way to go, though not so dark, but that we could discern the cataracts which poured down the hills, on one side, and fell into one general channel that ran with great violence on the other. The wind was loud, the rain was heavy, and the whistling of the blast, the fall of the shower, the rush of the cataracts, and the roar of the torrent, made a nobler chorus of the rough music of nature than it had ever been my chance to hear before.

  Think of it: the man who wrote this striking scene was an old man of sixtyfour, who traveled mounted on a pony scarcely able to carry his w
eight and had ridden through a cold downpour, eaten in wet clothes, and yet could write at the end of the day of what an amazing experience he had had!

  I arrived at Inveraray from the opposite direction under considerably nicer circumstances, including sunlight and a fully functioning automobile. Inveraray, perched at the edge of gorgeous Loch Fyne, was one of the first planned towns, although few living there at the time had any say about it. The duke of Argyll, whose castle—still in the family—sits only a few hundred yards from the town’s perimeter, decided in 1744 that he had grown tired of the ruinous old castle he was living in and wished to construct a new and grander home. That naturally meant he would require sufficient space for proper landscaping of the grounds, a consideration I’m sure we all can recognize. In this instance it meant moving the town of Inveraray, which was encroaching on his project, to a new site farther away. The “New Town” took shape a decade later, and by 1776, just as the American colonists were breaking open their rebellion, the new Royal Burgh of Inveraray was opening for business. It apparently was just in time, based on what Thomas Pennant saw when he came here in 1772. “This place,” he wrote, “will in time be magnificent; but at present the space between the front of the castle and the water is disgraced with the old town, composed of the most wretched hovels that can be imagined.”