Hoots & Havers with James Irvine Robertson December 2004

Society is more complex than it was during the days of Moses so it might be going too far to abolish all laws save these five, but legislators should not feel it an achievement to enact a new law but rather feel a sense of shame, firstly because something is not going right if it requires a law to regulate it and secondly because it adds to the complication and expense of our lives. The perfect politician should be a mouse-like creature who lurks unseen in the national undergrowth, slaving to make the progress of our lives easier by flattening the social speed bumps that interfere with our journey. Unfortunately they often prefer to create bumps and bellow proudly from the rooftops about it.

This particular distress comes from hearing that the sale of swords is to be banned. It may be that louche elements in the central belt use the product of squashed beer cans from the Philippines to slit each other's gizzards, but a blanket ban will do more than discourage these folk. I know several people who have laboured for years to learn the ancient art of sword-smithing and now make beautiful reproductions of broadswords etc which sell for many hundreds of pounds to Americans in search of their heritage and similar collectors. If an exception is not made for such cases I shall study hard to discover some significant difference in the policy of the political parties that will persuade me that my vote would be better placed in one box than another. Perhaps it is time to vote Tory. Of all the parties the Tories are the most mouse-like. Particularly in Scotland it is quite hard to discover whether they still exist at all.

I spent a bit of time transcribing a document the other day. It was a copy, written in 1845, of a document copied in 1820. The 1820 copy was a copy of another copy written in 1753. This copied an older document that was very difficult to read, so the copier said, of one that was written about 1715. This was not a copy at all but an original. Its author, as a boy, had talked to an old man who, as a boy, had read a Book that had been burnt in a fire in Meggernie Castle in about 1650.

So the thing I worked on was a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy cobbled together from information provided by an old man who had read an original copy more than half a century earlier. Since the Book was the product of some fifteen generations of oral history and written in 'Old Gallick or Celtick character', I didn't suppose that a copy here or there would make much difference to my copy.

Some of it is rollicking stuff and not, so far as I know, recorded elsewhere. The following paragraphs, for instance, tell the tale of the 80-year old chief of the Clan Donnachaidh going to the Court of King David II in 1355. It's quite nice to imagine the route that his last journey must have taken and it also shows that banning swords is not the answer to unprovoked violence. There's a good name for the baddie, too.

'Duncan, desirous to have the whole or some part of his large possessions secured to him and his posterity by written rights from the Crown, repaired to Court which was then at Scone or at Perth. He had his enemies but it seems they could not prevail against his favour with the King. His business was finished of an evening, and next morning he was to pay his court and receive Charters from the King's own hand.

'Besides other occasional attendants he always had twelve chosen servants about his person but one of them was a traitor, Blair by name, who was bribed to destroy his master. This he actually accomplished for when Duncan was getting himself dressed in the morning for his appearance at Court, Blair with his fist struck a knife into the crown of his head, and then attempted to escape, but his master drove a chair at him which broke his back and Kenneth McGilivie, another of the servants, dispatched the traitor with a spear.

All this was hushed up for the time. Duncan immediately caused his head to be bound up with bandages and caps and went to Court. The King, observing his countenance as well as the tying up of his head, asked of him what was the matter and he answered that indeed the Gentlemen of the Court had made him sit up and drink more than was fit for a man of his age.

'He received his papers and departed but had not gone far from court when his People were obliged to put him in a litter; his papers were laid under him, he ordered his men to carry him to Dull and not to slacken their speed whether he was dead or alive and, if he should die by the way, his body was not to be touched till his son Robert should arrive. Robert found the charters and buried his father at Dull where his grave is shown to this day as a rarity for its length.'