SCOTLAND THE BRAVE

BY ALL ACCOUNTS, THE FIRST and self-proclaimed King of Great Britain, Charles James Stuart, was not exactly a bundle of fun, although one has to admit that he occasionally came up with one-line quips that could be seen as amusing in the right light. The most famous of these, of course, was “Cutte off his balls and swingge him from a tree”, spoken in King’s Lynn when the locals brought a cut-purse they had caught to his inn to ask him what they should do with him. This was in 1603, and it is remarkable in the fact that it is the first recorded example of “the people” telling a ruling and reigning monarch that they would not obey him. (The cut-purse was pilloried for a week in the stocks, and kept his balls, as far as one knows.)


HISTORY, HOWEVER, HAS NOT MADE MUCH MENTION of a couple of other ho-ho-jesty comments James made, and this is probably due to the fact that he was such a boring, dismal wet blanket. No other king of England has ever gone to such lengths to abolish buggery, calling it one of those “horrible crimes which ye are bound in conscience never to forgive” or to ban smoking, which he described as a “branch of drunkenness” and the “root of all sins”. Strange then, that when introduced to a young lady of sixteen who was fluent in Greek, Latin and Hebrew and had been “groomed”, as they say nowadays, to be his mistress, his only question was (I am cleaning this up a little bit) “These are rare attainments for a damsel, but does she shag?”

BUT THE SMARTEST OBSERVATION MADE BY THE GOOD STUART had to do with eating oysters. He reportedly stated, “He was a bold man who first swallowed an oyster”. One wonders whether our Scots of today will have such cleverness. This is because the elections in 2010 will see the renewed bitterness over constitutional issues between England and Scotland that have remained unresolved for three hundred years, unless the Labour party can manage to make a deal with the Plaid Cymru MPs or with those unpronounceable chaps from Northern Ireland. And so much of this will have to do with fisheries that a Conservative victory may mean independence for Scotland So, ironically, it will most likely be Scotland that holds the knife to Gordon Brown’s breast. Now our politicians will be indulging in “live” debates on television, and therefore I am presenting (above) a photograph of the bags under the eyes of the leaders of all three major parties after a grueling political campaign. Consider this a public service.