Category Archives: Uncategorized

Day 6: Fish and Ferry Fouls

Posted on by
2

The Burns museum the day before set us up well for the shenanigans of Day 6. One of The Bard’s most famous lines says “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men gang aft agley.”

Before leaving Inverary I dashed to the SPAR shop for some Fishermen’s Friends cough drops, famous the world over. And who did I see coming in as I was going out but a familiar face from the Inverary Pipe Band video?! One of the drummers gave me a smile and nod. But there wasn’t time to converse. The tour was waiting for our day out in Glencoe and the long drive up to Oban so we could take the luxurious Isle of Mull ferry over to, well, the Isle of Mull, and spend the night in the harbor town of Tobermoray.

Glencoe is a world-famous story, but there’s a lot of rubbish added over the generations about Scots and English, Catholics and Protestants, and what a hero/cad Charlie (as in Bonnie Prince) was. It’s complicated; even in the 1600s being late for a meeting and not having your paperwork filled out could result in tragedy—in this case, 38 deaths.

Short version: all the Highland clans were required to sign an oath of allegiance to William of Orange (as in the guy from William and Mary College) by Jan 1, 1692. The MacDonald chief arrived late to the wrong place. He had to go from Fort William to Inverary (where we had spent the night last night) and got there Jan. 6, begging to sign the oath. Told everything was okay once he’d signed, he went back to his clan. A few weeks later, 120 soldiers showed up to be garrisoned in his town. Well okay, Highland hospitality is legendary and the soldiers weren’t causing any harm. The MacDonald chief took some people from the Campbell clan into his house. What he didn’t know was that on Feb. 12, a letter arrived telling the commanding officer to “extirpate” everyone under 70 years of age.

Here’s another thing about Scottish hospitality: it is sacrosanct. Nobody can survive outside on a mountain in the winter in Scotland; people were obligated to take each other in, and when you shared a fire and a meal with people, you were obligated to be at peace with them. Otherwise the world would fall apart.

Which it did, because at 5 a.m. the commanding officer killed the MacDonald clan chief and several of his sons; the wife and youngest son escaped as the garrisoned soldiers set the village on fire.

Many people escaped, although it’s not known how many died running through the snow up a mountain slope to get to Appin. Another group fled into a place called the Lost Valley and hid there.  

The ones that did escape were probably warned by the soldiers billeted in their houses. One story goes that a child heard a soldier telling the family dog quite loudly that he shouldn’t sleep in the house that night, it might be bad for him if it caught fire. Another story says a piper from the visiting regiment went out on a hillside and played a funeral dirge. Who knows, but the fact that 38 people were killed in a village of more than 200 suggests that even official orders couldn’t change the Highland code of ethics for some of those boys.

The aftermath of Glencoe’s Massacre was the destruction of the clan system, which had been the strategic plan all along. If you couldn’t trust Highland hospitality to hold, you may as well barbeque a human and eat flesh. Life as they knew it was over. So the Highland Chiefs did what American parents did during the Civil War: divided up their sons to ensure family survival. Oldest sons went to London to get educations and understanding of the new world order under William. The others stayed on the land, until their brothers’ sons came home Englishmen in thought and deed and told everybody to clear out and make way for sheep farms. The line from the Massacre to the Highland Clearances is a straight one.

The interpretation center tells the tragic story in more detail, but also highlights the Glen as a national historic preserve with unique layers dating back to the ice age. https://www.nts.org.uk/visit/places/glencoe/highlights/visitor-centre

Everyone was deep in thought as we drove on through scenic mountains to Oban, where we arrived early enough to catch the 3 pm ferry. Alas, the car before us got the last berth so we had to wait until the 5:30 sailing. No matter; that meant we could ransack the delectable chocolatier, plus the only charity shop Oban had. Cassidy and I spent a happy hour in there and returned to a van groaning with chocolate from the rest of the group’s purchases.

Which turned out to be fortuitous. The ferry broke down. Goodbye, Isle of Mull with its luxury bar and restaurant. Hello, small old rusting thing with a coffee vending machine grabbed from somewhere that transported fisher folk and sent to us for 6:30. By the time we got to Tobermoray, we were all a little tired.

So finding the hotel had muffed the room arrangements made me downright cranky. The 20-something behind the counter put on a facial expression that said louder than any words, “I don’t get paid enough to deal with American Karens” and the battle was on. Finally I said, as patiently as I could, “Madam, the bus driver you are trying to put in a double bed with this young lad has known him four days. That’s a little soon for them to be sleeping together, don’t you think?” And the tour members burst into laughter. So did the child behind the counter—and then she fixed the room arrangements.

We meandered Tobermoray for an hour since they couldn’t give us dinner until 8. Sigh… another hazard of the late ferry. But everyone was in good spirits when we sat down to—

–the worst meal in the history of Scottish cuisine. Five of us had ordered the hake. We received bowls of baked beans with a potato halved atop the beans and a whitefish filet on the potato. It was, in a word, vile. So vile, even Gareth wouldn’t finish everyone’s portions. We began to laugh and come up with names for this inventive dish. Sculpt it into shapes. Anything but eat it.

Fortunately, there was sticky toffee pudding for dessert. And everyone still had loads of chocolate from the sweet shop. And the hotel had a lovely bar.

People waddled off to bed a little later that night. Did I mention the hotel had a lovely bar?

And darkness fell about 2 in the morning, because we were farther north now, and we slept.

Pig, Towel, Goose: GO!

Posted on by
3

Sorry about yesterday. My presence was required at multiple events in town, usually hefting luggage and smiling. Let’s pick up with our heroes’ adventures today, shall we?

After a hearty breakfast at Liz’s place we meandered down through the Irish back roads to the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum. (Think Williamsburg, but Irish.) Andrea loved the gardens, Maria loved the church, Cassidy loved the sweet shop, and Mr. Fox loved the farm.

Mr. Fox, I should say, picked up his very own fox puppet at the ginormous Giant’s Causeway gift shop the day before. The little guy fit perfectly on his paw, and when I passed them on the Folk Museum grounds, Mr. Fox and Zahnke party of three were enjoying the sights tremendously, with Mr Fox-the-puppet’s wee fox puppet making erudite comments.

Maria and I also passed a man walking alone in a blue sweatshirt emblazoned with a school logo. Schools in Scotland require uniforms (public or private). He asked if we had seen “the blue uniform school children” and we pointed him in the right direction. He thanked us and walked the other way. Don’t judge; teaching is a difficult profession.

Andrea and I spent a great deal of time sorting through linen dishtowels at the Folk Museum shop, trying to parse statements like “conceptually designed in Scotland manufactured in Indonesia.” After spending the morning learning how people harvest and weave flax, we were looking for something a little more… local? Although I understand the age-old dilemma between local quality goods and prices tourists will pay: you can’t sell authentic stuff at bulk prices. It’s an omnipresent problem in cultural heritage.

I bought my dad a plastic Rubik’s Cube with multicolored sheep on it, made in China. C’est la vie.

As a chair caner, I had to check out the basket weaver’s place, where we found a sweet story waiting. The big goose in the center of the caning area was made by the basket weaver in honor of one of the Folk Museum’s volunteers, a guy whose nickname and life symbol was a goose. The volunteer had spent more than twenty years working with the museum.

And of course, who can resist trying on a mummer’s mask shaped like a pig? When I was doing my PhD in Newfoundland, people would show up with masks while doing the traditional holiday mummering (when you go house to house dressed up in disguise and play music and dance; think Christmas caroling with a Halloween twist). But none were as cool as this pig.

The Transport Museum is a separate building, built in a huge spiral, and just as we pulled in so did about six busloads of school children. After about an hour even Mr. Fox–who was thoroughly enjoying the day out–had seen enough of trains, planes, and automobiles–not to mention small children in school uniforms. But where were Lulu and Fiona? We had a ferry to catch.

The mystery was made more perplexing because Mr. Fox and his fox puppet were safely in the van. Gareth tried texting his aunt and grandmother, but no answer.

I went in search of them, and found them trying to hurry up a path blocked by six busloads of schoolchildren being paired up by their minders after having been told to use the toilets before the buses drove them home.

Since Fiona and Lulu had also wanted to use the toilet, and the occupancy rate at the museum gift shop was one child per square inch, they had been directed to the toilets at the bottom of the spiral ramp, three stories down, where the classic cars were kept. Fifteen minutes down, fifteen minutes up.

We made the ferry with a few minutes to spare, and ate dinner back at the Stranraer hotel of the Victorian elevator. Actually, I forgot one of the funny stories about this elevator from our first day in Stranraer, before we went over to Liz’s ceilidh barn. When we arrived, the staff handed out keys and pointed us to the wee lift. What we didn’t grasp, or they failed to tell us, was that the room numbers starting with 4 were not on the fourth floor. There was no fourth floor. The 400s rooms were evenly divided across a recently renovated wing of the hotel, 401-409 on the second floor, 410-419 on the third floor.

Complicating these numbers is that Scotland numbers its floors differently: when you get into an elevator, you will see G, 1, 2, etc. This translates in American to G=1, 1=2, 2=3. So if you ask if something is on the first floor, the staff will respond, “No, Madam, on the ground floor.” Which is always good for a couple of “who’s on first” kind of routines, Scots style.

But because the elevator at this hotel was tiny, we shoved Fiona, Lulu, and Gareth into it with their luggage and sent them unaccompanied to look for rooms 409 and 412. As the hotel had an influx of other guests arriving, I was lining the luggage up for our next team of the Meadors and Maria to get into the elevator, when the doors opened and I saw Lulu, Fiona, and Gareth still in it, arguing. Fiona was saying “But there isn’t a fourth floor, they must have given us the wrong keys” and Lulu was saying “if I get out and ask at the desk we’ll lose the elevator” and Gareth was staring straight out the elevator door with a glassy expression and then the doors closed again.

A minute later they opened, revealing the Zahnke women engaged in a lively discussion of what the hell was going on here. Gareth had removed his hat and was resting one elbow on the stack of luggage.

All’s well as ends well. We had supper, and fell into our respective beds in rooms on the third and fourth floor of the hotel, labeled second and third floors, bearing numbers in the 400s. And there was sleep by 9 pm. Americans abroad: we know how to party.