COLUMN: The day Hansard had bother with a Glasgow accent
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
Stone's Throw by Jamie Stone
Here’s a fact I bet you didn’t know. In the United States, which man’s bust is most commonly found? Abraham Lincoln? George Washington? Andrew Carnegie? Nope to all three.
Carnegie gives the clue. Robert Burns was his favourite poet, and when he built his many public libraries throughout the United States, he gave orders that each one was to have a bust of Scotland’s national Bard.
What a joy to be in Embo for their Burns supperthe other week. Boy, was it fun - the first since 1959 apparently. You wouldn’t think so from the way it was run so very professionally.
Of course, Embo’s own Willie Mackay, a kenspeckle councillor north of the Ord, was there. He was, as ever, a superb compere and his Holy Willie’s prayer is about the best you’ll ever see the length and breadth of the world every January when folk gather to celebrate the life of the Bard.
This said, I have been to one or two Burns suppers further south that weren’t nearly so successful.
I remember one where one of the performers (a Glasgow chiel) had drunk a bit too much of the good stuff before he embarked on Tam O’Shanter. Let’s just say the audience were less than amused.
I also remember another in Northern Ireland where the piper had his kilt on back to front. The Irish being the Irish, that didn’t prevent it from being a riotous night.
It’s a long time ago now but it too, like Embo, will stick in the wee grey cells as a good one.
Apologies to Embo folk, but I am going to repeat two thoughts that I shared that night. The first is that the poem we all learnt at school, To a Mouse, has a deeper meaning.
The Lowland Clearances had a sad impact on the south of Scotland. Many small tenant farmers were evicted and forced either to move to Glasgow and other cities - or had no choice but to emigrate.
In the poem, Burns laments the fact that a plough has just made a mouse homeless. To my mind, this is a reference to what he had seen happening all around him. I may be wrong, but it is a thought.
The second thing I shared with the Embo folk was a tale of Alan Brown MP, a Scottish Member of Parliament with a very thick Glesga accent. You and I, gentle reader, can understand him. But just as with Robert Burns, many of the English in the Chamber have trouble deciphering it.
“Aye, yer faert man!", said Alan Brown to the then Secretary of State for Scotland, David Mundell, one day during a rowdy session of Scottish Questions.
Alan was sitting in front of me and, for the record, he is a man that I like. I watched with interest as, a few minutes later, a doorkeeper in a tailcoat and white bow tie approached him with a note from Hansard (the good people who take down for perpetuity every word an MP says).
Puzzled, Alan opened the envelope and read its contents. Then he leant back and roared with laughter. I tapped him on the shoulder from behind and asked: "What was the joke?"
He passed back the note from Hansard: “Sorry, Mr Brown, we couldn’t quite make out what you said. Did you call the Secretary of State a fairy?"
I believe Robert Burns, himself, would have enjoyed that short tale.
Jamie Stone, a Tain resident, is the MP for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross.
