“And there is the understanding, born of repeated exile, that everything that seems solid and valuable is ultimately perishable, while everything that is intangible — knowledge most of all — is potentially everlasting.” Bret Stephens.

Having reverence for books, wisdom and knowledge is vital.

Controversial article? Jews are often smart. Tell me something I don’t know. This was an idea I thought about and discussed with my father almost 50 years ago. He said, and I think his approach has great wisdom, that the Jews had an ancient tradition of literacy (the most ancient in the world) and a great reverence for books, wisdom, and knowledge. Other peoples who similarly have developed or maintained a strong tradition of academic discipline and curiosity have excelled as well: we see this among many peoples but especially the ancient Greeks, Enlightenment Scots, Chinese and others. I consider myself an intellectual and I suppose I am. But both my father and I benefitted from having an education that was partially Jewish through our many Jewish teachers and professors. Next to the Jews, I would say many of my best teachers were Jesuits or Jesuit-educated professors. My grandparents were talented and hard-working people with little formal education not even finishing grade school and going to work as early as age eight. So my grandfather was (apparently) a talented linguist (he could communicate in Hindi, English, Punjabi and some French (as well as his native Gaelic and Scots) but he could not read most of these languages or write them. He was, however, an avid reader of newspapers and periodically and fascinated by geography, maps and atlases. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of baseball traditions and stories (he must have heard thousands of games on the radio and seen hundreds in person) and he remembered dates, names of battles, regiments etc. He also loved music and enjoyed Rachmaninoff, John McCormack whom he saw perform in person. But I don’t think he ever read an entire book in his life. So he knew something about music, poetry and songs but almost nothing about literature. He was very knowledgeable about Socialism and Marxism because he flirted with Socialism/Marxism and therefore Communism as a young man. He escaped the influence of the Red Clyde, however, and by the time I knew him he was a staunch anti-Communist. From my grandfather I developed a love of Scottish songs, military music and baseball. From my parents I was instilled with a reverence for books, music, languages and higher culture. I was aware it was a great privilege to be able to go to school and to afford to buy books and do some travel. Too often people are narrowly educated and stop thinking and reading into adulthood. One problem of education today is that it has become so easy to get (like a supply of freshwater) that young people take for granted the highly subsidized leisure time they have to study and improve their minds. As a teacher, I see the biggest difference between students is one of concentration and discipline and reverence for schooling and education. If one does not have good discipline and respect for education then one will not progress very far. I can’t understand how some people think they can learn a subject in depth without listening and without reading and studying.

By Richard K. Munro

Rome conquered and endured due to its organization, superior communication systems, superior professional military and its basic legal and economic stability. One great weakness of Rome, however, was its lack of a formal system of executive succession. During the era of “Good Emperors,” the Emperors adopted the person thought best to succeed. This fell apart when Marcus Aurelius died and was succeeded by his son Commodus. Also for some reason, Rome stopped developing economically and technologically. Theoretical steam engines were invented but never used except as a parlor trick. The Romans had presses for olive oil and could have easily developed the printing press but did not. Perhaps their dependence on slave labor hampered or discouraged technological and economic innovation. Gibbon was convinced that Christianity destroyed the Empire by destroying its military virtue.

But the root cause, I believe is that philosophically and morally pagan Roman society was rotten to the core. Sex was for erotic pleasure only and the rearing and education of children were neglected. The Romans were extremely hedonistic and dedicated themselves to Bread and Circuses. In Rome by the 3rd century, there were over 180 festivals a year -which meant free food and games. I believe the Romans stopped thinking and working. The barbarians were numerous and warlike and increasing armed and trained in the Roman fashion. We forget that many of the barbarian leaders were Roman citizens and had been officers in the Roman army.

Nations and civilizations which discover how much easier and soft it is to live for ephemeral pleasures without worrying about anything permanent in the world of the mind and the soul, soon find their mental muscles turn to mush and they cannot think about difficult economic, social and political problems. They prefer emotional outbursts instead of thought and sustained the intellectual effort. Uneducated, indisciplined people become incapable of organizing their experience into a logical pattern and become impotent to plan or train for changes in the future or very important to recall the lessons of the past.

In short, only the educated are free and the uneducated will lack the wisdom to sustain and make a more perfect Union.  Surely, this must be considered a warning to our own “permanent” and “highly-advanced” civilization. In the years to come we may find out how fragile our civilization really is.

By Richard K. Munro

Robert Burns, the Bard of Auld Ayr, has been compared to Theocritus , Mark Twain, Finley Peter Dunne, José Hernandez -author of Martin Fierro-Shaw and Shakespeare. Burns was a voluminous reader in English, Scots, and French on the scale of a Jefferson though he had little Latin and less Gaelic. The Principal of Edinburgh University, at the peak of the Scottish Enlightenment, said “Burns was “one of the most extraordinary men I ever met with, his poetry surprised me very much , his prose surprised me still more and his conversation surprised me more than both his poetry and his prose.” As a peerless songwriter Burns has been compared to Stephen Foster, the Beatles, Lerner and Loewe, all of whom he influenced. But what importance can Burns, a romantic poet of the 18th century Scottish Enlightenment have to us in this modern unromantic technical commercial world that seems to love not honor, nor romance, nor poetry, nor courage nor art? Why is love for Burns reborn every generation from the Victoria falls, Scotland to Victoria, Canada? From Tobermory on the isle of Mull to Moscow, Shanghai and Taipei ? From Perth, gateway to the Highlands, to Perth, Australia ? From Edinburgh to Dunedin, New Zealand? From London to New York from Atlanta, to Dallas, Texas and San Francisco? What then is the peculiar prophetic flavor of the poetic wine of Robert Burns ? What is the secret of his enduring popularity?

When Burns appeared the spirit of Scotland was divided and at a low ebb. King Edward I, (Long Shank)s had long before ,in 1296, removed her symbols of royalty and nationality the famous Stone of Scone or Lia Fail. In his rage against the independent minded Scots Long Shanks removed a prophecy in Latin and Gaelic from the Lia Fail or stone of destiny. But the text was preserved in secret and it was rhymed in the Saxon tongue by Sir Walter Scott:

Unless the prophets faithless be
and the Seer’s words be vain
Where’re is found this sacred stone
The Scottish race shall reign!

From Cromwell’s invasion to the Glen Coe Massacre and the bloody aftermath of Culloden, Scotland experienced on disaster after another including internecine religious strife. Scotland suffered great hunger, poverty and humiliation. The Highland Clearances, had begun. “I remember the day I left my home, I had no choice I had to go , o Fuadach na Gaidheal-scattering of the Gael am goirt agus searbh –the pain and the bitterness -but the blood is strong and the heart is Highland. The brig Caledonia lies stormbound on the Lawrence awaiting God’s hand to see her free. Slowly gliding river widening her final journey homeward {to Scotland} without me. “Slan leibh Alba gu brath! Fare ye well forever my Scotland! The heart of the Scottish Highlands bled deep flowing out into to sea like a river never to return, and it was Lochaber No more for many a heart!

Smollet has written:

…immediately after the decisive action at Culloden the Duke of Cumberland took possession of Inverness; where six and thirty deserters…were ordered to be executed…he set off detachments on all hands to hunt down the fugitives and lay waste the country with first and sword. The castles of Glengary and Lochiel were plundered and burned; every house, hut or habitation met with the same fate without distinction and all the cattle and provisions were carried off; the men were either shot upon the mountains like wild beasts or put to death in cold blood without form of trial; the women after having seen their husbands and their fathers murdered were subjected to brutal violation and then turned out naked with their children to starve on the barren heaths. One whole family was enclosed in a barn and consumed in ashes. Those ministers of vengeance were so alert in the execution of their office that in a few days there was neither house cottage man nor beast to be seen within the compass of fifty miles. All was ruin, silence and desolation.”

Prince Charlie was gone and he would not come back again. “Burned are our homes exile and death, scattered the loyal men.”

Was there one free heart who remembered the Declaration of Arbroath?

For so long as one hundred men remain alive, we shall never under any conditions submit to the domination of the English. It is not for glory or riches or honours that we fight but only for liberty, which no good man will consent to lose but with his life!

Was there one true Scottish heart who remembered Barbour’s Bruce?\

Ah Freedom is a noble thing.
..freedom all solace to man
gives…may nocht knaw …
the anger, na the wrechit doom that is

Yes, there was one. A lad born in Ayr named Robert Burns.

To go to that rude cottage of Ayr the birthplace of Burns so near the Brig o’ Doon, is to experience a secular epiphany as to the essential equality of all humanity. It is to experience awe at the true mystery of talent and genius. It is an affirmation at what secret treasures can be found hidden anywhere among any class, gender or race IF individuals are given a proper upbringing and decent education and chance to develop, discover and explore their God-given gifts.

As Burns’ father knew it is hard to be poor . At the age of 19 Burns’ father was a homeless migrant farm laborer but he was proud he could read, write and cipher and always carried the Guid Auld Beuk (the Bible) with him. Burns said of his father “even his faults leaned towards virtue’s side.” Despite the challenges of grinding poverty, Agnes Brown (Mrs. Burns) and her husband kept their entire family of seven under one roof and surrounded the children’s lives with care and tender love. Both mother and father displayed a piety that was neither excessive nor harsh unlike the extreme Calvinism that was the mode of the established clergy of his time.

In Burn’s house physical labor was incessant, food and fuel were scarce. But education and religion were not neglected; they were held rather by the Burns family as an essential, sacred duty. And Mrs Burns “sang so sweet” Rab oft “couldna” sleep as she crooned “the Auld Scots sangs” to him. Burns had no shame of his very humble origin:

From scenes like these old Scotia’s grandeur springs
That makes her loved at home, revered abroad
Princes and lords are but the breath of kings
An honest man’s the noblest work of God.

As John Masefield has written

I have seen flowers in stony places
and kindness done by men with ugly faces
and the gold cup won by the worst horse at the races;
So I trust too.

Wordsworth recognized that Burn’s leading characteristic was his utter sincerity and almost absolute truthfulness. Wordsworth acknowledged few masters but of Burns he said:

Whose light I hailed when it first shone
and showed my youth
How verse may build a princely throne
On humble truth.

Indeed this is the basis of Burn’s power. Burns saw through the hollowness and pretence of the men and women he met, especially the established clergy and propertied upper classes whose rank Burns said was just , after all, ” the gunieas’s stamp”.

couplit to foul thirldom…
{O we} should think freedom more to
praise tha all the gold in world that is.!

Sir Walter Scott, who met Burns as a boy at Adam Fergusson’s home in Edinburgh, said meeting Burns was like meeting Vergil in person. He described Burns as a man of “dignified plainness and simplicity…his person was strong and robust…there was a strong expression of sense and shrewdness ..his eye was large and of a dark cast, which glowed (I say literally glowed)…when he spoke with feeling or interest. I never saw such another eye in a human head, though I have seen the most distinguished men of my time.”

Oh, yes, journey to Burn’s humble birthplace near the Auld Kirk of Alloway, where Burn’s father is buried next to his Agnes Brown his beloved bride. Journey to walk the scenes of Tam O’ Shanter’s fancies with “Cutty Sark”. Cross the Brig O’Doon like Tam -before it is too late! Go to Poosie Nancy’s in – Mauchline- to have a dram in Burn’s corner as I have done. Souther Johnnie’s convivial spirit dwells there and bids Rob to toast one more time and share a funny story!

Journey to the graves -side by side- of Holy Willy and Mary Morrison -the toast o’ the town- to come close to the truth which fascinated, inspired and instructed Lincoln.

It is not well-known today but Lincoln “could quote …large portions of Burn’s Poems from memory.” Lincoln, had many immigrant Scottish friends, such as his partner Judge Stuart and it is said that Lincoln had a great talent for mimicry. It is said Lincoln could render Burns perfectly with an authentic “Scotch accent.” Lincoln delighted in Tam O’Shanter and the story of Brig O’Doon. He loved the patriotic poetry of Burns and he was surely moved by the anti-slavery sympathy of Burns.

This is from Burns’ Slave’s Lament:

It was in sweet Senegal
that my foes did me enthral
For the lands of Virginia -ginia O!
Torn from that lovely shore
and Must never see it more
and alas I am weary, weary, O!
***
the Burden I must bear
while the cruel scourge I fear
In the lands of Virginia -inia O!
and to think of friends dear
with the bitter, bitter tear
and alas ! I am weary, weary O!

That Lincoln would have been acquainted with the life of one of his favorite poets is beyond doubt and there was much in Burn’s biography with which the young Lincoln could strongly identify except perhaps Burn’s predilection to strong drink which Lincoln left to his partner Billy Herndon.

Burns inspired the small and helped them remember the people from which they came: ; women reformers and teachers, naturalists like John Muir and Rachel Carson, pioneer farmers in the outback, Manitoba, Canada and the Ohio Valley. Burns cheered the hearts of Master plasterer Jos Munro working in White Star Ships and Cunard Line Ships, Montreal, New York and London. It is said he always carried a volume of Burns with him. Shipmasters at sea used Burns as a sort of Scottish catechism and read him to a young cabin boy sent to sea for truancy: Thomas Munro, Sr., my grandfather. He told me how the Scottish sea captain circa 1895 had few books -the Bible, some volumes of Walter Scott, some Shakespeare and Burns and he read them out loud to the boy apprentices and yes, after a few drams would sing some of the songs and these songs and poems my father and grandfather taught to us. Burns was carried in the heart and on the lips of Scottish Rabbi’s in the temples of the Gorbals, the ancient Jewish quarter of Glasgow and by ministers, soldiers, doctors in India and Egypt. Burns was carried on lip and in the heart through the Kalahari Desert and on the Zambezi River by David Livingstone, and by missionary priests in China. The Chinese scholar Yuan Kejia has said -for Burns is much loved in China in translation- “Burns is great because he is just like all of us. He loves what we love and hates what we all hate. He stands for the democratic spirit .”

Burns inspired railway engineers and football players of the River Plate at Munro, Argentina. In two world wars Burns inspired and united Churchill and the common Jock and Donald fighting the foe at Ypres, Dunkirk or El Alamein. My own grandfather remembered Burn’s Night January 25 1915 in the trenches of Ypres. Their company commander Captain Dick Donald Porteous of the 1st Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders sang Scottish songs of Burns as well as songs in Spanish and French while playing the guitar and accompanied by the “box” (accordion) after interludes of piping.

Burns inspired the great connecting them to the small: Walter Scott, Byron, Queen Victoria, Gladstone and the common men and women of Highlands and Lowlands who roamed the world o’er.

Thomas Jefferson admired the poetry and literature of Scotland greatly even to the point of reading Gaelic poetry in translation:” the words a’told and the writing bold: the tale the tells of the love twixt Diarmad and Grainne.” Jefferson was so moved by MacPherson’s Fingal he wrote “I am not ashamed to own that I think this rude bard of the North -the greatest Poet that has ever existed.” Ironically, Jefferson was referring referring to MacPherson’s Ossian- not Burns-. Jefferson came to admire Burns far more and gave Washington a book of Burns’ verses that is still on display at Mt. Vernon.

Burns was a lover who could match fellow Scot James Bond kiss for kiss and conquest for conquest. Young Robert dearly loved the lasses but he praised as well their minds, their characters and respected their opinions. He was a loving husband and father.

His close friend Maria Riddel said:

“others, perhaps, may have ascended to prouder heights in the regions of Parnassus but none certainly ever outshone Burns in the charms…of fascinating conversation, the spontaneous eloquence of social argument or the unstudied poignancy of brilliant repartee…his form manly; his action energy itself…such was the irresistible power of attraction that encircled him though his appearance and manner were always peculiar he never failed to delight and excel… his features were stamped with the hardy character of independence….his voice…sonorous … captivated the ear with the melody of poetic numbers, perspicacity of …reasoning or ardent sallies of enthusiastic patriotism….he as seldom, indeed never, implacable in his resentments…he was candid and manly in the avowal of his errors and HIS AVOWAL was a reparation…”

Others Englished their names and manners , kept silent or kow-towed to snobbish landed gentry in fear but Burns courageously spoke out for justice, for mercy, for humanity, for memory, for respect. He elevated the views of the common man:

What though on hamely fare we dine
Wear hoddin grey an a’ that
Gie fools their silks and knaves their wine
A man’s a man for a’ that.

Burns spoke of for Scotland’s law and about days of infamy:

The lovely lass of Inverness
nae joy nor pleasure can she see
For e’en to morn cries Alas!
And ay the saut tear blin’s her e’e:
Drumossie moor, Drumossie day
A waefu’ day it was to me!
For there I lost my father dear
My father dear and brethren three
Their winding sheet the bluidy clay
Their graves are growin green to see
and by them lies the dearest lad
That ever blest a woman’s e’e
Now wae to thee , thou cruel lord
A bluidy man I trow thou be
For monie a heart thou has mad sair
That ne’er did wrang to thine or thee!

That cruel lord was the German the Duke of Cumberland; in other age the cruel lord was Kaiser Bill or Adolf Hitler.

Burns furthermore wrote:

What force or guile could not subdue, through many warlike ages
Is wrought now by a coward few
For hireling traitor wages,
The English steel we could disdain,
Secure in Valor’s station
But English Gold has been our band
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation.
****
Why should we idly waste our prime
repeating our oppressions?
Come rouse to arms! ‘Tis now the time
To punish past transgressions
‘Tis said the Kings can do no wrong
Och, their murderous deeds deny it
and since from us their power is sprung
We have a right to try it.
Now each true patriot’s song shall be
Welcome Death or Libertie….
Those despots long have trode us down
and Judges are their engines
such wretched minions of a Crown…
The Golden Age we’ll then revive
each man will be a brother
in harmony we all shall live
and share the earth together,
In virtue trained, enlightened Youth
Will love each fellow creature
and future years shall prove the truth
That man is good by nature
{Given half a chance!}

Burns questioned the legitimacy of the 1707 Union with England. How could it be legitimate when most Scots had been disenfranchised or non-jurors ? Burns, like his contemporary Irishman William Paterson, signer of the U.S. Constitution, recognized the Union as an unequal and often corrupt partnership ; a crooked political deal between German Princes and Tory lords more akin to a rape than a marriage of mutual consent.

Nonetheless, London was where the money and patronage were. And “English was the language of the banks and the long-range guns.” The elite of the Scottish Enlightenment tried to out-English the English and had become for all intents and purposes North Britons and inhabitants of northern province of the English Empire. Many were of the Anglican Communion (Scottish Episcopalians).

Among these learned anglicized cosmopolitans appeared four men from the North forever proud to be Scotsmen . If strangers look on Scotland as nation -with its own flag, garb, unique musical tradition, legal system, currency, history, culture and today proudly its own parliament, we owe this primarily to four men (and the good women behind them): James MacPherson , Adam Ferguson, Robert Burns and Walter Scott.

The greatest and most unexpected of these four and the causeway between Highlands and Lowlands, Old World and New, was Robert Burns. Burns poetry and prose is infused with the enlightened democratic influences of Locke, Ferguson, and Jefferson. MacPherson and Ferguson represented the link to Scotland’s Gaelic heritage and predated Burns. All of the Scottish Enlightenment was an influence on Burns as was the Scottish poet Allan Ramsay but Burns always remained a man of independent mind. Burns reflected the thought and philosophy the Scottish School of Common Sense led by Thomas Reid and the Rev. Adam Fergusson, the greatest Highland teacher and thinker of his day, the former chaplain to the Black Watch, whom Burns knew at Edinburgh. Ferguson’s History of Civil Society is a remarkable book, the first English language book ever use the word “civilization” . Ferguson’s history is a defense of the inestimable value of traditional cultures everywhere, and by implication Scottish and Highland culture. ” The boasted refinements”, wrote Ferguson , “of the polished age, are not divested of danger… They open a door, perhaps ,to disaster…they enervate the minds of those who are placed to defend them…they reduce the military spirit of entire nations….{preparing.}..mankind for a government of force.”

Ferguson influenced Burns deeply with the Gaelic concept of the “dualchas araid”: -a splendid ancient heritage -a priceless pearl- which should be preserved and passed on . In his tour of the Highlands Burns came to realize the Highlander was not a savage but an ancient Christian people imbued with concept of “siobhaltachd”(civility), Highland hospitality, generosity, deep humanity and courtesy which owed as much to Celtic heritage as to the church and Greco-Roman ideas of civilitas . Ferguson believed in capital and progress but was concerned that “in every commercial state, notwithstanding any pretension to equal rights, the exhalation of the few must depress the many.” In addition, without the right to bear arms ,said Ferguson in 1767, the end result would not be liberty but tyranny. If liberty were threatened what could expected of pleasuring loving youth raised in the city without manly sport or military training? Would they have the strength and courage to face danger and the suicidal ferocity of more warlike peoples? Ferguson and Burns believed in teaching the tales of the sword and gun, and breathtaking courage glory of the steadfast Highland Regiments at Ticonderoga and Fontenoy where Ferguson himself led the Black Watch under fire. The “bairns an’ young’ anes” , needed to be taught of the guid-anes (Goodjins) of history like Wallace, Hancock, Washington and the Bruce as well as the “bad anes” (badjins) like Long Shanks ,The Butcher Cumberland, Tarleton, Himmler and Hitler.

Wrote Burns:

At Wallace’s name, what Scottish blood
But boils up in a spring-tide flood
Oft have our fearless fathers strode
By Wallace’s side
Still pressing onward, red-wat shod
or glorious dy’d!

Burn expresses the sentiment again perfectly in a letter to George Thompson dated by Adam Ferguson August 30 1793: in my yesternight’s evening walk, warmed…to a pitch of enthusiasm on the theme of liberty and independence which I threw into a kind of Scots Ode…that one might suppose to be the gallant Royal Scot’s address to his heroic followers on that eventful morning {of the Battle of Bannockburn)…..So may God ever defend the cause of Truth and Liberty as he did on that day! Amen! …. P.S. the recollection of that glorious struggle for Freedom, associated with the glowing ideas of other struggles of the same nature,not quite so ancient, roused by rhyming mania.” Burns ,naturally, was referring to the American and French Revolutions.
I have seen the original manuscript in Burns own clean hand :

“By oppressions woes and pains,
by your sons in servile chains,
we will drain our dearest veins
but they shall be free!
Lay the proud usurper low,
tyrants fall in every foe,
liberty’s in every blow,
let us do or die.”

Ferguson and Burns both bitterly opposed the disarmament of Highlanders, the prohibition of the bagpipes, Highland Garb, tartan, and the depreciation of the Gaelic and traditional Scottish culture. Fergusson himself was convinced that by owning weapons and learning to use them a commercial people can keep alive a collective sense of honor, valor, and physical courage, traditions that no society, no matter how rich, sophisticated and advanced can afford to be without. The wise man knows the world is a dangerous place.

Burns , Ferguson and his mates of the Black Watch would have agreed: Am fear nach gleidh h-airm san sith cha bhi iad aige am a’chogadh” (the man who keeps not arms in peace will find none on him when war comes.”) I remember the ironic, defiant sign posted in a Quonset hut long ago by my Marine D.I. at Quantico, Virginia :”Gun control means hitting your target.” I am sure the jocks of today’s Black Watch who stand poised to root out terror side by side with our American forces would be in full agreement.

Friend and foe alike respect and sometimes fear dauntless courage and the vitality it represents. But as Burns and Ferguson recognized It is this very reservoir of courage and manliness which guarantees our liberty and the long term peace of our society. Burns himself belonged to a local Scottish militia unit and extolled their virtues of ancient masculine pursuits as climbing, hunting, fishing, shooting and soldiering. Were not the Highlands “the birthplace of valor and country of worth? Was not the Garb of Auld Gaul a manly attire of a soldierly but gentlemanly race?

A Highland lad my love was born,
the lowland laws he held in scorn
but he still was faithfu’ to his clan
My gallant, braw John Highland man!
With hi philibeg an’ tartan plaid
An guid claymore down by his side
The ladies hearts he did trepan
My gallant braw John Highland man
But Och, the catch’d him at the last
And bound him in a dungeon fast
My curse upon them every one
They’ve hanged my braw John Highlandman…
…There is not a lad in a’ the lan’
Was match for my John Highlandman!

Ferguson , wrote, perhaps thinking of Highland Bards like, Ian Lom or the MacLain poets:

“the most admired of all poets lived beyond the reach of history, almost of tradition. The artless song of the savage the heroic legend of the bard, have sometimes a magnificent beauty, which no change of language can improve…under the supposed disadvantage of a limited knowledge and a rude apprehension, the simple poet has impressions that more than compensate the defects of his skill. The best subjects of poetry, the characters of the violent and brave, the generous and intrepid, great dangers, trials of fortitude and fidelity….are delivered in traditions that animate like truth because they are equally believed…he delivers the emotions of the heart, in words suggested by the heart for he knows no other…”

Ferguson could have been writing a prophecy of Burns’s own achievement. To Ferguson and Burns one must fight the good fight in peace as well as war for freedom, justice and a civilized, decent way of life where the weak are secure and the strong and rich serve the common good. For their character the young needed not just material security but must to be taught civic virtue and religion. A well-rounded person contributes to human well-being in general and the good of society and is not consumed merely by selfish individual or material interests. Ferguson and Burns thought there was a great societal and educational danger in the unbridled self-interest of the satanic mills of Glasgow and Manchester whose managers sought to maximize productivity and profits with no regard to the human cost. Both staunchly opposed all forms of slavery and forced labor. Division of labor and industrialization created wealth but is also the cause of ignorance, alienation, the destruction of family ties, the exploitation of child labor, misery and additional vices like madness, drunkenness, class envy and urban violence. Laborer’s “art requires no exertion of genius” said Ferguson and so “are degraded by the object they peruse.” Young people and workers needed not just material things but also cultural and spiritual help to give their souls balance, compassion and composure. Ferguson and Burns thought it strange that the English would study avidly the languages of India or praise the ancient Greeks and Romans while ignoring the culture, language, steady virtues and courage of the Highlanders who lived just beyond the hills!

Burns’ sympathies were with enlightened Whig opinion and the American variety of that opinion as represented by Jefferson, Hancock, Henry and Washington who swore with Burns that taxation with representation was tyranny!

Och, the Highlandmen hate tolls’ an’ taxes…
While Terra firma on her axis
Diurnal turns
Count on a friend in faith an’ practice
in Robert Burns!
***
Burns had little or no Gaelic but he read McPherson’s translations and adaptations . In addition to writing his own lyrics, Burns was a preserver, without pay, of ancient airs and songs of Scotland. Burns heard Gaelic song in the Highlands and no doubt at Ferguson’s Edinburgh home. Ferguson himself was a native speaker of Gaelic and polyglot. These ancient Celtic rhapsodies were interpreted for Burns and brought him into contact with centuries of verses praising the country, the mist-covered mountains, the flowers the birds…

Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the evening gale…
…..flow gently sweet Afton, among they green braes, flow gently, I’ll sing a song in thy praise…
{Och} But pleasures are like poppies spread, you seize the flower, its bloom is shed
or like the snow-fall in the river a moment white then melts forever..”

In a sense Burns is a Scottish Hemingway literary but appealing to men. Unlike Hemingway however, Burns is equally appealing to women whom Burns did not recognize as inferior to men or merely sex objects but something complementary. If not as physically strong they were if anything, worthier in some ways than men and worthy of love, protection and sacrifice:

For you sae douce ye sneer at this
ye’re nought but senseless asses, O
the wisest man the warl’ e’er saw
he dearly lov’d the lasses, O
Auld Nature swear, the lovely dears
Her noblest works she classes, O
Her prentice han’ she try’d on man
and THEN she made the lasses, O.!
Green grow the rashes, O
Green grow the rashes O
The sweetest hours that e’er I spend
Are spent among the lasses, O!
and
But truce with kings, and truce with constitutions,
With bloody armaments and revolutions;
Let Majesty your first attention summon:
Ah! ça ira ! The Majesty of Woman!

The Regiment and male bonding was great but family life, led by a good woman was the center of all that was good and clean:

To make a happy fireside clime
To weans and wife
That is the true pathos sublime
Of human life.

Of Burns it has been said that “there is nothing in his letters or poems which goes beyond a sincere deism -nothing that is any way Christian.” Burns, like Fergusson, represents the Scottish Common Sense School of the Enlightenment. An important part of Lincoln’s affinity to the poet was Burn’s free thinking and honest religious doubt for religious dogma as opposed to faith in God. Both men read Paine’s Age of Reason whose defiant anti-clerical deism was widely regarded as a little more than atheism. But was Burns an atheist? The areligious skepticism of Hume was shunted aside by Burns, Ferguson and many Scots as faith and reason were seen as compatible: one only needed to balance the heart and the head. And certainly the women of Burn’s household were deeply religious. Burns has been claimed as merely a pale Deist but Burns himself wrote ” I will deeply imbue the mind of every child of mine with religion” and “I am so convinced that an unshaken faith in the doctrines of religion is not only necessary by making us better men but also making us happier me, that I shall take care that every little creature that shall call me father shall be taught them.” Although Burns did not agree with rigid Calvinists he nonetheless attended church regularly with his wife and family and studied the Bible and quoted Jesus whom he referred to as “our Saviour:”

What Burns despised was intolerance and a perverted “Holy Willie Hypocrisy”. Burns praised the Rev. John MacMath as part of a “candid liberal band…of public teachers…as Christians too renowned an’ manly preachers.” When in Edinburgh Burns met the Roman Catholic Bishop John Geddes and struck up a friendship with him. Burns praised the “Popish Bishop” as he called Geddes, as a man completely free from social snobbishness. Burns lack of prejudice is remarkable in those bleak years before the Catholic Emancipation.

Perhaps you remember the poem “To a Mouse” which seems at first glance a simple poem about nature. With Burn’s eyes as the “lord” of the farm he realizes that the mouse is like the lowest born joat-flitter (migrant worker). The picture is winter and it is very cold. It is remarkable that the poet of that brutal and often barbaric time is showing a kind heart to a small wild animal as if nature herself were sacred. He parallels our world and the world of the lowly mouse. You might recall that he said “The best laid schemes o’ mice and men gang aft agley (go oft ary). The Gaels of old were of the opinion that the work of the poets was important to health of language and the health of people’s mind. I believe that. J.S. Blackie a well-known classical and Gaelic scholar of the 19th century said the function of the poet was to be calling back to Nature and truth the spoiled children of convention and affectation -“a’ gairm air ais gu Nadur agus Firinn a’ chlann truaillte tionalais agus faioncholtais.” Of course in Gaelic faoincholtas (convention) means fashionable or vain (faoin)-foolish -imitation. Burns had that genius to wake us up to reality and away from our self-indulgent complaining about petty things.

Perhaps you remember the poem about the small little wild beast:

…wee, sleekit, cow’rin tim’rous beastie…wi’ a panic is {his} breastie…
Still thou art blest, compared wi’ me!
the present only toucheth thee
But och! I backward cast my e’e
On prospects drear
an’ foward tho’ I canna see
I guess an ‘ fear!

I have translated for my own amusement many poems and fragments of Burns into Spanish:

{Ratoncillo) estás dichoso y bienaventurado comparado a mí
El presente sólo te toca
Pero ¡Ay! echo un vistazo atrás
a panoramas deprimientes
Y hacia adelante aunque no puedo ver nada
Con nada calculo y me temo lo peor. (translation R. K. Munro)

Looking back to depressing panoramas what a state! And forward I can see nothing; I count on “nothing ” and what fear is upon me!

The fourth stanza, addressed to the mouse is poignant as a “wee bit sigh stir’s” the poet’s bosom:

Thy wee-bit housie, too, in a ruin!
Its silly wa' the win's are strewin!
An naething, now, to big a new ane,
      o foggage green!
And bleak December's win ensuin,
      Bith snell an keen!

Compared to Burns my life is a utopia…how about yours?

But Mousie, thou are no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be in vain:
The best-laid schemes o' mice and men
          Gang aft agley,
An lea'e us nought but grief an pain
          for promised joy! 

But just like the mouse we will not be alive forever nor forever young (my hair no longer thick but thin and is turning white). All living creatures are alike in this respect both man and beast We should remember this and “it’s I am thinking we should all be reading Burns from time to time” as my Auld Pop would say, or at the very least singing his songs and reciting his poems! In October 1785 Burn’s younger brother John Burns died at age fourteen. And shortly after in November 1785 Burns’ father had died. Burns’ own health and financial condition were in a precarious state.

In the year of our Lord, 2003 , a new Scottish Parliament was inaugurated representing the autonomy and nationhood of Scotland within the Union of the United Kingdom. The Scottish Flag flies proudly alone at the Edinburgh tattoo, and yes the Stone of Destiny, an lia fail, the stone of Scone, was returned to Scotland with great fanfare in 1997- forever snatched from the tomb of Long Shanks. It took seven hundred years but Braveheart,Robert the Bruce, Burns, Scotland and liberty triumphed, in the end, over Long Shanks. Burns looks firmly towards the future and democracy but he never forgot his own and his people’s past. Had he lived he might well have emigrated to America as did his direct descendants. Burns speaks to the world, if they would hear, about the true meaning of liberty and the nobility of man -and woman too- those who dwell in every land and every walk of life. Burns suffered with the poor and oppressed be they colonials , blacks slaves from Senegal , Scots, Chinese or English or French or American factory workers. “Man’s inhumanity to man”, he wrote , “makes countless thousands mourn.” Wrote Burns: “Whatever mitigates the woes or increases the happiness of others, this is my criterion of goodness; and whatever injures society at large, or an individual in it, this is my measure of iniquity.” Burns preaches not irreligion but tolerance for skeptics as well as for all faiths and denominations. Burns sings not just of woman’s beauty but of her rights and of her mind and the equality of these tender souls created in the image of God.

All that Scotland had done and suffered, the memory of her heroic but disastrous history, the heads bloodied but unbowed, the strong valiant, manhood of her Highland men, the deep sonsie lyric womanhood and pragmatism of her lassies, the memory of “dualchas araid”, the splendid ancient Gaelic heritage, the songs of the Hebrides, the beauty of Scotland’s nature and her scenery -of Highlands, lowlands and Islands, may have vanished without trace without the unconquerable spirit of Robert Burns.

And the British people and people ‘round the world would have been for the poorer.

Yes, all this could have been utterly destroyed by mindless uniformity, the depressing deracination of the urban poor, the manufactured ugliness of slum upon slum and a numb proletarian anomie, had Scotland been left without the Scottish and Celtic renaissance led by Burns.

Truly the pen and the heart and the lips are mightier than the sword! Burns himself was the torch of this new land of light and liberty we celebrate today. Burns was the patriot and literary hero whose truthful art overcame and oppression, woes and shame . Burns turned the tide back for Scotland which afterwards Walter Scott carried to a full flood winning over the heart of Queen Victoria, Jefferson and Lincoln, Highlander and Lowlander alike, young and old, rich and poor, “Let Kings and courtiers rise and fa’ this world has many come but ‘brightly beam aben them a’ the star of Robbie Burns! “

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN MAY WE LONG TOAST THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF ROBERT BURNS!

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2019/12/mid-century-manhood

George Orwell, in his influential essay Notes on Nationalism distinguished patriotism from the related concept of nationalism:

“By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force upon other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.’ Of course, patriotism is Greek in origin and nationalism is Latin in origin.

Orwell makes good points but I nationalism does NOT have to mean ethnic particularism or chauvinism or even jingoism.

Surely nationalism has been associated with a strong desire for NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE which can be a very good thing. Karl Marx famously stated that “The working men have no country”and that “the supremacy of the proletariat will cause them [national differences] to vanish still faster.” It is totalitarian to believe that regional and national differences should be stamped out.

We are all nationalists or nativists to some degree of course. Almost everyone prefers his own language, his own food, his favorite sports, his favorite music, his own religion. I would not say men and women are separated into “nations” or “conflictive classes”. I cannot distinguish between my mother and my father and the entire COMMUNITY when I think of my native land.

Of course, I have a sentimental tie to the wee homeland of my heart which is Scotland and particularly to the Highlands -the Gaidhealtachd. But unlike some, I have never felt separatism was a wise path. Small groups need the protection and security of a national union.

The decline and fall of Celtic peoples, in my view, was directly related to their divisions into clans and tribes and their inability to unite. Their inability to gain unity undermined their culture and essentially doomed their languages.

On the other hand, excessive nationalism exalting one nation, one race, one religion and one language over all others can fall off into true Fascism.

I am an American by choice but I love other nations also and other cuisines and other languages. My religious faith is universalist; it is not bounded by one race or one nation.

But you can’t win a championship without a team. And you can’t win a war without a Regiment, without a team, without an Army.

The only security for the family is the community and the only security for the community is the alliance of communities known as the nation.

To me, patriotism and nationalism are nearly synonymous. The Spanish have a word “patriotero” which means excessively patriotic in a chauvinistic or flag-waving way. We can be excessively nationalistic or excessively patriotic.

But surely love for our OUR TEAM and OUR COLORS is not bad unless it makes us HATE all rivals even neighbors. I love the Dodgers but would never beat up a Red Sox fan (some yobs do). I admire other nations and other people who have skills and traits I lack. I doff my hat to the best team. The Nationals were the best team in 2019.

But we make a fatal mistake if we think our freedom is due to the UN or chance. We are free because soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines were willing to die for the Colors, the colors that represented their homeland, their nation, their security, their freedom. I consider myself a patriot and a cosmopolitan nationalist. I admire our Gallant Allies and know we need friends and allies.

Without national pride and national units, NATO and the UN would not protect me from evildoers, criminals and fanatics. To say “nationalism” is treason as Macron said, is wrongheaded even dangerous. Treason to whom? The EU superstate?

Our freedom is tied to our national independence. So let me say it on Veteran’s Day. I am a proud patriot and American nationalist. We SHOULD DELIGHT in the triumph of the Good but the costs should never be forgotten. We should have gratitude to our nation but also to our “gallant allies” the other nations who had taught us and helped us win wars and protect freedom. To me, true freedom will never mean uniformity but pluralism.

Auld Pop had a philosophic attitude towards life. “Save your luck for when it counts. A man has only so much luck. Sooner or later you will roll snake eyes.” “This is the only life you have this side of paradise: be a leal n’ true mon (a man of honour)”. “A soldier will die for the Colours but no’ an extra two bob a day.” Pop, we used to say you have to stop smoking! He answered “Tha moral dhaoine anns a cladh a mhianniacheadh casad a bhith aca mar seo.” (“There’s mony a man in the cemetery that wad like to hae a cough like that!”
“Cuimhnich air na daoine bhon tainig tusa” REMEMBER THE PEOPLE YOU CAME FROM. Ne obliviscaris he said many times -his Regimental motto- DO NOT FORGET. Of people who were “feckless slackers” he would say, “Such a mon has nae poosh (no push; no ambition). He is good for naething at a’! except to be a parasite hanging aroond the kitchen.” If we complained he would say, “If THAT’S A’ ye hae to worry aboot, ye hae nae worries! Hiding in a dry cave in Gallipoli , low on ammunition and water wi’ Turks scream to cut off your heid…THAT’s WORRY!!” Auld Pop had a soft spot , naturally for the Red, White and Blue of Britain, but he was a naturalized American citizen (at age 50). During WWII he built Naval vessels and liberty ships (before WWI he built Naval ships on the Clyde.

Auld Pop used to say. ” You are lucky to be alive. Every new day is a gift. Lucky to have fresh water to drink and to wash. Lucky to have a roof over your head and tea at the boil. Lucky to have someone to love and to be loved by someone. Lucky to have hot soup for dinner. Lucky to have a job to do and lucky to have legs to walk to it. Lucky to have ears for music. Lucky to have a voice for talking. Lucky to have eyes to see. Lucky to have two arms and two hands and all ten fingers. Lucky to have a dollar or two in your pocket. Lucky to see a new generation growing. Lucky to see Old Glory flying. Lucky to have had a good ride. When the evening comes. and there is peace on every hill glad to have lived. And , yes when the evening comes how peaceful will be our sleep for we saw not the sacred flame extinguished. We saw not the Colours lowered in our time.”

A wonderful message that my friend Richard Munro shared about his grandfather, Thomas Munro: RULES FOR SURVIVING THE GREAT WAR (1914-1919).

He wore a kilt (with a canvass cover) every day for almost five years. He used to kill bugs that crawled up his legs with his cigarettes; he said it took practice to burn the bugs off with out burning yourself. He also said tobacco smoke helped keep the bugs away. Auld Pop was a quiet man but touch not that cat but with a glove. He had killed his first man at age 10 with a Martini-Henry rifle (a Sumatran Pirate); He and his mates killed so many Germans they literally lost count. Once they killed about 50 Germans in less than 10 minutes wiped out a whole platoon before they got off a single shot. It was not for nothing the Germans called them the “Ladies from Hell”.

1. Auld Pop: When goin’ over the top, furrst, stan’ behind the tallest man or the broadest tree. Aye (always), a guid thing tae do!

2nd Shoot true; dae untae others before they dae untae you! 30 rounds a minute wi’ yer Enfield for the Jairmans an’ 20 for the Turk -15 for the Buggers (Bulgarians).

3rd When carrying boxes o’ provisions bring at least one Webley pistol, prrreferrably two, fully loaded. Aye, the Jairman’s no liked THAT!

4th always carry a bayonet an’ a sgian dubh (the dagger traditionally carried by Highlanders in their sock) in yer leggin’s. Just a wee bit extra for close up warrrk.

5th Eat when ye can and boil yer tea.

6th Make nice with the Dins (Indian Soldiers); you never know when they will hold yer flank. Chai lao! (Bring tea!) Covering fire DAY DO! (Give)

7th take cover and pray like hell during a artillery bombardment.

8th never volunteer for anything; just do your job and stand by yer mates.

9th never smoke at night while on watch. NEVER.

10th Think o’ hame, think o’ your mates, think o’ your loved ones an’ thank God when it’s all over.

REPEAT #1 and #2 and #7 as often as possible!!!

I asked him what the British Army did with near-eyed soldiers who needed glasses. He said, “Och, we pit (put) them in the front lines for a closer “luke” (look)!!!!

Thomas Munro , Sr Dec 22 1886 -June 9, 1962 Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders August 1914-May 1919 (Constantinople), MM 2nd Ypres.
The Dins (Indian Soldiers of the 27th Division) called him “Chang Dhost” (the Good Comrade) and Changa Gori Spahis (“The Good White Soldier”). The Jocks of the Ants (Company A) called him “Pops” or Auld Pops, Later Auld Pop.

At one point he saw 36 days of continuous combat on the Western Front experiencing almost daily bombardments and hand to hand combat with the Germans as well as witnessing the first poison gas attack in history. They had only urine-soaked handkerchiefs for protection. In April-May 1915 he lost many of his relatives, in-laws and best friends as well as his first Company Commander in the 1st Battalion Captain Dick MacDonald Porteous (KIA May 10 , 1915). He saw action at Gallipoli, Salonika and the Struma Valley. Only three men in his company were on active service by Armistice day; everyone else was killed or invalided out due to serious wounds.

The Argylls, alone suffered 7,131 killed and over 25,000 casualties. NE OBLIVISCARIS ..do not forget.

Death should not be the most difficult thing to accept about life because death comes to us all. Victor Hugo wrote “It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.” Shakespeare said in Julius Caesar (Act II, Scene 2): “Of all the wonders that I have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.” And the Greek poet said: “Dear son of Aegeus, to the immortal gods alone belong immunity to eld and death, all else doth all-consuming time devour….”

The most difficult part of life is gaining wisdom and a sense of gratitude for all we do have and for the time of good health we do have. The most difficult thing about life is that we have to, sooner or later, say goodbye to those whom we love. Either they will leave us or we will leave them.

Parting is truly a sweet sorrow. C.S.Lewis said “The death of a beloved is an amputation.” The lesson learned is that life and love are just brief moments in time.

We should love each other and appreciate each other NOW, this hour, this day, this week, this month this year. My mother and father died at the beginning of the 20th century now long ago:

My fayther and my mither

Sleep i’ the mools this day;

I sit my lane amang the rigs

Aboon sweet Rothesay Bay.

“Mools” means dust or the earth of a grave. I grew up hearing Scottish songs and poems that my parents and their friends and relatives listened to and both my parents loved poetry, music and song.

“Oh! there arose my Father’s pray’r,

In holy evening’s calm,

How sweet was then my Mither’s voice, In the Martyr’s psalm;

Noo a’ are gane! we meet nae mair Aneath the Rowan Tree;

But hallowed thoughts aroond thee twine O’ hame and infancy.

O, ROWAN TREE!”

The Rowan Tree is a nostalgic Scottish song filled with what the Gaels call “Cianalas.” It makes a special appeal to all Gaels who are exiled. It tells the story of a man who whenever he sees a Rowan Tree -a species of mountain ash-thinks back to the happy, never to be recaptured days of his carefree childhood when such a tree grew near his Highland Black House. The man has survived to visit the scenes of his childhood but the clachan (Highland village) is probably depopulated and the old home in ruin -perhaps only the outline of the foundations remain. The song captures completely the love a Gael has for the past and the places associated with it.

My father’s mother -born in Oban, Argyll circa 1890- sang it as well as did her sister Anna Sweeney (Auntie Annie to my father). I never met Auntie Annie but she had a big part in our family history. It was she who gave my father’s mother the money to sail to America in September 1927 (on the Transylvania -I have a copy of the ship’s manifest) She meant to come to join us eventually but stayed on in Scotland to take care some elders in her family on my father’s mother’s side. She died suddenly in 1935 and I know this because my father kept the telegram in his book of Burns poems. I remember when he took it out to show it to me one day when we were in his library discussing Burns -this would have been in the late 60’s or early 70’s and while speaking of her -his mother’s sister-his godmother- his voice broke and he cried. He often spoke of his mother and aunt and his cousin Molly Dorian and “Uncle” Johnny Dorian (his fourth grade teacher and later headmaster of St. Anthony’s RC school his many boyhood friends from his parish and his football team -a legendary team- the St. Anthony Ants. So even though I never met these people it was as if I had known them. My father would quote them and tell stories about them and share their favorite music and his favorite memories of them.

I have always loved THE ROWAN TREE. My mother and I used to sing it together and we heard Kenneth McKellar and Anne Lorne Gillies sing this song as well not only on LP’s but live in concerts. We all knew THE ROWAN TREE by heart -like many other Irish and Scottish songs -and sang it around my mother’s Hamilton upright piano or on the way home from trips to the mountains or on long car trips after seeing the Mets or Phillies.

In fact one of my best memories of my mother was the baseball game we never saw. We lived a long way from Shea Stadium and it was a 3 or 4 hour round trip to get there. My father was on a business trip so he couldn’t go to the night game in the middle of the week so my mother said, that she, of course, would drive me, she said, “she loved baseball!” Of course, my mother loved anything I loved. She always wanted to make people happy. That was the way she was. Well in any case it was raining heavily as we came to “Auld Shea” but we could see the lights were brightly shining through the dark and rain. When we got there they took our tickets and we went to our seats. The usher had to wipe off the seats with a town and a mitten! There must have been only about 8000 fans that night. The game actually began and they got in part of an inning in until a torrential downpour made it impossible to continue play. As a small boy I was disconsolate that I would miss a chance to see and big league game and all my baseball heroes. But my mother was very positive. We withdrew under the overhang of the Mezzanine and I drank hot chocolate and she drank hot coffee. We chatted about baseball to begin with. She never once complained or said anything negative in fact all her remarks were very hopeful. But in the end the game was a rainout and we had to get our paper tickets “rain checks” -they were all paper tickets back to exchange them for another day.

So one might think this would be the worst baseball memory ever. But instead the night was golden. The rainout was not a curse but a blessing. My mother and I spent the entire afternoon and evening talking, singing and laughing together sharing our friendship and love. On the way to the ballpark my mother had talked about my father’s mother and Aunt Annie and “Uncle” Johnny Robertson (killed in the Clyde Blitz in May 1941) and memories of my grandfather (Auld Pop) and his nephew Jimmy Quigley and Father Collins (of St. Anthony’s in Glasgow) and Father Garvey of Sacred Heart parish in New York.

My mother was Free Church (a Protestant) not Catholic so my father’s parish priest an Irishman actively discouraged the union and called her a “Proddy Dog” to my father’s face. My father had to be restrained from hitting “the Irish bastard.” But he hit hard nonetheless and said, “Father -you are no Christian. Just an old, ignorant bigoted Irishman and when my mother -a good Catholic- hears what you have said she will never darken the door of your parish again. God is a just judge and he will judge you harshly I am sure.”

My mother was in tears because she said, “now we can never marry!” But my godmother Katherine (Kay) Brennan -we have a large portrait of her in our living room had an idea. She said, the best thing do do was get married right away. She made a few calls and they made an appointment for the Little Church Around the Corner in Manhattan.

It was really called the Church of the Transfiguration and it had a very interesting history. It was built around 1850. During the Civil War it was place of refuge for African-Americans during the brutal 1863 Draft Riots in New York. The church got its famous nickname from an incident just before Christmas 1870. There was an actor, a certain Joseph Jefferson who had gone to a church to request a funeral for a close friend and fellow thespian, George Holland. But upon hearing the deceased friend had been an actor and was not a member of the church, the rector refused to even consider allowing funeral services. Joseph Jefferson had loved his friend and wanted to have a memorial service for him someplace and so asked around the neighborhood. An acquaintance said, it is reported, “I believe there is a little church around the corner where it might be done.” To which Jefferson replied, “Then I say to you, sir, God bless the little Church around the corner.”

And so my mother and father were married on flag day June 14, 1941 in an Episcopal Church (neither was Episcopalian. Later that evening they returned to my grandparent’s apartment in Brooklyn on old Dahlgren Place (no longer existing.) My father’s mother famously said, “How did the meeting with Father “so-and so” go?” And before she could say any more she saw my mother wearing a gold wedding ring and they told her the story. But she said, “But Tommie and Ruthie you are no’ married in the eyes of the church…..” and it was her turn to cry copiously.

My mother told my father it was best she go home with Kay Brennan and my father said he would work things out.

My father loved his mother and did not want her to suffer so he did not spend his wedding night with his bride!

The way the problem was solved was via the Scottish immigrant community. Now Scots are, generally speaking of numerous religious persuasions. A substantial minority are Roman Catholic, others are Presbyterian, some are Scottish Episcopalian (Anglican Communion), some are Jews, others are “Free Church” (evangelicals) , and many were free thinkers who never ever went to any church and so mixed marriages were very common even in those days. After a few days the solution to their problem was found in the person of Father Garvey of Sacred Heart Parish. He was a Scottish Roman Catholic priest with ties to Govan -he had studied in the Scots College at Valladolid with Father Dean Collins the man who married almost everyone on our family and who baptized my father on March 17,1915 while Auld Pop was in the trenches of the Ypres Salient with the Argylls. But the best part about Father Garvey besides being Scottish was that his mother had been a Scottish Episcopalian so he had many relatives who were of that persuasion and he had no prejudices whatsoever against mixed marriages. He said to my grandmother, “Ruthie is a Christian and a fine, wee lassie. Ye shall know them by their fruits. She loves you and your son enough to get married a second time in the Catholic Church. That’s good enough for me and God. And so let’s plan to do that immediately if not sooner.” So my parents had only one witness to their first wedding (Kay Brennan) and only four to their second wedding the following week (Kay, my father’s mother, his sister and his father-his brother couldn’t be bothered). They had a very simple dinner at home and then went to see MAJOR BARBARA with Wendy Hiller my mother’s favorite actress. By the way my mother was an only child but her mother -she was Free Church (Evangelical) and her aunt did not come to either wedding. In fact my mother had no contact with her mother until after WWII. So deep were the religious prejudices back then. That’s one of the reasons I am strong ecumenical myself. The more pluralism in religion the better as far as I am concerned.

My mother had no memories of her father Eric Anderson because he had been killed when she was a small child but she did know he loved music too -he had played the guitar and sang-and had many records of Caruso and John McCormack. She never knew her father but she knew his favorite hymns were “The Holy City” (Jerusalem), “The Rugged Cross”, and “All Creatures of our God and King”. She knew he had been a sailor, an immigrant to America, a lumberjack, a carpenter and he had worked in the ship-building trade. During WWI he built subchasers. I also know he hated the Kaiser (like everyone in our family) and was intensely pro-Ally even before the USA entered the war.

Thou rushing wind that art so strong,
Ye clouds that sail in heav’n along,
O praise Him! Alleluia!
Thou rising moon, in praise rejoice,
Ye lights of evening, find a voice!

I also know Eric was very patriotic. He died before his 25th birthday. He was a naturalized American citizen and greatly admired Theodore Roosevelt and voted for him in 1912. My mother had a book of Roosevelt’s travels in the Amazon that had belonged to her father. Viktor Frankl, in The Doctor and the Soul wrote: “We cannot, after all, judge a biography by its length, by the number of pages in it; we must judge by the richness of the contents…Sometimes the ‘unfinisheds’ are among the most beautiful symphonies.” We would like to believe this. I don’t know if Eric Anderson was an Anti-Catholic as my mother’s mother but he might have been because he and all his relatives were break away from the Established Church and as they tell me very devout. He belonged to the same church as my mother’s mother and her aunt they were -as far as I could tell-ultra-Calvinists but I don’t really know because we had very little do do with them when I was growing up. I know they called us the “Irish Munros” (even though my family was Scottish) and it was not meant as a compliment. Some of the spinning wheels and furniture Eric Anderson made still exists (some are in folk museums). I am sure (almost sure) all the ships he built are long gone. He is dead, his splinter church is dead (died out) and his wife is dead as well as his daughter. He lives on only in the name of his great-granddaugher Erica. So I never knew him but I know he had good qualities. He was brave. He was hardworking. He was a patriotic naturalized American. He was God-fearing. He loved music and singing. I would like to believe that if he had opposed my mother’s wedding he might have mellowed and accepted it after a time.

My mother used to say, “We are born in one day. We can learn and change in one day because of one intense experience. And we can fall in love in one day as your father and I did. We can marry in one day as we did. And marry again the next week as we did. We can get sick and die in one day. Anything can happen in just one day. Our bodies are fragile vessels for our immortal souls.”

My father used to quote Socrates “The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our separate ways, I to die, and you to live. Which of these two is better only the God knows.” My father loved the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (the Fitzgerald translation) and so tended toward skepticism:

“Oh threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise!
One thing at least is certain – This Life flies;
One thing is certain and the rest is Lies –
The Flower that once has blown forever dies.”

My father was raised a Catholic but by age 21 his faith had withered away and I can only describe him as lapsed Catholic tending towards agnosticism. As an adult he never attended church except to go to wedding or funeral. His favorite line, was, when speaking of heaven, “Personally, I vote yes. But it is too good to be true. I think death is a sleep. They say” ” Death is nothing strange, nor Hell as has been said, Good will not perish, nor evil be unpunished for God is the great Judge.” “Ah, yes! Isn’t it pretty to think so. I wish it were true! I would want to see my mother again. But laddie, it is too good to be true!”

Nonetheless, though my father was not untouched by tragedy in his life -he lost most of his friends at young age due to his immigration at age 12 and the fact that most were killed at Dunkirk in 1940. Those tragedies taught him not to inflict pain and suffering on others if we can help it. He often said, “This is the only life you have this side of paradise. Don’t be an SOB.”

Yes, the most difficult thing about life is saying goodbye to the people you live and the things you love. Arthur Schopenhauer, a favorite author of my father’s, said” “If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence, or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood?” My father did not agree with Schopenhauer because my father believed if there was any immortality it was through on e’s children. One of his favorite Shakespearean Sonnets was Sonnet 2

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field,
Thy youth’s proud livery so gazed on now,
Will be a totter’d weed of small worth held:
Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;
To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserv’d thy beauty’s use,
If thou couldst answer ‘This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,’
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold.

So my father believed marriage meant openness to children and though he was not an orthodox Catholic by any means he dislike Planned Parenthood and overuse of artificial contraception what he and Auld Pop called “Dud in the Mud sex” for no purpose. He also believe a man and woman had only so many “good shots” and “good eggs” and it was foolish to waste them. Don’t have children until you are married my father said but don’t put it off too long when you do. He said, “you never know how many years of health your and your spouse will have.” My parents didn’t have any children until my mother was 32 but of course he was in the Army 1942-1946.

My grandfather (Auld Pop) has been dead over 50 years but my cousin Helen Munro and I speak about him often as if he were just with us a little while ago. My mother and father and godmother Kay Brennan and my godparents Andrew Muir Tracey and Kitty (Scally) Tracy are all dead but their portraits are in my house and their voices are in my memory. I still stay in close contact with Kitty’s children Paul Tracey and her daughter Ada (Tracey) Stankard.

And of course if you love someone you never really say goodbye to them nor forget them and it has to feel good to know you will never be forgotten by those who loved you either.

Jorge Luis Borges wrote: “When writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation.” Not all of us will become well-known authors or artists and let us remember indeed most author’s produce ephemeral works of art that will totally forgotten in 20, 50 or 100 years. Herman Hesse wrote: “We fear death, we shudder at life’s instability, we grieve to see the flowers wilt again and again, and the leaves fall, and in our hearts we know that we, too, are transitory and will soon disappear. When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something last longer than we do.” If they are lucky one quote or one character or one joke might be quoted and remembered. Some might say then the death of an individual person has no more meaning than the death of a dog or cat or of armies or of nations.

But this can’t be true. Individuals can live and communities can live on even if the Empire or nation is destroyed. This especially true of the Jews who have, remarkably, had a continuous history for 6,000 years and against all the odds the Jews kept alive the memory of their nation and faith in God and have resurrected Israel as an independent nation Similarly, when Carthage fell, or when Numantia fell or Alesia surely some individuals escaped and lived on perhaps escaping individually or in small bands to Britain or Ireland.

I always remember something my father said to me one time when I was musing over my maps of the Roman Empire and setting out my Roman soldiers. Unlike Churchill, I was very lucky to have many memories not only of my father but also Auld Pop, my Scottish grandfather. They read to me, took me on walks, played with me and spent time with me. My father said:”You know, of course, that the Romans were the arch enemies of our forebears. Within the Roman Empire we would be the barbarians to be destroyed or enslaved: for when the beat of the kettle-drum of the steely hard Roman come, taken our own hilltops, one by one. You ancestors were the Celts and the Gaels. Not the Romans! ”

But I replied, yes, “but St. Patrick brought us into the Roman world. And also we come from the Lochlanoch -the Vikings! Not only Niall of the Nine Hostages but the Dane Clan Ranald and Olaf the Tree-Hewer! That’s what you and Auld Pop said!.”

And thinking some more I retorted: “Our ancestors did not have to be enslaved they could have served the yoke and become mercenaries like the Varangian Guard!”

“True”, said my father, “but Vikings and Saxons and Gaels who served the Eastern Roman Emperor were lost to their families and to their nations. As small racial and linguistic minorities in the Eastern Empire they died out or were assimilated over time to the Greek-speaking or later Turkish speaking population. So the exiles survived as individuals but their language and culture was destined to fade away.”

But something of us remains in our nation, our family, “our race and line” as they used to say in the Highlands -our family line within the human race. I believe those who have families and pass on family traditions, values and beliefs never die.

My father smiled and his small eyes glowed when he said these things. My father had the bright face of a jolly soul with long deep laugh lines underneath his black glasses. My father was very private and had suffered losses and disappointments in his life but generally speaking had a sweet and sunny disposition. On the faces of the aged there are wrinkles made by laughter and sympathy. When my father was in his forties he gave up smoking and he could have passed for 35 and when he was in his sixties he could have passed for 45 and when he was in his vigorous seventies he could have passed for 50. He had all his hair till the day he died and he was just a few months from his 90th birthday. The chief evidence of his age were his dentures. By his 70th birthday he had lost all his teeth not having any dental care at all the first 20 or 30 years of his life.

By contrast, I knew someone close to our family who was exceeding beautiful from her late teens to early thirties when her figure began to go. It is not an exaggeration to say she was as beautiful as a Hollywood starlet and a knockout in a bikini in her late teens and early twenties. She was about 5′ 6″ and I would guess 115-120 pounds. She liked the ski, swim and sail and so was reasonably athletic as a young woman. As a young boy I greatly admired her and was happy to spend time with her and meet her older friends. I suppose I was a little bit in love with her although she was 12 or 15 years older than I. She had many gentleman and squandered her youth with wild Spring breaks on this coast or that island. She was still attractive in her thirties but by that time ridiculous in a bikini and not favored by tight blue jeans. By the time she was in middle-age her face was drawn and lined into severe, inharmonious contours. She was not a happy woman. She did not have a successful marriage mostly -from what I gleaned from her sister- a series of worthless lovers who took what they could from her and dumped her when she lost her figure and most of her looks. She also let her mind go and I don’t think she read a single serious book after age 35. She gambled, she smoked, ate and drank with abandon and by the time she was 50 weighed over 300 pounds. But it wasn’t just her looks she lost. By neglect she lost the love of my father, my mother -and they were very loving people and also those of most of her immediate family members. I realize and I am sure others did also that we were drawn to her, in part,in the beginning because of her synthetic charm and physical attractiveness. But she was one of those persons that if she could not get something out of you -free chores or money- she had zero interest. Some people are like that. This person, I came to realize, was a shallow, selfish-hedonist but proved the old statement by Orwell that at 50 you have the face you deserve. Nature gives everyone some youthful charm and beauty in the late teens and early 20s but by 30 or 40 your beauty is shaped by your life choices, life habits and life experiences. I have noticed smokers and sun worshippers seem to age the fastest.

I never dated a smoker for very long nor any dame who who drank more than I did. I cried when I was young, when the young woman said, “I like you but there is no chemistry.” I came home and was unconsolable. How could I not be loved if I loved? How can I not be loved if I were kind and thoughtful took a girl out to dinner and gave expensive presents?

My grandmother was very practical. she said, “Dinna fash yersel’ Ricky (that’s what she called me). “There are lots of fish in the sea! And now you think she is so beautiful so perfect so slim! But remember in another 30 years she will just be another fat old woman like me! ” And she made me laugh. And it is true. Most of the beautiful young women I knew 40 and 50 years ago are dead and, if they are lucky, old and fat grandmothers.

My father loved Proust whom he read in the original French (my own French is small) : “Now there is one thing I can tell you: you will enjoy certain pleasures you would not fathom now. When you still had your mother you often thought of the days when you would have her no longer. Now you will often think of days past when you had her. When you are used to this horrible thing that they will forever be cast into the past, then you will gently feel her revive, returning to take her place, her entire place, beside you. At the present time, this is not yet possible. Let yourself be inert, wait till the incomprehensible power … that has broken you restores you a little, I say a little, for henceforth you will always keep something broken about you. Tell yourself this, too, for it is a kind of pleasure to know that you will never love less, that you will never be consoled, that you will constantly remember more and more.”

I feel like this. But of course, Man proposes and God disposes.The sun in the sky today will set; each day it sets and each day it takes some with it. I remember the day my father died, many thousands of miles away. As I drove home the sun was setting. I stopped the car to watch. I hadn’t heard the news yet but somehow I knew my father was gone. And he was. And I knew all the tears in the world could not restore to you those who have gone from you.

Not this side of paradise, anyway.

I am finishing the second of PETER CADDICK-ADAMS STEEL books (AND and STEEL). I have read hundreds of WWII books and have enjoyed these immensely.  I have learned a lot that I did not know (African-American experience in England pre D-Day for example). not to mention interviews I had never read before. I think this book, so well written, will be a cornerstone of D-Day literature.Congratulations. A great companion to all the fine D-Day books I have read from THE LONGEST DAY to Six Armies in Normandy etc.

 I know good history having read almost all of David Howarth, Alan Moorehead, Cornelius Ryan, John Keegan, Andrew Roberts, Alex Kershaw,, Stephen Ambrose, Michael Grant plus of course the classic historians including Churchill I am impressed by a work that 1) is compelling and well-written 2) fair to all sides 3) accurate ( I haven’t found one typo or historical error 4) full of new information and new insights. If anyone would ask me why read STEEL and SAND and I would say it is like reading a whole new book about D-Day, ITS ORIGINS, and its aftermath. Of course, I recognize some of the same source material in other books but PETER CADDICK-ADAMS always bring a fresh approach. This book is highly recommended. Now I want to read all of his WWII books!

I am not Roman but I was raised to believe the Roman missionaries and their school raised us to a better life. We entered Western Civilization with St. Patrick, St. Columba, St Mungo and St. Maelrubha. I am not a Greek but I have the deepest admiration for Greco-Roman civilization. I am not a Jew but I have had many Jewish friends and teachers my entire life -and my parents too. One of my father’s best friends (our neighbor for over 50 years was Manny Sussman, an RAF veteran radar not pilot and his wife Doris.) I last had dinner with him in the fall of 2004 and was glad to spend some time with him then. He had been widowed by then. He lost most of his family during WWII due to the Holocaust and the Blitz. I listen to Jews constantly (Dennis Prager; Ben Shapiro) and others and learn from them. These are men of culture who mention fine music and good books constantly (unlike the philistine Russ Limbaugh who is funny but shallow). I am not English either but I have the greatest respect for English culture. My father used to joke that Manny represented the best of both worlds as an Englishman and as a Jew. We are not English but have alway been Anglophiles and strongly Unionist. We appreciate the gifts of the English, the Jews, the Greeks the Romans. We (and I am speaking as a Gael or Celt) know we lacked what it took to be a successful nation and empire. We only succeed as part of greater more stable and united cultural entities because basically we are emotional, brooding and barbaric seeking tit-for-tat revenge and almost incapable of unity. Believe me I have to fight my darker impulses to kill, to steal, to seek revenge over past wrongs. I cannot say the Duke of Cumberland without holding back some anger and some tears. One of the glories and one of the curses of Gaels is that we never forget. But , Thank God, my faith teaches me to be a Good Neighbor. I try to remember the gifts of the English not the bad moments. I try to remember Pitt, Disraeli, Churchill. I try to think on Shakespeare and the King James Bible not the Glen Coe Massacre or the Great Hunger.