Banff was once home to Scotland’s largest pear tree. Nicknamed “Byron’s Pear” after “that wee deevil Geordie Byron” (age 8) fell out of it while stealing fruit from the manse garden. It was 42ft tall, 13ft around the trunk and the canopy was 150ft across.
Incidentally, Banff folk thought “Geordie Byron” was a little shit. He was known as “the English nickom” (wee devil). After a Miss Abercromby of Birkenbog complained to his mother about him, he headbutted her in the gut and said he’d throw her off a balcony (he was aged 7).
In the 1850s and 1860s a poetry competition of sorts took place in the guestbook of the old (pre-1881) Drumnadrochit Inn. See if you can spot the theme…
MacKay, W. (1914) Urquhart and Glenmoriston; olden times in a Highland parish. 2nd Edition. Northern Counties Newspaper and Printing and Publishing Company, Inverness. 596pp.
Not many poems about migraines out there. “On his Heidake” was written by Scottish makar William Dunbar about 1500 to 1513 to explain a lack of productivity to his patron and benefactor, James IV.
Rough Translation:
My head did ache last night, so much that I cannot write poetry today. So painfully the migraine does disable me, piercing my brow just like any arrow, that I can scarcely look at the light
And now, Sire, shortly after mass, though I tried to begin to write, the sense of it lurked very hard to find, deep down sleepless in my head, dulled in dullness and distress
Very often in the morning I get up when my spirit lies sleeping. Neither for mirth, for minstrelsy and play, nor for noise nor dancing nor revelry, it will not awaken in me at all.
In September 1954, about 200 schoolchildren (some as young as 4) invaded the Southern Necropolis in the Gorbals, armed with sharpened sticks, stones, and penknives. When the police arrived, they were told that everyone was there to kill a 7ft vampire with iron teeth who had eaten two of their schoolmates.
Genuinely scared, the children patrolled the grounds looking for the vampire. The next night, another massive crowd of children scaled the walls after the gates were locked. Gravediggers, cemetery officials, and the police couldn’t keep the throngs of children out of the grounds. A journalist at the scene was begged by the children to help them: “Hiv ye come tae shoot him, Mister? Kill him sae we can sleep tonight!”.
One of my favourite cases of mass hysteria, the whole ordeal was blamed on scary comic books, and compelled the MP for the Gorbals to introduce the Children and Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Eliz2/3-4/28/contents) the following year.
A poem read to the children “Jenny wi the Airn Teeth”, by Alexander Anderson about a bogle that eats naughty children may also have a lot to do with it!:
“…Jenny wi’ the airn teeth, Come an’ tak’ the bairn:
Tak’ him to your ain den, Where the bowgie bides, But first put baith your big teeth In his wee plump sides;”
Jenny wi the Airn Teeth, A. Anderson
References
The Scotsman, 18th March 2016.https://www.scotsman.com/whats-on/arts-and-entertainment/gorbals-vampire-and-monster-hunt-shook-glasgow-1480233
In 1778, a Linlithgow man sent a woman some bad poetry. She was having none of it.
An EPIGRAM. Addressed to a certain Gentleman in Linlithgow, who lately attempted to write Poetry. By a Lady.
THOU scribbling, grovelling, Grubstreet dunce, Why thus mispend your time? Why struggle hard (oh! vain attempt) To grace the polish’d rhime? Why knock your stupid, brainless skull, And think that rhyme will come; Knock as you will, you’ll surely find. There’s nobody at home.
For folk in Caithness and Sutherland the largest beast in the ocean was the cirean-cròin, a leviathan sea dinosaur that could eat 7 killer whales at a go. An old Gàidhlig rhyme told of its relative size to other creatures:
James Melvin (1795-1853) rector of Aberdeen Grammar School banned students from using Doric Scots, except when translating Latin poetry, where “the pith and force of the Scots tongue” could be properly used. Here are some of his lines1 I have omitted his “apologetic apostrophes” but left his spellings mostly intact. from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
There I saw Sisyphus, wi mickle wae, Birsin a big stane up a heich brae, Wi aa his micht oot ower the knowe, Wi baith his hands an feet, but wow! When it’s maist dune, wi awful dird, Doun stots the stane, an thumps upo the yird.
J. Riddell (1868) Aberdeen and its Folk from the 20th to the 50th Year of the Present Century
