Taming the Scots
(English language version) by Malcolm Lobban
The Scots may think they were hard done by during the period of Margaret Thatcher’s Tory regime. Well, I would like to put the historical record straight. The rot set into that old country up there long before the arrival of the ‘Iron Lady’.As a matter of fact, it was another dame called Margaret who helped to head the ball, as it were, into the Scottish goalmouth, and she too was English.
It probably all began as far back as the year 1030.The body of a king was found lying outside a blacksmith’s forge near Elgin, Morayshire. His name was Duncan ~ although some people called him ‘Duncan the Gracious’. I think this was due to the fact that he never used swear words, and always said “pardon” after breaking wind! Nevertheless, it appears that the poor sod was murdered.
No one really knows why he was in Elgin in the first place. After all, the place didn’t have a decent football team in those days. However, the police suspected that Duncan’s cousin, Macbeth was the culprit.
As usual, the media got it all wrong, and tried to direct the blame towards Macbeth’s wife, a frumpy little woman called Gruoch. Rumour had it that she had egged her husband on, in the hope that he might gain promotion by getting rid of Duncan.
As it turned out, they had no sooner buried poor Duncan than the bold Macbeth, who up until then had been a minor figure in local government, took over the family business, Crown Enterprises Ltd. In fact, he actually became sort of ‘king of the castle’, and remained so unchallenged for sixteen years, during which time a syndicate based in England began to present a threat of ‘take-over’!
The challenge came from no less a person than the late Duncan’s eldest son, a man who flourished under the title ‘Malcolm Bighead’. Some said he acquired the unusual name by virtue of his local standing, as ‘head man’, but one rather suspects it was more to do with the size of his cranium, testified by the fact that he could easily carry fourteen pounds of potatoes in his helmet!
Malcolm Bighead was only nine when his father was killed, which resulted in him being sent to live with family friends in South Britain. He went to school there and was soon educated into the ways of the Anglefolk.
When he became of age, and had earned several A-level certificates in the art of serf-bashing, he determined it was time for his return to Scotland ~ with a view to perhaps acquiring his late father’s old job, or even a supervisory position in the family business. Alas, however, it would appear that his uncle Macbeth was not of similar inclination, and who quickly told his nephew to seek out some other entrepreneurial agency, like the local Jobcentre. ..or, perhaps he might prefer to join the Knights Templars, or, better still, the Freemasons! In any event, it seemed that there was to be no opening for young Malcolm, and even less of a welcome to the old country!
Malcolm tried to reason with his stubborn uncle Mac. He even resorted to fortune-telling, in that if he didn’t see his way to letting him into the business, the time would come when a baldheaded Englishman called William Shakespeare would one day make the name Macbeth unmentionable world wide!
This last threat must have really upset the Gaelic king, who appears to have been enraged enough to call out his troops to arms.Malcolm, meanwhile, appears to have been forewarned, and had mustered considerable armed support from among the Northumbrians and other assorted Englishmen.Thus, having encouraged his men to quaff copiously of the local brown ale, he marched northwards.
Both armies met near the small hamlet of Lumphanan in the Grampian area, where they did battle with great fury. Alas! Poor Macbeth was slain, and the bold Malcolm Bighead was well and truly home for good.
Things more or less settled down under King Malcolm’s reign.But around the year 1066, things were going rather badly in South Britain. It seems a large gang of hooligans ~ possibly full of Bordeaux wine ~ had come across on the ferry from Normandy, intent on causing havoc in the little seaside resort of Hastings.The thugs were led by a fierce fellow known as ‘William the Corncurer’, or some such sobriquet. In any event their arrival caused great panic among the lieges, who took up a defensive position on a piece of high ground.It could be said the confrontation was definitely “one in the eye” for their leader, King Harold, who was killed in the melee!
This William fellow, in effect, took over England. I suppose he might justifiably be seen as the original Tory, since his head was full of fantastic ideas on how the country might henceforth be better managed.And like the Tory clowns, who were later to serve Margaret Thatcher, he initiated the concept of ‘free trade’ ~ with the proviso, of course, that he and his cohorts-in-crime took the biggest share of the profit.This led to economic recession, and mass unemployment ensued among the common folk ~ who didn’t even have time to organise trade unions ~ and great misery spread throughout South Britain!
The new King William was also in favour of the concept of Privatisation.He quickly evicted most of the English people from their communal lands and tenements and replaced them with his own card-carrying crawlers.They, by due process, came to be called earls, barons and knights.
The system ruled that, if one did not bow the head and possibly kiss William’s hand ~ or some other part of his anatomy ~ then one was unlikely to be returned to his native land, nor could one expect to be seen as a devoted follower of the new Norman order.Thus, anyone not in possession of a vellum parchment signed by William found himself essentially out of social welfare benefit! Actually, King William was perhaps the first on record to create what are now, rather euphemistically, styled ‘quangos’,(quasi non-government organisations) which were soon set up across the country ~ but he called them baronies and boroughs.
The poor folk were thus obliged to either do homage to this Norman ruler, or emigrate.Many of them turned their attention to Dunfermline (nothing to do with the building society of that name), this was where Malcolm Bighead’s main office was at that time.The poor refugees were looking for asylum ~ and by selecting Scotland, they were heading for one of the biggest madhouses of the period!
Meanwhile, Malcolm Bighead was busy brushing up on his use of the Gaelic language, in an attempt to maintain the loyalty of those big hairy men from the northern mountain region. Almost daily, he could be heard singing those enchanting Highland airs and practising his Celtic phraseology and tongue-twisting mouth music which abounds in many ‘hee-do-rum-haws’ and other quaint vocabulary ~ all so alien to genteel English sensibility!
King Malcolm was so engrossed in his personal culture trip that he failed to notice the steady influx of Anglefolk coming into Scotland.Among these new ‘white settlers’ was a fellow named Edgar, described as being lawful heir to the late lamented King Harold.He asked Malcolm if, perhaps, he might see his way to offering him some lucrative employment within the Scottish government ~ so long as it was not in the Ministry of Defence, since his track record, like that of King Harold, wasn’t quite up to standard! Nevertheless, he handed over his CV to Malcolm and said he would consider any job, so long as it was of a supervisory nature.
The bold Malcolm Bighead, meanwhile, was otherwise distracted by the sight of a rather beautiful young dame standing among the refugees.This was Edgar’s younger sister, Margaret ~ and this is the lady to watch.Malcolm’s brain was working overtime, as he tried to figure out the best way to enter Margaret’s favour. His thoughts visualised a lustful weekend in a caravan at Arbroath.But this lady was not to be wooed roughly, having been earlier alerted to Malcolm’s uncouth lifestyle, she determined that no-one would taste her delights prior to sanction by the Holy Father in Rome ~ together with perhaps a fair-sized hunk of gold placed on the appropriate finger.
Thus, Malcolm Bighead, besotted with love and carnal desire, quickly lost his heart and his heritage by finally offering to marry the fair Princess Margaret. And while the trumpets heralded the nuptial vows, they also signalled the beginning of the end for Celtic Scotland ~ and Parkhead football stadium had nothing to do with it! The new Queen Margaret, besides taking possession of the keys of the royal palace, eventually took charge of most of the business of state,
She it was who taught Malcolm how to use cutlery, and she insisted that he should change his Y-fronts more than once every month.Apart from all this ~ and in between occasional bedtime headaches ~ she did manage to give Malcolm eight children. She further encouraged more Anglefolk to come into Scotland ~ indeed, it was thought to be an ideal place in which to set up B-and-B houses at seaside towns as far apart as Saltcoats and Portobello.
Queen Margaret never really acquired a taste for Scotland’s staple diet.She had an aversion to porridge, haggis, cold meat pies and fried bread. She soon began to import more exotic things from England and the European Common Market area.In next to no time, King Malcolm was feasting on fish and chips with mushy peas, or perhaps tripe and onions done with milk.Then there was sliced bread for sandwiches, and the occasional toasted muffin.Out went pints of heavy beer and whisky chasers, and in came stemmed glasses of fine red wine ~ or perhaps the odd bottle of Buckfast Abbey’s finest vino-collapso,* by way of a special treat! Indeed, the royal palace was a changed place.
Margaret was not too keen on how the common folk of Scotland went about their everyday lives. She immediately found fault with the old Celtic clergy, then brought in her own from Rome.Apart from this, she was always over-careful about her own personal appearance in public ~ more so where the media was concerned. She saw to it that at least two poor folk were kept handy, so that when the reporters came around they would be sure to see her either handing out biscuits to urchins, or giving some poor leper a pedicure!
All of the foregoing, along with her part-time agency work for the Bishop of Rome, kept Queen Margaret gainfully employed.Nevertheless, it might be construed that she was perhaps just a touch more interested in her own salvation, than those poor serfs who were kept hanging around the royal midden. She may have viewed her charity work as some kind of celestial insurance policy for her own redemption. If so, then it all seems to have worked in her favour ~ nothing as mundane as a seat in the House of Lords for this ‘Maggie’ ~ in fact, the holies of the day made her a saint no less!
Apart from this, Queen Margaret appears to have been a good wife to Malcolm Bighead, and she always made sure that he had on his best armour when he went out to battle with King William down south. She also made sure that he had a plentiful supply of dainty cucumber sandwiches in his hairy sporran.
Meanwhile, King Malcolm kept himself busy, either trying to effect boundary changes between his country and England, or more often he just made a bloody nuisance of himself among the new Norman yuppies over the Border. Indeed, every time he and his cronies left English soil, King William would be inundated with complaints from his subjects concerning certain items that had mysteriously disappeared, like cows from fields and lead off church roofs!
Mind you, there were a couple of times when King William got so fed up that he actually tried to invade Scotland, but nothing ever came of his efforts. On his way home, he stopped long enough to build Newcastle and Carlisle, as a kind of deterrent for keeping out the Scots: this, of course, was long before the Anglefolk built Wembley stadium!
And all the while the Anglefolk kept migrating north into Scotland.Malcolm was by then getting a bit annoyed with this ‘invasion’, by finding it increasingly difficult to get a decent game of golf at St. Andrews.The main problem seemed to be, that whenever one of the migrants died in Scotland, another hundred would arrive for the funeral and forget to go home again.
So, there you have it! The foregoing is how Scotland came to be ‘civilised’. The country was never completely conquered by foreign soldiers ~ not even the Romans could manage that. But it should be noted that for a very considerable time, there was not a lot worth conquering ~ well, not until oil was discovered off the Aberdeenshire coast, that is.
No, the plain truth is, the Normans did not have to invade Scotland with force. They were, in fact, invited in by successive kings of Scots, and it was no time at all before they were running everything, and their descendants have since continued to rule, and to quote one stalwart Scottish chappy, who was wont to remark: “An that’s hoo the maist o’ us yins in Scotland aye talk as guid English as whit they dae themsels, so we dae!”
Whomsoever may take the time to read this short report, should readily appreciate the existence of certain similarities with Scotland’s situation during the last UK Tory government, all of which tends to suggest that we seldom learn from our past mistakes.
Quaint though they may be, the Scots have contributed much towards modern civilisation as we know it today, all of which was born out of their native wit and ingenuity. Whatever they might feel about their personal achievements, they will probably be the first to admit that, perhaps, their greatest talent sometimes lies in the ability to score goals through their own goal mouth! Bless all the poor buggers!
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* Note: Buckfast is a cheap fortified wine produced by monks in Buckfast Abbey, Devon, and is popular among misguided adolescent Scots ~ possibly as an alternative to glue-sniffing! and other clandestine activities, sadly practised by some present-day teenagers in Scotland’s less affluent communities.
The original Scottish version of “Taming the Scots”, written in the vernacular, as found in the Glasgow area, was published in “Chapman” (No.84) in 1996: 4 Broughton Place, Edinburgh EH1 3RX, Scotland.
The piece may have lost some of it indigenous humour in the translation.
