ginning to enjov myself, and remarking to my children that thisrnScottish festial is much more entertaining than the local FestarnItaliana, mv daughter suggests that it may be because I’m Scottislirnand not Italian. We wander by the tents set up by variousrnclan societies. Clan Douglas is there, ine itably, but as I am onrnthe point of telling the kids that our own clan (whose societyrnI had only learned of the week before) would never stoop tornthis, one of them shouts, “Look, Dad, there’s a tent for ClanrnMurra.”rnI have never checked into our family’s claim to be a sept ofrnthe Murrays, though Flemings have played a prominent role inrnthe histor’ of that elan (nor have I ever verified the even vaguerrnclaim tiiat mv father’s mother, nee Smith, was actually a Me-rnEirlane). The ladies manning, or rather womanning the littlerntent are ver- kind and speak warmly of what clan membershiprnmeans to them—the significance of clan lovaltv comes up repeatedK’rnduring the festival—and 1 am tempted, if onl}’ for thernsake of my deracinated children, to fill out the membershiprnforms and stake a claim, if not to be someone, at least, to havernbeen something once. All this ethnic rigmarole appeals to arndeeper sense than nostalgia. Perhaps it helps us Americans tornreaccjuire a sense of national identity, a sense that is not suppliedrnb)’ our Jacobin holidays—July 4, Veterans Dav, and thernfourth Thursday of November that is now called “Turkey Day.”rnPerhaps these clan-gatherings and folk festivals, however artificial,rnshould not be judged for what the} are not, which is anythingrnto do w ith the real world, but for what the arc, which isrnsomething like a school whose very formalit and artificial simplicitrnare conditions that make possible the metamorphosis ofrnchildren into human beings; perhaps before we can actually bernan thing, we must play at being something we are not yet.rnLike man’ great nations, Scotland is a product as much ofrnthe imagination as it is of battles and policies, and thernmodern traveler unfortified by poetry may find little more thanrnvistas to admire. I had been putting off the trip for more thanrntwo ears, when, driving down the street in Roekford, I turnedrnon the radio and heard Max Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy—”anrnomen,” I remarked to my unsuspecting wife. On the train fromrnLondon I sit beside a perpetual student who carries his managementrntexts ostentatiously in a Montpellier bag and spendsrnthe da dramatically chewing his left thumbnail. Bv the timernwe reach York, I begin to fear he, like his country, is down to thernknuckle. Newcastle seems grim, only the cathedral spire catchingrnthe sun gives a hint of anything better, and a Scottish passengerrncomments, as our train is halted on the bridge, “Enjoyrnthe ‘iew of lovely Newcastle.”rnCrossing the border is almost an event. “Where’s the customsrnofficers?” cracks another Scottish wit. But whether it isrnGod or nature or merely the effect of man, the landscapernchanges immediately; the ground swells to peaks of grassv scarprnand here and there we see the sea, and feeling like one ofrnXcnophon’s soldiers I begin to wish 1 liad not booked a room inrnPxlinburgh. Arriving at Waverlcv Station, I set off with determinationrnin the wrong direction down Princes Street. Turningrnaround. I sit beneath the statue of Walter Scott and consult thernmap. Retracing my steps, I lug my bags the long way around uprnto Ro’al lerracc, and unsure of my way up Calton Flill, I stop atrna little trailer with a round-the-clock vigil demanding a ScottishrnParliament. The young nationalist inside has trouble interpretingrnm- accent, but his directions (accurate but rather too precisernto be useful) put me on the right course, which takes mcrnpast the phony Greek ruin that inspired Douglas Young’srn”Winter Homily.”rnEdinburgh is altogether the best city in Britain, more likernParis or Brussels than London. Modern deelopment has, forrnthe most part, eaten only into the fringes—though there is arnhideous concrete box in the Canongate a stone’s throw fromrnI lolyrood. The medieval streets of the old town seem genuinelyrnold and perhaps even menacing—drugged-up punks withrnpink and green hair and dangling earrings seem more at homernhere than in New York or LiOndon. The New Town is also impressive,rnwith its rational air and faith in progress, although thernHanoverian street names must have seemed intolerable to Jacobiternears: I lano’er, Brunswick, George, Frederick—even thernKing, Queen, and Prince’s streets are named after the wrongrnkings, queens, and princes, the same family that in every generationrnhas succeeded in producing that bright and charming setrnof royals without whom England would just not be England.rnScotland, at least since the 14th century, has been definedrnby its struggle with England, and the Scottish watchword hasrnalways been: Ireedom. Archdeacon Barbour prefaced his epicrnpoem The Bruce with this invocation: “A! fredome is a noblernthing, / Fredome mays man to haiff liking, / Fredome all solacernto man giffis,,’ He levys at es that frely Icvys. / A noble hart mayrnhaiff nane es. . . “rnBlind Harr}’ summed up William Wallace’s career as a strugglernfor freedom: “Thus Wallace thrys has maid all Scotlandrnfre,” and King James I, abducted and held prisoner by the Englishrnfor 18 ears, complained in “The Kingis Quair”: “Thernbird, the beste, the fish eke in the see/The’ Ivve in fredome everichrnin his kind;/And I a man and lakkith liberte.” How to preservernthe Scottish nation has been the grand theme of Scottishrnpoets ever since independence was surrendered b the Act ofrnUnion engineered by a Scottish elite class that traded nationalrnliberty for personal gain. Burns, in his own version of a popularrnsong, complained: “What force or guile could not subdue, /rnThro’ many warlike ages, / Is wrought now by a coward few, / Forrnhireling traitois’ wages.”rnAnd there are Gaelic poems that are far more bitter: “If I hadrnmy way,” wrote John McDonald of one of the commissionersrnwho negotiated the act, “I would melt your gold payment, pourrnit into your skull till it reached to your boots.” Burns could gornfrom Jacobite sympathies to Jacobin enthusiasm without, apparently,rnseeing a contradiction—just as more recent nationalistrnpoets like MacDiarmid and my own mentor, DouglasrnYoung, often expressed their nationalism in a leftist language—rnbecause for the nationalist left and right are mere ploys orrnstratagems that serve the higher cause of the nation.rnThe Scottish love of liberty was no mere obsession of poets.rnIn 1320, the Scots lords who followed Robert Bruce signed arnformal protest to Pope John XXII who had excommunicatedrnKing Robert and his people for daring to stand up to England.rnAfter a brief and mythic history of their ancestors who had settledrnin Scotland, which “they now hold in freedom from all vassalage,”rnthey describe the depredations of Edwards I and II—rn”sparing nor sex nor age nor priestly orders”—and go on torndeclare that “By the Providence of God, the right of succession,rnthose laws and customs which we are resolved to defend evenrnwith our lives, and by our own just consent, he is our King.”rnMost remarkably, these noblemen go on to insist that their loyaltyrnis to their nation and not to their King: “Yet Robert himself,rnshould he turn aside from the task that he has begun, and yieldrnScotland or u,”‘ to the English King and people, we should castrnNOVEMBER 1995/11rnrnrn