ist austerity without any perceptible lapse into papist saeramcntalism,rnand mv only thought is how to escape the crowds asrnquickly as possible. Reluctantly accepting the Duke of Argyll’srnhospitality (he is the owner of the Great hm at hivcraray, a rundownrntourist hotel with a magnificent view of Loch Fyne), Irnmake mself at home in the bar, which is filled with holiday visitorsrnhappily spoiling their children. Seeing a local or two at thernbar, I leave my comfortable chair and ask for a glass of HighlandrnPark. “That’s a good whiskey,” I’m told by a slight, older manrnin work clothes. When I ask what else he and the barman like,rnthe barman recommends Isle of Jura. “You might as well drinkrnacid,” says Hcggy, as he is called, and after one glass, I concludernthat Heggv is a man of mature judgment. He asks what I amrndoing by nivself so far from home, and I tell him I’m in Scotlandrnpreparing a magazine issue. “What can you learn in sornlittle time?”rnOne fair question deserves another, and I ask him what hernwould tell a stranger about his own country. I prod him, as hernhesitates over where to begin, with a question about politics.rnFar from well-off, Heggy often votes Conservative, on therngrounds they are more progressive, but he is fed up with bothrnThatcher and Major who have ruined the entire country. Onlyrnhis hatred of Tony Blair would induce him ever to vote for Major.rnTrying to explain the condition of poor Scotland, Heggyrnconfesses to ignorance. He was never taught Scottish history inrnschool—only a few anecdotes of Bruce and Wallace—all thernso-called British history is English history. “Some people thinkrnScotland is a county of England,” he shouts, “but we’re not.”rnWhat he knows, he did not learn from books, which he doesrnnot trust, but from the old people who, as he says touching hisrnnose with his hnger, knew the truth of it.rnEaster Sunday I go to church, and until the very end of thernser’icc I am not sure whether the church is crackpot Anglo-rnCatholic or progressive papist: phony Peruvian “hymns,” thernpriest, when he devests, wearing a sweater and T-shirt, a homilyrnthat suits the T-shirt better than the vestments, and only thernstrong smell of whiskey on the breath of all the men striking arnmore serious note. What strength of character it shows, torndrink that much so early in the day.rnI spend the rest of Easter getting nivself lost, looking for ruinedrncastles. In a steady drizzle I make my wa to Dunadd, thernruins of a Celtic fortress that was home to the first Scottish,rnwhich is to sav Irish, kings of Scotland. After several false “discoveries”rn—every rock outcropping is a cairn and every cairn arncastle: it is an old land, where the very rocks are ancient bones—rnI take the right road through sheep pastures and across a littlernbrook. I park my car next to a truck and look up at the rocks—rn”a wear talc, of grass upon a buried town”—vhere I sec a pairrnof visitors standing, at the very top, as if they were lords of thernplace. As I draw nearer, I can just make out that they are speakingrnneither in English nor Scots, and as we pass upon the slopernI realize thev are speaking Gaelic, whether Scottish or Irish Irndo not know. Perhaps they are on a pilgrimage. The ruins arernmeager, but Dunadd is far more impressive than the late Romanrnforts I have seen in Britain, although the Roman forts arerncenturies older. But while the Roman imperial camp is evidencernof a wonderfully efficient bureaucracy whose very mediocrityrnwas on so high a level that it became civilization itself,rnDunadd is peculiar, as if it grew out of this verv land and couldrnbe transplanted to no other place. Perhaps, if Celts had everrnestablished an empire, they might have succeeded in massproducingrna culture. But I doubt it. Even the faces in this partrnof Scotland are more distinctive than in the South, as if theyrnwere chiseled b’ a mannerist sculptor on the bottle.rnScotland, like England, is an amalgam of Celtic, German,rnScandinavian, and even Mediterranean stocks, but here, thernCeltic note—however faintly sounded in the genes—is the tonic.rnI sometimes wonder if the Celts are not like the ancientrnGreeks, a people who subvert the conquerors with their music.rnEven in translation there is something in Celtic poets like DuncanrnBan Macintyre and Soriey MacLean that only shows itselfrnin a few English poets: an earthy directness combined with anrnattention to natural details and an almost uncanny clarity ofrnvision. Perhaps the quality lies in the landscape itself, althoughrnthat reduction—like most reductions—would only beg thernquestion of why these people have chosen to live where the’rnlive. Momcilo Selie says that you can always spot landscapesrnthat would ap)peal to a Celt: the Scottish and Bosnian Highlands,rnthe cliffs of Nova Scotia, the glens of the Smokies andrnthe Ozarks.rnr n h e tragedy of Scotland—like T the tragedy of America—isrnnot that there are too few peoplernwriting what is called poetry, butrnthat there are so few poets who canrngive life to the nation.rnIf Celts had any sense, they would hole up in their glens andrnbid defiance to the worid, but in the end they alwa’s fall in withrnthe grand strategies of their leaders and end up displaced, likernthe Highlanders after the ’45, dispossessed like Mary Stuart, orrndisemboweled like Sir William Wallace. With any sense, theyrnmight not have followed General Lee into Pennsylvania orrncharged like madmen at Gettysburg; with any sense they mightrnhave told Bonnie Prince Charlie that they would not follow himrninto England (least of all to London); they would have insistedrnupon a repudiation of the Act of Union, and would lia’e swornrnloyalty to his father as King of Scotland on the same terms usedrnby the signers of the Declaration of Arbroath, but it was in vainrnthat Lord George Murray argued that the Highlanders, althoughrnthey could not, v’ould not fight for all of Britain, justrnmight have been able to hold the Highland line long enough tornattract foreign support. The vanity and ambition of the Stuartsrnwas always their undoing, and the ’45 put an end to somethingrnfar greater than their pretensions to royalty: it put an end to allrnhopes for an independent Scotland.rnI know so little of war, not even the little that can be learnedrnfrom books, that I ought to avoid e’en the strategy of hindsight.rnWalking over the vast and gently swelling field of CullodenrnMoor, I can onl- with the greatest difficulty imagine what thernbattle was like. I am more moved by the little monumentsrnNOVEMBER 1995/13rnrnrn