News From Scotland
A Wee Dram?
How about 9120 drams – all in one bottle – that’s over 60 gallons!
It would have gone well with the world’s largest haggis, made in Mauchline, Ayrshire. The haggis weighed in at about 1200 pounds. The big challenge was cooking it and lifting it without splitting the skin!
The bottle stands 5’5″ tall and is filled with Famous Grouse whisky. Bottle after bottle was poured in by hand, taking more than three hours to fill! Fomous Grouse is now in the Guinness Book of World Records for the biggest bottle of whisky. It was part of their 107 anniversary celebration. The bottle will be on permanent display at the Glenturret Distillery in Crieff.
It would have gone well with the world’s largest haggis, made in Mauchline, Ayrshire. The haggis weighed in at about 1200 pounds. The big challenge was cooking it and lifting it without splitting the skin!The whisky will be kept, but the haggis was addressed and eaten on Bleaching Green in Mauchline – where Burns met Jean Armour.
Edinburgh University and the Higgs Boson
Professor Peter Higgs may have kept a low profile for most of his life – but that is now changing. Throughout the world, people are becoming aware of the famous Higgs boson particle that bears his name – the so-called “God particle” – which answers the basic question of how matter acquires mass.
Prof Higgs, 83, has been waiting since 1964 for science to catch up with his ideas about the Higgs boson. It was in that year he dreamed up the concept in a moment of inspiration while walking in the Cairngorms – a particle present throughout the universe which lends mass to matter and holds the universe together.
The quiet physicist, retired from the University of Edinburgh, is fast becoming a global celebrity as creator of the theory behind the “God particle”. Born in England, the son of a BBC sound engineer, Prof Higgs’s groundbreaking proposal was that particles acquire mass by interacting with an all-pervading field spread throughout the universe. The more they interact, the more massive and heavy they become.
Scientists using the Large Hadron Collider at CERN to look for the fabled particle, have said the search could soon be over.
Never one to blow his own trumpet, Prof Higgs is described by friends and colleagues as “very unassuming” and shy. Some believe his retiring nature might even have held back his career. Now, despite his best efforts to keep a low profile, the spotlight is turning on him.
Prince William installed as Knight of the Order of the Thistle
The most ancient and most noble Order of the Thistle is the highest honor Scotland can bestow. It is the Scottish equivalent of the Order of the Garter, but fewer people are installed into the Order of the Thistle. The number of knights is limited to 16, and a new one is appointed whenever a knight passes away.
Prince William joins family members already in the order: HRH Queen Elizabeth II, HRH Prince Charles Prince of Wales, HRH the Duke of Edinburgh, and the HRH Princess Anne Princess Royal.
The Earl of Strathearn – as the prince is known in Scotland – joined the other existing knights in the order which has been running in continuous form since 1687.
Historians are divided on the origins of the order, although the tradition is thought to date back to 809, when Achaius, the Pictish King of Scots, formed an alliance with Emperor Charlemagne of France. Some accounts believe Achaius established the order in 786 after winning the Battle of Athelstaneford in East Lothian, when he reputedly saw the cross of St Andrew in the sky.
The ceremony took place in one of Edinburgh’s best-known landmarks, the Chapel of the Order of the Thistle, in St. Giles’ Cathedral. The chapel was only recently added to St Giles’ Cathedral, just over a century ago, but it is one of Scotland’s most breath taking architectural treasures.When the order was revived by James VII, the number of knight’s was 12, to symbolise the 12 apostles of Christ. There has always been a strong religious element to the order.
The installation of Prince William as a royal knight was in celebration of his recent 30th birthday. Edinburgh’s Lord Provost Donald Wilson offered the city’s warmest congratulations to Prince William on his installation as a Knight of the Thistle.”
Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon - The Queen Mum
Perhaps the most popular member of the royal family, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon came from Scottish nobility and a direct line to the Royal House of Scotland. Yes, even though there has been no English blood in the royal family since 1066, there is a lot of Scottish blood. In fact, in the Union of the Crowns in 1603, it was the Scottish king who took over the English throne!
Although Queen Elizabeth’s mother married into the royal family, she 
herself came from Scottish nobility, growing up in Glamis Castle, as daughter of the 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne. She was also related to the Duke of Wellington, who defeated Emperor Napoleon. Her mother was descended from a British Prime Minister William Cavendish-Bentinck, and a Governor-General of India, 1stMarquess of Wellesley, who was the elder brother of that famous Duke of Wellington.
herself came from Scottish nobility, growing up in Glamis Castle, as daughter of the 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne. She was also related to the Duke of Wellington, who defeated Emperor Napoleon. Her mother was descended from a British Prime Minister William Cavendish-Bentinck, and a Governor-General of India, 1stMarquess of Wellesley, who was the elder brother of that famous Duke of Wellington.Elizabeth was born in her parents’ London home, or in a horse-drawn ambulance on the way to the hospital. Maybe it was those Scottish genes and her challenging entry into this world that led to her long and hardy life. 
She was educated by a governess until the age of eight. When she was fourteen, Britain declared war on Germany. Four of her brothers served, and her elder brother, Fergus, died as an officer in the Black Watch Regiment. Another brother was captured and held as a POW until the end of the war. Glamis Castle was turned into a convalescent home for wounded soldiers, which the future Queen helped run. One of the soldiers she treated wrote in her autograph book that she was to be “Hung, drawn, & quartered … Hung in diamonds, drawn in a coach and four, and quartered in the best house in the land.”
She was educated by a governess until the age of eight. When she was fourteen, Britain declared war on Germany. Four of her brothers served, and her elder brother, Fergus, died as an officer in the Black Watch Regiment. Another brother was captured and held as a POW until the end of the war. Glamis Castle was turned into a convalescent home for wounded soldiers, which the future Queen helped run. One of the soldiers she treated wrote in her autograph book that she was to be “Hung, drawn, & quartered … Hung in diamonds, drawn in a coach and four, and quartered in the best house in the land.”She was never meant to be Queen. She married the Duke of York – second in line to the throne. And her beloved husband, Bertie, was shy and had a speech impediment now made famous by the movie “The King’s Speech”. But, as her biographer James Wentworth Day writes, “Her gaiety conquered his shyness. She gave him confidence. When he rose to speak, she flashed him a quick smile. It gave him the spur he needed.”
In the Second World War, Adolf Hitler described her as “the most dangerous woman in Europe.” During the Blitz, when the Cabinet asked her to take the children and leave London, she said: “The children won’t go without me. I won’t leave the King. And the King will never leave.” So they stayed throughout the war. She regularly visited the factories and neighborhoods of the East End of London, which was under constant bombing attack. Buckingham Palace was bombed several times, prompting her to remark: “I’m glad we got hit. It makes me feel I can look the East End in the face.”
A typical Scot, she was famous for her strong principles, physical courage and sense of duty. Peter Ustinov wrote of her facing a student riot at the University of Dundee in 1968. When students were throwing toilet rolls like streamers, she got out of her car, picked one up, and approached the student who’d thrown it. “Was this yours? Oh, could you take it?” The student was dumbfounded, and the mob quieted and backed away.She was well-known for her dry wit. When she heard that the Duchess of Mountbatten had been buried at sea, she said: “Dear Edwina, she always did like to make a splash.” Once she accompanied the gay writer Noel Coward to a gala, and noticed him eye the soldiers on guard – she whispered: “I wouldn’t if I were you, Noel. They count them before they put them out.”
If you want to know how to live to be a hundred, you might look to her love of the occasional alcoholic beverage. She drank gin – and Dubonnet – and port – and martini – and champagne. She is estimated to have enjoyed 70 alcoholic drinks a week! Once, when a case of drink was given for the Royal party at Christmas, but it wasn’t known if they would be coming, she said: “Well, I could polish the whole lot off myself.” But nothing ever interfered with her performing her duties. She opened events, attended funerals, was never concerned about the popularity of her duties. She was active in showing herself and helping end racial inequality in South Africa.
She survived many illnesses. She was twice a cancer survivor, and overcame many accidents. When a fish bone stuck in her throat, and she was rushed to an emergency operation, she joked afterwards “the salmon have got their own back.” What else would a Scot say? Her beloved husband, King George VI, died in 1952, and she became “Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother” to avoid confusion with her daughter Queen Elizabeth II. To the public, she was affectionately known as the Queen Mother, or simply the Queen Mum.
She loved dogs and horses, and was an excellent judge of race horses, particularly steeplechasers. She owned horses that won more than 500 races, although she never placed bets.
In 1995 her right hip was replaced. In 1998 her left hip was replaced, following a fall at Sandringham stables. Her 100th birthday was celebrated with a commemorative £20 banknote issued by the Royal Bank of Scotland (Scottish banks are allowed to issue their own banknotes – if you’d like to see, I have some. Last time I was back, they had become unacceptable in Scotland, but were still legal tender in England!).
At one celebration event, the Archbishop of Canterbury mistakenly went to pick up her wine glass, only to be admonished by the alert centenarian’s “That’s mine!” which caused widespread amusement. She broke her collar bone later in the year, and in December 2001, the 101 year old fell and broke her pelvis – but still insisted on standing for the National Anthem at the memorial service for her late husband. Just three days later, her second daughter, Princess Margaret died. The queen Mum fell at Sandringham House and was in a wheelchair with a badly cut arm – but she was determined to travel from Norwich to Windsor, to attend Margaret’s funeral, two days later. Seven weeks later, she passed away in her sleep, at the age of 101, with Queen Elizabeth II at her bedside.
As Army Cadet of the Year, I had the honor and pleasure of being presented to the Queen Mother at a garden party in Buckingham Palace – and she was every bit as others have described her – a true Scot – interested – chatty – hospitable – unassuming – a genuinely charming lady. Among all the uniforms there that day – the Royal Marines Band – the Regiment of Guards – she noticed my hodden grey uniform and came over to chat. Hodden grey, the tartan of the London Scottish Regiment, came from the tartan worn by the common folk in Scotland – made from blending one strand of black wool to twelve of white before weaving – and made famous in Burns’ “A Man’s A Man For A’ That”
“What though on hamely fare we dine; Wear hodden grey, an’ a that; Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine; A Man’s a Man for a’ that.”
The London Scottish, wearing the hodden grey since 1859, became part of the Gordon Highlanders in 1937.
Mary Queen of Scots - The First Soccer Mom?
The daughter of King James V of Scotland, Mary Queen of Scots was a sports enthusiast. She played golf – and tennis – and apparently soccer. That would make Mary de Guise the world’s first soccer mom! Recently, a small leather ball was found behind the oak paneling of a room that was once the bedchamber of the Scottish Queen. Since this was Mary’s bedchamber, it is believed that all objects found there would likely have belonged to the Queen herself.
Researchers have determined the ball to be the world’s oldest soccer ball. Today’s golf balls are made of several layers of different materials to improve performance. Apparently the Scots were well aware of that technology almost five hundred years ago. This ball has a cricket ball at its center, contained inside a pig’s bladder to allow for inflation, and encapsulated in a stitched leather covering to give it a smoother bounce and roll.
Mary had a short but eventful life. She was only 6 days old when her father died in 1542 and she acceded to the throne of Scotland. She was widowed at 18; married 3 times, after the Scottish parliament annulled her engagement to Prince Edward of England; and executed for treason at age 44. In her short life, Mary was Queen of four nations: Scotland, France, England and Ireland.
Shedding Light on the Dark Ages
It seems the period from 300 AD to 900 AD may not have been as dark as previously thought. This is a time that Scotland has traditionally been portrayed as a nation of blue-painted Picts warding off marauding Vikings.
Alice Blackwell, a Glenmorangie Research Officer with Scotland’s National Museums, has spent the past 3 years studying artifacts from the period, and she disputes the gloomy picture of the Dark Ages. The Picts inhabited only part of Scotland, and other social groupings conducted trade and exchanged intellectual ideas with much of Europe.
Glenmorangie, it appears, is giving us more than single malt. Alice Blackwell’s book “A Jewel of Gold Placed on a Silver Dish” will be published in the fall.
The Stone of Destiny – that ancient royal seat of Scotland, where kings were crowned -may be the Stone of Irvine. One thing is sure, it has moved around a lot in its history. Legend has it being taken by Jacob while in Haran. Legend also has it being brought from Ireland by the Dalriata gaels when they settled Scotland. More likely is the story of Fergus, son of Ferchard, the first King of the Scots in Scotland, bringing the Stone from Ireland to Argyll, where he was crowned on it.