A History Maker (16 page)

…
Saint Mary's Loch half a mile away.
Today the calm surface exactly reflected the
high surrounding hills with woods of pine,
oak, birk, rowan.

The wooded character of this scene is recorded in the ancient ballad of the Outlaw Murray,
which describes King James Stuart leading an army of
full five thousand men
against the border clans:

In the eighteenth century this ancient forest was destroyed by a system of housekeeping based upon sheep and the wool industry. Sir Walter Scott later celebrated the transparency of the loch but also its arboreal devastation:

By the end of the twentieth century overgrazing had destroyed the topsoil, exposing grey slides of rubble-like stone in places. The end of industrial housekeeping let Ettrick regain
its ancient forest with the addition of fine gardens around the homesteads.

Page 30.

Large, low-walled, broad-eaved mansions,
each with the slim white inverted cone of a
powerplant stalk growing dim and invisible
after the first hundred feet.

Like the trees on which it was modelled the powerplant lived and fruited by synthesizing sunlight, air, moisture and dirt, though the nature of the fruit was decided by human programming. Roof, walls and foundations of houses — all but the polished parquet floors — were extensions of the plant. Stalks easily reached cloud level since their tap root touched the geothermal layer.

The first modern powerplant was developed in the twenty-first century by a team of more Japanese geniuses than can be listed here. The world was then so disastrously polluted by competitive exploitation that the richest exploiters were acquiring shares in self-contained ecosystems (some on Earth, some on satellites) where they hoped their children would survive when human life became impossible elsewhere. The same greedy madness for more existence than they would allow others had driven American, British and
Russian governors to build nuclear bomb bunkers in the twentieth century, Egyptian governors to build huge pyramids and burial chambers in the dawn of history.

The company who had developed the powerplant foresaw it could replace monetary housekeeping. They also knew it would cause panic in the bankers, stockbrokers and executives who then ruled the civilized world by manipulating money. (Note that civilized = citified.) Money was then the most beautiful and desirable of possessions and wars were fought against people who reduced its value: the Japanese therefore promoted their powerplant in secret, selling seedlings at huge prices to heads of governments and transnational businesses as a means by which the wealthy could get self-supporting private households. Millionaires saw that such households were safer than any others and began seeding them on privately owned islands off the shores of their native lands, but not all millionaires and heads of state acted selfishly. Without openly saying so the governments of Japan, Switzerland and Israel planted the roots of a powerplant economy which would eventually benefit their whole country. Soon after an Arab syndicate began secretly donating
cuttings to Islamic nations everywhere. By then news of powerplant culture had spread to users of the open intelligence network, who saw it could be used to liberate everyone from want. Millionaires faced the fact that their private havens would only be perfectly safe in a world where most people were safe.

The first of the national plantations reached maturity near the end of the century, after which the foreign imports of nations possessing them dwindled to zero. By this time every country in the world was following their example though in highly organized police states (Britain and the U.S.A. were the last) an underclass was maintained for many years by denying powerplant housekeeping to folk herded in ancient cities which were used as concentration camps, causing the destruction of several beautiful buildings (Saint Paul's Cathedral, for example) which the modern world would have preserved as song schools, exhibition halls or travellers' hotels.

Page 36.

clyped
= to have made public a private matter which the publicizer was expected to keep private. The noun
clype
(sometimes
clype-clash
) means, one likely to inform on others.
sleekit
= soft and smooth to the touch. In a
great poem Burns applies it affectionately to a field mouse. Applied to a person, however, it connects with the adjective
slee
meaning clever, skilful, deft, but also furtive or cunning, therefore not to be trusted.

Page 38.

blethering
= making a wordiness as senseless as those windblasts Yorkshire farmers call
wuthering
, but less offensively than is implied by
blustering
. It derives from the Old English word for bladder or windbag.

obstrapulous
= loudly or assertively troublesome, from the Latin adjective
obstreperus
meaning noisy.

Page 39.

weans = infants or children, so almost synonymous with bairns, but tending more to the baby end of human growth.

The world holds hardly a dozen tribes of
professional Amazons.

Greek legends say the Amazons were a nation of women on the banks of the Danube whose strength in battle kept them independent of men. They had a wholly female population because they conceived from the men of a neighbouring nation, getting rid of male offspring at birth. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries European travellers gave the Amazon name to large female regiments
who fought for the African kingdom of Dahomey. Sometimes conscripted before birth — often recruited from slaves — trained to endure pain, fight in the hardest areas of combat and wholly at the disposal of their king and his chieftains when out of it — they had as little independence as other soldiers of the historical epoch. Through most of history women only attached themselves to armies when they had no better livelihood. Homeless travelling women lived parasitically on equally parasitic hordes of male mercenaries, trading sexual relief and alcohol for money between the battles, trading water and crude medical help for anything they could get during them. With total nationalization of warfare in the twentieth century women were conscripted into army storekeeping, driving and signal work. Few were directly employed to shoot and bomb people.

The independent female armies imagined by the Greeks only appeared in the early modern era. Every continent but Antarctica got two or three Amazon Warrior houses, none recruited from local clans but drawing highly combative volunteers from all parts of the globe. Broadcasts of their battles were highly popular with men, but since modern Amazons refused
to recognize the Geneva Conventions no male army dared fight them. They had nothing in common with North American military sisterhoods who dressed in parodies of male combat dress, marched to war beside their brothers and lovers, lined up on the edge of battlefields and incited their clans to greater efforts with choral chanting and synchronized body jerks. Counted together the military sisterhoods and Amazons were less than 0.05% of the world's female population. Since warfare stopped invading their homes or supporting their families over 99.95% of women have avoided it. Many younger women, however, still found fighting men more attractive.

Page 40.

neep
= tumshie or turnip.

Page 44.

stoor
= tiny particles in a chaotic or stirred-up state. In
Lament for the Makaris
Dunbar uses it for the dust clouds raised by battling warriors. In
To a Mountain Daisy
Burns applies it to newly ploughed topsoil. It can also mean windblown spray. Twentieth-century Scots most frequently applied it to fluff collected in vacuum-sweeper bags.

Page 45.

Groombridge … was testing my fitness for
immortality.

Since dead parents and friends meet and talk with us in dreams we are sure to return as dreams in the heads of those who remember us. Folk who entertain others with tremendous examples, ideas, stories and music can survive in thoughts and actions for many years after their deaths. This was human immortality until the twenty-first century when a federation of transnational pharmaceutical companies (who pretended to be competing for tax avoidance purposes) found a treatment which could make bodies younger again. They could not be made younger than when the treatment began, but after seven years they could be restored to the exact state they were in
when
it began. The rejuvenated brain cells had therefore no recollection of the previous seven years.

No biological solution has yet been found to this problem, which scientists called the Struldbrugg factor from Jonathan Swift's diagnosis of it in 1726. A brain cannot contain more than a normal lifetime of experience without being wasted and warped by it, so youth can only be restored by undoing biological experience. However, the problem had a technical solution. Shortly before a person of thirty or forty was restored to their twenty-three-or thirty-three-year-old state they
recorded a summary of what their renewed cells would find useful to know. Since the businessmen and scientists who financed and discovered this process valued information more than sensed experience they embraced the treatment but kept it secret. In the twenty-first century lifespans varied greatly from nation to nation and class to class, but competitive housekeeping ensured that malnutrition, disease, famine and warfare kept the average human lifespan for the whole planet less than forty years. The effect on even a prosperous nation of many people not dying would have been catastrophic.

Immortality only became possible for many after the creation of extra-terrestrial living room. By that time powerplant housekeeping had returned the earth to a stable ecology and most intelligent people had come to prefer sensed experience to manipulating units of information. Since fear of death is an obvious sign of an unsatisfying life few nowadays want their bodies to exist forever.

Page 50.

perjink
= trim, neat, of smart appearance.

Page 55.

I hate women for their damnable smug
security and for always being older than me,
always older and wiser.

This spasm of rage against women from a man who personally preferred them to men was a symptom of the spreading war fever.

Page 59.

jorries
= small glass or porcelain balls and the game children play with these on pieces of level ground. In Dumbarton it is called
jiggies
(from the verb
jig
meaning to turn or dodge quickly) and in other parts of Scotland,
bools
. It should not be confused with the
bools
played by adults with much larger, wooden balls on smooth green lawns, though the rules of play are similar.

Page 61.

whaups
= curlews.

Page 63.

The Warrior house was built over the short
river flowing into Saint Mary's Loch from
Loch of the Lowes.

This modern structure was on the site of Tibbie Shiel's Inn where James Hogg (poet, novelist
and tenant farmer at Altrieve and Mountbenger) gathered with his neighbours in the first decades of the nineteenth century. A large statue of the poet with crook, plaid and sheepdog was placed on the lower slope of Oxcleuch Rig near the end of that century, and now overlooks the Ettrick veterans' garden of remembrance.

The Warrior house was drill hall, armoury, canteen, dormitory, gymnasium, infirmary, cinema, library, stable, garage, youth hostel, club room and old men's home. Four distinct ranks used it.

1 – The Boys' Brigade. These soldiers of any age over twelve had joined the army but not yet fought a battle. They spent a third of their time in martial exercise. A dedicated few spent more time on that but most enjoyed playing other games too.

2 – Officers. Between wars these spent two days a week training the Boys' Brigade, the rest in martial sport, study and love affairs.

3 – Veterans: officers who had tired of war or grown too old for it. Their pastimes were advising the Boys' Brigades, playing bowls or cards and visiting old men and women in quieter houses.