When I caught up to 24 hours behind, I started reading a Scottish horror story.
I woke up about 2:15 AM, shut off the lights, and went to sleep. This morning I woke up thinking about a mathematical problem.
September 3 (7:06 AM): The problem revolved around what it is that binoculars actually do. Suppose you have eight-power binoculars. An object of one foot in height will end up looking eight feet high. Yet the viewer does not have to look up at it. Once the problem is expressed that way, it is relatively easy to resolve. But there is more than that. The original question was, why is it when one stands next to a tall monument and looks at the top does it appear to be leaning over the viewer? If all points are brought to one-eighth the distance, the result is still a figure that stands vertically.
Well, breakfast was fairly good. I had oatmeal (Scott's Porage Oats), which had much smaller grain, almost as small as something like Wheatena. I also had eggs and, of course, toast wedges.
We then rushed out to catch a city tour. We got one and our first stop was the Castle. There are two 'towns' in Edinburgh, an older one and a newer one. Why they don't consider that a town that just expanded I am not sure. Old Edinburgh is 1333 years old this year, having been founded in 654 with the building of the Castle. The newer city, founded in 1768, lies on the other side of what is Princes Street.
The Castle overlooks the city and has a big gun fired every day at 1 PM. The idea was inspired by the Paris lunch gun that was fired twelve times at noon. The economical Scots decided 1 PM was a better time for lunch. It is funny that the traditional Scottish attitude toward money and the supposed Jewish attitude are much the same, but the Jews seem to get more flak for it.
The Castle seems to be used now as a collection of museums. The first is a museum of military regalia. Included is Bob, a heroic dog who was stuffed on his death. In a way he is still providing service after his death. I also saw a ram's head that was turned into a table snuff mull. These days I think all table snuff mulls are made by Tupperware. Continuing on, you see various historic rooms. There are the crown jewels of Scotland which the Queen of England is specifically forbidden to wear. This is in the Crown Room. Go a little further and you find the Scottish National Naval, Military, and Air Force Museum. It is an impressive name, but small compared to the military museums in England. The Hall of Honors (a separate building) has, by regiment, a book listing all Scotsmen killed in war from World War I and World War II to the present. We also saw the graveyard for military dogs. The bus driver/guide said that anyone who came back with the name of the most famous dog would get to drive the bus. Not that I was greatly anxious to drive, but we copied down the names from all the gravestones we could read. He said it was none of those. Later he told us about Paddy, whose name cannot be read off the stone; you have to feel the letters.
After the Castle we went to St. Giles Cathedral, though it is considered a cathedral only under a technicality. Since it is Presbyterian these days, it ought not to be considered a cathedral. Apparently for Edinburgh to be given certain political rights, there are criteria it has to fulfill--I don't quite follow it. In any case, the locals needed to be able to claim that there was a cathedral in Edinburgh. So St. Giles was designated.
On the stained glass windows I noted that Christ and people they like are done in light translucent colors; Romans and other people the Church doesn't like are done in darker, opaque colors. Hence the windows are programmed to give mystical religious experiences whenever the sun shines. You know, 'when the sun shines, the Son shines.' I know just standing there I had a deeply moving, spiritual, mystical experience of seeing a glowing Christ in the middle of a stained glass window. Like Ahkaton, I now worship the sun. Send me one million dollars or the sun is going to call me home and I'll end up crispy like the marshmallow that fell into the campfire.
A side chapel has a memorial to Robert Louis Stevenson, who as far as I know was not a particularly religious figure. He wrote popular novels of adventure which did nothing to bring people to the Church. So after his death his name is used to bring people to the Cathedral.
Also buried is the Marquis of Montrose, who was executed for treason on the accusation of the Duke of Argyll. The Duke was also beheaded for treason and likewise interred in the Cathedral. Our driver thought this was a great joke because the two headless ghosts would duel every night. I frankly doubt that the ghosts would have fought more than two or three times. Probably less.
At one time the Cathedral housed four religions at once. I think they were Catholic, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Collegians. The last is an off-shoot of Catholicism that allows priests to marry. I think also one believes you put milk in tea and the other thinks it should be lemon. In any case, each religious group felt magnanimous since the people in the other three religions were going to burn in Hell for all eternity anyway, so there was little point in extending the torment to their pre-death lives. It wasn't like they were Jews or Hindus or something.
Humor aside (and yes, that was intended as humor), the Scottish seem an incredibly temperate and tolerant people. The English classics were things like THE MERCHANT OF VENICE which, let us face it, does about as much for brotherly love as a burning cross. Scottish national classics include books like IVANHOE which was a long way ahead of its time in its message of tolerance.
If you don't believe in Scottish tolerance, you need only take a good look at Edinburgh itself. It is hard to imagine a city of more architectural styles that all live together peacefully. You have, in one little city, classical Greek, classical Roman, German village, Gothic, English village, Spanish castle, modern, and who knows how many other styles. The only place that has more different architectural styles in closer proximity is the Epcot Center.
Well, we also saw Anchor Close. It should be explained what a close is. There are three kinds of alleys in Scotland. When they build a new alley they take a man in average health about 60 years old and have him walk to the end of the alley. If they can walk there and back without problem it is an 'okay alley' or just an 'alley' pure and simple. If he dies of heart failure it is a 'death' alley and will be condemned eventually. If the man is not killed by the walk but it is close then the alley is called a 'close.' Off of the Royal Mile every block or so there is a close.
Anchor Close is famous because the ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA was first published there. The symbol for the BRITANNICA includes the thistle that is the city's symbol (if I remember correctly). Of course, these days the BRITANNICA is published in Chicago. Now one of those things that I tend to take for granted is that the national encyclopedia of Britain would be published in...well...Britain. Sorry. It just sounds better to call it the ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA than the ENCYCLOPEDIA CHICAGICA.
Then we went to the Palace of Holyroodhouse. This is the Scottish palace where the Queen stays when she is in Edinburgh. I am not sure where, since it is mostly open to the public and would afford a certain measure of inconvenience. The current palace was built for Charles II, who never actually saw it, to the great relief of Sir William Bruce (who built it).
As you enter it you pass tapestries with mythological subjects like satyrs. From there you see:
the royal dining room which has never seen a toaster waffle
the throne room with a painting of Victoria's coronation. It is legal proof that Victoria was at one point young.
the evening drawing room with its portrait of the Queen Mother fully clothed
the morning drawing room where the Queen and her Privy Counsel get together for yucks
around the corner is an audience chamber whose whole point is to prove that royalty is rich even though the country is on the brink of financial
ruin. It includes chairs nobody is allowed to sit on like my mother used to have in the living room.
next was a bedchamber that for some reason the King would never sleep in. I think it was too fancy. He slept on a couch in one of the other rooms, I guess. With his money I'm sure he could afford one that folded out. The chamber is decorated with pictures of Hercules. He was popular with nobility, it seems.
the picture gallery (now this is serious) which was commissioned by Charles II and all the paintings, which were painted in two years. They are pictures of the kings of Scotland, all with Charles's large nose, whether the kings had large noses or not. It is part of Charles trying to establish his ancestry back to--are you ready for this?--Moses. Yeah, Moses as in Charleton Heston. This was the sort of twelveupmanship the monarchs of Europe played. The older paintings were painted darker to artificially look aged. Some seem a bit rushed and seem more like caricatures.
climb the stairs and you get to Mary Queen of Scots's bedroom. It was there her husband, Lord Darnley, had a bunch of conspirators break in on Mary and her secretary David Rizzio. They killed Rizzio with 56 stab wounds, all in the hopes that the 6-months-pregnant Mary would miscarry and Darnley would be closer to the throne than he would be if his own son was born. Also I think he thought it would be a funny practical joke of the 'Boy, you should have seen your face...' variety. Not only did she not miscarry but it cured a stubborn case of hiccoughs.
on the way out you see at some distance from the Palace Queen Mary's Bathhouse, a separate bathhouse connected by an underground passage to the Palace. There Mary would take baths in white wine.
Well, did I ever tell you these folks were normal? After the tour we returned (or rather, were returned) to
Princes Street. We made some plans for the evening, namely we picked out a walking tour for the evening. There were a number advertised at the Tourist Information Centre. We picked one called 'Ghosts and Ghouls of Edinburgh' that met at 8 PM at the Mercat Cross, just outside St. Giles. Then we walked back to the Royal Mile. This day we did mostly wandering and reading about places in a guidebook we'd gotten back in New York called EDINBURGH: A TRAVELER'S COMPANION. It is a much more literary guidebook than most, consisting mostly of what people have said through history about the various sites. I don't really remember the order in which we hit the various sites but I think first we went to Lady Stair's Museum, which was hidden away in a close. It is a museum to Scott, Burns, and Stevenson. It has paintings of them and relics of their lives. Interesting but about what you would expect.
We walked the Royal Mile a little way, then left it to see Greyfriar's Kirk where Bobby's grave is the most prominent feature. We sat there in the kirkyard for a while writing our logs and reading the Edinburgh guide. From there we headed to Grassmarket where the public executions took place. This was the site in 1736 where a Captain Porteous was supposed to keep the order during an execution. He arrived drunk and in a foul mood. When some of the local boys threw stones at the executioner, as they usually did anyway, he ordered his troops to fire on the crowd. They were less than happy about the order and some aimed high, but even some of those killed people. Porteous was tried and given a death sentence for the incident, but then was given a reprieve. The populace rioted at the news of the reprieve and went after Porteous. Scott describes the lynching in THE HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN. The title THE HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN, incidentally, is remembered in a brick heart on the ground near St. Giles.
We then walked up the twisted crooked street of West Bend. Around 1670 this street was the home of Major Weir, a tall, dark, likable man with a tall walking stick. |
