Edward Irving, the infamous preacher, died on the 7th of December, 1834.
Edward Irving had a reputation for being a highly demonstrative and charismatic preacher. If television had been invented in his day, he would have been the presenter of one of those interminable, fund raising religious programmes. In the early 19th Century, Irving was also the main public figure in a movement obsessed with what he prophesised was a rapidly approaching apocalypse. In many ways, he was a Pentecostalist before such a label existed, and embraced speaking in tongues and other absurdities. Fred Kaplan, a biographer of Irving’s one time friend, Thomas Carlyle, wrote that Irving “had an extraordinary capacity for self-dramatisation, which he revealed in his preaching …and his heightened rhetoric about his own and his nation’s Christian destiny”.
Not everyone in the Church of Scotland approved of Irving and Thomas Chalmers, who became a leader of the ‘Disruption’ and to whom Irving was at one time an assistant, described Irving’s preaching as “full of bravuras and flourishes” and “like Italian music, appreciated only by connoisseurs”. His prolixity was wondrous and one interminable sermon, during which he was obliged to rest while the congregation sang a few verses of a hymn and which was later published, ran to one hundred and thirty pages, plus thirty more of dedication and preface. In 1822, his fervent sermons in the Caledonian Chapel in London attracted great attention and he became a “larger than life” figure who put Walter Scott “in mind of the devil disguised as an angel of light”.
By 1827, his early popularity had begun to subside, but he squared that with the typical denial, choosing to ignore the serious blow to his self-esteem. He developed an interest in the supernatural and, in 1828, took to lecturing throughout England and Scotland about his prophesies of the ‘Second Coming’. In 1833, his notoriety became too much for the Church of Scotland and it accused him of heresy, resulting in his excommunication. Undeterred, and together with the politician Henry Drummond, he had already formed his own sect. From that ‘school of the prophets’, the Holy Catholic Apostolic Church had emerged, otherwise known as the ‘Irvingite Church’ with its loyal congregation of ‘Irvingites’.
Edward Irving was born in Annan on the 4th of August, 1792. He began his education at a school kept by Peggy Paine, a relation of Thomas Paine, the author of ‘The Age of Reason’. Irving went next to Annan Academy and in 1805, to the University of Edinburgh, from where he graduated with an M.A. in 1809. The following year, he took up a teaching post at a newly established Academy in Haddington and in 1812, moved to a similar post in Kirkcaldy. In the meantime, Irving completed divinity studies through a series of partial sessions and licensed to preach in June, 1815. However, he remained a teacher for three more years until he resigned and moved to Edinburgh, to seek a position in the Church of Scotland. Unsuccessful at first, he was on the point of going to Persia as a missionary when he was appointed to a post in St John’s Parish, Glasgow, in October, 1819, as assistant to the theologian, Thomas Chalmers.
In July, 1822, he moved to London, to preach at the National Scotch Church in Cross Street, Hatton Garden, where with the help of its Patron, the Duke of York, he avoided the obligation to preach in Gaelic as well as English. Irving probably wished to be seen as an Elijah the Tishbite or a John the Baptist, judging by his 1823 publication, ‘For the Oracles of God, Four Orations: for Judgment to come, an Argument in Nine Parts’. It got mixed reviews in which Irving was either a profound thinker or a deceptive quack; a sublime Demosthenes or a ‘Bombastes Furioso’ of stuff and nonsense. He believed his “solitary volume… [was] the sum total of all for which the chariot of heaven made so many visits to the earth”. Unbeknowing of the real truth behind his revelations, he contrasted a time “when [at] each revelation of the ‘Word of God’ …there was done upon the earth a wonder” with “now the miracles of God have ceased …No burning bush …no hand cometh forth from the obscure to write his purposes in letters of flame”. By then, mankind had grown up somewhat.
Crowds flocked to hear Irving preach and his success continued into the late 1820s, but by 1827, his decline had begun. Also in 1827, having developed his interest in prophesies and the supernatural, Irving translated ‘The Coming of the Messiah in Glory and Majesty’. That strange book, which was ‘indexed’ (or banned) by the Catholic Church, told of the biblical events of Daniel and Revelation as if they were about to take place and it was written in 1790 by Manuel De Lacunza, an ex-Jew who wrote under the pen name of ‘Juan Josafat Ben Ezra’. During his travels in Scotland, in 1828, Irving’s imagination had been stirred by the seeming revival of “apostolic gifts of prophecy and healing”. He persuaded himself that such ‘gifts’ had been kept in abeyance only by the absence of faith. Unsurprisingly, in 1831, the year after he published his doctrines regarding the humanity of Jesus Christ, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland condemned his “irregularities” connected with the manifestation of ‘gifts’ and he gradually estranged the majority of his own congregation. The establishment of the Holy Catholic Apostolic Church and excommunication followed.
Edward Irving continued to preach in London until his early death on the 7th of December, 1834. He was buried in the crypt of Glasgow Cathedral, near to the tomb of St. Mungo and is remembered by a statue in the grounds of the old Parish Kirk in Annan.
Today, if we were being polite, we’d call Irving’s parishioners ‘charismatic’. Carlyle wrote of them that suddenly, during regular service and with Irving's encouragement hysterical women and crackbrained enthusiasts uttered confused ‘Ohs’ and ‘Ahs’ and absurd interjections about ‘the Body of Jesus’. He also wrote that they pretended to work miracles and cast out Devils. Irving wasn’t too complimentary of his native land; one of his quotes being “I perceive two things in Scotland of the most fearful omen: ignorance of theological truth, and a readiness to pride themselves in and boast of it”. Pragmatic Presbyterians would no doubt argue.
Tuesday, 7 December 2010
Sunday, 5 December 2010
Lady Grizel Baillie
Lady Grizel Baillie, poet, songwriter and Reformation heroine, died on the 6th of December, 1746.
Religious fanaticism is a terrible thing when it results in the death of others, but it’s equally terrible when it results in the death of the fanatic. Three or four hundred years ago in Scotland, there was fanaticism on both sides of a religious divide caused by the ‘Reformation’. There were many Scottish men and women of that period, from 1517 to 1746, who endured torture, imprisonment and death, in an almost fanatical devotion to either the Catholic or the Presbyterian religion. The 1638 ‘National Covenant’ was an expression of faith on the Presbyterian side and its adherents were known as ‘Covenanters’. Lady Grizel Baillie was the daughter of a ‘Covenanter’, Sir Patrick Hume of Polwarth, who later became Lord Polwarth and the 1st Earl of Marchmont, after the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of the Protestant William and Mary.
Grizel Hume became a bit of a heroine during the ‘Reformation’, long before she became Lady Grizel. In fact, she was a very brave wee girl, who served as a go-between for her father and her future, posthumous, father-in-law, Robert Baillie of Jerviswood, during the latter’s imprisonment. Baillie of Jerviswood wasn’t quite a fanatic, but he was a covenanting conspirator who was implicated in the ‘Rye House Plot’ against King Charles II. He was executed for treason on the 23rd of December, 1684, at the Mercat Cross in Edinburgh and became a cause célèbre for Jacobites in the years that followed. After Baillie was hanged, the Hume family, whose estates were then forfeited, fled to Holland, where they settled in Utrecht, with Grizel’s father, Sir Patrick, posing as a Dr. Wallace. After the ‘Glorious Revolution’, Mary of Orange offered Grizel the post of Maid of Honour. However, Grizel refused, preferring instead to return to Scotland, where, on the 17th of September, 1692, she married George Baillie, son of the ‘Covenanter’, and became Lady Grizel.
The story of Grizel’s heroism is in two parts. Part one: when she was still just twelve years old, her father sent Grizel to Edinburgh with letters for his imprisoned mate, Baillie of Jerviswood. That was undoubtedly a perilous task for a girl not yet in her teens, however, the idea presented in some versions of the story that she had to make her own way to Edinburgh, a journey of between thirty and forty miles, is surely preposterous. Anyway, Sir Patrick dared not attempt to visit his ‘patriot’ friend personally, but as the story goes on, “wee Grizel”, attracting less suspicion than an adult, was able to gain admittance to the prison. She was tasked with more than delivering letters as it was also her mission to bring back any information she could. She contrived to deliver the letter and carried back useful messages, such as “It’s nae very comfy in here” and the gratitude of her father’s chum.
Later, at Baillie’s trial, Sir Patrick, as described in contemporary broadsheets, did dare to go to court. Whereas he didn’t dare visit the prison, he was bold enough to intercede in defence of his great buddy, “sometimes blunting with rare skill the edge of manufactured ‘false witness’, to the rage of the prosecutors”. Hume’s friendship for Baillie meant the authorities were looking for an excuse to implicate him in the ‘Rye House Plot’ and so he took to hiding in the vaults of his ancestors, in Polwarth Kirk; his whereabouts known only to his wife and daughter and the proverbial ‘faithful retainer’, one Jamie Winter.
Part two: brave wee Grizel, despite being scared of the usual ‘terrors’, which kirkyards were held to contain, was able to overcome her fears, stumble over graves, and night after wintry night, deliver a midnight feast to her father. She always managed to get home before daybreak and evade the soldiers searching for her fugitive. As ‘The Legend of Lady Grizelda Baillie’ from Joanna Baillie’s ‘Metrical Legends of Exalted Character’ has it:
“Sad was his hiding−place, I ween,
A fearful place, where sights had been,
Full oft, by the benighted rustic seen;
Aye, elrich forms in sheeted white,
Which, in the waning moonlight blast,
Pass by, nor shadow onward cast,
Like any earthly wight;…”
From earliest youth, Grizel was wont to write in verse and prose and her daughter had at one time in her possession, a manuscript volume with several of Grizel’s compositions, “many of [which were] interrupted, half writ, [and with] some broken off in the middle of a sentence”. Although Lady Grizel wrote a number of simple and sorrowful Scots songs, sadly only two are extant. One is the mournfully beautiful fragment ‘The ewe-buchtin’s bonnie’, which may have been inspired by her father’s peril. The other is ‘Were ne my Hearts light I wad Dye’, which originally appeared in ‘Orpheus Caledonius or a Collection of the best Scotch Songs set to Musick by W. Thomson’, in 1725. Some of her songs were printed in Allan Ramsay’s ‘Tea-Table Miscellany’, including the latter, which has been described as “of outstanding excellence and entirely Scottish in sentiment and style” by Tytler in Tytler and Watson’s ‘Songstresses of Scotland’. Tytler went on to state effusively, “Its sudden inspiration has fused and cast into one perfect line, the protest of thousands of stricken hearts in every generation”. Here’s a wee taste in a couple of verses:
“When bonny young Johnny o’er ye sea,
He said he saw nothing as bonny as me,
He haight me baith Rings and mony bra things,
And were ne my Hearts light I wad dye.
His Kin was for ane of a higher degree,
Said what had he do with the likes of me,
Appose I was bonny I was ne for Johnny,
And were ne my Hearts light I wad dye.”
In addition to her songs, Lady Grizel is known for her ‘Household Book’, which was reprinted by the ‘Scottish History Society’ in 1911. That presents a unique and minutely detailed account of her expenditure, menus, and instructions to her housekeeper and others. It also presents the historian with an interesting insight to the running of a large, Scots country house at that time. Grizel Hume, was born at Redbraes Castle in Berwickshire on the 25th of December, 1665, and Lady Grizel Baillie died in London on the 6th of December, 1746. She was buried on her birthdate in the family burial place at Mellerstain.
Religious fanaticism is a terrible thing when it results in the death of others, but it’s equally terrible when it results in the death of the fanatic. Three or four hundred years ago in Scotland, there was fanaticism on both sides of a religious divide caused by the ‘Reformation’. There were many Scottish men and women of that period, from 1517 to 1746, who endured torture, imprisonment and death, in an almost fanatical devotion to either the Catholic or the Presbyterian religion. The 1638 ‘National Covenant’ was an expression of faith on the Presbyterian side and its adherents were known as ‘Covenanters’. Lady Grizel Baillie was the daughter of a ‘Covenanter’, Sir Patrick Hume of Polwarth, who later became Lord Polwarth and the 1st Earl of Marchmont, after the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of the Protestant William and Mary.
Grizel Hume became a bit of a heroine during the ‘Reformation’, long before she became Lady Grizel. In fact, she was a very brave wee girl, who served as a go-between for her father and her future, posthumous, father-in-law, Robert Baillie of Jerviswood, during the latter’s imprisonment. Baillie of Jerviswood wasn’t quite a fanatic, but he was a covenanting conspirator who was implicated in the ‘Rye House Plot’ against King Charles II. He was executed for treason on the 23rd of December, 1684, at the Mercat Cross in Edinburgh and became a cause célèbre for Jacobites in the years that followed. After Baillie was hanged, the Hume family, whose estates were then forfeited, fled to Holland, where they settled in Utrecht, with Grizel’s father, Sir Patrick, posing as a Dr. Wallace. After the ‘Glorious Revolution’, Mary of Orange offered Grizel the post of Maid of Honour. However, Grizel refused, preferring instead to return to Scotland, where, on the 17th of September, 1692, she married George Baillie, son of the ‘Covenanter’, and became Lady Grizel.
The story of Grizel’s heroism is in two parts. Part one: when she was still just twelve years old, her father sent Grizel to Edinburgh with letters for his imprisoned mate, Baillie of Jerviswood. That was undoubtedly a perilous task for a girl not yet in her teens, however, the idea presented in some versions of the story that she had to make her own way to Edinburgh, a journey of between thirty and forty miles, is surely preposterous. Anyway, Sir Patrick dared not attempt to visit his ‘patriot’ friend personally, but as the story goes on, “wee Grizel”, attracting less suspicion than an adult, was able to gain admittance to the prison. She was tasked with more than delivering letters as it was also her mission to bring back any information she could. She contrived to deliver the letter and carried back useful messages, such as “It’s nae very comfy in here” and the gratitude of her father’s chum.
Later, at Baillie’s trial, Sir Patrick, as described in contemporary broadsheets, did dare to go to court. Whereas he didn’t dare visit the prison, he was bold enough to intercede in defence of his great buddy, “sometimes blunting with rare skill the edge of manufactured ‘false witness’, to the rage of the prosecutors”. Hume’s friendship for Baillie meant the authorities were looking for an excuse to implicate him in the ‘Rye House Plot’ and so he took to hiding in the vaults of his ancestors, in Polwarth Kirk; his whereabouts known only to his wife and daughter and the proverbial ‘faithful retainer’, one Jamie Winter.
Part two: brave wee Grizel, despite being scared of the usual ‘terrors’, which kirkyards were held to contain, was able to overcome her fears, stumble over graves, and night after wintry night, deliver a midnight feast to her father. She always managed to get home before daybreak and evade the soldiers searching for her fugitive. As ‘The Legend of Lady Grizelda Baillie’ from Joanna Baillie’s ‘Metrical Legends of Exalted Character’ has it:
“Sad was his hiding−place, I ween,
A fearful place, where sights had been,
Full oft, by the benighted rustic seen;
Aye, elrich forms in sheeted white,
Which, in the waning moonlight blast,
Pass by, nor shadow onward cast,
Like any earthly wight;…”
From earliest youth, Grizel was wont to write in verse and prose and her daughter had at one time in her possession, a manuscript volume with several of Grizel’s compositions, “many of [which were] interrupted, half writ, [and with] some broken off in the middle of a sentence”. Although Lady Grizel wrote a number of simple and sorrowful Scots songs, sadly only two are extant. One is the mournfully beautiful fragment ‘The ewe-buchtin’s bonnie’, which may have been inspired by her father’s peril. The other is ‘Were ne my Hearts light I wad Dye’, which originally appeared in ‘Orpheus Caledonius or a Collection of the best Scotch Songs set to Musick by W. Thomson’, in 1725. Some of her songs were printed in Allan Ramsay’s ‘Tea-Table Miscellany’, including the latter, which has been described as “of outstanding excellence and entirely Scottish in sentiment and style” by Tytler in Tytler and Watson’s ‘Songstresses of Scotland’. Tytler went on to state effusively, “Its sudden inspiration has fused and cast into one perfect line, the protest of thousands of stricken hearts in every generation”. Here’s a wee taste in a couple of verses:
“When bonny young Johnny o’er ye sea,
He said he saw nothing as bonny as me,
He haight me baith Rings and mony bra things,
And were ne my Hearts light I wad dye.
His Kin was for ane of a higher degree,
Said what had he do with the likes of me,
Appose I was bonny I was ne for Johnny,
And were ne my Hearts light I wad dye.”
In addition to her songs, Lady Grizel is known for her ‘Household Book’, which was reprinted by the ‘Scottish History Society’ in 1911. That presents a unique and minutely detailed account of her expenditure, menus, and instructions to her housekeeper and others. It also presents the historian with an interesting insight to the running of a large, Scots country house at that time. Grizel Hume, was born at Redbraes Castle in Berwickshire on the 25th of December, 1665, and Lady Grizel Baillie died in London on the 6th of December, 1746. She was buried on her birthdate in the family burial place at Mellerstain.
Sir Robert Watson-Watt
Sir Robert Watson-Watt, physicist and inventor of radar, died on the 5th of December, 1973.
Robert Watson Watt had inventing in his blood as he was a direct descendant of the inventor James Watt. Instead of sitting around getting all steamed up, Watt got all wired up in radio waves and became more concerned with valves that amplified electronic signals rather than valves that controlled the emission of steam. It was due to Watt’s invention of ‘radio detecting and ranging’ – otherwise known as radar – that the blue-eyed German Luftwaffe pilots were left scratching their crew-cut blond hair struggling to understand why Britain’s Spitfires and Hurricanes were always in the air to meet them over the Channel during the Battle of Britain. Churchill’s “few” were able to be in the right place at the right time, because Watt’s radar stations were able to detect ‘Jerry’ at up to seventy miles away. Watt probably added the hyphen to his name, because everyone thought he already had two surnames anyway and so it was that he became Sir Watson-Watt in 1942. He looked every inch the boffin and in truth, he was a bit pompou; if he could use five words instead of one, he would. After the ‘War’ he was reportedly disappointed that he did not gain more recognition for his contribution to the Allies’ victory, but in 1952, he was ‘rewarded’ for his contribution to saving Britons from having to learn German. The British Government gave him £50,000 and the Yanks gave him the US Medal of Merit.
Of course, the basic principles of radio wave reflection and electromagnetic waves had been established already, by another famous Scot; James Clerk Maxwell. Ironically, however, it was a German, Heinrich Hertz, who was the first to demonstrate experimentally the production and detection of Maxwell’s waves. That discovery led directly to radio and ultimately, radar. Hertz’ name lives on as the unit of frequency of a radio wave – one oscillation or cycle per second is one Hertz (Hz), which at radio frequencies, is usually represented in megahertz (MHz). Coincidently, another yet German speaker is associated with radar. Christian Andreas Doppler was an Austrian who first described, way back in 1842, the phenomenon that has since become known as the ‘Doppler Effect’. That principle is very important for the range finding aspect of radar systems and you can see how it works by standing in front of an approaching train.
Don’t take that literally, but think of the sound wave of a passing train. The sound of the train becomes ‘higher’ in pitch as it draws nearer and ‘lower’ in pitch as it passes and draws further away. The train makes a constant noise, but the number of sound waves reaching your ear in a given amount of time is what determines the tone, or pitch, you perceive. As the train gets closer, the number of sound waves reaching your ear increases, therefore, the pitch increases and as the train moves away, it decreases. It gives the false effect of accelerating closer and decelerating away as the observed frequency is affected by the relative motion of you (stationary in this example) and the moving train.
Watson-Watt was responsible for creating the first workable radar system, turning theory into one of the most important ‘weapons’ of the War, however, his invention also had the obvious civil applications. Radar was patented in 1935 and Watson-Watt went on to develop airborne intercept radar, which helps fighter planes detect enemy aircraft in the dark. Amongst his other contributions can be listed a cathode-ray direction finder, which was used to study atmospheric phenomena; his research in electromagnetic radiation, and other inventions used for flight safety. In 1926, he also gave us the phrase ‘ionosphere’, which is the uppermost part of the atmosphere where it becomes ionised by solar radiation.
Robert Alexander Watson Watt was born in Brechin on the 13th of April, 1892. He was educated at Damacre School in Brechin and at Brechin High School, before gaining a bursary to study at St Andrews, which he took up to study electrical engineering at University College in Dundee, which was then an off-shoot of St Andrews University. He graduated with a BSc(Engineering) in 1912 and became an assistant to Professor William Peddie, who encouraged Watt’s interest in radio waves. Later, in 1915, Watson Watt began work as a meteorologist at the Royal Aircraft Factory at Farnborough with the aim of applying his knowledge of radio to the early detection of thunderstorms. Lightning gives off a radio signal as it ionizes the air and Watt planned on detecting that in order to warn aviators of approaching storms. He found that aircraft could also be detected without being seen, thereby paving the way for his system that tied together the technological elements necessary to create an effective radar network that worked in the real world.
In 1924, Watson-Watt moved to the Radio Research Station at Slough and in 1933, after a couple of amalgamations, he became Superintendent of a new Department Of Radio Research at the National Physics Laboratory in Teddington. One of the first things he did was to prove to the Air Ministry that Nazi Germany’s claims of having a ‘death ray’ were merely noise. Later, Watson-Watt and his assistant Arnold Wilkins drafted a report entitled ‘The Detection of Aircraft by Radio Methods’, which was presented to the Committee for the Scientific Survey of Air Defence. On the 26th of February, 1935, a successful trial took place using the BBC’s short-wave transmitter at Daventry against a Heyford Bomber. Watson-Watt became Superintendent of Bawdsey Research Station, near Felixstowe, on the 1st of September, 1936, and persuaded the government to set up a network of early warning radar stations. The initial system, known as ‘Chain Home’ and ‘Chain Home Low’, was erected in time for the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. Eventually, a chain of two hundred and fifty huge masts were erected at strategic points along the coastline, from Southampton to Scapa Flow.
Sir Robert Alexander Watson-Watt spent much of the latter part of his life in Canada and the USA, but he died in Inverness, on the 5th of December, 1973, and he was buried in the Kirkyard at Pitlochry.
Robert Watson Watt had inventing in his blood as he was a direct descendant of the inventor James Watt. Instead of sitting around getting all steamed up, Watt got all wired up in radio waves and became more concerned with valves that amplified electronic signals rather than valves that controlled the emission of steam. It was due to Watt’s invention of ‘radio detecting and ranging’ – otherwise known as radar – that the blue-eyed German Luftwaffe pilots were left scratching their crew-cut blond hair struggling to understand why Britain’s Spitfires and Hurricanes were always in the air to meet them over the Channel during the Battle of Britain. Churchill’s “few” were able to be in the right place at the right time, because Watt’s radar stations were able to detect ‘Jerry’ at up to seventy miles away. Watt probably added the hyphen to his name, because everyone thought he already had two surnames anyway and so it was that he became Sir Watson-Watt in 1942. He looked every inch the boffin and in truth, he was a bit pompou; if he could use five words instead of one, he would. After the ‘War’ he was reportedly disappointed that he did not gain more recognition for his contribution to the Allies’ victory, but in 1952, he was ‘rewarded’ for his contribution to saving Britons from having to learn German. The British Government gave him £50,000 and the Yanks gave him the US Medal of Merit.
Of course, the basic principles of radio wave reflection and electromagnetic waves had been established already, by another famous Scot; James Clerk Maxwell. Ironically, however, it was a German, Heinrich Hertz, who was the first to demonstrate experimentally the production and detection of Maxwell’s waves. That discovery led directly to radio and ultimately, radar. Hertz’ name lives on as the unit of frequency of a radio wave – one oscillation or cycle per second is one Hertz (Hz), which at radio frequencies, is usually represented in megahertz (MHz). Coincidently, another yet German speaker is associated with radar. Christian Andreas Doppler was an Austrian who first described, way back in 1842, the phenomenon that has since become known as the ‘Doppler Effect’. That principle is very important for the range finding aspect of radar systems and you can see how it works by standing in front of an approaching train.
Don’t take that literally, but think of the sound wave of a passing train. The sound of the train becomes ‘higher’ in pitch as it draws nearer and ‘lower’ in pitch as it passes and draws further away. The train makes a constant noise, but the number of sound waves reaching your ear in a given amount of time is what determines the tone, or pitch, you perceive. As the train gets closer, the number of sound waves reaching your ear increases, therefore, the pitch increases and as the train moves away, it decreases. It gives the false effect of accelerating closer and decelerating away as the observed frequency is affected by the relative motion of you (stationary in this example) and the moving train.
Watson-Watt was responsible for creating the first workable radar system, turning theory into one of the most important ‘weapons’ of the War, however, his invention also had the obvious civil applications. Radar was patented in 1935 and Watson-Watt went on to develop airborne intercept radar, which helps fighter planes detect enemy aircraft in the dark. Amongst his other contributions can be listed a cathode-ray direction finder, which was used to study atmospheric phenomena; his research in electromagnetic radiation, and other inventions used for flight safety. In 1926, he also gave us the phrase ‘ionosphere’, which is the uppermost part of the atmosphere where it becomes ionised by solar radiation.
Robert Alexander Watson Watt was born in Brechin on the 13th of April, 1892. He was educated at Damacre School in Brechin and at Brechin High School, before gaining a bursary to study at St Andrews, which he took up to study electrical engineering at University College in Dundee, which was then an off-shoot of St Andrews University. He graduated with a BSc(Engineering) in 1912 and became an assistant to Professor William Peddie, who encouraged Watt’s interest in radio waves. Later, in 1915, Watson Watt began work as a meteorologist at the Royal Aircraft Factory at Farnborough with the aim of applying his knowledge of radio to the early detection of thunderstorms. Lightning gives off a radio signal as it ionizes the air and Watt planned on detecting that in order to warn aviators of approaching storms. He found that aircraft could also be detected without being seen, thereby paving the way for his system that tied together the technological elements necessary to create an effective radar network that worked in the real world.
In 1924, Watson-Watt moved to the Radio Research Station at Slough and in 1933, after a couple of amalgamations, he became Superintendent of a new Department Of Radio Research at the National Physics Laboratory in Teddington. One of the first things he did was to prove to the Air Ministry that Nazi Germany’s claims of having a ‘death ray’ were merely noise. Later, Watson-Watt and his assistant Arnold Wilkins drafted a report entitled ‘The Detection of Aircraft by Radio Methods’, which was presented to the Committee for the Scientific Survey of Air Defence. On the 26th of February, 1935, a successful trial took place using the BBC’s short-wave transmitter at Daventry against a Heyford Bomber. Watson-Watt became Superintendent of Bawdsey Research Station, near Felixstowe, on the 1st of September, 1936, and persuaded the government to set up a network of early warning radar stations. The initial system, known as ‘Chain Home’ and ‘Chain Home Low’, was erected in time for the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. Eventually, a chain of two hundred and fifty huge masts were erected at strategic points along the coastline, from Southampton to Scapa Flow.
Sir Robert Alexander Watson-Watt spent much of the latter part of his life in Canada and the USA, but he died in Inverness, on the 5th of December, 1973, and he was buried in the Kirkyard at Pitlochry.
Saturday, 4 December 2010
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle was born on the 4th of December, 1795.
Thomas Carlyle was a grumpy old man, but then again, he was a grumpy young man, too. It’s fair to say he had good reason as he quite probably suffered from gastric ulcers throughout most of his life. He is generally presented as having been crotchety and argumentative, and even his great friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, said he “…talks like a very unhappy man, profoundly solitary, displeased and hindered by all men and things about him”. Regardless of all that, Carlyle was a leading Victorian intellectual. It’s easy to say that he was an essayist, writer, translator, historian, and influential social critic, but he’s not that easy to categorise as he wasn’t a philosopher and he was much more than a critic. His early works inspired such social reformers as John Ruskin, Charles Dickens, Thomas Mann and William Morris, however, by the late 1840s, his progressive opinions seem to have progressed to the right. At least that is the common analysis, which stems from his admiration of strong leaders being interpreted as a foreshadowing of Fascism and the oft repeated story of Göbbels having read Carlyle’s work on Frederick the Great to Hitler in their Berlin bunker. What does that prove? That even dictators have a discerning taste in books.
Carlyle wrote a lot of good books, some would say great books; none of which were novels, but there are one or two that were novel. Carlyle’s most novel work and his breakthrough publication was called ‘Sartor Resartus’ (‘The Tailor Retailored’), which was published in ‘Fraser’s Magazine’ between 1833 and 1834. It is partly autobiographical and wholly enigmatic, and it was written using a complex language that came to be called ‘Carlylese’. It is also partly philosophy as it tells the story of Diogenes Teufelsdröckh, a German self made philosopher who believes everything can be explained in terms of clothes, which seems quite absurd. Teufelsdröckh undertakes a spiritual journey in “One age [of which], he is hag-ridden, bewitched; the next, priestridden, befooled; in all ages, bedevilled”. It is a satire and the source of Carlyle’s reputation as a social critic deeply concerned with the falseness of material wealth and the social conditions of workers.
Carlyle’s work comprises thirty volumes, so you’ve got a lot of catching up to do if you want to get through even a shortlist. One of his key themes was that of leadership, a quality that he admired and propounded in his six volumes about Frederick the Great and in ‘The Early Kings of Norway’. In his famous work ‘On Heroes and Hero Worship’ he put forward the concept of the leader as hero, whom the people should recognise and worship, and the examples he used ranged from the Prophet Mohammed to Will Shakespeare. Perhaps folks would have a different view of Mohammed if they also saw his as a man who “single-handedly, could weld warring tribes and wandering Bedouins into a most powerful and civilized nation in less than two decades”. One downside of Carlyle’s searing honesty is that his treatment of the subject of West Indian slavery in ‘The Negro Question’ is an anathema to the modern reader; leave that one off your list.
In his writing, Carlyle raised serious questions about democracy, politics and mass persuasion, which aren’t a million miles from the ‘will to power’ theories in ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ by Friedrich Nietzsche. However, in that very book, Nietzsche called Carlyle an “insipid muddlehead”, suggesting he’d failed to escape from the very petty-mindedness he professed to condemn. However, George Eliot was a fan, suggesting, “…surely there is no one who can read and relish Carlyle feeling that they could no more wish him to have written in another style than they could wish Gothic architecture not to be Gothic... No novelist has made his creations live for us more thoroughly than Carlyle… what depth of appreciation, what reverence for the great and godlike under every sort of earthy mummery!”.
Carlyle’s love of German literature led to his translations of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and others. His translation of Goethe’s ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’, is regarded as a masterpiece. He also wrote ‘The Life of Schiller’ and was largely responsible for introducing German Romantic literature to Britain. To Carlyle, history was the storehouse of heroes and he once wrote that “All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.”. His three volume history ‘The French Revolution’ presents historical facts, but also sets out to question the nature of the facts with which historians deal. He must’ve been a bit of hero himself as he had to rewrite that book after John Stuart Mill’s maid mistakenly burned the original first volume. He graciously accepted £100 compensation from Mill, who had originally offered twice as much.
Thomas Carlyle was born in Ecclefechan, on the 4th of December, 1795. He was educated at the village school, in Annan Academy and, from the age of fifteen, at Edinburgh University, where he studied arts and mathematics. Afterwards, he taught at Annan Academy, Kirkcaldy Grammar School and privately in Edinburgh, where he also studied law, briefly. During that period he worked on his book about Schiller, which was first published by the ‘London Magazine’ in serial form between 1823 and 1824. He also contributed to Brewster’s ‘Edinburgh Encyclopaedia’ and such journals as the ‘Edinburgh Review’ and ‘Fraser’s Magazine’. Thomas was expected to become a preacher, but he lost his inbred Calvinist faith and went on to serve mankind by means of an admirable alternative. From 1824 he was a full time writer and in 1834, moved from the farm at Craigenputtock to London, where he became known as ‘the Sage of Chelsea’.
In the last few years of his life, Carlyle’s writing was confined to letters to ‘The Times’. He was appointed Rector of the University of Edinburgh in 1866 and in 1874, he received the ‘Prussian Order of Merit’. Thomas Carlyle died in London on the 5th of February, 1881. Carlyle had declined a Baronetcy from the Prime Minister, Disraeli, and although it was arranged that he could be buried in Westminster Abbey, his earnest wish was granted and he was buried in Scotland; in lowly Ecclefechan.
Thomas Carlyle was a grumpy old man, but then again, he was a grumpy young man, too. It’s fair to say he had good reason as he quite probably suffered from gastric ulcers throughout most of his life. He is generally presented as having been crotchety and argumentative, and even his great friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, said he “…talks like a very unhappy man, profoundly solitary, displeased and hindered by all men and things about him”. Regardless of all that, Carlyle was a leading Victorian intellectual. It’s easy to say that he was an essayist, writer, translator, historian, and influential social critic, but he’s not that easy to categorise as he wasn’t a philosopher and he was much more than a critic. His early works inspired such social reformers as John Ruskin, Charles Dickens, Thomas Mann and William Morris, however, by the late 1840s, his progressive opinions seem to have progressed to the right. At least that is the common analysis, which stems from his admiration of strong leaders being interpreted as a foreshadowing of Fascism and the oft repeated story of Göbbels having read Carlyle’s work on Frederick the Great to Hitler in their Berlin bunker. What does that prove? That even dictators have a discerning taste in books.
Carlyle wrote a lot of good books, some would say great books; none of which were novels, but there are one or two that were novel. Carlyle’s most novel work and his breakthrough publication was called ‘Sartor Resartus’ (‘The Tailor Retailored’), which was published in ‘Fraser’s Magazine’ between 1833 and 1834. It is partly autobiographical and wholly enigmatic, and it was written using a complex language that came to be called ‘Carlylese’. It is also partly philosophy as it tells the story of Diogenes Teufelsdröckh, a German self made philosopher who believes everything can be explained in terms of clothes, which seems quite absurd. Teufelsdröckh undertakes a spiritual journey in “One age [of which], he is hag-ridden, bewitched; the next, priestridden, befooled; in all ages, bedevilled”. It is a satire and the source of Carlyle’s reputation as a social critic deeply concerned with the falseness of material wealth and the social conditions of workers.
Carlyle’s work comprises thirty volumes, so you’ve got a lot of catching up to do if you want to get through even a shortlist. One of his key themes was that of leadership, a quality that he admired and propounded in his six volumes about Frederick the Great and in ‘The Early Kings of Norway’. In his famous work ‘On Heroes and Hero Worship’ he put forward the concept of the leader as hero, whom the people should recognise and worship, and the examples he used ranged from the Prophet Mohammed to Will Shakespeare. Perhaps folks would have a different view of Mohammed if they also saw his as a man who “single-handedly, could weld warring tribes and wandering Bedouins into a most powerful and civilized nation in less than two decades”. One downside of Carlyle’s searing honesty is that his treatment of the subject of West Indian slavery in ‘The Negro Question’ is an anathema to the modern reader; leave that one off your list.
In his writing, Carlyle raised serious questions about democracy, politics and mass persuasion, which aren’t a million miles from the ‘will to power’ theories in ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ by Friedrich Nietzsche. However, in that very book, Nietzsche called Carlyle an “insipid muddlehead”, suggesting he’d failed to escape from the very petty-mindedness he professed to condemn. However, George Eliot was a fan, suggesting, “…surely there is no one who can read and relish Carlyle feeling that they could no more wish him to have written in another style than they could wish Gothic architecture not to be Gothic... No novelist has made his creations live for us more thoroughly than Carlyle… what depth of appreciation, what reverence for the great and godlike under every sort of earthy mummery!”.
Carlyle’s love of German literature led to his translations of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and others. His translation of Goethe’s ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’, is regarded as a masterpiece. He also wrote ‘The Life of Schiller’ and was largely responsible for introducing German Romantic literature to Britain. To Carlyle, history was the storehouse of heroes and he once wrote that “All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.”. His three volume history ‘The French Revolution’ presents historical facts, but also sets out to question the nature of the facts with which historians deal. He must’ve been a bit of hero himself as he had to rewrite that book after John Stuart Mill’s maid mistakenly burned the original first volume. He graciously accepted £100 compensation from Mill, who had originally offered twice as much.
Thomas Carlyle was born in Ecclefechan, on the 4th of December, 1795. He was educated at the village school, in Annan Academy and, from the age of fifteen, at Edinburgh University, where he studied arts and mathematics. Afterwards, he taught at Annan Academy, Kirkcaldy Grammar School and privately in Edinburgh, where he also studied law, briefly. During that period he worked on his book about Schiller, which was first published by the ‘London Magazine’ in serial form between 1823 and 1824. He also contributed to Brewster’s ‘Edinburgh Encyclopaedia’ and such journals as the ‘Edinburgh Review’ and ‘Fraser’s Magazine’. Thomas was expected to become a preacher, but he lost his inbred Calvinist faith and went on to serve mankind by means of an admirable alternative. From 1824 he was a full time writer and in 1834, moved from the farm at Craigenputtock to London, where he became known as ‘the Sage of Chelsea’.
In the last few years of his life, Carlyle’s writing was confined to letters to ‘The Times’. He was appointed Rector of the University of Edinburgh in 1866 and in 1874, he received the ‘Prussian Order of Merit’. Thomas Carlyle died in London on the 5th of February, 1881. Carlyle had declined a Baronetcy from the Prime Minister, Disraeli, and although it was arranged that he could be buried in Westminster Abbey, his earnest wish was granted and he was buried in Scotland; in lowly Ecclefechan.
Friday, 3 December 2010
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson died on the 3rd of December, 1894.
Robert Lewis ‘Louis’ Balfour Stevenson was a bit of a wimp, but he sure as heck could write an adventure story. Too sickly to realistically contemplate following the family tradition of building lighthouses, this non-Lighthouse Stevenson compromised by agreeing to study for a law degree. However, he had always wanted to be a professional writer and that, to the joy of millions around the world, then and now, is what he became.
If you’ve never read any of his books, shame on you, but you may well have seen a dramatisation of one or two of them; on television or in the movies or even on the stage. He was the author of ‘Treasure Island’ published in 1882, the macabre thriller ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’, which appeared in 1886, ‘Kidnapped’, also from the same year and, in 1886, whilst in America, he began writing ‘The Master of Ballantrae’, which is set in both that country and Scotland. His last book was the unfinished masterpiece, ‘Weir of Hermiston’, set in 19th Century Edinburgh and the Lammermuir Hills. That was written while Stevenson was in exile in Samoa, where he made his home after having scoured the South Seas trying to find a climate that would be conducive to allaying the symptoms of his tuberculosis. In the tropical climate of Samoa, Stevenson’s thoughts often turned to Edinburgh and he wrote a sequel to ‘Kidnapped’ in 1893, called ‘Catriona’.
Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson was born in Edinburgh on the 13th of November, 1850, and at the age of eighteen, he dropped the ‘Balfour’ from his name, changed the spelling of ‘Lewis’ to ‘Louis’, and began to refer to himself as ‘RLS’. He produced his first story, a short historical tale, at the age of sixteen and by the time he was called to the bar, he had already started to write travel sketches, essays, and short stories for magazines. His first articles were published in ‘The Edinburgh University Magazine’ and ‘The Portofolio’. Stevenson sometimes wrote in the Scottish vernacular, including a number of poems and the story of ‘Thrawn Janet’. His first book was ‘An Inland Voyage’, an account of his journey through Belguim and France in a canoe designed by John MacGregor, who was largely responsible for popularising canoeing as a sport across Europe.
In Edinburgh, Stevenson led an unconventional, bohemian lifestyle, matched by his daringly long hair and eccentric appearance. In 1879, he published ‘Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes’. Giving a fascinating insight into the Edinburgh of another era, it is amongst the most vivid and personal of his books. It’s a kind of guide book mixed with social commentary and contains controversial views of his native city. So much so in fact, that Stevenson was moved to add a footnote to the first chapter in response to criticism. In closing that first chapter, he had written “By all the canons of romance, the place demands to be half deserted and leaning towards decay; …but these citizens …are altogether out of key. Chartered tourists, they make free with historic localities, and rear their young among the most picturesque sites with a grand human indifference. To see them thronging by, in their neat clothes and conscious moral rectitude, and with a little air of possession that verges on the absurd, is not the least striking feature of the place”.
His footnote added “These sentences have, I hear, given offence in my native town, and a proportionable pleasure to our rivals of Glasgow. I confess the news caused me both pain and merriment. May I remark, as a balm for wounded fellow- townsmen, that there is nothing deadly in my accusations? … And let them console themselves - they do as well as anybody else; the population of (let us say) Chicago would cut quite as rueful a figure on the same romantic stage. To the Glasgow people I would say only one word, but that is of gold; I have not yet written a book about Glasgow”.
Stevenson’s attitude to his writing is illustrated in various prefaces and dedications, often to his friend and financial agent, Charles Baxter. His wife wrote the preface to what must be for lovers of Scotland’s history, Stevenson’s masterpiece. That of course, is ‘Kidnapped’, which wraps the tale of the fictitious David Balfour in the events of the aftermath of the 1745 Jacobite Rising, during his flight around and across Scotland in the company of historical figures such as Alan Breck Stewart. Fanny wrote in that preface that her husband had the idea of writing a story that would turn on the ‘Appin murder’ and that he gleaned much valuable material for his novel from a book about the trial of James Stewart in Aucharn in Duror of Appin for the murder of Colin Campbell of Glenure. She also wrote that apart from having described Alan Breck as “smallish in stature”, Stevenson seemed to have taken Stewart’s personal appearance, right down to his clothing, directly from that book. I guess we can forgive that level of plagiarism – and mine, because the copyright has long since expired.
Whilst in France, prior to writing ‘Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes’, Stevenson fell in love with a married American woman, called Fanny Vandegrift Osbourne, who was ten years his elder and had two children. When she returned to California to get a divorce, Stevenson followed after her in 1879 and they were married in San Francisco, in 1880. From the late 1880s, Stevenson lived with his family on an estate he had purchased in Vailima, in Samoa, where the servants used to call him ‘Tusitala’ (‘Teller of Tales’).
Robert Lewis ‘Louis’ Balfour Stevenson died of a brain haemorrhage at Vailima on the 3rd of December, 1894. His grave on Mt. Vaea in Samoa carries the following quotation from his tale, ‘Old Mortality’, which was published in 1884: “Here he lies where he longed to be; home is the sailor, home from sea, and the hunter home from the hill”.
Robert Lewis ‘Louis’ Balfour Stevenson was a bit of a wimp, but he sure as heck could write an adventure story. Too sickly to realistically contemplate following the family tradition of building lighthouses, this non-Lighthouse Stevenson compromised by agreeing to study for a law degree. However, he had always wanted to be a professional writer and that, to the joy of millions around the world, then and now, is what he became.
If you’ve never read any of his books, shame on you, but you may well have seen a dramatisation of one or two of them; on television or in the movies or even on the stage. He was the author of ‘Treasure Island’ published in 1882, the macabre thriller ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’, which appeared in 1886, ‘Kidnapped’, also from the same year and, in 1886, whilst in America, he began writing ‘The Master of Ballantrae’, which is set in both that country and Scotland. His last book was the unfinished masterpiece, ‘Weir of Hermiston’, set in 19th Century Edinburgh and the Lammermuir Hills. That was written while Stevenson was in exile in Samoa, where he made his home after having scoured the South Seas trying to find a climate that would be conducive to allaying the symptoms of his tuberculosis. In the tropical climate of Samoa, Stevenson’s thoughts often turned to Edinburgh and he wrote a sequel to ‘Kidnapped’ in 1893, called ‘Catriona’.
Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson was born in Edinburgh on the 13th of November, 1850, and at the age of eighteen, he dropped the ‘Balfour’ from his name, changed the spelling of ‘Lewis’ to ‘Louis’, and began to refer to himself as ‘RLS’. He produced his first story, a short historical tale, at the age of sixteen and by the time he was called to the bar, he had already started to write travel sketches, essays, and short stories for magazines. His first articles were published in ‘The Edinburgh University Magazine’ and ‘The Portofolio’. Stevenson sometimes wrote in the Scottish vernacular, including a number of poems and the story of ‘Thrawn Janet’. His first book was ‘An Inland Voyage’, an account of his journey through Belguim and France in a canoe designed by John MacGregor, who was largely responsible for popularising canoeing as a sport across Europe.
In Edinburgh, Stevenson led an unconventional, bohemian lifestyle, matched by his daringly long hair and eccentric appearance. In 1879, he published ‘Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes’. Giving a fascinating insight into the Edinburgh of another era, it is amongst the most vivid and personal of his books. It’s a kind of guide book mixed with social commentary and contains controversial views of his native city. So much so in fact, that Stevenson was moved to add a footnote to the first chapter in response to criticism. In closing that first chapter, he had written “By all the canons of romance, the place demands to be half deserted and leaning towards decay; …but these citizens …are altogether out of key. Chartered tourists, they make free with historic localities, and rear their young among the most picturesque sites with a grand human indifference. To see them thronging by, in their neat clothes and conscious moral rectitude, and with a little air of possession that verges on the absurd, is not the least striking feature of the place”.
His footnote added “These sentences have, I hear, given offence in my native town, and a proportionable pleasure to our rivals of Glasgow. I confess the news caused me both pain and merriment. May I remark, as a balm for wounded fellow- townsmen, that there is nothing deadly in my accusations? … And let them console themselves - they do as well as anybody else; the population of (let us say) Chicago would cut quite as rueful a figure on the same romantic stage. To the Glasgow people I would say only one word, but that is of gold; I have not yet written a book about Glasgow”.
Stevenson’s attitude to his writing is illustrated in various prefaces and dedications, often to his friend and financial agent, Charles Baxter. His wife wrote the preface to what must be for lovers of Scotland’s history, Stevenson’s masterpiece. That of course, is ‘Kidnapped’, which wraps the tale of the fictitious David Balfour in the events of the aftermath of the 1745 Jacobite Rising, during his flight around and across Scotland in the company of historical figures such as Alan Breck Stewart. Fanny wrote in that preface that her husband had the idea of writing a story that would turn on the ‘Appin murder’ and that he gleaned much valuable material for his novel from a book about the trial of James Stewart in Aucharn in Duror of Appin for the murder of Colin Campbell of Glenure. She also wrote that apart from having described Alan Breck as “smallish in stature”, Stevenson seemed to have taken Stewart’s personal appearance, right down to his clothing, directly from that book. I guess we can forgive that level of plagiarism – and mine, because the copyright has long since expired.
Whilst in France, prior to writing ‘Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes’, Stevenson fell in love with a married American woman, called Fanny Vandegrift Osbourne, who was ten years his elder and had two children. When she returned to California to get a divorce, Stevenson followed after her in 1879 and they were married in San Francisco, in 1880. From the late 1880s, Stevenson lived with his family on an estate he had purchased in Vailima, in Samoa, where the servants used to call him ‘Tusitala’ (‘Teller of Tales’).
Robert Lewis ‘Louis’ Balfour Stevenson died of a brain haemorrhage at Vailima on the 3rd of December, 1894. His grave on Mt. Vaea in Samoa carries the following quotation from his tale, ‘Old Mortality’, which was published in 1884: “Here he lies where he longed to be; home is the sailor, home from sea, and the hunter home from the hill”.
Thursday, 2 December 2010
Mary Slessor
Mary Mitchell Slessor, the Scottish missionary, was born on the 2nd of December, 1848.
Wee Mary Slessor from Aberdeen in Scotland, who once journeyed to Africa, is remembered variously, but always fondly, as ‘the white Mother’, ‘Ma Okoyong’, ‘a big person’, ‘Eka Kpukpru Owo’ (everybody’s mother – or ‘Mother of all the Peoples’), ‘the White Queen of Calabar’ and “the most wonderful woman in West Africa”. Strangely, by one biographer, she was called the “Expendable Mary Slessor”, but J. H. Morrison pays her a much more apt tribute, stating: “She is entitled to a place in the front ranks of the heroines of history, and if goodness be counted an essential element of true greatness, if eminence be reckoned by love and self-sacrifice, by years of endurance and suffering, by a life of sustained heroism and purest devotion, it will be found difficult, if not impossible, to name her equal”.
Mary Mitchell Slessor was born in Gilcomston, in Aberdeen, on the 2nd of December, 1848. Her mother, who was a deeply religious woman, was from Oldmeldrum and her keen interest in missionary work in Nigeria was to have a great influence on Mary. In 1859, the family moved to Dundee and Mary, at the age of eleven, was sent to work in the jute mills, to supplement the family income. She was a ‘half timer’ in the Baxter Brothers’ Mill and spent the other half of her arduous days at a school provided by the mill owners. It was a harsh introduction to the work ethic, which was to dominate her life. By the time she was fourteen, Mary had become a skilled jute worker and began working full time. That meant a twelve hour day toiling at her weaving machine “amid the flash of the shuttles, the rattle of the looms and the roar of the machines”. Like her countryman and fellow missionary, David Livingstone, Mary furthered her education by reading books during any spare moments she could snatch.
Mary and her mother were members of the Wishart Church, named after the Protestant martyr, George Wishart, the only true hero of the Reformation in Scotland. Mary volunteered to become a Christian teacher at a local mission and the earliest story of her courage occurred at that time. The story goes that she successfully stood her ground against a gang of local youths, when one of their number swung a weaver’s shuttle, closer and closer to her face. Mary defied them by demanding that if she didn’t flinch, they would all join the Sunday School class. Mary triumphed, and later the experience was something that she would exploit in her encounters with far more threatening adversaries.
Mary became entranced by accounts of work in Nigeria, which were outlined in the ‘Missionary Record’ and successfully applied to the ‘Foreign Mission Board of the United Presbyterian Church’ for a posting to the Calabar region of West Africa. She left Scotland aboard the S.S. ‘Ethopia’ on the 5th of August, 1876 and returned only once, briefly. The part of Africa to which she had sailed was known as the ‘White Man’s Grave’ and a place where life meant very little. Witchcraft and superstition were prevalent in a country where slavery was common. Cannibalism occurred in some parts and human sacrifice routinely followed the death of a village dignitary. The ritual murder of twins took place, because their birth was thought to be an evil sign and if a family had too many children, the simply left the unwanted child in the bushes to die. In that primitive society, women were treated as little more than livestock, but Mary stepped bravely ashore and never once looked back.
Diseases and infections were things that foreigners could hardly avoid and the average life expectancy was just a few years. However, Mary survived and as remedies and precautions became available in the early years of the 20th Century, she provided vaccination against the dreaded smallpox and set up mission hospitals for treating the native peoples. Unlike most missionaries, Mary became fluent in the Efik language and adopted native styles, so as to better integrate with and influence the native culture, and the day-to-day lives of those she served. Mary urged them to quit worshiping the skulls of dead men and not to be afraid of evil spirits. She told them not to kill the wives and slaves of a ‘big man’ when he dies, because, “They cannot help him in the next life”.
Mary was clever enough to have leveraged the British desire for better trade routes in order to secure finance and as Government money was secured, Mary was able to move ever further into the heartland. Her legendary all night treks through rain forests into the Nigerian interior are nothing short of incredible. At first, she worked in the missions in Duke Town, Creek Town and Old Town, her first sight of which was a human skull swinging from a pole in front of the meeting house. In 1888, despite the best advice of King Eyo Honesty VI, the intrepid exploreress went alone to work among the Okoyong. The King, conceding to her wishes against his better judgement, sent her upriver as a “big person in the grandest canoe in all of Calabar”. Mary was the first outsider ever allowed to live amongst the Okoyong, where she was allowed to build a school. In a reprise of her Dundee experience, she prevented several internecine battles by refusing to get out of the way. “Out of the way; you die, too white Ma. Move on!” she was told, but she calmly stood her ground, crying “Shoot, if you dare!” They didn’t.
Her reputation also helped her in venture into the territory of the cannibal Azo tribe, whom she won over in her own peerless way. Mary’s insistence on lone stations had often led her into conflict with the authorities and gained her a reputation as “somewhat eccentric”. Nevertheless, she was heralded in Britain as the ‘white queen of Okoyong’ and had achieved what traders, soldiers, and diplomats had been unable to do for four hundred years – open up the heartland of Nigeria to outsider trade. A missionary, but not an evangelist, Mary concentrated on settling disputes, encouraging trade, establishing social changes and introducing Western education. To the natives, who trusted her absolutely, she was known as the “White Mother” or “Ma”. In 1892, she was made vice-consul in Okoyong, presiding over the native court and in 1905, she was named vice-president of the Ikot Obong native court. In 1913, she was awarded the Order of St John of Jerusalem. H. K. W. Kumm, in ‘African Missionary Heroes and Heroines’ wrote of a conversation with Sir William Wallace, the Deputy Governor of Northern Nigeria, who described Mary Slessor as “the most wonderful woman in West Africa”.
Mary Slessor died on the 13th of January, 1915, after a prolonged bout of fever, probably suffering from malaria. She was given a state funeral and buried on a hillside by the mission station where she had first served, under an imposing cross of Aberdeenshire granite.
Wee Mary Slessor from Aberdeen in Scotland, who once journeyed to Africa, is remembered variously, but always fondly, as ‘the white Mother’, ‘Ma Okoyong’, ‘a big person’, ‘Eka Kpukpru Owo’ (everybody’s mother – or ‘Mother of all the Peoples’), ‘the White Queen of Calabar’ and “the most wonderful woman in West Africa”. Strangely, by one biographer, she was called the “Expendable Mary Slessor”, but J. H. Morrison pays her a much more apt tribute, stating: “She is entitled to a place in the front ranks of the heroines of history, and if goodness be counted an essential element of true greatness, if eminence be reckoned by love and self-sacrifice, by years of endurance and suffering, by a life of sustained heroism and purest devotion, it will be found difficult, if not impossible, to name her equal”.
Mary Mitchell Slessor was born in Gilcomston, in Aberdeen, on the 2nd of December, 1848. Her mother, who was a deeply religious woman, was from Oldmeldrum and her keen interest in missionary work in Nigeria was to have a great influence on Mary. In 1859, the family moved to Dundee and Mary, at the age of eleven, was sent to work in the jute mills, to supplement the family income. She was a ‘half timer’ in the Baxter Brothers’ Mill and spent the other half of her arduous days at a school provided by the mill owners. It was a harsh introduction to the work ethic, which was to dominate her life. By the time she was fourteen, Mary had become a skilled jute worker and began working full time. That meant a twelve hour day toiling at her weaving machine “amid the flash of the shuttles, the rattle of the looms and the roar of the machines”. Like her countryman and fellow missionary, David Livingstone, Mary furthered her education by reading books during any spare moments she could snatch.
Mary and her mother were members of the Wishart Church, named after the Protestant martyr, George Wishart, the only true hero of the Reformation in Scotland. Mary volunteered to become a Christian teacher at a local mission and the earliest story of her courage occurred at that time. The story goes that she successfully stood her ground against a gang of local youths, when one of their number swung a weaver’s shuttle, closer and closer to her face. Mary defied them by demanding that if she didn’t flinch, they would all join the Sunday School class. Mary triumphed, and later the experience was something that she would exploit in her encounters with far more threatening adversaries.
Mary became entranced by accounts of work in Nigeria, which were outlined in the ‘Missionary Record’ and successfully applied to the ‘Foreign Mission Board of the United Presbyterian Church’ for a posting to the Calabar region of West Africa. She left Scotland aboard the S.S. ‘Ethopia’ on the 5th of August, 1876 and returned only once, briefly. The part of Africa to which she had sailed was known as the ‘White Man’s Grave’ and a place where life meant very little. Witchcraft and superstition were prevalent in a country where slavery was common. Cannibalism occurred in some parts and human sacrifice routinely followed the death of a village dignitary. The ritual murder of twins took place, because their birth was thought to be an evil sign and if a family had too many children, the simply left the unwanted child in the bushes to die. In that primitive society, women were treated as little more than livestock, but Mary stepped bravely ashore and never once looked back.
Diseases and infections were things that foreigners could hardly avoid and the average life expectancy was just a few years. However, Mary survived and as remedies and precautions became available in the early years of the 20th Century, she provided vaccination against the dreaded smallpox and set up mission hospitals for treating the native peoples. Unlike most missionaries, Mary became fluent in the Efik language and adopted native styles, so as to better integrate with and influence the native culture, and the day-to-day lives of those she served. Mary urged them to quit worshiping the skulls of dead men and not to be afraid of evil spirits. She told them not to kill the wives and slaves of a ‘big man’ when he dies, because, “They cannot help him in the next life”.
Mary was clever enough to have leveraged the British desire for better trade routes in order to secure finance and as Government money was secured, Mary was able to move ever further into the heartland. Her legendary all night treks through rain forests into the Nigerian interior are nothing short of incredible. At first, she worked in the missions in Duke Town, Creek Town and Old Town, her first sight of which was a human skull swinging from a pole in front of the meeting house. In 1888, despite the best advice of King Eyo Honesty VI, the intrepid exploreress went alone to work among the Okoyong. The King, conceding to her wishes against his better judgement, sent her upriver as a “big person in the grandest canoe in all of Calabar”. Mary was the first outsider ever allowed to live amongst the Okoyong, where she was allowed to build a school. In a reprise of her Dundee experience, she prevented several internecine battles by refusing to get out of the way. “Out of the way; you die, too white Ma. Move on!” she was told, but she calmly stood her ground, crying “Shoot, if you dare!” They didn’t.
Her reputation also helped her in venture into the territory of the cannibal Azo tribe, whom she won over in her own peerless way. Mary’s insistence on lone stations had often led her into conflict with the authorities and gained her a reputation as “somewhat eccentric”. Nevertheless, she was heralded in Britain as the ‘white queen of Okoyong’ and had achieved what traders, soldiers, and diplomats had been unable to do for four hundred years – open up the heartland of Nigeria to outsider trade. A missionary, but not an evangelist, Mary concentrated on settling disputes, encouraging trade, establishing social changes and introducing Western education. To the natives, who trusted her absolutely, she was known as the “White Mother” or “Ma”. In 1892, she was made vice-consul in Okoyong, presiding over the native court and in 1905, she was named vice-president of the Ikot Obong native court. In 1913, she was awarded the Order of St John of Jerusalem. H. K. W. Kumm, in ‘African Missionary Heroes and Heroines’ wrote of a conversation with Sir William Wallace, the Deputy Governor of Northern Nigeria, who described Mary Slessor as “the most wonderful woman in West Africa”.
Mary Slessor died on the 13th of January, 1915, after a prolonged bout of fever, probably suffering from malaria. She was given a state funeral and buried on a hillside by the mission station where she had first served, under an imposing cross of Aberdeenshire granite.
Wednesday, 1 December 2010
Kinnaird Head lighthouse
The first modern lighthouse in Scotland was lit on the 1st of December, 1787.
The first modern lighthouse in Scotland is now Scotland’s Lighthouse Museum and it has as its slogan the apt phrase, ‘Battered by storms, ravaged by waves, built by Stevenson’. That refers, of course, to Robert Stevenson, the first of the famous ‘Lighthouse Stevensons’ amongst whose descendents was the novelist, Robert Louis Stevenson.
The earliest known mention of a lighthouse in Scotland is from 1635, when Charles I granted a patent to James Maxwell of Innerwick and John Cunninghame of Barnes to erect a lighthouse on the Isle of May, which lies at the mouth of the Firth of Forth. Maxwell and Cunninghame were authorised to collect toll duties of 1½d. per ton for Scotch vessels and double that rate for foreign ships. That patent was ratified by the Scots Parliament in 1641. The method of lighting such older lighthouses was by means of a coal fire. Later, in 1814, the ‘Commissioners’ purchased the Isle of May, together with the lighthouse and all interests in light dues, for the sum of £60,000. A new lighthouse was established on the Isle by the ‘Lighthouse Board’, in 1816, and that was engineered by Robert Stevenson, who by that time had established himself as ‘Mr. Lighthouse’.
Thirty years earlier, the lighthouse at Kinnaird Head, near Fraserburgh, was commissioned by the ‘Commissioners of Northern Lighthouses’ following an Act of the 27th of June, 1786, “for erecting lighthouses in the northern parts of Great Britain”. That Act came in response to a series of hugely destructive storms around Britain’s, and particularly Scotland’s, coasts, in 1782. It was then on the 1st of December, 1787, that the light from Kinnaird was first exhibited. The ‘Keeper of the Light’ was a former shipmaster called James Park. That man was paid 1s. per night, with the benefit of some ground, on condition the he had another person with him, who he was to instruct in the cleaning of the lantern and lighting the lamps.
The lighthouse tower at Kinnaird Head was built by Thomas Smith and then rebuilt in 1824, by his stepson, Robert Stevenson. Smith was the man who designed the whale oil lamps and invented a type of parabolic reflector; Stevenson ‘simply’ built the edifices that housed those essential beams. Thomas Smith designed Kinnaird’s light and it was the most powerful light of its day. It had seventeen reflectors in the lantern chamber, located at the top of the four storey structure, which were arranged in three horizontal tiers, giving its illumination a range of over twelve miles. Smith was appointed ‘Engineer to the Commissioners of Northern Lighthouses’ on the 22nd of January, 1787, and prior to that appointment, he had been a ‘whiteironsmith’ and manufacturer of lamps in Edinburgh. He held the position of ‘Engineer’ until 1804, when he was succeeded by Robert Stevenson.
Kinnaird Head Lighthouse was built on top of a 16th Century castle, which was built for the Fraser family in 1572. Kinnaird Head, which is ‘cinn na h’airde’ in Gaelic, means ‘at the head of the point of land’ and fittingly describes this extraordinary promontory, which lies on the north east, where Scotland’s coastline turn through 90 degrees. Who knows why the Frasers of Philorth built the castle on such an exposed headland, but such locations were not uncommon. Take a look at Dunnottar or Tantallon; and there are plenty more examples. Kinnaird Castle certainly became a focal point for the village of Faithlie, which long since became the once bustling fishing port of Fraserburgh.
There are several stories concerning the castle or the lighthouse. One is that the castle tower seems to have been lucky to have survived as, in 1824, Robert Stevenson had called for it to be demolished and replaced by a purpose built structure. Its survival is seemingly down to Sir Walter Scott, who once accompanied Stevenson on an expedition around Scotland on the ‘Pharos’, a ship belonging to the Lighthouse Board. Scott, who was known for his antiquarian sentiments, appears to have convinced Stevenson to demolish only the structures around the tower, albeit that the interior was gutted. Other than the stone vaulted ground storey, which was retained, its floors were ripped out, new doors and windows were added, and the entire top storey was removed and replaced by a new lantern. The old stairs were replaced by a fine new spiral stair, which is a feature that can be appreciated today, designed by Stevenson.
Another story, concerning the Castle’s Wine Tower, not the lighthouse tower, is a kind of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ fairy tale. The legend goes that Lord Fraser’s daughter was young and beautiful, but instead of meekly succumbing to her father’s plans for her marriage, she had fallen hopelessly in love with a piper. Her affections were returned, but when her father found out, he reacted in true 16th Century fashion. She was told to give up her love for the piper, who was cast into a cell at the foot of the Wine Tower with just his bagpipes for company. The daughter refused to comply and so she was shut into the top of the Tower as a punishment. As the piper slowly starved to death, he composed a plaintive pibroch to his lost love, which she was able to hear from her window. Distraught and unable to bear life without her lover, she climbed out of the window and jumped to her death. These days, you can identify the spot where she fell onto the rocks below the Tower as it is marked in red to signify her blood, spilled for love.
Today, the lighthouse is still in working order, but it has been replaced by a small, unmanned light, which operates beside the original structure. However, the 1787 lighthouse remains much as it was left by its last crew and is managed as part of the Museum of Scottish Lighthouses museum by the Kinnaird Head Trust.
The first modern lighthouse in Scotland is now Scotland’s Lighthouse Museum and it has as its slogan the apt phrase, ‘Battered by storms, ravaged by waves, built by Stevenson’. That refers, of course, to Robert Stevenson, the first of the famous ‘Lighthouse Stevensons’ amongst whose descendents was the novelist, Robert Louis Stevenson.
The earliest known mention of a lighthouse in Scotland is from 1635, when Charles I granted a patent to James Maxwell of Innerwick and John Cunninghame of Barnes to erect a lighthouse on the Isle of May, which lies at the mouth of the Firth of Forth. Maxwell and Cunninghame were authorised to collect toll duties of 1½d. per ton for Scotch vessels and double that rate for foreign ships. That patent was ratified by the Scots Parliament in 1641. The method of lighting such older lighthouses was by means of a coal fire. Later, in 1814, the ‘Commissioners’ purchased the Isle of May, together with the lighthouse and all interests in light dues, for the sum of £60,000. A new lighthouse was established on the Isle by the ‘Lighthouse Board’, in 1816, and that was engineered by Robert Stevenson, who by that time had established himself as ‘Mr. Lighthouse’.
Thirty years earlier, the lighthouse at Kinnaird Head, near Fraserburgh, was commissioned by the ‘Commissioners of Northern Lighthouses’ following an Act of the 27th of June, 1786, “for erecting lighthouses in the northern parts of Great Britain”. That Act came in response to a series of hugely destructive storms around Britain’s, and particularly Scotland’s, coasts, in 1782. It was then on the 1st of December, 1787, that the light from Kinnaird was first exhibited. The ‘Keeper of the Light’ was a former shipmaster called James Park. That man was paid 1s. per night, with the benefit of some ground, on condition the he had another person with him, who he was to instruct in the cleaning of the lantern and lighting the lamps.
The lighthouse tower at Kinnaird Head was built by Thomas Smith and then rebuilt in 1824, by his stepson, Robert Stevenson. Smith was the man who designed the whale oil lamps and invented a type of parabolic reflector; Stevenson ‘simply’ built the edifices that housed those essential beams. Thomas Smith designed Kinnaird’s light and it was the most powerful light of its day. It had seventeen reflectors in the lantern chamber, located at the top of the four storey structure, which were arranged in three horizontal tiers, giving its illumination a range of over twelve miles. Smith was appointed ‘Engineer to the Commissioners of Northern Lighthouses’ on the 22nd of January, 1787, and prior to that appointment, he had been a ‘whiteironsmith’ and manufacturer of lamps in Edinburgh. He held the position of ‘Engineer’ until 1804, when he was succeeded by Robert Stevenson.
Kinnaird Head Lighthouse was built on top of a 16th Century castle, which was built for the Fraser family in 1572. Kinnaird Head, which is ‘cinn na h’airde’ in Gaelic, means ‘at the head of the point of land’ and fittingly describes this extraordinary promontory, which lies on the north east, where Scotland’s coastline turn through 90 degrees. Who knows why the Frasers of Philorth built the castle on such an exposed headland, but such locations were not uncommon. Take a look at Dunnottar or Tantallon; and there are plenty more examples. Kinnaird Castle certainly became a focal point for the village of Faithlie, which long since became the once bustling fishing port of Fraserburgh.
There are several stories concerning the castle or the lighthouse. One is that the castle tower seems to have been lucky to have survived as, in 1824, Robert Stevenson had called for it to be demolished and replaced by a purpose built structure. Its survival is seemingly down to Sir Walter Scott, who once accompanied Stevenson on an expedition around Scotland on the ‘Pharos’, a ship belonging to the Lighthouse Board. Scott, who was known for his antiquarian sentiments, appears to have convinced Stevenson to demolish only the structures around the tower, albeit that the interior was gutted. Other than the stone vaulted ground storey, which was retained, its floors were ripped out, new doors and windows were added, and the entire top storey was removed and replaced by a new lantern. The old stairs were replaced by a fine new spiral stair, which is a feature that can be appreciated today, designed by Stevenson.
Another story, concerning the Castle’s Wine Tower, not the lighthouse tower, is a kind of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ fairy tale. The legend goes that Lord Fraser’s daughter was young and beautiful, but instead of meekly succumbing to her father’s plans for her marriage, she had fallen hopelessly in love with a piper. Her affections were returned, but when her father found out, he reacted in true 16th Century fashion. She was told to give up her love for the piper, who was cast into a cell at the foot of the Wine Tower with just his bagpipes for company. The daughter refused to comply and so she was shut into the top of the Tower as a punishment. As the piper slowly starved to death, he composed a plaintive pibroch to his lost love, which she was able to hear from her window. Distraught and unable to bear life without her lover, she climbed out of the window and jumped to her death. These days, you can identify the spot where she fell onto the rocks below the Tower as it is marked in red to signify her blood, spilled for love.
Today, the lighthouse is still in working order, but it has been replaced by a small, unmanned light, which operates beside the original structure. However, the 1787 lighthouse remains much as it was left by its last crew and is managed as part of the Museum of Scottish Lighthouses museum by the Kinnaird Head Trust.
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