Bonnie Scotland and what we owe herGriffis, William Elliot
History
Bonnie Scotland and what we owe her
Griffis, William Elliot
Scotland; Scotland -- Description and travel
One playfellow, who afterwards gave up his life at Bull Run for the
land that had given him welcome, was my first tutor in Scottish
history. If native enthusiasm, naïve sincerity, and, what seemed to one
mind at least, unlimited knowledge, were the true bases of reputation,
one might call this lad a professor and scholar. As matter of fact,
however, we were schoolboys together on the same bench and our combined
ages would not amount to twenty-five. He it was who first pictured with
vivid phrase and in genuine dialect the exploits of Robert the Bruce
and of William Wallace. He told many a tale of the heather land, in
storm and calm, not only with wit and jollity, but all the time with
a clear conviction of the absolute truth of what had been handed down
verbally for many generations.
He it was who, without knowing of the books written in English which
I afterwards found in my father’s rich library of travel, stirred my
curiosity and roused my enthusiasm to read the “Scottish Chiefs” and
Sir Walter’s fascinating fiction, and, by and by, to wander over the
flowery fields of imagination created by that “illegitimate child of
Calvinism,” Robert Burns.
Though the boy who became a Union soldier was the first, he was by no
means the last of Scottish folk whose memories of the old country were
fresh, keen, and to me very stimulating. In church and Sunday school,
in prayer-meeting and Bible class, I met with many a good soul who
loved the heather. I heard often the words of petition and exhortation
that had on them the burr and flange of a pronunciation that belonged
to the Lowlands. As years of experience and discrimination came, I
could distinguish, even on American soil, between the Highlander’s
brogue and the more polished speech of Glasgow and Edinburgh.
When the time for college preparation came, I had, for private tutor in
the classics, a theological student, who in physical frame and mental
traits, as well as in actual occupation, was Hugh Miller all over
again. He had been a stonecutter, believed in “the testimony of the
rocks,” and could lift, move, or chisel a block of mortuary material
with muscles furnished for the occasion. In character, he resembled in
hard beauty the polished rose-red granite of his native hills. Strictly
accurate himself, a master whose strength had grown through his own
surmounting of difficulties, he was not too ready to help either a
lazy boy or an earnest student, while ever willing to give aid in
really hard places. He introduced me to Xenophon, and his criticisms
and comments on the text were like flashlights, while his sympathy for
Klearchus and his comrades illuminated for me my own memories of the
camp life, the hard marching, and the soldier’s experiences during the
Gettysburg campaign. From the immortal Greek text he made vivid to me
the reality of human relations and their virtual identity, whether in
B.C. 400 or A.D. 1863.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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