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Hoots & Havers February 06

Sir Iain Moncrieff of that Ilk once said that some 30,000 Scots can show their descent from King Robert Bruce and that another million can count him amongst their forebears but can’t prove it. Similarly there are tens of thousands of Scots who are of the Blood of the Prophet. This, I’m told, came about because Alfonso I, king of Castile-Leon married Zaida, daughter of Abu-I Kasim, Moorish king of Seville in about 1090.

A wee while later Edward I, the Hammer of the Scots, married Eleanor of Castile and James I of Scotland wed Joan Beaufort, their descendant. The son of these two, James II, copulated with any Scots lass who stood still long enough; his myriad of Stewart descendants, legitimate or illegitimate, founded dynasties of their own and married into half the clans of the Highlands. Thus many of us have the privilege of being able to wear a green turban, signifying that the wearer is a descendant of Mohammed.

I have never really investigated the Muslim aspect of our Highland heritage. I’ve encountered the occasional moderator, and a suffragan bishop of Jarrow once bounced me on his knee, but the only time I’ve tried to discuss the Almighty with a professional was when I encountered an Imam on a ferry on the Nile. I was told to do so by my companion who said that he was very important, the equivalent of the Archbishop of York, and it was a chance that should not be missed.

The Imam was sitting cross-legged on a dais set on a carpet on the deck of the boat and he picked his toenails throughout our conversation. He looked like John Knox - most of them do. He spoke some English, which made him one up on me because my Arabic is non-existent. We were introduced and he cut to the chase straightaway. ‘What is your religion?’ he asked.

‘Christian,’ I replied, stretching the point a bit.

‘Ah! A heathen. Where are you from?’

‘Scotland.’

That silenced him for a moment. ‘Are you all heathens there?

‘We do not think so’

‘Ah!’ he said and conversation lapsed for a few moments.

‘I have read the Koran,’ I ventured.

His eyes lit up. ‘You know Arabic?’

‘No. I read a translation.’

He rocked with laughter. ‘Do not be so stupid! The Koran is Arabic. Anything else is nothing. You are nothing.’

‘Ah!’ I said.  He gave me a few poppy seeds and we parted. There was nowhere the conversation could really go but I wasn’t wearing my green turban at the time which would have been a useful conversational gambit.

 * * * * *

Granted it is unlikely to happen but I would hate to have the responsibility of developing a project like Taymouth. And what’s going on down there seems to be less than straightforward. A huge wave of local goodwill accompanied the grant of planning permission and we were told we’d be kept fully informed about progress. That may have been a mistake for anything less than complete transparency won’t do.

A couple of opulent newsletters were delivered door to door in the district but these seem to have dried up. Moreover they were written in PR speak which tediously muffled any hard information through a filter of spin and puffery. It meant that the minutes of the community councils became the best source of news about what was going on.

Work seems to have stopped on the Castle and the shoals of eastern European workers have gone home. The biggest cheese, Michael Hall, who was the affable front man of the project, also seems to have gone home. The Castle seems to be wind and water tight, which is real progress, but the Spike Bar – an apparently oft-used term by the golfing fraternity for a place to get blotto without removing your spiked shoes – has been dropped from the current agenda, and the club house which had been closed down is now being refurbished for the current season, when the course was supposed to be closed.

It’s rum stuff and I suppose we just have to wait for further information.

  * * * * *

For various reasons I find myself the repository of things genealogical in my family. Three or four pictures of long-dead members came my way last week. The one illustrated was born Sophie Robertson in 1821.

She was the only child of aging parents and they write of the delight they felt when she was arrived – and lived. She was much loved and, after her father died in 1837, she was sent to school in Edinburgh – sewing, painting, dancing, French. Her letters home to her mother burst with life and humour. She had a cousin James, a lawyer, who was very fond of her. He kept a journal and he often mentions her. He hoped she would wed his younger brother Donald.

She didn’t. James was horrified when she married, aged 23, the minister of Blair Atholl, a man fifteen years older than she was, a widower with a daughter. James kept an eye on her and sadly reports a string of difficult pregnancies, ill-health, premature aging and little apparent happiness. Sophie died in January 1856, aged 35 with her husband at her bedside. I checked out her death certificate on the web just now. ‘Neuralgia 3 weeks. Hemorrhage from the bowels 36 hours’. Her brother-in-law the Pitlochry doctor attended her. She was buried at Struan. In his journal James wrote ‘This is the end of Sophie whose prospects at one time promised so fairly, so brightly. It wrings my heart to think of it.’ Her mother moved into the manse and reared her five surviving grandchildren.

The little miniature would have been painted when Sophie was about ten. The other is from a daguerreotype taken shortly before her death. The contrast between the two images is poignant. The entry following hers in the register of deaths comes twelve days later - her daughter aged three months.

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