There is only one place in the world where the phrase, 'Firth of the Fourth' makes sense: Scotland. A firth is a bay! Scotland is so steeped in history that it would take a life time to relate it all. But there were many interesting anecdotes I picked up in my third visit to this beautiful land with its high black mountains, green flowing hills and valleys and a people with strange accents (of course our accents are strange to them again.) The same word and name could mean two different things in different countries!
Glaswegians are people who live in Glasgow! To us it would means something about glass! Dunoon is a popular place to visit in Scotland, to us in Cape Town it is a squatter village. Sutherland is a wild and wide place but to us in South Africa it is known as the place where all the observatories are located. Elgin in the Cape is known for its fruit, but in Scotland it is Macbeth area, where the witches operated from. Orkney is a little mining town in the West Transvaal, but to the Scots it is the place with precipitous cliffs dropping to the sea leading to the low hills of Orkney, near the Arctic circle.
There are many valuable lessons to be learned in the history of Scotland.
The first town on the border between England and Scotland is called Gretna Green. Here many runaway lovers from England got married by a blacksmith who performed the ceremony over his anvil and tapped his anvil to announce them as man and wife! According to English law young lovers have to be 18 to get married, but in Scotland 16 was the marrying age. They would elope and get the smith to marry them, being pursued by angry parents, of course! Parents struggle to understand the chemistry between young lovers! We need to have faith to allow God to bring people together in his way and his time or else we will experience Gretna Greens as well!
Common Riding is something the Scots do in summer: they ride along the borders on horseback to recall the days of the great raids in the moors! What do you and I remember about our nation's past? Is there something you want to commemorate? They turned evil raids into a pleasant past time for this generation.
The body snatchers were people in Edinburgh who dug up coffins to sell corpses to Medical Researchers who needed to dissect the bodies. This trade fell into disrepute when the merchants started murdering people to sell fresh bodies to the Medics! Greed makes murderers of us all - when the only driving force in life is to make a profit, all morals and ethics get thrown out the window!
John Gray's grave is famous because his terrier, Bobby, watched over his grave for fourteen years after his death. A statue has been erected to commemorate Bobby's loyalty to his master in Candlemaker's Row. Loyalty is something we need to restore in our relationships and our attitudes towards one another and to the cause we give ourselves to. Let us learn this lesson from the little dog, Bobby!
The coat of arms of Glasgow depicts a salmon. It refers to one of St. Mungo's miracles. The queen of Cadzow (now Hamilton) gave her wedding ring to her favourite courtier. The king noticed it and stole the rign from the courtier and threw it into the river Clyde. Then he demanded the rign back from her on pain of death. In despair the queen went to St Mungo and asked for help. He sent a man to the river and bring the first fish he caught back it to him. In the mouth of the fish there was the missing ring! Sometimes we also throw away what we most treasure and we need a miracle to recover it! But, miracles do happen - so do not despair.
The Clyde was a narrow, shallow river until they widened and deepened it to make Glasgow the second city in the Empire because of the new possibilities of trade and ship building! The Queen Mary and both the QE I & II were built in these shipyards. Perhaps we need to deepen and widen our outlook on life in order to be more productive and to enrich our lives!
Sterling Bridge was the place where both Brave heart William Wallace and Robert the Bruce defeated the English armies to bring independence to Scotland in their respective generations in 1297 and 1314. We have to serve our generations like David according to the will of God for our lives to set people free from sin and religious bondage! Let's be brave hearts for God!
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