“There is no such thing as a weed. Weeds are just plants growing in the wrong place”. So said Angus McBeard, the huge and hairy owner of our local garden centre “Thistles and Thorns”. I had simply asked him what weedkiller to use to control thistles and I had obviously stirred up his latent patriotism.
“Scotch thistles in Scotland are regarded as precious native wildflowers and roses are weeds” said McBeard with ferocious feeling.
“The Scotch thistle is a symbol of Scottish strength and cunning” added Angus’ wife, Fiona, sensing an opportunity to gallop off on her favourite hobby horse.
“Our national emblem is our beautiful Scotch thistle. We are tough and our plants are tough”.
I had not realised until now that our local plant nursery was a hotbed of Scottish nationalism. I have some sympathy with the Scots as I have discovered that I have numerous ancestors all called David Cameron. Cameron is of course one of the most ancient of the Scottish clans and has been described as “Fiercer than fierceness itself”. ** Added to this, my middle name is David and I’m quite partial to Scotch Finger shortbreads.
“When the Romans invaded Britain”, she went on, “We repulsed them at the border and they had to retreat.
“You see, the Roman soldiers’ great weakness was that they wore sandals, not boots. They were always stepping on fierce young Scotch thistles which crippled them with stinging pain”.
“It’s like snake bite” chipped in young Dougal, the youngest of the McBeard family, who was already, at 10, sprouting a few ginger facial hairs in homage to the family name.
“Just show me another plant that could defeat the Roman army and I’ll eat my tam o’shanter” said Angus, taking off his hat and raising it to his bared teeth, as if it was a black pudding pizza.
“As well as the formidable thistle defence line, our forebears had some highly effective attack weapons” said Fiona, clearly the historian of the family.
“The first one was the hound barrier”.
“Hound barrier?” I said, perplexed.
“That’s right, hounds. Well actually terriers, but really fierce ones. The old Scots had packs of specially trained West Highland terriers to nip those bare Roman heels incessantly, then run away and attack from another angle. The enemy couldn’t see them until it was too late, because Westies are little white dogs which are invisible in the sleet and snow. The Scots worked out that the Roman soldiers’ feet and ankles were their weak points. So they attacked them relentlessly. Those little terriers really riled the Romans, I can tell you”.
“Then there was the sound barrier” said Angus mysteriously.
“Sound barrier?” I said, quizzically. “But no-one broke the sound barrier before 1947”.
Angus scowled and ignored my objection and knowledge of trivia.
“Have you ever” he said, glaring at me ferociously like Mel Gibson in Braveheart, “Have you ever been forced to listen to badly played massed bagpipes all out of tune with each other? It’s like hundreds of geese being plucked alive”.
I confessed that, though I had been to my local Australian expression of the Edinburgh Tattoo, I had never experienced massed bagpipes as a weapon of deliberate sonic attack.
“Don’t forget the drums dad!” piped in a serious looking young Dougal.
“Och aye, Dougal, good laddie for reminding me” said his father.
“Drums, hundreds of them, pounding away all night, played by specially selected Scots men and women who couldn’t keep in time even with a metronome. As you probably know, Roman soldiers were trained to march in strict time with the drum beat. So drums playing out of time with each other drove them crazy”.
“Crazy” I agreed, wondering what I had to do, buy or promise to get out of this secret revolutionary cell meeting, yet sensing some strange Scottish stirrings in my blood.
“Scottish drums were a brilliant weapon during the day as well” went on Angus, beating his fists on a large upturned pot. “They were so loud they drowned out the Roman military drums and all the soldiers got out of step with one another and kicked one another’s ankles and trod on one another’s toes. It was muckle martial marching chaos, I tell you. They tossed cabers at the Romans from the hilltops, knocking some of them down. Then they showered them with haggis launched from catapults. The Romans rushed off to the nearest burn to wash it off as quickly as possible and became so rattled, that they finally gave up, and retreated behind Hadrian’s Wall along the border. They amused one another with gladiator fights and hot Roman baths to sooth their aches and pains”.
“So, as you can see” concluded Fiona, bristling with joie de Scottish vivre, “we are very proud of our Scotch thistles”.
“But it’s been declared a noxious weed in every country in the world – apart from Scotland” I protested, feeling somehow disloyal to all those David Cameron forbears.
“It’s all a matter of context” said Angus, eager to return to his theme and itching to enlighten the unenlightened like me and perhaps recruit me to join the cause..
“Scotch thistles are our strength, and our secret weapon”.
“You can also cook and eat them. But be careful to pull out the prickles first, they are murder on the tongue”.
“Out of their context, like in Australia, the prickles get caught in the sheep’s wool and ruin the wool clip and snag in the baristas’ beards and ruin the coffee. There’s nothing worse than a cappuccino with thistles floating in it. They’re a fearsome danger in the wrong context, but a great asset to Scotland, and we’re verra proud to have them” he concluded with a flourish as he and Fiona and Dougal broke into a stirring rendition of “Scotland the Brave”.
One day when he’s not quite so puffed up, and warlike, I’ll ask Angus why he migrated from his beloved Scotland to Australia, and whether he could take a few hectares of Scotch thistle or gorse back with him next time he returns to his native heath. Meanwhile, I’ll go back to listening to my favourite Scottish band, Skyedance. Tonight I might try to cook a hearty cock-a-leekie soup and some neeps and tatties*** to feed my inner Scot.
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© Geoff Milton 2020
** James Logan “The Clans of the Scottish Highlands” London: Ackerman & Co. 1845
***see cietours.com/blog/10-traditional-scottish-foods-try
