In dear old England the yule log has been recognised as a hearth centre-piece since 1184. As far as most of us are concerned it now survives in chocolate form. Scotland takes a different view. Fire has precedence. In Aberdeenshire the citizens swing balls of fire; in Shetland they burn a Viking ship. The further north you go, the more you find evidence that the Scots have a vivid sense of their uproarious Viking past.
Again, twelve days and it’s all over in England. By New Year’s Day we are watching Twelfth Night and in Edinburgh they are celebrating Hogmanay – about as meaningful a term as Shakespeare’s choice of title. In the Shetlands, mid-winter roistering goes on until the last Tuesday in January.
As far as mid-winter festivities are concerned, the trump card is in the hands of the Scots and in particular Robbie Burns. We have him to thank for Burns night, for ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and for Romantic poetry that captured the popular imagination before Wordsworth and Coleridge got going. Burns’s poetry is easy, welcoming and has few problems for an English speaker. It finds inspiration in love, adorable little animals and haggis. It makes Dumfries and Galloway as dear to the English as to the Scots. Burns has his detractors, of course, Hugh MacDiarmid being the most notable., but Burns is much admired south of the Border and beyond Burns night. For an Englishman he epitomises what a poet ought to be.
Christianity with a Scottish accent is part of our English inheritance. Those who have made their way across gigantic Mull and set foot on tiny Iona cannot avoid thinking of Columba. Aidan, too, a monk from Iona, became Bishop of Lindisfarne and brought the Good News to the north of England. Much later Livingstone from Blantyre became the missionary exemplar of the two nations. The Iona Community continues to inspire the English as much as the Scottish. Hymns by Montgomery and Bonar have a modest place in our traditional hymn-books.
Let a Scottish writer (Robert Louis Stevenson) have the last word:
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
‘I go to prepare a place for you,’ said Jesus, (John 14.2)
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