Heeding the Piper’s Call

My grandmother was a little old Scotswoman who always wore black, even black hats with crinkly black flowers, until her 1951 passing. But her stories were colorful tartan tales of castles, pirates, angels, Indians, even a royal execution. They were more real to me than holy Scripture.

Her name was Mary Adam Cannon. She was a frail, bent, white-haired lady born in Kirkintilloch (Church-in-the-Lake), a village beyond that great city Glasgow on the River Clyde. She had a soft, no-nonsense brogue dotted with rolling Rs, and she grilled wondrous lamb chops. She concocted miraculous cough syrups of honey and lemon juice, or sugar boiled with sliced onion. Smells evoke our most potent memories. The fragrance of pale blue lilacs recalls her face powder and tiny, old-age pension-rented cottage. Lines and creases in a wan, angular face bespoke 79 years of modest triumphs. Hurts and losses? Mere details of fretful lives forewarned in the gilt-edged pages of her old King James Bible.

Grandma’s role in World War II was to be my companion and caregiver, as my parents worked in San Francisco naval shipyards to defeat arrogant Germany and imperial Japan. At 3, at bedtime, I first heard the croon and clash of Scottish lullabies and bloody tales of ancient battles. My only actual keepsake of her is a battered Folgers coffee can bank, depicting a tall, black clipper ship like the one she boarded in 1879, aged 7, for strange America. This relic endures on my desk; it’s a relic and nothing more.

But on Memorial Day weekend, I will reconnect with her on a more profound level at Costa Mesa’s Orange County Fairgrounds, where I’ll celebrate with thousands of our distinction at the United Scottish Society’s 72nd Annual Southern California Scottish Festival.

Whatever one’s ethnicity, we’re indelibly marked by forbears. My ancestors always moved west toward farther shores, genes commingling eventually with Irish, German, Jewish, Hungarian, even the Cherokee blood of the Tennessee widower, a strict teetotaler, who became my grandfather. Talents and faults--including my weakness for strong drink--are woven into my DNA strands like steel teeth in barbed wire. It remained my life’s lesson to learn what firewater does to an Indian with Scots-Irish blood. Sometimes it wasn’t pretty. But I hold no grudge at earning sobriety the hard way. Knowing who you are forges an ineffable bond with a past alloyed of genes, bone and memory.

In my case, I thrill to the hearty, martial bagpipe anthem “Scotland the Brave,” and that haunting hymn “Amazing Grace.” Professional bagpiper Ian Whitelaw played those and more at 1999 memorial rites for my mother, Josephine Cannon Vinsel. I am--in large part--who I am through those two ladies, and regret that we knew no piper to summon for Grandma in 1951.

The hairs will stand on my neck in chills at those familiar, distant Highland tunes, arriving under spring fog burning away like mist on a moor. The corners of my eyes will burn again at the crisp, brittle rattle of snare drums; the rich humming of bagpipes as our kilted bands mass, five abreast, for the grand march. Sound is transformed into pure sensation, resonant to the bone. I see them now, 350 strong, resplendent in tartan plaids of 60 clans--blues, greens, reds, gold, black, gray, brown, yellow, rust, pink and heather purple--their regalia aglint with burnished brass and silver, flashing in the May sun.

Music and ritual enliven my recollections, and this year I’ve been remembering the most vivid of my grandmother’s bedtime stories--the tale of my Clan Gordon forefather, the executioner. It was he, as my grandmother recounted, who, in 1587, raised high his executioner’s ax and swung it down on the thin, pale neck of Mary, Queen of Scots, the doomed Stuart ruler condemned by her own cousin, England’s Queen Elizabeth I. Mary did not die quick and clean. His ax was dull.

Most published accounts are too graphic, like a Quentin Tarantino movie, but my ancestor finally severed the royal head. Library books reveal that he then grasped Mary’s long auburn hair--unaware it was a wig--jerked the grisly trophy aloft and solemnly intoned: “God save the queen ... “ Whereupon head tumbled from wig and spoiled his dramatic moment before all the lords and ladies.

Grandma said Queen Mary had smuggled her beloved dog, a wee terrier, into the death chamber beneath regal skirts for final comfort. Whimpering, shivering, bewildered at what befell his mistress, he finally died of grief.

Grandma knew. Grandma said so.

The ancient eyewitness account was repeated by generations of Clan Gordon septs, or member families, a feudal confederation whose chief raised the Gordon Highlanders infantry regiment renowned for red tunics and white helmets. But even though my 16th century kinsmen clearly were neither royalty nor aristocrats, we revere our tiny homeland’s heritage. Our history is steeped in bondage, righteous will and evolution toward democracy and human rights. Since 1700, Scotland has contributed much to the modern world. Published volumes list Scot-achieved milestones in democratic ideals and governance. We set standards in philosophy, education, invention, aviation, global and space exploration, military tactics, economics, business, engineering and literature. We 28 million of Scots blood--diluted, perhaps--who’ve scattered worldwide include 12 million in America and 4 million in Canada. Twenty-three U.S. presidents and five of the 12 astronauts who walked on the moon had Scots roots.

Yet difficult as the old places were and disappointing as new worlds seemed, there remains that strand of shared and handed-down memory, tough and enduring, blended and redefined over the years. This, I think, is what heritage is about. One can try to explain it, but it cannot be caught in a jar and studied like a firefly or a tadpole. Nor is it less a miracle than those tiny creatures here at our far end of evolution.

Rituals will bring it all alive as thousands gather next weekend. Every year, since my first Scots festival in 1969, I anticipate being at home among kinsmen. My red handlebar mustache is, 35 years later, now white, reflecting those dress uniform colors of our troops of the 92nd and 101st Gordon Highlanders Regiment. Still, the vivid self my forbears defined remains ever enchanted by our proud pipes and drums.

They will shake the very air with a music we, the privileged, carry in our blood.

I count the days.

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The 72nd Annual Scottish Festival takes place May 28 through May 30 at the Orange County Fairgrounds, 100 Fair Drive, Costa Mesa. More information is available at www.unitedscottishsociety.com.