History is Dead / Secrets and Allegories

"Libraries gave us power, then work came and made us free." Manic Street Preachers.

Democracy came to us, in it's present form, via the 1832 and 1868 Reform Acts (date for SCOTLAND). These acts successively extended the vote from Sussex males, to neuvo-riches males to the rest of the male population. Eventually it was given to women as well. Alongside this Education (the 1870 Education Act) would seek to educate the masses. Conveniently for people like me these concessions to basic human rights would come after a series of rebellions in Scotland and Ireland. Either way, the working classes in the 19th Century started to have a say in their own affairs, and be able to read and think for themselves.

Literacy, though, is not kind to history. Neither is the present. The John Maclean Society is dead, only existing in the shadowy heirarchy of the SRSM and even then... you can't just JOIN. The 1820 Society barely even warrants a mention on Wikipedia (which will talk about just anything). You can join THAT. While you can... There's even a Thomas Muir of Huntershill Society. But you can't join that, either. It's... secret. The only open, relevant and useful Historical Society today is the Society of William Wallace. Unlike the 1820 Society, it has at it's head the charismatic and alledgedly transexual (no... sorry... that was a joke, wasn't it?) David R Ross.

Why? The Republicans in Scotland exist in the shadows. Secret alliances, hidden agendas and politics for the future don't require propaganda. They require results, and sometimes allowing you to join a historical group isn't the best method of preserving the memory. William Wallace, on the other hand was too stubborn to concede, too stubborn to die when he was supposed to and too stubborn to accept what the hell anyone else had to say about Scotland if it wasn't in ALL our names. Each generation since his eventual death would resurrect him in their own image because of the stark, brilliant and easily malliable for their own intents.

What if I told you there was a veil in Scotland? Political movements behind and beyond apparently benign movements? Should I be posted as a David Icke in the making? I always wondered why the YSI disliked Siol nan Gaidheal. The Siol in my book were the good guys, the ones who silently built cairns, wore black t-shirts and made up the numbers at rallies that would have died without them. It can't have been because of membership, because the YSI were made up of young people, and the Siol have potbellies and drinking habits more akin to Hell's Angels than Student's learning the art.

I was recently told a Story about the Wallace Watcher. It extended something I already knew. At Cambuskenneth Abbey there is a Stone called "the Wallace Stone" where, if you bother to go, you will see a stone directly pointing at the Abbey Craig hill. It is said that one of Wallace's appendages is buried under it, and sometimes a White Rose, or a Thistle is left for him. A minority of people know this legend. Even less know the tale of the Wallace Watcher. On August 23rd, at dusk, a tall man, wrapped in Wallace Plaid in the Old Style, with his face masked by a scarf walks up from the Riverside Ruin, when there's no-one near the stone. He stops for a minute, withdraws a half-drunk bottle of Whiskey, most recently an old Glenlivit, and puts it on the Wallace Stone with a White Rose and a Thistle. He leaves via the Riverside Ruin and is never seen again until the next year. The story is so scant and little know that only those who have bother to go the Wallace Stone on the day can bear witness to the event.

History is the perspective of the present. It often doesn't matter how many people know the truth, but only those few who do.

Today I was in Cambuskenneth and I saw a man at the Wallace Stone, but couldn't see his face. Make of it what you will.