Angel Harp: A Novel

by Michael Phillips

  I remembered Ranald’s words about the history of Scotland being the history of its religion. I had always known that Scotland’s music was special and unique. More than anything it was Celtic music that had drawn me here in the first place. But it wasn’t only the music that had gotten inside me. It was the history, the culture, the people, the language, the lore, the literature, the hopes, the disappointments, the triumphs, the poetry, and the pervading spiritual atmosphere that overspread them all. God had used the land of Scotland to awaken me spiritually. Surely that was no accident. Scotland’s multidimensioned magic knit together many factors into a unique tapestry, melancholy perhaps, woven in subdued shades and minor chords of mystery and undefinable meaning. Subdued shades, exactly like the heather. At last I was ready to discover what that interweaving of music, history, and religion signified. I wanted to take in the full scope of the subtle heathery tapestry and perceive the tale it told.

  No longer were the tourist sites mere “tourist” sites—suddenly they had become intricate and important threads of the vast tapestry that was Scotland.

  I toured the Museum of Antiquities in Edinburgh with heightened interest, even excitement. To see the ancient Queen Mary harp and Lamont harp and Pictish stones sent thrills through me. Everything was newly alive with meaning. The harmonies of my own harp were now more than mere music—they were alive with harmonies of the spirit resonating with the deep longings of my soul. I think it was perhaps while touring Edinburgh Castle that the history at last began to organize itself and give its particular nuances to the three-dimensional tapestry. The stark, rugged majesty of the castle itself, seen from across the valley, so perfectly typified the land and its personality—it appeared to grow literally out of the stones themselves, exactly like so many of Scotland’s ancient castles. Out of a foundation of granite had emerged a people, a culture, a nation—hard, determined, rugged, enduring, like the stones of their homes and castles and buildings and bridges. But they were likewise a people of passion and vigor and creativity, for they also derived much of their national character from the peat that overlaid the granite substrata, peat that had not only warmed their cottages but whose warmth fueled the fires of their hearts with vitality and energy and pride. Granite and peat together. Both defined the national character.

  When I gazed upon Bonnie Prince Charlie’s red cape and trousers in their display at the castle, my heart felt something, a connection with the reality of Scotland’s history that plunged yet deeper at the sight of the bust of Mary Queen of Scots. These heroes of Scottish legend and song were real people! With wonder I beheld the crown jewels, then the Stone of Scone, upon which had been crowned British kings and queens for centuries. The awe deepened as I stood in Queen Margaret’s tiny chapel and recalled my own epiphany of the spirit on the drive south.

  I left the castle in a daze, overwhelmed by the emotional experience of being in the midst of a history that suddenly seemed so much a part of my own inner story. I walked back to the hotel where I was staying, in no hurry as I made my way through the streets. All about me was modernity and bustle and noise. But my mind and heart, all my senses, were engrossed in events and people of centuries past. I felt as if I were walking in a dream, where busyness swirled about me but wasn’t really there.

  I went back to my hotel room and sat down to read a fifty-page book outlining Scotland’s history I’d bought at the castle gift shop. I read it straight through, two hours without a break. I read slowly, almost methodically, trying to absorb not merely the details but the overview of two thousand years of history. The minute I was finished, I was on my way back to the castle.

  I don’t know how many people tour Edinburgh Castle twice in the same day, but I did. I spent the whole rest of the afternoon, more slowly this time, visiting every room and listening in detail to every segment of the tour-guide CD. In Margaret’s Chapel for the second time that day, I read selections out of another book from the gift shop, Prayers of Mary Queen of Scots. I felt such a spiritual bond with these two women, both queens of Scotland separated by almost five hundred years, Queen Margaret and Queen Mary. As many terrible things as had happened in the name of religion, there was yet an undercurrent of true faith throughout the history of this land that could not be denied. They lived so long ago, yet what incredible women of deep and abiding faith they both were! That faith was now real to me, too, as it had been to Margaret and Mary.

  Changes were taking place inside me—deep inside me. I left the chapel in cleansing tears.

  It was late by the time I made my way back down the Royal Mile from Castle Hill, sometime after six o’clock. I realized I was hungry. I’d had no lunch. I hadn’t even thought of it. But I didn’t want to waste time in a restaurant. There was too much to read, too much to learn. I knew there was a third movie I needed to see, one that would add a spiritual component to Local Hero and Braveheart. I had seen it years before. But as it came back to my mind I realized that I needed to see it here, in Edinburgh. More than the mere story, I was ready to absorb the full message of Eric Liddell’s life. Therefore, on the way down the hill I bought a sandwich, a bottle of wine, a package of oatcakes, then went into a video store I remembered seeing and bought a used copy of Chariots of Fire to watch on the DVD player in my room.

  I don’t know when I’ve spent such an enjoyable evening! After Chariots I read till after eleven from various of the other books I had with me.

  From Edinburgh I drove to St. Andrews. Most people probably go to St. Andrews for golf. I went for its connections to the Scottish Reformation, to touch one more facet of the spiritual roots of the nation that had become so newly meaningful. Many of the events that had taken place at St. Andrews reminded me how horrible and ugly and ungodly much of that history was—burnings and beheadings and excommunications. But the evil that existed in man toward his brother could not invalidate God’s truths. That was a fallacy of logic to which secular intellectualism was prone that I had no intention of falling into. Though it had been turned toward both good and evil, there could be no denying that a spiritual passion existed in this land that was part and parcel of its history, and perhaps part and parcel of my own spiritual journey as well. It was a passion to know God. It was a passion that had been wrongly directed and entirely misplaced in the hearts of many through the years of Scotland’s bloody past. But it was a passion that reached its flowering fulfillment in men like Iain Barclay and Ranald Bain and others like them, who connected the dots of history and spirituality into the unified personal story they were meant to tell. History is supposed to tell the story of increasing truth. That it didn’t always tell that story in the life of every observer of history meant nothing to me. I wanted to make certain that my reading of history produced increasing truth in my life. I was hungry to know the story history was supposed to tell.

  I had already decided to visit Stirling and Bannockburn again, though I had seen them cursorily during the drive of my first week. It was there that Scottish history had reached its zenith in 1314 with Robert Bruce’s triumphant defeat of the English. I wanted to drink it all in again, this time with a more complete understanding of the events of that pivotal time.

  As I had in Edinburgh, I took my time, savored each new tidbit of history I could fit into the historic drama. After watching the video and perusing the books at the visitors center at Bannockburn, I left the crowd of people and walked out through the tree-lined avenue across to the battle monument. I made my way slowly, gazing over the gently sloping plain, allowing the quiet sense of history to speak its faint words. I wanted to feel the legend.

  I had been to so many of Scotland’s historic places. I had just left Edinburgh and St. Andrews. I had walked Scotland’s coasts, driven its Highlands, toured castles of magnificence, and had tea and oatcakes in a humble crofter’s cottage. But in the center of it all, where geography itself seemed to demand a climax… here at Bannockburn did the history of this nation converge into an inevitable pinnacle of drama.

 
In the distance, singularly situated at the very heart of the country, Stirling’s castle rose out of the valley floor itself, as if the ground had burst apart one day and exploded upward with granite—exactly as I had observed at Edinburgh—growing of itself the mighty gray fortress-flower that now sat proudly atop it.

  No site in all Scotland was fuller or richer, no place contained more symbolism, than right here. It was the site of the greatest battle in all Scottish history—where independence had been won. I walked the rest of the way to the Bannockburn battle monument. Slowly I made my way around it, reading the posted information with historic reverence.

  Leaving the circle, I continued on toward the giant bronze statue of Robert Bruce himself. In the same way that Stirling Castle emerged from the rocks of the valley, the silent, massive sentinel from the past seemed to grow up from the surrounding terrain.

  I stared upward at the majestic figure. The expression of fearlessness on Bruce’s face, looking down from out of his helmet of mail, was so lifelike as to compel obedience, commanding all to behold the mighty hand that subdued this land and vanquished its enemies. The wide eyes and flared nostrils of the mighty beast he was seated upon likewise compelled, not hushed submission like its master, but terror, lest any stand in its path and be crushed beneath its powerful hooves. Truly were horse and rider one, fit symbol of that independent spirit of a proud nation who would not forever remain under the rule of another.

  Were any of my Buchan ancestors here on that fateful day? Iwondered.

  Several minutes later, feeling full with the sense of history, I made my way back to my car. I was ready to point it again toward the north.

  As I drove away from Stirling, I was overflowing with a thousand sensations… music, spirituality, and history all blending as one. Everywhere about me the heather was in bloom. Yet it still seemed to hide its most vibrant color from view. The tapestry of its colors remained obscure. Like Scotland’s history, it would not divulge its secrets easily.

  As I went, with images of the triumphant Robert the Bruce still so fresh, it occurred to me how different were Scotland’s other heroes—William Wallace, Mary Queen of Scots, her son King James VI, even MacDonald of Glencoe whose clan had been massacred in 1692, and especially that epitome of the Scot’s hero, Bonnie Prince Charlie. None had triumphed like the Bruce. Actually, in a sense they had all failed—even King James, who, though he had not personally failed in his reign as king, had certainly failed the land of his Stewart roots by abandoning her at what could have been her singular moment of greatest triumph, helping set in motion the series of events that ended at Glencoe and Culloden, and eventually doomed Scotland’s nationhood.

  Why, I wondered, did Scotland so immortalize in ballad and song what could only be viewed as the failures of its great figures?

  There were so many could-haves, things that didn’t go their way that could have, and maybe that should have, so many what-ifs that turned against them. And in the great irony of Scotland, the Scots even turned against themselves. James VI abandoned Scotland for the lure of London as the seat of his crown. If the Bonnie Prince had chosen his ground more carefully, as I had learned at one of the historic visitors centers, and attacked Cumberland’s troops the night before, he might have occupied the throne of Great Britain rather than the Hanoverian George I. The Stewart dynasty might still be in power today, ruling all of Britain from Edinburgh rather than a line of German ancestry ruling from London. But the greatest irony of all was that, in the end, no battlefield defeat at the hands of the English in 1707 cost Scotland its independence. It was the Scottish Parliament itself that voted to end nationhood and allowed Scotland to be swallowed up in Britain. Many of Scotland’s ironic what-ifs of history were self-inflicted.

  North of Pitlochry I stopped at the Hermitage of Dunkeld. There I spent several hours thinking and praying and walking about, this time with a volume of Burns’s poetry, trying to answer some of these very questions. From there I returned over the desolate moors again to Glencoe, where I spent the night at a B and B. The next day was bright and warm. Most of the morning and well into the afternoon I hiked on the high trails surrounding Glencoe. Though Lord Byron’s immortal poem had been penned about another mountain peak farther east, it was while walking the lonely mountains surrounding Glencoe, as I read them over again and again until they were burned into my brain, that the solemn splendor of Byron’s words entered my soul:

  Away ye gay landscapes, ye gardens of roses—

  In you let the minions of luxury rove;

  But restore me the rocks where the snowflake reposes,

  If still they are sacred to freedom and love.

  Yet, Caledonia, dear are thy mountains,

  Round their white summits tho’ elements war,

  Though cataracts foam ’stead of smooth flowing fountains—

  I sigh for the valley of Dark Lochnagar.

  Ah, there my young footsteps in infancy wandered,

  My cap was the bonnet, my cloak was the plaid;

  On chieftains departed my memory pondered

  As daily I strayed through the pine covered glade.

  I sought not my home till the day’s dying glory

  Gave place to the rays of the bright Polar star;

  For fancy was cheered by traditional story,

  Disclosed by the natives of Dark Lochnagar.

  Shades of the dead, have I not heard your voices

  Rise on the night rolling breath of the Gael;

  Surely the soul of the hero rejoices,

  And rides on the wind o’er his own Highland vale.

  Round Lochnagar while the stormy mist gathers,

  Winter presides in his cold icy car;

  Clouds therein circle the forms of my fathers:

  They dwell midst the tempests of Dark Lochnagar.

  Years have rolled on, Lochnagar, since I left you,

  And years must elapse e’er I see you again;

  Though nature of verdure and flower has bereft you,

  Yet still you are dearer than Albion’s plain.

  England, thy beauties are tame and domestic

  To one who has roved o’er the mountains afar;

  Over the crags that are wild and majestic,

  The steep frowning glories of Dark Lochnagar.

  And there, at historic Glencoe, the heather finally began to unfold its mystery.

  I saw what it signified, and why Scotland’s history burned so bright and alive in the heart of the Scot’s soul. It was because of a new kind of Scottish hero that emerged out of the ashes of defeat following Culloden—a literary hero. In Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson and George MacDonald and many others, the Scots truly did “conquer” the literary worlds of their day. Their battlefield predecessors may have failed, but their literary warriors triumphed! What the prince’s Highlanders had not accomplished at Culloden with the sword, these new men of letters achieved in the century that followed by the might of the pen.

  In so doing, they recast the history of their land and imbued it with immortality. Out of the mists of the past arose new heroes like Rob Roy MacGregor and Flora MacDonald and so many more, to take their place beside the Bruce, the Queen, and the Prince. The very defeats of martyr-heroes like Mary and Charlie were turned into the legends by which Scottish history derived a new identity and yet greater power.

  Scotland’s heroes thus became larger in death than they were in life, greater in defeat than they perhaps could ever have been in victory. Burns’s nostalgic lamentations invoked a pride that waspalpable, imbuing the past with heroic overtones more significant than the events themselves, giving the history of the past a seductive mystery capable of firing the imaginations of future generations.

  Nor was this a mere imaginary mythology born of failed hopes and dreams. It was far more. The great Bard immortalized a true reality existing in the tales of his homeland’s lore. He discovered what the history meant. No revisionism this, but a history that ha
d been awaiting the eyes of the insightful poet-Bard to pull from between the lines of history’s unfolding panorama.

  Burns’s verses and Scott’s tales and MacDonald’s wisdom thus elevated those whose names might otherwise have faded into the mists of the past with new stature.

  I recalled to mind the great statue I had just seen of King Robert on his enormous bronze mount. But as I saw him now, the Bruce was not alone.

  There was Bonnie Prince Charlie beside him to the right on his own mighty steed of valor. Mary Queen of Scots sat to his left astride a magnificent white horse. The Bonnie Prince raised the sword of freedom in his hand high overhead. Her head high with queenly dignity, Mary quietly held the Bible and prayer book as weapons of faith that her cousin Elizabeth could never vanquish. Marching out proudly in front of them I envisioned a ten-foot-high statue of bearded, kilt-clad MacDonald of Glencoe, bearing a great claymore in his muscular arm. “Let the Campbells of the Dutch king’s legions do their worst,” I could hear his silent cry, “the free spirit of the Highlands will never die!”

  What a vision of four hundred triumphant years of history!

  King Robert Bruce did not reign over the now silent expanse of Bannockburn alone. All Scotland’s great men and women rode with him. Behind MacDonald of Glencoe and the Bruce and the Queen and the Prince spread out a great gallery of witnesses—Dundee and Montrose and Flora MacDonald and Rob Roy… old Columba and Saint Ninean and Kenneth MacAlpin, King Malcolm and Queen Margaret… yes, and there were Burns the Bard and Sir Walter and George MacDonald trailing their forebears with proud and vigorous step and the light of truth radiating from their eyes.

  No defeat at Culloden could silence such a band of warriors!

  All had fought worthily and nobly for the right of Scots to call themselves free Scots. In the hearts and minds of their descendants, they were fighting still. Nothing could silence the collective majesty of that eternal freedom-song.