Deja View
May 15, 2023, 6:47 am , by Richard Lutz
Mary, Queen of Scots, must have been a busy woman. Richard Lutz explains
,
The iconic rebel 16thc monarch seems to have witnessed the crucial Battle of Langside, which spelled her defeat, from two different places at the same time.
Here’s one: it’s called Queen Mary’s Seat and overlooks Glasgow:
She may not have shared the big vista of the modern city now bustling beneath the Campsie Hills. But she would have seen her 6000 strong army wiped out by a half brother. Her demise was inevitable.
But hang on…what about Court Knowe, a handful of miles west?
A modest stone marks the place where she also viewed her defeat. History’s a funny old thing when it comes to facts. Kind of like when town after town, house after house on the eastern seaboard of the States tells you, hand on patriotic heart, that George Washington Slept Here…and There and Also There.
Anyway, Mary must have been an unstoppable queen on that day when she…maybe..viewed the crucial 1568 battle at two places at once. Maybe she had a body double. Or just good PR manager.
That’s enough history. The twin viewpoints are part of the Magnificent Eleven…an 11 mile route that links up parks, meadows and woods circling the south of the city. I’m not sure about it being ‘magnificent’, but it’s very pretty, a bucolic amble where the wooded bits are bordered by wild garlic that suffuses the warm day with sharp fragrances:
Walk along, grab sharp a handful of those white flowerheads and you get an eye-opening burst of garlic. If that’s your idea of fun.
The long miles take in the White Cart Water with its waterfalls:
Kids backflip off the rocks, dogs bounce and splash, Glasgow spreads itself in mid May sunshine. Did Mary, who lost her head 19 years after the battle, stop by this rumbling river on her way to view her defeat? Or as she made her excuses and left when she saw her future destroyed?
Privet passions
Back home and the dry weather means a return to the Sisyphean task of the cutting, trimming, chopping back the hedge:
It’s never ending and seeing a clean (ish) straight line is impossible. Unfortunately, my line of sight is terrible. A clean line is simply out of the question. I trim cleanly over the top. But it still resembles a roller coaster with dips, sweeps, angles, slopes and definitely little in the way of straightability.
I decide to stick to planting potatoes. My neighbour Tom, who knows What To Do, says I’m a month late.
I dig out the long furrows. Straight as a die. I plant, I water and cover them with good mulched earth. I leave and then make the mistake of turning to see the finished work right next to the completed swooping hedge. Not a straight line in sight, my potato patch is full of curves and everything off kilter and roller coaster. The gardening season has well and truly started.
share this post!
Sue Mcnallly
Queen Elizabeth I slept
In every bed in England from my observations
Martin
A gardener after my own heart (and skill base)
Hannah Arenot
Best of luck with your spuds!
Gordon Brown
Mary QoS apparently rode her horse “properly” rather than side-saddle, much to contemporary shock.
Will Travel
the word Sisyphean: It reminds me of the term Painting the Forth Road bridge near Edinburgh.
LHR
Walking in Buxton and ran across a hotel where Mary Queen of Scots stayed to take the waters back in the 1580’s
Jerry Honig
Passing this on to my daughter who lives in the south of the city
Subscribe to new posts.