From the Archives: My Heart's in the Highlands

In September of 2014, the people of Scotland, fed up, presumably, with close to 300 years of rule by the effete crumpet-monkeys of Buckingham Palace--the descendants of some minor German princelings who, through sheer luck, stumbled into the greatest gig known to mankind--decided to hold a referendum on Scottish independence, and whether or not to dissolve the Act of Union of 1707, which brought Scotland under English rule.

You can't blame them. Elizabeth II doesn't seem like a bad sort. Nice enough lady. But she's no spring chicken. Teeth, as they say, lengthen. And the notion of the bum of her likely successor, Prince Charles--once aptly described by the immortal (although tragically dead) Christopher Hitchens as "that jug-eared, slobbering, weak-chinned dauphin"--occupying the throne is enough to make the blood of even the boldest Highlander run cold.

And if you're telling me that a country that gave the world Adam Smith, David Hume, and Sherlock Holmes* can't run itself, you're crackers. Barmy. Or "meshuggeneh," as I believe it goes in Gaelic.

Filled as I am with a detestation of hereditary privilege, colonial exploitation, and the imposition of the will of the few upon the many, naturally, I wholeheartedly suppo--what? What's that? You ask how I could espouse such noble sentiments while living on a luxurious country estate and plantation, supported by the labor of uncounted numbers of peasants? You ask how on earth I can truly detest such advantages as the Royals enjoy while maintaining my baronial existence at Palmerwood?

Well,

1) I believe 'twas Emerson who said "Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

2) Shut the &$%# up.

As I was saying, I enthusiastically supported Alex Salmond's Scottish National Party and the cause of Scottish independence. But then, we Palmers always have. While the referendum was going on, I dug out of the archives of the Palmer Portrait Gallery this magnificent representation of my great-great-great-great-great granduncle, Angus Hamish Shlomo Alasdair MacPalmer.

Palmer family legend has it that this stirring portrait was painted just before the Battle of Culloden in 1746, the last bold attempt at Scottish independence, in which Angus Hamish Shlomo Alasdair was supposed to have commanded the MacPalmer of Monaltrie's Regiment.

He disappeared in battle (some cynics wonder whether he actually took part in it at all). No one knows this brave highlander's fate. But we do have it on good authority that his last recorded words were, "Aye, lass... 'tis a mighty big sporran indeed," to a barmaid in Drumnadrochit the night before the battle.

Sadly, the Scots were to fare no better in 2014 than in 1746. The Referendum was defeated 55%-45%. But so long as the desire for freedom burns bright in the breasts of all true Highlanders, hope remains. As the great Highland poet Robbie Burns wrote, a man's a man for a' that.



*Sherlock Holmes? A Scot? Why yes indeed, folks. A well known bit of Sherlockiana is that Dr. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was once asked if there was a "real" Sherlock Holmes. "Most assuredly there was," he answered. The model for Sir Arthur's Holmes was a professor of the good doctor's at the University of Edinburgh, Dr. Joseph Bell, a dour Scots Presbyterian physician with an aquiline nose, piercing eyes, a decisive manner, and, like Holmes, an almost uncanny knack for observation and deduction, which made him one of the most gifted diagnosticians of his time, or any other.