Plaids, Paisleys & Highland Things.

On the eve of Burns night I was thinking that I don't know anything about Robert Burns and I don't really know much about Scotland, Scottishness or the Scotch (more about that word later).  I started to get worried that I might actually be a bit Scottish-ist devoid of all knowledge of Scotland. So my mind decided to go off on a bit of a highland fling thing to see what I remember and what I could find out about this far-away place.

We never went on holiday to Scotland as young kids.  It just seemed like somewhere really far away and foreign with a lot of football teams with difficult to pronounce names that I remember from the football pools and results announced on telly on Saturday afternoons.  Watching English born Rod Stewart perform on Top of the Pops wearing tartan or laughing hysterically at Russ Abbot on TV as he did an 'aye see you Jimmy' headbutt were as close as I ever got to Scottish culture. 

Photo: Michael Putland (1973)

Then in around 1978 those teen sensations from Edinburgh, The Bay City Rollers came to East London. It was my first proper gig with my mates.  I think we were about 12 years old.  We got tartaned up.  We had the acrylic plaid scarves and wore the white polyester wide-legged trousers scrawled allover with graffiti and with obligatory tartan turn ups, we sung "Eric, Derek, Alan too, Woody, Les, we love you!" We were so excited to see them perform at Ilford Town Hall at a FAB 208 magazine party.  They were on the bill with Essex band Flintlock. There was so much screaming, fainting and idol worship, that outside in the high road,  I can clearly remember a whole row of ambulances waiting to attend to hysterical, overwhelmed fans. Me and my friends got out in one piece, clutching goodie bags filled with such exciting freebie products as Valderma soap for teenage acne. My dad was waiting in his car up the road to collect us after the concert. In the days before mobile phones, God knows what he must have been thinking when he saw all the ambulances there!

Then in later Scottish-Essex moments of my twenties 'outta my head' days, I fell absolutely in love with The Waterboys song The Whole of the Moon....but had no idea they were from Scotland and around the same time, I shared a house with my Scottish friend Eileen who's dad happened to be the late Jimmy Johnstone, nicknamed 'Jinky'. Years later I discovered he was a legend, having been a brilliant Celtic footballer of the 1960s - on a par with Georgie Best superstar - and I didn't even aye och the know that I lived with the daughter of a superstar! She managed to keep that a secret!

In the Whole of the Moon, The Waterboys sing 'I talked about wings, you just flew.....'.  Talking about wings, when my son was in my belly, I drove with his dad, for the best part of a day all the way from London to the beautiful town of Oban, up past Loch Ness for our friends traditional Scottish wedding and was over the moon to see so many men in kilts and with bagpipes. From the back of the wedding venue, we could look across the bay and see the actual Mull of Kintyre. I had no idea it was a real place, I hadn't really thought about it and probably just thought it was some words in a Wings song of my youth, a song that I had loved though and would play over and over again. I just discovered while researching for this blog that Paul MacCartney owned a farm there and the song was written as a tribute to the beauty of the Kintyre Penninsula.  I remember standing there in Oban, looking over at the stunning view and thinking 'oh, wow, there really is a Mull of Kintyre!'

Incredible beauty. The view of the Mull of Kintyre from Oban

Working in the fashion industry, in the early 90s, I got headhunted for a job in London as Senior Buyer at High Street retail chain Mackays (now known as M&Co). The Scottish company was owned by two brothers, Iain and Len McGeogh, who at work we referred to as 'Mr Len' and 'Mr Iain'.  I loved my job there, and for about 3 years I was a successful buyer and visual (display) merchandiser of their teenage girls wear range called 'Kylie' responsible for selecting and buying stock for over 200 shops.  It's great to see that Kylie is still going strong and popular clothing for young people today.

Occasionally one of the big boss McGeogh brothers would pop into our offices opposite St Mary's Hospital in Paddington and I would discuss my weekly sales figures with them.  Little did I know that they were multi, multi, multi millionaires on the Sunday Times Rich List as two of the most wealthy men in the country, you certainly wouldn't have thought it by looking at them, they seemed very humble indeed.  Once while on a visit to Scotland to the main Mackays warehouses and HQ in Paisley, near Glasgow, I was a bit shocked by how rough and rundown the area was.  I thought it must be a cheap place to have property but had no idea then of it's historical connections with the textiles industry....and witches! 

When I went into the local sweetshop to buy a bag of crisps, the man serving me was behind a counter with narrowly spaced iron bars in front and I had to pass my money through this iron grill. I literally thought he would have to take my crisps out of the bag and feed them to me through the grill. Although it was broad daylight, I thought it must be an area of high crime, so I didn't hang around for too long to find out more about the area. Now, (a lot) older and (a bit) wiser, I'm looking into the history of the town of Paisley.  It makes for fascinating reading.

The witches of Paisley

Paisley was the location of the Renfrewshire Witch Trails of the late 17th Century, when seven well respected local people (four men and three women) were accused by an eleven year old girl of witchcraft and were subsequently put to death on Paisley's Gallows Green.

The young girl who believed that witches had put a spell on her in 1696 was Christian Shaw, the daughter of the Laird of Balgarran.  She claimed she had been tormented by a group of people and had experienced various symptoms of being cursed, such as having fits, coughing up hair and flying through the air! This was only a few years after the now famous witch trials of Salem and some believe the witch-hunt was influenced by the American witch-hunts.

As Agnes Naismith, one of the so called witches died, she is rumoured to have screamed out a curse for the town and its townsfolk to suffer from ill fortune. The mythical witches were buried in a mass grave which was sealed by a horseshoe.  It wasn't until roadworks in the 1960s that the horseshoe removed. Gradually the town of Paisley went into decline, which may or may not have been due to Agnes' curse! 

Alexander Stoddart's monument 

In 2008 a monument to the persecuted 'witches'? was erected. It was created by the Royal Sculptor Alexander Stoddart and a horseshoe was embedded into the monument, to hopefully bring good fortune back to the town.

Christian Shaw having been widowed in her 30s, embarked upon a tour of Northern Europe in the late 1600s with her mother. In Holland, Christian, with her entrepreneurial spirit, saw an opportunity to gain knowledge for future business.  The Dutch were producing the finest thread obtainable, they used techniques and apparatus for spinning thread that Christian wanted to bring back to Scotland. In what was seen as Industrial Espionage, crucial pieces of a Dutch 'Spinning Jenny' were smuggled into Scotland under their skirts!

The company Bargarran Threads was set up by Christian on her return to Paisley, producing fine silken threads of supreme quality, in the manner of the Dutch. She employed workers, built equipment and used her contacts in high society to spread the word about these finest of threads. Orders flowed in from the aristocracy in the South from such fashionable places as Bath.  By 1820, the industry started by Christian Shaw employed 7000 people in Paisley alone!

Since 2012 the town folk of Paisley have developed cultural venues, a shop, a festival and other creative projects relating to this heritage and Paisley's textile industry, where students and visitors can learn more of these legends of the past and participate in workshops. At the end of this blog is a link to their Facebook page "Renfrewshire Witch Hunt 1697'.

When we were 'Mods' in the mod revival of the late 1970s we would scour markets such as Brick Lane, Petticoat Lane and Kensington Market looking for clothing in original 1960s fabrics.  I had no idea that the name for those swirly whirly Arabesque designs came from the town of Paisley in Scotland. I never gave it a thought.  When silk went out of fashion in around 1790, weavers in Paisley switched to producing imitations of Kashmiri cashmere shawls in ornate paisley patterns, woven using Coats Threads.  Coats, a well known thread supplier today, was established as part of the Renfrewshire textile industry, after the Bargarran Thread company that was set up by Christian Shaw.  By the 19th Century, the small industrial town of Paisley was producing paisley shawls and pashminas for shipment worldwide.  So we could say that without the cunning developments smuggled to Scotland by entrepreneur Christian Shaw, paisley might not be paisley today! I wonder what it would have been called?

The exotic paisley 'teardrop' motif, favoured for smoking jackets has remained popular since the year dot.  It has been printed, embroidered, brocaded and woven.  The design is adored by hippies and rock n' rollers such as Liam Gallagher, David Bowie, and of course Prince.  Liberty of London are crazy for it.  Although the motif design originated in ancient Persia and India, the name paisley became world famous.  According to the BBC article Paisley, the story of a classic Bohemian print (See link below) it is said to contain hidden messages and symbolism - now that is fascinating and I think will have to be the subject of a later blog.  

Wow, so much exciting textile related stuff evolving from this small Scottish town! Well worth a visit back there I think, even if I have to stick my money through iron bars in the sweetshop to buy a bag of crisps!

Photo: Mandie Stone

Anyway. Tomorrow night, 25th January, people will be celebrating the life and work of the revered poet Robert Burns with their Burn's Night Feasts and suppers, some of which will even be offering Vegan haggis! Staff at our local Children's Hospice Charity Shop in Glastonbury (pictured) have created a fabulous Burn's Night themed window, filled with typewriters and poetry. What really caught my eye though were these stunningly styled highland fling costumes that wouldn't look out of place on a Vivienne Westwood or Alexander McQueen catwalk.  What a wonderful tribute to the great Scottish baird Burns. 

Photo: Mandie Stone

We won't be celebrating Burn's Night as such, being none Scottish n'all that, but I suppose by writing this blog, I'm celebrating Robert Burns in my own way, sharing muses with you my readers, experiencing his poems for the first time and loving them. Talking of love and with Valentine's Day only a couple of weeks away, I chose A Red, Red Rose as my featured Burns poem. 
Hope you love it!

O my Luve is like a red, red rose 

   That’s newly sprung in June; 

O my Luve is like the melody 

  That’s sweetly played in tune. 

So fair art thou, my bonnie lass, 

   So deep in luve am I; 

And I will luve thee still, my dear, 

   Till a’ the seas gang dry. 

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear, 

   And the rocks melt wi’ the sun; 

I will love thee still, my dear, 

   While the sands o’ life shall run. 

And fare thee weel, my only luve! 

   And fare thee weel awhile! 

And I will come again, my luve, 

   Though it were ten thousand mile.

I'm signing off for now cos I've got a neck ache from typing. 

Oh, just one more thing on the Scottish theme.  It was only after I reached the age of fifty, that I found out from a neighbour with Scotch blood, that you must never refer to a Scottish person as Scotch. Because they are Scottish not Scotch and Scotch is a drink, albeit a drink from Scotland.  

Obviously. I get it now.....although where does that leave 

Scotch Broth and Scotch Tape? 

Are they not Scottish too? Hmmmm.......

"I saw the crescent. You saw the whole of the moon......" Lyrics: The Waterboys
Photo by Brian Outten of the full moon over Burn's the Bread in Glastonbury. (Nothing to do with Burn's night though!)

Sources/Links

BBC website article on the Paisley witch trials
About Christian Shaw. Entrepreneur of Paisley
Renfrewshire Witch Hunt 1697
The Whole of the Moon. The Water Boys.
Mull of Kintyre. Wings.
BBC article about Paisley print and weave
Poetry Foundation website
The Paisley Thread Mills