Alasdair Gray - Unlikely Stories Mostly

Estate: Twelve or thirteen thousand pounds Sterling of debt, five brethren all men and two marriageable sisters to support, and less to defray all this by six hundred pounds Sterling a year, in a time of frantic anticivilian warres and garboyles, than my father inherited for nothing, in a peaceful age, to maintain himself alone. Meantime the Church Commission maintain in my kirks three cutpurse Mammoniferous ministers of their own make who, loathing my loyaltie to the Episcopal liturge, demand for their tythes a fifth of the rent of the land, and combinate in synods and concils with creditors and neighbours to put upon me alone the charge of garrisoning troops in this district, thereby intending to inchaos the structure of ancient greatness into the very rubbish of a neophitic parity.

PRO ME

Tenandrie: All are descended (as they themselves avouch) from pregenitors who accompanied my ancestors Alypos, Belistos, Nomostor, Astioremon and Lutork in their borignarie acquest of the land, receiving from these such good yeoman leases for the digging and manuring of it that they very suddenly took deep root therein, and bequeathed to their children the hereditary obedience owed to their masters. Each hamlet by that means having its own Clan, as we call it, or name of kindred, none will from that portion of land bouge, any inter-flitting between coterminal parrishes being as mutually displeasing to them as an extrusive exile to the Barbadoes or to Malagask. I have farmers who dwell in the selfsame house inhabited by their ancestors from dad to brat, sire to suckling, above nine hundred years together and though none can read, they nevertheless exchange discourse with any concerning the heathenish deities of the Grecolatin Pantheon, whose temples, delubres and fanes, of a circularie, oval, triangulary or square figure, my own forefathers erected in groves and high places before the time of Christ, the stones whereof may still be ascribed to Jove, juno, Palas, Apollo &cetera by the eye of the intelligible Mythologist.

CONTRA ME

Tenandrie: These much plundered and rouped of goods, gear and rents by the soldiery without hope of redress; while their Kir-komanatickal presbyterian pastors vilipend, pester and flite them for tenaciously clinging to their frets of old, which often send them at set times to fountains, oak-trees, little round hillocks and stone-heaps where, with preconceived words and motions, they worship in accordance with the poetical liturgies of Hesiod, Theocritus and Ovid; And my ministers demand that I magisterially prohibit and persecute these practices as things of charm, fascination, inchantment or infernal assistance! There is a silly old wife who, for doing some pretty feats wherein she has been instructed by her mother, according to a prescript set down in some verses of Homer, whom neither had the skill to use, is accused of witchcraft by one who, being a professor of the Greek, whipt a boy for not getting these verses by heart: as if it were a duty for him to study what is felonie for others to enact. Being resolved to conduct myself by the light of reason, I openly acquit many of both sexes whom flagitory zealots accuse of incubation, succubation and peragration with fairies and am forthwith reputed an obstinate assertor of erroneous doctrine. Even as a raw youth I would not without examination trust to aged men in matters contrary to commonsense and experience, for I caused brought to my father’s house one of either sex that were supposed rivals in diabolical venerie, the male with the succub, the female with the incub. The young man was two-and-twenty years old, very bashfull, yet prone to lasciviousness, and a handsome youth; she was some five-and-twentie, nothing so pleasant as he, and had it not been for a little modesty that restrained her, a very sink of lust. All this I perceived at first view, and after I had spoken kindly with them in generals, I entreated them with all gentilnesse possible, to tell me freely whether it was so or not, as it was reported of them; and their answer was (for they were not suspicious of any harm from me) that it was true enough; whereat I straight conceived that they had a crack in their imagination. The better to try an experiment thereon, I commanded to be given unto each of them an insomniatorie and exoniretick potion, for stirring up a libidinous fancie; I also directed one of my footboys to attend the woman with all possible respect and outward shew of affection; the like I required of one of my mother’s chambermaids to be done in behalf of the young man. Which injunctions of mine were by these two servants with such dexterity prosecuted, that the day after each of their night’s repose with these two hypochondriacks, when I called for them, and, after I had fairly insinuated myself into their mind by a smooth discourse, asked whether that night they had in their bodies felt any carnal application of the fowl spirit, or if they did, in what likeness they received him? To this both made reply that of all the nights they had ever enjoyed, it was that night respectively wherein the spirit was most intirely communicative in feats of dalliance, and that he acted in the guise of the boy and chambermaid whom I had appointed to await on them as they went to bed. This confirmed me in my former opinion, which certainly increased when I heard a short time after, that the imagination of two had become a regular fornication of four; by which (though I caused to punish them all) the fantasists were totally cured, who afterwards becoming yoke mates in wedlock to the two servants of our house, were in all times coming sound enough in fancie, and never more disquieted by diabolical apprehensions.

PRO ME

Nation: Betwixt pole and tropicks there has been no great engagement wherein Scotsmen have not (by valiantly slaughtering each other on behalf of all the greatest Christian states in Europe) made their nation as renowned for its martialists as have its promovers of learning for their literatory endeavour. I here set down the greatest names on all sides since the jubilee of 1600, instellarating thus * such as creep in from an earlier age, since it is not my custom to maintain a rank by excluding an excellence. CONTRA ME

Nation: I will not enlist opposite the flaming sparks of their country’s fame those coclimatory wasps of the Covenanting crue whose swarms eclipse it. I will discourse but generally, or by ensample, of those viper colonels who do not stick to gnaw the womb of the Mother who bears them, and of those ligger-headed Mammoniferous ministers, those pristinary lobcock hypocritick Presbyters ( press-biters rather) who abuse learning in the name of God, as if distinct truths could oppose THE TRUTH.

PRO SCOTIA ARMS

FOR THE KING OF SWEDLAND GUST AVUS CAESER-OMASTIX AGAINST DANE, POLE, MUSCOVITE AND HOLY EMPEROR.

General James Spence (created Earl of Orcholm), Sir Alexander Leslie (governor of the cities of the Baltick coast), Marquis James Hamilton (General over 6,000 English in the Swedish Sevice) with these Scottish colonels:

Sir George Cunningham

Sir John Ruven

Sir John Hamilton

Sir John Meldrum

Sir Arthur Forbas

Sir Frederick Hamilton

Sir Francis Ruven

Sir William Ballantine with (to be rapid) these colonels: Armstrong, Balfour, another Balfour, Bucliugh, Crichton, Cock-burn, Culen, Edmistoun, Gun, Hamiltoun, Henderson, Johnston, another Johnston, Kinninmond, another Kinninmond, Leckie, Leslie, Liddel, Livistoun, Sandilands, Scot, Seaton, another Seaton, Sinclair, Spence, Stuart.

FOR THE KING OF POLE AGAINST SWEDE, MUS-COVITER AND TURK

Colonel Lermon

Colonel Wilson

Colonel Hunter

Colonel Robert