Alasdair Gray - Unlikely Stories Mostly

Colonel Scot

Colonel Gordon

Colonel Wood

Colonel Spang

Colonel Gun

Colonel Robertson

Colonel Rower

FOR THE GRAND DUKE OF MUSCOVY AGAINST THE SWEDE, TURK AND TARTAR

Sir Alexander Leslie generalissimo of all forces of the whole empire of Russia with

Colonel Crawford

Colonel Gordon

Colonel Keith

Colonel Mathuson

Colonel Kinninmond

Colonel Game (agnamed the Sclavonian, who for the height and grossenes of his person, being greater in compass than any within six kingdoms of him, was elected King of Bucharia, and only refused the sovereign crown, sword and sceptre belonging to the supreme majesty of that nation, because he had no stomach to be circumsized).

FOR THE HOLY ROMAN EMPEROUR OF GERMANY AGAINST THE SWEDES, DUTCH AND VENETIAN

Colonel Henderson

Colonel Johnston

Colonel Lithco

Colonel Wedderburne

Colonel Bruce

Colonel Gordon (now high Chamberlain to the Emperour’s Court)

Colonel Leslie (who is made hereditary marquess and colonel-general of the whole infantry of the imperial forces.)

FOR THE DUTCH WILLIAM OF ORANGE AGAINST SPAIN AND FRANCE

These colonels:

Robert Munro of Fowls

Obstol Munro

Assen Munro

Hector Munro (who wrote a book in folio called Munroe’s expedition)

George Leslie

Robert Leslie

John Leslie (agnamed the omnipotent)

Alexander Leslie

Alexander Hamilton (agnamed dear Sandy)

William Cunningham

Alexander Cunningham Finess Forbas

Alexander Forbas (agnamed the Bauld)

Alexander Forbas (another)

Borg (who took a Spanish General in the field upon the head of his army)

Edmund (who took the valiant Count de Buccoy twice prisoner in the field)

Urchart (who is a valiant soldier, expert commander and learned scholar) and

Dowglas the ingenious engineer general, and many more who became colonels and general persons under Gustavus Adolphus.

FOR THAT TETRARARCH OF THE WORLD ON WHOSE SUBJECTS THE SUN NEVER SETS, THE GREAT DON PHILIP OF SPAIN, AGAINST THE DUTCH AND THE FRENCH

the thrice renowned

Earl of Bodwel

Colonel Sempill

Colonel Boyd

Colonel Lodowick Lindsay Earl Crauford, also a Scottish Colonel whose name is upon my tonge’s end and yet I cannot hit at it; he was not a souldier bred yet for many years he bore charge in Flanders under Spinola. In his youthood he was so strong and stiff a Presbyterian, that he was the onely man Scotland made choice of, to be the archprop and main pillar of that government; but waining in his love of the Presbytery as he waxed in knowledge of the world, from a strict Puritan he became the most obstinate rigid Papist that ever there was on this earth. It is strange that I cannot remember his title; he was a lord I know, nay more, he was an earle, aye that he was, and one of the first of them. Ho now! Peascods on it, Crauford Lodi Lindsay puts me in mind of him; it was the old Earle of Argile, this present Marquis of Argile’s father; that was he. That was the man.

FOR THE THIRTEENTH LEWIS OF FRANCE AGAINST THE DUTCH AND SPANISH

Lord Colvil

Lord James Douglas

Sir William Hepburn

Hepburn of Wachton

(Had these survived the days wherein they successively dyed the bed of honour, they had all of them been made Marischals of France)

Sir Andrew Gray

Sir John Seatoun

Sir John Fularton

Sir Patrick Moray

Colonel Erskin

Colonel Lindsay

Colonel Morison

Colonel Hume

Colonel Mouatt

Colonel Liviston

Colonel Leslie

Colonel Forbes

FOR VENICE AGAINST THE GERMAN EMPEROR

Colonel Dowglas

Colonel Balantine

Colonel Lyon

Colonel Anderson

FOR VENICE AGAINST THE TURK

Captain William Scot, vice-Admiral of the Venetian fleet, the onely renowned bane and terror of Mahometan navigators, for he did so tort and ferret them out of all the creeks of the Adriatic gulph that many of them, for fear of him, did turn land-souldiers or drovers of caravans.

*****************************

From this list I have omitted all mention of gallant Scottish duelists such as Francis Sinclair, natural son to the late Earle of Catnes, who performed this notable exploit in the city of Madrid: Eight Spanish noblemen being suspicious of Sinclair’s too intimate familiarity with a kinswoman of theirs, did altogether set on him at one time, which unexpected assault moved him to say:

“Gentlemen, I doubt not but you are valiant men, therefor my entreaty is that you take it as becomes men of valour, by trying your fortune against mine, one at a time.”

The Spaniards pretending to be men of honour, swore by an oath made on their crossed swords that they should not faile therein; in a word, conform to paction, they fell to it, and that most cleverly, though with such fatality on the Spanish side, that in less than the space of half an hour he killed seven of them apassyterotically, that is, one after another; gratifying the eightth, to testifie that he had done no wrong to the rest, with enjoyment of his life. As for pricking down here those other Scots renowned for valour and for literature, I hold it not expedient; for the sum of those named doth fall so far short of the number omitted, that apportioned to the aggregate of all who in that nation since the year 1600, have deserved praise in arms and arts, jointly or disjunctly, either at home or abroad, it would bear the analogy, to use a lesser definite for a greater indefinite, of a subnovitri-partient eights; that is to say, in plain English, the whole being the dividend, and my nomenclature the divisor, the quotient would be nine, with a fraction of three-eights; or yet more clearly, as the proportion of 72 to 625. But let me resume the account of my especial self by inditing: ARTS

LORD NEPER OF MARCHISTON. The artificial numbers by him first excogitated and perfected are of such incomparable use, that by them we may operate more in one day than without them in the space of a week; a secret that would have been so precious to antiquitie, that Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Archimedes and Euclid would have joyntly concurred in deifying the revealer of so great a mystery. My country is more glorious for producing so brave a spark, than if it had been the conquering kingdom of a hundred potent nations. Neper also had the skill (as is commonly reported) to frame an engine which, by virtue of some secret springs, implements and substances inclosed within the bowels thereof, could clear a field of four miles circumference or more (proportional to its bigness, for he could make it any size at all) of all living creatures exceeding a foot in hight, by which he was able to have killed thirty thousand turkes, without the hazard of one Christian. Of this, upon a wager, he gave proof on a large plaine in Scotland, to the destruction of a great many herds of cattel and flocks of sheep, whereof some were distant from other half a mile, some a whole mile. When earnestly desired by an old acquaintance, at the time he contracted the disease whereof he died, not to take the invention of so ingenious a mystery with him to the tomb; he replied, That for the ruine and overthrow of mankind there were already too many divices framed, which, since the malice and rancor in the heart of man would not suffer these to diminish, by no conceit of his would their number be increased. Divinely spoken, truly.

CRICHTON * AGNAMED THROUGHOUT EUROPE ADMIRABILIS SCOTUS OR THE WONDERFUL SCOT:

who in one day at the Sorbonne in Paris, from nine in the morning to six at night, did argue in Hebrew, Syriack, Arabick, Greek, Latin, Italian, English, Flemish, Dutch, Spanish, French and Sclavonian, in prose and verse, at his disputants’ discretion, thereby resolving the knurriest problems propounded to him by the choicest and most profound philosophers, mathematicians, naturalists, mediciners, surgeons, apothecaries, alchymists, civil law doctors, canon law doctors, grammarians, rhetoricians and logicians in that greatest of all cities which is truly called the Abridgement of the World; and ilucting the most umbraged obscurities, and prostrating the sublimest mysteries to the vulgar capacity, by the easie and accurate promptness of his speech. When the Rector of the University awarded him a purse of gold and a diamond ring, the nimblewitted Parisians raized such thundering plaudities that the rarified air over the echoing concavities of the colleges could not support the birds in flight, who fell from the sky in a feathered showr. And the very next day to refresh his brains, as he said, went to the Louvre in a buff-suit, more like a favourite of Mars than one of the Muses’ minions; where in the presence of the Court and great ladies, he carryed away the ring fifteen times on end, and broke as many lances on the Saracen. The picture of Crichton, with a lance in one hand and a book in the other, is to be seen in the bedchambers and galleries of most of the great men of the Italian nation, where he was murdered in a fitte of jealous rage by the Prince of Mantua; and most of the young ladies likewise, that were anything handsome, had his effigies in a little oval tablet of gold hanging twixt their breasts, for many yeeres that intermarnmilionary ornament being held as necessary for the setting forth of their accoutrements, as either fan, watch or stomacher.