Seven is a magic number for the Selkies: if you want to tempt a beautiful Selkie from the waves you must go and cry seven tears into the salt water. All Selkie songs are in lines of seven: what follows is a true story about human brutality, translated from the Selkie original, which goes more naturally into the old Faroese, or Celtic languages like Gaelic, than it does into an imperial tongue like English. For the ease of Anglophones everywhere I’ve used an approximation to old Scots.
black smoke catches the straw – a plume
from bundles piled around the standing stake
on North Street, just in front of St Salvator’s.
This will be the final afternoon
of Patrick Hamilton, martyr to the cause
of righteousness, of fairness to the common man.
They lashed him to the stake, soaked his rags
in tallow then set him alight. They said
the flames engulfed him fast, at first: the skin
seared, blistered and the fat ran out in rivulets
between the cobbled stones that line the street
today. They say he shrieked, but not profanities,
they say: he called his god. They understood
his words: the common tongue – vernacular.
The god was cruel, and watched him barbecue
for six full hours until he let him die
but everybody present on that day could hear –
bore witness to the words he had to say:
their Bible was for everyone. The ploughboy
would defy the Pope and read the book himself.
O, god, and godis; and fae wie the god’s mair richt
than the ain afore o’ syne. Och, ye lourd men,
come ye hame, come doon tae the bed o’th’sea
where bells’ll knell for ain and aa’ o’thee.
On thirteen counts he stood accused. This man
was well-connected. Grandson of a Duke
and friends with Martin Luther, and he’d gone
to Flanders, met Erasmus, got his Master’s
out in Paris – and wrote six-part harmonies
to boot. He wasn’t just your local lad
made good. He packed a punch. And then he died:
was roasted, slowly, like a pig, or ox.
Are you surprised? The wood around the pyre
was damp. This was St Andrews, don’t forget:
the town, then city, built on sacred ground,
whose vast cathedral stood against the sky,
its plain-chant tossed against the boiling clouds
as walls of water crashed against the rocks,
the greatest church in Scotland, sacred heart
that made St Andrews worth the pilgrimage
until that second bloody Cardinal – nephew
of the one who ordered Hamilton to death –
was killed by ambush, murdered in his bed
then hung up on the castle ramparts, to avenge
the blood of Wishart. This was just the start.
O, god, and godis; and fae wie the god’s mair richt
than the ain afore o’ syne. Och, ye lourd men,
come ye hame, come doon tae the bed o’th’sea
where bells’ll knell for ain and aa’ o’thee.
All you with legs, walk down to St Salvator’s,
take a look. You see those guilty cobbles:
the P, the H, now intertwined in stone,
now asking for forgiveness for the crime
that saw a good man of St Andrews burn.
The silent crowd that watched; each carpenter,
each soldier, priest, each farmer, blacksmith, tanner,
every fisherman, each worker of the land
– they stood in silence, trying not to breathe
too deep. The wind blew west: the stench was rank.
It drifted down through Market Street, to South Street
and across the flattened grasses on the dunes,
beyond Kincaple, past Strathkinness, out to Crail
across the Lomond Hills, the fields of Fife
it wafted up Dundee to Aberdeen
and filled the Angus glens. It hung; a pall
on Loch Etive, Loch Earn, Loch Awe, Loch Tay
and down to Auchtermuchty, Falkland, Star, Dunbog
to Pittenweem, Anstruther, up to Crieff
across to Glasgow, up to Oban and Loch Fyne;
unsettled flocks of sheep as far as Nairn.
O, god, and godis; and fae wie the god’s mair richt
than the ain afore o’ syne. Och, ye lourd men,
come ye hame, come doon tae the bed o’th’sea
where bells’ll knell for ain and aa’ o’thee.
George Wishart’s still a bairn when Patrick burns.
He’s fifteen when the scent of smoky flesh drifts
down the decades. Nothing moves the heart
as fast as sickness to the stomach and guts.
Wishart retches, backs away, avoids
the greasy blood congealing on the stones.
He runs, and hears the burning man’s refrain:
the Bible is for everyone. The ploughboy
shall defy the Pope and read the book himself.
The logic never left him: George becomes
a man of letters, then he preached the word
of god direct. Forget your Pope: he’s vain,
he told the serfs. The Cardinals? They’re eating you
for lunch. And as for Mary, baby Queen –
you watch her. She’s not what she seems.
The Cardinal took ill to this, though George
had one disciple who’d avenge his death,
and more: a man called Knox. The rest is history.
Their great cathedral, built on solid rock
was god’s glory, as translated by mankind.
But sandstone by its very name’s just sand…
O, god, and godis; and fae wie the god’s mair richt
than the ain afore o’ syne. Och, ye lourd men,
come ye hame, come doon tae the bed o’th’sea
where bells’ll knell for ain and aa’ o’thee.
The buttresses and keystones fell –
loosened, plummeting like dragon’s teeth,
crashing through the nave and transept roof,
cracking slabs of granite, thudding to turf
blackened with soot and smoke and steeped in blood.
The only choir that lingered was the wind,
like selkies, wailing over empty fens:
Come home, our Patrick Hamilton
come home, our George, and all of you
who fell to the discords men must make
of god, and gods, and whose god is more righteous
than the last god or the next. Oh foolish men,
come home, come to the bottom of the sea
where bells shall toll for one and all of thee.
And so the buttresses and keystones fell –
loosened, raining down like dragon’s teeth,
crashing through the nave and transept roof,
cracking slabs of granite, thudding to turf
blackened with soot and smoke and steeped in blood.
The ghostly choir that lingered was no wind,
but selkies, calling in our Selkie tongue:
come hame, our Padruig Hameldane
come hame, our Deòrsa, come all o’ ye
who fell ower the brekis men moun mak
o’ god, and godis; and fae wie the god’s mair richt
than the ain afore o’ syne. Och, ye lourd men,
come ye hame, come doon tae the bed o’th’sea
where bells’ll knell for ain and aa’ o’thee.
