And the Land Lay Still by James Robertson Page B

Yarrow”, and he sang some verses frae a couple mair, just tae gie me a taste o them, he said they were hundreds o years auld but the odd thing was, they were brand new tae me and yet I
kent them. How d’ye reckon that, eh? I
kent
them. See, where I grew up ye had tae fight tae survive, and it was aw different faimlies, different clans if ye like, and there were these codes ye had tae ken, and if ye stepped ower the mark you were for it. Weel, I was often ower the mark, and I was often for it. I was a right scrapper, and tae tell ye the truth I enjoyed it. There were things I would fight for and things I wouldna. I would fight ower a woman, I would fight if somebody kicked my dug, I’d fight if my faimly was insulted or if I thought somebody was lying tae me, or if there was a debt that hadna been paid or a score that had tae be settled. But I wouldna fight onybody because of fitbaw or religion or politics, because I didna think they were worth it, and I wouldna fight a man just because he was drunk and wanted tae fight, I would walk away frae that. I was sure o mysel, ken, I didna
hae
tae fight, but I liked tae. And here was this auld man in the pub singing these ancient ballads, and the stuff that was in them, weel, he could hae been singing aboot the places I grew up in. That stuff happened aw the time, just wi nae weapons – or different weapons. So he tellt me aboot fairs and festivals where I could hear mair o these songs, no just in the Borders but all over Scotland and in England tae, and I started tae spend my spare time at these gatherings and learning the auld ballads. And the thing is, the mair I learned, the mair it seemed I already kent them. They were in me, but I just hadna kent they were. And something else, the mair I sang them, the less I wanted tae fight. It was the days of the big CND marches against Polaris, and the singing and the protesting kind o went thegither, there was a big overlap, and I found myself on marches tae the Holy Loch and suchlike, so half the time I was singing all these bloodthirsty songs aboot battles and murder and the other half I was singing anti-war songs but either way it stopped me fighting. I canna mind the last time I was in a fight, but it’s years ago. I dinna hae time tae fight noo. There’s no enough time tae learn aw the songs.’
    They bought half a dozen bottles of beer and clinked down the street. Greatcoat was still at it when they left, arguing about everything. The biker looked over his shoulder at Mike as they went.
    So what was Jean Barbour like, Mike wanted to know. ‘Ach, she’s a fine woman, ye’ll get on great wi her,’ Walter said. She wasn’t from Edinburgh originally, she was from Argyll, somewhere over
that way. Well, her ancestors were. Or were they? Now that he thought about it, was there not something about Glasgow too, and the Highlands? The way she went on, you were always picking up information about her and you always swore that this time you weren’t going to forget it, but you did somehow. Some folk said she had a bit of tinker in her, quite a bit in fact, and that would explain her ability to tell a tale, but not how she’d come to own this house in the middle of Edinburgh. And not how she spoke either, her voice and her accent seemed to shift all the time depending on what she was saying. Oh, you would hear some bonnie tales if you listened long enough to Jean Barbour, so you would.
    ‘Pay attention now,’ Walter said, and lumbered off through a narrow entry. Mike had to negotiate something at his feet that had earlier been somebody’s dinner, then followed through the half-dark, trying to run a mental thread from the street to a door where he found Walter working the bell pull as if he were raking out a fire. After a minute the door opened and a pale female face looked out at them.
    ‘Oh, it’s yersel, Walter, in ye come.’
    ‘Thanks, Maggie,’ Walter said, and Maggie stood aside and shut the door behind them and they were