Scotland Day 8

Britishism of the day: “wee one” instead of “little one” or “baby.”

Before going to Scotland I asked a number of people if they wanted anything. One of the requests was a shirt from the Edinburgh Harley-Davidson dealer.

I have thought about learning to ride a motorcycle but have never actually been on one. So visiting a motorcycle dealer in another country was a little odd. Aside from the fact that it said “Edinburgh” on the signs and that prices were in pounds the dealership would have looked completely unremarkable in the US. Corporate branding at work, I suppose.

Mostly, however, today was about the wedding. You know, the official reason I went to Scotland?

The ceremony itself was brief and a purely civil function. It included what must have been the fourth or fifth time I’ve heard an excerpt from “The Velveteen Rabbit” at a wedding. This was not, so far as I know, an idea stolen from anyone else’s wedding – it has now appeared in just about every circle of friends I had in college but I don’t think it has done so in this circle before. I have never attended a purely civil ceremony in the US, but I was rather surprised to hear the bride and groom asked for their addresses by the officiate.

I wore my standard sport-coat, tie (MacGill tartan), white shirt, and khaki pants. I also wore a MacGill cummerbund for a little flair.

The bride did not wear pants. Neither did the groom.

Yes, he was wearing a kilt. In fact quite a few of the men there (including all of the wedding party) were wearing kilts.

The reception was very nice. Each table was a book rather than a number – the Aeneid, to pick a non-random example, rather than, say ‘table 3’. Each person’s place was then marked with a bookmark. I’m not sure to what extent books were matched to people – the Aeneid is certainly appropriate enough for me, of course.

The food was tasty, the speeches humorous and sometimes touching, and the wine and sparkly stuff were plentiful.

But the really fun part was the dancing.

The SCA rears its head again – the traditional Scottish dances have very clear ancestry in SCA-period English ‘country dances’. Dancing is a group affair with your partner typically only slightly more important than the other members of your set (anywhere from six to twenty or more people). Steps are simple, and it is apparently customary these days for a professional caller to demonstrate each dance and call sometimes call the motions for the first set. This last means that everyone can enjoy the dancing without prior knowledge while still actually, you know, DANCING. Thanks in no small part to several SCA dance classes this Yank with two left feet managed to swing his partners all over the floor without stepping on anyone’s feet. This was difficult at times – especially since one of my sets included a girl who looked to be about three.

Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer ‘real’ dancing to the modern ‘stand in one spot and move your hips and arms a bit’. I don’t know about other’s preferences, but just about everyone there danced at least once and it seemed to me that a good time was had by all.

Sadly, there were no bagpipes at the reception. I did feel a little cheated on that point, but there was a street piper playing outside the hall where the ceremony was held.

After the reception my bus-fu failed me and I wound up walking about two-thirds of the way back to the apartment. Walking in any urban area near midnight is not exactly on my lists of preferred activities, doubly so since in accordance with UK law I was not carrying even my knife. Yes, the UK has tighter regulations on knives than even ‘blue’ states in the US have on firearms. Take a look at their crime stats (especially the projected ones to cover unreported robberies and such) sometime and you will understand why my misreading of the bus map wound up causing me to have some nervous moments.

Edinburgh, however, while certainly not a city that never sleeps, is a city that walks. This means that the busy spaces do create mob safety zones, which luckily turned out to be most of my route. Still, I do not recommend others follow in my footsteps on this one.