Notes from the North 6 2024



The National Library of Scotland is one of six copyright libraries in the United Kingdom. This means it has a legal right to hold a copy of every book published in Great Britain. There is as a result an almost unimaginably rich hoard of words, images and film stacked, micro-fiched, digitised and filed within its walls on George IV Bridge, at Causewayside where maps are held, and at Kelvin Hall in Glasgow. One of the best known of its many treasures is probably the last letter Mary Queen of Scots wrote, to Henry 3rd of France, the brother of her first husband, just six hours before she was beheaded on 8th February 1587. One of her final requests to Henry is to make sure her servants are paid, (something he failed to do but which Philip II of Spain put right).

one page of Mary's letter

To begin with the library was not a public resource. It first opened as the Advocates’ Library in 1689 and it was only with the passing of the copyright Act in 1710 that it began to assume the role it has today. As was so often the case in the 19th and early 20th century, the library benefitted from the philanthropic generosity of a single private individual.  

Alexander Grant of Forres (1864 – 1937) started his working life as an assistant in McVities Bakery on Queensferry Street. That was when he developed his secret recipe for McVities famed digestive biscuits. In time they brought him and his company great wealth. He is not remembered so much for his biscuits however but for being one of Scotland’s most generous and engaged philanthropists. He was also one of the first to make use of the ‘match-funding model’ for several of the projects he supported, including the National Library. He gave £200,000 - equivalent to several millions in today’s prices - to enable it to become a publicly-accessible national resource in its own purpose-built building.  

1692 Glencoe Order

Among other donations he made to the library was the Glencoe Order, which he bought for £300. The Glencoe Order is the instruction sent to Captain Campbell of Glenlyon from the then Secretary of State Dalrymple to kill every  MacDonald of Glencoe under the age of 70 for their alleged failure to vow allegiance to William and Mary. The Massacre of Glencoe stands as one of the most heinous crimes in Scottish history. Not only was it a mass murder but it was committed by troops who, for a full twelve days, had been sheltered and fed by those they killed. 

Grant’s philanthropy extended well beyond documents of historic importance. Here are some of the notes he made in his diary about smaller but no less vital gifts and allowances:  

-       I promised to send Mrs Stiven £300 to pay for six weeks’ stay in a sanatorium for Mr Stiven (4th January 1922)

-   I agreed to continue Mrs Stiven’s allowance for a further year (7th January 1930)  

-       we would allow Mrs Lawrence 10/- per week for six months. This is a tin-house worker who is ill and cannot return (15th May 1931)

-       I promised to give the man in the margarine plant £50 to take his wife and family home to Denmark for a fortnight’s holiday at Christmas (24th November 1933)

-       pay the full salary of the late Mr Park to his widow for the month of April and thereafter give her a rate of £200 a year until further notice (16th April 1934).

Another of the library’s treasures is the John Murray Archive, acquired in 2005 with support from the Scottish government. It is a collection of 234 years' worth of manuscripts, private letters, and business papers relating to the firm and its authors. Long before it was taken over by the current owners, Lagardère, John Murray had established itself as the publisher of some of the most influential writers of the past century: Jane Austen, Herman Melville, Conan Doyle, Lord Byron, Goethe, Charles Darwin John Betjeman… 

It includes correspondence between Mary Shelley and Lord Byron, and letters of Jane Austen and Charles Darwin. Since 2012 it also holds the majority of Patrick Leigh Fermor’s diaries and personal correspondence, including his only surviving travel journal written in 1933-34 when he walked through Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania to Instanbul and Mount Athos, a journey which eventually resulted in surely one of the best travel trilogies ever written: A Time of Gifts, Between the Woods and the Water and The Broken Road.

There is so much more to say about the riches tucked away inside this quite ordinary-looking large building but I will close instead with the news of this year’s Scots Scriever whose residency is half-funded by the library and half by Creative Scotland. 


She is Susi Briggs, the Galloway Scots Scriever who took over from Aberdeen’s Shane Strachan, the Doric Scots Scriever. Susi was born in Dumfries where Robert Burns lived for most of his adult life. Here is an excerpt from her poem ‘Diva’ – a confident rebuttal of the patriarchy:

Wi her haun at ma back, she whuspers, “Keep walkin”

An we walk awa fae storms that ither fowk summon!

An if I fail tae listen an get drawn intae the black watters,

She yells an she pynts tae whaur the safe harbours are.

 

On dry land, her wit tickles me, an I lauch oot lood.

Affen no at the richt times as deemed by

The girnin faces o fowk wi notions 

That wimmen shuid ken by noo whaur the lines are drawn.  

Thegither we stamp oot they lines an still lauchin,

We smash the patriarchy yin wee bit at a time.

 

 

 

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