Alex Massie on Tynecastle's bravest and saddest season in
the Great World War :The names Patrick ‘Paddy’ Crossan, Tom Gracie and Harry Wattie do not echo through football history. They are not remembered the way the Manchester United players who died at Munich or the Torino team that perished at Superga have been immortalised as the melancholy embodiment of that most wistful feeling: what might have been. Outside Edinburgh, Crossan and his team-mates have been all but forgotten. They will, however, be remembered.
No club sacrificed more in the First World War than Heart of Midlothian. Sixteen players from the club joined up, most of them enlisting in the 16th Battalion of Royal Scots, the oldest infantry regiment in the army and nicknamed 'Pontius Pilate's Bodyguard'. Seven members of the first team were killed in action
I woke up this morning and my mind fell away and
looking back sadly from tomorrow as I heard an echo
from the past softly say come back, won't you stay?
I wanted to reach you, let you know I still care
and lost in the silence of my sorrow,
I put a promise in the wind to fly away to you there.
Catch my love as it goes sailing and on
the winds of the morning, I'll come sailing.
It's only forever can I say I love you,
Only forever have I lost you.
And only a dreamer and a battered spirit
could wake up as I do and hope it is still yesterday.
I will indulge my sorrows and give way to the throes and fury of my despair.
And as for my happiness…What kind of happiness do you see for me?
What are those unimportant little sins that I shall have to commit before
I am allowed to sink my teeth into Life and tear happiness from it?
"All sorrows can be borne if you put them
into a story or tell a story about them.
I start with a tingle, a kind of feeling of the story I will write.
Then come the characters, and they take over,
they make the story."
The Fury of Life
The "Fury drives us to our finest heights
and coarsest depths
Out of fury comes creation, passion and inspiration,
but also violence, pain and self destruction
The giving and receiving of blows
From which we never recover.
This is what we are,
What we civilize ourselves to disguise
The terrifying human animal in all of us."
'But I don’t want to go among MAD people,'
Alice remarked.
'Oh, you can’t help that,' said the Cat.
'We're all MAD here. I’m MAD. You’re MAD.'
'How do you know I’m MAD?' said Alice.'You must be,” said the Cat.
'or you wouldn’t have come here.'”
He was older than the days he had seen
And the breaths he had drawn.
He linked the past with the present,
And the eternity behind him throbbed through him
In a mighty rhythm to which he swayed
As the tides and seasons swayed.
It filled him with a great unrest and strange desires.
It caused him to feel a vague, sweet gladness,
And he was aware of wild yearnings
And stirrings for he knew not what.
And not only did he learn by experience,
But instincts long dead became alive again.
Faithfulness and devotion,
Things born of fire and roof, were his;
Yet he retained his wildness and wiliness.
He was a thing of the wild.”
The wild at heart.…
They were tame, they were wild.
They were loyal, they were rebels.
They were bold, they were reckless.
They were friends, they were foes.
They were angels, they were devils.
They were brave, they were foolish.
They were saints, they were sinners.
They were sons, they were brothers,
They were the Crossans,
Fiercely they loved
And fiercely they fought,
And nothing
between Heaven and Hell
would ever defeat them.
Mention Glasgow and various stereotypes jump to mind, shipbuilding, dreadful slums, random violence, razor gangs, and hard drinking (Although I never touch the stuff, if you
ever need a good “Hit Man” just buy a bottle of Jack Daniels
and give me a call!).
What else is written about the city usually refers to captains
of industry, architects, inventors, and medical men of note.
Scratch the surface, and you find another Glasgow
with a long tradition, the real Glasgow
“Radical Glasgow”
Glasgow can boast of a long tradition of radical movements growing from the ranks of ordinary people.
People struggling not only to improve their own conditions, but that of all working class people….
The Storms of Fate
1900 Dublin
The early 1900s was a period of tumult for Ireland. The nationalist movement was gaining momentum backed by the guerilla warfare tactics of the newly-formed I.R.A.
Strength, toughness, and street smarts were useful to the Irish rebel leaders, including the renowned real-life rebel, Michael Collins.
Collins, Padraig Pearse, and James Connolly...
And there in their midst was a young lad from Glasgow, James Crossan, about to be swept up by those storms of fate…
Scotland
During the early 1900s strikes in the Scottish coal mines, on the railways, and on the docks paralyzed the economy and showed the power of a unified labor movement. Government attempts to break the unions not only failed, they instilled greater resolve in those who were arrested, locked out of their jobs, or denied employment because of their union activities. The Labor Party was created to gain representation in Parliament for workers; the result was the election in 1906 of 29 Labor members, who entered into a coalition with the Liberals. The Liberal government responded by passing the Trade Union Act of 1913, which allowed union dues (fees paid by union members) to be used for political purposes.
Ireland
At the same time, all of the Irish members of Parliament stood for home rule and threatened to withdraw their support from the Liberal government if home rule was not granted. The situation in Ireland had deteriorated since the failure of home rule in 1893. Irish citizens were divided into two camps: Irish republicans supported independence for Ireland, while British unionists supported continued union with Britain. Tension continued to escalate between the two groups and eventually led to the Irish Revolution (1912-1922). The revolution began in 1912 as Irish on both sides of the issue armed themselves for war after the introduction of the third home rule bill in Parliament.
Los Angeles
In 1872, the Southern Pacific railroad came into Los Angeles from San Francisco - allowing the city to get in touch with the rest of the state. Throughout the rest of the 1870's the area around Los Angeles became a farming center, with industry and manufacturing only shortly behind.
In the early 1900's east coast filmmakers descended upon Los Angeles - for the weather, and to escape patent legal trouble for using Thomas Edison's movie camera patent. The studios blossomed, and put Los Angeles on the map. In 1932, the Olympics were held there. During World War II, Los Angeles factories produced huge amounts of weapons, airplanes, and war machinery.
1900 Glasgow
The influx of people looking for employment spawned the emergence of tenement accommodation. The poorest families were forced to live in "single ends", one roomed homes where the entire family, often including grandparents, would live together.
Many families had to share common lavatories and wash facilities.
However, the struggle for survival generated a common bond between the tenement dwellers and a great sense of community spirit, kindness and sharing dominated everyday life.
1900 Gorbals
It had become a true community with a mix of a succession of immigrant groups: Highlanders, displaced by sheep, land confiscation and poverty; Irish fleeing famine and political upheaval; and Jews leaving behind persecution in Europe.
'The hub of Glasgow Catholic life up to the 1950s'.
Glasgow's rapid growth as an industrial city in the 19th and 20th centuries created a legacy of poor, cramped housing, with frequent bouts of high unemployment. The social problems were probably at their worst in the Gorbals area, just south of the river Clyde. This is where Glasgow got its reputation as "No Mean City" and gang fights with open razors as weapons.
After the Second World War, attempts were made to rehouse those in sub-standard tenement blocks by moving them to new estates on the edge of the city - though the sprawling local council estates of Castlemilk, Easterhouse, Pollok and Drumchapel created just as many social problems. In the Gorbals, the old buildings were demolished and new high-rise flats arose in their place - as filing cabinets for people. The old community spirit of the area was thus largely destroyed.
1900 Los Angeles
Los Angeles was incorporated as a city in 1850. Railroads arrived when the Southern Pacific completed its line to Los Angeles in 1876. Oil was discovered in 1892 and by 1923 Los Angeles was supplying one-quarter of the world's petroleum.
Even more important to the city's growth was water. In 1913, William Mulholland completed the aqueduct that assured the city's growth and led to the annexation by the City of Los Angeles, starting in 1915, of dozens of neighboring communities without water supplies of their own. A largely fictionalized account of the Owens Valley Water War can be found in the 1974 film "Chinatown".
In 1877, a 21-year-old Irishman named William Mulholland arrived in Los Angeles, having worked his way from Ireland, by way of Pennsylvania, Panama, and San Francisco as a sailor, knife sharpener, lumberjack, dry goods salesman, Apache fighter and mine prospector. He would, in time, engineer a historic feat and have great impact upon the future of Los Angeles.
Years later, Mulholland wrote, "Los Angeles was a place after my own heart. The people were hospitable. The country had the same attraction for me that it had for the Indians who originally chose this spot as their place to live. The Los Angeles River was a beautiful, limpid little stream, with willows on its banks. It was so attractive to me that it at once became something about which my whole scheme of life was woven, I loved it so much."
Although he possessed no formal training in engineering, Mulholland pursued an intense personal interest in geology, hydraulics and engineering by educating himself at the public library. Living in a shack near what would later become the intersection of Los Feliz Boulevard and Riverside Drive (near the present day Mulholland Fountain), he worked as a ditch tender, keeping a nearby section of the Los Angeles water channel clear. By 1886, he had worked his way up to become the private Los Angeles City Water Company’s superintendent.
After the City of Los Angeles bought out the Los Angeles City Water Company in 1902, Mulholland oversaw the formation of the new Los Angeles Bureau of Water Works and Supply (which would eventually become the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in the 1920s). He was the department’s first superintendent and chief engineer. He also became the first American engineer to build a dam utilizing hydraulic sluicing (Silver Lake Reservoir, 1906). This new method attracted the attention of engineers and dam-builders nationwide.
Mulholland saw that a burgeoning and thirsty Los Angeles would soon need much more water than it had available. After much maneuvering and politicking by himself and others, Mulholland realized the dream of opening a new water source by tapping into Eastern Sierra water from the Owens Valley. He personally organized and supervised up to 3,900 construction workers at a time to build the 233-mile Los Angeles Aqueduct over six years. The massive project was completed ahead of time and under budget ($24.5 million in municipal bonds were approved by voters for the project). It was the largest and most difficult municipal engineering project in U.S. history at the time. After an elaborate ceremony on November 5, 1913, water was released from the aqueduct into the San Fernando Valley. Mulholland declared to exuberant crowds at the ceremony, "There it is. Take it." The achievement gave the City of Los Angeles the ability to grow beyond a population of 500,000 and leverage of water to expand city territory into the San Fernando Valley and other surrounding communities (the cities of San Fernando, Santa Monica and Beverly Hills held out
In 1923, the City of Los Angeles honored Mulholland by means of a new highway that ran along the spine of the Santa Monica Mountains. It was named Mulholland Drive.
As the City of Los Angeles began extracting greater amounts of water from the Owens Valley and balked at paying higher prices for it, residents there began fighting back. In the summer of 1924, a band of Valley opponents launched their first dynamite attack against a section of the aqueduct. Additional acts of violence against the aqueduct continued through the year, culminating in a major showdown when opponents seized a key part of the aqueduct and, for four days, completely shut off the water to Los Angeles. State and local authorities declined to take action and the press portrayed the Owens Valley farmers and ranchers as underdogs. Los Angeles was forced to negotiate. Mulholland stated that he "half-regretted the demise of so many of the valley’s orchard trees, because now there were no longer enough trees to hang all the troublemakers who live there."
The emboldened Owens Valley hiked water prices even higher. Mulholland became even more resistant to their demands.
In 1927, dynamite again exploded along the aqueduct. Mulholland responded with a small army of heavily armed guards.
The national press called the whole affair, California’s “Little Civil War.”
Owens Valley opposition did not hold together for long. Its leaders were owners of several local banks and were caught embezzling depositors’ funds. The banks collapsed and most Valley residents lost money. Opposition to the aqueduct fizzled. Mulholland and the City of Los Angeles moved in to buy up as much Valley land as possible, taking ownership of 95 percent of farmland and towns.
With this victory, Mulholland turned his attention to potential new sources for water. He saw the Colorado River as a promising source. His vision eventually led to the construction of Hoover Dam and the Colorado River Aqueduct, an accomplishment he did not live to see.
WILLIAM MULHOLLAND
Sorrow's Journey
"His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling,
like the descent of their last end,
upon all the living and the dead."
"The Dead"
James Joyce
Irish Independence
Despite the promise of home rule, the situation in Ireland exploded during the First World War. In 1916 the Easter Rebellion caused a profound change in Britain’s relations with the Irish. While thousands of Irish participated in the British war effort, pro-independence activists saw the war as an opportunity to win total freedom. On Easter Sunday in 1916 an armed uprising took place in Dublin. Although the British brutally suppressed the Easter Rebellion, it accelerated the pace of the Irish Revolution.
In 1918 Irish representatives to Parliament refused to take their seats and instead declared an independent Irish Free State. They formed their own Parliament, the Dáil Éireann (Gaelic for “Assembly of Ireland”), with Irish independence activist Eamon de Valera as its leader. The British government refused to recognize the rebel government, but the Irish republicans had the support of the people, especially during the following years of guerrilla warfare. Armed independence groups merged to create the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which launched attacks against members of British security forces and Protestant Irish police. By 1921 southwestern Ireland was under British martial law.
My Wild Rose
Tis a wee bonnie lassThat stands here before me,
Carryin' her heart in her handHopin' tis her I'd see.
For you are my Rose amongst the
thorns of my pains.
For you are my 'bow after all the rains.
For what she'd be a needin'Is but a wee tiny kiss,
From me, her grandest lad
Ta bring her a joyful bliss.
She'd be dancin' a merry jig
And showin' me a grand time,
And if I'd be the smartest ladI'd be oft makin' her mine.
She's got the rosy cheeks she doesAnd a grand sparkle to her eye,
I'd best be the gentle man,
And not be makin' her cry.
And as I lay me
head down
Upon me downy
pillows soft,
If all the world and love were young, And truth in every shepherd's tongue, These pretty pleasures might me moveTo live with thee and be thy love.
Go Lovely Rose
Tell her that wastes her time
and me,
That now she knows,
When I resemble her
to thee,
How sweet and fair
she seems to be.
Tell her that's young,
And shuns to have her graces spied,
That hadst thou sprung in deserts
where no men abide,
thou must have uncommended
died.
Small is the worth
Of beauty from the light retired:
Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desired,
And not blush so to be admired.
Then die-that she
The common fate of all things rare
May read in thee;
Who the fuck are you?
You are not the land of my birth.You are the land of my ancestors' birth.My ancestors, who were involved in your struggles
to become a nation,Who were there in your shining hours and your darkest hours,Who sacrificed for you and were shaped by your storyThen later left you for reasons I do not know,But there were tears at the parting.As the ripples and tides of the ocean shape the sands
and even the shorelines over time,So did the experiences of my ancestors ripple
through the generations and shape me.
The whispers and shouts of their patriotism
have flowed through my blood since my birth
And, I long to know your history, to fathom the riddles of your past.I cannot read enough or learn enough about you.I want to experience every facet of you
so that I may better understand myself.
No, you are not the
land of my birth,
But you are the land
of who I am.
Misfortunes one can endure.
But to suffer for one's own faults
-- Ah! -- There is the sting of life!
These were not men, they were battlefields.
And over them, like the sky, arched their sense of harmony, their sense of beauty and rest against which their misery and their struggles were an offense, to which their misery and their struggles were the only approaches they could make, of which their misery and their struggles were an integral part.
thousand horse and none to ride! With flowing tail, and flying mane,Wide nostrils never stretched by pain.
Mouths bloodless to the bit or rein,
And feet that iron never shod,And flanks unscarred by spur or rod,A thousand horse, the wild, the free,
Like waves that follow o'er the sea,Came thickly thundering on...
~Lord Byron, XVII, Mazeppa, 1818
The will to do, the soul to dare.
Sir Walter Scott
"Fate: how small a role you play in it.
Human Life
Duration: momentary. Nature: changeable. Perception: dim.
Condition of Body: decaying. Soul: spinning around. Fortune: unpredictable.
Lasting Fame: uncertain.
Sum Up: The body and its parts are a river, the soul a dream and mist,
Life is warfare and a journey far from home, lasting reputation is oblivion. "
Mornie utúlië
Mornie alantië
May it be you
journey on To light the day, When the night
is overcome You may rise to find the sun.
A promise lives within you now.
CELTIC WOMAN
I see how I came…
Back, back, each step the wrong way, and each sign followedas you'd have me go, 'til the skein picks up and we stand here face to face.
Mary of Scotland
(Mary to Elizabeth)
Maxwell Anderson
Living a Simple Life Together…
Mature as he was, she might yet be able to help him to the building of the rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the passion.
Without it we are meaningless fragments, half monks, half beasts, unconnected arches that have never joined into a man.
With it love is born, and alights on the highest curve, glowing against the grey, sober against the fire.
Life's a Faught ~
Dear lassie, we must part! That might our ruin prove! Let others whisper in thy ear The tender tale of love. Could I my thoughts command, I'd think no more of thee, For doubly dear-bought were our loves, If love dear-bought can be.
Life’s a Struggle
That life's a faught there is nae doubt, A steep and slipp'ry brae, And wisdom's sel', wi' a' its rules, Will aften find it sae. The truest heart that e'er was made May find a deadly fae. And broken aiths and faithless vows Gi'e lovers mickle wae.
When poortith looks wi' sour disdain, It frights a body sair, And gars them think they ne'er will meet Delight or pleasure mair. But though the heart be e'er sae sad, And prest wi' joyless care, Hope lightly steps in at the last, To fley awa' despair.
For love o' wealth let misers toil, And fret baith late and air', A cheerfu' heart has aye enough, And whiles a mite to spare: A leal true heart's a gift frae Heav'n, A gift that is maist rare; It is a treasure o' itsel', And lightens ilka care.
Let wealth and pride exalt themsel's, And boast o' what they ha'e., Compared wi' truth and honesty, They are nae worth a strae. The honest heart keeps aye aboon, Whate'er the world may say, And laughs and turns its shafts to scorn, That ithers would dismay.
Sae let us mak' life's burden light, And drive care awa'; Contentment is a dainty feast,
Although in hamely ha'; It gi'es a charm to ilka thing, And mak's it look fu' braw, The spendthrift and the miser herd
It soars aboon them a'. But there's ae thing amang the lave, To keep the heart in tune, And but for that the weary spleen, Wad plague us late and soon; A bonnie lass, a canty wife, For sic is nature's law; Without that charmer o' our lives, There's scarce a charm ava.
