Even though they efface the landscape, the snows of midwinter make the deeper symbolism more apparent. The psychic differences between the Northern and the Southern Kingdoms, which long predate Alex Salmond, are most explicit in this season.
When I was a child, Christmas Day was not a bank holiday in Scotland. It was celebrated, but only as a trial match for the major event: Hogmanay. No one has satisfactorily explained its etymology, but the word is so appropriate. It has a moral onomatopeia. Christmas: despite the best efforts of commerce, it has not lost contact with its origins as the greatest festival of all. Wassailing, merry gentlemen — merry everyone — punch, porter and port, great heartening fires, while the weather is a mere decoration: ‘comfort and joy’ may come from one of the shallower carols, but it expresses the English Christmas ethos.
Hogmanay is pre-Christian, and has no savour of the New Testament; the Scots have always preferred the Old. At Hogmanay, the elements cannot be expected to behave just because there is a star in the sky and the church bells are ding-donging merrily (an even shallower carol). Untamed, nature must be defied. As if to give the forces of darkness time to muster, a proper Hogmanay does not start until -midnight. Thereafter, it is black-avised men struggling along snowy byways, bearing lumps of coal and bottles of whisky. Whisky’s etymology is Gaelic. At Christmas, the English have the way, the truth and the life. At Hogmanay, the Scots have the water of life.
What a water it can be. Recently, I had the pleasure of drinking a bottle of Ardbeg, Committee Reserve. I have never had a finer whisky, and rarely tasted a more expensive one. The Island malts have their detractors. I once heard them described, by a man who is normally sound, as tasting like creosote strained through peat. Although that is rank philistinism, there is an asperity; the first taste is not gentle. I could be persuaded that the normal 17-year-old Ardbeg would benefit from longer in barrel, though one understands the demands of cash-flow. With the Committee Reserve, strength has matured into subtlety: the power is immense, but harmonious.
We were talking about old whiskies, so I told a tale of Brussels during the late Eighties and a restaurant offering ’53 Macallan as an aperitif. That caught my eye as an admirable digestif, especially as it was the same price as a moderate cognac. The first two glasses arrived with ice. We explained that in Scotland, ice in whisky was a criminal offence. While those drams recuperated, we had another couple, and came to the obvious conclusion. Leaving any of that magnificent whisky at the mercy of foreigners who might subject it to abominable indignities: it would be like leaving a wounded man on Afghanistan’s plains.
So we finished the bottle and casually inquired if they had any more (not, I stress, to drink there and then). No, that had been the only one, specially opened for us. It also turned out to have been specially bottled for the Coronation. If one had possessed the foresight to purchase it unopened, it could probably now be exchanged for a case of the Committee Reserve.
There was one trivial problem. I had not been thirsty by the time we started on the whisky, and at nine the next morning, I had a briefing with Arthur Cockfield, then one of the UK Commissioners. The Arthurian legend had an infallible command of detail. The nickname was misleading, for he did not have the mien of rex quondam, rex futurus. He was more like an ancient lizard, and had a relentlessly desiccated voice. One could have done with a more mellifluous companion, especially as he did not offer me so much as a cup of coffee. By the end of the hour, my throat had turned into sandpaper and I needed any old water, urgently, before I could savour in juxtaposition the Arthurian comedy and the previous night’s usquebaugh.
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