By Samantha Berkhead
Associate Editor
Before this weekend, I was convinced that only one song had ever been written for the bagpipes.
You know the one. Its brash cacophony of opening notes ringing out ubiquitously at Memorial Day parades across America every summer.
Blame it on cultural isolation, my own ignorance or merely the fact that I don’t think about bagpipes that often, but it never occurred to me that the Scots probably know a lot more about the instrument than we do.
In fact, there were many aspects of Scottish culture and life I didn’t know about before I arrived in the so-called “Athens of the North,” Edinburgh, last Friday night. Over the course of the weekend, the incessant sound of bagpipes floated throughout the centuries-old streets; the repertoire included much more than one song.
It would be an injustice to one’s self to never visit the place — because the birthplace of Harry Potter, Peter Pan and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is just as magical as its exports would lead you to believe.
Like many places throughout Europe, visiting Edinburgh is akin to time travel, just with less disease and chamber pots.
As soon as you step foot on the Royal Mile, stone shapes of famed Scots atop plaqued pedestals greet you. I ran into Adam Smith, father of modern capitalism and cultivator of the “invisible hand” theory — in other words, a historical figure you only care about if you’re a history major or if your name is Sam Berkhead.
Just across the cobblestone road sits the 18th-century philosopher David Hume, anachronistically clad in a toga. His right big toe gleams gold from the countless hands that have rubbed it in passing for good luck — which is ironic, since superstition and luck were things that Hume himself despised.
On Princes Street, the center of Edinburgh shopping, a monument to Scottish author Sir Walter Scott the size of a small church dominates the skyline. It’s an edifice grandiose enough to make any writer resent the lack of reverence America has for wordsmiths.
Edinburgh Castle sits on top of a volcanic cliff at one end of the Royal Mile — it’s imposing, awe-inspiring, breathtaking — basically everything Dublin Castle isn’t (no offense). A statue of famed Scottish warrior William Wallace guards the main castle gates, and I’m quite certain the statue isn’t Australian and doesn’t hate everybody. The castle interior is a real-life Helm’s Deep if you replace Viggo Mortensen with a bunch of tourists.
Bad jokes aside, if you only have time to do one thing in Edinburgh, go to the castle. Climb the outer walls and treat yourself to a 360-degree view of the city and the highlands. Explore the castle prisons that housed American revolutionaries at one point in time. Go see the Scottish crown jewels and the Stone of Destiny. Visit the royal apartments where Mary, Queen of Scots frequented from time to time. There are tons of things to see, and none of them disappoint.
Edinburgh isn’t entirely dedicated to the past, however. If you’re lucky, you’ll see a real-life Yoda. He floats.
A thousand stories and memories have housed themselves throughout the city over the years — many of them macabre, dark and bizarre — but the one that stuck with me the most concerns a dog named Bobby.
In Greyfriars Cemetery, an eerily quiet churchyard in the middle of the city, a tombstone in front of the church surrounded with sticks, dog toys and flowers is inscribed with the words “Greyfriars Bobby: Let his loyalty and devotion be a lesson to us all.”
The dog belonged to a night watchman named John Gray in the mid-1800s, and the story goes that the two were inseparable during their two years together. Gray died of tuberculosis, but Bobby survived him for 14 years, throughout which he spent every night sleeping at his owner’s grave.
Bobby became a local fixture, and after his death he was buried just outside the cemetery gates. The actual truth of the story has been called into question since then, but I’d like to think it’s possible for a living thing — human or animal — to show that much devotion to a loved one.
My only regret about my trip was that I didn’t stay longer. There is so much to see and do, and it would be impossible for me to write about all of them here.
And if history, literature, legend and cute highland terriers completely bore you, the city of Edinburgh has pubs, bars and clubs numbering in the hundreds. It’s always beer o’clock in Scotland.
