Who Are You? Where Are You From?

In 1998, Jennifer and I spent time in Scotland, home to relatives and ancestors on both sides of our families. It was a journey into the old world, perhaps more for me than Jen.

My ancestors hailed from Perthshire, generations of them. My father’s parents left their old homes in Perth in 1919, made a new life in New Westminster and raised a family there. Though they blended well into the new world, they longed for their part of Perthshire, the North Inch, Kinnoull Hill, and the old Muirton Farm. That longing for the old homeland passed on to my father; he passed it on to my brother and sister, and I fantasized about someday returning “home” to see the place for myself.

I visited in 1980 and 1985, but these were mere fleeting moments. A distant cousin, still living, showed me the potato and turnip fields he’d farmed most of his life, like his ancestors. As we drove the winding roads alongside the River Tay, he asked when I “might be moving back to Perth.”

Beside the River Tay

He introduced me to the deacon of a Presbyterian Church as “David Morton, whose grandfather left Perth in the prime of his life, then his father briefly returned, and now David Morton is back.” The deacon beheld me with a raised eyebrow as the goosebumps jolted up my spine.

“Aye, he’s a Scot!”

In 1998, with Jennifer and her son Tom, I quickly became steeped in the home of my ancestors again. When we drove away from busy arteries outside of Prestwick, I found myself in that fantasy land, again, a world of imagined memories: the winding rural roads and hills that the Mortons and Murdochs (my grandmother’s family name) knew so well. The stone homes, railway stations and the tiny hamlets we drove through. I ordered haggis, neeps and tatties 1 in dusty restaurants with roaring fires, quaffed Scottish Ale, and earnestly shook hands with hotel proprietors as if they were old friends. I hadn’t seen in years.

Into the Scottish Highlands

We drove west through the Borders country, past ruins, like Melrose Abbey, laid to waste by Henry VIII. Jen’s son, Tom, joined us at Jedburgh Abbey. We travelled north to Edinburgh, through Perth and into the Highlands. We found ourselves on the hallowed Whiskey Trail, for a while, then turned south at Inverness, through Drumnadrochit and into the small village of Tomich.

Tomich became a base for excursions in the lower highlands. There weren’t many days when the sun broke through the dark clouds and fog, so we took car trips. Our journeys took us along single-track highland roads, stopping occasionally for short walks or roadside hotel restaurants for lunch.

One afternoon, we toured the Black Isle 2 and stopped in the seaside village of Rosemarkie.

The Rosemarkie Stone

The town was charming, though there was nothing much to distinguish it from so many others we saw that day. I remember standing on a gravel beach off the main road, battered by the wind, watching a fishing boat enter Moray Firth. But I had no right to complain. This was the land of my ancestors, I reminded myself. I should try to smile.

Jennifer had wanted to visit the Groam House Museum in Rosemarkie, which held a collection of Pictish stone carvings. The Picts, like the Celts, were essentially the aboriginal people of Scotland who thrived in the Early Middle Ages from around 400 to 500 AD. Their elegant carvings rivalled the designs we recognize today as Celtic, but their uniqueness reflected a distinctive Pictish culture and history.

The museum was a revelation! Rosemarkie had been a stronghold of the Picts and some of the most telling artifacts of their culture had been unearthed here. They were stirring, particularly several pieces of a larger work known as the Rosemarkie Stone. It was full of abstract symbols, bold geometric forms and intricate detail.

The Crescent and V-Rod

I was attracted to one symbol called a V-Rod in a description of the Stone. It consisted of a wide V-shape with flared ends that could resemble a broken arrow. A crescent, like a bow, appears to be overlaid with ornamentation resembling birds’ heads.

The same image appears three times in the Rosemarkie sculpture with variations. The crescent and v-shape appear frequently in other Pictish artifacts. Archaeologists have no definitive answers as to their meaning.

I felt haunted, staring at the stone fragments. I’ve experienced the same feeling looking at other ancient relics. The Crescent and V-Rod seemed to behold me with the same fascination that I held staring back at it. As if it were asking the same questions of me as I was of it.

“Who are you?” we asked of each other. “Where do you come from?”

Taking something with me

Although Jennifer, Tom and I moved on from Rosemarkie a few minutes later, I can still bring back that sense of mystery, that longing for connection with something from the distant past.

As we left the museum, a silver broach of the Crescent and V-Rod in the museum shop caught my eye. Jennifer and Tom went off to a candy store while I lingered. I imagined seeing the broach on the lapel of one of Jennifer’s business suits. It was a very smart design to a modern eye, and I knew she’d love it on its own merit. I bought it!

But It was as much to have that symbol in my own life as it was to please Jennifer. And every time she wore it, I felt that ongoing conversation resume with a race of people as distant in the past as time itself.

A few months after our return to Vancouver, the broach became a birthday present for Jennifer. It was a favourite of hers, and she wore it often.

Ways of the WSÁNÉC

In 2011, not long after we moved to South Pender Island, Jennifer and I had the idea of naming our home after Rosemarkie, the little village on the Black Isle and our revelatory moments there. Initially we kept the decision to ourselves, not to make too much of it. Eventually, we had a beautiful cedar-carved sign made for the entrance to our driveway that featured the Crescent and V-Rod, announcing it to anyone driving down Southlands Drive. Colin Hamilton of Thuja Wood Art made the sign.

But I wonder now if it’s appropriate to take the name and symbology from “Pictland,” the ancient home of the Pictish people, and plant it in the ancient home of the WSÁNEĆ (Saanich) people.

As time passes … as I become more attuned to this corner of S,DÁYES (Pender Island), the driveway sign feels a little like an anachronism. The way the wind blows through the trees and grasses, the places where eagles roost and ravens call to each other, the cycles of plants, the ways of the otters, mink and seals … these things have less to do with the aboriginal people of Scotland and more to do with the Coast Salish people, the Saltwater people.

Remembering the vanquished

But the Picts were also an aboriginal people who predated the Romans and Vikings in the far north of Britain. These “invaders” wanted to vanquish people like Picts and claim the land as their own. The Picts were eventually “colonized” by the Romans, not unlike the North American First Nations peoples by Europeans.

The Romans referred to the people they encountered in northern Britain as Picti from a Latin word, pingere, meaning “to paint.” The painted people, probably a reference to the practice of tattooing, may not have even known they were being called Picts, nor that historians may have used the term in a pejorative sense, emphasizing their “barbarism.”

Like so many other peoples, the Picts were eventually converted to Christianity. Their symbols and distinctive art gradually vanished into the Middle Ages, replaced by Christian crosses, churches and Latinized words.

Tell me your stories

So, who’s to say my ancestors weren’t Picts before they became the Scots that farmed the lands along the River Tay, Perthshire. And I mean no ill will against the Picti when I display their V-Rod and Crescent, and the name Rosemarkie at the top of our driveway. It’s shown with deep appreciation and the faint notion that some of their blood may still stir in my veins. Who knows?

Our time in Pictland was eye-opening and meaningful. Perhaps there is something of value in having the Picti and the WSÁNEĆ here on Southlands Drive, S,DÁYES, across time and space, beholding each other, talking together:

“Who are you? Where do you come from? Tell me your stories.”

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