My Heart’s in the Highlands – Part 4

Inverness, Culloden & Edinburgh

By James T. Carney

Inverness is a pretty town, and I was glad I stayed there so as not to hold my fellow hikers up (as I said at the end of Part 3). Among the things I saw in Inverness was a monument to the Scots who had died in the two World Wars and in wars since. The number of names from World War I was almost twice as great as the number of names from World War II. In some ways, Great Britain never recovered from World War I, and the memories of it were partly responsible for the appeasement policies the British government followed in the 1930s.

A belated hogmanay

Dictionary.com's "Word of the Day for Friday, December 31, 2010" was

Hogmanay \hog-muh-NEY\
noun: 1. a gift given on New Year's Eve.
proper noun: 1. New Year's Eve in Scotland.
    Hogmanay is the name for Scottish New Year's Eve. It probably comes from the Old French aguillanneuf, "last day of the year."

The photo is of a Hogmanay celebration in Edinburgh. I recognize the castle from my 1965 time in Auld Reekie. In copping the photo, I also found "10 facts about Hogmanay":

1. Many Scots still use Hogmanay to practice the tradition of first footing, when it is customary to visit a friend or neighbour just after midnight to celebrate the New Year. [I'm glad no one tried this with us last night; we were asleep by 8:30.] While the traditional gift of a lump of coal for the host's fire may not be as common as it once was, it's still bad luck to show up empty handed, so be sure to take along your tipple of choice.
2. Edinburgh's Hogmanay celebrations were the site of the World Record for the largest country dance. 1914 people danced Strip The Willow at the "Night Afore Fiesta" on 30 December 2000.
3. Mystery still surrounds the origin of the word "Hogmanay"....

My belated hogmanay¹ to you is my wife's solution to today's cryptoquote:

Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man. – Benjamin Franklin

    I'm reasonably certain that Mr. Franklin meant "man" in the sense of human. I, at any rate, offer this hogmanay to women as well as to men.

Hogmanay, hogmanay, hogmanay! I love the way it's pronounced. It needs to be a rhyme word in a limerick. Unfortunately, my brief foray in rhyming dictionaries came up empty. I shouldn't let that be an unsurmountable obstacle—or not for my muse, anyroad. So, let's see whether she comes up with anything during this first day of the new year.
    You're free to challenge your own muse, too, of course. An entry from you could be your own belated hogmanay to me.
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1. I've capitalized the word when it refers to the day, not when it refers to a gift for the day.