Dunkeld Cathedral |
My Friday series continues...
where guest authors are invited to share a post with us about the historical background to their writing. I'm delighted to be featuring such a wonderful variety of novels during the series, some of which fall outwith the standard historical fiction category.
The settings for this series do not require to be Scottish, though many of them are, and if you've been following my Friday '#Aye. Ken it wis like this...' blog series you may notice some repetition of a particular historical figure, and of particular themes - though not in the same posts.
Today, I'm delighted to welcome back Amy Hoff, an author and extremely versatile artistic film-maker that I met some years ago at a gathering in Glasgow. A specialist in Scottish history, Amy's interest in Scottish folklore, and Scottish history in general, is deep. Some of her writing, set in Scotland, falls into the supernatural categories and is, I believe, the basis of her current film making. Thorough research has given Amy some very intriguing and unusual aspects to focus on in her writing, details that may not be too well-known in the wider-world about a particularly famous Scottish poet named Robert Burns, but I'll let Amy share them with us.
The historical background to the
Robert Burns love story in the Caledonia universe, an upcoming novel titled Burns Night.
Alexander Naysmyth's Robert Burns |
Robert Burns, Scottish national poet
and slut, is introduced in the second book, Mortal
Souls. It is also revealed that he is a vampire. Over the course of that
story, it is hinted that he fell in love with someone a long time ago and has
stayed dedicated throughout his immortal life. Although only glimpses of
Burns’s story are told in Mortal Souls,
the entire history of the romance is revealed in Burns Night.
Robert spent an evening out at the
pub, where he met a mysterious stranger who looked like neither a man or a
woman, although he assumed it was a man at the time. He fell for this person,
only to later discover it was a human-shaped creature called a baobhan sith, a sort of faerie race of
vampires also called the White Women of the Highlands .
This creature calls itself Desdemona but is not of any particular gender and
Robert’s ongoing obsessive love is a matter of puzzlement to the creature
itself.
Desdemona also happens to be the
commander of the Fae army during their very own opium war. The story goes on to
show Robert begging Desdemona to turn him because he knows how ill he is and
that he will die soon. Against their better judgement Desdemona tries to do as
he asks, but he dies anyway.
Burns Mausoleum St. Michaels Dumfries |
Thirty years later, when his body is
exhumed to be moved to the new mausoleum, he opens his eyes. He eventually
meets up with the Caledonia officers
and moves into Glasgow
when he discovers Desdemona did not die in the war after all.
There is more to the story, of
course, but a great deal of it is based on real history.
The character of Desdemona is based
on Alison Begbie/Elizabeth Gebbie, a woman Robert asked to marry but was turned
down in some particularly embarrassing way; Robert’s ensuing year of depression
while living in Irvine
is attributed to this. Alison/Elizabeth was said to be extremely independent
and intelligent in ways that a poor farmer like Burns would never have
encountered before in a woman. His resulting songs about her, including
Cessnock Banks and Mary Morison, praise her intelligence and talk of his
loneliness without her. Since many scholars believe he was not in love with
Jeanie and named more than one of his children Elizabeth, some believe that
Alison/Elizabeth’s influence on his life and heart were more dramatic than we
tend to think today.
The concept of Burns as a vampire
resulted from a class during my Master’s degree years at Glasgow University .
It so happened that Scotland ,
like much of Europe , was aflame with the
concept of phrenology, and many people wanted to get their hands on the poet’s
skull. In order to prevent this, it was decided that the exhumation would be
carried out in secret, but given the open nature of the cemetery in Dumfries , a crowd gathered.
Please click the link below to take you to the original document |
Please click HERE
When the broken pine casket
was opened, everyone was stunned to see that Burns simply looked as if he were
asleep; even the traditional blush on his cheeks was there. Someone made the
mistake of touching the body, probably out of sheer surprise and awe. The body
then crumbled into dust. I remember saying aloud, ‘Maybe he was a vampire,’ and
here we are.
Robert Burns House Dumfries |
In writing this particular episode of Caledonia, I wanted to make the story about Robert Burns a story
about love, since it’s what Burns’ work (if not his life) was all about. In
creating the character of Desdemona, I wanted to show that if love was the most
important thing in the world to this man, then the recipient of that love would
not necessarily be something you’d expect. It’s an easy story, to tell of a
beautiful woman and handsome man. Robert Burns falling in love with what
amounts to an eldritch horror in the Caledonia universe
made the story more about love itself than who was involved in it.
Mortal Souls is on pre-order on amazon HERE, till publication Saturday 2nd June 2018.
Many thanks for popping in today, Amy. My very best wishes with all of your exciting projects - in the writing and film-making spheres!
Slainthe!
Images above from Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Robert_Burns_Mausoleum,_Dumfries.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Robert_Burns_House,_Dumfries.jpg
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thank you for reading my blog. Please pop your thoughts about this post in the comment box. :-)