Their Culture in Their Bones These two men grew up
straight in conditions which would today be thought unfit for beasts or even for Scottish tinkers; and they worked, as none of us could now work, for a pittance that wouldn't keep an adolescent in cigarettes. With no more than three or four words of book- learning, they carried their culture in the marrow of their bones and faced the harsh world like Homeric heroes. They had in complete measure the courtesy (and cunning) of their race, but if a lout pressed either of them too far, he simply knocked him down. When I was a child I met one or two old men like this in the West of Scotland: I thought them fabulous then and think so still. There is no sentimentalising over such unsentimental narratives as those of Aonghus Beag and Micky MacGowan; but when I think of the vigour and humour and compas- sion and honesty and imaginative force which mark every line of every page, the word 'culture' as we bandy it today tastes like ash on my tongue.
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