Miracle at Haddington

Shrines and wonders

Sandra Barwick

Usually the Earl of Lauderdale tries to avoid the word miracle. 'There has been one actual miracle, but we're jolly careful not to use the term. I think favours is a better word. First of all, religious people are very good at imagining things. And then, there's often a lack of actual proof.'

In fact the main reason for this noble discretion is that Scottish Protestant ears and eyes are still sensitive to Popish overtones. If it requires a suspension of disbelief to accept miracles of healing, 50 years ago it would have required an even greater effort of faith to believe that there would ever be a Scottish shrine to the Virgin Mary attached to a Presbyterian church, as there is at Haddington, 15 miles east of Edinburgh, in the side chapel which belongs to Lord Lauderdale's family.

Because of this, next month's pilgrimage to this scene of Marian favour will be a low-key affair compared to its English equivalent at Walsingham in Norfolk, without benefit of banners, smells or bells. It was at one of these pilgrimages that prayers were made for Barbara Turner, for 38 years plagued by lung infection and coughing fits.

In the end the miracle, she says, occur- red not in the shrine but in the bedroom of her home in Prestbury, Cheltenham, where, in January 1988, she was praying before a pair of postcards of the shrine's Madonna and Child and the Cross of Nails propped on her dresser. 'Oh Dear Lord, when will I stop coughing?'

Two days later, says Mrs Turner, she was taken by a prolonged fit of coughing. In the ensuing commotion, watched by her husband, she coughed up, in order: a piece of what appeared to be bone about an inch long; a lump of congealed blood; a small quantity of fresh blood.

`I went straight out and told the lady in the motor-cycle shop,' says Mrs Turner, a scooter rider, who reports that she has not had a coughing fit since, and feels com- pletely well. 'I'm starting a new lease of life at 55. It's so hard to believe — I don't care who believes it.'

Her medical practitioner, one Dr G. W. Peacock, has written a testimony for her describing her long history of chest infec-

SCOTTISH SPECIAL

tion and pleural effusion, and reporting that he has never come across a similar case in 30 years of practice, in or out of Cheltenham.

Mrs Turner says that as a result of the publicity she now tends to venture out only in crash hat and goggles. The other prob- able effect is an increase in the 2,500 who would otherwise be likely to attend the coming pilgrimage. Two-thirds are usually Scottish Protestants, though this will not, of course, be a comprehensively ecumenic- al occasion.

Lord Mackay's friends in the Free Pres- byterian Church will not be there, unless they are demonstrating outside against Romish practices. The last 20 years, they believe, have been ones of accelerated degeneration and iniquity in which the work of the Scottish Reformation has begun to be undone.

Nowhere is that more evident than in Lord Lauderdale's chapel at St Mary's, Haddington, 15 miles east of Edinburgh. Signs abound. On the outside of its gate is a picture of the burning bush, the emblem of Scottish Presbyterianism. Inside is another picture of the same bush twinned with a Latin inscription to the Virgin: a symbol in two senses — of tact (few now read Latin) and of the Virgin's Perpetual Virginity. The burning bush, says Lord Lauderdale with some glee, was a mediaeval symbol of this doctrine.

Over an altar composed of stones from Lauderdale houses and Scotland's holy places, is a figure of the Virgin and Child in her lap with the three gift-bearing and kilted Kings approaching from either side. Beneath the altar is a basket heaped with biro-covered papers giving thanks and asking favours. These are generally small enough. 'Thank you for helping us settle in Haddington so nicely. May it continue.' `Please comfort the loneliness of my mother now her husband is dead.'

The tact continues outside the chapel. When pilgrims are in the main church, Lord Lauderdale suggests that the Pres- byterians' aversion to invocation of Our Lady be respected. What happens in the shrine is another matter.

`It's my freehold property and if I want to fill it with coals or hold a dinner party I can do it,' says the 17th Earl. The Wee Frees would have preferred either to what he did: restore devotion to the Virgin Mary. In the early Middle Ages there had been a shrine and a holy well associated with healing powers a few miles from Haddington at Whitekirk. After an English invasion the shrine was rebuilt in the 15th century at Haddington; then the church was left bare and half roofless by the Reformation. Parish worship continued in the other half.

By 1970 the Church of Scotland was planning to restore the decayed half in the new spirit of unity. Lord Lauderdale, an Episcopalian, saw his chance: `I suggested, "Why don't I restore my aisle?" Their idea was to make it an ecumenical gesture. They thought it would be nice if it could be used for Christians of other traditions. They didn't really know what they were letting themselves in for. They thought "What a good idea! It'll be a Piskie sort of colony on our territory." ' The opening of the restored shrine in 1978 set the tone of the place in its promiscuous mix of priests, including an Eastern Orthodox priest, an ex-Moderator of the Church of Scotland, the Abbot of the Roman Catholic Cistercian monastery nearby and the Most Revd Alastair Hag- gart, Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church. The few protesting Protestants outside were greeted with an infuriating tolerance. The Primus went outside to say hello. 'So glad,' he said, with a smile of intense pastoral sweetness, `that your pil- grimage coincided with ours.'

At the pilgrimages, Church of Scotland, Episcopalian and Roman Catholic clergy and priests still worship together in the main body of the restored ecumenical half of the church. The atmosphere, with its guitars, up-beat hymns, and gesturing, while hands are laid on the many disabled in wheelchairs, has more of a charismatic than a High Church flavour. Lord Lauder- dale, for many years Guardian of the Anglican shrine at Walsingham, is visibly keener on some of these feature than others.

`There are some people who go in for liturgical dancing. They mean very well,' he says, fast-forwarding a video as it reaches the moment of their performance. `They practise for a year — it's not my cup of tea. I find them rather plump and not very good dancers, but it conveys a mes- sage to some people.'

At Haddington itself, as they prepare for this year's pilgrimage, the local clergy are remaining discreet on the subject of mira- cles. They would not like the place to lose its focus as a centre of prayer and become a place of merely magic cures.

`We're not quite so open about it as the Earl,' says Dr Stephenson, the Episcopa- lian curate there, in a voice of mixed pleasure and caution. `What we're contri- buting here to the Church's life is the importance of prayer for healing. We pray for the requests left every Friday, but after that we don't inquire.

`There are many answers to prayer. If in fact Jesus is doing something special for His mother we can't stop that. And if she gets active in some way we can't stop that either.'

Certainly the Earl appears unstoppable. He is on what the Wee Frees would regard as the fast lane of the Broad Road that leadeth to Destruction. Even now, after aerial surveys, the ex-MP, ex-foreign cor- respondent, current Hereditary Bearer of the National Flag of Scotland, is close to re-discovery of the Whitekirk Holy Well.