THROUGH The Shortbread Tin is a new theatre production from National Theatre of Scotland that explores the story of James Macpherson, who, in 1760, introduced Scotland, and the world, to Ossian, a supposed third-century Bard.
The show begins with a question: What’s the point in myths?
There are more questions to follow: Imagine you didn’t know anything about the country you came from? Imagine if somebody somewhere decided what you should know?
Questions are deliberate in this show. They are there to provoke. But they are posed as an opportunity for consideration. There is space given each time a new question is asked: space for the audience to answer them in their own heads, with their own response.
I then ask the audience two more questions: Have you ever heard of James macpherson? Have you ever heard of Ossian? My line after this moment is always the same: “Some aye, some no, see I thought that was how it was going to go,” because that’s what seems to happen every night.
For some reason, only half of the audience know this history. And I still don’t know quite why that is. Perhaps you’ll know about it if you’ve studied Scottish history, or trad music, or Scots and Gaelic languages. This story wasn’t known to me when I began this project. I had no idea who James Macpherson or Ossian was. This was all a big education for me, and also everything that comes with it – Culloden, Jacobites, Clearances, the Act of Proscription. I realised that I knew very little about the country I come from.
But is this just my fault for not knowing, and not knowing that I didn’t know, and I didn’t know to ask? Or is it my fault for being taught, and then being drawn to, other more popular histories, such as Romans, Egyptians and Ottomans? What I did learn was that there is clearly a hierarchy of histories that are more worthy of learning than others.
But my question is – why is that? Or as I say in the show: “Imagine if you were told that your history wasn’t good enough and it was replaced by a better one?”
Can you imagine that? Imagine that, eh?
This was all given some new perspective by a recent situation that I found myself in at the reopening of the Scottish Parliament. Extracts from the show were performed in front of MSPs, and the King and Queen. The script contained references to the slippery nature of the general understanding of Scottish history, and sure enough, there was a bit of kickback about the content that I presented.
It seemed that how we understand our country’s history rests on political and personal preference – a preference to ignore certain parts and highlight others that suit a particular agenda. But, of course, I am absolutely not innocent here – I also have an agenda, even if I don’t think I do.
James Macpherson saw his culture changing in front of his eyes. One image that I could not escape was of the young James, who – having been brought up on the myths of warriors and ancient battles, saw first-hand the result of Culloden and the defeat of the Jacobites on his doorstep. He saw them being taken to Ruthven Barracks, and he saw the changes that followed – changes in the law to language, worship and music.
It was no wonder then that he wanted to create a new story for Scotland, one in the image of the tales of other times. And these stories caught the attention of the country, and the world, becoming popular with American presidents, European rulers and inspiring the Romantic Movement. His attempt at changing the cultural conversation worked. Until it didn’t.
How can we face up to our history in order to move forward in an authentic way? How can we continue to highlight aspects of our history that have been hidden from us? What do we do with the parts of history that don’t fit the narrative of how we like to present ourselves to the world? I told you that I ask a lot of questions.
But questions are exactly what we should be asking. At least if we question, we can perhaps make a bit of forward movement in understanding who we are by where we’ve been. What would it take for us to do that?
I’m not suggesting that we should just make up our history like Macpherson did – our history is good enough and interesting enough. All the parts that we can be proud of and the parts that we don’t necessarily have to feel guilt or shame about, but that we could face, own up to, and start to process as a country.
We just need to tell our own story.
