No biological solution has yet been found to this problem, which scientists called the Struldbrugg factor from Jonathan Swift’s diagnosis of it in 1726. A brain cannot contain more than a normal lifetime of experience without being wasted and warped by it, so youth can only be restored by undoing biological experience. However, the problem had a technical solution. Shortly before a person of thirty or forty was restored to their twenty-three-or thirty-three-year-old state they recorded a summary of what their renewed cells would find useful to know. Since the businessmen and scientists who financed and discovered this process valued information more than sensed experience they embraced the treatment but kept it secret. In the twenty-first century lifespans varied greatly from nation to nation and class to class, but competitive housekeeping ensured that malnutrition, disease, famine and warfare kept the average human lifespan for the whole planet less than forty years. The effect on even a prosperous nation of many people not dying would have been catastrophic.
Immortality only became possible for many after the creation of extra-terrestrial living room. By that time powerplant housekeeping had returned the earth to a stable ecology and most intelligent people had come to prefer sensed experience to manipulating units of information. Since fear of death is an obvious sign of an unsatisfying life few nowadays want their bodies to exist forever.
Page 50.
perjink = trim, neat, of smart appearance.
Page 55.
I hate women for their damnable smug security and for always being older than me, always older and wiser.
This spasm of rage against women from a man who personally preferred them to men was a symptom of the spreading war fever.
CHAPTER THREE — WARRIOR WORK
Page 59.
jorries = small glass or porcelain balls and the game children play with these on pieces of level ground. In Dumbarton it is called jiggies (from the verb jig meaning to turn or dodge quickly) and in other parts of Scotland, bools. It should not be confused with the bools played by adults with much larger, wooden balls on smooth green lawns, though the rules of play are similar.
Page 61.
whaups = curlews.
Page 63.
The Warrior house was built over the short river flowing into Saint Mary’s Loch from Loch of the Lowes.
This modern structure was on the site of Tibbie Shiel’s Inn where James Hogg (poet, novelist and tenant farmer at Altrieve and Mountbenger) gathered with his neighbours in the first decades of the nineteenth century. A large statue of the poet with crook, plaid and sheepdog was placed on the lower slope of Oxcleuch Rig near the end of that century, and now overlooks the Ettrick veterans’ garden of remembrance.
The Warrior house was drill hall, armoury, canteen, dormitory, gymnasium, infirmary, cinema, library, stable, garage, youth hostel, club room and old men’s home. Four distinct ranks used it.
1 — The Boys’ Brigade. These soldiers of any age over twelve had joined the army but not yet fought a battle. They spent a third of their time in martial exercise. A dedicated few spent more time on that but most enjoyed playing other games too.
2 — Officers. Between wars these spent two days a week training the Boys’ Brigade, the rest in martial sport, study and love affairs.
3 — Veterans: officers who had tired of war or grown too old for it. Their pastimes were advising the Boys’ Brigades, playing bowls or cards and visiting old men and women in quieter houses.
4 — Servants. These had a talent for housework, no wish to fight and preferred the company of men to women. They seldom left the Warrior house because their love affairs were with each other. The only class conflict was slight tension between servants attached to the officers’ mess and hero-worshipping cadets who sometimes worked as waiters.
Page 65.
March, march, Ettrick and Teviotdale etc. Based on March, March, Pinks of Election, a song published by Hogg in his Jacobite Relics, Blue Bonnets Over the Border is one of the many lyrics which Walter Scott (1771–1832) scattered through his novels. It is sung by Louis (one of Julian Avenel’s followers) in The Monastery. Set to a pleasant marching tune and slightly bowdlerized it was so popular with anglophone choirs in the late historical era that T.S. Eliot quotes it inThe Awefull Battle of the Pekes and the Pollicles. Like other Scottish songs its local popularity was ensured by emphatic use of place names.
Page 74.
coronach = a Gaelic lament for the fallen.
Page 75.
bogie = a call to cancel a game while people are still playing it.
Page 80.
glaikit sumphs = irresponsible dullards.
Page 82.
girning = whining or wailing through teeth exposed as in a grin.
dour = determined, hard, stern, dull, severe, obstinate, unyielding, sullen, humourless, slow, sluggish, reluctant.
ahint = behind; at the rear end.
disjaskit = disjoined or discombobulated.
pawkie = crafty; shrewd.
couthie = friendly; sympathetic.
Page 88.
YE GOWK! = you cuckoo.
YE DOITED GOMERIL! = you crazed idiot.
YE STUPIT NYAFF! = you puny insignificance.
YE BLIRT! = you unexpected squall of rain; rain or wind; you childish outcry; you externally visible part of the genitalia of a female horse.
CHAPTER FOUR — PUDDOCK PLOT
Page 107.
carnaptious = irritable; contentious.
Page 108.
Secret societies (like governments, stock exchanges, banks, national armies, police forces, advertising agencies and other groups who made nothing people needed) had ended with the historical era.
All these organizations existed to create and protect money which everyone needed in the last centuries of the historical era. Wat did not know the wonderful value huge amounts of money added to the lives of those who owned them.
Page 111.
The times are racked with birth pangs. Every hour Brings forth some gasping Truth, etc. These lines are by Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–94) Bostonian doctor, professor of anatomy and essayist. In 1858 his Autocrat of the Breakfast Table made him famous by its playful wit, fresh unconventional tone and vignettes in verse. The monstrous but quickly domesticated truths he describes here are nineteenth-century geological and biological discoveries not foreshadowed in the Bible. At first many feared these contradicted the word of God, undermined organized religion and would overturn established authority. In a few years it was obvious that ecclesiastical, legal and political bosses were as firmly established as ever, and scientific discovery was making industrial investment more profitable.
It was written by an American judge heralding fascism.
This statement is untrue. The speaker has confused the nineteenth-century doctor and essayist with his son of the same name, a U.S.A. Supreme Court Chief Justice who ruled in 1927 that third generation idiots could be legally sterilized, and also lived to see the rise of Hitler. The first O. W. Holmes could not herald fascism. He lived when the world’s most fascist states were European monarchies or the colonies of European monarchic empires. In those days no American would have thought such places patterns for the U.S.A.