Unionism is done in Scotland. It no longer has a story to tell the people |
It's quite a mouthful for a book’s title, but I recommend A Psychiatric Study of Myths and Fairytales: Their Origin, Meaning and Usefulness by Professor Julius Heuscher. I discovered it one snowy day as an undergraduate in the university library. I was there more for heat than study. Students were pretty poor in the late 1980s.
Heuscher’s work enthralled me as he told how these archetypal stories underpinned so much of the meaning of human life, from birth to death and everything in between.
One recurring motif in fairy tales the world over is "the child who won’t listen". Little Red Riding Hood is probably the best western example. She’s told not to talk to strangers, and not to go into the forest, but off she goes – stubborn and blind to risk. In the original version of the tale, she ends up as supper for the Wolf.
Similar stories occur in every corner of the planet. In West Africa, there’s The Boy Who Ignored A Warning from the Dead. In this tale, our protagonist – a lad who thinks he’s the coolest, toughest, smartest kid in the village – is told by a shaman that the spirits have sent a warning that he should not to go through a specific part of the forest where he sometimes ventures. Sure enough, off he goes, stubborn and blind to risk, and ends up living the rest of his life under an awful curse.
Over the last few months, I’ve increasingly wondered if our most garrulous unionists are perhaps in need of a few hours in the company of Professor Heuscher. The SNP and the Greens, as well as countless pro-Yes folk, have been warning that independence was about to return to the top of Scotland’s political agenda.
But unionists just laughed. Little Red........