By: Simon Brooke :: 27 July 2011
But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed,
The trembling earth resounds his tread.
Clap in his walie nieve a blade,
He'll mak it whissle;
An' legs an' arms, an' heads will sned,
Like taps o' thrissle.
The symbols we choose tell us something about how we see ourselves, and, perhaps, a little of how we really are. Only in Scotland would we seek to extirpate our national flower. Only in Scotland would we celebrate a poem which speaks of doing so. Only in Scotland would we be utterly confident that we will never succeed.
The thistle is a hardy creature. It will grow anywhere, on the poorest soils, in the harshest conditions. It defends itself fiercely with many sharp weapons. It cheerfully travels great distances to find a new home. And wherever it grows, it throws up its gay plumes of flowers, each armed with a potent hand-grenade of seed...
The thistle endures harshness and poverty and creates beauty; it spreads widely. But it's prickly, over-aggressive, defensive, leary of the world, and offers little freely to anyone else — except the bees. It's little wonder than one of Scotland's best-loved history books is called 'The Field of Thistles'.
I write this after a day heiding the thistles in my fields. This farm is organic; we use no poisons. That means that to control weeds, we need to stop them seeding. In meadow or pasture the thistle is a weed, unpalatable to most grazing animals. So we must seek to control it, to cut down each flower before its little hand grenade can explode into a puff of silky down. A little thistle down goes (literally) a long way, so in a sense in heiding my thistles I'm benefitting my neighbours as much or more than myself. And it's sad, because they are things of beauty, besides being a good food source for bees.
But I need not fear to lack thistles next year. Every thistle my neighbours miss will contribute a drifting orb of down to bring that army with its bold, cocky purple plumes back to my fields next year. Not even the Scots can extirpate thistles.
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