FAIR HELEN (2014)
Andrew Greig
Quercus Publishing, 384 pages
* * * *
If you want to immerse yourself in some
challenging and rewarding reading, download Scottish writer Andrew Greig’s Fair Helen. (You’ll probably wish to
download it as only hard cover copies have made their way to our shores.) Beware:
Although the novel is written with Greig’s customary elegance, many of the
terms that appear are from the Lowland Scots dialect and you’ll need to consult
the book’s glossary for many of them. (I did a cut-paste-printout for the ones
I was having trouble remembering.)
Is the effort worth it? I think so. Fair Helen is a 17th century
historical drama/romance based upon a tragic ballad as filtered through Sir
Walter Scott’s second volume of The
Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. Got that? Let me explain. James VI of
Scotland has just ascended to the English throne as James I and, in 1603,
brought about the union of the two crowns. If you think this brought peace,
think again. We’re still 200 years from the birth of modern nation-states,
which means that regional identities trumped any sort of nationalism. That is
to say, not only did people view themselves as Scots or English– the Crown be
damned–they also subdivided. A
Lowland Scot knew he was different from a Highlander or a Glaswegian, just as
he knew he wasn’t a Northumbrian or a Cumbrian (English). Since no one agreed
on where the borders between any of these places lay exactly, vast tracts of
the Borders were known as the Debatable Lands. Moreover, local power on both
sides of the questionable divides lay in the hands of powerful families and
clans, with lesser folk allying with whomever they thought could offer the best
patronage and protection.
Greig takes us inside a world of treachery,
bloodshed, and shifting loyalties through an likely means: he imagines the
back-story of Helen of Annandale, an Irvine family beauty about whom history
knows next to nothing other than she is the tragic subject of a Scots ballad
known as “Helen of Kirkconnel.” If Helen of Troy was the face that launched a
thousand ships, Helen of Kirkconnel was the fair lovely face that set hundreds
of horsemen and soldiers into bloody glens. The book is narrated by her cousin,
Harry Langton, a scholar and writer more comfortable in Edinburgh than among
the unwashed, unlearned, sanguinary warriors of the Borders. He’d not be there
at all, were it not that he was born in the Debatable Lands and his boyhood
friend Adam Fleming is on the cusp of becoming a laird. Adam is also one of the
rivals for Fair Helen’s hand, the other being the violent and even more powerful
Rob Bell. In Greig's telling,
Helen may have been fair, but chastity was not among her virtues. Within the
patriarchal world of the 17th century, Helen is not at liberty to
choose her future husband—acquisition of land, power, and patronage trumps
love.
The novel is a complex tale of scheming,
double-dealing, spying, politics, and shifting alliances involving Border
families such as the Irvings, Bells, Scotts, Armstrongs, and Grahams. Each
thought themselves noble and exalted, though history’s judgment is that most were
petty tyrants with grandiose ideas. In short, Helen a pawn in a big game played
by small men. Call it love, lust, and mayhem in a place where borders are
abstractions and rights are asserted by the thrust of a blood-tipped sword. Fair Helen isn’t an easy read for those
unfamiliar with Lowland Scots but, then again, neither is Sir Walter Scott.
Wade through this—the thrills outweigh the required language lessons. Rob Weir
Postscript: Music plays a big role in this novel, as it does in many of
Greig’s works. If you’d like some instrumental background accompaniment, secure
a superb CD from Kathryn Tickell titled Debatable
Lands. (Topic PRKCD50). Tickell is a talented fiddler and
is considered one of the foremost virtuosos of the Northumberland bagpipes, a
much buzzy, sweeter, non-blown cousin of the Highland pipes. As this suggests, she
hails from the English side of the Debatable Lands though borders remain hazy. When
I visited Berwick-upon-Tweed a few years back I wasn’t certain if I was in England
or Scotland. The answer? It depends on whom you ask!
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