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STEEPED IN HISTORY—The oldest house in Glasgow is this 500-year-old structure which, rumor
has it, once was inhabited by Mary, Queen of Scots. Located across from the Glasgow Cathedral,
the house has become a popular tourist attraction.
Old house draws
many in Glasgow
By GORDON IRVING
Copley News Service
GLASGOW, Scotland - A
house that was built 500 years
ago is proving a mecca for
thousands of tourists.
Known as Provand’s Lord
ship, it is the oldest house in
this vast industrial city. Mary,
Queen of Scots, the tragic mon
arch of history, once slept in it.
The house is attracting more
interest than all the modern
skyscraper apartment build
ings now going up in this fast
changing city.
“Next to Glasgow Cathedral,
which dates to 1197, this old
house is the oldest building in
the city,” a Glasgow historian
told me. “We are very proud of
it.”
When it was built five cen
turies ago, Glasgow had only a
few thousand inhabitants, and
the life of the city was bound up
with its cathedral. Provand’s
Lordship, as the house became
known, was one of the cathe
dral houses, reserved for use of
the clergy.
It was built in 1471 by Bishop
Andrew Muirhead. His ar
morial bearings, three acorns
in a bend, are still faintly visi
ble on the lowest stone of the
south gable.
The house was part of a large
Scientists must have scruples
By FATHER LESTER
Copley News Service
Dear Father Lester:
A scientist friend was moan
ing the other day about re
search dollars drying up. He
feels that the public thinks of
scientists as bogeymen bent on
evil. Naturally he denies the
charge and says that scientists
should be given what they need
to find the truth but they
shouldn’t be asked to make
moral judgments on their
work.
Comments?
Ernest B.
Dear Ernest:
Scientists are obliged like all
men to the laws of morality.
They cannot, for instance, soak
hospital founded by the bishop
“for the support of twelve aged
poor men.”
Today, in the Townhead dis
trict of Glasgow where this 500-
year-old house stands, the leg
end strongly persists that two
Scottish sovereigns, King
James the Fourth and Mary,
Queen of Scots, both lived in
Provand’s Lordship at various
times.
Queen Mary is said to have
lived in the house during a visit
to the city in 1566.
She accepted the hospitality
of its owner, William Baillie, a
canon of the church.
In the middle of the 17th Cen
tury, the house was occupied by
a city tailor, William Brysone.
He added an extension to its
west side, complete with his
initials and the date 1670.
In later years, the house suf
fered a continuing decline, and
was somewhat debased in tone
by the addition of a small lean
to extension which housed the
city executioner.
Residents in the old house,
looking out from its windows
and across to the old Bishop’s
Yard of Glasgow Cathedral,
must have witnessed many a
gloomy procession as a con
demned person walked to his
death on the gallows.
innocent people in ice water un
til lifeless, as Hitler’s scientists
were reputed to have done, in
order to discover the truth
about human reaction to cold.
Nor can they, as some seem to
be doing today, experiment
with living human embryos as
though the latter were not hu
man beings but only little more
than polliwogs whose lives are
at the service of science. Dis
covering truth is a great good,
but it must not be obtained at
the price of moral evil.
But even if all scientists were
totally moral in their search for
truth, nevertheless the re
sources of the community are
limited and can finance only so
many projects.
Early last century the house
changed hands again, and be
came an inn.
In 1906 a number of leading
citizens, recognizing its history
and value, rescued the house
for posterity. There was a
steady stream of gifts of an
tique furniture, tapestries and
pictures.
Collected at various times,
the furnishings in the house
represent different aspects of
old Scottish life at different pe
riods. In the main, however,
they give a fairly general im
pression of a domestic interior
of about the year 1700.
The rooms contain a number
of very fine 16th Century
stained-glass windows. There
are also early Flemish tapes
tries, some early Scottish oak
cabinets, a number of refectory
tables, and a set of ten William
and Mary walnut high-back
chairs.
The items that intrigue tour
ists most are the Scottish
carved and dated oak arm
chairs, about twenty in all,
many with armorial bearings.
There are also a number of
valuable historical portraits,
including a charming one of
Mary, Queen of Scots, as a
young girl.
Glasgow, a city of bustling
* * *
Dear Father Lester:
Clergymen of all faiths, led
by Catholic Bishop Carroll T.
Dozier of Memphis, Tenn.,
have pledged support to “any
young man of draft age who re
fuses to serve in the military
because he conscientiously ob
jects to war and killing.”
They will preach peace and
call for letters to congressmen
demanding an immediate end
to the Vietnam war.
Do you go along with them?
K.H.
Dear K. H.:
Clergymen should counsel
people on duty to conscience.
Flower children
flee from heroin
By HAROLD Y. JONES
Copley News Service
SAN FRANCISCO - Wind
kicks up scraps of paper and
blows them past boarded-up
shops on Haight Street.
Bleary-eyed white hippies
scuff along, sometimes alone,
sometimes in small groups.
Blacks sit on steps of seedy
buildings and look indifferently
at the hippies.
Stagnation has set in. Gone
are the happy days, say in 1967,
when the flower children
flocked to the Haight-Ashbury
scene from all over the United
States, maybe to oppose the
Vietnam war, maybe to smoke
a little grass.
What happened to “Hash
bury,” the symbol of the new
youth culture? What happened
to the thousands of plump
middle-class kids who jammed
the sidewalks all day,
strumming guitars and leaning
on cars?
“They’ve all gone — Haight
Street is a bad scene today,”
said Adria Garabedian, who
once published a weekly neigh
borhood shoppers’ guide in the
Haight. “Heroin did it.”
Hard-stuff pushers moved in
and found they could sell
enough “horse” to pay for their
own SIOO-a-day habits. The
flower children moved out and
left new hard-core hippie ad
dicts among assorted drifters
who had come looking for
action.
Then the “rip-offs” started —
the stealing to pay for heroin
habits. All of it — burglary,
shoplifting, mugging and
daylight stickups right on the
streets. And murder.
People who’d bought houses
in the Haight in the preceding
decade or so because they liked
its international and interracial
middle-class flavor suddenly
found living in the neigh
change and fast-changing in
dustries, is better known,
worldwide, for its whisky distil
leries and its football teams.
Now its quaint old house beside
the cathedral, celebrating its
500th anniversary, is bringing
it some well-deserved his
torical distinction as tourists
and visitors from many parts of
the world seek it out on their
tours of Scotland.
Duty demands that a person
acts not against his conscience.
In doubt about the justice of an
intended act, he must resolve
his doubt before he acts. (The
factors leading to war today
are usually so complicated that
the private citizen cannot hope
to solve all doubts about the
justice of the war. Ordinarily
he can resolve them in favor of
the greater knowledge which
his country’s administrators
should have by reason of their
office.)
The clergymen around
Memphis, though, seem to have
gone beyond mere counseling.
Their public pledge to help con
scientious objectors combined
with the call for immediate
Griffin Daily News
borhood unpleasant.
Neighborhood shopping
became dangerous. Business
fell off. First one shop closed,
then another. One plate glass
window was broken, then
another. Today Haight Street
looks like World War II Ix)ndon
during the blitz.
Real estate values are down,
in some cases by 35 per cent.
Banks are reluctant to lend
money to the few people
courageous enough to want to
reopen the shops. And if you
are foolish enough to walk
through the area at night you
almost deserve your fate.
But does all this mean the
permanent residents are
moving out? No. Most are
convinced the neighborhood
will regain its old, friendly
atmosphere.
“It won’t be easy,” said
attorney Robert H. Laws, a
former president of the Haight-
Ashbury Neighborhood
Council, a group of citizens who
have been working for several
years to try to improve the
neighborhood. “But I think it
will happen — eventually.”
developed an ulcer
from his efforts to get neigh
borhood factions to work
together. And still little is
happening.
The busiest places in the
neighborhood today are the
branch post office, where
down-and-out youths wait for
an occasional money order
from home, and the Haight-
Ashbury Medical Clinic’s
detoxification section, which
tries to help addicts kick
heroin.
Here and there a stalwart
home owner will paint his
building. Here and there
housewives can be seen tending
flowers in tiny gardens. But, on
the whole, Hashbury is a
cultural backwater in San
Francisco today. The number
of old apartment buildings
being occupied by hippie
communes is increasing.
And the people who want to
restore the neighborhood still
haven’t come up with a formula
that a majority of the residents
of the neighborhood can accept.
Until they do, Haight-
Ashbury will retain its bombed
out appearance, a place
frequented by aimless
youngsters who shuffle along
sidewalks littered with broken
glass and rubble.
withdrawal from Vietnam ap
pears to encourage disobedi
ence to the community direc
tive on military service. They
may have given cause for being
rightfully prosecuted.
Under the circumstances,
too, the clergymen’s call for
peace seems to indicate a poor
understanding of the term. Ap
parently they would have a na
tion submit to the unjust ag
gressor as the way to peace.
But peace is the tranquillity of
just order. There can be no
peace in injustice. Hence, nor
mally, the community must
stand up to injustice and battle
the aggressor in order to put
down injustice so there can be
peace.
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