Edinburgh is worth a Mass

‘Love is love’ — just say it

Before the creation of the United Kingdom in 1707, Scotland’s semi-detached status in the Union of the Crowns often made its politics a potential source of instability to its southern neighbour. Mostly it was about religion: while England had adopted the new reformed faith in its most watery form, Scotland’s leaders had embraced a more radical Calvinist interpretation which brought it into conflict with Westminster. This led to such comic scenes as Bishop Walter Whitford, a Scottish royalist despised by hard line Presbyterians, introducing a new prayer book armed with two pistols. Or Jenny Geddes, the Edinburgh market trader who inadvertently sparked the English Civil War by starting a riot in Edinburgh with the words ‘De'il gie you colic, the wame o' ye, fause thief; daur ye say Mass in my lug?