Moveable Feasts Guy Fawkes wheels around in tandem with Diwali, Festival of Lights, obscure to this 60s Glasgow child; Bonfire Night our big, noisy, bright-edged party, Remember, Remember, the 5th of November.
In primary school we chanted that doggerel, thinking a Catholic plot against the English great stuff till our neighbours made it clear it was our treason and plot we were singing; then in 1968 the Scottish Nationalists started ranting about deporting the lot of us by force.
We sang ‘Hail Glorious Saint Patrick’, learnt nothing about our heritage or history, our buried roots a blank space on the map; nothing about the long march of our ancestors who brought fire, wheel, sword, music, left them everywhere they settled, from the Western edge of the Chinese Empire to the West coast of Ireland, many gods, many names, one gesture, one giving, the worst sin to stamp out a hearth fire.
Now I hear fireworks days before Guy Fawkes, not careless hooligans but pious Hindus, Diwali moves in parallel with Britain’s pagan/Christian hybrid, along the old path, to hold light against our darkness, to say the tribe is here round the fire with food, drink, and chant, to tell our gods we walk towards the turn of the year, we do not forget you, we take you with us, lit by the fire that gives us our lives.
Brian Docherty Brian Docherty was born and grew up in Glasgow.
His poetry collection ArmchairTheatre was published by Hearing Eye (London) in 1999.