It was a strange sensation I always felt whenever my grandmother spoke of our ancestry. "I'm a Scotch witch," she would say. "I can see things before they happen." I would try not to smirk because inside I believed she really was. "It's like color television opening up in my mind."
"What is?" I asked.
"When I see things before they happen. It's like color television. It happens when I am sleeping." I was sure it was talk like this that inspired some in our town to call her crazy Mary.
"You mean you dream these silly things?" I said trying to sound incredulous.
"Don't make it sound foolish, boy. I'm no dimwit. You know what I saw!"
This is when the feeling begins. I have heard the story so many times I don't need her to repeat it. Without hearing the words my mind travels back to the first time Mary Catherine Kerr told me I was of Scottish descent.
"I saw it you know," she repeated.
Her comment jolted me back from my thoughts to our dinning room table. There were fresh-cut roses from her garden in a vase and rolls with homemade raspberry jam. I picked up another roll, pretending like I was not interested in what she was about to say. Buttering the bread and spreading the home canned jam I finally replied, "You saw what?"
"The Battle of Bannock Burn," she said indignantly. "When the English rode hard on Robert the Bruce.17, 000 men with heavy cavalry, archers with long bows, foot soldiers with 12 foot lances...and poor Robert out numbered more than three to one."
I felt a chill run up my back as she mentioned the battle. My face tingled with the sensation and a hot flush ran across my cheeks.
"He wouldn't have defeated them without us, you know. We were there, the Kerr's."
My thoughts were swallowed up with images of Falkirk flooding through my mind. Edward I, Longshanks, the Hammer of the Scots, had destroyed the Scots' army in 1298 at Falkirk. He was a bloody man.
But living in a small, rural Idaho town didn't feel very Scottish. As an eleven-year-old boy when my grandmother first told me of her dreams I found my mind wanting to go to Midlothian, where our people were from and as I began to read of the Scottish people my thoughts began to fix on the battles of Falkirk, Stirling, and the famous Bannock Burn. It was at Bannock Burn when Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland, destroyed the formidable English army of Edward II. My grandmother's dreams of the battle I longed to see for myself had fueled the fire of my imagination, adding to my love of horses, lances, shields, and swords. Now as a young man of 17 I had read every book on Scottish history I could lay hands on.
Startling me, pulling me back from my own vision of years gone by I heard grandmother say, "It's in your blood, boy. You cannot deny what you feel. Now that you have reached the age of believing you must know...these are not just the dreams of an old nag." She leaned in closer to me, fixing her stone grey eyes on mine. "I am a Scotch witch."
"But..."
"Now, now, William you hold your tongue. I know what Walter Carlson says. He's just an ornery old man. But you Willy know you have felt it."
I had felt it. But what I could not admit to grandmother was that I was now having dreams of my own. They started only three weeks before arriving at her house for the summer. Now I was seeing the Battle of Bannock Burn every night as I slept. But what was stranger was the dreams were getting stronger and now I was unable to block them out of my mind during the waking hours of the day.