I feel some sympathy for Mr Willie Mack who has just lost his job as editor of the
Southern Reporter-a sister(?) paper of the
Berwickshire. He apparently caused
some offence in ' Innerleithen and beyond' by putting 'dummy' captions onto pictures of this years St Ronan's Games Week and Cleikum Ceremonies. One of the captions described 'common riding' participants as "pious little bleeders" I won't go into too much detail about these festivities but it is yet another of those Borders' celebrations as are held nearer to Hutton in Duns and Coldstream. Involving in this case the male Dux and the female Dux of the secondary school at Innerleithen who represent (in the male case at least) St Ronan- an early saint immortalised in one of Walter Scott's works. 'Cleikum' means some thing like 'catching' -and the de'il (Scots for Devil) was famously cleikumed some time ago and this happy event is celebrated in this festival. St Ronan's games are partly athletic events of ancient provenance and partly social happenings. As all over the borders the 'common riders' inevitably harking back to the dreaded Reivers of infamous memory get into the act thus, apparently, irritating the editor of the Southern Reporter who may have felt that a little bit of micky taking might not go amiss. It did however as 'he appeared to ridicule Borders history and tradition' by suggesting that those taking part, including a number of children, should "get out more for their sanity" (Full story in today's Scotsman by the way, page 3 and also on their website at
http://news.scotsman.com/archive.cfm?id=857522004 ) Perhaps Mr M is a blogger and confused his blog with his editorial duties and committed the big offence of causing 'deep offence'
throughout the Borders common-riding community. A powerful lobby it would appear if it can bring about the downfall of a local editor.
At the risk of also attracting ire it is worth suggesting that there has been something of a sense of humour failure-an occupational hazard facing satirists, bloggers and others who may sometimes feel that just because something is local and traditional it can't be funny-haha or just plain peculiar. I feel much the same way about Wynesome Maydes but I'll not advertise the fact in a local broadsheet.
Those of you ago about the festival to
http://www.teoma.com and put "St Ronan's Games Week" or " Cleikum Ceremonies" into the search system and all will be revealed. It looks like fun but don't add an extra 'ny' , please.
