Mary's locks

In 7th grade I won a costume prize as Mary Queen of Scots AFTER the execution. My grandmother had made me a period style dress where the ruff instead of being at my neck was on top of my head. The hole was covered in a blood red cloth. I had a peep hole so I could see where I was going.

Dar (which I called my grandmother) had taken a cornucopia and covered it with cloth including a train. She covered a ball with skin colored cloth and drew an anguished face which filled the cornucopia's opening. I carried it under my arm.

Mary, Queen of Scots, had always fascinated me. As a reward for being good at the dentist, I was allowed to buy a book.

The Landmark series for children covered many historical topics all written by talented writers.

I selected the one on Mary and devoured it in a couple of days.

The TV show "You are There" which took historical events and treated them as on the scene current news, did a program on Mary's execution. www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNIvFfwEieI

It shows the politics and how Mary refused to enter the hall without her ladies in waiting. It describes every movement that was recorded of the execution.

I never expected as a child to get up close to any place Mary had been. I was so wrong.

Twice I've been to Holyrood Palace where her alleged lover David Rizzio was killed in front of her.

I've also been to Stirling castle and stood at the place where she was crowned as a baby upon the death of her father.

This trip to Scotland, I was not expecting to see anything of Mary.

I was wrong.

On a bus trip to we ended up at the Mary Queen of Scots House in Jedburgh. I walked through her bedroom where she had spent a few weeks. The room is smaller than my bedroom in Argelès.

Other rooms were also small.

It is a modest house made of brick. Fireplaces are in almost every room, much needed against the cold weather of Northern England.

One display had a lock of her hair. A fragment of the dress she wore at her execution was next to the lock. On the other side of the room was her death mask.

I feel over the years I've been as close to Mary as anyone can be when separated by centuries.

Reading history is one thing. Touching it? A true privilege.


Another version of her life/death is here. www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU89DSRirb4 

The movie that is out about her is full of inaccuracies. Her real life was dramatic enough, they didn't need to change events.