Learning about the Religious Wars,Wigtown Book Festival 2022

by Hugh McMillan

I had to leave before the talk,
the streets were full of hooded
folk with green anoraks like monks
pacing in the rain between one book
and another, but in the pub

in Newton Stewart the barman
had just bought a huge crossbow
with a metal bolt in a car boot sale
and wanted to fire it ‘to see what

happened’. I had just got a pint

of cider and looked on but thought

even from my degree of ignorance
that the complex winding mechanism

indicated no ordinary buy: indeed it took

three men in Rangers tops some

minutes to load it: I imagine in warfare
one man in a Rangers top might be
trained to do this in half the time,
using his 55 Nike Air Force trainers
as counter balance but imagine

the pressure as enemy horsemen
from the Holy Roman Empire bore down.
Even here, the barman had to stop
for a second to serve two sceptical girls

Baileys. Someone brought

a thick plank from the back to prop
against the wall and had
the presence of mind to draw the face
 of a local Catholic friend upon it.
There was much laughter, whooping

and excitement and many folk
were told to stand back well out
of range. It was like Grunwald,
the mist of sweat, the breath,
the drum of anticipation like hoof beats,

the sun splintering through windows,
the puggy pulsing red as blood.
I was in the second line when
the fusillade fired, through the target,
two walls, a cupboard and a junction
 
box, lodging a few feet from a woman
watching ‘Homes Under the Hammer’.
She was reported to have exclaimed
Hail Mary Mother of God thus settling
the conflict once and for all.