By Tim Porteus

IN THE early 19th century there was an incident recorded in a publication called Book of Sports and Mirror of Life by Pierce Egan. It is a collection of stories and anecdotes mainly relating to sporting life and animals.

The following tale is inspired from one of the anecdotal stories in Egan’s book:

ONE autumn evening in the early 19th century, a storm descended on the county. Dark clouds opened their dreich souls and drenched the land with a torrent of rain. The wind and downpour kept people awake for the whole night, and but by sunrise the tempest was over.

Yet all the sudden rain had caused the River Tyne to flood. The folk of Haddington gathered by its banks to witness a strange sight. For the surface of the water was laid with huge masses of hay. The storm had obviously caused the hay recently cut and stacked in the fields upriver to be blown into the flood water, or swept away by it.

They watched as small mountains of hay floated by. It was an intriguing sight but of course for farmers it was their winter feed for their animals going waste to the sea.

Then someone spotted a swan. It seemed to be attempting to find a place to land. The river was in a torrent and at times the majestic creature seemed to give in to the current and glide on its course until once again it found the strength and motivation to make for the river bank. It was in no imminent danger, but clearly desired to get out of the fast-moving water.

As people watched the swan it was noticed that a strange black spot could be seen amidst its white feathers. As the swan drifted closer to the bank, people realised what the black spot was: a rat!

The rat was clearly alive, at times peeping over the plumage as if to see where they were. The swan seemed unperturbed by the rat’s presence on its back. In fact, as people watched more closely there seemed to be a connection between the swan and the rat which was most unusual.

The royal bird was clearly giving the rat a collie-buckie, or piggy back. How the rat came to be on the swan’s back in the first place nobody could tell. The wee creature was very likely at home in one of the bales of hay when it was swept away by the river. In the swirling water it must have struggled to survive.

Then rescue came with the swan. Could the creature have scrambled onto the swan without its permission? Surely not! Did the swan actively help the rat? If so, the moment of rescue had been a compassionate act unseen by human eyes. As people followed the drama they realised that the swan was looking for a place to land, not for itself but for its passenger.

A crowd had soon gathered to witness the swan’s progress. The power of the flood water meant it had real difficulty in finding a place to get close to the river bank. But finally the swan found the strength and opportunity to swim close to the river’s edge.

The rat, recognising the opportunity, leaped from the swan’s plumage and landed safely on dry land. For an instant the rat turned and looked at the swan, then scampered away. The swan, its mission accomplished, majestically glided back into the main flow of the river.

If the rat had thought itself safe then it soon realised this not to be the case. The people watching the spectacle had motivations very different to the swan. As soon as the rat landed, dozens of young men, urged on by their elders, chased it with sticks and set their dogs upon it.

The animal, having survived nature’s tempest, now faced an even greater danger; his life was sport for humans. The creature zigzagged as people, yelling and howling with delight, chased it this way, then that. The rat, being cornered by a group of about 40 lads armed with stones and sticks, turned and headed back towards the water.

But it didn’t make it. The creature was given a deadly blow by a ‘merciless fellow’. A cheer rang out and people came to view the dead rat. Then a strange silence descended as people reflected, now too late, on what had happened. In the frenzy of the chase it had been so easy to see the rat as merely vermin, rather than a living creature who had struggled to survive and so earned the right to life.

People dispersed, no longer cheering.

The whole scene had been witnessed by the swan from its vantage point on the river. What its thoughts were on the human behaviour it saw we can only guess.

Humans can be made to do this to each other as well, of course. In the frenzy of war, people are encouraged to see others as no more worthy of life than that rat. And the insidious power of this is that both sides are encouraged to think the same way.

But deep down, when we touch our humanity, we know how wrong this is. Old soldiers themselves are the first to understand the tragedy of it and see the humanity in those who had been on the ‘other side’. While there are undoubtedly people who commit evil and need to be stopped, it is the conditions which allow hate to flourish which give rise to their power and influence in the first place.

In our remembrance of those who have fallen, let us do so with the reflection and not the frenzy. Let us not forget that the real enemy of us all is hate.