THE SEX ISSUE
SALTIRE & SAUCE To open our sex issue Paul Dale picks his favourite Scottish sex scandals
Illustrations by David Galletly
H istory may be written by the victors but we all know the interesting stuff, the sex scandals, are chronicled by salacious gossips and gifted storytellers. From the blood red sauce of the Jacobean tragedies to the tabloid game, set and match of the Tommy Sheridan story, the public interest in any Scottish sex scandal lies in the details. Like the question of what lies beneath a Scotsman’s kilt, the public wants to know: how naked are the genitals? How shrunken by the northern breeze are they? And how chafed by pride and action (or lack of it) are they?
In many ways modern Scotland is a nation built on sex scandals big and small, from the alleged satanic orgies of ancient Scottish King Kenneth McAlpine to Mary Queen of Scots’ messy extramarital fling with James Hepburn, fourth Earl of Bothwell, to the filthier poems of that sex addict Robert Burns. This particular timeline of Scottish sexual awareness begins with the period of the Scottish Enlightenment. In early 18th century Scotland, the Stuart kings were gone, Scottish independence was lost and English-imposed excise duties were crippling the economy. Protest was inevitable and in Fife it took a unique form – private sex clubs.
This erotic revolt started in Anstruther with gentleman’s club, Beggar’s Benison, devoted to the celebration of free sex, smuggling and subversion of the Jacobite cause. Named after a verbal blessing given to the notoriously promiscuous King James V, the club opened its doors to all the displaced lairds and merchants. Drunken, ribald, sexually ambivalent toasts were drunk from phallus-shaped goblets, passages were read from the erotic classics, including The Song of Solomon, Byron’s Don Juan and John Cleland’s Fanny Hill and there were masked dancing girls. Initiation to the club involved tip-to-tip masturbation among other things. In fact the members of the club viewed this perennial pastime as a bold act of defiance (in a climate of moral panic about masturbation) against a London that had imposed a new dynasty, union and customs duties on Scotland. The Beggar’s Benison may have been a Rotarian-style protest in search of a scandal, but the 200-odd brothels of Victorian Edinburgh incited genuine hysteria. The city’s High Street thronged with sixpenny whores, while St James Square and Leith Street housed a number of labyrinthine underground shebeens. These were the bête noir of so-called respectable society. And there was none
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3-17 Feb 2011 THE LIST 13