PANALBA

IN an old family album there is a photograph of my maternal grandparents and my newly engaged parents at a St Andrews Night Dinner held in Singapore in 1935. It was taken in the dining room at Raffles Hotel, and there must have been in excess of 100 guests in attendance, all dressed up in their finery; the women wearing ball gowns and tartan sashes, the men in full Highland evening dress.

Having attended similar events in New York and London, it has often puzzled me that the feast of St Andrews Day is so universally celebrated by Scots overseas while here in the land of his saintly patronage, we have tended largely to ignore him in favour of our national bard Robert Burns, who was himself a member of Lodge St Andrew.

The Scottish Presbyterian ascendancy and Reformation are partly to blame, but that fails to explain the ubiquitous St Andrews Societies which have flourished across the globe. Of course, the Ayrshire-born ploughman poet's legacy is his songs and his poems. Saint Andrew was a far more intangible, ethereal being.

Here in Scotland, we fly his flag and name city squares and buildings after our Patron Saint, but when it comes to saluting him on a par with Irish and their St Patrick, we have a long way to go.

At least this was the situation up until 2007 when the Scottish Parliament, fuelled, do not be fooled, by its political aspirations, decided to introduce the St Andrew's Day Bank Holiday (Scotland) Act, designating the 30th November an official bank holiday. If it falls on a weekend, then the following Monday can be taken as a bank holiday instead, although banks are not obliged to close and employers are not required to give their employees the day off.

St Andrew's Day is now the official Flag Day in Scotland, the Government requiring that the Saltire should fly on all of its buildings. Moreover, the village of Athelstaneford in East Lothian has been officially recognised as the birthplace of the Scottish flag, depicting that cross of white cloud seen against a blue sky on the morning of a great victory won by Picts and Scots fighting off an army of invading Anglo-Saxons in the year 832AD.

Coming in the short, dark days before Christmas, it provides an all too welcome opportunity to have a bit of fun and to analyse what it is to be a Scot. Starting off on Saturday, there will be an ongoing celebration of the flag in Athelstaneford, a foodies paradise at Haddington Farmers' Market, all the fun of the races at Musselburgh Racecourse, a Scottish Music and Literature Ceremony in Haddington, and on St Andrew's Day itself, a spectacular concert held in St Andrew's High Church, Musselburgh.

A St Andrew's Day religious service is taking place at Athelstaneford Parish Church on Sunday with a symbolic handing over of the flag to the people of Scotland ceremony at noon. In the afternoon, there follows a celebration of Scottish Music & Literature in St Mary's Parish Church at Haddington, taking place in the very kirk where the great Protestant Reformer John Knox himself served as an alter boy in the seventeenth century

This event is being hosted by the broadcaster and writer Alison Craig, and the cast includes musicians such as Mairi Campbell, Dave Francis, Sangstream and Ada Francis, and, much to my delight, I have been invited to do a reading. Bearing in mind the kenspeckle solemnity of the occasion, I have chosen a few words from that largely forgotten epic masterpiece, The Grave .

No, don't laugh. It might sound like a fire and brimstone sermon from the pulpit, but The Grave is one of the finest and most whimsical literary achievements of its genre, spawning generations of Scottish writing thereafter.

Its 767 lines were penned in 1743 by the Reverend Robert Blair, who served as the Minister of Athelstaneford from 1731 until his death in 1746, the year of the Battle of Prestonpans which took place almost in his back yard. The book was so popular when it appeared that it was subsequently reprinted in forty nine editions.

Had he but known it - perhaps he did - the Reverend Blair's expressed sentiments are, to my mind, in every aspect compatible with the timeless hopes and fears of the twenty first century, with special meaning for the diaspora of the Scots and not least, the martyrdom of Saint Andrew.

Of course, I have no intention of reading out the full text in St Mary's. If anything, the final verse says it all:

When Self-Esteem, or others' Adulation,
Would cunningly persuade us we were Something
Above he common Level of our Kind,
The Grave gainsays the smooth-complexion'd Flatt'ry,
And with blunt Truth acquaints us what we are.

Should Saint Andrew by any chance be listening in on Sunday, I would like to think that he'd approve.