LANARK LANIMER DAY
An ancient celebration held within the Royal Burgh of Lanark on the Thursday between the Sixth and Twelfth days of June annually since the year 1140.
 

Lanark and The Lanimers

by Jack House

I suppose the earliest hour I ever got up in the morning was to be a judge for the Lanimer Day procession. Even if it was in the summer time, the dawn scarcely seemed to be breaking when I left my home fornenst Broadcasting House in Glasgow and started off for Lanark.

When I got there, 1 was amazed to see so many people around at that early hour. In case anybody doesn't know, the judging of the various contributions to the procession has to be done long before the parade starts. It worried me, but it didn't seem to worry the participants. Maybe they'd got to bed earlier on the previous night than I did.

You don't always enjoy judging things like this. Admittedly, it's a lot better than judging a Baby Show. (I judged a Baby Show only once, and never again! I don't want to be torn limb from limb by mothers who don't quite agree with me.) But in Lanark everybody seemed to be quite joco. They accepted the judges' decisions without question. They were delighted if they got an award, but didn't seem to be disappointed if they were left out of the prize list.

I had seen Lanimer Day before, of course. But this was the first time 1 had a personal interest in it. After the judging was over, I went down to the stand where the high heid yins sit, just beside the Queen's throning area. Then down the hill came the procession—bands, councillors, birks, pageants, humorous lorries, dignified exhibits and a wheen of local comics who went on foot and seemed to me to be the modem equivalent of a laird's jester

On television I have said this already, but I will say it again. If Lanimer Day took place on the Continent or in America, it would be world-famous. Everybody would know of it. Well, it's true that a lot of people do know of the Lani-mers, but they are mostly ex-Lanarkians. Just ask a Glaswegian about Lanimer Day and he'll look absolutely blank. A prophet, or a procession, has no honour in his or its own country.

Not that you'd want any more people crowding into Lanark on Lanimer Day. That time when I was judging and took my seat in the stand, I was joined by an elderly Lanarkian who now lived in some foreign partlike Timbuktu or Edinburgh and had come back specially for the occasion. When the parade was over and the Queen had taken her seat below the statue of Sir William Wallace, with his gay garland round his bonnet, the crowds swept in from each side of the street and formed a solid mass as far up the thoroughfare as the eye could reach.

My elderly Lanarkian friend turned to me and said, with awe in his voice, "Ye could walk ower their heids!" It was an evocative statement. Perhaps this was the first time he had ever seen Lanimer Day from this point of vantage, and he had never realised what a stirring effect it is to see a whole town en masse. But what he said was true. If you had a light enough tread, you could have walked over their heads, so tightly were they packed, and so proudly were they there.

Well, I must confess that, apart from the Lanimers at all, I like Lanark. I've been thinking very much of the town in the last year or so because I have been writing a book entitled "Portrait of the River Clyde", which will be published in September or October of this year. And, as you can well imagine, Lanark plays a big part in it.

But what I have said in my book doesn't represent all I think personally about Lanark. There is something about this couthy place that especially appeals to me. Twice I have walked up the Clyde from the Broomielaw to the river's source in the Daer Water. Lanark has always been a stopping place for me on those and other expeditions.

Once I adjudicated a Drama Festival for several nights in Lanark. I'm glad to say that I escaped unscathed! But what I do remember is that it was then I met a notable Lanarkian, Robert McLellan, the playwright and author who now lives in Arran. Robert is still a Lanark man at heart, and I think he communicated some of his love of the place to me.

And then, of course, there is New Lanark. I don't know what its future is to be, but I think of its past, when it was founded by one of the great Glaswegians, David Dale. You see his picture on Royal Bank of Scotland notes to-day— that's if you are lucky enough to have any. David Dale is supposed to have been the original of Sir Walter Scott's Bailie Nicol Jarvie.

He did a wonderful work in New Lanark, and any other Glaswegian is bound to have a fellow-feeling for the ancient and distinguished and still flourishing Royal Burgh of Lanark.