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Who will have the last word .

Sat, Oct 12 2024 7:58 AM (1,433 replies)
  • craigswan
    31,581 Posts
    Mon, Nov 6 2023 11:31 AM

    St. Andrews

  • craigswan
    31,581 Posts
    Mon, Nov 6 2023 11:31 AM

    University of St Andrews, Scotland - Top UK Education Specialist | Get ...

  • craigswan
    31,581 Posts
    Mon, Nov 6 2023 11:32 AM

    I am the anonymous Scotsman who stood up to sing.

    It was 1958. President Dwight Eisenhower asked Bobby Jones to captain the Americans in the World Amateur Team Championship. A terrible spinal cord disease had left the champion crippled. One night, the local elders invited Jones to the town hall to become a Freeman of the Burgh of St. Andrews, the first American so honored since Benjamin Franklin.

    We are the townspeople who came to welcome him home.

    Jones grabbed the table and struggled to rise, pushed and pulled by the love in the room. His son waited behind him in case he fell. Jones inched down to the podium, and we rose, cheering each awkward step, all of us one, feeling the pain of age and disease, remembering a time when he was young and invincible. Could this old man in braces really be the great Bobby Jones?

    He didn't have notes. He spoke from the heart for about 12 minutes. He called all of us his friends and hoped we would call him ours. He spoke slowly, in his Georgia drawl, and his words rang true. "I could take out of my life everything except my experiences at St. Andrews," he said, "and I would still have had a rich and full life."

    He shuffled off the stage and slipped into a golf cart. He rode down the center aisle, leaving this place for the last time.

    Overcome with the moment, I began to sing an old Scottish song.

    The clear words gave us chills.

    "Will ye no come back again?" I sang.

    We joined in -- singing the song slow and sad, a funeral recessional, as the cart pulled slowly into the night, a living man turning into a ghost before our eyes. He became part of us, and we sang goodbye to a piece of ourselves.

    "Will ye no come back again?

    Better loved ye cannot be,

    Will ye no come back again?"

    He rode in the cart, never to return to the town he loved so much. We stayed in the town hall, grieving, unable to speak.

  • craigswan
    31,581 Posts
    Mon, Nov 6 2023 11:35 AM

     

    Five notorious ghosts of St Andrews .

    It has been reported that a phantom golfer haunts the bunkers and fairways at St Andrews Old Course, but rather than being a wicked, malevolent spirit, it’s said to be quite helpful.

    Tales have been told of a ghostly figure that helps local golfers locate and retrieve their stray balls from the rough.

    The ghost is understood to be a manifestation of 19th century golfer ‘Young’ Tom Morris, who from the age of just 17 won the Open Championship an incredible four times in a row..

  • craigswan
    31,581 Posts
    Mon, Nov 6 2023 11:36 AM

    Patrick Hamilton was a 16th century student and teacher at St Andrews University whose spirit, it is claimed, still maintains power over the institution to this day.

    As a protestant reformer, Hamilton was charged with heresy and endured a particularly excruciating death. His sentence was carried out on a cold winter’s day in February 1528.

    He was burned at the stake outside the front entrance to St Salvator’s Chapel - but it wasn’t as quick as the accused would have hoped.

    The 21-year-old burned from noon till 6pm as his executioners struggled to get the fires going.

    At one point, gunpowder was placed under Hamilton’s arms, causing severe injury to his hands and face, but still the flames refused to rise.

    Hamilton’s final words before he perished were “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”.

  • craigswan
    31,581 Posts
    Mon, Nov 6 2023 11:37 AM

    One of St Andrews’ most famous ghost stories is that of the Veiled Nun of St Leonards. Visitors down the short stretch towards St Leonards Kirk known as Nuns Walk have been known to encounter a horribly disfigured phantom.

    The story goes that a local girl was so heartbroken after her lover’s death that she decided to mutilate herself so that no man would be attracted to her ever again. The girl sliced off her ears, split her nostrils, branded her cheeks and cut off her eyelids and lips. She later joined a nunnery, but would die from her self-inflicted injuries.

    Today she lurks up and down Nuns Walk where she has been known to lift her veil at passersby unlucky enough to cross her path..

  • craigswan
    31,581 Posts
    Mon, Nov 6 2023 11:37 AM

    Like Young Tom Morris, many of St Andrews’ ghosts are actually quite kind. One who falls into this category is the St Rule’s Monk who appears from time to time on its ancient stairs. The monk is said to allow visitors safe passage up the stairs, ensuring they make it to the summit of the tower without mishap.

    In the 1950s it was reported that one visitor to the tower was offered assistance on the stairs by a ‘kindly monk’ who was blocking his path. When he refused, the man reported he felt nothing as he ‘squeezed’ past the monk on the tight stairs..

  • craigswan
    31,581 Posts
    Mon, Nov 6 2023 11:38 AM

    The White Lady has been sighted on numerous occasions over the past 200 years. Dressed all in white, she is said to inhabit the precinct around the ancient cathedral and can often be seen waving a handkerchief from a window at St Rule’s Tower - the ‘Chamber of Corpses’ as it was known to the Victorians. She is said to detest visitors to her ‘lair’.

    Back in 1868, stonemasons, undertaking work within the tower, discovered a series of coffins within a ‘hidden’ sealed chamber. One of the caskets was without a lid and contained the well-preserved remains of a woman wearing a white dress and white leather gloves.

  • craigswan
    31,581 Posts
    Mon, Nov 6 2023 11:40 AM

    St Andrews Ghost Tours (St. Andrews) - All You Need to Know BEFORE You ...

  • craigswan
    31,581 Posts
    Mon, Nov 6 2023 11:41 AM

    OTL: Ghosts of St. Andrews - ESPN

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