Hungry days of past not so unfamiliar for some
DIGGING INTO THE PAST with Dr Murray Cook
Earlier on in the spring I did a couple of organised walks for Start Up Stirling who help homeless people and run a food bank.
They wrote to me the other day to say thanks and to confirm that those that came on the walk (you lot!) had generously given £327.99.
Now two things immediately occurred to me.
The first was that I wished I’d given a penny to round it up and secondly I thought about being hungry.
Not the peckish‘i-fancy-abiscuit-type-hunger’, but the grinding, debilitating type, where it consumes your every waking hour, which thankfully I’ve never faced.
This is what happened in Stirling during the Wars of Independence (and is currently happening in Ukraine).
We were in a war zone, farms were destroyed, men and women killed and children starved.
Stirling’s economy collapsed by 60% compared with before and after the wars.
From 1304-1314 we were an English garrisoned town with spies watching everything and taxes raised.
When Bruce won this wasn’t the end, just the start of another even worse phase of misery.
He burned the castle down and could he ever trust anything here ever again? Accommodations had been made, life had gone on.
Stirling began to turn on the church and its Forth salmon fishing rights, which were one of the richest in Europe.
Cambuskenneth Abbey had been granted those fisheries in the 12th century and they guarded them jealously.
Fish traps were destroyed and the church complained to Bruce who sided with the church and people in Stirling stayed hungry. Today’s cost of living crisis is affecting people in Stirling today.
So if you’re lucky enough to not be hungry, cold or homeless spare a thought for those that are and if you can afford it , help them.