A submission for The George Hotel blog from Duncan Beaton, Argyll Archives.
Duncan is a son of Inveraray who resides in Furnace.
“We’ll no’ be beat”, said Dougie, and you might be thinking this is a saying from Neil Munro’s famous Para Handy short stories. In fact, it wasn’t the mate of “the smertest boat in the tred” speaking, but a school friend of mine who came out of retirement to paint our newly acquired cottage in Furnace in 2017. Despite the fact Dougie the Mate was speaking just slightly more than 100 years ago so much remains the same. Para Handy’s “smertest boat” was the puffer “Vital Spark”, and we still have a “Vital Spark” tied up at the pier today.
Neil Munro (1863-1930) was an author and journalist who never lost touch with his roots and friends in Inveraray, a tradition we are also proud and lucky enough to retain today. He was born round the corner from the famous Inveraray Jail (his stepfather was the governor) and every summer he came “home” to holiday at “the house of the brass man’s hand”, the house built on Main Street by Provost Lachlan Campbell, right next door to the George Hotel. He enjoyed a dram and the craic, no doubt often with his old friends over the bar at the George, another tradition we maintain today. In happy circumstances like this he picked up jokes and stories which later formed the humorous tales we still know and love. In that vein, a more recent joke has been converted into the Para Handy Tale below, in a tribute to the George where it was heard, the late author, and the area of Upper Loch Fyne.
Para Handy’s Strange Pudding
I was perturbed by the agitated state of my old friend the mariner when I met him recently on the pier at Inveraray. “What on earth is ailing you, captain?” I said in a jaunty manner aimed at raising his spirits.
“Och, it is yourself”, he replied, and I saw that it was going to take more than the breezy tone of my question to restore Para Handy to the man we all know and love. He was fingering his tongue, as if a piece of tobacco had stuck to it, and at the same time rubbing his stomach in a pitiful manner. A few minutes later we were at the bar in the George with a couple of glasses of good whisky in our hands as I waited for the story to unfold.
