A Fire in Their Hearts by Philip Paris review: 'both moving and fair'
Set during the persecution of the Covenanters in the 17th century, Philip Paris’s new novel is a gripping recreation of now distant historical times, writes Allan Massie
Philip Paris had a deserved success with his 2023 novel The Last Witch of Scotland. He deserves and will surely have a comparable success with this novel about the persecuted Covenanters. Anyone reared in the now fading, even dying, Presbyterian Kirk will be familiar with the tales of the "Suffering Remnant" - the extreme Covenanters who defied the Government of Charles II and the re-establishment of Episcopalianism after the Restoration of 1660. The little bands of Covenanters in the western moorlands, harassed by Claverhouse's dragoons, is a familiar image, and Stevenson's line "Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying” is memorable and moving.
Of course, as is the case with so much history, there are two sides to the story. The Covenantors were opposed not only to the re-established church after the Restoration of Charles II in 1660; they were political rebels as well as religious zealots. The persecuted had been persecutors when the Presbyterian Kirk was in the ascendancy, and after 1660 they were a small minority of the Scottish people, with little support beyond the south-west of the country. Nor were they all "suffering saints". Thir heroes were the gang who murdered Arshbishop Sharpe, dragging him from his coach on a moor near St Andrews and killing him before the eyes of his daughter. In Old Mortality, one of the best of Scott's novels, he has the leader of the murder gangs declare that proof that they were acting in the name of the Lord because they were waiting to kill, not the Archbishop, but "one of his inferior minions", and the Lord had delivered the Archbishop into their hands.
None of this detracts from Paris's splendid book, which tells a gripping story, also featuring a touching and well-written romance or love affair. A novelist is entitled to take one side in a quarrel and Paris writes with imagination and sympathy for the undeniable suffering of the Covenanters. He covers a great deal of ground, too. There are scenes set in Orkney (after a shipwreck) and in Barbados, to which numerous Covenanters were dispatched as indentured labourers.
His portrayal of the sufferings of the Covenanters is both moving and fair and the pace of his narrative rattles impressively on. Sensibly, he makes no attempts to offer us period dialogue. We are too far away from the 17th century to do this credibly. Scott, reflecting on the problem, suggested that one can't go further back than the speech of one’s grandfathers, and the language of 17th century religious strife goes far further back that than.
The result is a very enjoyable recreation of now distant historical times written in an easy and often poignant manner. There is always a good case to be made for the defeated in a historical quarrel, and Paris makes it admirably. From this point of view it is reasonable to say nothing about the darker side of the oppressed defenders of the Covenant - and the fact that few of us today would wish to live in the world which the Covenanters defended is irrelevant in the context of a novel. In any case, novelists are usually attracted to the defeated. Why else would we have so many Scottish novels about the Jacobites?
A Fire in Their Hearts, by Philip Paris, Black & White, £16.99
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