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before they moved to the Braids. Betty had enjoyed the reading, although she had detected a number of inaccuracies in her husband’s recollection of events. He had confused the place of their first meeting and had got his age at the time quite wrong. He had also mixed up the name of the late Duke of Atholl, whom he had described as Angus, but who had actually been called Iain. These were little things, of course, although the cumulative effect of a number of errors of that nature could make for a narrative which was perhaps less than reliable, but she had refrained from correcting him. Ramsey had many virtues, but he also had a slight tendency to become 198 The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part IV – Legal Matters peevish when it was pointed out to him that he was wrong about something. So Betty had remained silent in the face of these mistakes and had confined her reaction to nods of agreement and small exclamations of appreciation. And she reflected on the fact that nobody was ever likely to read Ramsey’s memoirs, even if he found somebody prepared to publish them. That was not because they were intrinsically irrelevant, but because these days people seemed to be interested only in reading about vulgar matters and violence. And there was no vulgarity or violence in Ramsey’s memoirs . . . at least so far. Betty sighed.

“I shall now move on to some legal reminiscences,” said Ramsey, looking down at his wife in her comfortable chair. He preferred to read while standing, as this gave freedom to the diaphragm and allowed the voice to be projected.

“Legal things,” muttered Betty. “That’s nice, dear.”

“I have been a lawyer for my entire working life,” Ramsey began. “And I have never regretted, not for one single moment, my choice of the law. Had I decided differently at that fateful lunch with my prospective father-in-law in Broughty Ferry, I might have ended up in the marmalade business, but I did not. I stuck to the law.

“Now that should not be taken to mean that I have anything but the highest regard for those in the marmalade business. I know that there are some who think it in some sense undignified to be involved in that sort of trade, but I have never understood that view. In my view, it is neither the bed you are born in, nor the trade you follow, that determines your value. It is what you are as a man. That’s what counts. And I believe that Robert Burns, our national poet, expressed that philosophy perfectly when he wrote A Man’s a Man for A’ That. It does not matter who you are or what you do; the ultimate question is this: have you led a good life, a decent life? And I believe, although I do not wish to be immodest, that I can answer these questions in the affirmative.

“I have, as it happens, had a strong interest in Burns since the age of ten. That was when I started to learn his works off The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part IV – Legal Matters 199

by heart, starting with To a Mouse. I always recommend that poem to parents who want their children to learn to love poetry. Start with that and then move on to Tam O’Shanter when the child is slightly older and will not get too nervous over all those references to bogles and the like.

“But I digress. I knew from my very first day as a law student that the law was the mistress for me. I remember very clearly my first lecture in Roman Law when the professor told us all about the Corpus Iuris Civilis of Justinian and of how it had been transmitted, through the agency of Italian and Dutch scholars, to Scotland. That was romance for you! And it got better and better as we went on to topics such as the Scots law of succession and the principles of the law of delict. Succession was full of human interest, and I still remember the roar of appreciative laughter that rose up in the lecture theatre when Dr George Campbell Paton told us about the case of Mr Aitken of Musselburgh who instructed his executors to erect in his memory a bronze equestrian statue in Musselburgh High Street. And then there was the man in Dundee who left his money to his dog. That was very funny indeed, and it