19 April 2026

Yesterday, we were on South Street in St. Andrews to witness the centenary of the Kate Kennedy Procession. It is like a picture book where all the characters which have shaped St. Andrews and our  nation emerge into the daylight.

There’s St. Andrew with his cross! Bishop James Kennedy who founded the University arrives in a daffodil bedecked coach with his niece, the Lady Kate. Queen Margaret, Robert the Bruce, Mary Queen of Scots and her nemesis John Knox are all there.

There are about 160 characters in the procession and they include men and women, the ancient of days and near contemporaries like Old Tom Morris, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, first graduate in medicine, Sir James Black, Nobel prize-winner who discovered beta blockers.

Fifty years ago in 1976, I was in the Procession. I didn’t belong to the Club but in those days the University was smaller and the Kate Kennedy Club needed others to play a part. I became the Revd. Samuel Rutherford for a day!

I have the photograph to prove it – breeches, black gown, white preaching bands, wig and a Puritan hat! My seventeenth century alter ego was a minister in the kirk, Principal of St. Mary’s, Rector of the University.

The experience was not lost on me. Over twenty years later as a minister myself in Logie Kirk, we created a pageant with all the children and young people in the kirk to celebrate the 850th anniversary of Cambuskenneth Abbey.

The children dressed up as our forebears beginning with the prophet Isaiah and ending with a twentieth century minister. It stirred the heart and moved the soul to see all these characters appear in the ancient ruins of the Abbey.

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