Late at night, the air thick with mist, the distant sound of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Bad Moon Rising lured us in. We followed the music along the wet cobbled streets until we found the source.
People were spilling out of a pub, singing, “Don’t go around tonight; well, it’s bound to take your life. There’s a bad moon on the rise.”
As these familiar lyrics enticed us in, the long, stressful travel day was quickly forgotten.
The pub in question was the Royal Oak. A proper, salt-of-the-earth, 200-year-old pub.
But let’s rewind. How did the Royal Oak become my favourite? How did a pub become such a dear friend of mine?
It was the end of August. I had just said a few tearful goodbyes to my family back home in Canada before embarking on my year abroad in Scotland, not knowing what to expect.
“Four bags,” I kept telling myself on the flight, so I could keep track of all my things. But here I was in the Edinburgh airport with just three bags. After spending hours locating my missing bag, finally, peace.
Or so I thought. I arrived at my new flat only to find that my flatmate had forgotten to leave me a key.
There stood my mum and me, in the same clothing we had been in for the past 24 hours, jetlagged, soaked by the rain. A glimmer of hope appeared in the form of a friendly neighbour who offered to take our bags while we figured out a way to get a key.
Mum and I made our way down Princes Street, dodging hundreds of other tourists. I thought to myself: “What the hell have I done? Why did I move here?”
We returned to my flat with a freshly cut key in hand, showered, changed, and decided to turn this day around.
So, we set out again in search of a pub that would bring our spirits up. That’s when we found ourselves at the Royal Oak.
As Bad Moon Rising came to an end, the crowd parted, welcoming us into the quaint pub.
I had never seen live music quite like this before. In Alberta, live music means you’re going to watch someone perform on a stage. The Royal Oak introduced me to an entirely new side of it.
Here, music lovers gathered around musicians singing unamplified music from the comfort of their seats. It was intimate and powerful.
The Royal Oak, along with many other pubs in Edinburgh, is older than Canada itself. Stepping into this historic haven for musicians, poets, and storytellers was, for me, a glimpse into the aspects of Scotland’s culture and traditions that I was so fascinated by before moving here.
In between crowd-pleasing singalongs and ballads, locals sang Scottish sea shanties.
Among the many quotes featured on the Royal Oak’s walls, one of them reads, “Freenship gies us a delight, Freenship consecrates the drappie, Freenship brocht us here the night.”
Reading this filled me with relief. Though I had just moved to an unfamiliar city where I knew no one, I sensed that nights at the Royal Oak could offer friendship on my loneliest days.
I sat amongst musicians and music lovers with a Guinness in hand, unsure whether the cold chills I was covered in were from the breathtaking music or the Edinburgh weather. “Okay, this is why I moved here. This is exactly where I need to be.”
