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The fantasy of Scotland's history

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Nikkohl Gallant
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« on: May 19, 2008, 10:51:39 pm »




From The Sunday TimesMay 18, 2008

The fantasy of Scotland's history
In an exclusive extract from his book The Invention of Scotland: Myth and History, the late historian tells how the country's story is based on fiction



Hugh Trevor-Roper
In Scotland, it seems to me, myth has played a far more important part in history than it has in England. Indeed, I believe that the whole history of Scotland has been coloured by myth; and that myth, in Scotland, is never driven out by reality, or by reason, but lingers on until another myth has been discovered, or elaborated, to replace it.

I believe that three consecutive myths have successively filled the 400 years of Scottish history from the 16th century to the 20th. The political myth, the literary myth and the sartorial myth, which is with us still.

These myths, though they may explode on contact with the evidence, are nevertheless historically important. It became a part of the national honour to maintain them - at least until a new myth should be imported to drive them out.

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Nikkohl Gallant
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« Reply #1 on: May 19, 2008, 10:52:33 pm »

The Political Myth: Scotia's Rise to Glory

The early history of all countries is obscure; but the mist which envelops the early history of Scotland is unique, both in density and duration. It was thickened and prolonged by national pride and deliberate myth-making. As late as the end of the 18th century, the racial origins of the Scots and their relationship with the Irish was a matter of learned dispute; and the ablest scholars were led, by blind or interested guides, and by deliberate forgeries, into the grossest errors.

In 1729, the first and greatest of Scottish antiquaries, Father Thomas Innes - an exiled Catholic priest and Jacobite who stood outside the interested intellectual establishment of Scotland - had destroyed the basis of the Scottish myths. But his work was barely noticed; and in 1776 even Edward Gibbon, misled by “two learned and ingenious Highlanders”, would be totally wrong about the origin of the Scots. A few years later Gibbon would discover another and better guide. John Pinkerton, whom he would patronise and encourage, would prove to be the ablest Scottish antiquary after Innes. But he too would fall into error when he came to the origin of the Picts. It was not until the late 19th century that the mists of myth would be scientifically cleared away and at least the outline of early Scottish history become visible.

Until the late 11th century, at least, Scottish history was preserved, with reasonable accuracy, in record or memory, and commemorated by the bards who recited royal succession lists on ceremonial occasions. But from that time the mists began to gather and that outline was gradually obscured and distorted by an ever-thickening cloud of mythology: a cloud that would not be effectively dispersed till another seven centuries had passed.

The process began spontaneously among the Scots as a bid to capture history, like everything else, from the Picts. It was quickened by an external force: the national struggle with England for independence. It was consecrated, in the 16th century, by the most advanced thinkers of the time: the cultivated, cosmopolitan Scottish humanists of the Renaissance.

For the 200 years between Kenneth MacAlpin in the mid-9th century and Malcolm III in the later 11th century we have, essentially, two kinds of sources that tell us something of how the Scots recorded and interpreted their history. Lists of kings in the royal succession were preserved: these would be recited publicly at enthronements and no doubt on other important occasions. The length and continuity of the royal succession, thus proclaimed, would emphasise the crucial role played by the monarchy in the fortunes of its people. There were also folk memories, stories about the origin and character of the people, which crystallised occasionally as fragments embedded in the chronicles kept by monks, but which might also appear in connection with the king-lists.

The information in the king-lists is narrow; that in the folk stories wider, but also woollier. These two kinds of sources, exiguous as they are, reveal, separately or in conjunction, at least an outline of the Scottish self-image as it developed.

Of the king-lists there are several versions, reflecting the periodic need to revise and update them, and also their copying and deposit in different parts of the country - not to mention their diffusion outside Scotland itself - and, of course, the hazards of their survival or destruction.

The process of copying and revision always entailed a risk of scribal error: through misreading, misspelling, or accidental omission or intrusion of names. Another technical problem was just how to display, for the unified monarchy of later times, its inheritance from the earlier dual monarchies: from the parallel monarchies of the Picts and the Scots, which had coexisted for some 300 years.

The problem could be dealt with in different ways: there were separate lists of Pictish kings and of Dalriadan kings, and lists which attempted a combination. It is by tracing the changes made to these king-lists over time that we can observe the gradually developing current that was, in the end, to sweep the Picts out of the historical record, and produce, instead, an ever-longer and more glorious past for the Scots.

« Last Edit: May 19, 2008, 10:53:10 pm by Nikkohl Gallant » Report Spam   Logged
Nikkohl Gallant
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« Reply #2 on: May 19, 2008, 10:54:03 pm »

The Literary Myth: The Search for a Celtic Homer

After the Union of 1707, and more especially after the defeat of the last Jacobite rebellion in 1746, the Scots looked for other ways of expressing their cultural identity. Recognising that the development of their country in the past two centuries had been arrested, and that their political activity had been (to say the least) unconstructive, they welcomed the end of political independence and devoted themselves to “improvement”.

It was natural that Scots, seeking compensation for the end of their independent history and politics, should turn to discover and appreciate their native literature. Unfortunately, when they looked for it, they could not find it. There was none.

In 1757, a young Scotch Highlander offered, in effect, to discover the epic poem of Celtic Scotland. A year after that he produced it. It had all the qualities which the age required. It was epic, melancholy and sublime. It was primitive and yet pure: pure in morals, pure in sentiment. It dated from the heroic age of the ancient Caledonians, who, at the beginning of the 3rd century AD, had gloriously resisted the legions of the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus; and yet it was suffused with tragedy: for that heroic generation had entered its twilight.

The poet himself, like Homer, was blind; but unlike Homer, he was not a mere wandering bard: he was a king's son, a royal but now lonely figure who had seen all his peers, and his own son, perish in the wars and himself had survived only to lament their fate in majestic poetry. The poet's name was Ossian and the young Highlander who discovered and translated his work, and thus gave Scotland the great literature which it had so far totally lacked and which now it so desperately needed, was James MacPherson.

Initially the literati was united in complacency at having brought to light this treasure of ancient Scottish literature. But over time the more critical literary men and scholars of London were beginning to entertain grave doubts. First, there was the style: the style of Ossian was not that of a “primitive” poet. Second, there were historical objections. Finally, there was the problem of Ossian's language.

If the poems of Ossian had been preserved in their original form, in ancient manuscripts, they must necessarily have been written in an archaic language very different from that still spoken in the Highlands. On the other hand, if they had been transmitted orally, and gradually modernised in the process, could they really be regarded as ancient poems at all? And anyway, could they really have been so transmitted? Was there any other instance of a long epic poem carried by oral tradition through 15 centuries? On the face of it, there seemed no way out of this dilemma that did not require assent to absurdity.

It emerged that the genuine Ossian poems belong to a cycle of Irish Gaelic poems originally composed in Leinster in the later Middle Ages. Essentially, the poems were Irish in origin, Irish in susbstance and Irish in preservation.

By 1775 the public controversy about Ossian had died down, and it seemed that there was a tacit agreement not to revive it. The English did not believe in Ossian; but why deprive the Scots?

If Scottish belief in the authenticity of Ossian weakened in the course of the 19th century, that was not because the Scots, however belatedly, yielded to reason. Ossian's poems lost their authenticity, not when they were disproved, but when changing circumstances made them no longer necessary - and when another myth was available to supersede them.

The myth of Ossian had been accepted because it filled a need - the need for a purely Scottish literature. In 1760 there had been no such literature, and Ossian had come to fill the void. To jettison it, to deny its authenticity, was to re-create that void. But by the early 19th century that was no longer true. In 1802 appeared the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border; in 1805 the Lay of the Last Minstrel; Marmion, Rokeby and The Lady of the Lake followed. With the rediscovery of genuine traditional Scottish poetry and the creation of genuine modern Scottish poetry, Scott had filled the void, and Ossian was no longer necessary.

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Nikkohl Gallant
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« Reply #3 on: May 19, 2008, 10:57:45 pm »

The Sartorial Myth: The Coming of the Kilt

Before the 16th century there is no evidence of distinctive Highland dress. Medieval writers, like Froissart, who refer to the sauvages d'Ecosse, say nothing about any peculiarity of garb. But in the 16th century evidence of such peculiarity begins to accumulate. All of these accounts are in substantial agreement. They show that the ordinary dress of the Highlanders was a long “Irish” shirt (in Gaelic léine), which the higher classes dyed with saffron (leni-croich); a tunic or failuin; and a cloak or plaid, which the higher classes had woven in many colours or stripes, but which in general was of a russet or brown effect, as protective colouring in the heather.

In addition, the Highlanders wore shoes with a single sole (the higher classes might wear buskins) and flat soft caps, generally blue. In battle, the leaders wore chain mail, while the lower classes wore a padded linen shirt painted or daubed with pitch, and covered with deerskins.

This was the normal Highland dress. However, there was also a variation used, probably, only by the chieftains and great men who had contact with the more sophisticated inhabitants of the Lowlands. This was the trews, a combination of breeches and stockings. The trews could not be used conveniently out of doors in wild country and all weathers except by men who had attendants to protect or carry them. It was therefore a mark of social distinction. Both trews and, probably, plaid were made of tartan.

The essential fact is that, as yet, there was no mention of the kilt, as we know it today. At the end of the 17th century, as far as the written evidence goes - and we have some explicit accounts - the alternative was simple. A Highlander wore either the plaid and the trews, or the “belted plaid” ending, below the belt, in a skirt. The former was the dress of an officer, or a gentleman; the latter of a common soldier, or peasant.

Against this clear conclusion of the literary sources, certain pieces of pictorial evidence have been advanced to suggest that the kilt, as a separate garment, was worn in Scotland before the Union with England. However, the illustrations used are a 19thcentury representation of a worn stone carving and cannot be implicitly trusted. In any case, they do not necessarily show a kilt. Close examination suggests that the servile habit is, in fact, the belted plaid.

The name “kilt”, in its early form of “quelt”, first appears 20 years after the Union; but only as a term for the belted plaid, not for a distinct garment. The author who first uses it is Edward Burt, an English officer posted to Scotland in the reign of George 1 as chief surveyor. The “quelt”, he says, is the “common habit of the ordinary Highlands”, adding that it is “far from being acceptable to the eye”. This quelt, he explains, is not a distinct garment, but simply a particular method of wearing the plaid. This “petticoat”, says Burt, was normally worn “so very short that in a windy day, going up a hill, or stooping, the indecency of it is plainly discovered”.

Burt was explicit about the Highland dress because already, in his time, it was a subject of political controversy. After the suppression of the Jacobite rebellion of 1715, proposals had been made to ban this dress. So the “Disarming Act”, presented to the British parliament by Duncan Forbes of Culloden, had originally included such a ban. However, it had been resisted, and - since the rebellion had been so easily dispersed - had not been pressed. But the discussion had continued, and Burt records the arguments used on both sides. The advocates of the ban argued that the Highland dress distinguished the Highlanders from the rest of British subjects and bound them together in a narrow introverted community: that the plaid, in particular, encouraged their idle way of life, “lying about upon the heath in the daytime instead of following some lawful employment”; that, being “composed of such colours as altogether in the mass so nearly resemble the heath on which they lie, that it is hardly to be distinguished from it until one is so near them as to be within their power”, it facilitated their robberies and depredations; that it made them, “as they carry continually their tents about them”, ready to join a rebellion at a moment's notice.

It is ironical that, if the Highland dress had been banned after the “Fifteen” instead of 30 years later, after the “Forty-Five”, the kilt, which is now regarded as one of the ancient traditions of Scotland, would probably never have come into existence. It came into existence a few years after Burt had made his observations - and very close to the area in which he had made them. Unknown in 1726, it suddenly appeared a few years later; and by 1745 it was sufficiently well established to be explicitly named in the Act of Parliament which forbade the Highland dress.

Its appearance can, in fact, be dated within a few years. For it did not evolve; it was invented. Its inventor was an English Quaker from Lancashire, Thomas Rawlinson.

The Invention of Scotland: Myth and History, by Hugh Trevor-Roper is published by Yale University Press, priced £18.99.

Times Online readers can receive £2 off the RRP by ordering directly on 020 7079 4900 (Monday-Friday 9am-5pm) Please add £1.50 for postage and packaging.


http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article3953025.ece
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Bianca
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« Reply #4 on: May 19, 2008, 11:11:04 pm »









WHAT A CROCK!!!


SOUNDS LIKE THE BOOK THAT WAS WRITTEN A FEW YEARS AGO, HERE IN THE USA,

CLAIMING THAT ABRAHAM LINCOLN WAS A FLAMING RACIST..........
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Your mind understands what you have been taught; your heart what is true.
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