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Overview
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780807849132 |
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Publisher: | The University of North Carolina Press |
Publication date: | 03/12/2001 |
Edition description: | 1 |
Pages: | 280 |
Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.63(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Introduction
What thou lovest well remains,Despite the diverse regional identities of their Scottish ancestors, today's Scottish Americans claim a Highland Scots identity constructed in the nineteenth century through romanticism, militarism, and tourism long after many of their forebears had immigrated from Scotland. Though not perhaps how the celebrated ancestors perceived themselves, their Highland representations have by now become traditional. This book considers the cultural processes that lead to a celebration of one form of identity over others, and the public rituals, symbolic costumes, social organizations, and beliefs that fortify ethnic identities and their revival. I examine an abiding awareness of Scottish heritage in North Carolina's Cape Fear Valley within the larger contexts of Scottish heritage revival at the state and southern regional levels. Through this case study, I wish to engage you in considering, more generally, the cultural construction of memory and the contemporary search for identity and community.
the rest is dross
What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee
What thou lov'st well is thy true heritage . . .
Ezra Pound, Canto LXXXI
Individually and as groups, we imagine Technicolor pasts that may develop an authenticity of their own and fulfill various needs by doing so. Most of us value gaining or inheriting some conception of "the past," but rarely acknowledge the creative aspects of our recall, or openly consider how our ordering of the past orders our social relations in the present. Heritage and ethnic celebrations are exercises in remembering that remind people to consciously stand together as a group apart. The traditions and perspectives of the past that we select and celebrate as heritage are those that have a moral, instructive, emotional, or intellectual appeal and those we therefore find good to remember.
The Cyclic Popularity of a Scottish-American Identity
Visions of ethnicity and heritage are fluid, appearing more or less important in relation to their temporal and social frames. Contemporary celebrations of Scottish-American heritage have revitalized an ethnic identity that, seemingly forgotten by many contemporary Americans, has nonetheless been prominent in public consciousness for most of American history. A Scottish, especially Highland Scottish, identity carried many negative connotations in early Anglo-America. Political, cultural, linguistic, and social differences distinguished Highlanders from Lowlanders and from Ulster Scots well beyond the American Revolution. However, in the mid-nineteenth century, these discrete groups became more concerned with distancing themselves from Irish immigrants fleeing the famines than from each other. The popular romantic portrayals of Scotland and Scottish identity by Sir Walter Scott assisted a conceptual blending of these three groups in America, in contradistinction to the new immigrants who, for the first time in American history, came predominantly from Catholic and Jewish communities in southern and eastern Europe.
Across the nation in the period immediately preceding the Civil War, and in the North and West prior to World War I, the foundation of Scottish Highland Games and the introduction of new Scottish social fraternities experienced widespread popularity. However, the overwhelming and regionally unifying experience of the Civil War largely eclipsed such celebrations in the South, as the World Wars and Great Depression would generally do for the nation. Patriotism born of war and America's initial years as an emerging superpower temporarily obscured distinctively Scottish identities. The value placed on conformity in response to immigration, war, and economic despair created the absurd misconception of "white America." Regional and ethnic distinctions reemerged shortly after World War II as many Americans experienced renewed interest in "the old countries"; as second- and third-generation immigrants began reasserting identities that distinguished them from "the white norm"; and as the nation began to explore the extension of civil rights to all Americans.
The last decades of the twentieth century witnessed a dramatic surge of interest in Americans' cultural and ancestral ties to Scotland. Beginning with a handful of new heritage societies in the late 1950s and 1960s, the numbers of national Scottish-American clan and heritage societies had grown to the hundreds by the mid-1990s and accompanied an explosion of the Scottish Highland Games scene. Celebration of a Scottish-American identity is quite distinct from other post-World War II, European ethnic revivals among, for example, Italian, Greek, Polish, or Scandinavian Americans. This is especially true in the South, where memory of Scottish ancestral tradition has merged with that of the southern experience, and particularly so in North Carolina, where the earliest and largest groups of Scots settled. Church and sporadic other commemorations in North Carolina nourished a lasting consciousness of Scottish roots. The celebration of Scottish heritage and identity in North Carolina is unique even among Scottish ethnic revivals. The Scottish heritage revival in North Carolina is not a second- or third-generation revival, but the revival of an identity and of a community from over two hundred years ago.
More Scots settled in North Carolina during the Colonial period than in any other state.[1] Many Lowland Scots and Scots-Irish traveled to North Carolina, as they did to other states, down the great wagon road from Pennsylvania. What makes Scottish immigration to North Carolina unique is the direct, large-scale immigration of Scottish Highlanders beginning in the 1730s; their localized settlement in the Cape Fear Valley; and the persistence of a Scottish identity in the area to the present. The memory of this Argyll Colony makes the state a symbolic homeland for many in today's Scottish-American community.
Table of Contents
PrefaceAcknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. Highlandism and Scottish Identity: The Origins of Contemporary Ethnic Expression
Chapter 2. Scottish Heritage and Revival in North Carolina
Chapter 3. Kith and Clan in the Scottish-American Community
Chapter 4. The Brigadoon of the Scottish-American Community: Scottish Highland Games and Gatherings
Chapter 5. Heritage Pilgrimage and a Sense for Scottish Places
Chapter 6. Warrior Scots
Chapter 7. Scottish Heritage, Southern Style
Conclusion
Appendix
Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index
What People are Saying About This
[A] combination of resource compendium, exhaustively detailed anthropological study and astute cultural criticism. Extensive research, clear prose and respect for her subjects will win this authoritative work favor among Scottish American enthusiasts and academics alike.Publishers Weekly
[Ray] recreates in detail the annual Highland games and gathering at Grandfather Mountain, N.C., for those of us who don't know our sporrans from our claymores. Hint: you might be cleaved in two with the second if you insult a Scotsman for wearing the first.A Nota Bene selection of The Chronicle of Higher Education
Essential reading for anyone interested in the transnational dimensions of Scottishness and the increasingly voluntary nature of cultural identity. Highly recommended.Scottish Affairs
It is hard to imagine a more comprehensive account of what has gone on in the Scottish American heritage community in recent decades. . . . [Ray] has a sound grasp of Scottish history, and of the actual history of the Highland Scots in Carolina. . . . Fascinating.Journal of American Studies
The strong pull of the homeland has manifested itself in a surprising number of American southerners. Ray's scholarly and readable examination of that pull offers insight into this fascinating minority group. Ray focuses upon North Carolina's Cape Fear settlement . . . . But she also extends her study to all of the southern states to demonstrate the pride of those whose connection to Scotland goes deep. . . . Just as fascinating as her scholarship are the delightful additions to the book. Numerous photos . . . show how a number of 'ancient' traditions are preserved. If you want to know what they wear under those kilts, this is the text for you.Bloomsbury Review
[This book] should be of great interest to historians in general as an illustration of the creative ways in which history is interpreted and taught outside academia. It should be of particular interest to students of Appalachia.Journal of Appalachian Studies
A thoughtful, investigative publication, Highland Heritage will interest both American and Scottish readers.Scots Magazine
Examines the nature of heritage and the ways in which people reclaim and change a 'past' in order to connect with forebears as well as others in the present. . . . Anthropologists, ethnographers, and students of Southern studies will find Ray's work valuable.Choice
Ray, attracted by the persistence of ethnic identity that links Scotland with North Carolina, offers a fascinating portrayal of the Scottish American manifestation of this heritage movement. . . . Richly informative about the power of heritage in postmodern society. . . . Readers interested in the creation and power of heritage, whether Scottish or not, will find this a stimulating book.Journal of Southern History
Ray has produced a fascinating account of a comparatively modern (post WWII) movement amongst Scottish Americans to construct a heritage. . . . As a textbook, this would be a thought-provoking and enjoyable addition to local history, oral history, and ethnic history syllabi, as well as those in anthropology and sociology.H-Net Book Review