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Scotland
By John H. Scotney Bravo Ltd
Copyright © 2010 Kuperard
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-85733-621-4
CHAPTER 1
LAND & PEOPLE
Scotland is a constituent part of the United Kingdom that four hundred or so years ago was an independent nation, and that might become one again. It has its own legal system and Church, and its own parliament with substantial powers of self-government.
GEOGRAPHY
Scotland is nearly two-thirds the size of England but its population of some 5.1 million is a tenth of England's, and of those, 2.5 million are crammed into the industrial southwest. A geological fracture, the Highland Boundary Fault, separates two markedly different landscapes. To the north, bisected by the Great Glen with its string of deep lochs (lakes), are the Highlands, an area of breathtaking views and hard, ancient rock whose heather-covered moorland and stern mountains stretch eastward toward Aberdeen and southward along Loch Lomond to the Clyde.
In the far north and west are 750 wind- and rain-swept islands, 130 of them inhabited, with a beauty and appeal of their own. Southeast of the Fault are softer sedimentary rocks creating rounded hills and fertile farmlands. The Lowlands of mid-Scotland are the site of the former coal and iron industry, and run diagonally across the country. They take in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and the Clyde industrial belt, and extend northward almost to Aberdeen.
Heading south again brings rich agricultural land and, beyond that, bleak hills and infertile moorland. This is the bloodstained border country, with its cruel fortresses and ruined abbeys. The Highlands cover half of Scotland and have half a million inhabitants. The central Lowlands and the Borders are home to the other 4.5 million Scots.
CLIMATE
Nowhere in Scotland is far from the sea, and this influences both people and climate. The North Atlantic is famously unpredictable, and it produces equally unpredictable weather that can change in a matter of moments. The climate is also surprisingly temperate, however, thanks to a strong ocean current carrying the warm waters of the Gulf Stream northward. The mountains can be cold and the wind bitter, while the relatively high latitude of northern Scotland makes for long winter nights counterbalanced by long summer days. Scotland is wetter than England, with three quarters of an inch (0.2 mm) or more of rain falling 250 days a year. The Western Highlands are the wettest, their annual rainfall being 180 inches (4,570 mm). In winter rain turns to snow and the central Highlands have 36 to 105 days of snow a year; the mild west coast, on the other hand, has at most a few days and sometimes none at all. Scotland is a land of contrasts, and nowhere more so than in its weather and its people.
Inshriach Nursery near Aviemore in the Cairngorms specializes in Alpine flowers; at the Logan Botanic Gardens on Mull, subtropical plants thrive.
WHO ARE THE SCOTS?
Five peoples formed the nation that came together as Scotland: Picts, Gaels, Britons, Angles, and Norsemen. Each spoke a different language, though the language of the Angles would come to dominate the midlands and south, and Gaelic the north and west. Even today about 1 percent of Scots are Gaelic speakers, and there are television and radio stations that broadcast in this language.
Neighbors too, on all sides, played their part in shaping Scotland and the Scots. England — rich, powerful, and greedy — to the south; France and the Netherlands to the east; Scandinavia northward, across icy, treacherous seas; Celtic Ireland a handful of miles to the west; then west again, way beyond but beckoning, Nova Scotia, Canada, and the USA; and farther still, the wide world. Each helped mold this hardy, practical, people, who are also romantic, loyal, hardheaded, softhearted, God-fearing, and sometimes foolhardy, but always "their own man."
A BRIEF HISTORY
Prehistory
Eight thousand years ago, Scotland's minute population scraped a living as hunter-gatherers. Three thousand years later, Skara Brae on Orkney had sophisticated stone houses with stone cupboards, stone seats, stone beds, hearths, tables, and drains, matched on the mainland by chambered tombs reminiscent of Mycenaean Greece. Another three thousand years later the Romans came and saw but did not conquer, instead building Hadrian's Wall and withdrawing behind it.
Picts and Scots
Archaeological evidence reveals that the Picts were in Scotland when the Romans came. First mentioned by the name "Picts" in a Latin text of 297 CE, they were skilled in metalwork and stone carving, but no one knows what language they spoke. Then there are the Scots. To confuse matters, the "Scots" are Irish in culture and language: "Scoti" is their Latin name, but they called themselves "Gaels." Artistically gifted craftsmen, this Celtic people established a kingdom in the west: Dál Riata. For centuries they fought the Picts north and east of them, the Vikings, each other, and their Irish cousins.
The Coming of Christianity
Many Scottish people have strong religious convictions, and the Gaels' great gift to Scotland is Christianity. After the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, Ireland was a haven of what was left of Western civilization and Christianity: a land of "saints and scholars." One of these Irish saints, Saint Columba, landed in the Western Isles in 563 CE, founding a monastery on Iona. From the Gaelic west this Irish form of Christianity spread across Scotland; in due course Glasgow gained its first bishop, Saint Mungo, and by the late seventh century the whole country was Christian.
Celtic Christianity differs from Roman Catholicism. It is said that the Roman Church reverenced the authoritative Saint Peter and the Celtic Church the sensitive Saint John, and that "the Celtic Church gave love while the Roman Church gave law." Be that as it may, the Celts at least theoretically submitted to papal authority at the Synod of Whitby in 663 CE, though Celtic religious practices continued until the eleventh century, when Queen Margaret finally established the victory of Roman Catholicism over the old Celtic Church. Even today in the Scottish attitude to religion there remains something of this ancient faith, which put the individual conscience before the bishop's ordinance.
Britons and Angles
The fertile southern Lowlands were home to another group of Celts. The Britons lived in hill towns, one of them ruled by Coel Hen — Old King Cole himself. They spoke a different language, Brythonic, akin to Welsh, and had strong links with Roman Britain. Their kingdom of Strathclyde in the southwest would survive until the eleventh century, and the people of the region still boast a distinct identity. Meanwhile, a Germanic tribe, the Angles, came from across the sea, occupied northeast England and created the kingdom of Northumbria. In the seventh century the Northumbrians seized southeast Scotland, including the town to which they gave the name "Edinburgh," after their king, Edwin. The Gaels called these newcomers "Sassenachs" (Saxons), and they spoke a form of what would become English, though one that would always differ from the English of southern England.
Norsemen
In the ninth and tenth centuries, King Robert MacAlpin and his grandson Constantine united the Picts and Scots. On a hill at Scone near Perth they were enthroned rather than crowned, being seated on a sandstone block called the Stone of Destiny, as would become the normal practice for Scottish kings. The joint kingdom was named "Alba" in Gaelic.
The two peoples had come together to confront the savage Norsemen: pagan Scandinavian sea-rovers who sailed their long ships as far and wide as America, the Mediterranean, and deep into Russia. In England they rebuilt York, in Ireland they founded Dublin, and in France they seized the whole peninsula still named after them: Normandy.
From 750 CE onward these "Vikings" raided and then colonized Shetland, Orkney, and Caithness. Orkney and Shetland would not become part of Scotland until 1468, and even in the twenty-first century they have a noticeable affinity to Norway in their music and folklore. There are still Orcadians and Shetlanders who regard Scotland as a foreign country. Other Norsemen slaughtered the monks of Iona and seized the Western Isles, holding them until the thirteenth century.
At last the Viking threat, which had seemed about to overwhelm Scotland, was contained, and in 1016 King Malcolm II defeated the Angles at the battle of Carham, carrying his border south to the River Tweed. Some time later, Strathclyde was absorbed. So, in the eleventh century mainland Scotland became united for the first time, though the Western Isles, Orkney, and Shetland still owed allegiance to Norway, and English kings from Canute to Edward I would assert suzerainty over their Scots neighbors.
Heroes and Villains
In the words of Robert Louis Stevenson, "The mark of a Scot is that he remembers and cherishes the memory of his forebears, good or bad; and there burns alive in him a sense of identity with the dead even to the twentieth generation."
A parade of larger-than-life characters struggling with England, innovating, winning and losing, building and tearing down, make up Scotland's vision of its past, and Scotland's heroes and villains are central to the Scottish sense of nationhood.
Duncan and Macbeth
Duncan, the second king of all Scotland, was not the kindly old fellow of Shakespeare's play, but young, headstrong, brutal — he killed his own grandfather — and incompetent. Macbeth killed Duncan in battle and turned out to be rather a good king who reigned for seventeen years, far longer than Shakespeare's account suggests. According to Shakespeare, Macbeth was defeated by Malcolm Canmore (Bighead) at Dunsinane in 1054; what is less well-known is that he survived for another three years until finally killed near Aberdeen by Malcolm and his English allies. Shakespeare lived in the reign of James I of England, who traced his ancestry back to Duncan — which could explain the playwright's jaundiced view of Macbeth and his wife. Her name, incidentally, was Gruoch, though curiously Shakespeare never mentions this.
The House of Canmore
Malcolm founded a dynasty lasting two centuries. The House of Canmore was bound to England by ties of marriage, often relied on support from the new Norman rulers of England, and equally often fought them. Norman lords and gentry were invited to settle, and today's great Scottish landowners are predominantly of Norman-English origin. Under the Canmores, trade flourished, trading towns called burghs were founded, and the first Scottish coins were issued. "Scotia" became the standard term for Scotland. Alexander III fought off a Norwegian invasion in 1263, and Scotland regained the Western Isles from Norway. Alexander's daughter married the Norwegian king's grandson, and in due course, in 1286, their infant daughter became Queen of Scotland.
The Wars of Liberation: Wallace and Bruce
Unfortunately, Margaret, the "Maid of Norway," was only three. In 1290 she sailed to her new realm but died on the voyage. King Edward I of England had guaranteed the survival of Scotland as an independent country, and was asked to arbitrate between the various contenders for the throne. He chose John Balliol, who was set upon the stone in 1292, but immediately the English king started treating Balliol as his puppet. The Scots rebelled and were defeated, and Balliol was made to surrender the throne — quite literally, for Edward took the Stone of Scone south to Westminster Abbey. For ten years England ruled Scotland, until a mere commoner, William Wallace, rose in arms and beat the English at the Battle of Stirling Bridge. Wallace was knighted and governed Scotland briefly; then, risking battle when he should not have done, he was defeated. Two years later Wallace was captured, taken to London, and cruelly executed.
Six months later still, Robert the Bruce, having initially submitted to Edward I, declared himself King and was crowned at Scone in 1306. At first he too was beaten, at the Battle of Methven, and fled for his life. Legend has it that, hiding in a cave, he watched a spider fail to build its web many times until finally it succeeded. Bruce too persevered. In 1307 Edward I, the "Hammer of the Scots," died, to be succeeded by the weaker Edward II. Bruce ruthlessly suppressed all opposition and united Scotland behind himself. In 1314, by choosing his ground well and skillfully deploying his small force of spearmen, he routed Edward's much larger army at the Battle of Bannockburn, and Scotland was free — though it would be fourteen years before the English conceded Scots independence.
Wallace the bold patriot, the "man of the people" who lost and was tragically martyred, and the persistent, pragmatic Bruce, who was cannily victorious, are iconic Scottish heroes, each reflecting something in the Scots character. Both were of Norman/Scottish stock — a formidable mix!
The Declaration of Arbroath
In 1320 King Robert wrote a letter to the Pope, sealed by all the leading Scottish lords, proclaiming the new independence. It is known as the Declaration of Arbroath, and it states: "as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we fight, but for freedom — for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself."
The Fourteenth Century
The fighting continued. In 1346 Bruce's son David invaded England, nearly losing everything his father had won by his defeat and capture at Neville's Cross. The Black Death came, halving Europe's population, but the warfare went on. At the "Burnt Candlemass" of 1356, English troops ravaged Edinburgh. Nevertheless, by the time David died, all Europe acknowledged him as Scotland's King. Because he was childless the succession passed to the descendants of his elder sister, Marjorie, wife to Scotland's hereditary steward. Their son became Robert II in 1371. And so begins the house of "Stewart," whose links with Scotland were to last until Bonnie Prince Charlie's fateful campaign of 1745.
The Early Stuarts
The late medieval period saw England tied up in war with France until the English nobles started slaughtering each other in the Wars of the Roses. In Scotland the Lord of the Isles, successor to the Norse rulers, was virtually independent, as were the Black Douglases in the south. James I spent eighteen years in English captivity, but on his return he and his successors gradually brought these overmighty subjects to heel, though both James and his grandson James III were to die at the hands of their own nobles. Parliament was developed as a counterpoise to the great nobles, and the marriage of James III to Margaret of Denmark in 1468 finally brought Orkney and the Shetlands into the kingdom. Scotland's first university, Saint Andrews, was founded in 1413, to be followed by the University of Glasgow in 1451.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Scotland by John H. Scotney. Copyright © 2010 Kuperard. Excerpted by permission of Bravo Ltd.
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