Beorn
08-09-2009, 05:57 PM
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00558/kilt_558347g.jpg
Unlike, perhaps, any race that ever lived, the Scots — or certainly those of a certain vintage — learnt their history from a souvenir tea-towel.
You may very well recall the device in question. It was always on offer in the gift shops and keepsake caves we encountered on childhood holidays to Mull or Millport, depicting a tableau vivant in which frock-coated, full-bearded gents went about devising the inventions that were to commend them to history. Here, for instance, John Logie Baird perfected his haunted fishtank as Alexander Graham Bell tinkered with house-to-house communication. Over there, Charles Macintosh was fashioning the raincoat and, later, Alexander Fleming accidentally synthesised penicillin.
This tea-towel was a history O-level in 75% Terylene. By stealth, sneakily as we cleaned the crockery, it inculcated in us the idea that the Scots invented everything — with the possible exception of Morris dancing, which the English were welcome to.
There’s an argument that, more than most, Scots could be considered cuckoos in the historical nest, serially insisting upon responsibility for the world as we know it, or at least the good bits. It’s a force of habit engendered by saloon-bar anecdotalism, by populist myth and legend and, most of all, by the obscuring mists of time.
It may be, of course, that were you to purchase kitchen requisites in, say, Holland, they’d be emblazoned with the achievements of Hans Lippershey, inventor of the telescope, or Willem Einthoven, creator of the electrocardiogram. But one rather doubts it. Half-true historical hubris seems an essentially Scottish invention.
We were reacquainted with the phenomenon last week with the news that Catherine Brown, the food writer, had uncovered yet another instance of Caledonian hostage-taking. Haggis, it would seem, was not the creation of gingery Highlanders who were keen to do something snacky with all their leftover sheep stomachs. Rather, the recipe appeared first in a cookbook entitled The English Hus-Wife, in 1615. This came 132 years before a Scot ever mentioned the dish, and 171 years prior to Robert Burns’s poetic PR job.
Thus we were reminded of the reverse side of the tea towel; of the fact that, for every Scottish claim of ownership and provenance, there seems to be a counter-claim. Our history and the totems and icons around which it is hinged are perennial subjects of debate and controversy, of border warfare. What seem to be givens are attacked first by correction then by revisionism. The kilt, to take the most commonly bruited example, was originally Irish and Danish and then a sort of kitsch fancy-dress popularised by Sir Walter Scott; Hogmanay is a French word; whisky has its roots, should you care to investigate them, in Italy and China. By now, the alternative histories of tartan (invented by the central European Hallstatt tribe), bagpipes (known to the Hittites) and Bonnie Prince Charlie (light-loafered drunk from Bologna) are as well known as the official varieties.
“They are very important, they are symbols of being Scottish and we are very proud of that,” argues Sandra White, SNP member for Glasgow. “It’s what people associate with Scotland. The tartan and bagpipes might not have originated from Scotland, but they are Celtic. I don’t mind stealing other people’s good ideas.”
The English, however, might have a contrary slant on the lineage of the lightbulb. Now, the lightbulb feels as though it might be a Scottish invention. It’s ingenious, mechanical and late-Victorian. It has the appropriate light-engineering feel that evokes a bearded bloke in a garden shed with a soldering iron. And, indeed, Wikipedia tells us that “in 1835 James Bowman Lindsay demonstrated a constant electric light at a public meeting in Dundee, Scotland. He stated he could ‘read a book at a distance of one and a half feet’.” A more authoritative source, however, tells us: “The first electric light was made in 1800 by Humphry Davy, an English scientist. When he connected wires to his battery and a piece of carbon, the carbon glowed, producing light.”
Michael Fry, the author and historian who has challenged the Scottish triumphalist impulse, believes this need to appropriate other countries’ inventions has something to do with our small country syndrome and our need to assert a separate identity.
“Certain kinds of Scots need to cling on to these things because Scotland is not an independent country and in charge of its own fate,” he says. “Over the centuries, Scots have found other ways to preserve their identity. The Scottish financial system was in part inspired by a desire to be different from the English. Scottish banknotes are another example.”
“The impetus in defining Scottish values is to be not-English,” he adds. “Whatever the English might choose in the future, Scots will choose precisely the opposite. This has its uses in keeping Scottish nationhood going. It is not the symbol that is important but its meaning. If the English took over tartan then the Scots would wear flowery shirts, and if the English would take over whisky, Scots would take on Bacardi. If it was found that these things were not Scottish we would just invent new symbols.”
The historian Tom Devine dubs the tendency sartorial nationalism: “In the late 18th and early 19th century the Highlands came to represent the whole of Scotland, not just here but abroad. There was a need to maintain a kind of Scottish identity, but not a Scottish identity which would be threatening to the Union. That’s why I call it sartorial nationalism, not political nationalism, but a nationalism of dress. And it has been extraordinarily successful. A Scotsman dressed that way today is immediately recognisable as a Scot, but of course it is an invention.”
Concomitant with this tendency is a secondary phenomenon. We might call it Rowling Syndrome, as in the Gloucestershire-born but forcibly-repatriated author of the Harry Potter novels. It’s the habit that appropriates for the nation those with only the most tenuous connection to it.
In some cases this is not entirely Scotland’s fault. Those who are canvassed for their opinions frequently know they’ll receive more favourable coverage if they tailor their remarks to the regionality of those who’ll consume them. The late comedian Frankie Howerd, for instance, once regaled me with tales of his childhood in Kilmarnock, seemingly ignorant of the fact that he actually spent it in York. The actor David Niven, most Scots will tell you, hailed from Kirriemuir, though this was a lie that Niven himself, born in London, initiated. As noted in Edwin Moore’s book, Scotland: 1,000 Things You Need To Know, Niven’s portrayal of Bonnie Prince Charlie in the 1948 movie is “truly odd”.
On the whole, though, Scotland does tend to practice its own tortuous blend of genealogy and eugenics, an ingenious, convoluted witchcraft that detects Scottishness in the unlikeliest of contexts. The sine qua non of this has to be ye ancient folk myth that Pontius Pilate was born in Aberdeenshire, the son of a Roman soldier stationed at Fortingall. The myth is vitiated somewhat by the reality that the Romans arrived in Scotland 40 years after Pilate’s death.
There are modern equivalents, too. The Beatles are, perhaps, the most frequent. Admittedly an early member of the band, Stuart Sutcliffe, was born in Edinburgh, though he left before the hits and died young. Yes, Paul McCartney did buy a farm near Campbeltown, though principally because in more built-up areas there were thousands of young girls who wished to pull his hair out. John Lennon took childhood holidays in Durness, Sutherland and 20 years later crashed his car near Golspie while on a driving holiday. In the main, though, the connections were no more plentiful than those of most Britons who grew up in the era before foreign holidays. This, however, didn’t prevent the publication last year of a 328-page book titled, The Beatles in Scotland.
Others find themselves attached to the inventory of Scottish creatives through only the most spurious accidents of birth, such as David Byrne of Talking Heads who departed Dumbarton aged two, Mark Knopfler, who left Glasgow for Newcastle at seven, Donovan who split Maryhill aged ten, and, of course, Rod Stewart who has only a patrilineal connection to Scotland.
As for thespians, there’s Emma Thompson (born in Paddington to a Glaswegian mother), Mike Myers (raised in Canada with a Scottish grandparent) and Jonny Lee Miller who has made a career playing Caledonians despite hailing from Kingston-upon-Thames. Famously the Vincente Minnelli movie Brigadoon was filmed in Hollywood because Scotland was deemed insufficiently Scottish-looking. A large part of Mel Gibson’s Braveheart was shot in Ireland.
Strangely, though, we rarely hear much about Birth of a Nation, an early cinema classic whose Caledonian connections are overlooked, perhaps on account of a speech given during the launch of the Ku Klux Klan: “Here,” says the white-hooded baddie, “I raise the ancient symbol of an unconquered race of men, the fiery cross of old Scotland’s hills. . .”
Meanwhile, in a 2003 episode of his quiz show QI, Stephen Fry remarked with amazement on the things Scotland did discover or invent but for which it rarely claimed credit. The list included adhesive stamps, the Australian national anthem, the decimal point, the Encyclopædia Britannica, hypnosis, the United States Navy, insulin, the hypodermic syringe and Bovril. It also includes the Bank of England*. But somehow that wouldn’t look quite right on the tea-towel.
Source (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article6788745.ece?token=null&offset=0&page=1)
* I knew that already, and trust me, they certainly let us English know about it. :D
Unlike, perhaps, any race that ever lived, the Scots — or certainly those of a certain vintage — learnt their history from a souvenir tea-towel.
You may very well recall the device in question. It was always on offer in the gift shops and keepsake caves we encountered on childhood holidays to Mull or Millport, depicting a tableau vivant in which frock-coated, full-bearded gents went about devising the inventions that were to commend them to history. Here, for instance, John Logie Baird perfected his haunted fishtank as Alexander Graham Bell tinkered with house-to-house communication. Over there, Charles Macintosh was fashioning the raincoat and, later, Alexander Fleming accidentally synthesised penicillin.
This tea-towel was a history O-level in 75% Terylene. By stealth, sneakily as we cleaned the crockery, it inculcated in us the idea that the Scots invented everything — with the possible exception of Morris dancing, which the English were welcome to.
There’s an argument that, more than most, Scots could be considered cuckoos in the historical nest, serially insisting upon responsibility for the world as we know it, or at least the good bits. It’s a force of habit engendered by saloon-bar anecdotalism, by populist myth and legend and, most of all, by the obscuring mists of time.
It may be, of course, that were you to purchase kitchen requisites in, say, Holland, they’d be emblazoned with the achievements of Hans Lippershey, inventor of the telescope, or Willem Einthoven, creator of the electrocardiogram. But one rather doubts it. Half-true historical hubris seems an essentially Scottish invention.
We were reacquainted with the phenomenon last week with the news that Catherine Brown, the food writer, had uncovered yet another instance of Caledonian hostage-taking. Haggis, it would seem, was not the creation of gingery Highlanders who were keen to do something snacky with all their leftover sheep stomachs. Rather, the recipe appeared first in a cookbook entitled The English Hus-Wife, in 1615. This came 132 years before a Scot ever mentioned the dish, and 171 years prior to Robert Burns’s poetic PR job.
Thus we were reminded of the reverse side of the tea towel; of the fact that, for every Scottish claim of ownership and provenance, there seems to be a counter-claim. Our history and the totems and icons around which it is hinged are perennial subjects of debate and controversy, of border warfare. What seem to be givens are attacked first by correction then by revisionism. The kilt, to take the most commonly bruited example, was originally Irish and Danish and then a sort of kitsch fancy-dress popularised by Sir Walter Scott; Hogmanay is a French word; whisky has its roots, should you care to investigate them, in Italy and China. By now, the alternative histories of tartan (invented by the central European Hallstatt tribe), bagpipes (known to the Hittites) and Bonnie Prince Charlie (light-loafered drunk from Bologna) are as well known as the official varieties.
“They are very important, they are symbols of being Scottish and we are very proud of that,” argues Sandra White, SNP member for Glasgow. “It’s what people associate with Scotland. The tartan and bagpipes might not have originated from Scotland, but they are Celtic. I don’t mind stealing other people’s good ideas.”
The English, however, might have a contrary slant on the lineage of the lightbulb. Now, the lightbulb feels as though it might be a Scottish invention. It’s ingenious, mechanical and late-Victorian. It has the appropriate light-engineering feel that evokes a bearded bloke in a garden shed with a soldering iron. And, indeed, Wikipedia tells us that “in 1835 James Bowman Lindsay demonstrated a constant electric light at a public meeting in Dundee, Scotland. He stated he could ‘read a book at a distance of one and a half feet’.” A more authoritative source, however, tells us: “The first electric light was made in 1800 by Humphry Davy, an English scientist. When he connected wires to his battery and a piece of carbon, the carbon glowed, producing light.”
Michael Fry, the author and historian who has challenged the Scottish triumphalist impulse, believes this need to appropriate other countries’ inventions has something to do with our small country syndrome and our need to assert a separate identity.
“Certain kinds of Scots need to cling on to these things because Scotland is not an independent country and in charge of its own fate,” he says. “Over the centuries, Scots have found other ways to preserve their identity. The Scottish financial system was in part inspired by a desire to be different from the English. Scottish banknotes are another example.”
“The impetus in defining Scottish values is to be not-English,” he adds. “Whatever the English might choose in the future, Scots will choose precisely the opposite. This has its uses in keeping Scottish nationhood going. It is not the symbol that is important but its meaning. If the English took over tartan then the Scots would wear flowery shirts, and if the English would take over whisky, Scots would take on Bacardi. If it was found that these things were not Scottish we would just invent new symbols.”
The historian Tom Devine dubs the tendency sartorial nationalism: “In the late 18th and early 19th century the Highlands came to represent the whole of Scotland, not just here but abroad. There was a need to maintain a kind of Scottish identity, but not a Scottish identity which would be threatening to the Union. That’s why I call it sartorial nationalism, not political nationalism, but a nationalism of dress. And it has been extraordinarily successful. A Scotsman dressed that way today is immediately recognisable as a Scot, but of course it is an invention.”
Concomitant with this tendency is a secondary phenomenon. We might call it Rowling Syndrome, as in the Gloucestershire-born but forcibly-repatriated author of the Harry Potter novels. It’s the habit that appropriates for the nation those with only the most tenuous connection to it.
In some cases this is not entirely Scotland’s fault. Those who are canvassed for their opinions frequently know they’ll receive more favourable coverage if they tailor their remarks to the regionality of those who’ll consume them. The late comedian Frankie Howerd, for instance, once regaled me with tales of his childhood in Kilmarnock, seemingly ignorant of the fact that he actually spent it in York. The actor David Niven, most Scots will tell you, hailed from Kirriemuir, though this was a lie that Niven himself, born in London, initiated. As noted in Edwin Moore’s book, Scotland: 1,000 Things You Need To Know, Niven’s portrayal of Bonnie Prince Charlie in the 1948 movie is “truly odd”.
On the whole, though, Scotland does tend to practice its own tortuous blend of genealogy and eugenics, an ingenious, convoluted witchcraft that detects Scottishness in the unlikeliest of contexts. The sine qua non of this has to be ye ancient folk myth that Pontius Pilate was born in Aberdeenshire, the son of a Roman soldier stationed at Fortingall. The myth is vitiated somewhat by the reality that the Romans arrived in Scotland 40 years after Pilate’s death.
There are modern equivalents, too. The Beatles are, perhaps, the most frequent. Admittedly an early member of the band, Stuart Sutcliffe, was born in Edinburgh, though he left before the hits and died young. Yes, Paul McCartney did buy a farm near Campbeltown, though principally because in more built-up areas there were thousands of young girls who wished to pull his hair out. John Lennon took childhood holidays in Durness, Sutherland and 20 years later crashed his car near Golspie while on a driving holiday. In the main, though, the connections were no more plentiful than those of most Britons who grew up in the era before foreign holidays. This, however, didn’t prevent the publication last year of a 328-page book titled, The Beatles in Scotland.
Others find themselves attached to the inventory of Scottish creatives through only the most spurious accidents of birth, such as David Byrne of Talking Heads who departed Dumbarton aged two, Mark Knopfler, who left Glasgow for Newcastle at seven, Donovan who split Maryhill aged ten, and, of course, Rod Stewart who has only a patrilineal connection to Scotland.
As for thespians, there’s Emma Thompson (born in Paddington to a Glaswegian mother), Mike Myers (raised in Canada with a Scottish grandparent) and Jonny Lee Miller who has made a career playing Caledonians despite hailing from Kingston-upon-Thames. Famously the Vincente Minnelli movie Brigadoon was filmed in Hollywood because Scotland was deemed insufficiently Scottish-looking. A large part of Mel Gibson’s Braveheart was shot in Ireland.
Strangely, though, we rarely hear much about Birth of a Nation, an early cinema classic whose Caledonian connections are overlooked, perhaps on account of a speech given during the launch of the Ku Klux Klan: “Here,” says the white-hooded baddie, “I raise the ancient symbol of an unconquered race of men, the fiery cross of old Scotland’s hills. . .”
Meanwhile, in a 2003 episode of his quiz show QI, Stephen Fry remarked with amazement on the things Scotland did discover or invent but for which it rarely claimed credit. The list included adhesive stamps, the Australian national anthem, the decimal point, the Encyclopædia Britannica, hypnosis, the United States Navy, insulin, the hypodermic syringe and Bovril. It also includes the Bank of England*. But somehow that wouldn’t look quite right on the tea-towel.
Source (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article6788745.ece?token=null&offset=0&page=1)
* I knew that already, and trust me, they certainly let us English know about it. :D