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 Electric
Scotland's Weekly Email Newsletter
   
  
Dear
Friend
It's your
Electric Scotland newsletter meaning the weekend is nearly here :-)
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See our Calendar of Scottish Events around the world and add your
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CONTENTS
--------
Electric Scotland News
The Flag in the Wind
Poetry and Stories
The Writings of John Muir
Fraser's Scottish Annual
Robert Burns Lives!
The Scottish Church
Pioneer Life in Zorra
John Stuart Blackie
Memoirs of a Highland Lady
Old World Scotland (New Book)
Canadians do it better
ELECTRIC SCOTLAND NEWS
----------------------
Well I have to admit that I got totally messed up with Canada Day
and my friends Nola and Harold coming for a visit. And so thinking
this was Thursday I was ready to do the newsletter when Julie came
in.... I said your a day early... she said no I'm not this is
Friday!!! And so you'll be receiving this newsletter a little late
this week.
We have enjoyed seeing some old friends appearing in our Aois
Community and we're working through a couple of issues with the
system. Like when you got into our picture gallery you couldn't get
out of it as the home link just took you to the home page of the
gallery.
We have also put in place a fairly tight sign on system to try and
eliminate spammers. When you sign up for the system you get sent an
email asking you to confirm you wish to join by clicking on a link
in the email we send you. Having done that Steve will also manually
approve you and when he does he'll send you an email telling you
that you have been approved. When you click on the link to verify
you wish to join that also sends an email to Steve telling him you
are awaiting approval and when he gets that he knows to do the
manual approval.
We also implemented a spam blocker service where known spammers are
logged and we have already noted that by using that service our
spammers are down to near zero whereas when we last had the system
in use we were getting at least 50 a day trying to get in. So in all
this new login system seems to be working very well indeed.
I might also add that Steve is also checking any pictures going up
so when you add pictures to the system they also need to be approved
prior to being made available. A few of you might remember that in
the last system we did get someone in posting pornographic pictures
so this way that should not happen again. There should only ever be
a maximum of 24 hours before your pictures are approved for public
viewing but of course if you marked them private they will remain
private.
We also had some fun with our menu bar but as we're also learning it
took a wee bit of work to find out how to apply new features to it
but now we've learned how to do that.
So it's been great to get some of you in and using the service
revealing a few issues that needed to be fixed.
Overall we're right now just making sure all the features introduced
to the service work as they should and once we're happy with that
we'll move on to introducing some additional features we have
waiting in the wings.
You can sign up for a free account at
http://www.scotchat.org/vbull
ABOUT THE STORIES
-----------------
Some of the stories in here are just parts of a larger story so do
check out the site for the full versions. You can always find the
link in our "What's New" section at the link at the top of this
newsletter or on our site menu.
THE FLAG IN THE WIND
--------------------
This weeks Flag is compiled by Mark Hirst who gets into the debate
on whether an Independent Scotland should retain the Queen.
You can read the Flag at
http://www.scotsindependent.org
Christina McKelvie MSP's Weekly diary is not available as the
Parliament are now on the Summer recess.
Poetry and Stories
------------------
You can read other stories in our Article Service and even add your
own at
http://www.electricscotland.com/article
The Writings of John Muir
-------------------------
We're now onto our 8th volume - Steep Trails - California, Utah,
Nevada, Washington, Oregon, The Grand Cańon with...
Chapter VI. The City of the Saints
Chapter VII. A Great Storm in Utah
Chapter VIII. Bathing in Salt Lake
Chapter IX. Mormon Lilies
Chapter X. The San Gabriel Valley
Chapter XI. The Gabriel Mountains
Chapter XII. Nevada Farms
Chapter XIII. Nevada Forests
Here is how chapter VIII starts...
WHEN the north wind blows, bathing in Salt Lake is a glorious
baptism, for then it is all wildly awake with waves, blooming like a
prairie in snowy crystal foam. Plunging confidently into the midst
of the grand uproar you are hugged and welcomed, and swim without
effort, rocking and heaving up and down, in delightful rhythm, while
the winds sing in chorus and the cool, fragrant brine searches every
fiber of your body; and at length you are tossed ashore with a glad
Godspeed, braced and salted and clean as a saint.
The nearest point on the shore-line is distant about ten miles from
Salt Lake City, and is almost inaccessible on account of the boggy
character of the ground, but, by taking the Western Utah Railroad,
at a distance of twenty miles you reach what is called Lake Point,
where the shore is gravelly and wholesome and abounds in fine
retreating bays that seem to have been made on purpose for bathing.
Here the northern peaks of the Oquirrh Range plant their feet in the
clear blue brine, with fine curving insteps, leaving no space for
muddy levels. The crystal brightness of the water, the wild flowers,
and the lovely mountain scenery make this a favorite summer resort
for pleasure and health seekers. Numerous excursion trains are run
from the city, and parties, some of them numbering upwards of a
thousand, come to bathe, and dance, and roam the flowery hillsides
together.
But at the time of my first visit in May, I fortunately found myself
alone. The hotel and bathhouse, which form the chief improvements of
the place, were sleeping in winter silence, notwithstanding the year
was in full bloom. It was one of those genial sun-days when flowers
and flies come thronging to the light, and birds sing their best.
The mountain-ranges, stretching majestically north and south, were
piled with pearly cumuli, the sky overhead was pure azure, and the
wind-swept lake was all aroll and aroar with whitecaps.
I sauntered along the shore until I came to a sequestered cove,
where buttercups and wild peas were blooming close down to the limit
reached by the waves. Here, I thought, is just the place for a bath;
but the breakers seemed terribly boisterous and forbidding as they
came rolling up the beach, or dashed white against the rocks that
bounded the cove on the east. The outer ranks, ever broken, ever
builded, formed a magnificent rampart, sculptured and corniced like
the hanging wall of a bergschrund, and appeared hopelessly
insurmountable, however easily one might ride the swelling waves
beyond. I feasted awhile on their beauty, watching their coming in
from afar like faithful messengers, to tell their stories one by
one; then I turned reluctantly away, to botanize and wait a calm.
But the calm did not come that day, nor did I wait long. In an hour
or two I was back again to the same little cove. The waves still
sang the old storm song, and rose in high crystal walls, seemingly
hard enough to be cut in sections, like ice.
You cab read the rest of this chapter at
http://www.electricscotland.com/history/muir/vol8_chapter8.htm
The rest of the chapters can be read at
http://www.electricscotland.com/history/muir/index.htm
Fraser's Scottish Annual
------------------------
These are articles from the 1900 - 1904 issues of Fraser's Scottish
Annual. This week we've added...
The Scottish Quern in Canada
A Study in the Growth of Legends
Old Crofter in the Highlands of Sutherland
Leading Scottish Books of the Year
The Heather
Characteristic Anecdotes
The article on John Barbour last week made me realise what an
important contribution he left by telling the story of Robert the
Bruce as he lived at a time when he was still living and so his
account of The Bruce is said to be as accurate as it is possible to
be. I thus searched and found a translation of his account of The
Bruce and will be adding that to the site.
This week the story of The Scottish Quern in Canada is most
interesting... it starts...
AMONG the many valuable relics to be found in the museum of Queen's
University, Kingston, is one which cannot fail to draw the attention
of the visitor. This relic is a Scottish quern, the hand grist-mill
of the old days, which was added to the University Museum collection
in March, 1898, the donation of j Mr. Angus MacCuaig, Kirk Hill,
Glengarry County, Ontario.
This quern first came to my notice while on a visit to my
granduncle, Mr. MacCuaig, in the summer of 1892, when he showed it
to me and told me something of its history. At that time he had
offered the quern to the Redpaths, of Montreal, to whom he was
related by marriage, for the Red- path Museum at McGill University.
His generous offer must evidently have been forgotten, for some
years afterwards I learned that my granduncle still had the stones
in his possession, and in 1898 I succeeded in pressing the claims of
Queen's University Museum for them, and soon after in receiving my
uncle's donation and placing the same in the museum of my Alma
Mater.
In structure the quern is very simple, being in the shape of two
flat circular stone discs, closely fitting on top of each other.
These discs are made from flat slabs of a metamorphic rock known as
mica- schist or glossy-schist, which is thickly studded with common
garnet crystals. The fine-grained schistose rock itself is not only
a very hard material, but with the harder garnet well cemented in
it, a good abrasive or grinding surface is secured. Being a highly
stratified rock, after being quarried in large slabs, it is easily
split into thinner slabs of from one and a half to two inches in
thickness, and then dressed to the desired circular shape with edges
bevelled. The specimen in question is about eighteen inches in
diameter, and is in two sections, each of which is about one and
three-quarter inches in thickness.
The rest of this article can be read at
http://www.electricscotland.com/history/canada/annual/article64.htm
The other articles can be read at
http://www.electricscotland.com/history/canada/annual/
Robert Burns Lives!
-------------------
By Frank Shaw
Frank is in London as we read this but he managed to send in another
chapter in his series...
'Law and Order' in 18th C. Edinburgh, The Case of Miss Burns V the
Baillie by Robert Carnie
As I write this, I am on busy and noisy Earl’s Court Road in London
with the windows throughout the apartment pushed open to combat what
London calls a “heat wave” that no where rivals the high 90s we left
in Georgia over a week ago! But, one can be thankful that our
bedroom here is located on the back of the building and a good
night’s sleep can be found! Susan and I are still on our “trip of a
lifetime” with our grandchildren, Ian and Stirling, and their
parents, son Scott and daughter-in-law Denise. I will give you more
details of our trip in the days ahead, but our attention is
presently turned once again to the writings of the late Dr. Robert
Carnie. Our thanks to his son Andrew for sharing several of his
father’s speeches with our readers, and it should be noted they are
presented as written without editorial by me. This particular speech
is amusing and includes a brief description by Robert Burns. I hope
you enjoy it as much as I have. (FRS: 6.30.09)
You can read the rest of this article at
http://www.electricscotland.com/familytree/frank/burns_lives57.htm
And you can read other articles in this Robert Burns Lives! series
at
http://www.electricscotland.com/familytree/frank/burns.htm
The Scottish Church
-------------------
From Earliest Times to 1881, By W. Chambers (1881)
Our thanks go to John Henderson for sending this into us.
we've added another Lecture...
Lecture IX
The Church of the Eighteenth Century, 1707 TO 1800 A.D., By the Very
Rev. John Tulloch, D.D., LL.D., Principal of St Mary's College, St
Andrews, and one of Her Majesty's Chaplains.
It starts...
THE subject assigned me is a large one, requiring an extended
canvas. In the short space allotted to me, I can onlydraw some of
its salient features. It is, moreover, a difficult and critical
subject, stirring questions of which we have not- yet seen the end,
and bringing before us for the first time fully-developed parties,
whose rival influence has modified the whole modern history of the
Church of Scotland, and whose conflicts and jealousies survive to
the present time. I must therefore not only work upon a reduced
canvas, but with a very delicate pencil. Whatever use these St
Giles' Lectures may be, one of their main intentions must be to
soften, rather than to harden ecclesiastical prejudices, and make
the controversies and asperities of the past a warning for our
better guidance, rather
than a stimulus to our unspent feuds. The Lecturer must of course
say what he thinks; but he must say it with discrimination, and in
charity towards all.
You can read the rest of this lecture at
http://www.electricscotland.com/bible/scottishchurch/jTheChurchInThe18thCentury1707-1800AD.pdf
The other pages can be read at
http://www.electricscotland.com/bible/scottishchurch/
Pioneer Life in Zorra
---------------------
By Rev W. A. MacKay, (1899)
We have now completed this book with...
Chapter XXIV. Zorra's Famous Missionary
Chapter XXV. What Shall the Harvest Be?
Here is how Chapter XvIII starts...
ONE of Zorra's Sons effected a revolution in the Presbyterian Church
of Canada. In the year 1854, Dr. Alex. Duff visited this continent,
and the result of his burning eloquence was the appointment of a
committee for the establishment of an independent Canadian foreign
mission, in connection with the western section of the Presbyterian
Church. In the eastern section they had already been aroused to
action by Dr. Geddie, and had begun work in the New Hebrides. But a
foreign mission committee and a foreign mission are not identical.
Sixteen years had passed before they found the first foreign
missionary. Several attempts were made without success. On three
occasions calls were extended to ministers whose Presbyteries
refused to release them from their congregations.
In 1871 the Church had just one ordained missionary, the Rev. James
Nisbet, laboring amongst the Indians at Prince Albert. It is not
surprising that the Foreign Mission Committee felt somewhat
depressed, and so expressed themselves to the Synod.
But the turning point came. In June, 1855, the members of the
Committee had agreed to hold a concert of prayer every Saturday
evening, and through the Record to invite the cooperation of others,
in seeking a blessing upon their work. These prayers were about to
be answered.
George Leslie Mackay, son of God-fearing parents in Zorra, who had
just completed his theological course in Princeton Seminary, N. J.,
offered his services to the Committee. His mind was made up that his
life should be spent among the heathen; but before applying
elsewhere, he felt it to be his duty to seek the patronage of his
own Canadian Church, and, if possible, lead the Canadian Church into
more aggressive work. The offer was accepted, and it was agreed,
after a good deal of correspondence, that he should go to labor
amongst the Chinese in Formosa.
You can read the rest of this at
http://www.electricscotland.com/history/canada/zorra/chapter24.htm
The other chapters can be read at
http://www.electricscotland.com/history/canada/zorra/index.htm
John Stuart Blackie
-------------------
By Anna M. Stoddart (1895)
Added more chapters this week...
Chapter XI. 'Ćschylus' and the Greek Chair 1850 - 1852
Aim of the Greek translation—Irregular and regular rhyme —Students'
reading-parties—The Hellenic Society—The British Association in
Edinburgh—Methods of learning languages - An early educational
reformer-Again in Germany—The Greek Chair at Edinburgh--Professor
Blackie's candidature- Disappearance of prejudices- The Greek Chair
won—Sectarian opposition— Notes of gratitude.
Chapter XII. Edinburgh 1852 - 1857
Parting gifts and regrets—Edinburgh in 1852—The pronunciation of
Greek—Departure for Greece—In Athens—Life in Athens—A drought of
rhyme—The Greek assistant lecturer - Work of the Greek classes -
Success of the Greek classes—Lectures at the Philosophical
Institution —Summer quarters at Bonn-Dr Guthrie's discourses— The
"Blackie Brotherhood".
Chapter XIII. Lays, Lectures and Lyrics 1857 - 1860
The "Braemar Ballads "—Professor Gerhard—' On Beauty'- Visit to
Cambridge - Miss Janet Chambers - Sydney Dobehl on Garibaldi—The
British Association at Aberdeen —The 'Lyrical Poems'—First meeting
with Mr Gladstone —Lord John Russell—The home in Hill Street—Social
entertainments—Changes in family circle.
Volume II
Chapter XIV. Homer 1861 - 1866
Popular lectures—Beginning of interest in Gaelic—Inaugural
class-lectures-London celebrities - A Highland home— Publication of
'homer '—Last visit to Professor Aytoun - The Oban house—Translation
of Bunsen's poems—Plenishing of Aitnacraig—Aim of the translation of
'Homer'— Plan of the translation of 'Homer '—Specimen of the
translation of 'Homer'.
Chapter XV. The Highlands and Islands 1866 - 1870
A political encounter—Lectures on Plato—Visit to Browning —Summer
days at Altnacraig—Threatened prosecution for trespass—Tour in
Orkney and Shetland—The gospel of Utilitarianism—Reforms in
classical teaching—Greek Travelling Scholarship—An Oxford
reading-party—Royal Institution lectures—At Pembroke
Lodge—Appreciation of 'Lothair '—Dun Ee.
Chapter XVI. Pilgrim Years 1870 - 1872
The Franco-German war—En route for Berlin—At Gottingen —Bismark—At
Moscow—The 'Four Phases of Morals'- ,New edition of 'Faust'—Love for
the Highlands—Carivie on Spiritualism - A Highland itineracy-'Lays
of the Highlands and Islands'—An address done into Greek— Decadence
of Edinburgh society.
Chapter XVII. 'Self-Culture' 1873 - 1874
Death of Dr Guthrie—Lecture oil tour in Westphalia—Inception of the
Celtic Chair—Sitting for his portrait—An encounter with Bradlaugh—An
evening with Carlyle—At Dublin—Reading Irish history—St John's Eve
in Limerick—Excursion to Skye—At Inveraray Castle.
Chapter XVIII. The Celtic Chair 1875 - 1876
Gaelic in danger of extinction—Contributions to the fund—A charming
letter—At Oxford—Tour in the Hebrides— Flora Macdonald's
birthplace—'Songs of Religion and of Life'—The Ossianic
controversy—Hill Street hospitalities —Lectures on "Scottish
Song"—Scottish music—Scottish Universities Commission—At Loch
Baa—'Language and Literature of the Highlands'—Banquet to H. H.
Wylldham —Sir Henry Irving on influence of the stage.
Here is how the account of The Celtic Chair starts...
THE record of this movement from start to finish forms the main
source for Professor BIackie's biography during the ensuing four
years.
The matter had been relegated to the University Council as soon as
he seriously undertook its promotion. A committee was formed, which
included representatives of the Edinburgh University, of the
Highlands, of Celtic scholarship, and of the Free Church. Sir
Alexander Grant, Professor Masson, Cluny Macpherson, Mr Alexander
Nicolson, Lord Neaves, and Professor Macgregor were its members.
Professor Blackie was member and convener, as well as executor of
its behests. Papers indicating the circumstances which made the
preservation of Celtic dialects urgent, and fitted with blank pages
for subscription-lists, were prepared and forwarded to all parts of
the kingdom, as well as to all provinces and colonies of the empire
where Highlanders were resident. These were accompanied by the
Professor's personal appeal,—on behalf of the maintenance of Gaelic
in the Highlands for the people; of the Celtic dialects in the
University for the needs of philological study.
The schools consequent upon the new educational policy were—in all
parts of the Highlands —sapping the very foundations of their
language. Manned by English-speaking teachers, they condemned the
children who did not understand English to sit side by side with
those who did, to read the same lessons, and to profit by them as
best they could. To little girls and boys who painfully learned to
utter sounds which conveyed 110 meaning to them, the hours at school
were an unredeemed penance. The teacher had no means of relieving
their futility, for a knowledge of Gaelic was not a necessary
qualification for his post. At the expense of these early victims,
however, the conviction was well stamped into the minds of the
Highlanders that education, employment, success depended upon their
losing the mother-tongue and adopting that of the Sassenach
law-maker. We hear much, and with some indignation, of interference
with the languages of Poland, Finland, and such outlying lands of
imperial rule; but the process went on in the Highlands and Islands
of Scotland with a slow, sure, and impalpable tyranny. To arrest its
mischievous pressure, and to save Gaelic from extinction, was as
much the aim of the "Apostle of the Celts" as was the mere academic
rescue of its language and literature. He addressed himself to a
more concentrated study of these than hitherto,—communicated with
every available scholar whose proficiency was by right of birth as
well as by right of inclination,—sought out the local poets and
archologists, with whom remained the treasure of traditional
lore,—and translated himself passages from the Ossianic poems, and
lyrical, heroic, or elegiac songs from the Highland "makers" of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Mr Campbell of Islay was one of
his helpers; and Alexander Nicolson, the loyalest Celt, the truest
friend, the sweetest singer of his clan, gave him unwearied
assistance in disentangling the historical from the mythical in the
mass over which he pored.
You can read the rest of this chapter at
http://www.electricscotland.com/history/blackie/chapter18.htm
You can read these chapters at
http://www.electricscotland.com/history/blackie/
Memoirs of a Highland Lady
--------------------------
The Autobiography of Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus afterwards Mrs
Smith of Baltiboys 1797-1830.
Added more chapters to this book...
Chapter IX. 1812
Chapter X. 1570-1813
Chapter XI. 1813
Chapter XII. 1813-1814
Chapter XIII. 1814
Chapter XIV. 1814-1815
Chapter XV. 1815-1817
Chapter XVI. 1817-1818
Chapter XIII starts...
IN years long gone by a certain William Grant had enlisted as a
soldier and gone off to foreign parts, never to return in his former
station among his people. He rose early from the ranks, and during a
prosperous career in India won for himself fame, and rupees to
balance it. A curious kind of narrow-minded man, he had, however,
the common virtue of his race—he never forgot his relations; in his
advancement he remembered all, none were neglected. There was a deal
of good sense, too, in the ways he took to provide for them. One
brother was never more nor less than a common soldier; we knew him
as Peter the Pensioner, on account of sixpence a day my father got
him from Greenwich, in lieu of an eye he had lost in some
engagement. He lived in one of the cottages on the Milltown muir,
with a decent wife and a large family of children, all of whom
earned their bread by labour. We had a son in the wood-work and a
daughter as kitchenmaid during the time their uncle the General was
paying a visit to us. The next brother rose to be a major, and
retiring from the army in middle life, settled on the farm of
Craggan some miles down Speyside. His two sons, educated by the
uncle, were both lieutenant-colonels before their death. The
daughter, to whom he was equally kind, he took out to India, where
she married a civilian high in the service. The rest of his
relations he left in their own place, merely befriending them
occasionally; but for his mother, when she became a widow and wished
to return to Rothiemurchus, where she was born, he built a cottage
in a situation chosen by herself, at the foot of the Ord Bain,
surrounded by birch trees, just in front of the old castle on the
loch. Here she lived many years very happy in her own humble way on
a little pension he transmitted to her regularly, neither "lifted
up" herself by the fortunate career of her son, nor more considered
by the neighbours in consequence. She was just the Widow Grant to
her death.
After she was gone, no one caring to live in so lonely a spot, the
cottage fell to ruin; only the walls were standing when my father
took a fancy to restore it, add to it, and make it a picture of an
English cottage home. He gave it high chimneys, gable ends, and wide
windows. Within were three rooms, a parlour, a front kitchen
boarded, and a back kitchen bricked. He hoped my mother would have
fitted it up like to her Houghton recollections of peasant comfort,
but it was not her turn. She began indeed by putting six
green-painted Windsor chairs into the front kitchen, and hanging a
spare warming-pan on the wall, there being no bedroom in the
cottage; there her labours ended. The shutters of those cheerful
rooms were seldom opened, stones and moss lay undisturbed around its
white-washed walls, hardly any one ever entered the door; but it had
a good effect in the scenery. Coming out of the birch wood it struck
every eye, and seen from the water when we were in the boat rowing
over the loch, that single habitation amid the solitude enlivened
the landscape. We young people had the key, for it was our business
to go there on fine days to open the windows, and sometimes when we
walked that way we went in to rest. How often we had wished it were
our own, that we might fit it up to our fancy.
This spring I was furnished with a new occupation. My mother told me
that my childhood had passed away; I was now seventeen, and must for
the future be dressed suitably to the class "young lady" into which
I had passed. Correct measurements were taken by the help of Mrs
Mackenzie, and these were sent to the Miss Grants of Kinchurdy at
Inverness, and to aunt Leitch at Glasgow. I was extremely pleased I
always liked being nicely dressed, and when the various things
ordered arrived, my feelings rose to delight. My sisters and I had
hitherto been all dressed alike. In summer we wore pink gingham or
nankin frocks in the morning, white in the afternoon. Our common
bonnets were of coarse straw, lined with green, and we had tippets
to all our frocks. The best bonnets were of finer straw, lined and
trimmed with white, and we had silk spencers of any colour that
suited my mother's eye. In the winter we wore dark stuff frocks,
black and red for a while—the intended mourning for the king. At
night always scarlet stuff with bodices of black velvet and bands of
the same at the hem of the petticoat. While in England our wraps
were in pelisse form and made of cloth, with beaver bonnets; the
bonnets did in the Highlands, but on outgrowing the pelisses they
were replaced by cloaks with hoods, made of tartan spun and dyed by
Jenny Dairy, the red dress tartan of our clan, the sett originally
belonging to the Grants. Our habits were made of the green tartan,
now commonly known by our name, and first adopted when the Chief
raised the 42nd regiment; it was at first a rifle corps, and the
bright red of the belted plaid being too conspicuous, that colour
was left out in the tartan woven for the soldiers; thus it gradually
got into use in the clan, and still goes by the name of the Grant
42nd tartan.
You can read the rest of this chapter at
http://www.electricscotland.com/history/highlandlady/chapter13.htm
The rest of the chapters can be read at
http://www.electricscotland.com/history/highlandlady/index.htm
Old World Scotland
------------------
A new book we're starting giving Glimpses of its Modes and Manners,
By T. F. Henderson (1893).
We have the first chapter up about "On Wine and Ale". It starts...
DE QUINCEY, who has some claims as an authority on intoxicants has
opined that our northern climates have universally the taste latent,
if not developed, for powerful liquors. He may be right; but, as a
matter of fact, the taste has developed very slowly. In early times
it prevailed chiefly in climates where the grape was grown, or in
latitudes where bang and similar brews fired the savage breast.
Moreover, once a race has made choice of its liquor, it clings
thereto with a more than superstitious tenacity, and may be induced
to change even its religion with less reluctance and a lighter sense
of misgiving. It seems ultimately to be less a matter of appetite or
gustation than of sentiment. By its connection with the rites of
hospitality and the main episodes of social life the liquor of a
people becomes in some sort the symbol of its patriotism and its
nobler human feelings. Doubtless the increase of travel, the inter-
mixture of races, and the intercommunion between nations may tend
partly to obliterate such predilections; but now, as of old, it will
generally be found that, at least in the case of intoxicants, the
adoption, even partially, by one nation of another's liquor is to
some extent an evidence of reciprocal respect and goodwill. It was
not till after the accession of Dutch William to the throne of
England that Englishmen began to develop that affection for gin
which in the beginning of the eighteenth century led to such
extraordinary excesses. The English vogue for Scottish whisky also
has been at least coincident with a better appreciation of the Scot.
Possibly some of the more ardent of the Southron votaries of the
liquor have a lurking suspicion that it has a not very remote
connection with the Scot's persistency and "cannieness"; that while
"the haillsome parritch" is perhaps in some degree responsible for
his stamina, whisky even more than Calvinism has been his main
discipline and inspiration. Historically, however, whisky is not
more the national liquor of Scotland than the kilt is the national
dress, or Gaelic the national language. The only difference is that,
while the dress and language of the Highland Celt seem alike
destined to disappear at no distant date, whisky has not only
survived the conquest of the Highlands, but has extended its empire
to the Lowlands as well.
Originally the national liquor of Lowland Scotland, as of "Merrie
England," was ale, the universal liquor of the Saxons. There is
abundant evidence that ale was the universal beverage in the
Lowlands as early as the thirteenth century, and the presumption is
that its use in Caledonia was coeval with the arrival of our Saxon
forefathers. True, among the nobles wine was very much in use from
the thirteenth century onwards, and for several centuries it was
drunk among the upper classes more generally in Scotland than in
England. The Scottish vogue for wine was greatly owing to the
friendly relations between Scotland and France. The staple was
claret, though Malvoisie, Canary, Madeira, and other wines were
imported at an early period. Still, claret never became the Scots
national liquor, and although occasionally sold by Edinburgh
vintners at a very early period it could not be had in good country
inns till the eighteenth century. In "The Friars of Berwick," which
may be assigned to the end of the fifteenth or beginning of the
sixteenth century, the silly friars," Robert and Allan, are regaled
in the wonder good hostelrie" without the town on "stoups of ale
with. bread and cheese"; and there was evidently nothing better on
tap, for among the materials brought by the amorous Friar John for
his surreptitious feast with the landlady, while the other friars
were supposed to be asleep in the loft, were—
"Ane pair of bossis [Earthen bottles.] O good and fine
They hold ane gallon-full of Gascon wine."
That ale was at this period considered good enough even for the
richest merchants may also be inferred from the "Priests of
Peebles." The successful trafficker therein described had waxed
Sae full of woridis wealth and win
His hand he wash in ane silver basin";
but in regard to his table provisions it is deemed sufficient to
state that his wife had no doubt of dearth of ale nor bread."
The rest of this chapter can be read at
http://www.electricscotland.com/history/oldworld/chap1.htm
The book index page can be found at
http://www.electricscotland.com/history/oldworld/index.htm
Canadians do it better
----------------------
In celebration of Canada Day on 1st July 2009 I scanned in this
article from MacLean's magazine which you can read at
http://www.electricscotland.com/canada/canadians_better.htm
I might add that should I ever find a similar article about the USA,
Australia, etc I'm more than happy to share it with you :-)
And that's it for now and hope you all have a good weekend :-)
Alastair
http://www.electricscotland.com
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