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    Xenophobe's Guide to the Scots
    Xenophobe's Guide to the Scots
    Xenophobe's Guide to the Scots
    Ebook94 pages1 hour

    Xenophobe's Guide to the Scots

    By David Ross

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    About this ebook

    Two adjectives from their own form of the English language haunt the Scots. One is 'pawky', the other is 'dour'. The pawky Scot is a person with a droll grin and a wisecrack to accompany it. The dour Scot is a person with a grim expression, a grim mind, and a grim turn of phrase to accompany it. It is a special Scottish talent to combine both characteristics within the same person. Xenophobia is an irrational fear of foreigners, probably justified, always understandable. Xenophobe's Guides—an irreverent look at the beliefs and foibles of nations, almost guaranteed to cure Xenophobia.

     

    Innate instincts

    A Scotsman likes to feel that, almost by instinct, he could guddle a trout (palm it out of the water) or gralloch a deer (disembowel it with his knife), even if he spends his day driving a bus or designing software.

     

    A kilty cover-up

    If the Scots were to shed their seriousness, they would be noisier than the Neapolitans and wilder than the dancing Dervishes. Their reserve is not a defense against the rest of the world: it is a protective cover, like the lid of a nuclear reactor.

     

    Rob joy

    Calvinism is still deeply ingrained in the Scottish soul. A Scottish poet, overcome by the joy of sunshine and blue sky, once cried out what a fine day it was. The woman to whom he spoke replied, “We'll pay for it, we'll pay for it.”

     

    Cunning and clever

    The Scots respect cleverness and like to feel that they possess plenty of it themselves. In Scotland there is nothing wrong with being clever, so long as you show it by words or actions, rather than by bragging. You don't have to hide it. To say of someone that “he has a good conceit of himself” is neither praise nor blame, just a statement of fact.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOval Books
    Release dateDec 1, 2008
    ISBN9781908120816
    Xenophobe's Guide to the Scots
    Author

    David Ross

    David Scott Ross has travelled and taught throughout Asia since he first moved there in 1987. He currently teaches in upstate NY, where he lives with his wife and two sons. When David is not writing or teaching, he dreams about becoming a chef, a rock star, maybe an actor, but probably not all at once.

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      Book preview

      Xenophobe's Guide to the Scots - David Ross

      times.

      Nationalism & Identity

      Forewarned

      If there is one characteristic that defines the Scots it is that they are different. Not better or worse than anyone else, but definitely not to be confused with any other nation. A great deal of effort is put into being distinctive. Some people think this is all to do with the tourism industry, but they are quite wrong. The Scots do it entirely for their own satisfaction.

      Being Scottish is not simple and straightforward. For many Scots perfecting their Scottishness is a lifetime’s activity.

      Living as they do on the north-western edge of Europe, the Scots have evolved their own way of doing things, and take great pride in it. Being Scottish is not simple and straightforward, and for many Scots perfecting their Scottishness is a lifetime’s activity.

      This may lead you to think that the Scots are a nation addicted to showing off and boasting. Nothing could be further from the truth – they just want you to appreciate the fact that they are people who dance to their own particular tune. Knowing this enables you to appreciate their finer points: this is the essence of judgement, and all Scots are judges at heart.

      The Scots have a very sustained and steady sense of their own worth, and they don’t mind who knows it. Apart from such things as whisky, tartan, bagpipe music and Dundee cake, they have given the world the bicycle, gas for lighting, the first effective steam engine, the pneumatic tyre, chloroform, the telephone, television, penicillin, the ultra-sound scanner, paraffin, the mackintosh, the milking machine, the water softener, Dolly the cloned sheep… and if you didn’t know this, they’ll be glad to enlighten you. This is not a reticent, withdrawn, sorry-we’ve-bothered-you set of people.

      Exported Scots

      Even if they have been Americans, Canadians or New Zealanders for ten generations they know deep down in their hearts that they are really Scots.

      About 5 million Scots live in Scotland but over the past few centuries 30 million Scots have been scattered to the four corners of the earth. There are special nuclei, ‘little Scotlands’, in South Carolina, Eastern Canada, the South Island of New Zealand – and in the BBC. Yet though they have been Americans, Canadians or New Zealanders for ten generations, they know deep down in their hearts that they are really Scots. Many with only tenuous reasons for attachment are drawn by sentiment. Forebears of the artist Whistler, whose middle name was McNeill, hailed from a small island on the west coast of Scotland and his American descendants make regular visits ‘home’.

      Scots, it seems, are often keen to leave their country, then spend the rest of their lives attending Caledonian Society Meetings, celebrating with haggis and singing mawkishly sentimental songs, with tears in their eyes, about their ‘Highland home far across the sea’. They always have a ‘Highland home far across the sea’, even if they came from Glasgow.

      How they see others

      Non-Scots are divided into two main groups:

      1. The English

      2. The Rest

      If you belong among The Rest, you have a head start.

      The Scots generally find strangers fascinating, and many are the tales recounted by the lonely traveller of how he was welcomed with open arms in some remote Scottish glen. As long as he wasn’t English of course.

      Scots are often keen to leave their country, then sing sentimental songs about their ‘Highland home across the sea’.

      Americans are liked partly because many of the Americans who come to Scotland are of Scots ancestry, but more because of their perceived uncomplicated open-ness and generosity. Canadians are equally popular, if not more so, because they are even more likely to be just a few generations away from being Scottish themselves.

      The Scots also like Europeans, especially those from Scandinavia, who they see as fellow-Northerners, sharing virtues that combine individualism and community spirit, and enduring the same testing weather conditions. They particularly admire vibrant and fully independent countries whose populations are not much bigger, or perhaps even smaller, than their own – like Denmark, Switzerland and, of course, Ireland, that other Celtic nation, so similar in many ways yet so different in certain fundamentals. From the great mixer-blender of history, the Irish have emerged with fire on the outside and steel inside. The Scots are the exact opposite.

      The ‘Auld Alliance’

      They have always managed to maintain an alliance with the French – a feat not even attempted by any other European culture.

      The ability of the Scots to get on with anyone is amply proven by the fact that throughout history they have always managed to maintain an alliance with the French – the Auld Alliance – a feat not even attempted by any other European culture. The unkind might suggest that the only thing the Scots and the French have in common is that both believe that any race that dislikes the English couldn’t be all bad, but this is a vile rumour.

      The ‘Auld Enemy’

      The Scots have learned their pride, their nationality their characteristics good and bad chiefly at the hands of the English. They are not about to forgive them for it.

      The Scots have given the world so much, usually without asking whether it wanted it, but they are obliged to accept that the main conduit of innovation from outside – political, social, cultural, industrial – has always been that large country to the South, the ‘Auld Enemy’, England. Always more numerous, always richer, always ready to assert their superiority, the English have been thorns in the Scottish flesh for a thousand years. The Scots have learned their pride, their nationality, their characteristics good and bad, chiefly at the hands of the English, often violently. They are not about to forgive them for it.

      When God created Scotland, says a favourite Scottish story, he looked down on it with great satisfaction. Finally he

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