Piddingworth Greg Benton |
pidd.net |
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| 'Piddingworth...where St. George's Cross is not yet banned.' --Mark Steyn |
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| 'The Great Marquess' on the West Highland Line |
| Wha wadna fecht for Chairlie
Wha wadna draw the sword Wha wadna up and rally At the Royal Prince's word? Think on Scotia's ancient heroes Think on foreign foes repelled Think on loyal Bruce and Wallace Wha the proud usurper quelled See the northern clans advancing See Glengarry and Lochiel See the Brandished broadsword glancing Highland hearts as true as steel Now the Prince has raised his banner Now triumphant is our cause Now the Scottish Lion rallies Let us fight for Prince and Laws |
| Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;
Ae fareweel, and then forever! Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee, Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee. Who shall say that Fortune grieves him, While the star of hope she leaves him? Me, nae cheerfu' twinkle lights me; Dark despair around benights me. I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy, Naething could resist my Nancy; But to see her was to love her; Love but her, and love forever. Had we never lov'd sae kindly, Had we never lov'd sae blindly, Never met--or never parted-- We had ne'er been broken-hearted. Fare thee weel, thou first and fairest! Fare thee weel, thou best and dearest! Thine be ilka joy and treasure, Peace. enjoyment, love, and pleasure! Ae fond kiss, and then we sever; Ae fareweel, alas, forever! Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee, Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee! Robert Burns, 1791 |
| 'AE FAREWEEL, ALAS, FOREVER'? |
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| Good Bye St. Andrew? |
| Sir Sean Connery -
Comment 100 on the 'National Conversation' site. Tuesday, September 18, 2007 09:00 Like many people, I have watched with wonder at all the enthusiasm and energy generated by the SNP Government's first 100 days. Many of us are looking forward with great anticipation to seeing what happens over the next four years. Every step of the first 100 days has advanced Scotland's interest, and now it is time to give Scots a chance to reflect on the progress and converse about the future of Scotland. In a way, minority government has been a blessing because it provides the opportunity for a genuinely democratic position to evolve in Parliament. On our nation’s future, we know where the Scottish Government and indeed I stand – Independence and equality for Scotland. Now it is time to see where the other political parties stand. More importantly, it is time to see what the Scottish people want. It is amazing to think back only four months ago to the front pages of some newspapers, quoting unionist politicians predicting gloom and doom if the public had the temerity to choose a new Government. Now, if the same sensationalist charges are foisted on the public by the scaremongers, it will further point out the vacuous nature of their rhetoric. It is time we had a serious discussion about Scotland's future. There is a buzz around Scotland – doubly so after James McFadden’s terrific winning goal against France! Everything is moving forward now in a prudent and consistent way – step by step. There seems to be a great sense of relief as the conditioning of the past 50 years of doubt and low expectations gives way to optimism and ambition. The key part of this national conversation is that it is the people who will decide. There are alternatives. Donald Dewar was right – we are on a road, in a process, part of a conversation. It is time for us to embrace the conversation and move it forward. Connery, an actor, struggles for Scotland's independence from his wee home in the Bahamas. |
| EVAPORATED ILK: THE BRITISH ECLIPSE |
| The feast of St. Andrew, 30th November, invites Scots to celebrate the patron of Scotland at many gatherings at home and abroad. There will be much country dancing as the gaels and their ilk 'strip the willow' and skip about in their kilts fuelled by unequal parts whisky and haggis. In some places, the 'Gay Gordon' will have taken on new meaning. Of course, for most of Scotland and most Scots, the day will pass as usual. For those who have replaced the haggis with a deep-fried Mars bar, the observance that is normally attended by members of loyal societies and the Kirk will go on largely unnoticed. Still, the Scottish culture and it's identity, driven by a history of being in the northern shadow of the hated Sassenachs has, certainly more than that of the 'English', and with a little less rocket fuel than the Irish, remained both a sentimental as well as a potent force in the world o' ethnicity.. The rising movement toward independence from the United Kingdom has taken on a legal authority that is fuelled in it's devolution by both a mythological rendering of Scottish history that has been celebrated in popular culture by the devotees of Braveheart and a spirit of latent socialism where one finds more a 'Wally' than 'Wallace' beating in the breast. The politcial aspirations of the Scottish nationalists has much more to do with Euro-socialism than it does with uniting the Clans against the Longshanks of Westminster. Like the Irish, most Scots don't live in Scotland. They are spread throughout the former British Empire in a diaspora resulting from their ancestors either having been replaced by sheep or for having participated in the migration of industry, trade and administration overseen by John Brown's Sovereign. Canada, in particular, is a place where Scottish culture and tradition and invention have found enormous favour. They even have their own province of 'Nova Scotia' where the gaelic language is still spoken and studied and the old ways revered. There are more 'highland' regiments in the Canadian Army than in a British Army that has, much to the profound disappointment and resentment of traditional Scots, combined all the Scottish regiments into battalions of one 'Royal Regiment of Scotland'. With most of the distilleries having been sold to non-Scottish corporate entities, even the whisky industry has fallen prey to the external realities that have transformed the old into the new. The fact is that there aren't nearly as many Campbells and MacDonalds available for a feud as there used to be. They've either planted roots in Canada, Australia or the United States or, like others, have simply stopped reproducing their numbers. A Catholic archbishop from Scotland has recently made an appeal to the descendants of the 'clearances' in Nova Scotia to 'come home', make wee'uns and help to restore Caledonia. With incentives put into place by the Scottish government, it would seem that the affinity to all things Clannish for Scottish descendants doesn't quite reach to moving to their ancestral home. Even Sir Sean Connery, the celebrity spokesman for the Scottish Nationalists, tosses his caber from the warmth of his tax-favourable beach in the Bahamas; not quite the same as William Wallace shouting 'Freedom' at Stirling Bridge. At least the Jacobites faced the 'enemy' on their own soil. The Scottish culture is one of the most magnficent and influential in the history of the development of the civilised world. Scottish enterprise, invention and military acumen contributed to the establishment and flourishing of the British Empire and the nations that it spawned (Idi Amin notwithstanding). It is perhaps most ironic that Scotland's success and celebrated culture is mostly due to it's greatest embarrassment, i.e., the succombing to union with England in 1701. Without it's attachment to England and the Industrial Revolution, and the expansion of Empire, it's most likely that Scotland's historical destiny would more closely resemble that of Iceland. It would still have it's bagpipes, tartans and kilts but, rather than becoming symbols of a greatness and achievement, they would be regarded much as liederhosen is at Oktoberfest in Germany; delightful, of course, but hardly representative of the socio-industrial and military import that inspired world history. 'Great' Britain would not have been nearly as 'great' without Scotland. England, with it's Royal Navy and great merchant Companies of Hudson's Bay and East India, provided a vehicle for the exceptional qualities of the Scots, and the power of Westiminster, to flourish. Unlike Wales, whose complaints against the English are not without considerable substance, Scotland was never 'absorbed' or 'ignored'. The 'arrogant' English soon discovered that suppressing the culture of the Gael was a non-starter and that by permitting the Scots to more than affirm their particular cultural sensibilities and traditions, both England and Scotland, aka, the British, would prosper and so they did. With the meltdown of the British Empire by the mid-twentieth century, there entered into 'British' culture a malaise that has lingered and grown to such a sorrowful degree that it has fostered the increasing cultural, political and socio-economic disparity between Scotland and England that exists today. The 'marriage' is in trouble and has been for some time. It would, however, be much too simple to merely lay the blame at the door of the Scottish Nationalists (even with their regrettable Europhilic aims). Following the second world war, arguably the last great outpouring of British nationalism, spirit and pluck, the United Kingdom went into an economic and then social decline from which it has only partially recovered. The post-war generation, in it's adolescent need to defy anything that resembled 'authority', turned it's back on many of those things that were defended by their parents, e.g., the importance of rules, manners, traditions, religious faith and public institutions; especially the military and the Church. This rather sick transformation developed into a syndrome of self-loathing among the English that stands in stark constrast to the confident and strident British spirit that built an Empire. It's no longer fashionable to be British. The British identity, institutions and achievements of previous generations, mocked from the '60's in such 'popular' presentations such as 'Beyond the Fringe' and 'Monty Python's Flying Circus' among others has falsely translated cultural satire into the prevailing belief that Britain, it's former Empire and all that 'hope and glory' and 'Dad's Army' stuff was bad. It's a struggle for some to accept their own history. The solution for the contemporary education system has therefore been to simply stop teaching that history. Recent polls and studies have demonstrated the ignorance of the current generation in the UK of even the battles and leaders of World War Two let alone 1066 and all that. The rather sad consequence of this sheepish attitude has been the phenomenon of an inwardly xenophobic and petty tribalism coupled with the aformentioned Europhilia. How any Scot or Englishman could believe that their future ought to depend on bureaucrats in Brussels and ruled by continental nations for whom 'freedom' and the 'rule of law' have been largely foreign is quite beyond belief. Surrounded by the sounds, sights and symbols of Great Britain and the British Empire, I was born in Canada, of English parentage, a British Subject in the last years and days of the decline of what remained of the British World. From the maps on the classroom wall highlighting all the 'pink' lands that belonged to the British family to the daily singing of God Save The Queen, the Scout Promise and handbook, and the flying of the Union Jack on public buildings throughout the city and towns, to the prayers of the Church of England in which I was baptised and the parades in which my father marched as a veteran with his regiment in their scarlet tunics and bearskins along with the pipes and drums of the kilted highlanders, our public life, manners and identity reflected that which we lived as a family at home, on our Sundays and at our tables and in the photographs and stories from the 'old country'. Mine is the last generation in Canada of children and grandchildren of the massive British settlement that occurred at the time just before and following the First World War who were born and bred 'British'. The population of a young British Dominion skyrocketed. For us then, unlike now, to be 'Canadian' meant also to be 'British' whether our ethnicity was Scottish, English, Irish or Welsh. To a different degree the same could be said for other ethnic groups who populated Canada. Loyalty to the King was not questioned and neither was our attachment to the Mother Country. All of our associations were British and the Maple Leaf was a symbol, not of a separate 'people' but of a uniquely British Canadian culture. Evolution, the political realities, and the distance of time have changed all that. If it isn't fashionable to be 'British' in Britain, it certainly isn't on in Canada where, in the past few decades in English Canada, Canadians have 'learned' to be something mostly defined by the mind of Pierre Trudeau; although the French, never having quite accepted 'the conquest' of New France, still seem to regard themselves as 'French' originals and are inclined to similar aspirations as the Scottish Nationalists. The sad part in all of this isn't that the Empire is long gone. Of course it is and should be. All things pass. For some it was too late...for others, too soon. The challenge for the future is two-fold: 1. Preserving those things that made, and could still make, Britain 'Great' and, 2. Adapting and promoting British identity and culture within the realities of the world today. Re-living the quarrels of centuries past as a means of affirming one's identity is akin to cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. The 'union' of 1701, with all its warts, helped to lay the foundation for a much better world and permitted the rights of 'man' to flourish in places far away from Edinburgh and London. It is for Edinburgh and London to ensure that they continue to flourish at home. It is a time, not for a Lament, but for the Black Bear. For a comprehensive and satisfying view of all things 'British' I encourage readers to go to 'Brits At Their Best' where the British legacy and challenge is presented superbly. |
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| Saint Andrew The Apostle |