Celebrating the Act of Union

bratachdubh · Celebrating the Act of Union

A friend celebrating this morning:

Aventinian

Are your friends all fat, ugly and clearly not very nice?

If you think this sort of behaviour is the way to win any friends and convince people (who, in Scotland, do generally have a British identity) that independence isn't just some old fashioned bigotry then you're very much mistaken.

Millions of good people have died for that symbol, cheaply represented and poorly printed though your version is.

Lothian Sky

Oh lighten up.
If it was the English flag, you'd have a point.
It isn't , it's a political symbol of union.
Who's it bigotted against? Unionists?
And what's wrong with being bald, ugly and fat?
Frankly I think more Scots would be offended by your remarks!

azzuri

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bratachdubh

Highlander

Ah yes flag burning, what next? Book burning? Making people who regard themselves as British forced to wear symbols so they are easily identified? Creating different classes of citizens, mass deportation and extermination? Yip this is the Scotland nationalists want to create and it all started with some flag burning. Sick.

George

azzuri

bratachdubh

Oh dear. Have I inadvertently 'outed' a couple of British Nationalist Labour Party minions? And there was me thinking that this board was mainly nationalists of a more, shall we say, local variety.

I've obviously hurt the poor wee souls' feelings.

Oh dear, how sad, never mind.

It's a bit of cloth, you buffoons. A symbol of colonialism and imperialism, still being flown during illegal invasions of countries which have not actually done Scotland any harm.

Burning that obscenity does not automatically lead to burning books or Nazi-ism... That's Nationalism with a big N you're on about - the sort of thing practiced by the Brits during the days of Empire.

Aventinian

Aventinian

Aventinian

George

George

Highlander

All these images tell me is racism is rife in Scotland. And how stupid some people are, burning their own national flag, racism against their own kind, just plain weird.

George

macnumpty

Mctosh45

The union flag is not my flag never has been and never will. The FACT is, the Scots never wanted it......so to burn it is merely symbolic of that FACT. Shocked

Highlander

garye

Highlander

I don't need to explain anything. I have already said how stupid and weird that is.

Firefox

macnumpty

Mctosh45

Highlander,FACT the Scottish people never voted for the union i.e.the masses Rolling Eyes

Highlander

Mctosh45

Exactly my point......you make it well Shocked

Maol.Chaluim

ProudToBeAScotsGirl

I should probably stay out of this being a timid lass...but...I do wonder. If the people of Scotland wanted to be in the union and part of Britain...woulden't Scotland have slowly mixed with England over the hundreds of years until the Scottish indentity became nothing but history? Um...I mean....well, I mean a lot of people over here don't even know Scotland isn't independent, they're shocked. That's amazing really...that a country can keep so much culture and identity going strong for so long...that to me...gosh im horrable at this, im sorry. That to me tells me something, that this country has stayed Scotland to this day for a reason. and that can only come from the people living there, am I right? That tells me the people wanted Scotland to stay Scotland, and I can see why they want to be independent...

I mean...if it's really purely each country united as great britain, woulden't each one be as independent as the countries that are on mainland Europe? I mean...there isn't a big governing body leading over Greece or Italy above their own law making. I woulden't mind the union so much if each country was 100% independent, but simply united with free trade between, sort of like the USA and Canada and Mexico (forgot the name of it). But I know they push britishness in Scotland and have sense the Union started so I can see why Scots want to be independent. To benifit the country, but in many ways to ensure the survival of Scottishness. I don't believe it will ever die, but I know if Scoland doesen't become independent...well...well...um...certainly any country that isn't independent can't hold onto it's own values for forever.

I really want to see a Scottish Passport someday...I really do. Just my 2 cents...i'll step down now. Sad

Barny Rubble

Point is who's bothered if the fat ugly guy burns the union flag? If it was the Cross of St George yes. Its just shows the mentality of the Scots its the English that ant to get rid of Scotlandshire the said shire a finacial burden on the English taxpayer. Livingstone was/is right the £3 billion a year the English give Scotland would be better spent in England. I'm sad to say Scotland will never gain independence simply because the Scots don't want it especially the thousands that are claiming benefits and of course the Scots that are on IB more Scots are claiming the said in the UK. Idependence is a pipe dream for the Mel Gibson groupies!

mal

Barny Rubble

Scotland's education system hasn't done the Scots much good but the UK benefits system has, 20% of Scotland's population are claiming the said. Christ, Glasgow the Poles run the transport system! Aberdeen relies on the Yanks, the Shetlands want to go it alone Scotland’s one big mess!

mal

wisnaeme

bratachdubh

Blackleaf

SCOTS AND THEIR FABRICATED NATIONALISM

Both England and America I'd suggest are interesting countries in having a strong sense of statehood, but a weak sense of nationhood.. They operate through large symbols and set rituals, not local details and shared feelings. Flags, anthems, birds and so forth are a symbolic of the state but not towards national sentiments that are not really there. This is all very different to those countries that have a linguistic and folkoristic sense of the nation, the sets of stories and myth about the common folk that mark their own distinctiveness. In the last half of the 18th century there were massive self-conscious revivals of national musics, dances, folk tales, linguistic and literary traditions and where these traditions were inadequate to the political task of creating a sense of nationhood they were simply made up.

Scots I'd claim show one of the clearest cases of a fabricated nationalism. Whenever and wherever Scotsmen gather together we know what to expect. Tartan Kilts, bagpipes and scotch. Now the highland Scots had no independent tradition before the late 18th century, They were a subset of Irish culture and the Celtic lords had ruled the Scottish highlands from the 5th to the 17th centuries. The language was essentially Irish, their music came from the harp, and their poetry came from second rate druid bards who were weeded out from Ireland. The first stage in the making of an independent Scottish tradition was therefore the denial of Irish paternity and to do this there had to be a claim that the Scots were of a different and older descent. that they were descended from the ancient Caledonians who had resisted the roman armies. In the 1760s two writers of the same surname set about this task. James Macpherson, who found something called the Ossian manuscripts and John Macpherson the minister of sleat in the island of skye. Between them, by two distinct acts of forgery, they created an indigenous literature for Celtic Scotland and as a necessary support to it a new history. Both this literature and history in so far as they had any connection with reality had been stolen from the Irish. The sheer effrontery of the Macphersons must demand our admiration. James Macpherson picked up Irish ballads in Scotland, then wrote an epic in which he transferred the whole scenario from Ireland to Scotland and then dismissed the genuine ballads as debased modern compositions. The minister of Sleat John then wrote a critical dissertation in which he provided a necessary context for the Celtic homer whom his name sake had apparently discovered. he placed the Irish speaking Celts in Scotland four centuries before they actually arrived and explained away the genuine native Irish literature as having been stolen, in the dark ages, by the unscrupulous Irish from the innocent Scots. To complete the picture James Macpherson himself using the ministers papers, wrote an independent Introduction to the history of Great Britain and Ireland repeating the ministers assertions.

The remarkable thing about this forgery was how widely accepted and talked about it became. The famous historian Edward Gibbon accepted the work as fact, Madame De Stael thought the Ossian manuscripts equal to homer. Geothe praised the work as evidence of an authentic non-classical civilization. all that remained was to add some costuming to this story, to stage the ancient highlanders in a new way. The occasion fro this appears to have been a pageant devised by the novelist Sir Walter Scott, for an historical display of Highland life before the King of England in 1822. There one saw for the first time a parade of Scotsman, wearing something called kilts, with particular tartans designating the clan or family to which they belonged.

Each aspect of this sight has its own tortured history. First the kilt itself was invented by an English Quaker in 1727. Tradition highland dress was a long shirt coming all the way down to the knees usually of a brown or green color. Wealthy Scotsman could afford some patterned cloth supplied by Flemish weavers, and if they were very wealthy and wanted to conform to lowland tradition they would wear leggings, or trews from which the term trousers derives. Occasionally, to prevent the bottom of the woolen shirt getting wet or muddy they might tuck it in the belt, or if ti rained they would throw it over their heads, an act, according to an English commentator of gross indecency.

The English Quaker comes into the picture when he secures the rights to mine iron on a Scottish estate and he finds the local dress inconvenient, so he designs a skirt, like the tucked in shirt, but with the folds already pleated and sown. its a great success and local laird or chief, Macdonell, requires that his servants wear it. The history of the tartan cloth is even more bizarre. After the Scottish rebellion of 1745 the English ban traditional Celtic garb, the older shirt and the newer kilt, but they wish to use Scottish troops in the Empirial wars against the French. So Scottish soldiers were organized into regiments and in order to improve morale they were allowed to were tartan trousers, not kilts offshore as they fought Indians in north America and the other Indians in the Bengal and mysore. as the highland regiments multiplied to meet the needs of these wars, so their tartan uniforms were differentiated and when the wearing of tartan by civilians was resumed and the romantic movement encouraged the cult of the primitive clan the different tartans were transferred from regiment to families.

Ironically then the visual registration of highland uniqueness was designed to be of service by the English in imperial conquest. The tartan cloth and the kilt dress came together within the Scottish regiments as they fought the French, and the international image of the Scotsman was visually registered in Paris in 1815 at the final defeat of the French napoleonic army. By 1822 a young Scottish officer, who had never seen the outside of a mess room wrote a book, The character, manners and present state of the highlanders of Scotland, that projected back, to time immemorial, the wearing of the tartan kilt and outlined the particular colors that belonged to particular families. when George the forth came to Edinburgh in 1822 to thank the Scots for their work in defeating the revolutionary ardor of the French we was greeted by the pageant, devised by the novelist Scot, in which the modern tradition was fully established We can laugh at the thin historical legitimacy for any of these practices, but to do so would miss the point. what's of more interest surely is the enthusiasm, the almost religious fervor with which these new rituals were pursued and adopted. national tradition is obviously something very different from a local custom.

http://paperweight.cooper.edu/humani...tionalism.html

bratachdubh

Yawn... Most of those myths have long since been refuted. What history channel did you pick that one up from?

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Nice flag burning by the way Wink

Aventinian

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George

Babygael

You Highlander are a supplanter and you shut yer gob!!
Crawl back tae yer engerlish highlands!!

Av,yes you are a pan loaf spikiking unionist! But at least thats your democratic right. I certainly don't hate the Engerlish but I love Scotland More.So what does that make me?? Should I stand on the Brits side? Or should I stand for My country and people???

And scotsgal from America,trust me when I say that this is a sharks pool,so walk erm swim circumspectly!!They dinnae do weather reports and reciepies here! I've found! Mr. Green

Bratachdubh failte a`charaid.

Aventinian

George

Aventinian

Groan...

patriot1320

Corby Boy

Is it really a myth Highlander? Most Scots I have known have not given too hoots about the UJ and don't identify with it. Only one or two have. They have tended to be the Rangers supporting kind.