Lowland Scots

“ They were gradually driven back into the Highlands by Anglo-Saxon, Norman and Danish invaders, and are now represented by the Highlanders (q.v.) or Gaels. (2) The modern Scots, or Lowland Scots, are mainly of Anglo-Saxon race, modified by Norman, Danish, and Flemish elements. They are one of the finest and most hardy and industrious races in the world, equally successful in the arts of war and peace.
Scythians. An ancient nomadic and warlike race, found in the seventh century B.C. on the vast plains of South-eastern Europe, where they lived by cattle-breeding and raiding. ”

“ They are much in the position of those borrowings which we still owe to the war correspondent or the adventurous traveller in remote and little- known lands. They vanish with the conditions which led to their importation.
The second item, Primitive Aryan Civilisation, would seem, on a superficial view, to have only a remote connection with Lowland Scots. Closer study, however, will show it to be complementary to the opening article of the volume. That article aimed at linking on the vernacular to that primitive Teutonic influence which supplanted the prehistoric Celtic in the Lowlands. ”

“ The vrouw takes the long candles from the shrank (cupboard) , and leaves wooer and wooed to sit up together till the grey dawn breaks, a custom which, in one form or another, rural Scotland long looked on kindly. The envied fair one, who has many of such vrijers, may have to sit up four or five nights a week till the eventful choice is made.
There is abundant evidence in language to prove that the ancient Northumbria—that is, Lowland Scotland from Tay to Humber—was a Frisian or Dutch settlement. ”

“ He was the first holder of the Chair of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology in Edinburgh University. As these lectures have never been published, so far as I know, I believe I am doing a welcome service to linguistic study in incorporating them with my own researches.
1. Scoto-French in the Lowland Vernacular. [1]
But slight evidence of the "Auld Alliance" has survived in the vernacular. Any influences exerted on the nation by it were at no time more than political. France used Scotland merely as a thorn in the side of her rival, England. ”

“ The art of imitating ancient writing has got to a considerable perfection, and it has been the bane of Scottish literature and disgrace of her antiquities that we have manifested an eager propensity to believe without inquiry and propagate the errors which we adopt too hastily ourselves. The general proposition that the Lowlanders ever wore plaids is difficult to swallow. They were of twenty different races, and almost all distinctly different from the Scoto-Irish, who are the proper Scots, from which the Royal Family are descended. ”

“ The chief scene of Scottish history, with its art, architecture, commercial prosperity, and general likeness to Christendom, is in the Lowlands. Here are almost all her great cities, industries, and monuments. In this region, and not in the Highlands, Scotland’s two greatest, or at least most famous, men were born and reared, and here are the cities, which are “the hope of democracy.” In fact, the Celtic Scots never produced a distinct civilization of their own. The Celts, with all their charming traits and bold achievements, have nowhere brought to perfection this composite flower of history. ”

“ All Scotland, indeed, has now, in one sense, been "rent by the Saxon" from the Celt. "Let no one doubt the civilization of these islands," wrote Dr. Johnson, in Skye, "for Portree possesses a jail." The Highlands and islands have been the last portions of Scotland to succumb to Anglo-Saxon influences; that the Lowlands formed an earlier victim does not prove that their racial complexion is different. The incident of which we have now to speak has frequently been quoted as a crowning proof of the difference between the Lowlanders and the "true Scots". ”

“ Now it was that the Scottish Earl gave the word to his men, and just as the English were pushing rapidly on towards the slope of the high ground where the Scottish camp hung glittering in the moonbeam, driving a handful of brave men before them, who were still fighting as they retired, the shout of “Douglas!—Douglas!—Scotland!—Scotland!—Douglas!—Jamais arriere?” ascended to Heaven, and the determined Scots poured from their covert out upon the open plain, and rushed against the troops of Piersie. ”

“ Ah Scotland, Scotland! How is the gold become dim, how is the most fine gold changed! Ah! Where is the God of Elijah, and where is his glory! Where is that Scottish zeal that once flamed in the breasts of thy nobility, barons, ministers and commoners of all sorts! Ah, where is that true courage and heroic resolution for religion and the liberties of the nation that did once animate all ranks in the land! Alas, alas! True Scots blood now runs cool in our veins! The cloud is now gone up in a great measure from off our assemblies ”

“ John Major, writing in the reign of James IV (1489-1513) , mentions the differences between Highlander and Lowlander. The wild Scots speak Irish; the civilized Scots use English. "But", he adds, "most of us spoke Irish a short time ago." [16] His contemporary, Hector Boece, who made the Tour to the Hebrides, says: "Those of us who live on the borders of England have forsaken our own tongue and learned English, being driven thereto by wars and commerce. But the Highlanders remain just as they were in the time of Malcolm Canmore, in whose days we began to adopt English manners." ”

“ The Lowlanders, more especially, must have starved in a country that had not the means of supporting its own inhabitants, and of which they knew neither the roads nor the language. It is, however, [Pg 294] but too probable, that various suspicions, which were afterwards dispelled, of the fidelity of the Scots, induced Charles to throw himself into the hands of his Irish attendants at this critical juncture. ”

“ The dream of him who loved Scotland best would lie not so much in the direction of antiquarian revival, as in the hope that his country might be pointed out as one that in spite of rocks, and rigor, and poverty, could yet teach the world by precept and example, could lead the van and point the moral, where greater nations and fairer states had failed. Those who believe the Scots to be so eminently vain a race, will say that already we are in our opinion the tenth legion of civilization. ”

“ If, then, it was not by a displacement of race, but through the subtle influences of religion, feudalism, and commerce that the Scottish Lowlands came to be English in speech and in civilization, if the farmers of Fife and some, at least, of the burghers of Dundee or of Aberdeen were really Scots who had been subjected to English influences, we should expect to find no strong racial feeling in mediæval Scotland. ”

“ One feature of Miss Frere's book which does honour to her fine sympathy, but which is not ethnologically justifiable, is the persistent attempt to draw a sharp racial distinction between Highlander and Lowlander. The truth is, that no part of the Highlands is purely Celtic: the population is a welter of Picts, Gaels, Norsemen, Danes, and Saxons. The Lowland blood is, in like manner, a bewildering blend, there being no uncontaminated Anglo-Saxon district in any single county of Scotland. ”

“ Scotland and the court of Scotland were crowded with English and Norman knights, with English and Norman clerks. They got benefices, temporal and 26 spiritual, in the Scottish land. They may have converted; they may have civilized; but conversion and civilization are processes which are not always specially delighted in by those who are to be converted and civilized. Anyhow they were strangers, brought into the land by kingly favour, to flourish, as men would naturally deem, at the cost of the sons of the soil. Jealousy of the native Scots. The national spirit of the Scottish people arose ”

“ Hill Burton asserts that they did feel, we should expect to find references to the difference between Celts and Saxons. But, on the contrary, we meet with statement after statement to the effect that the Highlanders are only Scotsmen who have maintained the ancient Scottish language and literature, while the Lowlanders have adopted English customs and a foreign tongue. The words "Scots" and "Scotland" are never used to designate the Highlanders as distinct from other inhabitants of Scotland, yet the phrase "Lingua Scotica" means, up to the end of the fifteenth century, the Gaelic tongue. ”

“ In our days the various tribes of the Highland and Lowland populations live in peaceful union under one and the same government. But during several centuries Scotland was the theatre of the most sanguinary contests between the Celtic Highlanders and the Teutonic Lowlanders. The former, who were animated with an inveterate hatred of the Lowlanders, continually made hostile incursions into the Lowlands, and, after burning and ravaging the country, retired with cattle and other booty to their mountains, whither they knew well the Lowlanders durst not follow them. ”

“ The conquest of Scotland proved a far more difficult matter than that of Wales. The early history of the kingdom of [Pg 279] Scotland is a complicated one. When the Angles and Saxons landed in Britain, a great part of the mountainous region north of the Firth of Forth was inhabited by a Celtic tribe, the Picts. There was, however, on the west coast a little kingdom of the Irish Celts, who were then called Scots. By the opening of the tenth century the Picts had accepted the king of the Scots as their ruler, and the annalists begin to refer to the highland region as the land of the Scots. ”

“ Take the single kingdom of Scotland alone. Englishmen are carelessly wont to suppose there is such a thing as a Scotch temperament. Scotchmen know better. Even if we omit from the reckoning such remoter and more doubtful elements as Black Celts, and so forth, we may say, roughly speaking, that Scotland consists of six distinct nationalities—the English of the Lothians, the Welsh of Strathclyde, the Irish Scots of Argyllshire, the true Gaels of the Highlands, the Picts of the east coast, and the Scandinavians of Orkney, Caithness, and Sutherland. ”

“ For, whilst they were spreading themselves over the rich plains of the north of England, a foreign, though nearly related, Celtic people, the Scots from Ireland, had taken possession of their south-western frontier districts. Hence they spread themselves to such a degree over the Lowlands that both these and the Highlands, though the latter were almost entirely independent of the Scottish sovereigns, were called by one name, Scotland. After many battles the older Pictish inhabitants were, about the year 900, entirely amalgamated with the Scots in the Lowlands. ”

“ All Lowland Scotland stood on tiptoe, watching with anxiety the result of a debate that was to give her an English king, or was still further to cement the league of five hundred years, by placing the French dauphin on the throne of the Stuarts; we say Lowland Scotland, for the Celts, ever at war among themselves, viewed with disdain or heeded not whatever was done, beyond their then impassable boundary, the Grampians. ”

“ It will be remembered that as far back as the tenth century, the kings of the Scots had done homage to Edward the elder, and that they held the more important half of their realm, Lothian and Strathclyde, which together form the Lowlands, as grants under feudal obligations from the English crown. But the exact degree of dependence of Scotland on England had never been accurately fixed, though Scottish kings had often sat in English Parliaments, and sometimes served in the English armies. ”

“ A Scot within a Beast is no Disguise.
No more let Ireland brag her harmless Nation
Fosters no Venom since that Scots' Plantation;
Nor can our Feign'd Antiquity obtain,
Since they came in England has Wolves again.
Nature her self does Scotch-men Beasts confess,
Making their Country such a Wilderness ”

“ Every Scotchman is an Englishman, but an Englishman is not a Scotchman. The Scotch regard themselves as an elect race who are entitled to all the rights of Englishmen and to their own privileges besides. All English offices ought to be open to them, but Scotch posts are the natural heritage of the Scots. They take part freely in the debates on legislation affecting England alone, but in their opinion acts confined to Scotland ought to be, and in fact they are in the main, governed by the opinion of the Scotch members. ”

“ The essential differences between these remain markedly distinguishable after centuries of peaceful intercourse, and a common interchange of rights and privileges. The Scottish Gael, though by no means to be now regarded as sprung from a pure Celtic stock, scarcely differs more widely in language than in moral and intellectual characteristics from the race that peoples the fertile Lowlands. Yet the names of the most remarkable Lowland localities prove their possession by a Celtic race, whom therefore we cannot doubt to have been the prior, if not the aboriginal, occupants of the soil. ”

“ They had won themselves renown as soldiers or traders in nearly all the countries of the Old world, but they had not as yet any colony of their own in the New one. Hitherto these emigrants, though they were called Scots, had been chiefly Saxons from the Lowlands, but in the beginning of this reign bodies of Celts had gone back to the original Scotia, and in Ulster, their old home, they won back settlements from the kindred Celtic race who now looked on them as intruders. But while some of the wanderers thus went back to the old country, others were founding a New Scotland beyond the sea. ”