Scoti

“ Watering with its dearest dew
The heathy locks of Scotia.
[Pg 51] Down each green-wood skirted vale,
Guardian spirits, lingering, hail
Many a minstrel's melting tale,
As told of ancient Scotia.
When the shades of eve invest
Nature's dew-bespangled breast,
How supremely man is blest
In the glens of Scotia!
There no dark alarms convey
Aught to chase life's charms away;
There they live, and live for aye,
Round the homes of Scotia.
Wake, my hill harp! wildly wake!
Sound by lee and lonely lake,
Never shall this heart forsake
The bonnie wilds of Scotia. ”

“ The kings of Alban occasionally appear as kings of the Scots, but this is the first instance in which the name of Scotia is applied as a territorial designation of their kingdom. Used by a contemporary writer, who was himself a native of Ireland, it is evident that the name of Scotia had now been transferred from Ireland, the proper Scotia of the previous centuries, and become adopted for the kingdom of the Scots in Britain in the reign of Malcolm, son of Kenneth, which ushers in the eleventh century, superseding the previous name of Alban. ”

“ More than all, he did not boast of having been born in a wynd, or of having pu’d fine gowans wi’ Jeanie, the auld sweetie wife’s dochter at Drumkettle.
And an author—a modern author—who is guilty of all these sins of commission and omission must not expect perfection from the warm heart of Scotia. Somehow the Scotch seem to be a nation of persons without fathers. Nearly every Scot one meets strikes one as being a first generation man. ”

“ Ireland retained the name of Scotia, till so late as the fifteenth century, with the addition of Major, or Vetus, to distinguish it from Caledonia or Albania, that is, the present Scotland, which, in the eleventh century, began to be called Scotia Minor, as deriving its improvement immediately from hence. The ancient Scotch writers, of the greatest repute, are so far from denying their Irish extraction, that they seem to glory it; and King James I, in one of his speeches, boasts of the Scottish dynasty being derived from that of Ireland. ”

“ These men be pleased with flesh, apples, and fruit for meat, and with milk for drink: and give them more to plays and to hunting, than to work and travail.
The land Scotia hath the name of Scots that dwell therein, and the same nation that was sometime first in Ireland, and all according thereto in tongue, in manners, and in kind. The men are light of heart, fierce, and courageous on their enemies. They love nigh as well death as thraldom, and they account it for sloth to die in bed, and a great worship and virtue to die in a field fighting against enemies. ”

“ North of the Firths we find the barbaric tribes of the Picts and Scots, which had so often harassed the Roman province from the north and west, formed into settled kingdoms with definite limits; while Hibernia or Ireland now appears under the additional designation of Scotia. ”

“ The three propositions—1st, That Scotia, prior to the tenth century, was Ireland, and Ireland alone; 2d, That when applied to Scotland it was considered a new name superinduced upon the older designation of Alban or Albania; and 3d, That the Scotia of the three succeeding centuries was limited to the districts between the Forth, the Spey, and Drumalban,—lie at the very threshold of Scottish history. [4]
4The history of the name of a country is generally found to afford a very important clue to the leading features in the 5history of its population. ”

“ There were two septs of these Dál Riada, one settled in Ulster and the other in Alba [Scotland] . It was from the conquests [26] achieved by the Scots [i.e. Milesians] of Ireland that Alba was called Lesser Scotia. In course of ages the inconvenient distinction of the countries into Lesser and Greater Scotia died away, but the name Scotia, or Scotland, without any qualifying adjective, clung to the lesser country to the frightful confusion of historians, while the greater remained known to foreigners as Erin, or Hibernia. ”

“ Nova Scotia as a British colony also came into being as another result of these adventurous British expeditions to North America in the reign of James I. Under the name of Acadie this region had been declared to be a portion of New France by De Monts and Champlain in 1604-14. ”

“ From scenes like these, old Scotia's grandeur springs, That makes her lov'd at home, rever'd abroad: Princes and lords are but the breath of kings, “An honest man's the noblest work of God;” ”

“ Scotia. From the Celtic scot, wanderer, with the suffix ia, country; the ancient designation of the Highlands, now, with the Lowlands, called “Scotland.”
323Scotists. Those who accepted the doctrine of John Duns Scotus relative to the Immaculate Conception, in opposition to the “Thomists.”
Scotland. See “Scotia.”
Scotland Yard. On the site of the original Scotland Yard stood an ancient palace appropriated to the Scottish kings, who were required to pay homage once a year to the English sovereign at Westminster Abbey. ”

“ Though born in Nova Scotia, I am of almost pure New England descent. ”

“ Scots. That Scotland had in those daies two kingdoms, (besides that of the Orchades) whereof the one consisted of the Picts, and was called Pightland or Pictland, the other of the Irish race, and named Scotland: I hope no wise man will readilie denie. The whole region or portion of the Ile beyond the Scotish sea also was so diuided, that the Picts laie on the east side, and the Scots on the west, ech of them being seuered from other, either by huge hils or great lakes and riuers, that ran out of the south into the north betwéene them. ”

“ The passion of the Scots, from whatever race derived, for poetry and music, developed itself in the earliest stages of their history. They possessed a wild imagination, a dark and gloomy mythology; they peopled the caves, the woods, the rivers, and the mountains, with spirits, elves, giants, and dragons; and are we to wonder that the Scots, a nation in whose veins the blood of all those remote races is unquestionably mingled, should, at a very remote period, have evinced an enthusiastic admiration for song and poetry ”

“ Thus he was not only a Scot, but a Scot with a strong infusion of the Celtic element, the element whence the Scotch derive most of what distinguishes them from the English. The Scot is more excitable, more easily brought to a glow of passion, more apt to be eagerly absorbed in one thing at a time. He is also more fond of abstract intellectual effort. It is not merely that the taste for metaphysical theology is commoner in Scotland than in England, but that the Scotch have a stronger relish for general principles. ”

“ While Scotsmen are musing on what is deepest in man, the fires of devotion burn brightly and the soul utters itself in song, so that Scotland is not least among the nations in its repertoire of either poetry or music.
“Why are the Scotch so different from the English?” is a question often asked. In my view the roots of the difference are best discerned in a critical study of the Reformation. In Scotland this great movement of the human mind was far more consistent and radical than in England, and it therefore affected all classes more thoroughly. ”

“ In one of the most conspicuous points of Princes street stands that splendid triumph of architectural genius dedicated to the brightest mind in literature which Scotland claims.
A man dear to every lover of ancient song and story—one who has robed the mountains, valleys and streams of Scotland with immortal glory and universal renoun—Sir Walter Scott. We have spent many a pleasant hour studying the rugged and homely face of that figue which sits in the Centre with the Scottish plait thrown over his sholder and his favorite and famous stag-hound crouching at his feet. ”

“ For it has been truly said that the Scotch people have been made what they are by Scotland; that the Land has moulded and fashioned the People; and that in their literature, their religion, their manners, their history, the influence is seen of the physical characteristics of the country. ”

“ Scott went on after we had landed to make many remarks, mingled with picturesque anecdotes, concerning the fabulous beings with which the Scotch were apt to people the wild streams and lochs that occur in the solemn and lonely scenes of their mountains; and to compare them with similar superstitions among the northern nations of Europe; but Scotland, he said, was above all other countries for this wild and vivid progeny of the fancy, from the nature of the scenery, the misty magnificence and vagueness of the climate, the wild and gloomy events of its history ”

“ What Scotsmen, as Scotsmen, should ever prize most is bound up inseparably with the native language. Ours is a matured country, and the stirring scenes of her history on which the mind of the individual delights to dwell, are so frequently enshrined in spirited ballad and song, couched in the pithy Scottish vernacular, that, to suppose these latter dead—they are not translatable into English—is to suppose the best part of Scottish history dead and buried beyond the hope of resurrection. For its own sake alone the Scottish tongue is eminently deserving of regard—of cultivation and preservation. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ At such moments one felt that the man who was charming but perplexing Englishmen by his subtlety and ingenuity was not himself an Englishman in mental quality, but had the love for abstractions and refinements and dialectical analysis which characterizes the Scotch intellect. He had also a large measure of that warmth and vehemence, called in the sixteenth century the perfervidum ingenium Scotorum, which belong to the Scottish temperament, and particularly to the Celtic Scot. ”

“ Fond memory shall your strains repeat, Like distant echoes, doubly sweet, That on the wild the traveller hears.”
Scott went on to expatiate on the popular songs of Scotland. “They are a part of our national inheritance,” said he, “and something that we may truly call our own. They have no foreign taint; they have the pure breath of the heather and the mountain breeze. All genuine legitimate races that have descended from the ancient Britons; such as the Scotch, the Welsh, and the Irish, have national airs. ”

“ Could you ever mistake a Scot for an un-Scot? No! Our wide-apart eyes and our dreamy yet practical expression, our high cheekbones, our sensitive, clear-cut nostrils, and the something mysterious in our gaze which no one can explain or understand, not even ourselves, is all our own. I have just found this out since crossing the border. And am I not a MacDonald of Dhrum?
I can't say that the first Scots I met—men, women, or children—looked like descendants of the robber hordes who used to make the Borderland their home ”

“ For the cheer, my lord, a mess of white broth, a fat capon well larded, a dish of beef collops for auld Scotland's sake, and it may be a cup of right old wine, that was barrelled before Scotland and England were one nation—Then for company, one or two of our own loving countrymen—and maybe my housewife may find out a bonny Scots lass or so. ”

“ In the best Scottish houses, even the king’s palaces, the windows are not glazed throughout, but the upper part only, the lower have two wooden shuts or folds to open at pleasure and admit the fresh air. The Scots cannot endure to hear their country or countrymen spoken against. They have neither good bread, cheese, or drink. They cannot make them, nor will they learn. ”

“ Acknowledging that the Scots had suffered much, and were in fact "a very ruined nation," yet what had befallen them had introduced, he hinted, a very desirable change in the constitution of Scottish society. It had enfranchised and encouraged the middle and lower classes. "The meaner sort in Scotland," he said, "love us well, and are likely to come into as thriving a condition as when they were under their own great lords, who made them work for their living no better than the peasants of France;" ”

“ We must advert to a peculiarity of our Scottish countrymen, which can be set down only on the credit side of their character—their sympathy with each other when they meet as wanderers in foreign countries. Scotland is just a small enough country to cause a certain unity of feeling amongst the people. Wherever they are, they feel that Scotsmen should stand, as their proverb has it, shoulder to shoulder. ”

“ Yet no literature excels that of the Scots, in the perfect frankness with which the sons of the soil confess their recent emergence from barbarism into the admired civilization of to-day.
13
Thus the initial spell of the Scottish landscape lay first of all upon us who had known Scotland only through books or by word of mouth. Yet to such the human appeal is immense. Who can look upon this egg-shaped island of Arran, with its jagged peaks and its singularly grand scenery, without emotion? ”