Scotism

“ 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. ”

“ In Scotland the feeling about the English amounts in the main to good-humoured tolerance, touched with a certain amazement. The least cultivated of Scotsmen—and such a man is quite a different being from the least cultivated of Englishmen—will tell you that "thae English" are chiefly notable by reason of their profound ignorance and a ridiculous passion for the dissipation of money. The Scot of the middle class thinks his neighbour is a feckless, foolish person [Pg 5] who would pass muster if he could be serious, and who has got what he possesses by good luck rather than by good management. ”

“ Fierce courage that nothing on earth can subdue,
Sense of honor that shrinks from a blot,
Inexhaustible loyalty, loving and true,
You will find them to-day in a Scot.
If you want an intense love of country and kin,
An attachment as tender as strong,
That can gar the blood leap when the pipers begin,
And the tear start at sound of a song;
A grand patriotic devotion and pride,
That makes sanctified ground of the spot
Where a Scotsman for freedom has suffered and died ”

“ 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 ”

“ On the whole, perhaps, Europe has not done so badly with her Scots, the reason being that she never allowed them to be any Scotcher than she could help, and turned them out the minute they became aggressive. In England, however, the more Scotch and the more aggressive the Scot becomes the more we seem to like him. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Englishman, while retaining a due sense of his own superiority, learnt to acknowledge that his northern neighbour did really possess some good qualities which made him not unworthy of a place in the commonwealth, while the Scot, on his side, discovered that his ‘auld enemies’ of England were far from being all mere ‘pock-puddings.’4 As the result of this greater intimacy of association, the smaller nation was necessarily drawn more and more to assimilate itself to the speech and ways of its larger, wealthier, and more advanced partner. ”

“ I know not whether it be not peculiar to the Scots to have attained the liberal, without the manual arts, to have excelled in ornamental knowledge, and to have wanted not only the elegancies, but the conveniences of common life. Literature soon after its revival found its way to Scotland, and from the middle of the sixteenth century, almost to the middle of the seventeenth, the politer studies were very diligently pursued. The Latin poetry of Deliciæ Poëtarum Scotorum would have done honour to any nation, at least till the publication of May's Supplement the English had very little to oppose. ”

“ As the exceedingly clever young man who recently wrote a book about the Scot might say, this shows what the English really are.
It has been remarked, and possibly not without truth, that the Scot keeps the Sabbath and everything else he can lay his hands upon. He is credited with being the perfect money-grubber; his desire for competence, we have been told by the clever young man before mentioned, has blighted his soul and brought him into opprobrium among Turks and Chinamen. Well, the Scot does look after money: he desires competence, he loves independence ”

“ Happily in these our days the Scots and English, though so different in old and fundamental ideas, have come to work hand in hand together244 in civil government. Even within the fold of salvation, they dwell in Christian charity, ever agreeing to differ—the Episcopalian in Scotland being a “Dissenter” and the Scotch Presbyterian in England the same, each being in his own country a “Churchman,” while the average American is amused at the whole proceeding. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There was a saying in America that a totally abstaining Scotsman could not be beaten, and wherever a Scot has fallen, it was, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, the result of intemperance. Every Scotsman at home or abroad had in his keeping part of the honor of Scotland, and Scotland having so much more honor per man than other lands, it followed that every Scot carried a greater load of honor than the man of other lands. ”

“ Whoever has travelled in Scotland with sufficient attention to observe the ideas and opinions of the people, and whoever will look into Scotch theology, and read the history of the Scotch Kirk, and the proceedings of the Scotch Assemblies and Consistories, will see how little the country has benefited by its religion, and how wide an interval there is between its intolerant spirit and the natural tendencies of the Protestant Reformation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Had our race been distinguished only for its care of the bawbees, for its indomitable perseverance, its capacity to endure hardship, its adaptiveness, and its enterprise, I trow that the passionate pilgrim would not turn so eagerly to Scotland to cull the flowers of poesy and breathe the air of romance. And remember, our Scottish people are rather what the country has made them, than the country is what it has been made by them. ”

“ We have once more been joyful spectators of a truly national gathering. Once more we have seen Scotsmen, of every grade and degree, assemble together without a tinge of party purpose, to do honour to the memory of a poet who sprang from the ranks of the people, and who was heart and soul a Scotsman in his feelings, his inspiration, and, it may be, in his errors and his prejudices also. ”

“ Suffering that would have degraded a meaner race into slaves only hardened and ennobled the temper of the Scotchman. It was from these ages of oppression and lawlessness that he drew the rugged fidelity, the dogged endurance, the shrewdness, the caution, the wariness, the rigid thrift, the noble self dependence, the patience, the daring, which have distinguished him ever since. Nowhere did the Reformation do a grander work than in Scotland, but it was because nowhere were the minds of men so prepared for its work. ”

“ And now I consider it, Nature has planted, not only in particular men but even in every nation, and scarce any city is there without it, a kind of common self-love. And hence is it that the English, besides other things, particularly challenge to themselves beauty, music, and feasting. The Scots are proud of their nobility, alliance to the crown, and logical subtleties. The French think themselves the only well-bred men. The Parisians, excluding all others, arrogate to themselves the only knowledge of divinity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ The world that it conjured up before imaginative listeners was a world of twilight; of stars that drew a trail of tear-dimmed lustre about the ancient haunted places of the country; stars that had shone on battlefields and on the partings of lovers; that had looked on the raids of the border, and had stood over the dark border-towers among the peat. It was a strange truth that, in the voice of this coarse and humble vagabond, lay the whole distinctive spirit of the national poetry of Scotland. ”

“ We have been sometimes accused of a nationality which is too narrow and exclusive; but I hope and believe that the accusation is founded on misapprehension of our feelings. It is true that, as Scotsmen, we love Scotland above every other spot on earth—that we love it as our early home, and our father’s house. We cherish our feelings of nationality as we cherish our domestic affections, of which they are in truth a part. ”

“ Charles Murray, who in the South African veld writes Scots, not as an exercise, but as a living speech, and recaptures old moods and scenes with a freshness which is hardly possible for those who with their own eyes have watched the fading of the outlines. It is the rarest thing, this use of Scots as a living tongue, and perhaps only the exile can achieve it, for the Scot at home is apt to write it with an antiquarian zest, as one polishes Latin hexameters, or with the exaggerations which are permissible in what does not touch life too nearly. ”

“ 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;" ”

“ I noticed that he did not tell me the surname of my parents, and I pressed not the question. All that I asked of him was to continue his history, and inform me what had induced him once more to return to Scotland.
"Can a Scotsman ask that question of a Scotsman?" said he. "In whatever part of the globe he may be, the hope to lay his bones with his fathers is the Polar Star that cheers his wanderings, be they prosperous or adverse. Remove this hope, and his energies from that moment sink, for he has lost all of life worth caring for. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The English language could scarcely furnish language violent enough for the purpose of describing the Scots: “The people are proud, arrogant, vain-glorious boasters, bloody, barbarous, and inhuman butchers. ”