The Romantic Scottish Myth

            I am thinking a lot about Scotland lately.

           

I have been there, I am pleased and proud to say. In1997. That is a long story in itself, not for here, but all I can say is I felt perfectly at home. One could argue I had no right to; it wasn’t my home or my country and I’d never been there before. No matter. I belonged.

           

Scotland has been in my thoughts for several reasons. First, I am working on a long essay, which might turn into a book, about my response to JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy.  In that book, Vance seems to have an obsession about the Scots Irish, which, as that unimpeachable source Wikipedia states, can be identified as:

 

 The Ulster Scots people are an ethnic group^[6][7][8][9] descended largely from Scottish and English settlers who moved to the north of Ireland during the 17th century.^[10][11][12] There is an Ulster Scots dialect of the Scots language.

Found mostly in the province of Ulster, their ancestors were Protestant settlers who migrated from the Scottish Lowlands and Northern England during the Plantation of Ulster, which was a planned process of colonization following the Tudor conquest of Ireland.^[13] The largest numbers came from Dumfries and Galloway, Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, Ayrshire, Scottish Borders, Northumberland, Cumbria, Durham, Yorkshire and, to a lesser extent, from the Scottish Highlands.^[

Ulster Scots people emigrated in significant numbers to the American colonies, later the United States, and elsewhere in the British Empire. In North America, they are called Scotch-Irish or Scots-Irish.

This seems to be saying they weren’t of any Irish here, just transplants to Ireland who might have intermarried a bit with the Irish, but that’s doubtful because of the difference in religion. It was also a bloody and violent time, and the Scots who were transplanted were being run off their own land as well.

As my other essay argues, Vance places much of the blame for Appalachia’s problems on the Scots-Irish innate temperament of violence, feuding, alcoholism, honor culture, deviance, pride, and desire for seclusion.  There are some big problems with this view, but I am thinking though those elsewhere. At any rate, it’s making me think about my ancestry, which sends me back to my Family Tree DNA page, which has changed. Now it says I have 10% Irish DNA; that did not show up the last time I looked.  HUMMM.  Ulster Irish, I’m sure. 

While Vance traces pathologies to the Scots Irish, another man in history looked for a purer legacy. I am reading the biography of John C. Campbell, whose wife started the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, NC, right outside Murphy. A friend and I recently visited it, a wonderful trip. I have nothing but good to say for it, and the official biography of Mr. Campbell that I bought is a good read. John Campbell, a Midwesterner, was drawn to the mountains because of the belief that the people were descended from the same folks as his parents, immigrants from Scotland. He found there a home and kindred spirit he did not find in Wisconsin, and he dedicated his life to helping the people of the “Southern Highlands,” a romantic notion.

Where one man sees pathologies, another seems mythic beauty, I suppose.  And I think Hollywood and literature do the same, and this brings me to the most immediate reason I’m thinking about Scotland and wish I could return.

Last night TCM showed, as it often does, a lovely film from 1945, I Know Where I’m Going. It is not well known, partly because it is black and white (but beautifully shot), and English, and some of the dialogue is authentic and hard to grasp by (some) American ears. It is also the gift of two famous directors, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger of Archer Studios and stars Dame Wendy Hiller as a young, determined woman, Roger Livesey as a Naval Officer and Scottish Laird in the Hebrides in cognito, Pamela Brown, Petula Clark, and a cast of wonderful people.

The plot in short: Determined young woman is going to marry a rich industrialist old enough to be her father, and the wedding is on the island of Killoran in Northern Scotland. Rich industrialist has rented the island from the real owner for the wedding and honeymoon and other purposes, even putting in a swimming pool. Apparently, wealthy English types rent castles for holiday purposes, and the owners are happy to do so because there isn’t many other ways to make money, especially in war time.  When Determined Woman arrives by train at the town where a boat will take her to the island, bad weather intervenes and she has to wait, along with the laird who is home on leave for eight days and wants to visit his home.  Mutual attraction ensues, not just for the officer and Determined woman but for her and the culture she has to soak in while waiting for the weather to improve. Specifically, they attend the diamond anniversary part of an old couple, dance, enjoy music, and become more attracted.

As she finds she is losing her desire to marry rich old guy in favor of the real man before her (who is not a young guy; they are in their late twenties and early thirties, respectively), she bribes a boat owner with an amount of money he would never see otherwise to take her through the storm and the possible danger of a deadly whirlpool. Naval Officer/Laird is angry but his friend tells him she is doing it to get away from him, so he goes too; after a terrible storm and almost shipwreck, they return, with only the clothes on their back (her wedding dress fell overboard). The next day the weather improves, the real boat comes for her and her trio of wedding bagpipers (there have to be bagpipes), and they part. Or do they? Watch the movie. It’s on YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfRmZ8LkCFE It may sound like a Hallmark movie, but I promise you, you’ll enjoy it.

My point in this is that there is something I am going to call the “Scottish myth.” We see it in Georgia MacDonald’s stories, and I think it may go back to Sir Walter Scott’s novels. We see it in Brigadoon, the old Gene Kelly/Cyd Charisse/Van Johnson music. We see it the Burt Lancaster’s quirky comedy Local Hero. I’ve seen it in other movies.

The citified, materialistic, cynical, and/or nonspiritual person has to spend time in Scotland, for some reason. There they meet real people; a woman meets a real man (no pansies in this country!), the outsider meets poor, simple, but kind people; a man meets a mysterious and charming woman (who might be a seal, in one story). The visitor succumbs to the “place.”  The place may be enchanted, to boot (as in Brigadoon where the village only appears once a century). There must be some mystic, mysterious call to the "place;" perhaps it is genetic memory to the land of ones ancestors.  John C. Campbell believed he would find it in “the Southern Highlands.”

Why Scotland? Good question. I do not know if there is a rash of movies and stories with a similar plot about any other country; Scotland hasn’t really been a separate “nation” for a very long time. It has a small population compared to England (10% the number of people despite being more than half the size; there is far more open space, which explains golf). Despite JD Vance’s viewpoint, many have argued that the Scots have had an outsized influence on the world despite its size. 

    There are a few more places I would like to visit the first time:  Scandinavia, Greece, and if ever again peaceful, the Holy Land. To return, Italy and Scotland. If I had unlimited money, I would buy a home in Scotland. That will never happen, but there is a romance about Scotland in many minds, and I hope to find out why.