Scotland's Future Culture E-Book

Stuart McHardy

• Herausgeber: Luath Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 188

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

The culture of all nations is rooted in past experience, individual and communal. In Scotland's Future History McHardy looked at the misrepresentation of so much of Scotland's political and social history. In this new volume he takes a wider look at aspects of Scotland's culture that have been at the heart of how we have developed into who we are in today's world. Topics include literature, religion, history and story, the Radical 1790s, the remarkable Douglas Young and an introduction to Geomythography, a new way of melding prehistory and history to present a new and refreshing way seeing our past. Understanding our past is vital to the process of building a new Scotland in the years ahead. As Scotland moves towards reclaiming her status among the nations of the world it is important that we understand just how culturally distinctive we are. Being Scottish is no better than having any other nationality, but is is certainly no worse, and as this work hopefully shows, it is something worth celebrating.

Leseprobe

STUART MCHARDY is a writer, occasional broadcaster, and storyteller. Having been actively involved in many aspects of Scottish culture throughout his adult life – music, poetry, language, history, folklore – he has been resident in Edinburgh for over a quarter of a century. Although he has held some illustrious positions including Director of the Scots Language Resource Centre in Perth and President of the Pictish Arts Society, McHardy is probably proudest of having been a member of the Vigil for a Scottish Parliament. Often to be found in the bookshops, libraries and tea-rooms of Edinburgh, he lives near the city centre with the lovely (and ever-tolerant) Sandra and they have one son, Roderick.

First published 2017

ISBN: 978-1-910745-98-4

The author’s right to be identified as author of this book under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 has been asserted.

The paper used in this book is recyclable. It is made from low chlorine pulps produced in a low energy, low emission manner from renewable forests.

Printed and bound by Bell & Bain Ltd., Glasgow

Typeset in 11 point Sabon by Lapiz

© Stuart McHardy 2017

Dedicated to Claire, Roderick and Ishbel McHardy

Contents

Introduction

Going Forward Looking Back

Fermtoun and Clachan

Another Story

Geomythography

The Cutty Stool or The Distaff Side

The Kailyard

Saints and Stuff

Stories and Histories

The Radical 1790s

A Scottish Patriot

Postscript

Introduction

IN SCOTLAND’S FUTURE HISTORY I drew attention to aspects of our history that are, at the very least, open to re-interpretation. I wrote: ‘At the absolute centre of future Scottish history should be one simple idea. That we use what we know of ourselves to find out more’. Following on from that, in this second volume of essays on our past, I have looked at a broader spectrum of ideas. In today’s world, at the same time as some societies are becoming psychopathically intolerant, we can also see a growing recognition of people with a variety of different ways of experiencing and seeing the world. The growth of LGBTI groups and advocacy would have been impossible half century ago, even in those countries considered the most liberal. This has happened in large part because of individuals banding together to force governments into facing up to their needs. In turn this has been built on something I mentioned in Scotland’s Future History: the growth of ‘minority’ histories, and my contention is that standard political history is inherently flawed in presenting a valid picture of any nation’s past.

Scotland, since the founding of Holyrood, has a good record in such areas to date but at a time when the government in the UK is targeting those it should be doing most to help we have to realise that much of what we see as advances in our society are fragile due to the on-going influence of powerful, often multi-national, companies leading to a growing political frustration amongst electorates. Current political systems in much of the world see far too many different sectors of society as problems to be dealt with, rather than constituent parts of an arrangement that is supposedly predicated on working together towards shared aims, or mutual benefit. The chilling Thatcherite phrase ‘there is no such thing as society’ rings louder by the day and at this time there are growing divergences between what are the constituent parts of a political union primarily due to the resistance against the dominance of one part of that union over the other, particularly as regards Europe.

What has this to do with Scotland’s Future Culture? Well we are all defined by who we think we are and that is shaped by our perceptions of what has gone before, not only in terms of political history but in mythology and legend, language, music, dance, story and our own personal genealogies, as well as history in general. Governments seek simple stories to rally people around but that is partly why we are in the situation we are in today in Scotland. The recent explosion of commemorations of the First World War across the media is a case in point. These commemorations were more about the supposedly glorious past of a World Empire than an attempt to come to terms with what was then the greatest slaughter of humans ever perpetrated on the planet. It was as if there was a deliberate attempt to avoid learning any lessons from the blood-soaked debacles of that conflagration.

Governments and political establishments are always very particular about which aspects of the past they want represented. Anything that can be seen as working against their contemporary power is unlikely to be considered, and thus the sacrifice of millions of individuals, and their families, is subsumed in a story about glory and fighting the good fight; a fight in which, as Bob Dylan pointed out, ‘We had God on Our Side’. What winner didn’t?

The problems of understanding the past are manifold and in SFH I pointed out some of the more blatant distortions of Scotland’s past. In this book I am looking beyond the limitations of political history to try and show both how complex, but also how truly inspiring Scotland’s past can be.

All history is based on the idea of having a picture of the past that is of value to the present, and the future, and this was true long before literature was invented. I believe we rely far too much on what can be described as grand narratives, or contemporary created realities of the past. This gives a particular view of the past which I suggest leaves out not only a great deal of information which could further our understanding of that past but leads to a somewhat distorted idea of what history is, or, to my way of thinking at least, should be.

In this selection of essays I consider a range of topics from Scotland’s past that stretch beyond the normal, narrow definitions of history. It is one of the limitations of modern Western thinking that the specialisation of academics has led to subjects being separated into narrowly defined parameters, which while they may well suit the needs of these specialists and their institutions, can blur any real chance of increasing our understanding of the past. This specialisation sees languages studied not as one of the dynamic and evolving forces of culture and society but as intellectual constructs to be compared and analysed in such depth as almost to make such study irrelevant to all but the specialist. Archaeologists become experts on particular periods, which is of great interest to other similar specialists but what do they learn that will help us understand our pasts better? Much of this is due to processes of intellectual analysis that have arisen as the West developed its Empires, due to overwhelming technical superiority over other peoples, and treated the rest of the planet, and all non-European humanity with little more than contempt. The simplistic application of Darwin’s concept of the survival of the fittest to economic matters has given rise to mistaken and pernicious modes of thinking.

When human culture was dependant on oral transmission, the stories of past heroes were probably as important as the myths that were told to explain how the world worked and how we humans should behave in it. While the portrayal of such heroes themselves (of whatever gender) can be seen as similar to the idea of ‘Big Men Doing Big Things’, the more one studies the great sagas of the past, the more it becomes obvious that the stories reflect the society in which they exist in ways that are radically different from the presentation of history in the modern world, which, rather than arising from within the shared experiences of communities (as oral tradition had, and does yet) is presented from a centralised, and essentially elitist viewpoint.

How we see the world is dependent on what we are told and literary history, generally in the form of the grand narrative, has replaced the oral transmission of stories, myths and legends that were integral to earlier societies and cultures. This book is predicated on the idea that most academically acceptable history is essentially establishment oriented and, as such, can be understood as having a strong propagandistic role in helping to preserve the power structures of today’s world. This underlying and often entirely unconscious process is, in British terms (though not uniquely so), tied up with pathological attitudes towards class such as were seen in the recent sycophantic outpourings of media-drivel concerning the Duke of Edinburgh ‘retiring’ from his royal role at the age of 90.

However, there is, I suggest, a warning we should perhaps tak tent o, as can be appropriately illustrated in the case of the corpus of tales associated with the figure of Arthur. Under the influence of the invading Normans of the 11th century, the focus of this collection of traditional tales that formed a core part of the culture of all of the P-Celtic speaking peoples of this island and Brittany, the hero Arthur became ‘King’ Arthur. And therein lies the nub of a major problem. Modern history is all too concerned with the actions of so-called elites. In archaeology this translates into the rather unfortunate fascination with the behaviour of what too many scholars perceive as being those at the top of society. I have written of this before and do not wish to go over the same ground but it must be said that, apart from consigning the ancestors of the vast majority of human beings to irrelevance, this approach creates other problems. At a time when the utter venality of those who have their hands on the reigns of power in the British state is daily more evident, we need to realise that one of the ways that elite history distorts our understanding of the past is precisely through narrowing its focus not just in to the ‘Big Men’, but into political history itself.

What happened in the political arena is given precedence over all other aspects of human society, and behaviour. While this suits the elites of contemporary society and those happy to live in their shadow, it limits our understanding of what happened in earlier times. As humans, we are defined by our cultures as much as anything. In the modern world this has perhaps too often led to a concentration on specific languages, which are one aspect of culture but not its defining core, even if language is of major importance. Not so important however as what language carries. For it is through story, song and poetry as well as music and art that people gain an understanding of who they are and what their culture is – from whence, and whom, they have come.

In this regard, much of what has been presented as important in Scotland’s past has, like aspects of history that appeared in the previous volume, Scotland’s Future History, been subjected to obfuscation, manipulation and in some cases patronising and ignorant distortion. In this present volume, a variety of topics are considered, some of which are definitely outwith political history.

In Chapter One, Going Forward Looking Back, I suggest that we need to approach Scotland’s history through analysing the shared experiences of the population at large over time, focussing on the dominant socio-economic patterns that can be discerned as opposed to concentrating on what supposed ‘élites’ were up to. This leads into the next chapter, Fermtoun and Clachan, noting that the Clearances, Lowland then Highland, removed a pattern of occupation, common across the entire country, that had apparently changed little over many millennia. My contention is that the fundamental importance of the continuity of community underlies all of Scottish culture. In the following chapter, Another Story, I give a brief resume of a lifetime’s research into one particular motif that occurs in traditional tales, early histories and in the landscape. This is the theme of the Nine Maidens, tales which were not just common across the Celto-Germanic world but were known across the planet and may well have originally emanated from Africa. This underlines the reality that the peoples of Scotland have never inhabited an isolated backwater but were always part of world culture on many levels.

The following chapter is on Geomythography, which presents a new approach to considering our common past. This approach has developed over many years, following through on research into the Nine Maidens which led to considering how the pre-Christian peoples of Scotland saw their world, and how some of their ideas and evidence of their activities have survived. Chapter Five takes a brief look at the problem of how standard political history has almost totally ignored the role of women in the development of human culture and history. Though things have been changing in this regard over the past few decades, much remains to be done to offset how this has distorted our understanding of humanity’s development. I then consider the Kailyard, a term used to define a genre of 19th and early 20th century Scottish literature that has become a byword for what is presented as a couthy, backward and essentially overly twee version of Scotland and the Scots. Though I will be looking only at one story – Ian McLaren’s ‘The Posty’ – I am here suggesting that Kailyard is a valuable part of our culture and that we should celebrate it, not shrink from it.

Following this is an essay about how the Christian Church has shaped so much of what we consider to be Scotland’s history. The main focus of this chapter is on the figure of Columba and how his portrayal as ‘the dove of the church’ is simply propaganda. Saying this is not to make a value judgement on those who gave us our early history – merely to note that a devotion to religion is not the best grounding for developing a balanced view of the past. And as Bob Dylan showed in his song ‘With God on Our Side’, such attitudes are not unique to the religious.

This leads into a chapter looking at the roles of both story and history in representing, not just the past, but their role in developing how we see ourselves in the modern world. Story has been around for as long as humans have had language, while literature, no matter its current dominance in human society, is a relatively recent development in the growth of our species. This is of some relevance given we now know stories can survive for tens of millennia and, potentially in the case of the stories of the Nine Maidens, for much longer than that. By the time humans left Africa, there is no doubt they were carrying their stories with them.

In Chapter Nine I return to a theme from Scotland’s Future History, the Radical agitation in Scotland in the 1790s. While recently there has been welcome attention paid to the Radical lawyer Thomas Muir, and the group known as the Scottish Political Martyrs, the reality is that the demand for radical democratic reform was widespread in Scotland at the time and there were many dynamic and fascinating characters involved.

In the final chapter I look at the remarkable Douglas Young, a man of great intellect and tenacity who was jailed during World War II for his devotion to the cause of Scotland’s independence. Included in this is a brief look at the idea of Scotland’s sovereignty, which though many people nowadays think is somewhat arcane, I believe to be central to the campaign for taking back our national independence

Underpinning the ideas here presented is the need to try and gain a clear comprehension of just how the culture and community of Scotland have developed through history. Until just a couple of hundred years ago the vast majority, indeed almost the entire population, lived in small scattered self-sufficient communities. In the Lowlands these are generally known as fermtouns and in the Highlands as clachans (see Chapter Three), although technically the Highland versions should be called bailies, with ‘clachan’ generally referring to such communities that had ‘stones’, or churches. Many, if not most, of such churches were structures raised on ground that was sacred long before the Christian monks arrived. The idea of this approach is to understand societies that existed in the past through understanding that there was a remarkable degree of continuity within such communities. Many of the fermtouns and clachans that disappeared in the ‘improvements’ of the 18th and 19th centuries are likely to have been in existence on or around the same locations since at least the Bronze Age, and possibly much longer. Factor in that such communities were almost universally linked through kinship ties, surviving in the Highlands as part of the clan system till the middle of the 18th century, and it would appear that for most people the community they inhabited was central to their lives in ways that have not yet been studied enough.

If a community had survived over millennia, there seems no reason to doubt that the members of that group would have developed specific sophisticated methodologies for dealing with their environment, on both the physical and social level. The idea that they would always need someone to tell them what to do is frankly insulting. Even today in Scotland, crofters, when there is need for communal activity, will come together without the need for some ‘superior’ individual to tell them what is clearly needs doing. How much more would this have been the norm when everyone lived in the fermtouns and clachans? Yes, in times of war, and in instances of inter-clan raiding, there would be need for leadership. Likewise if boats, or birlinns, were being used, the need for someone to be designated as ‘in charge’ is clearly necessary. And given that people were inter-related in their small communities, it would only be sensible if the best man for the job was given the role. Once that activity was over, however, why would the person who had control over that activity be seen by his relatives as anything special?

One way of looking at history as it is presented is summed up in the Latin phrase cui bono – who benefits. By telling us that the past was always dominated by elites, history plays up the idea that contemporary elites are as natural to human society as breath is to the human body. This is nonsense, designed to keep such contemporary elites in positions of control, and is, as the current state of the world physically, socially and economically suggests, not a very bright idea at all.

Going Forward Looking Back

TO SUGGEST, AS I am doing, that history as it has developed is not fit for purpose (my contention being that the focus on ‘Big Men doing Big Things’ does not give a true reflection of humanity’s past, whether here in Scotland or anywhere else), means it is only right that alternative suggestions should be made as to how we should approach the past. I am not suggesting we throw out all history to date, no matter how tempting that may be to some, particularly to those groups who claim to be driven by religious motives. Rather, in future, I think we have to look across a broader spectrum of both available resources and human experiences to create a better understanding of how our species has lived, and hopefully will continue to live, on this fragile planet. The current fascination with genealogy shows that history is appreciated at a personal level across a wide spectrum, as well as being still part of the establishment education system, and it is such personal interest that underlies what I believe is a viable way forward in attempting a better understanding of our past.

Standard political history ignores the activities of the vast majority of human beings; they are deemed unimportant and irrelevant. This is part of the process by which the increasingly concentrated super-rich of the planet maintain their position. In order to help combat this one of the things we need is different ways of seeing, and I suggest that Scotland’s history itself provides the blueprint for such an approach. I have stated repeatedly that the communitarian aspects of Scottish society long predate the fundamentally elitist interpretations of Marx and Engels, and I believe that by focussing on how such ideas of communitarianism survived over remarkable periods of time we can begin to build an improved approach to history. For most of the human occupation of this part of the world, certainly since the last Ice Age as far as we can tell, the vast majority of people have lived in what are nowadays generally referred to as fermtouns and clachans, small kin-related groups of rarely as much as a hundred people, scattered across the landscape and closely related with other such communities.

Such population patterns underlie the social aggregates we see in our history as tribes and clans, and continued to be the norm until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for a great many of our predecessors, Highland and Lowland. The pattern can be clearly seen in General Roy’s military maps of 1745-61. Their ancestors worked communally to create the great sacred landscapes of Orkney, Calanais, Kilmartin and elsewhere and left traces of how they perceived their own environment across the land, traces of which can be seen today.2 The point of this is that we can now see that the old elitist notions of how the great monuments were created – some important individual, or perhaps a kingly or priestly class bossing the rest of an essentially subjugated population about – is not the only possible interpretation and appears to be one that has been designed to represent humanity in effect as being ‘programmed’ to be led by those among them who call themselves ‘their betters’. Disagreeing with this does not negate the idea of specialists being involved, either in the creation of monuments, or in ritual behaviour; I merely point out that such folk do not need to have had power over others. What the history of the Scottish clans suggests, echoing tribal experience across the world, is that while there were definite differences in status within the clans, even the chiefs could be removed if their activities were seen as detrimental to the interests of the community as a whole. And there lies the key: the community as a whole