The Curious Case of Inventing Scottishness

Hogmanay Special

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The curious case of inventing Scottishness

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Hogmanay Special

Wednesday 29 December 2021

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Mel Gibson in Braveheart, 1995

William Wallace’s wild Scots were routed by King Edward I of England in July 1298, scattering over the wild moorland in tartan kilts and blue-painted faces. Well, that’s Braveheart. It was described in the Times as one of the ten most historically inaccurate films of all time. The blue woad comes from the second century AD and the wild moorland from the nineteenth.

And the tartan kilts?

Ah … now there lies a story.

In 1983 a history book - now famous - appeared with the title The Invention of Tradition. The book came from a conference in which a roomful of distinguished historians read papers which seemed to show that all manner of so-called ‘traditions’ were in fact made up. And pointing exactly to where and by whom.

The chapter that caught the journalists’ eyes was about 'the invention of Scottishness.' It was by a then famous historian, Professor Hugh Trevor Roper. Actually, what the Professor meant by ‘scottishness’ was mainly just Scottish highland dress – tartan kilts. Oh, and a bit of poetry.

The curious case of inventing Scottishness on Apple podcast here

Novelist Sir Walter Scott created a make-believe world giving us the stereotypes of Scotland we have today

According to Prof. Trevor Roper it wasn't until the early nineteenth century that the tartan kilt hit the big time. And the man responsible was the novelist Sir Walter Scott. In his novels, from 1814, he created a whole make-believe world of olde worlde Scottish castles and Highland chiefs. And, of course, they all wore olde worlde kilts in olde world tartan.

The Scots loved it and made Sir Walter exceedingly rich.

But Trevor Roper in his chapter on 'the invention of Scottishness' has wrongly imagined that because something came into use at a particular time, it must have been invented then. It’s not true.

In the 1780s, for example, James Watt invented the valves that could make Newcomen’s steam engine drive factory machinery. But it didn't come into anything like widespread use until the 1840s. As any inventor will tell you, you don’t just need a good idea, you need a market. And the point about clan tartans was that they became popular in the early nineteenth century not because they were necessarily invented then, but because there was suddenly a market for them.

The curious case of inventing Scottishness on Soundcloud here

Balmoralisation, a term coined in 1932 meaning the superficial idealisation of Scottish culture

Contemporary cartoon of the overweight George IV kitted out for Sir Walter Scott's royal visit pageant

In 1822 Sir Walter Scott was put in charge of the visit to Scotland of the fantastically unpopular king George IV. The royal extravaganza was a cynical publicity stunt to soothe sore feelings over the violence used by the British army to put down a week of strikes in Glasgow in 1820. Three leaders had been executed – one decapitated – and twenty had been given hard labour.

For the week of elaborate pageants, levees and balls for the king, Sir Walter Scott instructed Scottish gentry to bring along a ‘tail’ of their clansmen and to turn up in ‘the ancient Highland costume’. Highland and Lowland gentlemen alike scuttled off in search of ‘clan tartans’ which Edinburgh tailors gratefully ran up for the occasion.

The King himself arrived with over £1000 worth of tartan and old-looking weapons he had purchased in London. He also came with a kilt, which turned out to be rather too short and he had hastily to be fitted out with a pair of skin-coloured pantaloons. It all went off with enormous success – the pageant that is – culminating in the moment the king finally toasted ‘the chieftains and clans of Scotland.’ A tradition was born, and it proved fantastically popular.

So now we have a much more interesting question. Why was there suddenly a market for genealogy and mock chivalry and clan tartans in early nineteenth-century Scotland? And this is where the story takes an altogether darker turn.

We're talking about the clearances of the Lowlands and Highlands - the process of combining individuals' small plots of land and common grazing into larger farms or ranchland for grazing sheep and cattle. It was both quick and painful.

The curious case of inventing Scottishness on Spotify here

2012 garden party at Balmoral. The royals wear the Balmoral tartan designed by Prince Albert in 1895 tartan and worn only with permission of the Queen

In the Highlands the clearances came later than in the Lowlands. The potato famine of 1847 gave lawyers, financiers and industrialists from the towns the opportunity to buy up impoverished Highland farmland, much of it destroyed by potato blight. Crofters who'd clung on through the famine were turned off the land. Fields and empty villages were destroyed, trees felled and agricultural lands turned into gale-swept, heather-clad moors where ghillies led cash-paying parties stalking for red deer.

So this is where the market came from. The newly wealthy lairds of the hunting estates needed to turn themselves into gentry. So with Walter Scott's novels in mind they built mock castles and imagined themselves heirs to an ancient tradition of Highland life where huntsmen hid in the heather … before finishing off their prey. Clan tartan, among other devices, drew a thick, romantic veil over the destitution they had caused.

The English aristocracy also bought into the romantic Highland myth. When Prince Albert bought Balmoral in 1848 it was in the middle of the potato famine. In 1932, the Edinburgh novelist George Scott-Moncrieff coined the term Balmorality for its superficial idealisation of Scottish culture.

As the introduction to Prof. Trevor Roper's posthumous book on Scotland explains, he only ever started to write about Scottishness in the 1970s because a Labour Government was exploring a scheme to devolve more political power to Edinburgh. As a Conservative, the Professor was completely opposed. What he very much wanted to prove, therefore, was that the whole business of Scottishness was a sham. All that business with tartan and kilts. It must have been made up – and probably by Englishmen.

Well if you catch our podcast you can see it wasn't! It's only the romantic myth that was made up.

HAPPY HOGMANAY to all our Scottish friends.

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