KTL yak/yack Princess Street Edinburgh Saturday Night

thread drift is good

I am amazed though at the way people cling to their myths - us English included of course

Prebble is a most entertaining read on the subject.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb...learances&rh=i:aps,k:prebble+clearances&ajr=2

I think I shall re-instate the section in my talk on the clearances when addressing scottish audiences

the highlanders need to know that it was the denizens of the central belt in cahoots with the highlanders own hereditary tribal (ooops clan ) leaders who sold them down the river and it really had almost nothing to do with the English

as for the stationing of French garrisons along the border in the years before the Union - well that was not very nice now was it?

and let us not forget the many invasions masterminded by the scots - usually in cahoots with the French (again).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasions_of_the_British_Isles#The_Franco-Scottish_invasion_of_1385

http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/history/union_and_jacobites/jacobites_invade_england/

http://www.open.edu/openlearn/histo...ld-history/scottish-invasion-northern-england


really lads you do need to shape up a bit and stop regarding yourselves as eternal victims of the English


However, two of the greatest glories of Scotland are the wildlife/environment (thanks to the clearances) and the right to roam.

there are lots of other great things as well of course - whisky, music, marvelous sailing, good horses, castles, low population density, excellent drinking establishments, a greater sense of community and social responsibility than us gimme, gimme, gimme English.

there - that should be enough sweeping generalisations for the time being.
 
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Sorry I missed this, would've been a good night by all accounts, but a little too far from home...

I hope Wednesday night's hospitality was up to scratch Mr Winter?
 
Dylan, you really need to go back to tanistry and the holding of land in community to understand some of the behaviours of history. James VI changed the traditional ways and applied primogeniture and English land laws of heredity mainly to make raising taxes easier. Following the tenet that power corrupts so some of the clan chiefs presented with sole ownership of the lands succumbed to self serving behaviour that allied with the attractions of English wealth and so to the history you know.
I blame England for allowing the bastard Elizabeth onto their throne - had it been the legitimate claimant Mary, all would have been very different. Strange how the English who promoted legitimate primogeniture had their history changed by bastards - first Guillaume le bâtard, then Elizabeth.
 
awol said:
Dylan, you really need to go back to tanistry and the holding of land in community to understand some of the behaviours of history. James VI changed the traditional ways and applied primogeniture and English land laws of heredity mainly to make raising taxes easier. Following the tenet that power corrupts so some of the clan chiefs presented with sole ownership of the lands succumbed to self serving behaviour that allied with the attractions of English wealth and so to the history you know.
I blame England for allowing the bastard Elizabeth onto their throne - had it been the legitimate claimant Mary, all would have been very different. Strange how the English who promoted legitimate primogeniture had their history changed by bastards - first Guillaume le bâtard, then Elizabeth.
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classic defense of a central belter there keen to divert the blame onto the English when it really lay with the Glasgow/Edinburgh money hungry power axis that still over dominates scottish politics today (just as London over-dominates English politics)

in some ways I find myself in agreement with William Cobbett

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Cobbett

he rode around England telling us a few home truths about the malevolent influence of what he called the Great Wen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Wen

perhaps I should sail around scotland warning the few who live outside Glasgow and Edinburgh what they have coming to them at the hands of the two great cities.


no..... I won't do that..... I shall just continue singing the praises of Scottish geography and music
 
Sorry, Dylan, if by Central Belt you mean the rift valley of the Central Lowlands, I have to disillusion you. I hale from further west with hebridean, Welsh and Irish antecedents.
No argument about the malevolence of the Great Wen - and there we are still those who are bought and sold by English (or rather city) gold. The nice thing about history is the way we keep on repeating it but perhaps this time Scotland has learned, though I doubt it.
 
dylanwinter said:
just as London over-dominates English politics
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I think you'll find London dominates the UK in economic and other terms. When Thatcher saw the future of the UK in service industries, that was the end of the balanced geography.

Maybe you should have turned right at Berwick after all?
 
dgadee said:
I think you'll find London dominates the UK in economic and other terms. When Thatcher saw the future of the UK in service industries, that was the end of the balanced geography.

Maybe you should have turned right at Berwick after all?
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sorry - my fault - I assumed that people understood that political domination also means economic domination - which is what Cobett was driving at

of course when we sell up our house close to London and move up country then we will benefit from that

as long as you can forget that we paid through the nose for the house in the first place
 
dylanwinter said:
sorry - my fault - I assumed that people understood that political domination also means economic domination - which is what Cobett was driving at

of course when we sell up our house close to London and move up country then we will benefit from that

as long as you can forget that we paid through the nose for the house in the first place
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I think you will find that Cobbett was not a great fan of industrialisation - preferring a rural economy. Although I suppose his was a kind of economy which many from the south think is not rural enough for Scotland - they would like a kind of playground for bird spotters etc. You know what I mean - landscapes without a person polluting them, posing a 'naturalism' (which never existed), photogenically stilted for the cameraman from the home counties.

I have no knowledge of your housing nor your mortgage and don't really see it's relevant to your perspective on blaming the Scots as a whole for the clearances.
 
dgadee said:
I think you will find that Cobbett was not a great fan of industrialisation - preferring a rural economy. Although I suppose his was a kind of economy which many from the south think is not rural enough for Scotland - they would like a kind of playground for bird spotters etc. You know what I mean - landscapes without a person polluting them, posing a 'naturalism' (which never existed), photogenically stilted for the cameraman from the home counties.

I have no knowledge of your housing nor your mortgage and don't really see it's relevant to your perspective on blaming the Scots as a whole for the clearances.
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not sure where we are heading on this

are you saying that it was not the scottish toffs and tribal chiefs who cleared the highlands to fill their pockets with sheep money and that it was the perfidious english after all.
 
One of the worst of the clearance landowners was the still hated 1st Duke of Sutherland who, according to Wiki, was "the title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom held by the head of the Leveson-Gower family. It was created by William IV in 1833 for George Leveson-Gower, 2nd Marquess of Stafford. A series of marriages to heiresses by members of the Leveson-Gower family made the Dukes of Sutherland one of the richest landowning families in the United Kingdom." Not entirely sure, but it reads as though, heaven forfend, he was an Englishman ennobled by a German.
 
Following on from James VI's abolition of tanistry, the ability of the clan chiefs to sell their ancestral lands was created. English purchasers were not unknown. Also lands were forfeited after the 1715 and 45 insurgences and were given to court favourites and a lot of them were at the forefront of the clearances.. It's just a wee bit more complex than you are portraying it, Dylan.
 
"the highlanders need to know that it was the denizens of the central belt in cahoots with the highlanders own hereditory tribal (ooops clan ) leaders who sold them down the river and it really had almost nothing to do with the English"

I await your forthcoming 'History of Scotland' eagerly.
 
awol said:
Following on from James VI's abolition of tanistry, the ability of the clan chiefs to sell their ancestral lands was created. English purchasers were not unknown. Also lands were forfeited after the 1715 and 45 insurgences and were given to court favourites and a lot of them were at the forefront of the clearances.. It's just a wee bit more complex than you are portraying it, Dylan.
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what can I say.....

the culture of denial of ethnic cleansing by their own countrymen is as strong today as it has ever been

perhaps it would be as well to let sleeping dogs lie

D
 
I recent times Rupert Leveson-Gower-a Brooklands and pre-war Grand Prix motorcycle racer- lived in West Oxfordshire-Aston IIRC.

His son James Leveson-Gower commisioned me to prepare a very nice 1927 Sunbeam model 90TT for the Banbury Run, the premier Vintage Motorcycle event in the UK.

Both were really nice people.

Tom Rolt-one of the founders of the IWA-states that Trentham Gardens was the seat of the Leveson Gower family in his book "Narrow Boat".
 
awol said:
One of the worst of the clearance landowners was the still hated 1st Duke of Sutherland who, according to Wiki, was "the title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom held by the head of the Leveson-Gower family. It was created by William IV in 1833 for George Leveson-Gower, 2nd Marquess of Stafford. A series of marriages to heiresses by members of the Leveson-Gower family made the Dukes of Sutherland one of the richest landowning families in the United Kingdom." Not entirely sure, but it reads as though, heaven forfend, he was an Englishman ennobled by a German.
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A Dutchman surely....................................
 
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