Some years ago Dr. Murray Gibbon wrote in his
Canadian Mosaic:
'To know a people, you must know its history and
origins, just as to know an individual person requires knowledge of
his parents, his upbringing and his career, as well as the house he
lives in and his surroundings.
'That is why, if we are to understand the
Canadian people, we must know more than just the geography and
scenery of Canada, and the customs and habits of the Canadians. We
must also study their racial origins.
'This we are fortunately able to do, because the
Canadian people have not lived long enough together to be set in
their ways. They are made up of European racial groups, the members
of which are only beginning to get acquainted with each other, and
have not yet been blended into one type. Possibly in another two
hundred years, Canadians may be fused together and standardized so
that you can recognize them anywhere in a crowd. But even then, the
writers of the future will understand them better if they know what
they were like when Canada was younger.
'The Canadian race of the future is being
superimposed on the original native races and is being made up of
over thirty European racial groups, each of which has its own
history, customs and traditions . . . The Canadian people to-day
presents itself as a decorated surface, bright with inlays of
separate coloured pieces, not painted in colours blended with brush
on palette. The original background in which the inlays are set is
still visible.'
But the original background is fast disappearing, and
a new Canadian, distinctive in outlook and mentality, is being rapidly
and splendidly evolved. He is a compound of many national ingredients
and the inheritor of many and varied national characteristics, of which
the Scottish are by no means the least. It is our purpose in the
following pages to try to recall and evaluate some of the contributions
which the Scots have made towards the building of this Dominion, during
the time when it was still a colony in its adolescence. The more virile
type of Scots—the Cape Breton Highlanders, for example—have, like the
French-Canadians, been able to form a group strong enough to preserve
their ancient language and many of the ways and customs, the songs and
sports of their forefathers. There are determinedly Scottish "islands"
as at Legatt's Point in Quebec: there are thousands in the Dominion who
pride themselves on their Scottish ancestry and traditions. That is
partly the sentimental side of the Scot which is making itself heard and
felt; it has little bearing on his daily living in Canada. He is, for
all practical purposes, a Canadian. This did not hold in the former
generation of Scots. A Scottish leavening there undoubtedly is and must
be in the second generation: but many of the second generation are no
longer Scots. They go to Canadian schools, speak with a Canadian accent,
grow up with the Canadian mentality. They have little or no interest in
Sons of Scotland or St. Andrew's Societies. They are Masons, or
Kiwanians, or Rotarians, or Kinsmen, or members of some other service
club. They spend
their holidays camping or touring in Canada; they do
not want to live in Scotland. They are troubled by no memories of "the
lone shieling". They are Canadians.
The Canadian of to-day is aware of a new feeling of
nationality. He realises that while there must be divergence of opinions
on matters of internal polity, a nation, if it is to play a worthy role
in international affairs, must speak from strength and not from
weakness, and with the assurance which the maximum of unity brings. The
evolution of Canada was inevitable; no one in his right senses could
wish or imagine it otherwise; and in the course of her evolution she is
gradually assuming the position and responsibilities of nationhood. This
implies no disloyalty to the British Commonwealth or to the
international ideal. Canada is merely putting into practical effect the
teaching of Scotland's great national poet — that, before a nation can
attain the international point of view it must first be sure that it has
a national one. And to the fulfilment of this ideal the Canadian of
Scottish extraction, or the more recent Scottish Canadian, is most
sincerely contributing.
And if we speak in particular appraisement of the
contribution of the Scots to Canada we do not seek to belittle the work
that has been done by the French, the English, the Irish and the Welsh.
The number of distinguished French names in early Canadian history is
legion — Cartier, who landed at Stadacona in 1535, La Salle, de
Salaberry and Champlain; Maisonneuve, Brebeuf, Frontenac; Mere Marie de
l'Incarnation, Madame La Tour and Madeleine de Vercheres. There are
fascinating adventurers like Radisson and Groseillers; there is Le Moyne
d'Iber-ville, commander of the Pelican, which sank the British
ship, Hampshire, in Hudson Bay with the loss of 290 good seamen,
in 1697. That sea fight makes epic reading.
'Just before he (the English Captain, Fletcher)
gave his last broadside called to the said Mons. d'Iberville,
bidding him strike, which he refusing to do Captain Fletcher took a
glass and drank to him, telling him he should dine with him
immediately. Upon which the said French Captain pledged him in
another glass. And thereupon his men fired a volley of small shot
upon the Hampshire which was returned with a like volley to
the Frenchman. After that the said Captain Fletcher was not seen, so
that it was supposed the said Captain Fletcher was then killed.' The
first white woman to see the prairies was a Frenchwoman, Marie Ann
Gaboury. She was there in 1807. As to French names in Canadian
history, one might use John Dryden's phrase when he was talking
about the characters in Chaucer's Prologue — "here is God's
plenty" — and leave it at that.
One cannot think of the history of Canada without
recalling English names like Frobisher, the first of his race to land on
Canadian soil, in 1576; and Henry Hudson, who vanished amid the ice
floes of James Bay in 1610; and William Baffin, who was busy exploring
the grim wastes of the North while William Shakespeare was writing his
plays in London and Elizabeth was trying to make up her mind whether or
not to cut off the head of poor Mary, Queen of Scots. There are many
later English names whose bearers have figured nobly in the making of
Canada— Wolfe and Durham, Amherst, Lawrence and Begbie,
Brock and Bagot, Sydenham and Simcoe. There are Irish
names like Baldwin, Hincks, Whelan, Talbot, Monck, Lisgar, the Marquis
of Dufferin and Ava, and D'Arcy McGee. A Welshman, Thomas Button, became
in 1610 one of the "Incorporated Discoverers of the North West Passage",
and a countryman of his, David Thompson, a Bunyanesque individual with
black hair "worn long all round and cut square, as if by one stroke of
the sheers, just above the eye-brows", was not only map-maker for the
North West Company but the author of a standard work on the fauna and
flora, the customs and the folklore of the Indians who lived in that
vast territory.
* * * * *
But one need only mention McGill and Dalhousie to
have some idea of the vital contribution which the Scots have made to
education in Canada; to recall names like McCulloch, Strachan, or
Macdonell to realise the variety of religious experience which they
represented. One has only to think of some of the most famous of the
Canadian regiments — the Black Watch, the Seaforths, the Camerons, to
see the quality of the fighting spirit that the Scots contributed to the
older Canada on which the newer Dominion has been so well and truly
built. One has only to mention names like General James Murray, or Lord
Elgin or Sir John A. Macdonald, or George Brown, to appreciate the part
that Scots have played in the politics and the diplomacy of the country.
One need only speak of Lord Mount Stephen, or Lord Strathcona, or
Sandford Fleming or the Allans, to realise what a tower of strength the
Scots have been in the development of Canadian industrial enterprise. It
is not too much to claim that the influence of the Scot has been felt in
practically every branch of Canadian life and achievement.
* * * * *
Many things, both wise and foolish, have been spoken
and written by the Scot about himself, and, unfortunately a certain
amount of exaggeration in his appraisement has not been lacking. He has
been unable to conceal the fact that he had a "gude conceit" of himself.
That has been made a matter for reproach by his enemies. He has been
criticised for a tendency to dwell overmuch on his material achievements
while ignoring his spiritual and intellectual attainments; for
forgetting that some of the highest and best of his contributions to the
human race have been made by unknown or unremembered Scots — simple,
good men like ministers, teachers, colporteurs, tillers of the soil, who
in the lonely places of life, have kept the torch burning amid
conditions that would have broken them if they had not been sustained by
a faith that would not shrink and which won to triumph over all
difficulties and temporal discouragements. Burns's Cotter was of this
company; he will be for all time a symbol of the humble Scot who gave
his mite and helped the weary traveller on his lonely way. That good
historian of The Scot in British North America, W. J. Rattray,
writing in his old-fashioned Victorian way, sums up the contribution of
the Scot in these glowing words:
'The history of the Scot in British North America
has virtually been the history of the country since its occupancy by
the British. In politics, especially, the Scot has been,
unquestionably, the most prominent of the varied elements which have
gone to the making of our national life. By all the qualities, of
statesmanship, of leadership, of diplomacy, men of Scottish origin
have proved their claim to the foremost place among those who have
laid the foundations of Canadian nationality. The splendid
intellectual and moral gifts of the race have lost nothing by
transplantation to the alien soil, but have rather become
strengthened by the strenuous conflict and pressure of unaccustomed
social conditions, and the action and reaction of new forces ....
The strong religious instincts, the keen moral perceptions, the
resolute will, tireless energy, and acute logical faculty of the
Scot, tempered and modified by the qualities of the people who share
our national heritage, will enter very largely into the fibre of the
coming race.' [Vol. iv. pp. 1191-2.]
That is a proud claim made over sixty years ago
although the writer did not get to the root of the matter like Burns. It
is also a true claim. But since then the character of the Scot has been
under fire. Like the new Canadian, the Scot has become acutely
self-conscious, more nationalistically self-conscious than he has been
since the days when Scotland was — nominally at least — an independent
nation with a King, a parliament and a diplomatic service of her own. He
is setting a new value on himself, bringing himself up to date, taking
stock of his assets. He is no longer thinking of himself in romantic or
sentimental terms; he has become a business proposition. He is in deadly
earnest. He is determined to rid the world of false ideas about himself.
He is willing to admit his failings; but they must be got rid of. He
would cultivate the qualities which have made for his success in the
past and choose them as a base on which to build his future. He is aware
that it is not easy to give up bad habits, especially if one is no
longer young, but he knows that the ability or inability to give up
those bad habits is the measure of a man's strength or his weakness. The
Second World War has greatly strengthened the Scot in his resolution. It
has enabled him to see himself more clearly and to understand himself
better in the fierce test of battle. It has allowed others to see him at
home, to appreciate his hospitality and the warmth of his welcome, his
courage in the field, his patience under suffering. He has grown
resentful of the false idea that men have held about him. The change in
the Scot of to-day is almost startling. He has found himself once more.
Once again Scotland is the land which sent the pioneers into the waste
places. She is still the same Scotland which gave so many of her sons to
Canada. Once again she can look with pride and understanding on a land
which she has so greatly helped to mould. Once again the Scottish sons
of Canada can look with pride and warm sympathy on the mother from whom
they have sprung. *
* * * *
It is a truism that has
been repeated ad nauseam that the greatest single factor in the life of
the Scottish people was the Reformation. Until that time no one had
associated the Scots particularly with religion. They were known on the
Continent of Europe for their fighting qualities and for their pride.
Their country was known to be poor, miserably poor; their Court was
filled with ruffianly nobles, intriguing courtiers, and their Kings
almost invariably came to a bad end very early in life. James I. was
assassinated; James
II.
was murdered; James III. was killed by the
bursting of a cannon; James
IV. brought his nation to
disaster and himself to an early death by his own obstinate stupidity ;
James V. died a young
man, like his ancestors, of heartbreak. His daughter Mary, Queen of
Scots, perished on the scaffold long before she had reached middle age.
Until the Reformation the Scots were an "independent" nation tied to the
apron-strings of the French. The Reformation stimulated them spiritually
and intellectually. It liberated them from the bondage of the past and
turned them into a nation of aggressive thinkers and enquirers into the
truth. When John Knox was set free from the slavery of the Nostre Dame
galley on the intercession of Edward VI.
of England, a
most implacable enemy of the old Church was let loose to work his will
against it. Knox was no fanatical Torquemada: we believe Carlyle's
picture of the man to be a much better likeness than Edwin Muir's.
[Muir, John Knox, (1930).] He lived in desperate days and had to adopt
extreme measures to maintain the intellectual and religious liberty
which he had won. But he did not "rob Scotland of all the benefits of
the Renaissance." It is ridiculous to assert, as Mr. Muir does, that "he
had no sense of justice", that he was "vindictive in his unrelenting
pursuit of Mary Stuart", that "normally he was altogether without
self-control" and "incapable of living at peace." Nor was Knox a bitter
and ignorant iconoclast. He believed in the beauty of holiness; he held
that holiness becometh God's house and that God's house is rendered
fairer and more seemly when it is adorned along the lines laid down by
John Calvin in his Institutes of the Christian Religion:
'But for as much as carving and painting are the
gifts of God, I require that they be both pure and lawfully used.
Lest these things which God has given us for His Glory and for our
benefit be not only defiled by disorderly abuse, but also turned to
our own destruction.'
The Scot adopted and adapted Calvinism; Calvinism did
not adopt and adapt the Scot as used to be commonly assumed. As a very
recent writer on Scotland puts it:
'The simple explanation of the so-called
'Calvinist' qualities of the Lowland Scot is that, from the
thirteenth to the seventeenth century, his ancestors were engaged in
a deadly struggle with a much larger and richer neighbour. England
could wage the war and leave an ample margin of her wealth and
energies for trade; Scotland had to throw everything she had into
the fight. And it gave the Lowland Scots the character inevitable in
any race, which, every few years throughout the centuries, has to
make scorched earth of its farmsteads and towns and take to the
woods and the hills as guerillas. It has given them all the grim
defects so mercilessly recorded by George Douglas Brown in his
The House with the Green Shutters, together with indefatigable
fighting qualities and a determination to make good the time lost
and win prosperity, each for himself. But they have no ancient
culture to inherit. A few blackened abbeys were all that the wars
left them. The Reformation found a country in which the poor were
poverty-stricken: the little wealth was concentrated about the Court
and the Church, which imported their culture as they imported their
luxuries.' [Ian Finlay, Scotland,
p. 117, (1944).]
One result of this is that the contribution of the
Scots to the fine arts has been comparatively meagre. They have produced
one poet who belongs not to Scotland but to the world, one novelist who
can take his place with the greatest and whose fame is forever secure.
And they have one supremely great religious philosopher. Carlyle came
late, perhaps too late, but it was as if the whole nation of Scots had
been waiting for him — Highlander and Lowlander. Carlyle represents the
best of their thinking. He went forth into the world, preaching the
gospel of self-sacrifice and the paramount need for work and duty. He
taught the inescapableness of personal responsibility and the inevitable
accounting that must follow. Carlyle, with his brusqueness and
roughness, his moral earnestness and autocratic overbearingness, his
democratic feeling and his intolerance of democracy, his broad
humani-tarianism and his narrow local vision, typifies the Scot who
took character and moral strength with him when he went furth of
Scotland to make the far wilderness blossom like the rose.
* * * * *
One of the most tragic things about the Scot is that
he is without a national culture, or a culture which is internationally
recognised as Scottish. I can remember my mother singing to me when I
was a child the story of the Four Maries, and from somewhere among the
mists of the years there come to mind these lovely lines:
'Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,
Oh! where hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl of Moray,
And have laid him in the green ...
He was a braw gallant,
And he play'd at the ba';
And the bonnie Earl of Moray
Was the flower amang them a' . . .
Oh! lang will his lady
Look owre the castle Doune,
Ere she see the Earl of Moray
Come sounding thro' the toun.
But the chances are that the modern Scots child knows
little or nothing of the ancient balladry of his country, or even its
history. He is more likely to be familiar with the American "funnies".
The Scot of to-day is a curious contradiction. He is perhaps more
nationalistic than at almost any period in his history. Yet he is
allowing the priceless heritage of the Gaelic to crumble away, and the
vernacular as spoken in the cities is a corrupt and unlovely thing. The
average Lowlander is blissfully ignorant of the fact that ethnologically
he is of the same stock as the Highlander, and that it is geographical,
political and economic conditions, and not racial differences that are
responsible for what is purely an artificial distinction. Gaelic was
spoken in part of the Lowlands until comparatively recently and that
district is still full of corrupted Celtic names. The Scot, especially
the Lowland Scot, romanticises Queen Margaret, forgetting that she was a
Saxon who hated everything Scottish and did her best to undermine the
traditions and the customs of her adopted country. The Scot is a great
believer in education, not as an end but as a means to an end. In a
recent issue of The University of Edinburgh Journal [Autumn,
1945.]l there is this statement: "The demand for university education,
coming both from the people and from the Government, is growing
enormously — a recent Government communication estimates the need for an
increase in the "student population" of the country as high as 50 per
cent. over the pre-war numbers. The tradition of equal opportunity for
all still holds in Scotland, and this, coupled with the conviction that
knowledge is power, has made the Scot one of the most efficient
individuals in the world. This idea of efficiency tends, however, to
make somewhat of a travesty of culture. "A university," according to one
recent authority, "is a corporation or society which devotes itself to a
search after knowledge for its intrinsic value." That is what is meant
by a liberal education. But the Scot is beginning to ask himself whether
he really is getting a liberal education, or whether he is being
educated at all. He is beginning to wonder precisely what value a degree
has when its recipient cannot discuss intelligently matters of general
interest, such as contemporary literature, art, music, scientific trends
and political portents. He is beginning to realise that purely academic
efficiency may cost too much, if it merely succeeds in turning promising
young men and women into robots whose intellectual vision has been
warped to such an extent that they cannot see the wood for the trees.
This is the danger of over-specialisation. It is the tragedy of our
Scottish schools (I except foundations like Fettes and Merchiston) that
they do little towards cultivating the social graces, and it is the
reproach of our Scottish universities that they do even less towards
supplying a social background, the lack of which has handicapped many of
our most brilliant graduates. Sir Alexander MacEwan was no doubt a
little harsh, but he was speaking no more than the truth when he wrote
in 1932: "It is open to doubt whether under our present system the
average primary or even secondary school child carries away with him
anything which may be described as of permanent intellectual value. It
is, unfortunately, possible to take a University degree and yet be as
devoid of the civilising influence of literature, art, and music as a
new-born babe." [''Education and the Arts", in The Thistle and the
Rose, p. 116 (1932).]
In a recent brochure entitled Re-educating
Scotland, the writer has this to say on the aims of Scottish
education:
'Scotland once had the reputation of being the
best-educated nation in Europe. This reputation was deserved,
especially in the eighteenth century, because the Scots' respect for
learning, which dated back to the pre-Reformation era, had led the
Church and the Burghs to establish schools on a scale which, in
proportion to population, exceeded that of any other European
nation, and most certainly far exceeded that of her richer
neighbour.
'To-day, after more than 70 years of State
control of education, the pristine glory has departed. That
statement does not mean that Scottish education has not progressed
under State control. On the contrary, great improvements have been
made. The curriculum is more liberal, teachers are more highly
qualified and better paid, school buildings and equipment are more
generously provided, physical training and games have been given a
place in the curriculum, medical inspection has been introduced, and
generally speaking, there is a better relationship between teachers
and pupils than in the old days. But, just as the Scottish infant
mortality rate is still shamefully high for a civilized country, so
also, while other nations have progressed in education Scotland has
dropped behind.
'The reason is that Scottish education is still
uneasily dominated by an old tradition: that of the "lad o' pairts",
who, by much burning of the midnight candle in the lonely croft,
contrived to win his way through Grammar School and University, to
the pulpit or professorial rostrum. It was a narrowly academic
tradition, which was based almost entirely on Latin in the Grammar
School, because the lectures in the University were, until well on
in the eighteenth century, delivered in the classical language. The
production of the "lad o' pairts" is still the main aim of our
educational system, to the neglect of the needs of the great
majority of our children, who have not the academic ability to
profit from a University education, at any rate, as we think of
Universities now . . .
'Once again, however, the crucible of War has
fired us with a burning idealism. We have fought and suffered and
died to preserve the democratic way of life. But this time, we are
determined to do what we failed to do between the two wars: to make
our country a real democracy of which its citizens can be proud.
Thus the demand for educational reform is strong . . . '
[Re-educating Scotland Ed. Naomi Mitchison, Robert
Britton and G. M. Gilgour, Pub. Scoop Books Limited, Glasgow,
n.d.]
* * * * * *
The attitude of contemporary Scottish writers and
historians towards Scotland is reflected in the work of Dr. Agnes Mure
Mackenzie. Dr. Mackenzie completed her six-volume history of Scotland,
Scotland in Modern Times, 1720-1939, in 1941. One critic, writing
in The Times Literary Supplement on December 27 of that year,
pointed out succinctly the difference between Dr. Mackenzie's point of
view and that of the distinguished Scottish historian, Hume Brown,
writing fifty years ago.
'Hume Brown wrote as a Whig, who was satisfied
with the blessings of the 1707 Union, and who considered Scottish
history mainly in relation to English. Dr. Mackenzie writes as a
Tory, who is profoundly dissatisfied with the effects of the Union;
and she always sees Scotland's history against a European
background. But a deeper difference is that where Hume Brown saw
Scotland as a nation whose great days were in the past, Dr.
Mackenzie believes that Scotland is a country still in the making,
and she looks forward to a future when the best Scotsmen will once
more want to spend their energies in the service of their own
country .... With unflagging loyalty, (Dr. Mackenzie) reminds us of
the Scottish origins of many British and foreign notables— even if
they were our enemies, like Lauriston, who commanded the French rear
in the retreat from Moscow .... But it is an excellent, and a new
thing that the chronicle of a country whose greatest failing is
particularism should be written by an historian sensitive to the
interaction of industry and morals, religion and music, education
and snobbery, and inspired with a patriotism that transcends any
sectional loyalties.'
The Scot of to-day objects to Lauderism
cheap music-hall travesty of his race. The Lauder conception of
the Scot as a red-nosed kilted Scot with fiery whiskers and a whisky
bottle sticking out of his pocket, is a grotesque distortion of what has
been dubbed "Balmorality" — that ludicrous misconception of the
Highlander popularised by Queen Victoria and that sycophantic old woman,
Harriet Beecher Stowe. As George Scott Moncrieff puts it:
'The picture in Victoria's mind can well be
conjectured: the genuine Celt, and the full Highland
dress, probably that composed by the Anglo-German Royal Family,
pacing through a baronial hall (not a chieftain's castle) of
the English inspired Baronial Revival, but strewn with tartans, or
amongst hills with wildness dabbed on, so as not to get in the way,
by a queenly hand. It was the game that they were all playing; like
the English of eighteenth century cult, only a thousand times more
intense, the past was made picturesque and romantic and essentially
unreal; it had existed, but it had no real bearing on contemporary
life. All the treacheries and sordid-ness of the clan life and of
Scottish history were forgotten; a tartan patchwork quilt was laid
over these, for the industrial age was here, an age that considered
history as something utterly dead, of use simply as a ticker to
replace genuine sentiments that had been jettisoned from life as
unpractical or indecent.' ["Balmorality"
in Scotland in Quest of her Youth, p. 78, (1932).]
* * * * *
Gibing and fleering at Scots poverty and the alleged
closenievedness of the Scot is an ancient pastime. When the French
historian, Jean Froissart, was in Scotland in David the Second's time,
he described the poor scale of living of the Scots. They boasted that
they were able to build a house in three days. But Froissart noted
another thing about the Scots; no matter how poor they were, they were
individualists and had little or no respect for the French nobles who
had come to help them fight the English — merely because they happened
to be nobles. They had no respect for them whatsoever when they rode
through their poor crops as they did in their own country. It was
something new for the French to find that poverty and independence could
go together. "A difficult people", Froissart called them; but they were
merely being true to type and doing what they had always been forced to
do — resisting superior force that would have despoiled and destroyed
them. They were anticipating the teaching of Burns, who insisted on the
sacred rights of the individual. But Froissart had a further complaint
against the Scots, a complaint which has been made by people other than
French in later times and in modified degree. The French were "hardly
dealt with in their purchases, and had to pay an extravagant price for
whatever they wanted; and whenever their servants went out to forage . .
. they were sure to be waylaid on their return, villainously beaten and
robbed, and sometimes even slain." According to the diarist, Robert
Fabyan, the Scots retaliated on their English detractors by gibing at
their "deformyte of clothyng" and ridiculing them in jingles like this:
Long beardes hearties,
Paynted hoodes witles,
Gay cotes graceless,
Make England thriftles.
James II. of Scotland
passed an Act forbidding any but aldermen and their wives to "wear
clothes of silk and costly scarlet and the fur of martens." Women were
not to wear tails "of unbecoming magnitude" and when they went to church
they had to "muffle their faces under pain of the escheat of their
kerchiefs." That interesting old man, Sir Richard Maitland, who was a
great collector of early Scots poetry, wrote a good-natured but pointed
Satire of the Town Ladies. One verse runs:
'Thair bodyes bravelie they atyir,
Of carnall lust to eik the fyir; [to
add to]
I fairlie quhy thai have ne feir [marvel]
To gar men deime quhat they desyre;
And all for newfangilnes of geir.'
When the Sixth Stewart of Scotland became James I. of
England the Southrons had a great time jeering at the mannerisms and the
meagre wardrobes of the Scots who crossed the Border with him. To avoid
undue attention, gentlemen like Sir Robert Aytoun and Sir Robert Ker and
Sir William Alexander anglicised themselves as quickly and as thoroughly
as possible. They grew rich and influential and presently the English
forgot that they were strangers within their gates. It seems to have
been John Nicoll, the remains of whose Diary of Public Transactions
cover the years 1650-1667, who was responsible for starting the
"bang went saxpence" tradition. Nicoll tells about a famous dancing
horse which "did affoord much sportis and contentment to the pepill" (of
Edinburgh) although the pleasure was greatly lessened because everybody
had to pay "tippence the pece, and some moir" in order to see this
marvel. And when that "high great beast", the "Drummodrary" came to town
it was "keipit close in the cannogait, (and) nane had a sight of it
without thriepence the persone, quhilk producit much gayne to the keipir
in respect of the great number of people that resorted to it for the
sight thairof."
After the Union of the Parliaments in 1707 there was
a fresh influx of Scots into England, and a regular chorus of hate was
started against them by writers like Swift, Charles Churchill, Samuel
Johnson and "Junius." But the Scot continued on his way with an almost
terrifying assurance and an utter disregard for the feelings of his
rivals. He had been nurtured in a hard school where he had to fight to
survive. And then barely.
* * * * * *
As for the "meenester and elder" tradition — that
goes back to John Galt and Dean Ramsay. To-day Scotland is no longer a
predominantly Presbyterian country. According to Ian Finlay:
'The Church of Scotland has something like one
and a quarter million members. The small minority which dissented
from the Union of 1929 has maintained itself apart as the United
Free Church (Continuing) . . . Outside the establishment, most of
the churches south of the Border are represented with the exception
of the Anglican itself. The near equivalent of this last in
structure and in ritual is the Episcopal Church of Scotland, but it
is an independent body. Although the number of its communicants is
only a little more than 60,000, they tend perhaps naturally to be
drawn from a landed and influential stratum of society. The Roman
Catholic Church counts almost half as many members as the Church of
Scotland, widely spread but proportionately most dense probably in
the strongly Irish basin of the Clyde and in part of the northwest
Highlands where it has survived the Reformation yet maintains
relations with the extreme Presbyterians who are its neighbours.
[op. cit. p. 57.]
To-day two of the most widely read novelists in the
United States, and very possibly in Canada as well, are Bruce Marshall
and A. J. Cronin. These are Roman Catholic Scottish writers and they
portray contemporary Scotland, or part of it, and a section of its
population. One may object that their work is no more representative of
Scotland or of Scottish people than are the novels of John Galt or J. M.
Barrie, or George Douglas Brown or Lewis Grassic Gibbon. Possibly not;
the point is that these writers describe a Scotland which has passed
away whereas Marshall and Cronin depict a very considerable proportion
of of the population of the Scotland of to-day. Fifty years ago their
books could not have been written because the people were not there to
be written about and there was no public that would have read them if
they had been written. Scotland is recruiting her population to-day to a
certain extent by natural increase of native Scots; but the greatest
source of increase is the Irish immigrants in the Clyde basin. If the
tragedy of the Scottish Highlands had been depopulation, that of the
Lowlands has been overcrowding. During the evictions many of the poor
Gaels found their way to Glasgow and stayed there. The cotton industry
absorbed many of them but during periods of depression when trade was
dislocated by world-shaking happenings like the French Revolution, their
sufferings must have been great. The army attracted many of them, but
others were unfit for a military life and as they could neither return
to their homes nor pay their passage to the Colonies, they pigged and
starved in miserable surroundings and formed the beginnings of the slums
which have been for so long a reproach to Scotland. What the Scottish
Celt and the Irish Celt have done between them is to make Glasgow the
largest Celtic city in the world, but the fact that they are fellow
citizens has done little to soften the centuries' old antipathy between
them. One recent writer suggests that this animosity is seen at its
height when Rangers and the Celtic meet. "This is more than a football
match. It is a collision, symbolically, between the native Scot and the
immense Irish influx to the Clyde basin, a collision between all they
stand for."
* * * * * *
There is another little matter which the Scot would
like to have put right, and that is the absurd and ignorant notion that
he has a very poor sense of humour. Sydney Smith is usually given the
credit or discredit for having started the libel. It was he who said
that a surgical operation was necessary in order to get a joke into a
Scotsman's head. Possibly the Canon of St. Paul's was thinking of one of
his own jocosities, for I confess that it is by no means an easy thing
to appreciate them now-a-days. One reason for this is that the fashion
of wit and humour changes rapidly and many of the merriest jests of a
hundred years ago seem flat and insipid to-day. There is nothing so
elusive as humour. I enjoy Dagwood and Blondie, but I can see nothing
amusing in "Bringing up Father", or "The Katzenjammer Kids." On the
other hand there are millions of people who rush to their newspapers
simply in order to see Jiggs's latest unhappy plight — or to chuckle
over the stale antics of the Katzenjammer morons. I confess that much of
the humour of the contemporary New Yorker is beyond me and
Punch tastes too often like warm stale beer or flat "Canada Dry".
Many of the jokes which delighted readers of Punch a hundred
years ago strike us to-day as being snobbish and actually cruel.
Anything that is not a perennial subject for mirth has to be taken on
the spot; it cannot be put aside to be swallowed later. It is a purely
temporary stimulant like a cocktail, and a cocktail will not keep. The
Scottish joke has a tang of its own. If it is in the vernacular it
cannot be translated without losing much of its point; if it is a Scots
joke in English it is not likely that the Englishman will understand it
in any case. And we have it on the authority of no less a person than
the biographer of Thomas Carlyle that
'among other good qualities, the Scots have been
distinguished for humour — not for venemous wit, but for kindly,
genial humour, which half loves what it laughs at — and this alone
shows clearly enough that those to whom it belongs have not looked
too exclusively on the gloomy side of the world.'
This is a sound analysis, but it is by no means the
whole truth about the quality of Scottish humour. The genuine humour of
the Scot has something in it of the quality which is known as "pawkie."
It calls forth a chuckle rather than a roar of laugher. It may at times
be coarse, but it is seldom cruel or sophisticated. It is not
inconsistent with the family happiness praised by Froude:
'I should say .... that the Scots (have) been an
unusually happy people. Intelligent industry, the honest doing of
daily work, with a sense that it must be done well, under penalties;
the necessaries of life moderately provided for; and a sensible
content with the situation of life in which men are born—this
through the week, and at the end of it the Cotter's Saturday
Night — the homely family, gathered reverently and peacefully
together, and irradiated with a sacred presence. Happiness! such
happiness as we human creatures are likely to know upon this world,
will be found there, if anywhere. [J. A. Froude, Short Studies on
Great Subjects, vol. i, pp. 182-3. New Ed. 1874.]
The long battle for existence that the Scot has been
forced to wage has made him traditionally a Liberal in politics, a
Conservative in religion and an individualist in most things. This
individualism has somehow communicated itself to the national humour and
given it a stamp of its own. Despite industrialisation and bitter years
of unemployment and the regimentation of the Second World War, the Scot
has retained his individuality and his humour, a humour that is broad in
scope and fully representative and characteristic of the people. But
here we must enter a caveat. The best of the Scottish jokes are not in
English Scots but in the vernacular, and, although the vernacular is
still spoken at fair and feeing market and in counties like Angus and
the Mearns in all its vigour, there are fewer people who speak it to-day
in proportion to the total population than ever before. The vernacular,
be it understood, is no mere dialect of English, like the speech of
Lancashire or Yorkshire, but the descendant of the Scots language, whose
writers had a literature, a mode of expression, and a characteristic
point of view. To-day, that ancient speech of the Scottish kings has
been split into numerous degenerate dialects, not one of which can claim
to be authoritative and the norm. Some time ago a play was produced in
Glasgow. It was in the vernacular. A friend of mine was present at the
performance which she thoroughly enjoyed. But beside her were two other
Scottish women of a younger generation. They understood hardly a word.
Harry Gordon draws his thousands who chuckle and laugh at his Scots
humour; but they are amused more frequently by his drolleries and facial
contortions than by what he says, for what he says is incomprehensible
to many of his hearers. It is a sad thing when one Scot has to explain
to another Scot the meaning of a Scots joke — in English. But the fact
remains that one never hears broad Scots spoken in the pulpit or at a
Burns Dinner or on the rostrum or on the bench or in Parliament House,
and when a language ceases to be spoken in the Aula or the
Curia, that language has ceased to be the cultural speech of a
people. And when a language ceases to be the cultural speech of a
people, it has not only lost its cultural standards but must rapidly
degenerate into a Taal.
* * * * * *
It is an undeniable fact, too, that there is a strong
vein of coarseness in much of the humour of the Scot. We find it in his
early literature — in William Dunbar's Rabelaisian description of the
high-jinks in the Queen's Chamber, in Peblis to the Play and
Christie Kirk on the Green. We find it in Alexander Scott, in the
anglicised Smollett, in Ramsay, in Burns, in Lewis Grassic Gibbon. Not
that Scots literature is any more bawdy than any other literature or
Scottish humour any coarser, but that quality is undoubtedly there. The
gamut of humour is covered in poems like The Wife of Auchtermuchty,
The Wowing of Jok and Jynny, The Gyre-Carling, and Quhy sowld
nocht Allene Honorit be? Samuel Colvil made some admirable and
amusing parodies of Zachary Boyd's Garden of Zion, two of which
run:
There was a man called Job
Dwelt in the land of Uz,
He had a good gift of the gob;
The same case happen us!
And Jacob made for his wee Josie,
A tartan coat to keep him cosie;
And what for no? there was nae harm
To keep the lad baith saft and warm.
John Leslye, the Bishop of Ross and an ardent
supporter of Mary, Queen of Scots, had a keen sense of humour; so had
Archbishop John Spottiswoode of St. Andrews, who refused to believe that
Andrew Melville's death from gout at Sedan was the direct result of his
having become a Presbyterian. It is needless to prolong our list of
Scots whose sense of humour has lightened many a dark hour — Allan
Ramsay, Robert Fergusson, Robert Burns, Lady Nairne, Charles Murray,
George Outram, G. K. Menzies among the poets; Galt, Moir, Scott, William
Alexander, J. M. Barrie, Bruce Marshall and Eric Linklater among the
novelists, make jibes at the alleged lack of humour on the part of the
Scot sound vapid and ridiculous.
* * * * * *
There are still Scots furth of Scotland who tend to
romanticise the land of their birth; but the Scot in Scotland no longer
does so. There, he is severely practical; the needs of the times have
forced him to become so. "The Lone Shieling of the Misty Island" has
still its place in his dreams; so has "The Road to the Isles". But the
Scot has at length realised that there is not only a place for him at
home but a duty to be done there. He is beginning to have a proper
understanding as to what his country stands for; he is commencing to
appreciate what she is trying to do— to cultivate her resources to the
limit so that her young men and women will find opportunity for
advancement, and in advancement content. That is what the modern Scots
builder is aiming at; that is the dream he would wish to see realised.
More than ever before, Scotland shall be a kingdom — a kingdom of the
mind'.
* * * * *
That is the Celtic part of the Scot — M'Connachie is
Barrie's name for him, M'Connachie of the gay courage. That is the part
of him that has not been extinguished by anglicisation or
industrialisation or poverty or spiritual distress. Something of this
Celtic spirit, which is after all the Scottish spirit, but sadly
submerged, has penetrated to the innermost corner of the Scot and made
him an unique being in this modern world — a compound of romantic
loyalties and of fierce independence. Let King George and Queen
Elizabeth visit the "red" Clyde and what happens? Are they assailed with
jeers and hisses? Does anyone try to throw a bomb at them? Are they
guarded by thousands of police and soldiers? Not a bit of it. The King
and Queen go there as to their own, and the people take them to their
hearts — these radically minded, independent people who are no
respecters of mere rank and privilege. What has happened on the Clyde
with its huge Irish population is this:
'The distinctive beauty and the great philosophic
interest of that (the Scottish) character, spring from the very
singular combination it displays of a romantic and chivalrous with a
practical and industrial spirit. In no other nation do we find the
enthusiasm of loyalty blending so happily with the enthusiasm for
liberty, and so strong a vein of poetic sensibility for liberty, and
so strong a vein of poetic sensibility and romantic feeling
qualifying a type that is essentially industrial. It is not
difficult to trace the Highland source of this spirit. The habits of
the clan life, the romantic loyalty of the clansman to his chief,
the almost legendary charm that has grown up around Mary Queen of
Scots, and round the Pretender, have all had their deep and lasting
influence on the character of the people. Slowly, • through the
course of the years, a mass of traditional feeling was formed,
clustering around, but usually transfiguring facts . . . The clan
legend, and a very idealized conception of clan virtues, survived
the destruction of feudal power; and the pathos and the fire of the
Jacobite ballads were felt by multitudes long after the star of the
Stuarts had sunk for ever at Culloden.' [W.
E. Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century, vol.
ii, p. 99]
One of the immediate and impelling causes of the
national rejuvescence which Scotland is experiencing is, undoubtedly,
the Second Great War. Not so very long ago Scotland seemed rushing
headlong to a tragic and hopeless finish. Her industries were derelict,
her people were without heart and emigrating in vast numbers to the
Dominions and the United States. The story of the second half of the
eighteenth century, when the exodus of younger men and women from the
country reached alarming proportions, seemed about to repeat itself. In
a way economic conditions were somewhat similar and emigration seemed
the only possible hope of survival for thousands. During the depression
of only a few years ago the streets of Glasgow saw procession after
procession of hungry-looking unemployed, skilled tradesmen the majority
of them, who had been denied the opportunity to use their skill and were
rapidly sinking into despair. I remember, as if only yesterday, these
innumerable clusters of idle miners and mechanics in Airdrie, Coatbridge,
and Motherwell, with their greasy caps askew, their cheap mufflers,
their turned-up coat collars, their patched and worn trousers, their
cracked, broken boots, patiently hanging around the Labour Exchanges. In
the background were rows of grim, cheerless tenements, public houses,
neglected-looking churches, a few policemen, a tawdry cinema
advertisement or two. In Glasgow bands of Fascist thugs in black shirts
shouted their Nazi doctrines at street corners, goading the unemployed
to bitter reprisals. On the Clyde the shipbuilding yards stood silent
and empty; the tragic half-finished hulk of the Queen Mary rusted
in her yard, lying like a broken-backed monster beside the grey-brown
river. The wharves were deserted; traffic was almost at a standstill.
The quiet was almost terrifying. Shivering pedlars of matches and
shoelaces and chamois leather dusters; ragged street artists, with dirty
clothfuls of stumps of variegated chalks, scrabbling crude etchings of
Lloyd George and the King and Queen, or a memorial cross in Flanders
fields, or a water scene which purported to be Loch Lomond; miserable
bearded old men with elderly drabs on their arms, quavering out Annie
Laurie; soldiers on crutches with their poor ribbons, openly begging
alms; clusters of former regimental bandsmen with verdigris-coated brass
instruments — these were some of the common sights which Scotland had to
show in the grim, grey days of the great depression. Now this has all
changed and the Scots are determined that, if possible, their new
prosperity shall not be frittered away again.
It is not only the Lowdands that are enjoying a
greater prosperity than they have known for a generation; the Highlands
too are looking forward to better days. An Amenity Committee and a
Fisheries Committee have been appointed; these are entirely Scottish in
character and are to be domiciled in Scotland. A new Hydro-Electric
Board, financed in Scotland and, like the other two Committees, entirely
Scottish in composition, has been set up to provide employment for
Scottish people and to develop Scottish economic industrial resources.
All these Committees have at heart the best interests of Scotland and
particularly of the Highlands. Work and amenities are to be provided for
the Highlands and the Committees will be permanently under Scottish and
not English control. The Scots have now their Secretary of State, a
magnificent building in Edinburgh from which Scottish affairs are
administered, and a capital which is the admiration and envy of the
world.
This new lease of life has come not only from
increased industrial prosperity but from an awareness of a sense of
nationhood among the nations within the British Commonwealth. This is
symptomatic of the spirit of the times, of the world-wide trend towards
nationalism among the smaller nations and among peoples from Wales to
Indonesia. But in Scotland the source of that inspiration is not always
understood, is perhaps not even suspected. There is no conflict between
Scotland and England as there is between Eire and England. The Scot
believes, and rightly so, that many problems which are purely local
and regional, can be best tackled and settled by Scotsmen in
Scotland. But there is no question of the Scot ever questioning the
sovereign power of the British Parliament in London or of his seeking to
interfere, through any machinery of government, in wider international
issues. [Since these lines were written, however, the situation has
changed. The trouble has arisen over the Prestwick Airfield. The Scots
want to establish a subsidiary Aviation Company of the British European
Airways, with headquarters at Prestwick, Scotland.. Scotland asks for
"resident responsible executive management" of her air services; the
Labour Government wants to run everything from Whitehall. The Scots who
have all their history been individualists refuse to be run by
Englishmen who are willing to come to heel when called by the Labour
Whips. The English have given the Irish all they are asking for. They
want to take from the Scots what is theirs. And, 'once again, the Scots
are being compelled to say "No" to their English overlords.] In other
words, the Scot of to-day while definitely nationalistic in outlook, is
at the same time internationally minded. And the man who taught his
countrymen how to reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable was Robert
Burns. To quote The Scotsman of July 31, 1946:
'This (the Scottish demand for a Scottish
Airfield) has been refused with the active assent of the Scottish
Labour members. It is a foretaste of what is likely to happen under
other nationalization schemes .... Any such independent effort the
Government are determined to stifle.
'The double part played by the Scottish Labour
M.P. is disturbing. In their constituencies they stand up for
Scottish interests. At Westminster they submit to party direction
and salve their consciences, as Mr. Willis, the Englishman does,
that the agitation for Scotland's interests in the air is "a piece
of political shadow boxing by the Tory Party to try to recover some
of its prestige." .... The Labour Party used to advocate devolution
for Scotland . . . but devolution and centralisation are
incompatible, and the Scottish Labour M.Ps. prefer centralisation in
the South of England . . . The last has not been heard of this
matter. Dissatisfaction will grow. If unemployment increases and if
opportunities for the development of aviation industries in Scotland
are missed, the part played by Scottish M.Ps. in neglecting present
opportunities will not be forgotten. Mr. Herbert Morrison taunted
Scottish Conservative members with using Sinn Fein arguments. That
was quite unjust. There has been no suggestion that Scotland should
be politically an independent State . . . The amendment sought
merely to avoid the worst effects of centralisation upon Scotland.
It is the Government who have presented the Opposition with a Sinn
Fein argument, for they have accepted the position of minority
shareholders in an independent company under Irish control, while
denying even a modest degree of autonomy in air matters to the loyal
people of Scotland . . .'
Burns lived in Scotland's Golden Age when the Scots
were doing their best to live down the unhappy memories of the '45. They
had adopted a Good Neighbour policy towards the English and were trying
to anglicise themselves as much as possible. The Scottish Universities,
whose chairs were now being filled by men of first-rate ability, had
emerged from obscurity into European-wide celebrity. The intellectual
activity in the universities stimulated a further enthusiasm for
knowledge among the educated classes throughout the length and breadth
of the country. And it was not merely intellectual knowledge that men
sought. As J. H. Miller puts it: "Men of considerable powers and marked
aptitude for academic discussion devoted their leisure to planting
trees, and to making two blades of corn grow where only one had grown
before." [Scottish Prose of the Seventeenth
and Eighteenth Centuries, p. 177, (1912). ]
All this was great gain to Scotland; but it also was loss. It meant a
lessening of religious zeal and a weakening of the spirit of the
Reformation which sprang from it. It was Burns who reminded his
countrymen of their Scottish heritage. The anglicised circles in
Edinburgh would have made a sorry mess of him if they had had their way,
but all they could do was to give the Edinburgh edition of the Poems
a veneer of their borrowed culture. They could not stifle his genius
and they could not censor his message. These men, Robertson, Blair,
Henry Mackenzie, and the rest of the intellectuals who sought to
dominate the Poet were terrifying enough in their own day. How many of
them are remembered? How many of them influence men's thoughts to-day?
And Burns? Burns stands out like a giant among pygmies, for he is one of
the world's great souls. His message is as vital in Russia and China as
it is in his native Scotland. His is the spirit behind the U.N.
* * * * * *
David Hume, Adam Smith, Francis Hutcheson, and Thomas
Reid, or the famous 'Scottish School' of philosophers, are names that
cannot be lightly dismissed; they belong to four great figures of the
Golden Age in the intellectual life of Scotland. But while these men are
representative of Scotland they are not truly representative of their
countrymen, because they lacked that spirit of independence, that
determination to probe to the uttermost, if needs be alone, which sent
David Livingstone and Mungo Park and Alexander Duff into the far corners
of the earth, willing to meet death itself in their quest for the Grail.
David Hume could undermine the very foundations of religion and question
the bases of science and human knowledge. He was a master of
philosophical speculation; but it was speculation for speculation's
sake. Hume and his fellow-philosophers lacked driving force; they had
nothing of the praefervidum ingenium Scotorum which characterised
that much more representative Scot, Robert Burns. Burns was no
philosopher in the technical sense of the word. But he had tremendous
driving power. He could pour ridicule on the fundamentals of the
Predestinationalists and the contemporary creed of the Calvinists,
expose the hollow pretentiousness of a system in a few lines:
'O THOU, who in the heavens does dwell,
Who, as it pleases, best Thysel,
Sends ane to heaven, an' ten to hell,
A' for thy glory, And no for ony gude or ill
They've done afore Thee!'
When Bishop Burnet, who had been a Presbyterian, was
trying to turn his Covenanting countrymen into Anglicans, he gave, in a
well-known passage in the History of His Own Times, as the reason
for his failure to do so that it was because there were so many in
'a poor commonality so capable of arguing on
points of government, and on the bounds to be set to the power of
princes in matters of religion. Upon all these topics they had texts
of Scripture at hand, and were ready with their answers to anything
that was said to them. This measure of knowledge was spread even
amongst the meanest of them, their cottagers and their servants,'
Here again was the praefervidum ingenium Scotorum
which no logomachy or specious argumentation could counter or break.
And that spirit did not die and is certainly not dead in Scotland
to-day. But when the philosophers of the eighteenth century took the
places of the theologians of the seventeenth, and when that philosophy
became speculative and devitalised, it meant that a change had come over
the whole tenor of Scottish life. It was against this that Burns
reacted. What happened to the philosophy of the Scots happened to their
Calvinism also. That fierce spirit, and the faith of the Covenanters
which had flamed in the land not so very long before, was overwhelmed by
the flood of Moderatism.
The best example of a Moderate was the celebrated Dr.
Alexander ("Jupiter") Carlyle, minister of Inveresk from 1748 until his
death in 1805. Carlyle preached what his friend David Hume called
"heathen morality." He tells us in his Autobiography:
'When Mr. Frederick Carmichael was translated to
Edinburgh, and the time grew near when I was to be presented to
Inveresk, there arose much murmuring in the parish against me, as
too young, too full of levity, and too much addicted to the company
of my superiors, to be fit for so important a charge, together with
many doubts about my having the grace of God, an occult quality
which the people cannot define. [Autobiography, pp. 207-8.
1861 ed.]
Two of Carlyle's closest friends were Dr. William
Robertson, Principal of Edinburgh University and Dr. Hugh Blair,
minister of the High Church and Regius professor of Rhetoric and
Belles-Lettres in the University. "Moderatism," as Hume Brown
explains, "laid emphasis on good works rather than on faith, and on the
ethical teaching to be found in the Bible rather than on its mysteries .
. ." According to Principal Rainy, in his reply to Dean Stanley's
lecture on the Church of Scotland, the Moderates
'were not altogether destitute of some connection
with religious earnestness, and they developed a striking activity
in general literature. For the rest (Dean Stanley) likes the men, he
likes their tone; as mental companions he gets on with them,, and is
at ease with them; therefore he recommends them. Did ever mortal
trifle so with life's questions? Was it not worth considering
whether there are not, or have not been, religious forces at work
here, or elsewhere, divided from Moderatism by an antagonism far
deeper than the mere Scottish fervour. Was it not worth while to ask
whether the decisive forces of Scottish religion can put on
Moderatism .... at any less expense than that of dying?' [Three
Lectures on the Church of Scotland, (1883),]
The Moderates wanted to have a foot in both worlds.
Their policy "was simply to fill the Church with ministers who by their
teaching and social qualities would commend religion to the classes
whose adhesion it was the interest of the national church to secure."
Their main asset was the patronage system so long as they were the
dominant party in the Church. About half of the livings were in the gift
of patrons who saw to it that only the 'right sort' of young ministers
were presented to these livings. Henry Mackenzie draws an amusing sketch
of one of these candidates and his patron.
'When I arrived at the baronet's, I found him and
his lady a good deal disappointed with my appearance and address, .
. . Sir John and Lady F— . . . delivered me over to the valet de
chambre to make me somewhat smarter, as they called it, by having my
hair more modishly dressed, and the cut of my coat altered . . .
These preliminaries being adjusted, I was suffered to come into
company, where ... I discovered to my infinite mortification, that
my former studies had been altogether misapplied, and that in my
present situation they availed me nothing ... It was found that I
could neither carve, play whist, sing a catch, or make up one in a
country dance. A young lady, a visitor of the family, who was said
to be a great reader, tried me with the enigmas of Lady's Magazine,
and declared me impracticably dull. Geography, astronomy, or natural
history, Sir John and his companions neither understood nor cared
for; but some of them reminded the baronet, in my presence, of a
clergyman they had met with in one of their excursions, a man of the
most complete education, who was allowed to be the best bowler in
the county, a dead shot, rode like the devil (these were the
gentleman's words), and was a sure hand at finding a hare.
'. . . . I find from the discourse of the family,
that some other things are required of Sir John's parson, which it
would not be so easy for a good conscience to comply with. He must
now and then drink a couple of bottles, when the company chooses to
be frolicsome; he must wink at certain indecencies in language and
irregularities in behaviour; and once when Sir John had sat rather
longer than usual after dinner, he told me that a clergyman, to be
an honest fellow, must have nothing of religion about him.' [The
Lounger, No. 40. Saturday, Nov. 5, 1785.]
Sometimes, where there was a wise patron and the
candidate was acceptable, the results were happy; but often they were
not. Sometimes the people resented bitterly having a minister foisted on
them when they had absolutely nothing to do with his choosing. When the
Earl of Selkirk appointed Thomas Blacklock, the friend of Burns, to the
parish of Kirkcudbright, the parishioners flatly refused to accept him
for two reasons — the young man was blind and he was not the people's
choice. When Thomas Reid, the philosopher, was "intruded" in the parish
of New Machar in 1737 the mob ducked him in a horsepond! The most
amusing account of the "settlement" of an unwanted minister is to be
found in John Gait's Annals of the Parish.
'First, of the placing. It was a great affair;
for I was put in by the patron, and the people knew nothing
whatsoever of me, and their hearts were stirred into strife on the
occasion, and they did all that lay within the compass of their
power to keep me out, insomuch, that there was obliged to be a guard
of soldiers to protect the presbytery; and it was a thing that made
my heart grieve when I heard the drum beating and the fife playing
as we were going to the kirk. The people were really mad and
vicious, and flung dirt upon us as we passed, and reviled us all,
and held out the finger of scorn at me: but I endured it with a
resigned spirit, compassionating their wilfulness and blindness.
Poor old Mr. Kilfuddy of the Breaehill got such a clash of glar on
the side of his face, that his eye was almost extinguished.
'When we got to the kirk door, it was found to be
nailed up, so as by no possibility to be opened. The sergeant of the
soldiers wanted to break it, but I was afraid that the heritors
would grudge and complain of the expense of a new door, and I
supplicated him to let it be as it was; we were, therefore,
obligated to go in by a window, and the crowd followed us, in the
most unreverent manner, making the Lord's house like an inn on a
fair day, with their grievous yellyhooing. During the time of the
psalm and the sermon, they behaved themselves better, but when the
induction came on, their clamour was dreadful; and Thomas Thorl, the
weaver, a pious zealot in that time, he got up and protested, and
said, 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that entereth not by the
door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is
a thief and a robber.' And I thought I would have a hard and sore
time of it with such an obstrapolous people. Mr. Given, that was
then the minister of Lugton, was a jocose man, and would have his
joke even at a solemnity. When the laying of the hands upon me was
a-doing, he could not get near enough to put on his, but he
stretched out his staff and touched my head, and said, to the great
diversion of the rest, 'This will do well enough, timber to timber,'
but it was an unfriendly saying of Mr. Given, considering the time
and the place, and the temper of the people.'
In the end the policy of the Moderates failed. The
French Revolution with its new concepts of liberty and equality and its
insistence on the supremacy of the people was one of the great
spear-heads of democratic sentiment in Scotland. As Burns put it
'A fig for those by law protected!
Liberty's a glorious feast!'
The Moderates were succeeded by the Evangelical party
which stood for the rights of the people as against the privileges of
the classes. The leaders of the Evangelicals represented the quickened
religious zeal of the times. The influence of the Reform Bill of 1833,
which gave thousands the right to vote, did not end with mere politics;
it was felt in ecclesiastical circles as well, where it was argued that
if men were to have the right of electing members of Parliament they
should also have the privilege of choosing their spiritual guides. There
were clashes between the conservative and liberal parties in the General
Assembly. In 1841 there was a motion to abolish patronage; it was
defeated by a small majority. In 1843 the final breach was made. On May
18 of that year Dr. Chalmers with more than four hundred ministers left
the Assembly and constituted themselves the Free Church of Scotland. The
Disruption, as this historic event was called, was a spiritual tragedy
for the Church, but it was at the same time a proof that the ancient
spirit of independence was not dead in Scotland, and that there were
still many in the land who were prepared to sacrifice position and
comfort and to sever life-long associations and friendships for a
principle.
* * * * * *
The Disruption was a national movement, but it was
more powerfully felt in the North and West than in other parts of the
country. There were various reasons for this. At the time of the cruel
clearances in the Highlands, many ministers of the Church of Scotland
sided with the proprietors, who were their patrons; some had probably
been appointed for the purpose. In the North the Reverend Alexander Sage
of Kildonan in Sutherlandshire, who staunchly took the part of his
people, stood almost alone among the parish ministers. And the
Highlanders did not forget. Indeed, their memories went back still
farther, to the days after Culloden, when the very name of Government
was to them a symbol of cruelty and oppression. They had little cause to
respect or trust the State and its officials, and the State Church came
under the same condemnation.
* * * * * *
The Disruption had its influence across the Atlantic.
The Synod of the Church of Scotland in Canada — i.e., Upper and Lower
Canada, the modern Ontario and Quebec — which in 1841 had founded
Queen's College at Kingston to train ministers in Arts and Theology,
lost a considerable number of ministers and elders; they went out to
form Free Church congregations and to set up Knox College in Toronto.
Yet the Kirk in Canada remained strong and active. But the Synod of the
Church of Scotland in Nova Scotia — which comprised congregations in
Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick as well — was for a time almost
shattered. It had never been strong or influential enough to obtain such
a measure of Government recognition as had the Synod in Canada, where a
definite part of the "Clergy Reserves" was secured to help ministers of
the Kirk. In Nova Scotia the most numerous congregations had been
founded by Presbyterians of another branch; missionaries were sent out
from Scotland by the "Seceders", who had left the parent Church a
century before. In Pictou County, which was predominantly Scottish,
there were two outstanding "Anti-Burgher" ministers, Dr. Macgregor and
Dr. McCulloch, the latter noted as the founder of Pictou Academy.
In 1845 the Church of Scotland sent out three of her
ablest ministers to strengthen the congregations, Dr. John Macleod of
Morven, his nephew Norman, and Dr. Simpson. All three were in Pictou for
the administration of the Sacrament. The scene is described in a recent
book which shows the life of that time:
'The service was held in the church and also in
the open air. Nearly five thousand Highlanders had come from all
parts of the country, and as they sat 'and listened to these notable
servants of their Church speaking in their own language, as they
sang the Psalms in Gaelic with the precentor and the ancient
antiphonal singing, and as with reverent, exulting hearts they came
to the Holy Table, their joy was deep and intense.'
[Daniel M. Gordon; His Life, by Wilhelmina
Gordon, p. 26. (1941).]
In 1875, throughout the Dominion of Canada, all
divisions of Presbyterians were reunited. In 1929 the wound in the
Scottish Church was largely healed. No doctrinal differences had to be
reconciled, and the issues over which the ministers who "came out" at
the Disruption had quarrelled with their brethren who stuck by the
Establishment no longer mattered. To-day the Church of Scotland is in a
true sense a National Church for, unlike the Church of England, the
impetus towards reformation came not from the throne but from the
people. Its ministers are in direct line of succession from St. Ninian,
St. Kenti-gern, St. Columba and John Knox. It is a Church which has
bidden farewell to the years of barren dogma and grim austerity of
worship, a Church which has caught once again something of the beauty of
holiness and the hallowed loveliness of symbolism. The High Church
movement, if one may call it that, is the answer to those who exclaim
that religion in Scotland is dead and the service of its Church the
veriest formalism. It is the very negation of Moderatism. Moderatism was
a negative creed and to-day the Church realises that it must not only
have a positive faith if it is to survive but the fighting gust of the
saints of old. The leader of this new movement in the Kirk is the Rev.
George F. Macleod; his aim is to go back to the spirit of the Celtic
Church of Columba, to rekindle its earlier "genius for devotion." Many
of the younger ministers work and study under Dr. Macleod in the Iona
Community during the summer months, and at the Iona Youth Centre in
Clyde Street during the winter ... As one walks among the ancient
tombstones of the little island or meditates in the Sanctuary of the
renovated Cathedral one can see with the eye of the spirit a great
procession of the dead who lived and prayed there and whose invisible
presence is still an inspiration to their successors. One hears in
imagination the rise and fall of their inaudible chants and as one walks
along the shore and hears with the bodily ear the shrill crying and
flyting of the gulls, one realises that these were the self-same sounds
that Columba heard; the ceaseless beat and throb of the tireless waves;
the moan and hiss of the winds in the coarse sand grass. Perhaps, like
Angus of the Picts, he too had a vision of the white saltire Cross in
the blue skies as he set out to confound the priests of Brude as Moses
confounded the magicians of Pharaoh. As one is aware of all this, one
sees the long centuries rolled back until yesterday and to-day meet and
the warriors join forces and go forth with renewed strength and bolder
courage.
Dr. Macleod claims that the model which the first
Reformers sought to imitate was the Celtic Church of Columba. "How weary
we are to-day of theories," he writes......"we must have Certainty or
die. The Celtic Church offered the Sacrament of Communion to the
faithful every Sunday of the year, that men's eyes might see and their
hands might often feel the certainty of Love. Again to offer it so is
not merely to meet "our day", but to rediscover the heritage that our
very Reformers sought to present. . . Perhaps the first Reformers are to
be vindicated at last, in coming days, by a return to what they sought.
If not (at least if we just drift on) then there is thunder in the air.
But it will not be the passing thunder of warring religious sects, but
the thunder of materialism, of Atheism, and all manner of unloveliness."
Dr. Macleod is a baronet in his own right but he has
dropped the title. He is an English "public" school boy and a former
minister in the fashionable West End parish of St. Cuthbert's. But he
left it to become minister of Govan Old Parish, one of the "toughest"
districts in Scotland. He preached at street corners, argued with
"atheists" and agnostics, delivered his message over the radio, filled
his church. He persuaded the town to give him premises which he
converted into holiday and play centres for the children, wrote a
pamphlet "Are not the churchless millions the Church's fault?",
insisted that the parish system of the church in the large
industrial centres was quite out of date and that as a consequence
Scotland was no longer a Christian but pagan country. Then he went to
Iona where he worked out his own plan of campaign, which he explained in
his fascinating volume, We Shall Rebuild, Religion, according to
Dr. Macleod, has become too formal a thing, a ritual performed every
seventh day. Religion must be lived daily. The restoration of Iona,
where ministers and tradesmen work together, became the practical
application of his theory. [The Abbey Church
of St. Mary and the Monastery buildings were originally founded by the
Benedictines, c. 1203, near the site of St. Columba's Church, (c. 563).
The Abbey Church was almost completely rebuilt and dedicated to St.
Mary, c. 1500. It was restored by the Church of Scotland 1902-1910. It
is the Monastery buildings that are being restored by the Iona
Community.] A man, Macleod teaches, is as good
a Christian when he is working at his trade as when he is
worshipping in church. He believes that "the Kingdom of God is among
you": that it can be carried to the slums and is as effective there as
in the Sanctuary. The Disruption took place at a difficult — an almost
terrifying time in the history of Scotland. The Highlands were
empty; the Lowlands were groaning under the effects of the Industrial
Revolution. The ministers who "came out" knew that they and their
families faced certain hardship and even possible starvation. But they
had faith and the vast majority stuck to their convictions. Theirs was
the faith that was able to move mountains. It was this same faith that
sustained the Scots in their wars of Independence, and supported the
Covenanters in their struggles against murdering thugs like Claverhouse
and the incredible Laird of Lag. It was the faith of men who would have
nothing to do with the totalitarian theory that the State must be
exalted at the expense of the individual. It was the faith of a man like
Bishop Macdonell of Kingston, the first Roman Catholic diocesan Bishop
in the British Dominions since the Reformation, one of the Grand Old Men
of the early great days of colonial life. It was written of Bishop
Macdonell after his death, in the old-fashioned style of the times that,
"being singularly liberal in his views, of benign temper and unbounded
charity, during the period of his episcopate, he had endeared himself to
his fellow-subjects of all creeds and ranks, and went down to the grave
with the universal regrets of all who had known of his honoured name,
his active and blameless life." [Rattray,
op. cit. vol. iii, p. 894.] It is the
faith of this new Columba — Dr. George Macleod.
* * * * * *
We have stated that the interests of the Highlander
are by no means being neglected in the rehabilitation of Scotland. It is
about time, for the Scottish Celt has had to endure much not only from
his enemies but from his friends as well. He has been romanticised
beyond all belief by the latter and he has been commiserated with. The
"fiery Highlander" and the "poor Highlander" have become almost stock
phrases. Scott is responsible for many misconceptions about the
Highlander: he knew very little about the true nature of the Celt and
less about his history. One reason for his romantic conception of the
Highlander was that he was
.... 'profoundly out of sympathy with the main
trend of Scottish life in his own day. The Industrial Revolution was
sweeping the country, filling the Lowlands with mills and foundries,
pouring a new proletariat into the cities, emptying the Highlands,
creating a large commercial class and great new fortunes. The
ugliness of this process shocked and frightened a romantic
conservative. Scott turned his back on the Scotland of his own day.
His genius, building on his knowledge of history and memories of his
youth, created a more picturesque country, several degrees removed
even from historical reality — not Scotland, in fact — but
Scott-land.' [J. M. Reid, Modern Scottish Literature. Saltire
Pamphlets. No. 5, p. 12, (1945).]
The late A. G. Macdonell in his My Scotland
poked fun at the Highlanders' perpetual "strutting before the theatrical
backcloth of his mountains in everlasting dress rehearsal." The Celt
loves colour; he take a pride in his Highland regiments, in their
embattled story and the soul-stirring challenge of their pipes. But it
is obviously absurd and illogical on that account to insist on regarding
him as an impractical dreamer in the northern tip of a land peopled by
hard-headed, "go-getting" Lowlanders. Miss Anna Ramsay has a word to say
about this in the Foreword of her The Challenge to the Highlander.
It will make unpalatable reading for some:
' . . . . Far from being given to dreams, (the
Highlander) seemed to be entirely concerned with the more practical
aspects of life; money and the ownership of land appeared to be his
dominant passions .... Almost every Highland feud took its rise
originally about the possession of land. The Highlander excelled in
practical work: he made a good colonist, pioneer, soldier,
scientist, engineer . . . For poetry, romance, idealism — one must
go to the Lowlands.'
The moaning of 'Fiona Macleod' and the Celtic
Twilight concept have also done much to give the world a false
conception of the Highlander and the Highlander a wrong idea of himself.
'The grey wind weeps, the grey wind weeps,
the grey wind weeps:
Dust on her breast, dust on her eyes,
the grey wind weeps!'
We know that mood well. We recall a lonely moor in
the Perthshire Highlands which was our summer boyhood haunt. From time
to time we would come across a green patch among the heather. There had
been a village there once. Then the Earl decided to put sheep to graze
on the moors and the people were forced to leave. The sheep still graze
there and the wind blows and the rains fall and the snows come and the
mist swirls where once were men and women and little children. One could
easily give oneself over to sad reflections there as one scents the
bog-myrtle, and gazes at the panorama of loch and mountain. Then, of a
sudden, the mood of melancholy vanishes as one remembers that his race,
far from being moribund, has grown and flourished beyond the seas, in
Canada, in Australia, in New Zealand, in the United States. To quote Ian
Finlay again:
'He is in fact the best strain of the Gael, even
more faithful to his origins and customs, and in Canada alone there
are said to be more speakers of Gaelic than in the Highlands of
Scotland . . . The Gael has his moods, but, far from being
melancholic, he is an ebullient and even a noisy person. He has
always loved gay colour and sound. Caesar noted the 'celerity' of
the Celt in mind and body, and anyone who has been present at a
social gathering of Highlanders where there was music must have
noticed the complete absence of that dreary sentimentality in which
the Anglo-Saxon habitually soaks himself, on such occasions. The
Gael, indeed, is perhaps less melancholy than any other race would
have been in his circumstances . . . The Gael is of a race which
cannot be permitted to die out in this country, however much our
loss may be another country's gain . . . Until recently at least,
his numbers have dwindled because the land and the sea could no
longer support him. He has been driven from both in part by
deliberate tyrannies, but more by his near proximity to a merciless
economic system against which he had no defence ... He must have the
means to make his earth fruitful as well as to send the fish from
his sea-lochs swiftly and cheaply to a market. Then, perhaps, the
Highlanders may begin to flow back again to their homes from the
cities they despise even if they prosper in them, for the life of
the cities is no life for a pretty man and well they know it.' [op.
cit. p. 5 and pp. 94-95.]
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