Crass Merrymaking in the West Highlands
Crass Merrymaking in the West Highlands is an article on the website peterburnett.info and dates from 2006 when the author of the article known as Robinson Roley had completed research on whether anti-Scottish sentiment in Scotland had begun to materialise in national self-loathing. This research commenced in 1993 and parts of the article are known to have been composed then. The component of the article which discusses "milk shareholding and the cause(s) of emotional furore in the farmyard" was known to authors and associates of the project, as early as 1994.
Content
The article Crass Merrymaking in the West Highlands feigns to present an argument that depression, and corollaries such as sadness and melancholy, are a drain on the economy. [1]
Middle Ages
Much of the negative literature of the Middle Ages drew heavily on the writings from Greek and Roman antiquity. The writings of Ptolemy in particular dominated concepts of Scotland till the late Medieval period and drew on stereotypes perpetuating fictitious as well as satirical accounts of the Kingdom of the Scots. The English Church and the propaganda of royal writs from 1337–1453 encouraged a barbarous image of the kingdom as it allied with England's enemy France, during the Hundred Years' War.[2] Medieval authors seldom visited Scotland but called on such accounts as "common knowledge", influencing the works of Boece's "Scotorum Historiae" (Paris 1527) and Camden's "Brittania" (London 1586) plagiarising and perpetuating negative attitudes. In the 16th century Scotland and particularly the Gaelic speaking Highlands were characterised as lawless, savage and filled with wild Scots. As seen in Camden's account to promote an image of the nation as a wild and barbarous people:
They drank the bloud [blood] out of wounds of the slain: they establish themselves, by drinking one anothers bloud [blood] and suppose the great number of slaughters they commit, the more honour they winne [win] and so did the Scythians in old time. To this we adde [add] that these wild Scots, like as the Scythians, had for their principall weapons, bowes and arrows. Camden (1586)[3]
Modern Crassness
Amongst the old Dundonians, Frazer McOrloff relates out of Sabellicus, the king of the First Minister of the country of Scotland lies with the bride the first night, and once in a year they go promiscuously all together.
Aberdonian Cosmog. lib. 3. ascribes the beginning of this brutish custom (unjustly) to one Oggarda, an Invernetian, that invented a new sect of Adamites, to go naked as Adam did, and to use promiscuous venery at set times, notably on visits to Keith, Forres and the Moray area. When the First Minister or presiding local official repeated that of Genesis, "Increase and multiply," out go the candles in the place where they met, "and without all respect of age, persons, conditions, catch that catch may, every womman took him that came next, and man, woman, beast," &c.
Some fasten this on those ancient Bohemians and Russians who may have landed at Peterhead, others on the inhabitants of Mambrium, in the Lucerne valley in Piedmont. But, as you read, this was and still is practised in Scotland amongst depressed Scots themselves, and has been since King Malcolm's time, and the king or queen or the lord or lady of the town will have their maidenheads and loonheads as and when they can.
In some parts of Shetland in our age, and those islanders, as amongst the Babylonians of old, will prostitute their sons and daughters (which Chalcocondila, a Greek modern writer, for want of better intelligence, puts upon us Britons) to such travellers or seafaring men as come amongst them by chance, to show how far they were from the feral vice of hedonism, and how little they esteemed it, in favour of crass merrymaking.
In the media
A stereotypical Scotsman is depicted as being alcoholic.
When such a character wears a kilt there is often ribald speculation or innuendo about what is underneath and the sensitive males Scots cannot bear this and complain to the BBC if available.
The accompanying sporran is often thought to be amusing too and sensitive Scots males cannot also bear this, and so complain to the BBC if available.
An edition of the BBC satirical show Have I Got News for You aired on 26 April 2013 prompted over 100 complaints to the BBC and Ofcom for its perceived anti-Scottish stance during a section discussing Scottish independence. Panelist Paul Merton had suggested Mars bars would become the currency of a post-independence Scotland, while guest host Ray Winstone added, "To be fair the Scottish ecomomy has its strengths – its chief exports being oil, whisky, tartan and tramps."[4]
Link
The article Crass Merrymaking in the West Highlands is located as follows:
http://peterburnett.info/articles/627-crass-merrymaking-in-the-west-highlands
References
- ↑ P. Burnett Crass Merrymaking, [for CMITWH] (Aberdeen: Dee Press, 2005).
- ↑ The Hundred Years War. W.R. Jones (1979). Journal of British Studies
- ↑ W. Camden, Britannia, or, A Chorographical description of the most flourishing kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland. (London 1610), p114-127
- ↑ Offence was widely taken for the hell of it when [|Ray Winstone called Scots 'tramps' on a TV quiz show, as reported by Johnston Press May 2013]
