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For the latest news from Scotland see our ScotNews feed at:
https://electricscotland.com/scotnews.htm
Electric Scotland News
Did you know that 51.3% of Babies born in England and Wales last year were to unmarried couples? Source: Office for National Statistics
-------
I watched a YouTube video this week about Pakistan where temperatures went over 50º. You can see this at: https://youtu.be/iVhcaQMVa2M and discover a major problem in the supply of water.
Of course Canada doesn't have this problem with over 20% of the world's fresh water.
This said many countries in the world are having many wild fire incidents both in North America and Europe. I am constantly amazed how fire fighters can fight those fires in the very high temperatures we are experiencing. I simply have no idea how they can operate at those temperatures and I take my hat of to them for sure!!!
Scottish News from this weeks newspapers
Note that this is a selection and more can be read in our ScotNews feed on our index page where we list news from the past 1-2 weeks. I am partly doing this to build an archive of modern news from and about Scotland and world news stories that can affect Scotland and as all the newsletters are archived and also indexed on Google and other search engines it becomes a good resource. I might also add that in a number of newspapers you will find many comments which can be just as interesting as the news story itself and of course you can also add your own comments if you wish which I do myself from time to time.
Why the mysterious Scottish broch is making a return
Standing amid the stunning Scottish wilderness for the past 2,000 years, these mysterious stone structures are a symbol of Scotland’s unique archaeological past.
Read more at:
https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p0cpl...aking-a-return
Why is a wet country like Scotland facing water scarcity?
While there are no plans for water restrictions for Scottish homes, it is not just about keeping gardens growing. Sepa says this is a result of climate change, and it could have a serious impact on agriculture and businesses in Scotland.
Read more at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-62424001
Christians ten times more likely to be killed by extremists, shocking research shows
CHRISTIANS are up to ten times more likely to be killed by extremist groups than Muslims in the African country of Nigeria, new research has indicated.
Read more at:
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world...esearch-update
UK drought: are farmers facing the crop failures of 1976 all over again?
This July was the driest in England since 1935. Record breaking temperatures bear comparison to the great drought of 1976, with potential disruptions to water supply and poor crop yields, especially for fruit and vegetables. But not all droughts are the same and not all farmers face the same type of drought.
Note: In 1976 I was living in Coventry in England and remember they appointed a Minister for Drought. For those that don't know Coventry is in the very heart of England so well away from the coast.
Read more at:
https://capx.co/uk-drought-are-farme...all-over-again
From bad to worse in fast fashion’s global sweatshop
A Scots professor, inspired by witnessing the suffering endured in the sweatshops of Bangladesh as a boy, reveals how the sudden cancellation of orders by UK firms because of Covid has worsened violence and exploitation faced by workers earning a pittance to provide the world with the latest styles at bargain prices.
Read more at:
https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/fast-fashion-sweatshop
Reprinted novels win army of new fans for forgotten best-seller DE Stevenson
She was a bestselling author who wrote more than 40 books that sold in their millions but, like many hugely popular female writers, she has been quietly forgotten as the years passed and her novels fell out of print.
Read more at:
https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/de-stevenson/
Keep Gaelic and politics apart
By Alastair Osborne in the Scottish Review
Read more at:
https://www.scottishreview.net/AlastairOsborne623a.html
Scotland's charging landscape
By Nome Hunter in the Scottish Review
Read more at:
https://www.scottishreview.net/NorrieHunter623a.html
Family matters
In the last decade the marriage rate has slumped to less than half its previous low point, with the UK now a world leader in family breakdown. More concerning still is that marriage, and all the benefits that flow from it, is increasingly becoming the preserve of an already well-off elite
Read more at:
https://capx.co/strengthening-famili...itish-society/
Here are all the rankings in which Canada is now last
Most unaffordable housing, highest cellphone bills and worst rate of acute care beds, to name a few
Read more at:
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada...da-is-now-last
Getting manufacturing going again is the key to a high-growth future
The UK cannot prosper on services alone - we need to revive manufacturing
Read more at:
https://capx.co/getting-manufacturin...-growth-future
Electric Canadian
Indians in Canada
Indians from Asia account for some 4% of the Canadian population.
Added a page with a few videos to explore Indian culture in Canada which you can get to at:: http://www.electriccanadian.com/history/india.htm
Trailmakers of the Northwest
By Paul Leland Haworth (1921) (pdf)
You can read this book at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/pion...fnorthwest.pdf
Newfoundland - On the Shores of Canada's Most Spectacular Coast
Added this video to the foot of our video page at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...and/videos.htm
Climate Change
Pakistan Burns At 50°C. You can watch this video at:
https://youtu.be/iVhcaQMVa2M
Thoughts on a Sunday morning - the 7th day of August 2022 - the Inevitables
By the Rev. Nola Crewe
You can watch this at:
http://www.electricscotland.org/foru...he-inevitables
Stories of New France
Being tales of adventure and heroism from the early history of Canada in two series, the first series by Agnes Maule Machar and the second series by Thomas G. Marquis (1890) (pdf)
You can read this book at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...00machuoft.pdf
Electric Scotland
Beth's Video Talks
August 10th, 2022 - Using the language of love in genealogy
You can view this talk at: https://electricscotland.com/bnft
Strategy for Agricultural, Biological and Related Research 1999-2003
By the Scottish Office (pdf)
You can read this at:
https://electricscotland.com/agricul...griculture.pdf
The Rising of 1745
With a Bibliography of Jacobite History 1689-1788 by Charles Sanford Terry, M.A. (New edition) (1903) (pdf)
You can read this book at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...5wit00terr.pdf
7 Steps to Make a Living on a Small Farm
By The Dutch Farmer
Thought you might find this of interest. There is a YouTube channel available to support this publication which you can read at:
https://electricscotland.com/agricul...Small_Farm.pdf
Memoirs of the Marquis of Montrose
By Mark Napier in two volumes (1856) (pdf). Added these two volumes to the foot of our account of him under our Significant Scots section. Have also added the Preface to these volumes as a separate download which sets the scene for the full volumes.
You can read this at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...aham_james.htm
The Border Magazine
Added volume 7 to our collection which you can read at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...r_magazine.htm
Story
The Hon. Mark F. Napier on “The Modern Scot.”
THE opening event for the season in connection with the London Scottish Border Counties Association was on Thursday evening, 7th November, when the Honourable Mark F. Napier delivered an eloquent address in the Frascati Restaurant, Oxford Street, London. There was a large gathering of London Borderers and their friends, who listened with rapt attention to Mr Napier’s oratory, and punctuated his periods with cordial applause. The Border Magazine has pleasure in presenting to its readers the following exclusive report: —
Many years ago, said Mr Napier, it was my lot to be steaming lazily across the Bay of Lyons in a small tramp of some six hundred tons burden, bound from Barcelona to the fairy island of Majorca. On board we were not a happy lot. Forward, the greasy, sodden deck was covered by a mournful mass of ragged humanity, cast down in every posture of misery and dejection. They were Carlist prisoners taken in arms against the Republican Government, awaiting the rebels’ late—imprisonment or death—and aft, the whole cabin and deck were occupied by the officers and men of the military escort, who, with loaded rifles and fixed bayonets, redolent of garlic and smeared with the mud of much marching, were hardly an inviting crew of bed-fellows amongst whom to search for a cranny for the night’s shakedown.
The night was clear and cold, and as I leaned over the side watching the curling wreaths of phosphorescent foam sent forth upon their aimless journey by the gentle rolling of the ship, I mused sadly upon the miseries of war, and counted my own country happy in the possession of justice, freedom, and contentment, which kept the cruel dogs of war so far removed from our gates. The Spanish captain paced the bridge, an embroidered smoking cap on his greasy head, his lean and hungry body wrapped in frock coat which showed signs of a long, lurid past, and his feet encased in what had once been patent leather shoes, and which were more suggestive of a dancing saloon than a quarter-deck.
The figure did not inspire me with much confidence, and feeling cold I fled to the engine well, where at least were warmth and light, and where I hoped to doze the night through watching the sweeping power of the crank and shaft, and wondering at the greasy mystery of the sidelong eccentrics.
Two rickety camp stools were there—one occupied, the other free. I seized the free one and soon had leisure to examine my companion. His tall and sinewy form was enveloped in the long folds of a Spanish mantle. A broad and massive brow and shaggy eyebrows set square upon a well cut nose were designed to protect a pair of deep-set eager eyes that seemed to peer into the far-off distance like those of some mediaeval watchmen on a tower, rather than to belong to the respectable modem Spanish merchant that I took him to be. The groaning of the engines, which I noticed were built in Glasgow by a man of my own name, the reek of the heated oil, and the moans of the men on the deck, many of whom were wounded, vexed the ear of night and banished sleep; so I talked the long hours through with my companion in the best Spanish at my command. He and I were the only civilians on board, and our lonely position, and the forlorn conditions of our fellow travellers, created a greater sympathy between us than our short intimacy would seem to warrant, and when dawn broke glorious upon the fairy isle, and we swung into the port of Palma, I felt sorry that I must part with my Spanish friend, who, with great patience and courtesy, had helped me to pass so pleasantly the cold and tedious hours of the night. He seemed to me a man of broad views, wide experience, and deep religious temperament— the whole tinged with a sort of romantic melancholy which has always seemed to me well embodied in Sir Joshua Reynold’s beautiful picture, now in the National Gallery, and which goes by the name of the “Banished Lord.”
He took leave of me with a proud and gracious dignity, and I turned to watch my luggage lowered into the boat. The villainous boatman cast it roughly over the side, completely regardless of its value and of my feelings. The philosophic calm which had so long possessed my soul was at once dispelled, and not knowing enough Spanish to swear by, I visited upon the head of the offending boatman a cataract of the choicest Border expletives at my command, mostly, I think, collected near Hawick. Thus relieved, and a little ashamed of my display of impatience, I turned to my Spanish friend at once to apologise, and to take my leave. A look of great surprise and benevolent-interest came into his eyes, and grasping my hand with painful fervour he exclaimed—Gad man! Why didn’t ye tell me ye was a Scotsman; and we twa been playing a’ nicht at bein’ Spanish Hidalgoes when we baith hail from the Border. Come awa doon; we maun line a wee drap for the sake of the auld folks at hame! His name, I think, was Johnstone, and he hailed from Annandale. He had been long in Spain as an engineer, had married a Spanish wife, built railways, and, as he told me later, had so lost the use of his native tongue that he could better express himself in the language of his adoption than in that of his birth.
This man was merely an example of the type of thousands of Scots whom you will find all over the face of the world, men valued and trusted wherever they go, not only in Canada, the United States, the States of Central and South America, but in China, Japan, India, Singapore, Italy, Greece, Asia, Africa, it is all the same; in banks and counting-houses, in the planning and execution of titanic engineering works, in agriculture, in horticulture, in medicine, in war, in policy—the same qualities of self reliance, fertility of resource, faithful service, integrity, singleness of purpose, seem in varying degrees to pervade them all, and tend to make them fit servants of science—a nation of wandering exiles, patient and enduring soldiers of civilization, to whom the world owes much gratitude, and pays considerable sums of money, and who carry the fame and honourable traditions of our race to all lands, and yet who bear with them in all their wanderings, and nearest to the hearts, the memory of their national scenery and folk lore, the pride of their race and clan, and the hope that some day when their work is done and their toils are o’er they may find an asylum and last resting-place near the village where first they toddled barefooted callants to the school, or padled in the sparkling burn, or sat on a Sabbath morn at the feet of their minister absorbing theology as cold and hard as the rocks about them, but on which many of them will find a moral foundation as sure and lasting as their lives.
Many such men have I known in my life, hailing from all parts of Scotland, but seeming to my partial fancy to emanate mainly from the more southern and western and eastern parts than from the north: though when you can get a Calvinistic Highlander with the passion, eloquence, and fire of the north combined with the cold, hard logic and contentious spirit of the south, a cursed and hard bitter spirit— such as we have recently seen in the late Duke of Argyll—such a man will go far and leave a trail of much good, or, perchance, much evil, but at all events plenty of something attempted and done—a deep impression for good or ill upon the annals of thought and action in his time.
As I sat in the library of the National Liberal Club, and raised my eyes while brooding upon the fate to be inflicted upon my brother Scots to-night, they fell upon the eloquent yet massive lines of the granite bridge which bears the name of a place greatest, perhaps, after Trafalgar, in British history—I mean the Waterloo Bridge—begun, oddly enough, before Waterloo, and finished in 1817 by Rennie, the son of a small Scottish farmer. This man marched to fame across his own bridges—Kelso, Musselburgh, Waterloo, London, Southwark, Holyhead, Hull, Sheerness-the first to make a stone bridge flat, and the greatest to combine strength of materials with beauty of outline; a man who could pile tons of granite over your head into a lofty arch with lines as light as gossamer, and stems as stout and graceful as those of the oak or mountain fir.
What was there about James Rennie, the peasant farmer of Phantassie, in the shire of Haddington, to send forth from that unpromising nest one son who became famous as an authority in agriculture, another who was a distinguished sculptor and politician and student in Rome—and one who entered politics from the quaintest of all motives—not the furtherance of a political programme, authorised or unauthorised, but, if you please, as a means and with a view to improving the state of the arts in this country—not in his own country, but in England. The ingenious electors of Ipswich returned him to Parliament in 1841. He not long after resigned his seat in favour of one Aitken, another Scot, and he next turns up as Governor of the Falkland Islands, raising that pleasing community from a state of abject misery to one of great prosperity and contentment. Then there is another brother, who, instead of being a ploughman, to which state the Almighty had probably called him, must needs be a civil engineer. He, poor man, was much interested in chocolate making and biscuit manufactories. What on earth had he to do with chocolate and biscuits? Why was he not content to sup parritch with milk, if he could get it, or if not without—like the good man his father, or the good wife his mother before him? What on earth had he to do meddling with and inventing the screw propeller, and being the first man to put the new force which was to revolutionize the shipping of the world into the first of Her Majesty’s ships to possess it? Surely it would have been more considerate to have left that useful discovery to be made by some Oxford or Cambridge don, say one who had earned a fellowship as an encouragement to useful learning! Who kept John Rennie alive during all these wanderings? Not the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, you may be sure; and what business had he in 1784 to be taking a journey south for the purpose of enlarging his knowledge and visiting Watt, the great engineer? Will any man tell me why on earth Watt did not kick him hastily out of the house for interrupting his studies and making an inroad upon his provision? Can you imagine a worse way of passing your vocations than in working as a millwright, so as to be able at some future time to establish a business on your own account? Why not trudge to Monte Carlo and have a cast with the dice? And what on earth had this man to do with Andrew Meikle the millwright, the inventor of the thrashing machine at the Houston Mill, by Phantassie; and with Robert Stephenson, surveyor to the Commissioners for Northern Lights and the Bell Rock Lighthouse, near the entrance to the Firths of Forth and Tay?
Or what mysterious force was there in the dark, cold glens of Annandale from which you might judge would issue the fiery spirit and trumpet voice of Thomas Carlyle, which, resounding through the echoing aisles of literature has filled for these seventy years the whole English-speaking world. The grandson of a carpenter, and the son of a mason, he learned reading from his mother and arithmetic at five from his father. How on earth he acquired French and Latin, and Greek, and geometry, and algebra, and rhetoric, and philosophy, and later on German, and then became independent as a teacher, and saved something of money from his seventy pounds a year, and moved gradually onwards, outwards, a martyr to disease; toiling to London and in London, his work unsold, rejected, yet still his spirit maintained by that unquenchable fire within, — supporting his brother as a medical student out of his income of £200 a year, and stocking the farm of another brother, Alexander, and still all the while sending home help to his parents. A wild seer, shaggy, unkempt, like the Baptist living on locusts and wild honey. Deluging the world with fiery denunciation of chatter, and becoming at last the strongest force in British literature for the middle half of the nineteenth century, and setting the enduring impress of his character upon generations of English reading men through all the world!
And now turn we further north, and to the realms of war, to where was born Ralph Abercromby, who shares with John Moore the credit of renewing once again the martial ardour and military reputation of the British soldier to Menstry (near Tullibody) not known, I fear, upon the Border. The family hailed from Birkenbog, name suggestive of slaps and stiles, and deep moss hags. A Whig in politics, he contested and won a Parliamentary seat and fought a duel with his opponent, refused to vote at the bidding of a powerful patron, and by his opposition to the American War forfeited his chances of professional advancement. But the country needed him, and he added the French West India Islands to the possessions of the Empire. It so happened that another Scot, one Dundas, held the Secretaryship of State. In the frightful confusion of 1799 he seems never to have wanted foes worthy of his steel—Frenchmen, Dutch, Spaniards—in the West Indies or the Eastern Mediterranean, it was all the same to him, and he went his way culling glory and territory as he went till at last he fell wounded in the arms of victory at Aboukir. “What is this you have placed under my head,” asked the dying General? “Only a soldier’s blanket,” answered John Macdonald, his brother Scot, "Only a soldiers blanket! Make haste and return it to him at once.” And so died the great Ralph Abercromby—noble, self-denying, and just to the end.
And as with Abercromby, so with Moore, we must look to Scotland for the origin of one of the most striking personalities in British history —the greatest of three gifted brothers, the others being Sir Graham Moore and James Carrick Moore. And as Abercromby. had his Dundas, so had Moore his Elliot from the Borders to back him.
Ever ready to learn, and with an open mind to improve, he, with the help of a brother Scot, Sir Kenneth Mackenzie—another Highlander, I fear,—created a new force of Light Infantry, breaking the battalion into skirmishers, support, and reserve, adopting the improvement from the enemy much as we are now slowly emulating the mobility of the Boers. Who among British men can ever hope to equal, still less to surpass, the noble dignity and steady constancy of that life and death? So single in purpose, so serene, and so magnanimous. Who that has ever read it can forget the description, by another Scottish soldier in his army, of Moore commanding in his last fight, suddenly appearing at a critical point of the battle,—suddenly appearing as though from the clouds— the horse arrested in its gallop, thrown upon its haunches, with fore feet firmly planted in the ground—furious action suddenly turned to the stillness of the statue? The horse thrown back and the form of the Commander bending forward intently taking in the scene, a moment’s study of the dispositions, a few decisive orders and horse and man leaping back into life and vanishing to some other part of the stricken field. They hastily laid him to rest with his martial cloak around him, and Soult, his victorious enemy, with a noble feeling of regard for his valour, raised a monument to his memory, which must remain forever green and fresh in the minds of his fellow-countrymen. Alas! I cannot find that we can claim his great prototype, General Wolfe, who died in glory on the heights of Abram, when the hero low was laid to the sound of the drum. But among the great Generals afterwards brought to the front in the Peninsular War, and brought up in the school of Moore, we find the names of Hope, Graham, and Crawford, and it is with perhaps a pardonable pride that I cite the words of Sir Henry Hardinge, in which he writes that among the Generals, Hope, Graham, Paget, Hill, and Crawford, and felt and submitted to Moore’s ascendency, and of the younger officers it was ever the proud boast of the Napiers, Colborne, the Beckwiths, and Barnard that they were the pupils of Moore and not of Wellington. Nay, more, he inspired the historian. “The description of Moore’s retreat in Napier,” says Sir Henry, “is perhaps the finest piece of military history in the English language, not only because the author was present, but because his heart was with the leader of that retreat. And if Napier felt towards Wellington as the soldiers of the 10th Legion felt towards Caesar, he felt for Moore the personal love and devotion of a Cavalier towards Montrose.” Or shall we for a moment turn to the great company of Elliots, who hail from Roxburghshire, and who in the fields of war and policy and letters have done great service to the State, and laqueathed a glorious heritage of fame to their descendants, clansmen, and compatriots? Who can read without a thrill of pride the story of how the grim old Heathfield, seventh son of the third baronet of Stobs, hung on like death to “The Rock” for three mortal years, and braved and baffled all the assembled might of France and Spain?
“The men are splendid,” nobly wrote a recent General of his troops, battered, mauled, and repeatedly rolled back as they were before a withering fire such as no troops in the world had ever braved before; “the men were splendid, and were not to be denied;” but what could be nobler than the devotion and cold resolve of Wauchope on the cruel morn of Magersfontein which broke on the ruin of the flower of the Scottish regiments, and shed tears and wailing through a thousand Scottish homes? And on ocean, that wide field of Britain’s glory, you will find that the Scot was no laggard in war though he may have had less time than some others for love. What of Duncan and Dundonald, Keith and Hall, Sydney Smith and Lork Northesk, and a hundred others, whose names are written on the heart of Scotland? And in the field of oratory, at the British Bar— who can forget the great clan of Erskine, absolutely endless in the roll of fame—Thomas storming the Queen’s Bench, in London, when a stripling from the army holding his first brief? He wrung a hearing from the unwilling ears of justice, and when Lord Mansfield said to this boy—“Sir, Lord Sandhurst is not before the Court,” he shouted—“Then I will bring him before the Court, for he is the man that has done this injustice.” The whole Court was wrapped in silence, and when he had got his say his client was released from prison, and became the most popular man in England. There was a splendid act for a soldier boy to do, and the finest and most romantic tiling in the history of the English Bar. I think of Scott and Campbell, who graced the woolsack in the English House of Lords. We can well look back on a proud list of noble Scottish men, noble types on whom we may hope to build our future fame. It is a splendid heritage, but a fearful burden of responsibility. And we Scottish men who live in London may well remember with humility as well as pride the great deeds of our forefathers, and strive if we can to emulate their patriotism, their noble determination, their high ideals, and their great success.
Mr Napier was enthusiastically thanked for his address on the motion of Sir John Jardine, and an excellent programme of music was thereafter discussed.
END
Weekend is almost here and hope it's a good one for you.
Alastair
https://electricscotland.com/scotnews.htm
Electric Scotland News
Did you know that 51.3% of Babies born in England and Wales last year were to unmarried couples? Source: Office for National Statistics
-------
I watched a YouTube video this week about Pakistan where temperatures went over 50º. You can see this at: https://youtu.be/iVhcaQMVa2M and discover a major problem in the supply of water.
Of course Canada doesn't have this problem with over 20% of the world's fresh water.
This said many countries in the world are having many wild fire incidents both in North America and Europe. I am constantly amazed how fire fighters can fight those fires in the very high temperatures we are experiencing. I simply have no idea how they can operate at those temperatures and I take my hat of to them for sure!!!
Scottish News from this weeks newspapers
Note that this is a selection and more can be read in our ScotNews feed on our index page where we list news from the past 1-2 weeks. I am partly doing this to build an archive of modern news from and about Scotland and world news stories that can affect Scotland and as all the newsletters are archived and also indexed on Google and other search engines it becomes a good resource. I might also add that in a number of newspapers you will find many comments which can be just as interesting as the news story itself and of course you can also add your own comments if you wish which I do myself from time to time.
Why the mysterious Scottish broch is making a return
Standing amid the stunning Scottish wilderness for the past 2,000 years, these mysterious stone structures are a symbol of Scotland’s unique archaeological past.
Read more at:
https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p0cpl...aking-a-return
Why is a wet country like Scotland facing water scarcity?
While there are no plans for water restrictions for Scottish homes, it is not just about keeping gardens growing. Sepa says this is a result of climate change, and it could have a serious impact on agriculture and businesses in Scotland.
Read more at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-62424001
Christians ten times more likely to be killed by extremists, shocking research shows
CHRISTIANS are up to ten times more likely to be killed by extremist groups than Muslims in the African country of Nigeria, new research has indicated.
Read more at:
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world...esearch-update
UK drought: are farmers facing the crop failures of 1976 all over again?
This July was the driest in England since 1935. Record breaking temperatures bear comparison to the great drought of 1976, with potential disruptions to water supply and poor crop yields, especially for fruit and vegetables. But not all droughts are the same and not all farmers face the same type of drought.
Note: In 1976 I was living in Coventry in England and remember they appointed a Minister for Drought. For those that don't know Coventry is in the very heart of England so well away from the coast.
Read more at:
https://capx.co/uk-drought-are-farme...all-over-again
From bad to worse in fast fashion’s global sweatshop
A Scots professor, inspired by witnessing the suffering endured in the sweatshops of Bangladesh as a boy, reveals how the sudden cancellation of orders by UK firms because of Covid has worsened violence and exploitation faced by workers earning a pittance to provide the world with the latest styles at bargain prices.
Read more at:
https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/fast-fashion-sweatshop
Reprinted novels win army of new fans for forgotten best-seller DE Stevenson
She was a bestselling author who wrote more than 40 books that sold in their millions but, like many hugely popular female writers, she has been quietly forgotten as the years passed and her novels fell out of print.
Read more at:
https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/de-stevenson/
Keep Gaelic and politics apart
By Alastair Osborne in the Scottish Review
Read more at:
https://www.scottishreview.net/AlastairOsborne623a.html
Scotland's charging landscape
By Nome Hunter in the Scottish Review
Read more at:
https://www.scottishreview.net/NorrieHunter623a.html
Family matters
In the last decade the marriage rate has slumped to less than half its previous low point, with the UK now a world leader in family breakdown. More concerning still is that marriage, and all the benefits that flow from it, is increasingly becoming the preserve of an already well-off elite
Read more at:
https://capx.co/strengthening-famili...itish-society/
Here are all the rankings in which Canada is now last
Most unaffordable housing, highest cellphone bills and worst rate of acute care beds, to name a few
Read more at:
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada...da-is-now-last
Getting manufacturing going again is the key to a high-growth future
The UK cannot prosper on services alone - we need to revive manufacturing
Read more at:
https://capx.co/getting-manufacturin...-growth-future
Electric Canadian
Indians in Canada
Indians from Asia account for some 4% of the Canadian population.
Added a page with a few videos to explore Indian culture in Canada which you can get to at:: http://www.electriccanadian.com/history/india.htm
Trailmakers of the Northwest
By Paul Leland Haworth (1921) (pdf)
You can read this book at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/pion...fnorthwest.pdf
Newfoundland - On the Shores of Canada's Most Spectacular Coast
Added this video to the foot of our video page at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...and/videos.htm
Climate Change
Pakistan Burns At 50°C. You can watch this video at:
https://youtu.be/iVhcaQMVa2M
Thoughts on a Sunday morning - the 7th day of August 2022 - the Inevitables
By the Rev. Nola Crewe
You can watch this at:
http://www.electricscotland.org/foru...he-inevitables
Stories of New France
Being tales of adventure and heroism from the early history of Canada in two series, the first series by Agnes Maule Machar and the second series by Thomas G. Marquis (1890) (pdf)
You can read this book at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...00machuoft.pdf
Electric Scotland
Beth's Video Talks
August 10th, 2022 - Using the language of love in genealogy
You can view this talk at: https://electricscotland.com/bnft
Strategy for Agricultural, Biological and Related Research 1999-2003
By the Scottish Office (pdf)
You can read this at:
https://electricscotland.com/agricul...griculture.pdf
The Rising of 1745
With a Bibliography of Jacobite History 1689-1788 by Charles Sanford Terry, M.A. (New edition) (1903) (pdf)
You can read this book at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...5wit00terr.pdf
7 Steps to Make a Living on a Small Farm
By The Dutch Farmer
Thought you might find this of interest. There is a YouTube channel available to support this publication which you can read at:
https://electricscotland.com/agricul...Small_Farm.pdf
Memoirs of the Marquis of Montrose
By Mark Napier in two volumes (1856) (pdf). Added these two volumes to the foot of our account of him under our Significant Scots section. Have also added the Preface to these volumes as a separate download which sets the scene for the full volumes.
You can read this at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...aham_james.htm
The Border Magazine
Added volume 7 to our collection which you can read at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...r_magazine.htm
Story
The Hon. Mark F. Napier on “The Modern Scot.”
THE opening event for the season in connection with the London Scottish Border Counties Association was on Thursday evening, 7th November, when the Honourable Mark F. Napier delivered an eloquent address in the Frascati Restaurant, Oxford Street, London. There was a large gathering of London Borderers and their friends, who listened with rapt attention to Mr Napier’s oratory, and punctuated his periods with cordial applause. The Border Magazine has pleasure in presenting to its readers the following exclusive report: —
Many years ago, said Mr Napier, it was my lot to be steaming lazily across the Bay of Lyons in a small tramp of some six hundred tons burden, bound from Barcelona to the fairy island of Majorca. On board we were not a happy lot. Forward, the greasy, sodden deck was covered by a mournful mass of ragged humanity, cast down in every posture of misery and dejection. They were Carlist prisoners taken in arms against the Republican Government, awaiting the rebels’ late—imprisonment or death—and aft, the whole cabin and deck were occupied by the officers and men of the military escort, who, with loaded rifles and fixed bayonets, redolent of garlic and smeared with the mud of much marching, were hardly an inviting crew of bed-fellows amongst whom to search for a cranny for the night’s shakedown.
The night was clear and cold, and as I leaned over the side watching the curling wreaths of phosphorescent foam sent forth upon their aimless journey by the gentle rolling of the ship, I mused sadly upon the miseries of war, and counted my own country happy in the possession of justice, freedom, and contentment, which kept the cruel dogs of war so far removed from our gates. The Spanish captain paced the bridge, an embroidered smoking cap on his greasy head, his lean and hungry body wrapped in frock coat which showed signs of a long, lurid past, and his feet encased in what had once been patent leather shoes, and which were more suggestive of a dancing saloon than a quarter-deck.
The figure did not inspire me with much confidence, and feeling cold I fled to the engine well, where at least were warmth and light, and where I hoped to doze the night through watching the sweeping power of the crank and shaft, and wondering at the greasy mystery of the sidelong eccentrics.
Two rickety camp stools were there—one occupied, the other free. I seized the free one and soon had leisure to examine my companion. His tall and sinewy form was enveloped in the long folds of a Spanish mantle. A broad and massive brow and shaggy eyebrows set square upon a well cut nose were designed to protect a pair of deep-set eager eyes that seemed to peer into the far-off distance like those of some mediaeval watchmen on a tower, rather than to belong to the respectable modem Spanish merchant that I took him to be. The groaning of the engines, which I noticed were built in Glasgow by a man of my own name, the reek of the heated oil, and the moans of the men on the deck, many of whom were wounded, vexed the ear of night and banished sleep; so I talked the long hours through with my companion in the best Spanish at my command. He and I were the only civilians on board, and our lonely position, and the forlorn conditions of our fellow travellers, created a greater sympathy between us than our short intimacy would seem to warrant, and when dawn broke glorious upon the fairy isle, and we swung into the port of Palma, I felt sorry that I must part with my Spanish friend, who, with great patience and courtesy, had helped me to pass so pleasantly the cold and tedious hours of the night. He seemed to me a man of broad views, wide experience, and deep religious temperament— the whole tinged with a sort of romantic melancholy which has always seemed to me well embodied in Sir Joshua Reynold’s beautiful picture, now in the National Gallery, and which goes by the name of the “Banished Lord.”
He took leave of me with a proud and gracious dignity, and I turned to watch my luggage lowered into the boat. The villainous boatman cast it roughly over the side, completely regardless of its value and of my feelings. The philosophic calm which had so long possessed my soul was at once dispelled, and not knowing enough Spanish to swear by, I visited upon the head of the offending boatman a cataract of the choicest Border expletives at my command, mostly, I think, collected near Hawick. Thus relieved, and a little ashamed of my display of impatience, I turned to my Spanish friend at once to apologise, and to take my leave. A look of great surprise and benevolent-interest came into his eyes, and grasping my hand with painful fervour he exclaimed—Gad man! Why didn’t ye tell me ye was a Scotsman; and we twa been playing a’ nicht at bein’ Spanish Hidalgoes when we baith hail from the Border. Come awa doon; we maun line a wee drap for the sake of the auld folks at hame! His name, I think, was Johnstone, and he hailed from Annandale. He had been long in Spain as an engineer, had married a Spanish wife, built railways, and, as he told me later, had so lost the use of his native tongue that he could better express himself in the language of his adoption than in that of his birth.
This man was merely an example of the type of thousands of Scots whom you will find all over the face of the world, men valued and trusted wherever they go, not only in Canada, the United States, the States of Central and South America, but in China, Japan, India, Singapore, Italy, Greece, Asia, Africa, it is all the same; in banks and counting-houses, in the planning and execution of titanic engineering works, in agriculture, in horticulture, in medicine, in war, in policy—the same qualities of self reliance, fertility of resource, faithful service, integrity, singleness of purpose, seem in varying degrees to pervade them all, and tend to make them fit servants of science—a nation of wandering exiles, patient and enduring soldiers of civilization, to whom the world owes much gratitude, and pays considerable sums of money, and who carry the fame and honourable traditions of our race to all lands, and yet who bear with them in all their wanderings, and nearest to the hearts, the memory of their national scenery and folk lore, the pride of their race and clan, and the hope that some day when their work is done and their toils are o’er they may find an asylum and last resting-place near the village where first they toddled barefooted callants to the school, or padled in the sparkling burn, or sat on a Sabbath morn at the feet of their minister absorbing theology as cold and hard as the rocks about them, but on which many of them will find a moral foundation as sure and lasting as their lives.
Many such men have I known in my life, hailing from all parts of Scotland, but seeming to my partial fancy to emanate mainly from the more southern and western and eastern parts than from the north: though when you can get a Calvinistic Highlander with the passion, eloquence, and fire of the north combined with the cold, hard logic and contentious spirit of the south, a cursed and hard bitter spirit— such as we have recently seen in the late Duke of Argyll—such a man will go far and leave a trail of much good, or, perchance, much evil, but at all events plenty of something attempted and done—a deep impression for good or ill upon the annals of thought and action in his time.
As I sat in the library of the National Liberal Club, and raised my eyes while brooding upon the fate to be inflicted upon my brother Scots to-night, they fell upon the eloquent yet massive lines of the granite bridge which bears the name of a place greatest, perhaps, after Trafalgar, in British history—I mean the Waterloo Bridge—begun, oddly enough, before Waterloo, and finished in 1817 by Rennie, the son of a small Scottish farmer. This man marched to fame across his own bridges—Kelso, Musselburgh, Waterloo, London, Southwark, Holyhead, Hull, Sheerness-the first to make a stone bridge flat, and the greatest to combine strength of materials with beauty of outline; a man who could pile tons of granite over your head into a lofty arch with lines as light as gossamer, and stems as stout and graceful as those of the oak or mountain fir.
What was there about James Rennie, the peasant farmer of Phantassie, in the shire of Haddington, to send forth from that unpromising nest one son who became famous as an authority in agriculture, another who was a distinguished sculptor and politician and student in Rome—and one who entered politics from the quaintest of all motives—not the furtherance of a political programme, authorised or unauthorised, but, if you please, as a means and with a view to improving the state of the arts in this country—not in his own country, but in England. The ingenious electors of Ipswich returned him to Parliament in 1841. He not long after resigned his seat in favour of one Aitken, another Scot, and he next turns up as Governor of the Falkland Islands, raising that pleasing community from a state of abject misery to one of great prosperity and contentment. Then there is another brother, who, instead of being a ploughman, to which state the Almighty had probably called him, must needs be a civil engineer. He, poor man, was much interested in chocolate making and biscuit manufactories. What on earth had he to do with chocolate and biscuits? Why was he not content to sup parritch with milk, if he could get it, or if not without—like the good man his father, or the good wife his mother before him? What on earth had he to do meddling with and inventing the screw propeller, and being the first man to put the new force which was to revolutionize the shipping of the world into the first of Her Majesty’s ships to possess it? Surely it would have been more considerate to have left that useful discovery to be made by some Oxford or Cambridge don, say one who had earned a fellowship as an encouragement to useful learning! Who kept John Rennie alive during all these wanderings? Not the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, you may be sure; and what business had he in 1784 to be taking a journey south for the purpose of enlarging his knowledge and visiting Watt, the great engineer? Will any man tell me why on earth Watt did not kick him hastily out of the house for interrupting his studies and making an inroad upon his provision? Can you imagine a worse way of passing your vocations than in working as a millwright, so as to be able at some future time to establish a business on your own account? Why not trudge to Monte Carlo and have a cast with the dice? And what on earth had this man to do with Andrew Meikle the millwright, the inventor of the thrashing machine at the Houston Mill, by Phantassie; and with Robert Stephenson, surveyor to the Commissioners for Northern Lights and the Bell Rock Lighthouse, near the entrance to the Firths of Forth and Tay?
Or what mysterious force was there in the dark, cold glens of Annandale from which you might judge would issue the fiery spirit and trumpet voice of Thomas Carlyle, which, resounding through the echoing aisles of literature has filled for these seventy years the whole English-speaking world. The grandson of a carpenter, and the son of a mason, he learned reading from his mother and arithmetic at five from his father. How on earth he acquired French and Latin, and Greek, and geometry, and algebra, and rhetoric, and philosophy, and later on German, and then became independent as a teacher, and saved something of money from his seventy pounds a year, and moved gradually onwards, outwards, a martyr to disease; toiling to London and in London, his work unsold, rejected, yet still his spirit maintained by that unquenchable fire within, — supporting his brother as a medical student out of his income of £200 a year, and stocking the farm of another brother, Alexander, and still all the while sending home help to his parents. A wild seer, shaggy, unkempt, like the Baptist living on locusts and wild honey. Deluging the world with fiery denunciation of chatter, and becoming at last the strongest force in British literature for the middle half of the nineteenth century, and setting the enduring impress of his character upon generations of English reading men through all the world!
And now turn we further north, and to the realms of war, to where was born Ralph Abercromby, who shares with John Moore the credit of renewing once again the martial ardour and military reputation of the British soldier to Menstry (near Tullibody) not known, I fear, upon the Border. The family hailed from Birkenbog, name suggestive of slaps and stiles, and deep moss hags. A Whig in politics, he contested and won a Parliamentary seat and fought a duel with his opponent, refused to vote at the bidding of a powerful patron, and by his opposition to the American War forfeited his chances of professional advancement. But the country needed him, and he added the French West India Islands to the possessions of the Empire. It so happened that another Scot, one Dundas, held the Secretaryship of State. In the frightful confusion of 1799 he seems never to have wanted foes worthy of his steel—Frenchmen, Dutch, Spaniards—in the West Indies or the Eastern Mediterranean, it was all the same to him, and he went his way culling glory and territory as he went till at last he fell wounded in the arms of victory at Aboukir. “What is this you have placed under my head,” asked the dying General? “Only a soldier’s blanket,” answered John Macdonald, his brother Scot, "Only a soldiers blanket! Make haste and return it to him at once.” And so died the great Ralph Abercromby—noble, self-denying, and just to the end.
And as with Abercromby, so with Moore, we must look to Scotland for the origin of one of the most striking personalities in British history —the greatest of three gifted brothers, the others being Sir Graham Moore and James Carrick Moore. And as Abercromby. had his Dundas, so had Moore his Elliot from the Borders to back him.
Ever ready to learn, and with an open mind to improve, he, with the help of a brother Scot, Sir Kenneth Mackenzie—another Highlander, I fear,—created a new force of Light Infantry, breaking the battalion into skirmishers, support, and reserve, adopting the improvement from the enemy much as we are now slowly emulating the mobility of the Boers. Who among British men can ever hope to equal, still less to surpass, the noble dignity and steady constancy of that life and death? So single in purpose, so serene, and so magnanimous. Who that has ever read it can forget the description, by another Scottish soldier in his army, of Moore commanding in his last fight, suddenly appearing at a critical point of the battle,—suddenly appearing as though from the clouds— the horse arrested in its gallop, thrown upon its haunches, with fore feet firmly planted in the ground—furious action suddenly turned to the stillness of the statue? The horse thrown back and the form of the Commander bending forward intently taking in the scene, a moment’s study of the dispositions, a few decisive orders and horse and man leaping back into life and vanishing to some other part of the stricken field. They hastily laid him to rest with his martial cloak around him, and Soult, his victorious enemy, with a noble feeling of regard for his valour, raised a monument to his memory, which must remain forever green and fresh in the minds of his fellow-countrymen. Alas! I cannot find that we can claim his great prototype, General Wolfe, who died in glory on the heights of Abram, when the hero low was laid to the sound of the drum. But among the great Generals afterwards brought to the front in the Peninsular War, and brought up in the school of Moore, we find the names of Hope, Graham, and Crawford, and it is with perhaps a pardonable pride that I cite the words of Sir Henry Hardinge, in which he writes that among the Generals, Hope, Graham, Paget, Hill, and Crawford, and felt and submitted to Moore’s ascendency, and of the younger officers it was ever the proud boast of the Napiers, Colborne, the Beckwiths, and Barnard that they were the pupils of Moore and not of Wellington. Nay, more, he inspired the historian. “The description of Moore’s retreat in Napier,” says Sir Henry, “is perhaps the finest piece of military history in the English language, not only because the author was present, but because his heart was with the leader of that retreat. And if Napier felt towards Wellington as the soldiers of the 10th Legion felt towards Caesar, he felt for Moore the personal love and devotion of a Cavalier towards Montrose.” Or shall we for a moment turn to the great company of Elliots, who hail from Roxburghshire, and who in the fields of war and policy and letters have done great service to the State, and laqueathed a glorious heritage of fame to their descendants, clansmen, and compatriots? Who can read without a thrill of pride the story of how the grim old Heathfield, seventh son of the third baronet of Stobs, hung on like death to “The Rock” for three mortal years, and braved and baffled all the assembled might of France and Spain?
“The men are splendid,” nobly wrote a recent General of his troops, battered, mauled, and repeatedly rolled back as they were before a withering fire such as no troops in the world had ever braved before; “the men were splendid, and were not to be denied;” but what could be nobler than the devotion and cold resolve of Wauchope on the cruel morn of Magersfontein which broke on the ruin of the flower of the Scottish regiments, and shed tears and wailing through a thousand Scottish homes? And on ocean, that wide field of Britain’s glory, you will find that the Scot was no laggard in war though he may have had less time than some others for love. What of Duncan and Dundonald, Keith and Hall, Sydney Smith and Lork Northesk, and a hundred others, whose names are written on the heart of Scotland? And in the field of oratory, at the British Bar— who can forget the great clan of Erskine, absolutely endless in the roll of fame—Thomas storming the Queen’s Bench, in London, when a stripling from the army holding his first brief? He wrung a hearing from the unwilling ears of justice, and when Lord Mansfield said to this boy—“Sir, Lord Sandhurst is not before the Court,” he shouted—“Then I will bring him before the Court, for he is the man that has done this injustice.” The whole Court was wrapped in silence, and when he had got his say his client was released from prison, and became the most popular man in England. There was a splendid act for a soldier boy to do, and the finest and most romantic tiling in the history of the English Bar. I think of Scott and Campbell, who graced the woolsack in the English House of Lords. We can well look back on a proud list of noble Scottish men, noble types on whom we may hope to build our future fame. It is a splendid heritage, but a fearful burden of responsibility. And we Scottish men who live in London may well remember with humility as well as pride the great deeds of our forefathers, and strive if we can to emulate their patriotism, their noble determination, their high ideals, and their great success.
Mr Napier was enthusiastically thanked for his address on the motion of Sir John Jardine, and an excellent programme of music was thereafter discussed.
END
Weekend is almost here and hope it's a good one for you.
Alastair