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https://electricscotland.com/scotnews.htm
Electric Scotland News
King Charles has reopened Glasgow's Burrell Collection almost four decades after the Queen first opened it. The internationally renowned museum and gallery reopened to the public in March after a six-year £68.25m refurbishment.
It houses 9,000 objects from the personal collection of shipping merchant Sir William Burrell, which were gifted to the city of Glasgow. The King toured the gallery in Pollok Country Park and met local school and nursery children outside. Senior museum manager Jane Rowlands showed King Charles the highlights of the collection, including Auguste Rodin's The Thinker.
His mother Queen Elizabeth first opened The Burrell, which was purpose-built for the vast collection of art and antiquities from around the world, on 21 October 1983. Sir William devoted more than 75 years to amassing the collection with his wife Constance and insisted his gifts to the industrial city should be housed where people could appreciate the art in a countryside setting.
The King's first official engagement in Glasgow since acceding the throne came two days after he attended a reception in Ballater with Camilla, the Queen Consort, to thank the community there for its support following the death of the Queen. Dressed in Royal Stewart Hunting Tartan, he looked delighted as he was presented with an autumnal wreath by local nursery children.
Inside the museum, the King was shown a statue of The Luohan which portrays a Buddhist monk. Both his late mother and grandmother have previously been photographed beside it. Following a viewing of the museum's collection of stained-glass windows and elaborate tapestries, the King was escorted into a open foyer where he met with volunteers and those involved with the museum's refurbishment.
The King was then invited to unveil a plaque by the chair of Glasgow Life, Annette Christie, who called it a "momentous occasion" for Glasgow.
You can see pictures of the event at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland...-west-63246881
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Crowds cheer King Charles during visit to Dunfermline.
See an article about his visit at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland...-fife-63107561
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.
The struggles of modern males
Sex-based equality is usually discussed only in terms of discrimination against women and girls. Yet as this week's podcast guest Richard Reeves sets out in his new book, there's another pressing issue plaguing Western societies the dramatic underperformance of men and boys, in school and beyond.
Read more at:
https://capx.co/the-capx-podcast-ric...are-struggling
Tens of thousands of salmon found dead after Canada drought
A research crew from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia was out monitoring salmon in Neekas river.
Read more at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-63136680
What does recent economic and fiscal mayhem teach us?
The past few weeks has seen some disturbing events occur with regards to economic and fiscal matters in both Scotland and the UK.
Read more at:
https://sceptical.scot/2022/10/what-...yhem-teach-us/
Suffolk cafe owner scoops porridge prize for second time
The coveted Golden Spurtle is awarded to the maker of the best traditional porridge using three ingredients - oatmeal, water and salt.
Read more at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland...lands-63188168
Canada buys land in France's Juno Beach due to condo plan
Canada will help buy a plot of land in France that was once stormed by allied troops on D-Day during World War Two.
Read more at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63177891
New legislation is on its way
It's exciting times in the housebuilding market as the Scottish Government promises to legislate to ensure developers provide electric vehicle (EV) charge points in the construction of new residential and non-residential buildings.
Read more at:
https://www.scottishreview.net//NorrieHunter632a.html
Coronation on 6 May for King Charles and Camilla, Queen Consort
King Charles III's coronation is to be held on Saturday 6 May, at Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace has announced.
Read more at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-63172425
The truff is out there: Scotland bids to be hotbed for kitchen delicacy
Prohibitively priced and powerfully pungent, one of France’s most illustrious gastronomes called them the diamonds of the kitchen. Traditionally sniffed out on mainland Europe, the truffle, an underground fungus, is now being farmed commercially in Scotland and Dr Paul Thomas is leading the hunt.
Read more at:
https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/the-tr...chen-delicacy/
Tuition fees residency rules breached human rights
Scottish ministers are being forced to change the law on tuition fees for hundreds of students from migrant families after a landmark court case. Lawyers successfully argued that Iraq-born Ola Jasim, who has lived in Scotland since she was 11, had her human rights breached.
Read more at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-63228362
Electric Canadian
Brown Waters and Other Sketches
By W. H. Blake (1915) (pdf)
You can read this at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/life...rownwaters.pdf
Tripping The Bruce
Set sail along the rugged northern coast of Ontario's magnificent Bruce Peninsula in TRIPPING The Bruce. Above the pristine turquoise waters are the towering cliffs of the Niagara Escarpment, and beneath the waters are dozens of sunken ships that Lake Huron has claimed. It is a stunning, primordial landscape filled with fascinating stories of rich bounty, human survival, and natural wonders. Added this video to the foot of our Bruce page.
You can view this at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...ruce/index.htm
Thoughts on a Sunday Morning - the 9th day of October 2022 - Thanksgiving
By the Rev. Nola Crewe
You can view this at:
http://www.electricscotland.org/foru...2-thanksgiving
Man-size
By William MacLeod Raine (1922) (pdf)
A "Mountie" story with a good movie plot. Mr. Raine knows more about the R.N.W.M.P. than most of those who purvey this type of fiction.
You can read this at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/lifestyle/mansize.pdf
Shepherds of the Wild
By Edison Marshall (1922) (pdf)
You can read this at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/life...00marsrich.pdf
Electric Scotland
Beth's Video Talks
October 12th, 2022 - Canadian Ancestors
You can view this talk at: https://electricscotland.com/bnft
Beth's Newfangled Family Tree
Hey. Here is November 2022 Section B. It is early to you as I am leaving for Atlanta next Thursday to do the speeches for the Games. You can read it at: https://electricscotland.com/bnft/index.htm
I think I have told you Tom is back in bed with no driving for a while. Steve is going to stay with him while I go to fulfill my obligations to the Games Committee in Atlanta. Debbie, his wife, is going to drive me. It's really sort of funny, I am not afraid of the rankest horse and will crawl on anything. I would ride a horse to town in a heartbeat, but I am somehow terrified of driving. Even in this, I drove for over a year, not happily, but drove. All of a sudden, I was scared silly. (Horses seldom try to run over anybody, unlike folks who drive cars.)
Our neighbor has said I can ride to the grocery store with her. I will be so very good and polite and try to help her in any way I can.
Anyway, I have organized my speeches and have enough material to last a solid week. Now, to map out the way we are going to drive. There is a way to go on The Atlanta Highway that will take us directly to the hotel, and that's all we have to do. We're going to be at the hotel for the speeches and also for the reception and then reverse our trip home. We won't have to go in any of the awful Atlanta traffic.
Anyway, sorry to send this early. That's my secret to doing lots of publications - I just work on them and never let anything get late.
Please take care of yourself.
It will take me until next Thursday to get the house ready for company and everything organized for me to be gone for 2 nights.
Much love,
beth
My Father
An Aberdeenshire Minister 1812-1891 by W. Robertson Nicoll (second edition) (1910) (pdf)
In the Preface you'll find...
"if one had been asked any time during the last thirty years of my father's life, which ended in 1891, where the best library and the best bookman in Scotland were to be found, I think if he had known the truth he would have referred the inquirer to my father's home. It was remote and secluded. You had to go to Aberdeen, take the train out for some thirty miles to Gartly, and then walk or drive another eight miles to Lumsden in the parish of Auchindoir. You would then find yourself in an upland village. At the side of that village you would find a little manse with some 17,000 volumes gathered under its roof. You would be received with the utmost cordiality by the occupant, a Free Church minister, but you would not have been allowed to see more than a fraction of his books, unless you had spoken the sesame. If you had referred to Fynes Clinton or any other of his favourite authors, you would have been taken upstairs and introduced into the secret treasures of the house. If not, you would have left the place feeling you had been deceived.
You can read this at:
https://electricscotland.com/bible/m...deen00nico.pdf
Plantation
Its Process in Relation to Scotland’s Atlantic Communities, 1590s–1630s By Thomas Brochard (pdf)
The article sets the Scottish and British Crown’s colonizing measure vis-à-vis the Scottish communities of the North Atlantic arc within a broader imperial framework. Underlying such course of action was the articulation of a rhetoric as a vital linguistic tool for its plantations’ raison d’être. The study delineates key aspects in the major plantation schemes of Scotland that were implemented between the 1590s and 1630s. Both the internal colonizing project of Lewis and the external ones of Ireland, briefly, and Nova Scotia, will be primarily assessed from the bottom-up perspective of the maritime communities of the northern Highlands. Distancing themselves from the governmental rhetoric, these ventures helped reconfigure clan allegiance and dynamics in the Lewis case, and reposition the role and identity of these far-northerners in the Irish and Nova Scotia plans as well as in redefining these enterprises’ nature.
You can read this article at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...tion_to_Sc.pdf
The Scottish Complementarians Who Teach Women to Preach
A church planting network in Edinburgh’s poorest neighborhoods is flipping gender norms on their heads. By Kara Bettis published in the June 2022 issue of Chrstianity Today at: https://www.christianitytoday.com/ (pdf)
You can read this article at:
https://electricscotland.com/bible/P...rticles%20.pdf
A History of Scotland
From the Roman Evacuation to the Disruption, 1843 by Charles Sanford Terry, Litt.D. Cantab. (1920) (pdf)
An interesting take on Scottish History which you can read at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...fscotlan00.pdf
Highland Clansman 1689-1746
By Stuart Reid, Illustrated by Angus McBride (pdf)
Duncan Forbes of Culloden provided one of the clearest definitions of a Highland Clan in 1746, describing them as “a set of men all bearing the same surname and believing themselves to be related one to the other and to be descended from the same conunon stock. In each Clan, there are several subaltem tribes, who owe their dependence on their own immediate chief, but all agree in owing allegiance to the Supreme Chief of the Clan or Kindred and look upon it to be their duty to support him in all adventures." Hardly pausing to draw breath, he went on to grumble: “As those Clans or Kindreds live by themselves, and possess different Straths, Glens or districts, without any considerable mixture of Strangers, it has been for a great many years impracticable (and hardlv thought safe to try it) to give the Law its course amongst the Mountains." Forbes, as lord president, had a very proper concern for the maintenance of law and order, but the Highland Clans were not just a threat to the civil peace. Between 1603 and 1746 they played an increasingly prominent role on battle fields both at home and abroad.
You can read this at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...ndclansmen.pdf
The Diary of Andrew Hay of Craignethan, 1659-1660
Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Alexander George Reid, FSAScot (1901) (pdf)
John Hay, third Lord Yester, by his second wife, the daughterand heiress of John Dickson of Smithfield, had a son, the Hon. John, who succeeded to the estate of Smithfield. He was succeeded in that estate by his eldest surviving son, Thomas, who died in 1570. From Thomas the Smithfield branch of the Hays was descended. John Hay, the third son of the Hon. John Hay of Smithfield, married Marion Kerr, and acquired the lands of Kingsmeadows. His eldest son, Andrew, married Janet Hay, and bought in 1635 the lands of Henderstoun, which he renamed Haystoun. He died in 1655, leaving two sons, John, who succeeded him in the estate of Haystoun, and Andrew, the writer of the Diary.
You can read this at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...whay00haya.pdf
An Angus Parish in the Eighteenth Century
By the Rev. W. Mason Inglis, M.A., FSAScot,, Minister of Auchterhouse (1904) (pdf)
THIS volume is practically a sequel of an earlier work, now out of print, entitled "The Annals of an Angus Parish," which dealt chie% with the 17th Century, and is written mainly with the view of describing and illustrating the many quaint and curious phases of old Parochial and Ecclesiastical life in Angus as are to be gleaned from the Parish Records of the 18th Century. While more immediately concerned with Auchterhouse Parish, the volume is meant to have a much wider bearing and range, and may possibly prove interesting to those fond of antiquarian lore, old family history, and the past manners and customs of the County. It has been the intermittent labour of a lengthened period, and is the result of extensive reading and research into every available source of information Avithin reach. My best thanks are due to friends who have supplied photographs, and to those parishioners and others who have so kindly furnished me with much curious information regarding the old smuggling times—a subject to them not without many touches of romantic and personal interest.
You can read this at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...neig00ingl.pdf
Scottish Society of Louisville
Got in their October 2022 newsletter which you can read at:
https://electricscotland.com/familyt...ille/index.htm
Anatomy of an Iron Age Roundhouse
The Cnip Wheelhouse Excavations, Lewis by Ian Armit. This report provides an excellent source for readers to appreciate the archaeology in the Western Isles. – Professor Niall Sharples (pdf)
You can read this at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...0-20220920.pdf
A New Scottish Growth Strategy
By John McLaren (2022) (pdf)
Scotland’s post devolution economic performance has been mediocre, with little or no apparent benefit coming from more powers or from extensive economic regeneration funding sources. However, post 2014, but pre Covid 19, this performance has become worrying, with GDP per capita growing at less than half the rate seen for the UK as a whole; Such slower growth is costing Scotland dear, with higher taxes needed to compensate for the £1 billion funding shortfall that has resulted and with the potential for this to rise to £2 billion by the start of the next decade.
You can read this at:
https://electricscotland.com/busines...h-Strategy.pdf
Children of the Market Place
By Edgar Lee Masters, "This remarkable book is above everything else a study of Lincoln and Douglas, and as such it is not only able and fascinating, but strangely timely. A picture humanly attractive and far-reachingly instructive." —Edwin Bjorkman in the New York Herald (pdf)
You can read this at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...rket-place.pdf
Story
The Aberdonian as Teacher in the New World
The wanderings of the Aberdeen scholar were not confined to Europe — he found his way to the New World as well. One of the early pioneers of education in America was Rev. Patrick Copland, a native of Aberdeen — born there in 1572, and educated at the Grammar School and Marischal College. His wanderings were many and diverse. He was for several years a chaplain to the East India Company, and while in its service made two vogages to India, returning from one of them by way of Japan.
About 1621 he conceived the plan of establishing a church and school in Virginia and collected money for the purpose. He received a grant of land from the Virginia Company, was appointed one of the Council of State of the colony, and was chosen as Rector of the Henrico College, to which his proposed school was to be affiliated. His intention of going out to Virginia, however, was frustrated by a massacre by Indians, which put an end to the project. Copland’s interest in colonization and the Christian education of the American natives continued unabated, nevertheless; and, receiving a legacy of £300 from a friend to establish an Indian School on the Somers Islands (the Bermudas), he proceeded thither, about 1626, to set the school in operation. He remained there for twenty years, actively prosecuting the work of a missionary and educationalist. This work was finally interrupted by ecclesiastical feuds, and Copland, owing to his Puritanism, was imprisoned for some time. In 1648 he sailed to Eleuthera, one of the Bahama group, and he died there, probably between 1651 and 1655, when he was about or possibly over eighty years of age. He founded the Professorship of Divinity in Marischal College in 1617 by a mortification of 2000 merks, which he subsequently increased to 6000 merks.
The College at Philadelphia, which developed into the University of Pennsylvania, was founded in 1755 by Dr. William Smith, a native of the parish of Slains, who studied at King’s College, 1743-47. He went to America in 1751, and attracted the attention of Benjamin Franklin by the publication of a scheme of university education. He was the first Provost of the Philadelphia College. Leaving Philadelphia in 1780 for Chestertown, Maryland, he there instituted the seminary which is now Washington College. His scheme of University education was practically identical with that prevailing in Aberdeen at the time, and it formed the basis of the curriculum adopted in all American Universities — quite a unique distinction, which Aberdeen owes to one of its wandering scholars.
The founder of Trinity University, Toronto, was John Strachan, M.A., King’s College, 1797; and St. John’s College, Rupertsland, was founded by John M‘Callum, who graduated at King’s College in 1832.
Many Aberdeen graduates have been professors in American and Canadian Colleges. Henry Hopper Miles, M.A., King’s College, 1839, was for many years Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy in Bishop’s College, Lennoxville, and ultimately became Secretary of the Department of Public Instruction in Canada: he was the author of the histories of Canada used in the elementary schools of the Dominion.
Our Modern "Export of Brains"
The export of brains still continues. I took the trouble one evening recently to run over two dozen pages of the list of graduates given in the University “Calendar” — barely a fifth of the total — and note the present occupation and location of the various men. There were professors, lecturers, College instructors and teachers in Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and India, not a few of the teachers being ladies; medical men all over the world, even in such remote places as Rara tonga, New Guinea, and Klondike; clergymen and medical missionaries in China, India, Nyasaland, Nigeria, and the New Hebrides, including a Bishop, the Bishop of Labuan and Sarawak, in the person of a son of the late Dean Danson; members of the Indian Civil Service and the Indian Forestry Service, and of the Consular and Customs services abroad; rubber planters in the Malay States, a barrister in Australia, a solicitor in Edmonton, Canada, a banker in Mexico, a mining engineer in Johannesburg, a stockbroker in Pretoria, a farmer in the Argentine, and another in Saskatchewan, who has named his holding “Bennachie”—which reminds me that an Aberdeen friend of mine who settled in the sunny clime and fruitful land of California dubbed his farm, so he said, “Pech nae mair”. In this connection I may mention incidentally that in the course of the past two years no fewer than eighteen graduates of Aberdeen University have been appointed to Professorships at home and abroad.
Buchan — selecting this district of the shire again merely as a sample — is not behind in its contribution to the export of Aberdeenshire brains in modern times. I hope I may be excused referring to the two last pages of my own edition of Pratt’s “Buchan,” where an enumeration was given of some of the more distinguished of then contemporary scholars hailing from the district. They included Charles Niven, Professor of Natural Philosophy at Aberdeen University; his brother, Sir William D. Niven, Director of Studies at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich; Dr. Peter Giles, now Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge; Professor A. F. Murison, London University; Principal Cook, Government College, Bangalore, India; and Thomas Davidson, a native of Fetterangus, probably the most brilliant scholar that Buchan — or Aberdeenshire, for the matter of that — ever produced. He emigrated to America and acquired a high reputation by his philosophical and educational writings. When he died (in 1900) the Spectator eulogized him as “one of the most gifted and remarkable men of the latter half of this century,” “one of the dozen most learned men on this planet At the date of the publication of that edition of Pratt (1901), Buchan was most worthily represented in theology by Dr. A. B. Davidson, Professor of Hebrew, New College, Edinburgh (a native of Ellon); in divinity by Rev. Dr. William Mair, Earlston (native of Savoch), Moderator of Assembly, 1897; in law by Mr. James Ferguson of Kinmundy, Sheriff of Argyll and later of Forfarshire; and in medicine by Sir James Reid (of Ellon), and by Dr. Charles Creighton (of Peterhead), author of “A History of Epidemics in Britain”.
Mr. Keith Leask bears striking testimony to what he terms “the roving propensities of the Aberdonian” in that exceedingly interesting and most entertaining book of his, “Interamna Borealis”. Writing on the record of the Grammar School Class of 1807, he points out that members of it found their way to Valparaiso, Lima, Java, Montreal, Charleston, China, and Jersey, etc. And writing on the University Arts Class of 1884-88 he says—
“One medical man, an unsuccessful candidate for the Yukon Territory in the Canadian Parliament, has made things lively in Dominion circles. Another doctor has travelled over Uganda and explored the uninhabited plains between Lake Victoria Nyanza and Kilima-Njaro, Rhodesia, and the ancient ruins of Matabeleland. Two in the Class have died at sea. Their outward-bound sails have long left the pier of Aberdeen far behind, and the wanderers are found in every quarter of the globe. They range from St. Kilda, ‘plac’d far amid the melancholy main,’ to China. Canada, America, Cape Colony, and the Hudson Bay Territory have all taken toll. The globe has been circumnavigated by at least two. Lately we noticed in ‘Round the World on a Wheel’ how three cyclists, breaking down in the interior of China, were succoured by a member of the Class.”
The Aberdonian as Soldier
Something ought, perhaps, to be said of the Aberdonian as soldier, but, frankly, it is a field I have not investigated, and I am somewhat doubtful if the investigation would yield any profitable results. It would be interesting, of course, to be assured that Aberdonians — limiting the term for the moment to men of the city — were to be found in the famous Scots Guard of France, best known to most of us, I suppose, by the account of it given in “Quentin Durward,” and the history of which and of the ancient league between France and Scotland has been so well delineated by Burton in his “Scot Abroad”. It would be equally interesting to know positively that Aberdeen furnished some of the Scots troopers who fought indiscriminately on any side in the Thirty Years’ War in Germany (1618-48), of whom the typical representative is Sir Walter Scott’s Dugald Dalgetty of Drumthwacket, on the estate of Banchory-Devenick. I am afraid, however, that the Aberdonian of the olden days was not a fighting man, but was more concerned in pursuing peaceful trade at home than in serving as a trooper abroad; and this opinion is strengthened by an incidental remark of Dr. Fischer—“The most influential Scotsmen settled in Germany were merchants. . . . Whilst in France we hear of nothing but of the heroisms of Scottish warriors, it was the Scottish trader in Germany who chiefly left his imprints upon the country of his adoption.” Such Aberdonians as took part in Continental campaigns seem mainly to have belonged to the county and to have been younger sons of impecunious lairds, who enrolled in foreign armies, impelled thereto either by love of adventure or by dire necessity, the paternal acres being insufficient to maintain them as idlers at home, or because, as in some cases, proscribed for their political or religious views and the persistent and troublesome proclamation thereof. Three notable and well-known instances in illustration are furnished in the chaper on “The Soldier” in “The Scot Abroad”. Patrick Gordon of Auchleuchries, in Cruden, after serving in the Swedish and Polish armies, had a brilliant career in the Russian service, and Burton expresses the opinion that, “after his friend and master Peter the Great, it may be questioned if any other one man did so much for the early consolidation of the Russian empire as Patrick Gordon”. James Francis Keith, of the once powerful and historic Buchan family of Keiths, forced to leave the country after the ’15 and the attempted Jacobite rising in Glenshiel four years later, won much distinction in the Russian army, and, transferring his services to Prussia, ultimately became one of Frederick the Great’s most trusted generals. And with him is associated his elder brother, the last Earl Marischal, who, however, was more a diplomat and an administrator than a soldier, a man of culture, the friend of Voltaire, and one of the literary circle with which Frederick surrounded himself.
Much the same remark — that the Aberdeen soldier was generally an offshoot of a county family and not at all a city man—falls to be made from a perusal of that colossal work, brilliantly executed — in many respects, a remarkable tour deforce— the volume on “Gordons Under Arms” by Mrs. Skelton and Mr. John Malcolm Bulloch, as well as of Mr. Bulloch’s many individual contributions to the history of the Gordons. The gallant and heroic Gordons, and the turbulent and discreditable ones of them as well — please to note that the familiar descriptive epithet should be “The Gey Gordons” and not as metamorphosed by latter-day journalists “The Gay Gordons,” and I do not need to tell an Aberdeen audience the meaning that attaches to “gey” — the Gordons were mostly members of county families, and arms and battles and raids and fighting were to them a sort of natural heritage. On the other hand, trading in all its ramifications was more congenial to the douce burghers of Aberdeen; the ellwand was their favourite weapon, not the sword. We are all proud, of course, of the worthy part played in the recent war by Aberdeen men, who showed, just as their ancestors did many times, that they could fight when the occasion arose; still, it is very noticeable that in the recent war Aberdeen produced only one man of high military rank—General Sir George F. Milne, G.C.M.G., K.C.B., D.S.O., the Commander-in-Chief of the Salonika force, son of a George Milne, who was the agent of the Commercial Bank in King Street and occupant for several years of the house at - Queen’s Cross which is now the Convent of the Sacred Heart. We must not forget, too, that Aberdeen men “did their bit” quite as valiantly in the Peninsular War, at Waterloo, and in the many campaigns of the century that followed — in the Crimea, the Indian Mutiny, Afghanistan, the Sudan, South Africa, and so on, not overlooking the famous charge up the heights of Dargai to the inspiring strains of the bagpipes played by Piper Findlater, a Turriff man, though what precisely was the tune he played still remains matter of controversy. After all, however, the deeds of such of these Aberdeen men as displayed conspicuous bravery are more properly part of the history of the regiments to which they belonged, and can hardly be classed with the individual achievements of Aberdonians abroad which we are now considering.
The Aberdonian as Colonist and Administrator
Finally, let us glance for a moment at the Aberdonian as a colonist and a settler. If the direct intercourse of Aberdeen with foreign countries resulting from trade connections has ceased to be so marked as it was in past centuries, it has been replaced in some measure by the inter-communication which has followed upon the emigration of Aberdonians to the various colonies and dominions and to the United States of America. Large numbers of Aberdonians have from time to time exchanged existence in their native city for life in lands of more sunshine and better prospects of “getting on”. They have engaged in the pioneer work of settlement in all parts of the world; and in the remarkable exodus to Canada from Scotland, organized and directed by the Canadian authorities, which took place in the first dozen years of the present century, numerous contingents were furnished by Aberdeen and the adjacent counties. During the height of this exodus, Mr. J. M. Gibbon, an Aberdonian, who is now the Publicity Agent of the Canadian Pacific Railway, contributed to the Aberdeen Daily Journal a series of articles (subsequently reprinted) on “The Scot in Canada,” descriptive of “a run through the Dominion”. At a place named Indian Head, near Regina, the capital of Saskatchewan, “it was natural to find some Indians,” he wrote, “but what surprised me was to see an Indian woman wearing a fine plaid of the Gordon tartan ”. Asking whether any Scot was farming in the neighbourhood, he was advised to go and see John Murray — “he is the best man we have round here,” he was told. He discovered that John came from Banchory-Devenick, where he had once been a blacksmith, that he still spoke the rich Doric, and that he owned a splendid farm. Digging up potatoes for their mid-day meal, John remarked — “Ye dinna grow tatties like yon in Banchory-Devenick. If they saw me owning soil like yon in Aberdeen, they’d a’ tak’ their hats aff to me!” Mr. Edward W. Watt, of the Aberdeen Free Press, who attended the Imperial Press Conference at Ottawa this year (1920) and participated in the accompanying tour through Canada, in the course of an address to the Aberdeen Chamber of Commerce, said:—
“The trail of the Scot is all over Canada. From Sydney to Vancouver he is in evidence, proud of his native land, and, in many cases, even prouder of the land of his adoption. I had many inquiries about Aberdeen from exiled Aberdonians, and it was a pleasure to meet several men who had fought during the Great War in the ranks of our own Territorial regiment. An incident which occurred one night as we were travelling down the Pacific slope quaintly illustrated the ubiquity of the Aberdonian. When the train stopped somewhere about one o’clock in the morning, I woke and heard some hammering outside and then a voice said ‘Are ye a’ deen noo, boys? Ca awa’.’ The accent was unmistakable.”
Many of the men who have migrated to the new lands of the earth have displayed both energy and ability, and have not only proved successful in various walks of life, but have won for themselves much distinction in their respective localities, particularly in the field of politics and administration, and in such departments of business and affairs as call for the exercise of superior mental faculties. “Look to India and the Colonies and every country with which we are connected,” Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff once said, “and you will find that Aberdeen men are doing hard intellectual work all over the world”. India in particular has been an exceedingly fruitful field for the display of the administrative capacity of the Aberdonian. I doubt if we can over-estimate the possession by the Aberdonian of this essential quality of “efficiency” — it has been so abundantly demonstrated. A few years ago, three of the permanent heads of great departments of State were Aberdeen or Aberdeenshire men — Sir Edward Troup, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Home Office, a native of Huntly (a nephew of George MacDonald, by the way); Sir John Anderson, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Colonial Office, born at Gartly; and Sir Robert Bruce, Controller of the London Postal Service, a graduate of Aberdeen. Sir John Anderson is now dead, and Sir Robert Bruce has retired.
Aberdeen’s contribution to the Indian Civil Service has been enormous. I will content myself with citing the names of a few living men only. The first that occurs, and the foremost, on account of many and important services rendered and still being rendered, is that of Sir James (now Lord) Meston, son of a well-known Registrar of Births, etc., in the city, who recently resigned the very high post of Finance Minister of India (held a few years ago by another Aberdonian, Sir James Westland, son of a former manager of the North of Scotland Bank). Lord Meston was called to London to assist the Indian Secretary in piloting the Indian Home Rule Bill through Parliament. Then we have Mr. G. F. Shirras, the Director of the Department of Statistics in India; Sir George Carmichael, member of the Council of the Governor of Bombay; Sir Alexander Henderson Diack, Senior Financial Commissioner of the Punjab (recently retired); and Sir James Walker, Commissioner of the Nerbudda Division of the Central Provinces—all Aberdeen men; and Sir Harvey Adamson, late Lieutenant-Governor of Burma — a native of Turriff. Lord Meston, by the way, was formerly Lieutenant-Governor of Agra and Oudh, and in March, 1916, he laid the foundation-stone of a Hospital at Cawnpore, the gift of Sir Alexander M‘Robert of Douneside, Tarland, who is, I think, president of the Cawnpore Woollen Mills Company. A notable thing was that, in addition to Sir Alexander M‘Robert, other five Aberdonians were present at the ceremony, these including Mr. (now Sir) Leslie Watson, formerly of the Stoneywood Works, and the Hon. George Gall Sim, Chairman of the Municipal Board of Cawnpore.
The Aberdonian abroad figures not infrequently as a politician. Not many years ago the Speaker of the United States Congress was a Mr. David Bremner Henderson, who hailed from Old Deer. When I was last in America I introduced myself, in a railway train, to Mr. John D. Stephen, the Republican candidate for the Governorship of Colorado—a State, by the way, larger than Great Britain. He was by birth an Aberdonian. A prominent South African politician is the Hon. Sir William Bisset Berry, a son of the late Baillie James Berry, the optician. He is a doctor, and has represented Queenstown, Cape Province, in the Legislative Assembly, with a short interval, since 1894, and was Speaker of the old Cape House of Assembly from 1898 to 1907. The Right Hon. W. A. Watt, son of an Aberdeen man, was formerly Premier of Victoria, and was appointed Treasurer in the Government of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1918. He resigned, however, in May, 1920, while in this country representing Australia at the International Conference on Finance. As allied to politics, we may include Mr. B. C. Forbes, of whom we have been hearing lately. A native of Fedderate, New Deer, be began life as a compositor on the Peterhead Sentinel. He budded forth as a reporter, went to South Africa, and then to the United States. There he specialized in financial journalism, and ultimately became financial editor of the New York Journal of Commerce. Three years ago he started the Forbes Magazine, an American fortnightly for business men. Nor should mention be omitted of the late Senator Gibson, of Ontario, who belonged, I think, to Peterhead; he dubbed his Canadian home “Inverugie” at any rate.
Not infrequently, as I have already indicated, the Aberdonian turns up in the most unlikely places and occupying the most surprising positions. A few instances may be cited. General Hugh Mercer, who commanded the American troops at the battle of Princeton in 1777, was born in Aberdeen and was educated at Marischal College: he was a second cousin of a Major James Mercer, who built Sunnybank House. Dr. Charles Smart, an Aberdeen man, a medical graduate of the University, served as a surgeon in the Federal army during the American Civil War, and retired with the rank of Brigadier-General. The first Governor of Pennsylvania was Patrick Gordon, an Aberdeen man, son of John Gordon, Aberdeen, who was the son of John Gordon, a merchant in Poland. John Mair, a noted “apostle of temperance” in North America, was bom in Aberdeen in 1788. Henry Farquharson, who took a leading part in organizing the Russian Navy, entered Marischal College in 1691. Francis Masson, the pioneer of botanical science in South Africa, was an Aberdonian. Dr. Adam Thom, a Canadian judge, and Mr. Angus Mackay, a Minister of Education in the New South Wales Government, were both Aberdonians; and half a century ago the Town Clerk of Sydney was Mr. John Rae, the son of an Aberdeen town’s officer.
This enumeration reminds me of a story told by Rev. Mr. M‘William of Foveran in his little book, “Scottish Life in Light and Shadow ”. He says he once asked a typical Aberdonian, semi-sarcastically, whether he did not think that, taking Scotsmen generally, an Aberdeenshire man was “just the pick of the lot”. The Aberdonian, insensible to the irony implied, simply gave a pleased little laugh and said—“Noo, that’s rale true!”
Apart from individual illustrations of the Aberdonian abroad which could be multiplied indefinitely—it is no unusual thing to find something like an “Aberdeen colony” in many European settlements in foreign countries, in such places, for example, as Hong-Kong and Singapore. Contingents of Aberdonians were to be found in Ceylon in the early days of coffee-planting, and, later, when tea-planting superseded coffee-planting; Aberdonians in numbers are to be met with to-day in Assam and other tea-planting districts of Upper India; and I am sure that by now all the rubber-growing districts of the East and of South America have their contingents of men hailing from the Granite City or from the county. A very large number of quarry-workers from Aberdeen and the neighbourhood are located at Barre, the chief seat of the granite industry in Vermont. There is a flourishing Aberdeen, Banff and Kincardineshire Association in Winnipeg, which held its tenth annual meeting last September. One of its vice-presidents is an Ellon man, two of its secretaries hail from Fraserburgh, and a third from Lonmay. Among the-early Governors of Fiji was Sir Arthur Hamilton Gordon (afterwards Lord Stanmore), an uncle of the Marquis of Aberdeen. He interested himself in the development of the islands, especially in the cultivation of sugar-cane, and not a few of the sugar-planters hailed from Aberdeenshire, particularly from the Haddo House estates. A later administrative official of Fiji was another Aberdeenshire man—Sir William L. Allardyce, K.C.M.G., son of the late Colonel James Allardyce of Culquoich. He was Deputy-Governor of the colony, 1901-02; and Colonial Secretary, 1902-04.
The name “Aberdeen ” itself has also acquired a certain degree of ubiquity. Eight towns at least in the United States are so called, and towns of the name are to be found in New South Wales, Queensland, and the Cape Province. Aberdeen is the name of a parish in New Brunswick, in a district where a “colony” of emigrants, mainly from Aberdeenshire and Glasgow, settled in 1861. There is an Aberdeen Lake in Keewatin, Canada — probably named, however, after Lord Aberdeen, when he was Governor-General of the Dominion; and “Aberdeen Island” off Hong-Kong possesses an “Aberdeen harbour”. The choice of the designation “Aberdeen” in so many and such various places could hardly have been haphazard, but must have been determined presumably by a predominance of Aberdonians in the locality, or selected in deference to the wish — or in honour — of some official or influential resident who came from Aberdeen. Either way, the choice of the name demonstrates — what is abundantly demonstrated otherwise — the immense capacity of the Aberdonian for “peaceful penetration”.
Much more, very much more, could be said of the Aberdonian abroad, both in the past and in the present day. I have been obliged to leave many phases of the subject unexplored. 'There is the large field of missionary enterprise, for instance, in which Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire men and women have taken — and are still taking — a prominent and honourable part; the names will readily occur of Mackay of Uganda, Dr. Robert Laws, Dr. Hedderwick, Mary Slessor, and Rev. Dr. James Shepherd. Cognate to missionary work, there is the very remarkable share that Aberdonians have had in the compilation of dictionaries of native languages—quite extraordinary, I am assured. Nor have I so much as mentioned Aberdeen’s participation in the building and sailing of the once famous clipper ships, and in the annual ocean-racing from China with the new season’s teas, or referred to the great number of Aberdonians who man the engine-rooms of the liners that have supplanted the clippers. Kipling, by the way, has put one of his toughest yarns into the mouth of a chief engineer whose speech was “the speech of Aberdeen”. I have said enough, however, I hope, to show that the Aberdonian ranges far and wide, playing no unimportant part in the world’s work. So extensive is that range that we might well employ the classic phrase, Quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris I.
There is a temptation—not unnatural, I fancy, and certainly not easily resisted—to indulge in a little self-glorification, in the manner of the familiar Scottish “sentiment” — “Here’s to oorsel’s; wha’s like us?” Perhaps I have been indulging in it all through, indirectly if not directly. For fear of the implied laudation being too excessive, and to obviate any danger of our becoming too conceited, I shall end with the warning conveyed in a delicious story furnished by Rev. Mr. Cowan, late of Banchory. During the war he acted as a chaplain to the forces, and was stationed at Malta, where a large military hospital was established. Writing home one time, he said he had two soldiers in hospital lying side by side, one a Welshman, the other an Aberdonian. He went in with some newspapers one day. The Welshman said, “It’s a good thing you’ve come. That’ll keep him quiet for a time. He’s continually lecturing us all on the unsurpassable glories of Aberdeen.” “Well,” said the Aberdonian, “Aberdeen is------.” The Welshman, in a tone of mingled weariness and disgust, instantly interrupted — “There he goes again!”
ROBERT ANDERSON.
END
Weekend is almost here and hope it's a good one for you.
Alastair
https://electricscotland.com/scotnews.htm
Electric Scotland News
King Charles has reopened Glasgow's Burrell Collection almost four decades after the Queen first opened it. The internationally renowned museum and gallery reopened to the public in March after a six-year £68.25m refurbishment.
It houses 9,000 objects from the personal collection of shipping merchant Sir William Burrell, which were gifted to the city of Glasgow. The King toured the gallery in Pollok Country Park and met local school and nursery children outside. Senior museum manager Jane Rowlands showed King Charles the highlights of the collection, including Auguste Rodin's The Thinker.
His mother Queen Elizabeth first opened The Burrell, which was purpose-built for the vast collection of art and antiquities from around the world, on 21 October 1983. Sir William devoted more than 75 years to amassing the collection with his wife Constance and insisted his gifts to the industrial city should be housed where people could appreciate the art in a countryside setting.
The King's first official engagement in Glasgow since acceding the throne came two days after he attended a reception in Ballater with Camilla, the Queen Consort, to thank the community there for its support following the death of the Queen. Dressed in Royal Stewart Hunting Tartan, he looked delighted as he was presented with an autumnal wreath by local nursery children.
Inside the museum, the King was shown a statue of The Luohan which portrays a Buddhist monk. Both his late mother and grandmother have previously been photographed beside it. Following a viewing of the museum's collection of stained-glass windows and elaborate tapestries, the King was escorted into a open foyer where he met with volunteers and those involved with the museum's refurbishment.
The King was then invited to unveil a plaque by the chair of Glasgow Life, Annette Christie, who called it a "momentous occasion" for Glasgow.
You can see pictures of the event at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland...-west-63246881
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Crowds cheer King Charles during visit to Dunfermline.
See an article about his visit at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland...-fife-63107561
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.
The struggles of modern males
Sex-based equality is usually discussed only in terms of discrimination against women and girls. Yet as this week's podcast guest Richard Reeves sets out in his new book, there's another pressing issue plaguing Western societies the dramatic underperformance of men and boys, in school and beyond.
Read more at:
https://capx.co/the-capx-podcast-ric...are-struggling
Tens of thousands of salmon found dead after Canada drought
A research crew from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia was out monitoring salmon in Neekas river.
Read more at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-63136680
What does recent economic and fiscal mayhem teach us?
The past few weeks has seen some disturbing events occur with regards to economic and fiscal matters in both Scotland and the UK.
Read more at:
https://sceptical.scot/2022/10/what-...yhem-teach-us/
Suffolk cafe owner scoops porridge prize for second time
The coveted Golden Spurtle is awarded to the maker of the best traditional porridge using three ingredients - oatmeal, water and salt.
Read more at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland...lands-63188168
Canada buys land in France's Juno Beach due to condo plan
Canada will help buy a plot of land in France that was once stormed by allied troops on D-Day during World War Two.
Read more at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63177891
New legislation is on its way
It's exciting times in the housebuilding market as the Scottish Government promises to legislate to ensure developers provide electric vehicle (EV) charge points in the construction of new residential and non-residential buildings.
Read more at:
https://www.scottishreview.net//NorrieHunter632a.html
Coronation on 6 May for King Charles and Camilla, Queen Consort
King Charles III's coronation is to be held on Saturday 6 May, at Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace has announced.
Read more at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-63172425
The truff is out there: Scotland bids to be hotbed for kitchen delicacy
Prohibitively priced and powerfully pungent, one of France’s most illustrious gastronomes called them the diamonds of the kitchen. Traditionally sniffed out on mainland Europe, the truffle, an underground fungus, is now being farmed commercially in Scotland and Dr Paul Thomas is leading the hunt.
Read more at:
https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/the-tr...chen-delicacy/
Tuition fees residency rules breached human rights
Scottish ministers are being forced to change the law on tuition fees for hundreds of students from migrant families after a landmark court case. Lawyers successfully argued that Iraq-born Ola Jasim, who has lived in Scotland since she was 11, had her human rights breached.
Read more at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-63228362
Electric Canadian
Brown Waters and Other Sketches
By W. H. Blake (1915) (pdf)
You can read this at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/life...rownwaters.pdf
Tripping The Bruce
Set sail along the rugged northern coast of Ontario's magnificent Bruce Peninsula in TRIPPING The Bruce. Above the pristine turquoise waters are the towering cliffs of the Niagara Escarpment, and beneath the waters are dozens of sunken ships that Lake Huron has claimed. It is a stunning, primordial landscape filled with fascinating stories of rich bounty, human survival, and natural wonders. Added this video to the foot of our Bruce page.
You can view this at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...ruce/index.htm
Thoughts on a Sunday Morning - the 9th day of October 2022 - Thanksgiving
By the Rev. Nola Crewe
You can view this at:
http://www.electricscotland.org/foru...2-thanksgiving
Man-size
By William MacLeod Raine (1922) (pdf)
A "Mountie" story with a good movie plot. Mr. Raine knows more about the R.N.W.M.P. than most of those who purvey this type of fiction.
You can read this at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/lifestyle/mansize.pdf
Shepherds of the Wild
By Edison Marshall (1922) (pdf)
You can read this at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/life...00marsrich.pdf
Electric Scotland
Beth's Video Talks
October 12th, 2022 - Canadian Ancestors
You can view this talk at: https://electricscotland.com/bnft
Beth's Newfangled Family Tree
Hey. Here is November 2022 Section B. It is early to you as I am leaving for Atlanta next Thursday to do the speeches for the Games. You can read it at: https://electricscotland.com/bnft/index.htm
I think I have told you Tom is back in bed with no driving for a while. Steve is going to stay with him while I go to fulfill my obligations to the Games Committee in Atlanta. Debbie, his wife, is going to drive me. It's really sort of funny, I am not afraid of the rankest horse and will crawl on anything. I would ride a horse to town in a heartbeat, but I am somehow terrified of driving. Even in this, I drove for over a year, not happily, but drove. All of a sudden, I was scared silly. (Horses seldom try to run over anybody, unlike folks who drive cars.)
Our neighbor has said I can ride to the grocery store with her. I will be so very good and polite and try to help her in any way I can.
Anyway, I have organized my speeches and have enough material to last a solid week. Now, to map out the way we are going to drive. There is a way to go on The Atlanta Highway that will take us directly to the hotel, and that's all we have to do. We're going to be at the hotel for the speeches and also for the reception and then reverse our trip home. We won't have to go in any of the awful Atlanta traffic.
Anyway, sorry to send this early. That's my secret to doing lots of publications - I just work on them and never let anything get late.
Please take care of yourself.
It will take me until next Thursday to get the house ready for company and everything organized for me to be gone for 2 nights.
Much love,
beth
My Father
An Aberdeenshire Minister 1812-1891 by W. Robertson Nicoll (second edition) (1910) (pdf)
In the Preface you'll find...
"if one had been asked any time during the last thirty years of my father's life, which ended in 1891, where the best library and the best bookman in Scotland were to be found, I think if he had known the truth he would have referred the inquirer to my father's home. It was remote and secluded. You had to go to Aberdeen, take the train out for some thirty miles to Gartly, and then walk or drive another eight miles to Lumsden in the parish of Auchindoir. You would then find yourself in an upland village. At the side of that village you would find a little manse with some 17,000 volumes gathered under its roof. You would be received with the utmost cordiality by the occupant, a Free Church minister, but you would not have been allowed to see more than a fraction of his books, unless you had spoken the sesame. If you had referred to Fynes Clinton or any other of his favourite authors, you would have been taken upstairs and introduced into the secret treasures of the house. If not, you would have left the place feeling you had been deceived.
You can read this at:
https://electricscotland.com/bible/m...deen00nico.pdf
Plantation
Its Process in Relation to Scotland’s Atlantic Communities, 1590s–1630s By Thomas Brochard (pdf)
The article sets the Scottish and British Crown’s colonizing measure vis-à-vis the Scottish communities of the North Atlantic arc within a broader imperial framework. Underlying such course of action was the articulation of a rhetoric as a vital linguistic tool for its plantations’ raison d’être. The study delineates key aspects in the major plantation schemes of Scotland that were implemented between the 1590s and 1630s. Both the internal colonizing project of Lewis and the external ones of Ireland, briefly, and Nova Scotia, will be primarily assessed from the bottom-up perspective of the maritime communities of the northern Highlands. Distancing themselves from the governmental rhetoric, these ventures helped reconfigure clan allegiance and dynamics in the Lewis case, and reposition the role and identity of these far-northerners in the Irish and Nova Scotia plans as well as in redefining these enterprises’ nature.
You can read this article at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...tion_to_Sc.pdf
The Scottish Complementarians Who Teach Women to Preach
A church planting network in Edinburgh’s poorest neighborhoods is flipping gender norms on their heads. By Kara Bettis published in the June 2022 issue of Chrstianity Today at: https://www.christianitytoday.com/ (pdf)
You can read this article at:
https://electricscotland.com/bible/P...rticles%20.pdf
A History of Scotland
From the Roman Evacuation to the Disruption, 1843 by Charles Sanford Terry, Litt.D. Cantab. (1920) (pdf)
An interesting take on Scottish History which you can read at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...fscotlan00.pdf
Highland Clansman 1689-1746
By Stuart Reid, Illustrated by Angus McBride (pdf)
Duncan Forbes of Culloden provided one of the clearest definitions of a Highland Clan in 1746, describing them as “a set of men all bearing the same surname and believing themselves to be related one to the other and to be descended from the same conunon stock. In each Clan, there are several subaltem tribes, who owe their dependence on their own immediate chief, but all agree in owing allegiance to the Supreme Chief of the Clan or Kindred and look upon it to be their duty to support him in all adventures." Hardly pausing to draw breath, he went on to grumble: “As those Clans or Kindreds live by themselves, and possess different Straths, Glens or districts, without any considerable mixture of Strangers, it has been for a great many years impracticable (and hardlv thought safe to try it) to give the Law its course amongst the Mountains." Forbes, as lord president, had a very proper concern for the maintenance of law and order, but the Highland Clans were not just a threat to the civil peace. Between 1603 and 1746 they played an increasingly prominent role on battle fields both at home and abroad.
You can read this at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...ndclansmen.pdf
The Diary of Andrew Hay of Craignethan, 1659-1660
Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Alexander George Reid, FSAScot (1901) (pdf)
John Hay, third Lord Yester, by his second wife, the daughterand heiress of John Dickson of Smithfield, had a son, the Hon. John, who succeeded to the estate of Smithfield. He was succeeded in that estate by his eldest surviving son, Thomas, who died in 1570. From Thomas the Smithfield branch of the Hays was descended. John Hay, the third son of the Hon. John Hay of Smithfield, married Marion Kerr, and acquired the lands of Kingsmeadows. His eldest son, Andrew, married Janet Hay, and bought in 1635 the lands of Henderstoun, which he renamed Haystoun. He died in 1655, leaving two sons, John, who succeeded him in the estate of Haystoun, and Andrew, the writer of the Diary.
You can read this at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...whay00haya.pdf
An Angus Parish in the Eighteenth Century
By the Rev. W. Mason Inglis, M.A., FSAScot,, Minister of Auchterhouse (1904) (pdf)
THIS volume is practically a sequel of an earlier work, now out of print, entitled "The Annals of an Angus Parish," which dealt chie% with the 17th Century, and is written mainly with the view of describing and illustrating the many quaint and curious phases of old Parochial and Ecclesiastical life in Angus as are to be gleaned from the Parish Records of the 18th Century. While more immediately concerned with Auchterhouse Parish, the volume is meant to have a much wider bearing and range, and may possibly prove interesting to those fond of antiquarian lore, old family history, and the past manners and customs of the County. It has been the intermittent labour of a lengthened period, and is the result of extensive reading and research into every available source of information Avithin reach. My best thanks are due to friends who have supplied photographs, and to those parishioners and others who have so kindly furnished me with much curious information regarding the old smuggling times—a subject to them not without many touches of romantic and personal interest.
You can read this at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...neig00ingl.pdf
Scottish Society of Louisville
Got in their October 2022 newsletter which you can read at:
https://electricscotland.com/familyt...ille/index.htm
Anatomy of an Iron Age Roundhouse
The Cnip Wheelhouse Excavations, Lewis by Ian Armit. This report provides an excellent source for readers to appreciate the archaeology in the Western Isles. – Professor Niall Sharples (pdf)
You can read this at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...0-20220920.pdf
A New Scottish Growth Strategy
By John McLaren (2022) (pdf)
Scotland’s post devolution economic performance has been mediocre, with little or no apparent benefit coming from more powers or from extensive economic regeneration funding sources. However, post 2014, but pre Covid 19, this performance has become worrying, with GDP per capita growing at less than half the rate seen for the UK as a whole; Such slower growth is costing Scotland dear, with higher taxes needed to compensate for the £1 billion funding shortfall that has resulted and with the potential for this to rise to £2 billion by the start of the next decade.
You can read this at:
https://electricscotland.com/busines...h-Strategy.pdf
Children of the Market Place
By Edgar Lee Masters, "This remarkable book is above everything else a study of Lincoln and Douglas, and as such it is not only able and fascinating, but strangely timely. A picture humanly attractive and far-reachingly instructive." —Edwin Bjorkman in the New York Herald (pdf)
You can read this at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...rket-place.pdf
Story
The Aberdonian Abroad
The Aberdonian as Teacher in the New World
The wanderings of the Aberdeen scholar were not confined to Europe — he found his way to the New World as well. One of the early pioneers of education in America was Rev. Patrick Copland, a native of Aberdeen — born there in 1572, and educated at the Grammar School and Marischal College. His wanderings were many and diverse. He was for several years a chaplain to the East India Company, and while in its service made two vogages to India, returning from one of them by way of Japan.
About 1621 he conceived the plan of establishing a church and school in Virginia and collected money for the purpose. He received a grant of land from the Virginia Company, was appointed one of the Council of State of the colony, and was chosen as Rector of the Henrico College, to which his proposed school was to be affiliated. His intention of going out to Virginia, however, was frustrated by a massacre by Indians, which put an end to the project. Copland’s interest in colonization and the Christian education of the American natives continued unabated, nevertheless; and, receiving a legacy of £300 from a friend to establish an Indian School on the Somers Islands (the Bermudas), he proceeded thither, about 1626, to set the school in operation. He remained there for twenty years, actively prosecuting the work of a missionary and educationalist. This work was finally interrupted by ecclesiastical feuds, and Copland, owing to his Puritanism, was imprisoned for some time. In 1648 he sailed to Eleuthera, one of the Bahama group, and he died there, probably between 1651 and 1655, when he was about or possibly over eighty years of age. He founded the Professorship of Divinity in Marischal College in 1617 by a mortification of 2000 merks, which he subsequently increased to 6000 merks.
The College at Philadelphia, which developed into the University of Pennsylvania, was founded in 1755 by Dr. William Smith, a native of the parish of Slains, who studied at King’s College, 1743-47. He went to America in 1751, and attracted the attention of Benjamin Franklin by the publication of a scheme of university education. He was the first Provost of the Philadelphia College. Leaving Philadelphia in 1780 for Chestertown, Maryland, he there instituted the seminary which is now Washington College. His scheme of University education was practically identical with that prevailing in Aberdeen at the time, and it formed the basis of the curriculum adopted in all American Universities — quite a unique distinction, which Aberdeen owes to one of its wandering scholars.
The founder of Trinity University, Toronto, was John Strachan, M.A., King’s College, 1797; and St. John’s College, Rupertsland, was founded by John M‘Callum, who graduated at King’s College in 1832.
Many Aberdeen graduates have been professors in American and Canadian Colleges. Henry Hopper Miles, M.A., King’s College, 1839, was for many years Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy in Bishop’s College, Lennoxville, and ultimately became Secretary of the Department of Public Instruction in Canada: he was the author of the histories of Canada used in the elementary schools of the Dominion.
Our Modern "Export of Brains"
The export of brains still continues. I took the trouble one evening recently to run over two dozen pages of the list of graduates given in the University “Calendar” — barely a fifth of the total — and note the present occupation and location of the various men. There were professors, lecturers, College instructors and teachers in Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and India, not a few of the teachers being ladies; medical men all over the world, even in such remote places as Rara tonga, New Guinea, and Klondike; clergymen and medical missionaries in China, India, Nyasaland, Nigeria, and the New Hebrides, including a Bishop, the Bishop of Labuan and Sarawak, in the person of a son of the late Dean Danson; members of the Indian Civil Service and the Indian Forestry Service, and of the Consular and Customs services abroad; rubber planters in the Malay States, a barrister in Australia, a solicitor in Edmonton, Canada, a banker in Mexico, a mining engineer in Johannesburg, a stockbroker in Pretoria, a farmer in the Argentine, and another in Saskatchewan, who has named his holding “Bennachie”—which reminds me that an Aberdeen friend of mine who settled in the sunny clime and fruitful land of California dubbed his farm, so he said, “Pech nae mair”. In this connection I may mention incidentally that in the course of the past two years no fewer than eighteen graduates of Aberdeen University have been appointed to Professorships at home and abroad.
Buchan — selecting this district of the shire again merely as a sample — is not behind in its contribution to the export of Aberdeenshire brains in modern times. I hope I may be excused referring to the two last pages of my own edition of Pratt’s “Buchan,” where an enumeration was given of some of the more distinguished of then contemporary scholars hailing from the district. They included Charles Niven, Professor of Natural Philosophy at Aberdeen University; his brother, Sir William D. Niven, Director of Studies at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich; Dr. Peter Giles, now Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge; Professor A. F. Murison, London University; Principal Cook, Government College, Bangalore, India; and Thomas Davidson, a native of Fetterangus, probably the most brilliant scholar that Buchan — or Aberdeenshire, for the matter of that — ever produced. He emigrated to America and acquired a high reputation by his philosophical and educational writings. When he died (in 1900) the Spectator eulogized him as “one of the most gifted and remarkable men of the latter half of this century,” “one of the dozen most learned men on this planet At the date of the publication of that edition of Pratt (1901), Buchan was most worthily represented in theology by Dr. A. B. Davidson, Professor of Hebrew, New College, Edinburgh (a native of Ellon); in divinity by Rev. Dr. William Mair, Earlston (native of Savoch), Moderator of Assembly, 1897; in law by Mr. James Ferguson of Kinmundy, Sheriff of Argyll and later of Forfarshire; and in medicine by Sir James Reid (of Ellon), and by Dr. Charles Creighton (of Peterhead), author of “A History of Epidemics in Britain”.
Mr. Keith Leask bears striking testimony to what he terms “the roving propensities of the Aberdonian” in that exceedingly interesting and most entertaining book of his, “Interamna Borealis”. Writing on the record of the Grammar School Class of 1807, he points out that members of it found their way to Valparaiso, Lima, Java, Montreal, Charleston, China, and Jersey, etc. And writing on the University Arts Class of 1884-88 he says—
“One medical man, an unsuccessful candidate for the Yukon Territory in the Canadian Parliament, has made things lively in Dominion circles. Another doctor has travelled over Uganda and explored the uninhabited plains between Lake Victoria Nyanza and Kilima-Njaro, Rhodesia, and the ancient ruins of Matabeleland. Two in the Class have died at sea. Their outward-bound sails have long left the pier of Aberdeen far behind, and the wanderers are found in every quarter of the globe. They range from St. Kilda, ‘plac’d far amid the melancholy main,’ to China. Canada, America, Cape Colony, and the Hudson Bay Territory have all taken toll. The globe has been circumnavigated by at least two. Lately we noticed in ‘Round the World on a Wheel’ how three cyclists, breaking down in the interior of China, were succoured by a member of the Class.”
The Aberdonian as Soldier
Something ought, perhaps, to be said of the Aberdonian as soldier, but, frankly, it is a field I have not investigated, and I am somewhat doubtful if the investigation would yield any profitable results. It would be interesting, of course, to be assured that Aberdonians — limiting the term for the moment to men of the city — were to be found in the famous Scots Guard of France, best known to most of us, I suppose, by the account of it given in “Quentin Durward,” and the history of which and of the ancient league between France and Scotland has been so well delineated by Burton in his “Scot Abroad”. It would be equally interesting to know positively that Aberdeen furnished some of the Scots troopers who fought indiscriminately on any side in the Thirty Years’ War in Germany (1618-48), of whom the typical representative is Sir Walter Scott’s Dugald Dalgetty of Drumthwacket, on the estate of Banchory-Devenick. I am afraid, however, that the Aberdonian of the olden days was not a fighting man, but was more concerned in pursuing peaceful trade at home than in serving as a trooper abroad; and this opinion is strengthened by an incidental remark of Dr. Fischer—“The most influential Scotsmen settled in Germany were merchants. . . . Whilst in France we hear of nothing but of the heroisms of Scottish warriors, it was the Scottish trader in Germany who chiefly left his imprints upon the country of his adoption.” Such Aberdonians as took part in Continental campaigns seem mainly to have belonged to the county and to have been younger sons of impecunious lairds, who enrolled in foreign armies, impelled thereto either by love of adventure or by dire necessity, the paternal acres being insufficient to maintain them as idlers at home, or because, as in some cases, proscribed for their political or religious views and the persistent and troublesome proclamation thereof. Three notable and well-known instances in illustration are furnished in the chaper on “The Soldier” in “The Scot Abroad”. Patrick Gordon of Auchleuchries, in Cruden, after serving in the Swedish and Polish armies, had a brilliant career in the Russian service, and Burton expresses the opinion that, “after his friend and master Peter the Great, it may be questioned if any other one man did so much for the early consolidation of the Russian empire as Patrick Gordon”. James Francis Keith, of the once powerful and historic Buchan family of Keiths, forced to leave the country after the ’15 and the attempted Jacobite rising in Glenshiel four years later, won much distinction in the Russian army, and, transferring his services to Prussia, ultimately became one of Frederick the Great’s most trusted generals. And with him is associated his elder brother, the last Earl Marischal, who, however, was more a diplomat and an administrator than a soldier, a man of culture, the friend of Voltaire, and one of the literary circle with which Frederick surrounded himself.
Much the same remark — that the Aberdeen soldier was generally an offshoot of a county family and not at all a city man—falls to be made from a perusal of that colossal work, brilliantly executed — in many respects, a remarkable tour deforce— the volume on “Gordons Under Arms” by Mrs. Skelton and Mr. John Malcolm Bulloch, as well as of Mr. Bulloch’s many individual contributions to the history of the Gordons. The gallant and heroic Gordons, and the turbulent and discreditable ones of them as well — please to note that the familiar descriptive epithet should be “The Gey Gordons” and not as metamorphosed by latter-day journalists “The Gay Gordons,” and I do not need to tell an Aberdeen audience the meaning that attaches to “gey” — the Gordons were mostly members of county families, and arms and battles and raids and fighting were to them a sort of natural heritage. On the other hand, trading in all its ramifications was more congenial to the douce burghers of Aberdeen; the ellwand was their favourite weapon, not the sword. We are all proud, of course, of the worthy part played in the recent war by Aberdeen men, who showed, just as their ancestors did many times, that they could fight when the occasion arose; still, it is very noticeable that in the recent war Aberdeen produced only one man of high military rank—General Sir George F. Milne, G.C.M.G., K.C.B., D.S.O., the Commander-in-Chief of the Salonika force, son of a George Milne, who was the agent of the Commercial Bank in King Street and occupant for several years of the house at - Queen’s Cross which is now the Convent of the Sacred Heart. We must not forget, too, that Aberdeen men “did their bit” quite as valiantly in the Peninsular War, at Waterloo, and in the many campaigns of the century that followed — in the Crimea, the Indian Mutiny, Afghanistan, the Sudan, South Africa, and so on, not overlooking the famous charge up the heights of Dargai to the inspiring strains of the bagpipes played by Piper Findlater, a Turriff man, though what precisely was the tune he played still remains matter of controversy. After all, however, the deeds of such of these Aberdeen men as displayed conspicuous bravery are more properly part of the history of the regiments to which they belonged, and can hardly be classed with the individual achievements of Aberdonians abroad which we are now considering.
The Aberdonian as Colonist and Administrator
Finally, let us glance for a moment at the Aberdonian as a colonist and a settler. If the direct intercourse of Aberdeen with foreign countries resulting from trade connections has ceased to be so marked as it was in past centuries, it has been replaced in some measure by the inter-communication which has followed upon the emigration of Aberdonians to the various colonies and dominions and to the United States of America. Large numbers of Aberdonians have from time to time exchanged existence in their native city for life in lands of more sunshine and better prospects of “getting on”. They have engaged in the pioneer work of settlement in all parts of the world; and in the remarkable exodus to Canada from Scotland, organized and directed by the Canadian authorities, which took place in the first dozen years of the present century, numerous contingents were furnished by Aberdeen and the adjacent counties. During the height of this exodus, Mr. J. M. Gibbon, an Aberdonian, who is now the Publicity Agent of the Canadian Pacific Railway, contributed to the Aberdeen Daily Journal a series of articles (subsequently reprinted) on “The Scot in Canada,” descriptive of “a run through the Dominion”. At a place named Indian Head, near Regina, the capital of Saskatchewan, “it was natural to find some Indians,” he wrote, “but what surprised me was to see an Indian woman wearing a fine plaid of the Gordon tartan ”. Asking whether any Scot was farming in the neighbourhood, he was advised to go and see John Murray — “he is the best man we have round here,” he was told. He discovered that John came from Banchory-Devenick, where he had once been a blacksmith, that he still spoke the rich Doric, and that he owned a splendid farm. Digging up potatoes for their mid-day meal, John remarked — “Ye dinna grow tatties like yon in Banchory-Devenick. If they saw me owning soil like yon in Aberdeen, they’d a’ tak’ their hats aff to me!” Mr. Edward W. Watt, of the Aberdeen Free Press, who attended the Imperial Press Conference at Ottawa this year (1920) and participated in the accompanying tour through Canada, in the course of an address to the Aberdeen Chamber of Commerce, said:—
“The trail of the Scot is all over Canada. From Sydney to Vancouver he is in evidence, proud of his native land, and, in many cases, even prouder of the land of his adoption. I had many inquiries about Aberdeen from exiled Aberdonians, and it was a pleasure to meet several men who had fought during the Great War in the ranks of our own Territorial regiment. An incident which occurred one night as we were travelling down the Pacific slope quaintly illustrated the ubiquity of the Aberdonian. When the train stopped somewhere about one o’clock in the morning, I woke and heard some hammering outside and then a voice said ‘Are ye a’ deen noo, boys? Ca awa’.’ The accent was unmistakable.”
Many of the men who have migrated to the new lands of the earth have displayed both energy and ability, and have not only proved successful in various walks of life, but have won for themselves much distinction in their respective localities, particularly in the field of politics and administration, and in such departments of business and affairs as call for the exercise of superior mental faculties. “Look to India and the Colonies and every country with which we are connected,” Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff once said, “and you will find that Aberdeen men are doing hard intellectual work all over the world”. India in particular has been an exceedingly fruitful field for the display of the administrative capacity of the Aberdonian. I doubt if we can over-estimate the possession by the Aberdonian of this essential quality of “efficiency” — it has been so abundantly demonstrated. A few years ago, three of the permanent heads of great departments of State were Aberdeen or Aberdeenshire men — Sir Edward Troup, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Home Office, a native of Huntly (a nephew of George MacDonald, by the way); Sir John Anderson, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Colonial Office, born at Gartly; and Sir Robert Bruce, Controller of the London Postal Service, a graduate of Aberdeen. Sir John Anderson is now dead, and Sir Robert Bruce has retired.
Aberdeen’s contribution to the Indian Civil Service has been enormous. I will content myself with citing the names of a few living men only. The first that occurs, and the foremost, on account of many and important services rendered and still being rendered, is that of Sir James (now Lord) Meston, son of a well-known Registrar of Births, etc., in the city, who recently resigned the very high post of Finance Minister of India (held a few years ago by another Aberdonian, Sir James Westland, son of a former manager of the North of Scotland Bank). Lord Meston was called to London to assist the Indian Secretary in piloting the Indian Home Rule Bill through Parliament. Then we have Mr. G. F. Shirras, the Director of the Department of Statistics in India; Sir George Carmichael, member of the Council of the Governor of Bombay; Sir Alexander Henderson Diack, Senior Financial Commissioner of the Punjab (recently retired); and Sir James Walker, Commissioner of the Nerbudda Division of the Central Provinces—all Aberdeen men; and Sir Harvey Adamson, late Lieutenant-Governor of Burma — a native of Turriff. Lord Meston, by the way, was formerly Lieutenant-Governor of Agra and Oudh, and in March, 1916, he laid the foundation-stone of a Hospital at Cawnpore, the gift of Sir Alexander M‘Robert of Douneside, Tarland, who is, I think, president of the Cawnpore Woollen Mills Company. A notable thing was that, in addition to Sir Alexander M‘Robert, other five Aberdonians were present at the ceremony, these including Mr. (now Sir) Leslie Watson, formerly of the Stoneywood Works, and the Hon. George Gall Sim, Chairman of the Municipal Board of Cawnpore.
The Aberdonian abroad figures not infrequently as a politician. Not many years ago the Speaker of the United States Congress was a Mr. David Bremner Henderson, who hailed from Old Deer. When I was last in America I introduced myself, in a railway train, to Mr. John D. Stephen, the Republican candidate for the Governorship of Colorado—a State, by the way, larger than Great Britain. He was by birth an Aberdonian. A prominent South African politician is the Hon. Sir William Bisset Berry, a son of the late Baillie James Berry, the optician. He is a doctor, and has represented Queenstown, Cape Province, in the Legislative Assembly, with a short interval, since 1894, and was Speaker of the old Cape House of Assembly from 1898 to 1907. The Right Hon. W. A. Watt, son of an Aberdeen man, was formerly Premier of Victoria, and was appointed Treasurer in the Government of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1918. He resigned, however, in May, 1920, while in this country representing Australia at the International Conference on Finance. As allied to politics, we may include Mr. B. C. Forbes, of whom we have been hearing lately. A native of Fedderate, New Deer, be began life as a compositor on the Peterhead Sentinel. He budded forth as a reporter, went to South Africa, and then to the United States. There he specialized in financial journalism, and ultimately became financial editor of the New York Journal of Commerce. Three years ago he started the Forbes Magazine, an American fortnightly for business men. Nor should mention be omitted of the late Senator Gibson, of Ontario, who belonged, I think, to Peterhead; he dubbed his Canadian home “Inverugie” at any rate.
Not infrequently, as I have already indicated, the Aberdonian turns up in the most unlikely places and occupying the most surprising positions. A few instances may be cited. General Hugh Mercer, who commanded the American troops at the battle of Princeton in 1777, was born in Aberdeen and was educated at Marischal College: he was a second cousin of a Major James Mercer, who built Sunnybank House. Dr. Charles Smart, an Aberdeen man, a medical graduate of the University, served as a surgeon in the Federal army during the American Civil War, and retired with the rank of Brigadier-General. The first Governor of Pennsylvania was Patrick Gordon, an Aberdeen man, son of John Gordon, Aberdeen, who was the son of John Gordon, a merchant in Poland. John Mair, a noted “apostle of temperance” in North America, was bom in Aberdeen in 1788. Henry Farquharson, who took a leading part in organizing the Russian Navy, entered Marischal College in 1691. Francis Masson, the pioneer of botanical science in South Africa, was an Aberdonian. Dr. Adam Thom, a Canadian judge, and Mr. Angus Mackay, a Minister of Education in the New South Wales Government, were both Aberdonians; and half a century ago the Town Clerk of Sydney was Mr. John Rae, the son of an Aberdeen town’s officer.
This enumeration reminds me of a story told by Rev. Mr. M‘William of Foveran in his little book, “Scottish Life in Light and Shadow ”. He says he once asked a typical Aberdonian, semi-sarcastically, whether he did not think that, taking Scotsmen generally, an Aberdeenshire man was “just the pick of the lot”. The Aberdonian, insensible to the irony implied, simply gave a pleased little laugh and said—“Noo, that’s rale true!”
Apart from individual illustrations of the Aberdonian abroad which could be multiplied indefinitely—it is no unusual thing to find something like an “Aberdeen colony” in many European settlements in foreign countries, in such places, for example, as Hong-Kong and Singapore. Contingents of Aberdonians were to be found in Ceylon in the early days of coffee-planting, and, later, when tea-planting superseded coffee-planting; Aberdonians in numbers are to be met with to-day in Assam and other tea-planting districts of Upper India; and I am sure that by now all the rubber-growing districts of the East and of South America have their contingents of men hailing from the Granite City or from the county. A very large number of quarry-workers from Aberdeen and the neighbourhood are located at Barre, the chief seat of the granite industry in Vermont. There is a flourishing Aberdeen, Banff and Kincardineshire Association in Winnipeg, which held its tenth annual meeting last September. One of its vice-presidents is an Ellon man, two of its secretaries hail from Fraserburgh, and a third from Lonmay. Among the-early Governors of Fiji was Sir Arthur Hamilton Gordon (afterwards Lord Stanmore), an uncle of the Marquis of Aberdeen. He interested himself in the development of the islands, especially in the cultivation of sugar-cane, and not a few of the sugar-planters hailed from Aberdeenshire, particularly from the Haddo House estates. A later administrative official of Fiji was another Aberdeenshire man—Sir William L. Allardyce, K.C.M.G., son of the late Colonel James Allardyce of Culquoich. He was Deputy-Governor of the colony, 1901-02; and Colonial Secretary, 1902-04.
The name “Aberdeen ” itself has also acquired a certain degree of ubiquity. Eight towns at least in the United States are so called, and towns of the name are to be found in New South Wales, Queensland, and the Cape Province. Aberdeen is the name of a parish in New Brunswick, in a district where a “colony” of emigrants, mainly from Aberdeenshire and Glasgow, settled in 1861. There is an Aberdeen Lake in Keewatin, Canada — probably named, however, after Lord Aberdeen, when he was Governor-General of the Dominion; and “Aberdeen Island” off Hong-Kong possesses an “Aberdeen harbour”. The choice of the designation “Aberdeen” in so many and such various places could hardly have been haphazard, but must have been determined presumably by a predominance of Aberdonians in the locality, or selected in deference to the wish — or in honour — of some official or influential resident who came from Aberdeen. Either way, the choice of the name demonstrates — what is abundantly demonstrated otherwise — the immense capacity of the Aberdonian for “peaceful penetration”.
Much more, very much more, could be said of the Aberdonian abroad, both in the past and in the present day. I have been obliged to leave many phases of the subject unexplored. 'There is the large field of missionary enterprise, for instance, in which Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire men and women have taken — and are still taking — a prominent and honourable part; the names will readily occur of Mackay of Uganda, Dr. Robert Laws, Dr. Hedderwick, Mary Slessor, and Rev. Dr. James Shepherd. Cognate to missionary work, there is the very remarkable share that Aberdonians have had in the compilation of dictionaries of native languages—quite extraordinary, I am assured. Nor have I so much as mentioned Aberdeen’s participation in the building and sailing of the once famous clipper ships, and in the annual ocean-racing from China with the new season’s teas, or referred to the great number of Aberdonians who man the engine-rooms of the liners that have supplanted the clippers. Kipling, by the way, has put one of his toughest yarns into the mouth of a chief engineer whose speech was “the speech of Aberdeen”. I have said enough, however, I hope, to show that the Aberdonian ranges far and wide, playing no unimportant part in the world’s work. So extensive is that range that we might well employ the classic phrase, Quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris I.
There is a temptation—not unnatural, I fancy, and certainly not easily resisted—to indulge in a little self-glorification, in the manner of the familiar Scottish “sentiment” — “Here’s to oorsel’s; wha’s like us?” Perhaps I have been indulging in it all through, indirectly if not directly. For fear of the implied laudation being too excessive, and to obviate any danger of our becoming too conceited, I shall end with the warning conveyed in a delicious story furnished by Rev. Mr. Cowan, late of Banchory. During the war he acted as a chaplain to the forces, and was stationed at Malta, where a large military hospital was established. Writing home one time, he said he had two soldiers in hospital lying side by side, one a Welshman, the other an Aberdonian. He went in with some newspapers one day. The Welshman said, “It’s a good thing you’ve come. That’ll keep him quiet for a time. He’s continually lecturing us all on the unsurpassable glories of Aberdeen.” “Well,” said the Aberdonian, “Aberdeen is------.” The Welshman, in a tone of mingled weariness and disgust, instantly interrupted — “There he goes again!”
ROBERT ANDERSON.
END
Weekend is almost here and hope it's a good one for you.
Alastair