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CONTENTS
Electric Scotland News
Electric Canadian
Basketball
The Pioneers of Blanshard
Camping in the Canadian Rockies
The Early Days of Representative Government in British Columbia
Canadian Refugees in the American Revolution
Five thousands Facts about Canada
Sketch of Peter Teeple, Loyalist and Pioneer, 1762 - 1847
Annual Reports of the Department of
Canada at the Cross Roads
Immigration and Settlement in Canada 1812 - 1820
Correspondence of an Emigrant
Banking in Canada
The United States and Canada; a political study
Edward Blake's Aurora Speech, 1874
Essays on Wheat
Canada and the Imperial War Cabinet
The Growth of Canadian National Feeling
The Flag in the Wind
Electric Scotland
The Bards of Bon Accord 1375 - 1860
Northern Notes and Queries
Scenes and Legends of The North of Scotland
The Life and Work of James Abernethy, C.E., F.R.S.E.
St. Kilda, Past and Present
Scottish Trade with the Plantations before 1707
The Constitutional Necessity for the Union of 1707
The History of Northumberland
The Teaching of Scottish History in Schools
Robert Burns Lives!
Clan Colquhoun
Clan Currie
The 'Diary' of Sir Thomas Hope (1633 - 1645)
The Connexion between Scotland and Man
The Scottish 'Nation' at the University of Padua
The Argyllshire Highlanders
The Stirling Antiquary: Reprinted from "The Stirling Sentinel," 1888-1893
Scottish Pewter Ware and Pewterers
Early Scottish Charters prior to A.D. 1153: with notes and an index
Dunottar and its Barons
The Use and Forms of Judicial Torture in England and Scotland
Some Sidelights on the History of Montrose's Campaigns
The Mackintoshes and Clan Chattan
Thomas Dickson LL.D.
Miss Katherine Read
The Charitie of the Boxe
The Earl's Ferry
The Scottish Peerage
The Municipal Institutions of Scotland
Electric Scotland News
I've become involved in discussions about adding a new group of forums in our Electric Scotland Community perhaps to be called "Scotland's Future". Am still in discussions about how this might play out but essentially the idea is to have a forum for each major sector and then explore that sector to see where it might take Scotland if it went Independent.
There are a group of people looking at getting involved with most of them being local Scots. The idea is to be a neutral source of information so all people of any political persuasion can get involved. It's also thought it might be a good idea to have a Scots Diaspora forum under this group so folk that are not eligible to vote in the referendum can still offer insight and suggestions. As part of this work we might ask that any members of our Community use the flag of the country they are living in. This way only local Scots would use the Scottish Flag. We could also use our personal profiles to tell people where we lean as regards the referendum. So you could list your current political leaning and where you stand on the referendum currently.
As the referendum really goes across party politics there is no reason why a labour supporter can't also be a YES voter in the referendum and likewise a SNP member can't also be a NO voter.
Anyway... just to give you a heads up on this discussion.
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As part of this discussion on whether Scotland should go for independence I have found a couple of articles on the Union of 1707 which makes some interesting reading. Along with this I have come across some very interesting publications and so have extracted a lot of articles to put on the site this week both for Electric Scotland and Electric Canadian. See more below for a list of the articles. I perhaps went a bit over the top on articles this week as it's taken me ages to do this newsletter!
ABOUT THE STORIES
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Some of the stories in here are just parts of a larger story so do check out the site for the full versions. You can always find the link in our "What's New" section in our site menu and at:
*http://www.electricscotland.com/whatsnew.htm and also http://www.electriccanadian.com/whatsnew.htm
We try not to point to a pdf file and instead send you to page where the pdf can be downloaded.
Electric Canadian
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Basketball
Have now completed this book and you can read the concluding chapters at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/life...ball/index.htm
The Pioneers of Blanshard
With an Historical Sketch of the Township by William Johnston (1899).
We are now up to chapter X of this book which means we're starting to get some of the biographies of the early settlers. You can read this book at http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...hard/index.htm
Camping in the Canadian Rockies
An Account of Camp Life in the Wilder parts of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, together with a description of the Region about Banff, Lake Louise and Glacier, and a Sketch of the early Explorations by Walter Dwight Wilcox (1896).
Another new book we're starting and here is the Preface...
THE Canadian Rocky Mountains offer exceptional attractions to those who enjoy natural scenery, sport, and camp life. Few regions of the world combining mountain, lake, and forest scenery possess the additional advantage of a delightful summer climate, such as obtains in the Canadian Rockies.
The extremely wild character of this part of the Rocky Mountains, and the very short time since it was opened up to travellers, are probably, in great part, the reasons for the lack of literature and the absence of any thoroughly illustrated publication concerning this region.
During a period of four years, the author has made camping excursions into many of the wilder parts of the mountains and effected a considerable number of ascents. An excellent camera has been an almost inseparable companion in every excursion, so that photographs of the typical scenery have been obtained from every possible point of view. Moreover, throughout all the processes of photographing, no expense of time or labor has been spared in order to obtain true and artistic representations of nature. Nor have these results been obtained without considerable sacrifice, for in many cases the proper light effects on lakes and forests required hours of delay, and frequently, on lofty mountain summits, high winds made it necessary to anchor the camera with stones; while the cold and exposure of those high altitudes made the circumstances unfavorable for successful work.
A map is not included in the volume, as, owing to the wildness of the country, there are no detailed maps covering this region that are entirely satisfactory. 'The best map, and, in fact, the only one available, is published in Dr. Dawson’s Preliminary Report on this part of' the Rocky Mountains.
The author makes grateful acknowledgment of the assistance received from many friends in the preparation of this book. Special thanks are due to Prof. J. H. Gore, of Columbian University, and to the Hon. Chas. D. Walcott, Director of the United States Geological Survey, for the valuable aid and information given by them; to M. Guillaume La Mothe for an interesting letter concerning the first exploration of the Fraser River ; and to Sir William Van Horne for the many courtesies extended.
W. D. W.
Washington, D.C., July, 1896.
You can get to this book at http://www.electriccanadian.com/life...ping/index.htm
And now we come to a series of articles that I found interesting for many reasons and have culled from historical magazines.
The Early Days of Representative Government in British Columbia
By W. N. Sage
FAR removed from the settled portions of British North America and separated from them by the Rocky Mountains and the great plains, two British colonies grew up on the North West Pacific coast during the middle years of the nineteenth century— Vancouver Island and British Columbia. At first sight their story would seem to have but little connection with that of the rest of Canada. Their problems were different, and their isolation was all but complete. Even as late as 1871, when the united colony of British Columbia became a province of the Dominion of Canada, there was considerable heart-searching both in Ottawa and Victoria as to whether or not it was wise to try to link up with the four original provinces of the newly-formed Dominion a territory so remote. In fact, as is clearly evidenced by a perusal of the debate on Confederation in the Legislative Council of British Columbia in March and April, 1870, and especially of the speech of the Hon. Mr. Trutch, it was only the incorporation of the North West Territory with the Dominion in 1870 that made the entrance of British Columbia into the federation a possibility. And even yet, fifty years after Confederation, British Columbia still retains its individual characteristics and its peculiar problems. It faces the Orient and has, geographically, turned its back on the rest of Canada. It is, as an eastern Canadian has called it, the “West beyond the West”. But it is now intensely Canadian in feeling, and has long since ceased its agitation for “Better Terms.'
You can read this at http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist.../earlydays.htm
Canadian Refugees in the American Revolution
By Carl Wittke
AMONG the first plans of the leaders of the American Revolution was the desire to make Canada the fourteenth colony in the rebellion against Great Britain’s authority in North America. In spite of the friction of earlier days between Canada and the New England colonies, there were elements in the Canadian situation in 1775 which, at first glance, promised success to the effort to win Canada for the cause of the revolution. Many of the colonial radicals in the English seaboard colonies were of the conviction that the French Canadians were discontented under British authority, which they had been forced to accept hardly a dozen years before. There was an influential English minority in Canada, known to be hostile to the provisions of the Quebec Act. Furthermore, Sir Guy Carleton. at the beginning of hostilities, had scarcely a thousand soldiers at his disposal for the defence of the many miles of the long Canadian frontier. It is not surprising, therefore, that for years after the first attempt of 1774 to have the inhabitants of Quebec send representatives to the First Continental Congress, the efforts to win Canada for the revolutionary cause were diligently continued.
You can read this at http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...s/refugees.htm
Five thousands Facts about Canada
1908 Edition.
While this is of course an old book and a fair bit is out of date there are still many facts in it which are still relevant today. It does make an interesting read and can be found at http://www.electriccanadian.com/lifestyle/5000.htm
Sketch of Peter Teeple, Loyalist and Pioneer, 1762 - 1847
By W. B. Waterbury. This account shows how the pioneers expanded into all kinds of other occupations.
You can read this account at http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...tch/teeple.htm
Annual Reports of the Department of Indian Affairs
These can make interesting reading and have download one report for you to read in pdf format but also provided a link to the Internet Archive where you can read others.
You can find this at http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...st/reports.htm
The Royal North-West Mounted Police
While reading one of the magazines I came across mention of two very interesting books on the RNWMP and so have made them available from the index page of another book we have up about them. You can read these at the foot of the page at
http://www.electriccanadian.com/forces/rnwmp/index.htm
Canada at the Cross Roads
By Agnes C. Laut
Miss Laut asks in this book a very pertinent question. Why is it that, in the Dominion of Canada with its immense natural wealth, its almost boundless opportunities for advancement and prosperity, there are barely eight and a half-millions of people, a mere handful compared with the number the country might, support? Miss Laut’s answer to this conundrum is that Canada has never really pulled together, never made a concerted effort to come into and to enjoy its heritage. Canadians have been too modest, she says. They have always meekly accepted the statement that the United States was the country of promise, the land of milk and honey, and so for decade after decade the young men and women of Canada have been drawn away to the south, heedless of the opportunities that have lain at their very doors. The time has come, says Miss Laut, when Canada stands at the cross-roads. One road leads to a great and rich Canada, the other leads to a Canada which is nothing more than a hanger-on, a poor relation of the United States. What Canadians have to do is to believe in their own country, to believe that within its own borders lie opportunities for careers for the most ambitious; in short, to stay at home and build a greater Canada than has been. Too many young men and women have left Canada to find careers elsewhere, while they might have done equally well, perhaps better, by staying at home. Only too often the Canadian universities are training men and women not to be leaders of Canadian life and thought, but to be recruits for positions in the United States. What is wanted is more confidence in Canada.
You can read this book at http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...crossroads.htm
Immigration and Settlement in Canada 1812 - 1820
By A. R. M. Lower
THE emigration that for a century and a half had been building up the old colonies of England was only slightly interfered with by the change in the political status of those colonies after the American Revolution. After 1783 as before, every year saw the new republic enriched by thousands of settlers from the old country, while Canada remained neglected and unknown1. The war of 1812-14 to a certain extent changed this: in the first place, it made a great deal of very bad blood between Britain and her former colonies: in the second, it called attention to the existence of a British portion of the New World. That Canada got much advertisement out of the war among the emigrating masses is doubtful; that she got: a good deal amongst officialdom appears fairly evident. At any rate, for several years afterwards, the war, and considerations arising out of it, governed official opinion on emigration to, and settlement in, Canada.
You can read this article at http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...mmigration.htm
Correspondence of an Emigrant
A series of letters leading us through an account of sailing from Scotland to Canada and through the settling process.
You can read these letters at http://www.electricscotland.net/canada/library12-1.htm
Banking in Canada
We've created this new section to explore the Banking industry in Canada and our first focus in on the CIBC bank.
You can read this at http://www.electriccanadian.com/tran...king/index.htm
The United States and Canada; a political study
By George M. Wrong (1921)
In this series of six lectures delivered by Professor Wrong at the Wesleyan University under the George Slocum Bennett foundation, the author has examined the conditions under which has arisen the dominance of the English-speaking peoples in America; he has placed in contrast the divergences and noted the similarities of their institutions; and, last but not least, he has clearly outlined Canada’s status in the British Commonwealth of Nations. It is beyond question that in this respect Professor Wrong has rendered an international service. We are not surprised to find in Continental Europe little comprehension of the relations which seem at once to unite and to separate the British communities throughout the world; but perhaps Canadians may be pardoned for a little surprise that those relations are so imperfectly realized by their neighbours. It is barely twenty-five years since a distinguished American statesman could hardly be induced to believe that Canada possessed and exercised the right of levying customs duties upon products of the United Kingdom imported into the Dominion. A quarter of a century previously Sir John Macdonald had encountered a similar lack of comprehension during the negotiation of the Treaty of Washington.
You can read this at http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...ical_study.htm
Edward Blake's Aurora Speech, 1874
There have been few political speeches in Canada which have been more justly famous, and which have exerted a wider influence on Canadian popular opinion, than Edward Blake’s “Aurora Speech” of October 3, 1874. The speech was delivered at a time when Edward Blake had taken up a somewhat independent attitude toward the Liberal party under Alexander Mackenzie and George Brown, and was leaning toward the doctrines of the new nationalist or “Canada First” party. It was, indeed, little more than an elaboration of the platform of the Canadian National Association; but it served to give the ideas of the Canadian nationalists a currency which they had not gained before, and 'n its bold and daring originality it gave a real stimulus to Canadian political thought. A speech which, nearly half a century ago, advocated such advanced ideas as the necessity for the growth of a national feeling in Canada, the reorganization of the Empire on a federal basis, the reform of the Senate, compulsory voting, and proportional representation, can only be described as a landmark in Canadian politics.
You can read this at http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...les/aurora.htm
Essays on Wheat
By R. H. Reginald Buller
Dr. Buller has done much more in this book than his modest title declares. As Professor of Botany in the University of Manitoba his attention was very naturally claimed many years ago by the Marquis Wheat, which is to-day (with its parent, the Hard Red Fife) the basis of all the high-grade w heat grown in Western Canada. His third chapter is an account of the work of Dr. Charles E. Saunders, who as Cerealist for the Dominion of Canada produced the single grain of wheat in 1903 from which has sprang all the Marquis Wheat at present in existence. The history of the new variety is well worth commemoration. Six years passed before the supply of Marquis had grown sufficiently to allow for thorough milling and baking tests, and for distribution among farmers. In the spring of 1900 four hundred samples were sent to many parts of Western Canada and its general cultivation began. Marquis Wheat invaded the United States almost at once, and to-day 300,000,000 bushels are being reused in North America from the seed originally selected seventeen years ago.
You can this book at http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...cles/wheat.htm
Canada and the Imperial War Cabinet
By George M. Wrong
THE defence of the British Empire is a perplexing problem. Attempts to solve it provoked the great revolution from which came the republic of the United States. This revolution was even more momentous than the French Revolution. Not only did it determine the form of the political institutions of the greater part of the two continents of America, but it was itself also in large measure the cause of the French Revolution. Royalist France was aflame with eagerness for republican principles, as applied in America, to the hurt of a hated rival in Europe. These principles, however, would not remain on the other side of the ocean from France. They crossed to Europe and in the end helped to make France herself a republic. Thus a problem of the internal government of the British Empire expanded into a world problem, the struggle between democracy and aristocracy, between local liberty and centralized control. Ever since, in 1607, English colonists settled in Virginia it has haunted the politics of the British Empire. After a stormy history of three hundred years it has taken on a new character because of the great war which broke out in 1914.
You can this article at http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...warcabinet.htm
The Growth of Canadian National Feeling
By W. S. Wallace.
“I see in the not remote distance one great nationality, bound, like the shield of Achilles, by the blue rim of Ocean”.—Thomas D’Arcy McGee, Speech in the Legislative Assembly of Canada, 1862.
THE growth of Canadian national feeling might reasonably be regarded as the central fact in Canadian history. Yet, apart from a pamphlet entitled Canadian Nationality, its Growth and Development, published by William Canniff, the historian of Upper Canada, as long ago as 1875, there has been hitherto—so far as would appear—no attempt to trace in a connected way the process whereby Canadian national feeling has grown to be what it is to-day. The historians of Canada have been legion, but, curiously enough, few of them have thought it worth while to lay stress on this cardinal aspect of Canadian history; and where they have touched on it, they have done so invariably in a casual and incidental way. They have described fully the military campaigns, the political changes, the boundary disputes, the economic and intellectual developments; but they have said little about the main fact which these details merely serve to explain and illustrate—the growth in Canada of a distinctive national feeling.
You can read this article at http://www.electriccanadian.com/lifestyle/feeling.htm
The Flag in the Wind
This issue was Compiled by Jennifer Dunn. In this issue Jennifer tells us about the "Baby Box": Finish Style which is an interesting article. The other cause she's talking about are "Dirty Bankers".
You can read this issue at http://www.scotsindependent.org
Electric Scotland
The Bards of Bon Accord 1375 - 1860
By William Walker
Added:
John Ewen
James Mercer
Ewen Maclauchlin
You can read these at http://www.electricscotland.com/poet...cord/index.htm
Northern Notes and Queries
We've managed to find other issues of this publication and so now continue the series by adding the September 1891 edition. Note: In the pdf version of the newsletter I am placing a graphic of the Contents page so you can see what is included in each issue.
This issue can be viewed at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...hern/index.htm
Scenes and Legends of The North of Scotland
or the Traditional History of Cromarty by Hugh Miller (1869)
We're now up to Chapter XXV.*and it starts...
“Unquiet souls*
Risen from the grave, to ease the heavy guilt*
Of deeds in life concealed.’’—Akenside.
Of all the wilder beliefs of our forefathers, there is none which so truly continues to exist as the belief in the churchyard spectre. Treat it as we may, it has assuredly a fast hold of our nature. We may conceal, but we cannot smother it;—we may deny it as pointedly as the lackey does his master when the visitor is an unwelcome one, but it is not from that circumstance a whit the less at home. True or false, too, it seems to act no unimportant part in the moral economy of the world. For without a deeper sense of religion to set in its place than most people entertain, men would be greatly the worse for wanting it. There are superstitions which perform, in some measure, the work of the devotional sentiment, when the latter is either undeveloped or misdirected; and the superstition of the churchyard ghost is unquestionably one of the number.
You can read the rest of this chapter at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist.../chapter25.htm
The other chapters can be read at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...arty/index.htm
The Life and Work of James Abernethy, C.E., F.R.S.E.
Past President of the Institution of Civil Engineers by his son John S. Abernethy (1867).*
Added this week are chapters on...
Egypt—Alexandria, 1867-8
Lake Aboukir, 1887-8
The Channel Ferry, 1870-2
Newport (Mon.), 1856-85
The chapter on Egypt—Alexandria, 1867-8 starts...
EARLY in the year 1867, the Khedive of Egypt, Ismail Pacha, visited England, and during his stay in London requested the late Mr. J. R. Maclean, M.P., C.E., and Mr. Abernethy, through his Minister, Nubar Pacha, to design works for the improvement of the harbour of Alexandria. Accordingly, accompanied by the Secretary of the Institution of Civil Engineers, the late Mr. Charles Manby, the engineers left England on the 5th February, and travelling vid Brindisi, reached Alexandria on the evening of the 10th. A fortnight later upon their return to London they advocated to His Highness a scheme of which the chief recommendations were the construction of a breakwater from Eunostos Point to protect the harbour from westerly winds, the building of quays in front of the city, provision for additional railway facilities for the export and import trades, and lastly, a shorter overland route to Suez. The report was duly submitted to His Highness, and the engineers were requested to attend on the 16th of July, at Lord Dudley’s house, in Park Lane, where they were presented to the Khedive. His Highness expressed approval of the scheme submitted bj' them, except as to certain proffered railway facilities direct with the palace, by which, if carried out, the members of the household and harem would have been enabled to enter the train without driving through the city to the existing station. After several subsequent interviews with Nubar Pasha, in Paris, during the summer, a second invitation to visit Egypt was received and accepted in the month of December. On this occasion they were joined by the late Sir George Elliot, Bart., M.P., and Professor Owen, and the entire party celebrated Christmas Day, 1867, in the kitchen of Shepheard’s Hotel, whither they had repaired in order to be near a tire, with songs, etc., the genial professor being one of the merriest. The late Sir Samuel Baker was also a guest at the hotel at this time, busying himself with preparations for the expected visit of H.R H. The Prince of Wales. At Cairo, several further interviews took place both with the Khedive and his Minister of Public Works, at some of which Colonel Staunton, Her Majesty’s Consul was present, but nothing more definite than an expression of general approval of the project ever resulted. The delay was difficult to account for, especially as the requisite capital was forthcoming, but subsequently it was reported to' have been due to the influence of some excellent French engineers who were held in high esteem by the Egyptian Government at the time, and who presumably were somewhat jealous of English intervention on Egyptian soil.
You can read the rest of this chapter at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist.../chapter15.htm
You can read the other chapters at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...ethy/index.htm
St. Kilda, Past and Present
By George Seton (1848)
We are now up to Chapter X of this book. Here is how Chapter VII. - Climate, Crops, and Live Stock starts...
I HAVE already referred to the tempestuous gales— chiefly from the south - west — which occasionally sweep across the island. Speaking generally, however, the climate of St Kilda is by no means rigorous—in consequence, no doubt, of the beneficial influences of the Gulf Stream, in the midst of which the island is situated. Martin describes the air as “ sharp and wholesome.” “The hills,” he says, “are often covered with ambient white mists, which in winter are forerunners of snow, if they continue on the tops of the hills; and in summer, if only on the tops, they prognosticate rain, and when they descend to the valleys, excessive heat. The night here, about the time of the summer solstice, exceeds not an hour in length, especially if the season is fair; then the sun disappears but for a short space, the reflex from the sea being all the time visible. The harvest and winter are liable to great winds and rain, the south-west v wind annoying them more than any other; it is commonly observed to blow from the west, for the most part of, if not all July.” He elsewhere gives an elaborate account of wind and weather prognostics, connected with the appearance of the sky and the character of the waves ; and mentions that the sea between St Kilda and the Long Island is most boisterous during the prevalence of a north wind. A terrific gale took place at St Kilda in January 1866; and Dr Macdonald refers to a hurricane that occurred on the 8th of July 1827, during his last visit to the island, when “ the billows rose mountains high, and dashed with fury against the lofty rocks.” He also states that when the sun happens to be obscured, the natives determine the time of day by the ebb and flow of the sea —“their knowledge of the tides depending upon the changes of the moon, which they likewise observe, and are very nice in it.” Mr Wilson pronounces the climate of St Kilda to be “extremely mild”—adding that the ice which is formed during the coldest winter night is scarcely thicker than a penny, and usually melts away, under the influence of the sun, in the course of the following day. Mr Macdiarmid, however, was told that snow sometimes falls so heavily as to bury the sheep, and that frost is occasionally severe.
You can read the rest of this chapter at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist.../chapter07.htm
You can read the other chapters at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...ilda/index.htm
Now come two articles which shed light on the Union of 1707 and I think can show the benefits that Scotland got from the Union...
Scottish Trade with the Plantations before 1707
By Theodora Keith
SCOTLAND, unlike the other countries in Western Europe, was very little influenced by the exploring and colonising impulses of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and there are few traces of any Scottish communication with America before the Restoration. One attempt was made to plant a Scottish settlement in America: that of Sir William Alexander, afterwards Earl of Stirling, to whom was granted a charter for colonising in America in 1621. The land was called Nova Scotia, and a number of Nova Scotia baronets were created; but no settlement seems to have been made, although the claims of the Alexander family on the country are a subject of controversy later in the century.
A few Scottish ships sailed to Greenland for the whale fishing, but there they came into collision with some ships of the English Greenland Company, who resented the Scottish attempt to share their trade. One Scottish merchant, John Burnett, of Aberdeen, 'being the sole merchant of our Kingdom of Scotland that hath supplied the plantation of that our colony of Virginia,' received permission in 1634 to trade with that settlement, and to transport tobacco and any other merchandise.
You can read the rest of this article at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...tish_trade.htm
The Constitutional Necessity for the Union of 1707
By Wm. S. McKechnie
ALL great movements that control the destinies of nations have their roots in constitutional phenomena. To this rule, the union of Scotland and England forms no exception. Towards the close of the seventeenth century there were forces at work which rendered a change in the relations of the two kingdoms inevitable, and which clearly indicated the direction such change must take, if a solution at once satisfactory and permanent was to be attained. The events of William’s reign had made the continuance of the status quo impossible. The relations of the Scottish Parliament to a king of Scotland, who was also king of England and was fast becoming the bondservant of the English Parliament, had proved fatal to the independence of the smaller nation. Scotland might still fondly cling to the tradition of her separate existence as a free and equal kingdom, but she found herself forced in practice to allow her national policy to be controlled in the interests of a foreign nation—a nation that had shown itself unsympathetic and contemptuous and had proved the most bitter and the most successful of trade-rivals. The key to the relations of the two kingdoms must thus be sought in the nature of the bonds uniting their two separate legislatures to a common executive head—a head so potent to thwart the weaker, so powerless to resist the stronger. Mutual sympathy and a Reeling of interests and traditions in common might have minimized the evils resultant from defective constitutional machinery; but in 1707 the sentiment of nationality was not a bond of union but rather a knife that cut the island sharply into two hostile units. The political atmosphere was surcharged with feelings of jealousy, mutual repulsion, and ill will.
You can read the rest of this article at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...cles/union.htm
And so with reading these two articles you might be better informed about the Union of 1707.
The History of Northumberland
English county volumes have, as a rule, little attraction for students of Scottish history, but the history of Northumberland is an exception to this rule, and no English county can compete with it for close connexion with the national history north of the Tweed. In order to prove what a mere platitude this statement is, the Scottish antiquary has only to consult this volume. So long as the great repository of Durham continues to pour out its unrivalled store of early evidences, no worker in Scottish history can afford to shut his eyes to what the English side of the Borderland can teach him. In addition to these, the Register of St. Alban’s (Cott. MS. T ib. E. vi.), the mother house of the priory of Tynemouth, has been ransacked for charters bearing on the franchise with the most happy results for Scottish history. It would be tedious to enumerate particularly the scope of the editor’s diligence in this respect. The abstracts of early Scottish charters, embodied in the notes, are a sufficient indication of what has been accomplished.
While we give an overview of the publication we have made all 11 volumes available for download in pdf format. You can get to all this at: http://www.electricscotland.com/nort...land/index.htm
The Teaching of Scottish History in Schools
By P. Hume Brown
A Lecture delivered to the Glasgow Branch of the Educational Institute of Scotland and to the Eastern Branch of the Secondary Teachers’ Association of Scotland.
THOUGH some may regard it as a rash assumption, we may perhaps venture to take it for granted that history is a legitimate and desirable subject in a school curriculum. If, indeed, there is a human instinct for any kind of knowledge, it is surely the desire to know the history of our fellow-mortals. If in the case of primitive races curiosity is first directed to the superhuman forces that condition life, their next intellectual interest is in the traditions of their own origin and history. At the camp fire of the savage the deeds of his ancestors are an unfailing theme or’ interest, and there is striking testimony to the exactitude with which one generation of tribesmen hands on its tradition to the next. Instinctively, it would appear, the rudimentary society realizes that its continuous existence is dependent on the tenacity with which it clings to its own particular past. ‘We are what you were; we shall be what you are,’ ran the patriotic hymn of the Spartans, and the words express at once the essence of patriotism and the essential idea of history.
You can read the rest of this article at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...s/teaching.htm
Clan Colquhoun
Got in their*Spring 2012 newsletter*which includes information on a new reel created by the Black Watch in Afghanistan. I took the liberty of embedding a YouTube video of it on this page at
http://www.electricscotland.com/fami...spring2012.htm
Clan Currie
The Clan Currie Society is pleased to announce that their 2012 Clan Gathering and MacMhuirich Symposium will be held August 24-26, 2012 on the beautiful island of South Uist in Scotland's Outer Hebrides. There is a YouTube video about it at
and more information can be found at www.clancurriegathering.com
Robert Burns Lives!
Edited by Frank Shaw
Fiddling with Known Burns: Burns and the Limits of Criticism By Murray Pittock
I am sitting at my desk admiring two great books published by Murray Pittock - Scottish and Irish Romanticism and Robert Burns in Global Culture. To study reviews of both books, I refer you to Chapters 97 (September 2, 2010) and 127 (November 30, 2011) in the index of Robert Burns Lives!. Both will make clear, in my opinion, that Murray Pittock is one of the top Burns scholars in the world.
Murray is one of an excellent and exciting group of Burns scholars at the University of Glasgow. It is a team of extremely talented men and women dedicated to seeing that Robert Burns regains his rightful place in literature. I can safely say, from my point of view as well as that of a £1 million pound windfall to the university’s Centre for Robert Burns Studies announced last year, that they will succeed in this endeavor. These University of Glasgow folks are, however, not alone in this quest. I am acquainted with other literary scholars at St Andrews, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and other colleges and universities in Scotland, as well as in the United States and Canada, who will no longer allow the long and lowly accepted status quo of Robert Burns to remain as we know it today. They are writing and seeking every chance they get to tell the world that Robert Burns will recapture his place in the academic community as a leader, not one who has been forgotten, overlooked or replaced in the annals of the Romantic era.
Books like the two mentioned above and those listed in Murray’s article below, along with some head turners to soon be published, The Cambridge Companion to Scottish Literature (20 critical studies), Scotland and the Nineteenth Century World (another collection of critical essays), and a revised Burns Encyclopedia, will help restore Burns to his literary greatness. The good news about these men and women is that their works will continue to press the theme that Burns belongs in the forefront of literature and that they will not be content for him to be seen only as a village poet, “the heaven-taught ploughman”.
Welcome back, Murray, you are always welcome to the pages of Robert Burns Lives! And a happy Fourth of July to one and all on both sides of the pond! (FRS: 7.4.12)
NOTE:
Murray Pittock is Bradley Professor of English Literature at the University of Glasgow and a co-editor of the Oxford Burns edition. He has run several funded Burns-related projects, including the 2009 Global Burns Network, and is the author of Scottish and Irish Romanticism (2008) and many other books: he has edited Robert Burns in Global Culture (2011) and The Reception of Robert Burns in Europe (forthcoming). You can read more about Burns and language in ‘To a Louse’ and other poems in Sergeant and Stafford, Burns and Other Poets (2012).
You can read this article at http://www.electricscotland.com/fami...s_lives143.htm
Other articles fro this series can be viewed at http://www.electricscotland.com/fami...rank/burns.htm
The 'Diary' of Sir Thomas Hope (1633 - 1645)
Lord Advocate (1616 - 1646)
OF all contemporary materials for historical study none are more valuable than those ‘human documents,’ Diaries and Letters. The Scottish national character for marked individuality has so seldom indulged in personal revelation of opinion and feeling that it is unwise to overlook the few specimens we have. Such neglect seems to have overtaken the 'Diary’ of Sir Thomas Hope. Published more than sixty years ago by the Bannatyne Club, historical writers have done little to popularise its merits. The editing of the volume gave no help in reading between the lines, though it was a great service even to put into print the very small and obscure writing of the MS., still preserved at Pinkie House by Sir Alexander Hope, the representative of the elder branch of the family founded by Sir Thomas. At first sight but a series of short, disconnected entries, the ‘Diary’ is found to throw a flood of light on the public events of what was one of the most momentous periods of British history. Besides, it reveals the time of an interesting character, his social and professional life in Edinburgh and in his rural retreat, his intellectual calibre, and his attitude to contemporary movements in Church and State.
You can read the rest of this article at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...icles/hope.htm
The Connexion between Scotland and Man
By Arthur W. Moore
OF the four countries adjacent to the Isle of Man Scotland is nearest, and has had perhaps the most intimate connexion with it. So close, indeed, is Nothin (Alban), as the Manxmen call it, that its Galloway coast is visible from Man on every clear day throughout the year.
You can read this article at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...ticles/man.htm
The Scottish 'Nation' at the University of Padua
By A. Francis Steuart
AFTER the thirteenth century the University in Italy to which both Scottish and English students were most indebted was the University of Padua. Bologna previously had been Alma Mater to a few of the travelling Scots, who entered the ‘Natio Anglica’ there, and of these Michael Scot, ‘the wizard', was, it is believed, one. When, however, the University of Padua was founded in 1222, during an eclipse of the older University, it attracted most of the representatives of the northern nations. At first at Padua the 'Natio Anglica’ included all inhabitants of Britain, English, Scots, and Irish alike, and in 1228, at the time when there was an abortive attempt to transfer the infant law university from Padua to Vercelli, we find that the ‘Natio Anglica’ among the Ultramontane ‘nations’ apparently existed, and that it was governed like the French and Norman ‘nations’ by a Rector.
You can read this article at http://www.electricscotland.com/history/italy/padua.htm
The Argyllshire Highlanders
The First Highland Regiment
WHEN King James vacated the throne of England and Scotland, and the Revolution of 1688 was an accomplished fact, William of Orange found himself confronted with a wax in Flanders, a war in Ireland, open mutiny amongst the troops in England, and an almost certain Jacobite insurrection in Scotland—a train of circumstances which necessitated an increase in the army. Amongst those who accompanied the new King to England was Archibald Campbell, who, since the execution of his father, the ninth Earl of Argyll in 1685, had been an exile in Holland, but had since been restored to the property and family dignities. To shew his gratitude to the new Government, and not without an eye to his own further interests, the new Earl, in view of the trouble in Scotland, proposed to raise a regiment of 600 men from among his tenants in the Western Highlands.
You can read this article at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...rgyllshire.htm
The Stirling Antiquary: Reprinted from "The Stirling Sentinel," 1888-1893
A collection like this shows what useful work a local newspaper can do. Here we have a most serviceable group of original and transferred articles mostly touching Stirlingshire. The index can be read and the book downloaded in pdf format at the foot of the page at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...hire/index.htm
Scottish Pewter Ware and Pewterers
By L. Ingleby Wood
This is an admirable book of its kind, well arranged, and excellently illustrated. The subject has a peculiar interest as a historical description of the rise and progress of an important industry, which, though now-obsolete, was once a recognised craft in all the principal towns of Scotland* Its applications in the domestic economy of our forefathers were many and various, and it had also a very considerable vogue in the ecclesiastical furnishings of Scottish churches. In these circumstances it is not surprising to find that the pewterers’ art had a development in Scotland which is of distinctively Scottish character and interest.
You can read more about this book and download a copy at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...les/pewter.htm
Early Scottish Charters prior to A.D. 1153: with notes and an index*
By Sir Archibald C. Lawrie (1905)
Sir Archibald Lawrie served his apprenticeship as a Record scholar lone ago. His name is associated with the most considerable task yet undertaken in Scotland in this branch of learning, the Index to the Acts of Parliament. In the present book, returning to the subject of those early labours, he gives us a work of reference, and an essay in criticism. To gather into one handy and sightly volume a corpus of documents hitherto scattered and in some cases not easily accessible, is a conception so excellent that even serious defects in execution would not be harshly judged. And on the whole the execution is fairly good. Corrections of text and notes, as well as additional Charters, could easily be indicated, but this is a task which every fit student of the book ought to perform for himself.
You can read this article and download the book at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...h_charters.htm
Dunottar and its Barons
By J. Crabb Watt
IN the course of examining some old family papers, the writer recently came upon certain accounts and inventories relating to a line of great noblemen of Scotland, the Keiths, Earn Marischal of Scotland. From these papers an interesting picture may be drawn of the domestic amenities and the equipment of their Castle of Dunnottar, situated on a rock nearly four acres in extent on the coast of The Meams, one mile south of Stonehaven. The direct line came to an end in the two greatest companions—or perhaps they ought to be called acquaintances, for they, at all events, were the soul of honour—of 'Pickle the Spy,’ namely, George Keith, the last Earl, the friend of Frederick the Great and correspondent of Voltaire, and James Keith, his brother, the celebrated Field Marshal of Prussia.
You can read this article at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...s/dunnotar.htm
The Use and Forms of Judicial Torture in England and Scotland
By R. D. Melville
THE employment of torture as an adjunct of criminal administration in both England and Scotland, although in common, indeed, with the rest of Europe, will ever remain as a dark red stain upon the annals of these countries, even while it possesses that morbid fascination which always clings around the tragic and the cruel, or any tale of human suffering. Its history has about it a living, human interest, which causes it to attract even while it repels, and the sympathies of modern humanity go out in mute and futile pity to those innumerable victims of human cruelty and superstition, while the nerves quiver to-day as we contemplate the awful agonies of those wretched beings immolated on the altar of a mistaken principle of justice.
You can read this article at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...es/torture.htm
Some Sidelights on the History of Montrose's Campaigns
By George Duncan
THE Red Book of Clanranald—a Gaelic volume notable in the Ossianic controversy—has been largely drawn on by Mr. Mark Napier and other writers on the subject of Montrose’s campaigns. The reference of these writers was to an inaccurate MS. translation, and, till quite recently, there had been no publication either of the original or of any translation, with the exception of a small portion of one of the translations which is included in the third volume of Mr. W. F. Skene's Celtic Scotland. In the Reliquiae Celticae of the late Rev. Dr. Cameron there will, however, now be found (vol. ii., p. 138) the greater portion not only of the contents of the Red Book, but also of those of another and more obscure volume known as the Black Book of Clanranald. The history of the Red Book has, as is well known, been matter of ancient controversy. The Black Book, on the other hand, is quite a modern discovery, and has never been referred to by the historians of Montrose’s campaigns. It was picked up by Mr. Skene about fifty years ago, among some old Irish MSS., at a book-stall in Dublin, and was by him restored to the present-day representative of its old possessors, the Macdonalds of Clanranald.
You can read this article at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...s/montrose.htm
The Mackintoshes and Clan Chattan
A review
The Mackintoshes and Clan Chattan. By A. M. Mackintosh, pp. xxiv, 566. Printed for the author, 1903.
The history of the Mackintoshes is important, even apart from other reasons, on account of their central position in the Highlands, and their close association for centuries with the town of Inverness. Like that of most of the clans, their origin is shrouded in much obscurity, but the author of this volume has spared no pains to make his information as interesting and reliable as possible. As early as 1880 he published a book on the same subject. This second edition is intended to represent the results of wider research and fuller knowledge. Favourably situated as the author has been for the purpose, he has endeavoured, as he tells, us, to present a correct history of the Clan Chattan generally, and of its component septs in particular. To this end he has carefully piloted his way (by the help of record and documentary evidence alone, disregarding or not insisting on the delusive lights of tradition, taking for granted no statements of family historians as to ancient events, and avoiding all temptation to speculations or guesses of his own, or to 'writing for writing’s sake.’
You can read more of this review and download a couple of books we found about them at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...es/chattan.htm
Thomas Dickson LL.D.
In memoriam by J. Balfour Paul
It is only fitting that some notice should be taken in the pages of the Scottish Historical Review of the demise of one to whom all students engaged in the investigation of the political, social, or family history of Scotland owe a deep debt of gratitude. Other men of eminence in the same field have passed away honoured with the usual column in the daily press, but no such memorial has been given to one who deserves in a very high degree to be remembered for his life’s work. It is perhaps only consonant with the character of the man that such should have been the case; but, on the other hand, it is but proper that some record should be made of one who did so much in the cause of historical knowledge.
You can read the rest of this article at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...es/dickson.htm
Miss Katherine Read
Court Paintress by A. Francis Steuart
THE eighteenth century giants of portrait painting, Hogarth, Hudson, Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Hoppner, are rather apt to make us forget a number of other minor workers who, though overshadowed by these Masters, left a great many paintings of great worth, which have hardly yet been appreciated at their right value. Among these minor painters is Katherine Read, some of whose portraits are frequently attributed to Reynolds himself. Her merit was much more properly estimated in her own time than it since has been. Smollett the historian speaks of her as Miss Read who ‘excelled the celebrated Rosalba in Portrait Painting,’ and Hayley in his Poetical Episdes wrote:
‘Let candid Jastice oar attention lead
To the soft Crayon of the graceful Read.’
It will therefore not be uninteresting to review the life of this forgotten paintress who was so much esteemed in her own day.
You can read this article at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...icles/read.htm
The Charitie of the Boxe
By E. Maxstone Graham
UPON a height in Strathearn, long stood the Parish Church of Gask. The oldest available record of this church was begun 233 years ago, and was continued for ten years. Year by year all through this document a continuous list of money received, and money spent in charity, discloses a state of affairs which, in the light of the present system of poor relief, seems primitive indeed. Moneys were collected every Sunday—boxed' according to the Session-Clerk—and during the week distributed. The Sunday congregation doubtless consisted wholly of peasants, who gave in charity out of a poverty that seems inconceivable in these days. The system was one of deliberately indiscriminate charity, and considering the claims of indigent parishioners, it is wonderful that any sums, however small, were forthcoming in aid of numberless applicants who had no connection with the parish.
You can read this article at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...icles/boxe.htm
The Earl's Ferry
By George Law
IN the time of John de Baliol, King of the Scots from 1292 to 1296, some Englishman wrote a tract which he called Brevis Descriptio Regni Scoiiae: and in it he mentions ‘Erlisferie’ and ‘Queneferie’ as the northern extremities of Lothian. This province was then wide enough to include the castles of Berwick, Dunbar, Edinburgh, and even Stirling; the abbeys of Jedburgh, Melrose, Roxburgh, Dryburgh, Kelso, Newbattle, and Holyrood; the priory of Coldingham ; and the nunneries of Berwick, Eccles, Coldstream, Haddington, and North Berwick. North of it and west of it was the Kingdom of ‘Scotland,’ in which the castles of Dumfries and Kirkcudbright, and the religious houses of Whithorn, Glenluce, Kilwinning, and Glasgow, were reckoned. Beyond the Firth of Forth was the ancient Pictish province or Kingdom of Fibh or Fife, with its great churches of Inchcolm, Dunfermline, Lindores, St. Andrews. To the south beyond Tweed was the North-Humber-land, part of the old Anglic Kingdom of Northumbria, which had withdrawn from both its ancient boundaries, Forth and Humber. The tract of 1292-6 seems to contain the first mention of the Earl’s Ferry, the most seaward ferry connecting Lothian and Fife. The ferry without doubt took its name from its being a franchise held by the Macduff's, earls of Fife, who appear on record in the twelfth century, and became extinct in the fourteenth.
You can read the rest of this article at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...earlsferry.htm
The Scottish Peerage
By J. H. Stevenson
FROM the day ‘quhan Alysander our king wes dede' down to the day when the Chancellor Lord of Seafield laid down his pen and exclaimed, ‘And there’s an end o’ an auld sang,’ the varied thread of Scottish story is mainly the history of a nobility which blended or opposed its ambitions in an endless succession of intrigues and feuds of which even the open wars of the country with the ‘auld enemy,' England, were too often but the opportunity or the result. No country, it has been said, stands so little indebted to its nobles as does Scotland. The saying may be false or true according as we determine wherein lies Scotland's main achievement.*I*think it false. The pride of Scottish history does not He in the patient upbuilding of a great democracy or the solution of constitutional problems, but rather in the exploits of its heroes in War; and its achievement has been the making of a people rather than a nation. While it is true that the Scottish magnates never united to extort a Magna Charta from the Crown, it is on the other hand also true that Scotland never saw its nobles combined to oppress its commons, nor its commons arrayed in form of war against its nobles. In all the blood-welding of this northern people a Wat Tyler or Jack Cade, a peasant war or a Jacquerie was unknown and impossible. And if there is anything in national sentiment, the deeds of Bruce and Randolph at Bannockburn, and the devotion of the eleven earls who died round their king at Flodden—in brief the valiant part played by her nobles in all her wars, is a service they performed to their country for all time.
You can read this article at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...es/peerage.htm
The Municipal Institutions of Scotland
By James D. Marwick
THERE seems to be no reason to doubt that, at a time anterior to any existing Scottish legislation, the little village communities which grew around Royal and Baronial Castles and Religious Houses, or on sites otherwise suitable, cultivated —with the sanction and largely for the benefit of their lords— such scanty trade as was then practicable. But their position was precarious. They were probably in a position of absolute villenage, and had no rights or privileges save such as the policy or caprice of their lords allowed. The protection they enjoyed was also burdened with heavy impositions. But in process of time the Sovereign and the more powerful nobles came to recognise it to be their interest to encourage the development of the little trading communities which had sprung up around them, and this they did by the concession of privileges in the form largely of monopolies and exclusive dealing. In the communities thus formed societies known as*hanses*or guilds were instituted, and the privileged members of these communities, in process of time, claimed the right to administer the affairs of the burgh in which they existed, to the exclusion of the humbler classes of craftsmen. But before this stage of development had been reached, it became obvious to the Sovereign and to the lords, lay and ecclesiastical, that the prosperity of the trading communities, established on their respective territories, conduced to their own advantage, and so it became customary for these communities to obtain farther concessions of privilege. In grants of these the Crown took the lead. The burghal communities established on the royal domains were specially privileged, and, in return for the advantages which they thus secured, the Crown received, in the shape of ferms or rents, tolls and customs, important financial advantages, and accessions of strength through the increase of an industrial vassalage. The baronial superiors, lay and ecclesiastical, of the burghal communities established on their territory, seem lo have followed the royal example, but the burghs of Regality and Barony which were formed under their authority, were subordinate, in rank, position, and privilege, to those burghs which held directly of the Crown.
You can read this article at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist.../municipal.htm
And finally...
Here is a wee joke found in our Rib Ticklers forum in our Community...
Sean is the pastor of a Church of England parish on the Northern Ireland/ Southern Ireland border and Patrick is the priest in the Roman Catholic Church across the road.*
One day they are seen together, erecting a sign into the ground, which says:*
TA END IS NEAR! TURN YERSELF AROUNT NOW*AFOR IT IS TOO LATE!*
As a car speeds past them, the driver leans out his window and yells, "Leave people alone, you Oirish religious nutters! We don't need your lectures."*
From the next curve they hear screeching tyres and a big splash.*
Shaking his head, Rev. Patrick says "Dat's da terd one dis mornin'."*
"Yaa," Pastor Sean agrees, then asks, "Do ya tink maybe da sign should just say, 'Bridge Out?'"
And that's all for now and hope you all have a great weekend.
Alastair
Electric Scotland News
Electric Canadian
Basketball
The Pioneers of Blanshard
Camping in the Canadian Rockies
The Early Days of Representative Government in British Columbia
Canadian Refugees in the American Revolution
Five thousands Facts about Canada
Sketch of Peter Teeple, Loyalist and Pioneer, 1762 - 1847
Annual Reports of the Department of
Canada at the Cross Roads
Immigration and Settlement in Canada 1812 - 1820
Correspondence of an Emigrant
Banking in Canada
The United States and Canada; a political study
Edward Blake's Aurora Speech, 1874
Essays on Wheat
Canada and the Imperial War Cabinet
The Growth of Canadian National Feeling
The Flag in the Wind
Electric Scotland
The Bards of Bon Accord 1375 - 1860
Northern Notes and Queries
Scenes and Legends of The North of Scotland
The Life and Work of James Abernethy, C.E., F.R.S.E.
St. Kilda, Past and Present
Scottish Trade with the Plantations before 1707
The Constitutional Necessity for the Union of 1707
The History of Northumberland
The Teaching of Scottish History in Schools
Robert Burns Lives!
Clan Colquhoun
Clan Currie
The 'Diary' of Sir Thomas Hope (1633 - 1645)
The Connexion between Scotland and Man
The Scottish 'Nation' at the University of Padua
The Argyllshire Highlanders
The Stirling Antiquary: Reprinted from "The Stirling Sentinel," 1888-1893
Scottish Pewter Ware and Pewterers
Early Scottish Charters prior to A.D. 1153: with notes and an index
Dunottar and its Barons
The Use and Forms of Judicial Torture in England and Scotland
Some Sidelights on the History of Montrose's Campaigns
The Mackintoshes and Clan Chattan
Thomas Dickson LL.D.
Miss Katherine Read
The Charitie of the Boxe
The Earl's Ferry
The Scottish Peerage
The Municipal Institutions of Scotland
Electric Scotland News
I've become involved in discussions about adding a new group of forums in our Electric Scotland Community perhaps to be called "Scotland's Future". Am still in discussions about how this might play out but essentially the idea is to have a forum for each major sector and then explore that sector to see where it might take Scotland if it went Independent.
There are a group of people looking at getting involved with most of them being local Scots. The idea is to be a neutral source of information so all people of any political persuasion can get involved. It's also thought it might be a good idea to have a Scots Diaspora forum under this group so folk that are not eligible to vote in the referendum can still offer insight and suggestions. As part of this work we might ask that any members of our Community use the flag of the country they are living in. This way only local Scots would use the Scottish Flag. We could also use our personal profiles to tell people where we lean as regards the referendum. So you could list your current political leaning and where you stand on the referendum currently.
As the referendum really goes across party politics there is no reason why a labour supporter can't also be a YES voter in the referendum and likewise a SNP member can't also be a NO voter.
Anyway... just to give you a heads up on this discussion.
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As part of this discussion on whether Scotland should go for independence I have found a couple of articles on the Union of 1707 which makes some interesting reading. Along with this I have come across some very interesting publications and so have extracted a lot of articles to put on the site this week both for Electric Scotland and Electric Canadian. See more below for a list of the articles. I perhaps went a bit over the top on articles this week as it's taken me ages to do this newsletter!
ABOUT THE STORIES
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Some of the stories in here are just parts of a larger story so do check out the site for the full versions. You can always find the link in our "What's New" section in our site menu and at:
*http://www.electricscotland.com/whatsnew.htm and also http://www.electriccanadian.com/whatsnew.htm
We try not to point to a pdf file and instead send you to page where the pdf can be downloaded.
Electric Canadian
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Basketball
Have now completed this book and you can read the concluding chapters at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/life...ball/index.htm
The Pioneers of Blanshard
With an Historical Sketch of the Township by William Johnston (1899).
We are now up to chapter X of this book which means we're starting to get some of the biographies of the early settlers. You can read this book at http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...hard/index.htm
Camping in the Canadian Rockies
An Account of Camp Life in the Wilder parts of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, together with a description of the Region about Banff, Lake Louise and Glacier, and a Sketch of the early Explorations by Walter Dwight Wilcox (1896).
Another new book we're starting and here is the Preface...
THE Canadian Rocky Mountains offer exceptional attractions to those who enjoy natural scenery, sport, and camp life. Few regions of the world combining mountain, lake, and forest scenery possess the additional advantage of a delightful summer climate, such as obtains in the Canadian Rockies.
The extremely wild character of this part of the Rocky Mountains, and the very short time since it was opened up to travellers, are probably, in great part, the reasons for the lack of literature and the absence of any thoroughly illustrated publication concerning this region.
During a period of four years, the author has made camping excursions into many of the wilder parts of the mountains and effected a considerable number of ascents. An excellent camera has been an almost inseparable companion in every excursion, so that photographs of the typical scenery have been obtained from every possible point of view. Moreover, throughout all the processes of photographing, no expense of time or labor has been spared in order to obtain true and artistic representations of nature. Nor have these results been obtained without considerable sacrifice, for in many cases the proper light effects on lakes and forests required hours of delay, and frequently, on lofty mountain summits, high winds made it necessary to anchor the camera with stones; while the cold and exposure of those high altitudes made the circumstances unfavorable for successful work.
A map is not included in the volume, as, owing to the wildness of the country, there are no detailed maps covering this region that are entirely satisfactory. 'The best map, and, in fact, the only one available, is published in Dr. Dawson’s Preliminary Report on this part of' the Rocky Mountains.
The author makes grateful acknowledgment of the assistance received from many friends in the preparation of this book. Special thanks are due to Prof. J. H. Gore, of Columbian University, and to the Hon. Chas. D. Walcott, Director of the United States Geological Survey, for the valuable aid and information given by them; to M. Guillaume La Mothe for an interesting letter concerning the first exploration of the Fraser River ; and to Sir William Van Horne for the many courtesies extended.
W. D. W.
Washington, D.C., July, 1896.
You can get to this book at http://www.electriccanadian.com/life...ping/index.htm
And now we come to a series of articles that I found interesting for many reasons and have culled from historical magazines.
The Early Days of Representative Government in British Columbia
By W. N. Sage
FAR removed from the settled portions of British North America and separated from them by the Rocky Mountains and the great plains, two British colonies grew up on the North West Pacific coast during the middle years of the nineteenth century— Vancouver Island and British Columbia. At first sight their story would seem to have but little connection with that of the rest of Canada. Their problems were different, and their isolation was all but complete. Even as late as 1871, when the united colony of British Columbia became a province of the Dominion of Canada, there was considerable heart-searching both in Ottawa and Victoria as to whether or not it was wise to try to link up with the four original provinces of the newly-formed Dominion a territory so remote. In fact, as is clearly evidenced by a perusal of the debate on Confederation in the Legislative Council of British Columbia in March and April, 1870, and especially of the speech of the Hon. Mr. Trutch, it was only the incorporation of the North West Territory with the Dominion in 1870 that made the entrance of British Columbia into the federation a possibility. And even yet, fifty years after Confederation, British Columbia still retains its individual characteristics and its peculiar problems. It faces the Orient and has, geographically, turned its back on the rest of Canada. It is, as an eastern Canadian has called it, the “West beyond the West”. But it is now intensely Canadian in feeling, and has long since ceased its agitation for “Better Terms.'
You can read this at http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist.../earlydays.htm
Canadian Refugees in the American Revolution
By Carl Wittke
AMONG the first plans of the leaders of the American Revolution was the desire to make Canada the fourteenth colony in the rebellion against Great Britain’s authority in North America. In spite of the friction of earlier days between Canada and the New England colonies, there were elements in the Canadian situation in 1775 which, at first glance, promised success to the effort to win Canada for the cause of the revolution. Many of the colonial radicals in the English seaboard colonies were of the conviction that the French Canadians were discontented under British authority, which they had been forced to accept hardly a dozen years before. There was an influential English minority in Canada, known to be hostile to the provisions of the Quebec Act. Furthermore, Sir Guy Carleton. at the beginning of hostilities, had scarcely a thousand soldiers at his disposal for the defence of the many miles of the long Canadian frontier. It is not surprising, therefore, that for years after the first attempt of 1774 to have the inhabitants of Quebec send representatives to the First Continental Congress, the efforts to win Canada for the revolutionary cause were diligently continued.
You can read this at http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...s/refugees.htm
Five thousands Facts about Canada
1908 Edition.
While this is of course an old book and a fair bit is out of date there are still many facts in it which are still relevant today. It does make an interesting read and can be found at http://www.electriccanadian.com/lifestyle/5000.htm
Sketch of Peter Teeple, Loyalist and Pioneer, 1762 - 1847
By W. B. Waterbury. This account shows how the pioneers expanded into all kinds of other occupations.
You can read this account at http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...tch/teeple.htm
Annual Reports of the Department of Indian Affairs
These can make interesting reading and have download one report for you to read in pdf format but also provided a link to the Internet Archive where you can read others.
You can find this at http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...st/reports.htm
The Royal North-West Mounted Police
While reading one of the magazines I came across mention of two very interesting books on the RNWMP and so have made them available from the index page of another book we have up about them. You can read these at the foot of the page at
http://www.electriccanadian.com/forces/rnwmp/index.htm
Canada at the Cross Roads
By Agnes C. Laut
Miss Laut asks in this book a very pertinent question. Why is it that, in the Dominion of Canada with its immense natural wealth, its almost boundless opportunities for advancement and prosperity, there are barely eight and a half-millions of people, a mere handful compared with the number the country might, support? Miss Laut’s answer to this conundrum is that Canada has never really pulled together, never made a concerted effort to come into and to enjoy its heritage. Canadians have been too modest, she says. They have always meekly accepted the statement that the United States was the country of promise, the land of milk and honey, and so for decade after decade the young men and women of Canada have been drawn away to the south, heedless of the opportunities that have lain at their very doors. The time has come, says Miss Laut, when Canada stands at the cross-roads. One road leads to a great and rich Canada, the other leads to a Canada which is nothing more than a hanger-on, a poor relation of the United States. What Canadians have to do is to believe in their own country, to believe that within its own borders lie opportunities for careers for the most ambitious; in short, to stay at home and build a greater Canada than has been. Too many young men and women have left Canada to find careers elsewhere, while they might have done equally well, perhaps better, by staying at home. Only too often the Canadian universities are training men and women not to be leaders of Canadian life and thought, but to be recruits for positions in the United States. What is wanted is more confidence in Canada.
You can read this book at http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...crossroads.htm
Immigration and Settlement in Canada 1812 - 1820
By A. R. M. Lower
THE emigration that for a century and a half had been building up the old colonies of England was only slightly interfered with by the change in the political status of those colonies after the American Revolution. After 1783 as before, every year saw the new republic enriched by thousands of settlers from the old country, while Canada remained neglected and unknown1. The war of 1812-14 to a certain extent changed this: in the first place, it made a great deal of very bad blood between Britain and her former colonies: in the second, it called attention to the existence of a British portion of the New World. That Canada got much advertisement out of the war among the emigrating masses is doubtful; that she got: a good deal amongst officialdom appears fairly evident. At any rate, for several years afterwards, the war, and considerations arising out of it, governed official opinion on emigration to, and settlement in, Canada.
You can read this article at http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...mmigration.htm
Correspondence of an Emigrant
A series of letters leading us through an account of sailing from Scotland to Canada and through the settling process.
You can read these letters at http://www.electricscotland.net/canada/library12-1.htm
Banking in Canada
We've created this new section to explore the Banking industry in Canada and our first focus in on the CIBC bank.
You can read this at http://www.electriccanadian.com/tran...king/index.htm
The United States and Canada; a political study
By George M. Wrong (1921)
In this series of six lectures delivered by Professor Wrong at the Wesleyan University under the George Slocum Bennett foundation, the author has examined the conditions under which has arisen the dominance of the English-speaking peoples in America; he has placed in contrast the divergences and noted the similarities of their institutions; and, last but not least, he has clearly outlined Canada’s status in the British Commonwealth of Nations. It is beyond question that in this respect Professor Wrong has rendered an international service. We are not surprised to find in Continental Europe little comprehension of the relations which seem at once to unite and to separate the British communities throughout the world; but perhaps Canadians may be pardoned for a little surprise that those relations are so imperfectly realized by their neighbours. It is barely twenty-five years since a distinguished American statesman could hardly be induced to believe that Canada possessed and exercised the right of levying customs duties upon products of the United Kingdom imported into the Dominion. A quarter of a century previously Sir John Macdonald had encountered a similar lack of comprehension during the negotiation of the Treaty of Washington.
You can read this at http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...ical_study.htm
Edward Blake's Aurora Speech, 1874
There have been few political speeches in Canada which have been more justly famous, and which have exerted a wider influence on Canadian popular opinion, than Edward Blake’s “Aurora Speech” of October 3, 1874. The speech was delivered at a time when Edward Blake had taken up a somewhat independent attitude toward the Liberal party under Alexander Mackenzie and George Brown, and was leaning toward the doctrines of the new nationalist or “Canada First” party. It was, indeed, little more than an elaboration of the platform of the Canadian National Association; but it served to give the ideas of the Canadian nationalists a currency which they had not gained before, and 'n its bold and daring originality it gave a real stimulus to Canadian political thought. A speech which, nearly half a century ago, advocated such advanced ideas as the necessity for the growth of a national feeling in Canada, the reorganization of the Empire on a federal basis, the reform of the Senate, compulsory voting, and proportional representation, can only be described as a landmark in Canadian politics.
You can read this at http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...les/aurora.htm
Essays on Wheat
By R. H. Reginald Buller
Dr. Buller has done much more in this book than his modest title declares. As Professor of Botany in the University of Manitoba his attention was very naturally claimed many years ago by the Marquis Wheat, which is to-day (with its parent, the Hard Red Fife) the basis of all the high-grade w heat grown in Western Canada. His third chapter is an account of the work of Dr. Charles E. Saunders, who as Cerealist for the Dominion of Canada produced the single grain of wheat in 1903 from which has sprang all the Marquis Wheat at present in existence. The history of the new variety is well worth commemoration. Six years passed before the supply of Marquis had grown sufficiently to allow for thorough milling and baking tests, and for distribution among farmers. In the spring of 1900 four hundred samples were sent to many parts of Western Canada and its general cultivation began. Marquis Wheat invaded the United States almost at once, and to-day 300,000,000 bushels are being reused in North America from the seed originally selected seventeen years ago.
You can this book at http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...cles/wheat.htm
Canada and the Imperial War Cabinet
By George M. Wrong
THE defence of the British Empire is a perplexing problem. Attempts to solve it provoked the great revolution from which came the republic of the United States. This revolution was even more momentous than the French Revolution. Not only did it determine the form of the political institutions of the greater part of the two continents of America, but it was itself also in large measure the cause of the French Revolution. Royalist France was aflame with eagerness for republican principles, as applied in America, to the hurt of a hated rival in Europe. These principles, however, would not remain on the other side of the ocean from France. They crossed to Europe and in the end helped to make France herself a republic. Thus a problem of the internal government of the British Empire expanded into a world problem, the struggle between democracy and aristocracy, between local liberty and centralized control. Ever since, in 1607, English colonists settled in Virginia it has haunted the politics of the British Empire. After a stormy history of three hundred years it has taken on a new character because of the great war which broke out in 1914.
You can this article at http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...warcabinet.htm
The Growth of Canadian National Feeling
By W. S. Wallace.
“I see in the not remote distance one great nationality, bound, like the shield of Achilles, by the blue rim of Ocean”.—Thomas D’Arcy McGee, Speech in the Legislative Assembly of Canada, 1862.
THE growth of Canadian national feeling might reasonably be regarded as the central fact in Canadian history. Yet, apart from a pamphlet entitled Canadian Nationality, its Growth and Development, published by William Canniff, the historian of Upper Canada, as long ago as 1875, there has been hitherto—so far as would appear—no attempt to trace in a connected way the process whereby Canadian national feeling has grown to be what it is to-day. The historians of Canada have been legion, but, curiously enough, few of them have thought it worth while to lay stress on this cardinal aspect of Canadian history; and where they have touched on it, they have done so invariably in a casual and incidental way. They have described fully the military campaigns, the political changes, the boundary disputes, the economic and intellectual developments; but they have said little about the main fact which these details merely serve to explain and illustrate—the growth in Canada of a distinctive national feeling.
You can read this article at http://www.electriccanadian.com/lifestyle/feeling.htm
The Flag in the Wind
This issue was Compiled by Jennifer Dunn. In this issue Jennifer tells us about the "Baby Box": Finish Style which is an interesting article. The other cause she's talking about are "Dirty Bankers".
You can read this issue at http://www.scotsindependent.org
Electric Scotland
The Bards of Bon Accord 1375 - 1860
By William Walker
Added:
John Ewen
James Mercer
Ewen Maclauchlin
You can read these at http://www.electricscotland.com/poet...cord/index.htm
Northern Notes and Queries
We've managed to find other issues of this publication and so now continue the series by adding the September 1891 edition. Note: In the pdf version of the newsletter I am placing a graphic of the Contents page so you can see what is included in each issue.
This issue can be viewed at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...hern/index.htm
Scenes and Legends of The North of Scotland
or the Traditional History of Cromarty by Hugh Miller (1869)
We're now up to Chapter XXV.*and it starts...
“Unquiet souls*
Risen from the grave, to ease the heavy guilt*
Of deeds in life concealed.’’—Akenside.
Of all the wilder beliefs of our forefathers, there is none which so truly continues to exist as the belief in the churchyard spectre. Treat it as we may, it has assuredly a fast hold of our nature. We may conceal, but we cannot smother it;—we may deny it as pointedly as the lackey does his master when the visitor is an unwelcome one, but it is not from that circumstance a whit the less at home. True or false, too, it seems to act no unimportant part in the moral economy of the world. For without a deeper sense of religion to set in its place than most people entertain, men would be greatly the worse for wanting it. There are superstitions which perform, in some measure, the work of the devotional sentiment, when the latter is either undeveloped or misdirected; and the superstition of the churchyard ghost is unquestionably one of the number.
You can read the rest of this chapter at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist.../chapter25.htm
The other chapters can be read at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...arty/index.htm
The Life and Work of James Abernethy, C.E., F.R.S.E.
Past President of the Institution of Civil Engineers by his son John S. Abernethy (1867).*
Added this week are chapters on...
Egypt—Alexandria, 1867-8
Lake Aboukir, 1887-8
The Channel Ferry, 1870-2
Newport (Mon.), 1856-85
The chapter on Egypt—Alexandria, 1867-8 starts...
EARLY in the year 1867, the Khedive of Egypt, Ismail Pacha, visited England, and during his stay in London requested the late Mr. J. R. Maclean, M.P., C.E., and Mr. Abernethy, through his Minister, Nubar Pacha, to design works for the improvement of the harbour of Alexandria. Accordingly, accompanied by the Secretary of the Institution of Civil Engineers, the late Mr. Charles Manby, the engineers left England on the 5th February, and travelling vid Brindisi, reached Alexandria on the evening of the 10th. A fortnight later upon their return to London they advocated to His Highness a scheme of which the chief recommendations were the construction of a breakwater from Eunostos Point to protect the harbour from westerly winds, the building of quays in front of the city, provision for additional railway facilities for the export and import trades, and lastly, a shorter overland route to Suez. The report was duly submitted to His Highness, and the engineers were requested to attend on the 16th of July, at Lord Dudley’s house, in Park Lane, where they were presented to the Khedive. His Highness expressed approval of the scheme submitted bj' them, except as to certain proffered railway facilities direct with the palace, by which, if carried out, the members of the household and harem would have been enabled to enter the train without driving through the city to the existing station. After several subsequent interviews with Nubar Pasha, in Paris, during the summer, a second invitation to visit Egypt was received and accepted in the month of December. On this occasion they were joined by the late Sir George Elliot, Bart., M.P., and Professor Owen, and the entire party celebrated Christmas Day, 1867, in the kitchen of Shepheard’s Hotel, whither they had repaired in order to be near a tire, with songs, etc., the genial professor being one of the merriest. The late Sir Samuel Baker was also a guest at the hotel at this time, busying himself with preparations for the expected visit of H.R H. The Prince of Wales. At Cairo, several further interviews took place both with the Khedive and his Minister of Public Works, at some of which Colonel Staunton, Her Majesty’s Consul was present, but nothing more definite than an expression of general approval of the project ever resulted. The delay was difficult to account for, especially as the requisite capital was forthcoming, but subsequently it was reported to' have been due to the influence of some excellent French engineers who were held in high esteem by the Egyptian Government at the time, and who presumably were somewhat jealous of English intervention on Egyptian soil.
You can read the rest of this chapter at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist.../chapter15.htm
You can read the other chapters at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...ethy/index.htm
St. Kilda, Past and Present
By George Seton (1848)
We are now up to Chapter X of this book. Here is how Chapter VII. - Climate, Crops, and Live Stock starts...
I HAVE already referred to the tempestuous gales— chiefly from the south - west — which occasionally sweep across the island. Speaking generally, however, the climate of St Kilda is by no means rigorous—in consequence, no doubt, of the beneficial influences of the Gulf Stream, in the midst of which the island is situated. Martin describes the air as “ sharp and wholesome.” “The hills,” he says, “are often covered with ambient white mists, which in winter are forerunners of snow, if they continue on the tops of the hills; and in summer, if only on the tops, they prognosticate rain, and when they descend to the valleys, excessive heat. The night here, about the time of the summer solstice, exceeds not an hour in length, especially if the season is fair; then the sun disappears but for a short space, the reflex from the sea being all the time visible. The harvest and winter are liable to great winds and rain, the south-west v wind annoying them more than any other; it is commonly observed to blow from the west, for the most part of, if not all July.” He elsewhere gives an elaborate account of wind and weather prognostics, connected with the appearance of the sky and the character of the waves ; and mentions that the sea between St Kilda and the Long Island is most boisterous during the prevalence of a north wind. A terrific gale took place at St Kilda in January 1866; and Dr Macdonald refers to a hurricane that occurred on the 8th of July 1827, during his last visit to the island, when “ the billows rose mountains high, and dashed with fury against the lofty rocks.” He also states that when the sun happens to be obscured, the natives determine the time of day by the ebb and flow of the sea —“their knowledge of the tides depending upon the changes of the moon, which they likewise observe, and are very nice in it.” Mr Wilson pronounces the climate of St Kilda to be “extremely mild”—adding that the ice which is formed during the coldest winter night is scarcely thicker than a penny, and usually melts away, under the influence of the sun, in the course of the following day. Mr Macdiarmid, however, was told that snow sometimes falls so heavily as to bury the sheep, and that frost is occasionally severe.
You can read the rest of this chapter at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist.../chapter07.htm
You can read the other chapters at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...ilda/index.htm
Now come two articles which shed light on the Union of 1707 and I think can show the benefits that Scotland got from the Union...
Scottish Trade with the Plantations before 1707
By Theodora Keith
SCOTLAND, unlike the other countries in Western Europe, was very little influenced by the exploring and colonising impulses of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and there are few traces of any Scottish communication with America before the Restoration. One attempt was made to plant a Scottish settlement in America: that of Sir William Alexander, afterwards Earl of Stirling, to whom was granted a charter for colonising in America in 1621. The land was called Nova Scotia, and a number of Nova Scotia baronets were created; but no settlement seems to have been made, although the claims of the Alexander family on the country are a subject of controversy later in the century.
A few Scottish ships sailed to Greenland for the whale fishing, but there they came into collision with some ships of the English Greenland Company, who resented the Scottish attempt to share their trade. One Scottish merchant, John Burnett, of Aberdeen, 'being the sole merchant of our Kingdom of Scotland that hath supplied the plantation of that our colony of Virginia,' received permission in 1634 to trade with that settlement, and to transport tobacco and any other merchandise.
You can read the rest of this article at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...tish_trade.htm
The Constitutional Necessity for the Union of 1707
By Wm. S. McKechnie
ALL great movements that control the destinies of nations have their roots in constitutional phenomena. To this rule, the union of Scotland and England forms no exception. Towards the close of the seventeenth century there were forces at work which rendered a change in the relations of the two kingdoms inevitable, and which clearly indicated the direction such change must take, if a solution at once satisfactory and permanent was to be attained. The events of William’s reign had made the continuance of the status quo impossible. The relations of the Scottish Parliament to a king of Scotland, who was also king of England and was fast becoming the bondservant of the English Parliament, had proved fatal to the independence of the smaller nation. Scotland might still fondly cling to the tradition of her separate existence as a free and equal kingdom, but she found herself forced in practice to allow her national policy to be controlled in the interests of a foreign nation—a nation that had shown itself unsympathetic and contemptuous and had proved the most bitter and the most successful of trade-rivals. The key to the relations of the two kingdoms must thus be sought in the nature of the bonds uniting their two separate legislatures to a common executive head—a head so potent to thwart the weaker, so powerless to resist the stronger. Mutual sympathy and a Reeling of interests and traditions in common might have minimized the evils resultant from defective constitutional machinery; but in 1707 the sentiment of nationality was not a bond of union but rather a knife that cut the island sharply into two hostile units. The political atmosphere was surcharged with feelings of jealousy, mutual repulsion, and ill will.
You can read the rest of this article at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...cles/union.htm
And so with reading these two articles you might be better informed about the Union of 1707.
The History of Northumberland
English county volumes have, as a rule, little attraction for students of Scottish history, but the history of Northumberland is an exception to this rule, and no English county can compete with it for close connexion with the national history north of the Tweed. In order to prove what a mere platitude this statement is, the Scottish antiquary has only to consult this volume. So long as the great repository of Durham continues to pour out its unrivalled store of early evidences, no worker in Scottish history can afford to shut his eyes to what the English side of the Borderland can teach him. In addition to these, the Register of St. Alban’s (Cott. MS. T ib. E. vi.), the mother house of the priory of Tynemouth, has been ransacked for charters bearing on the franchise with the most happy results for Scottish history. It would be tedious to enumerate particularly the scope of the editor’s diligence in this respect. The abstracts of early Scottish charters, embodied in the notes, are a sufficient indication of what has been accomplished.
While we give an overview of the publication we have made all 11 volumes available for download in pdf format. You can get to all this at: http://www.electricscotland.com/nort...land/index.htm
The Teaching of Scottish History in Schools
By P. Hume Brown
A Lecture delivered to the Glasgow Branch of the Educational Institute of Scotland and to the Eastern Branch of the Secondary Teachers’ Association of Scotland.
THOUGH some may regard it as a rash assumption, we may perhaps venture to take it for granted that history is a legitimate and desirable subject in a school curriculum. If, indeed, there is a human instinct for any kind of knowledge, it is surely the desire to know the history of our fellow-mortals. If in the case of primitive races curiosity is first directed to the superhuman forces that condition life, their next intellectual interest is in the traditions of their own origin and history. At the camp fire of the savage the deeds of his ancestors are an unfailing theme or’ interest, and there is striking testimony to the exactitude with which one generation of tribesmen hands on its tradition to the next. Instinctively, it would appear, the rudimentary society realizes that its continuous existence is dependent on the tenacity with which it clings to its own particular past. ‘We are what you were; we shall be what you are,’ ran the patriotic hymn of the Spartans, and the words express at once the essence of patriotism and the essential idea of history.
You can read the rest of this article at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...s/teaching.htm
Clan Colquhoun
Got in their*Spring 2012 newsletter*which includes information on a new reel created by the Black Watch in Afghanistan. I took the liberty of embedding a YouTube video of it on this page at
http://www.electricscotland.com/fami...spring2012.htm
Clan Currie
The Clan Currie Society is pleased to announce that their 2012 Clan Gathering and MacMhuirich Symposium will be held August 24-26, 2012 on the beautiful island of South Uist in Scotland's Outer Hebrides. There is a YouTube video about it at
Robert Burns Lives!
Edited by Frank Shaw
Fiddling with Known Burns: Burns and the Limits of Criticism By Murray Pittock
I am sitting at my desk admiring two great books published by Murray Pittock - Scottish and Irish Romanticism and Robert Burns in Global Culture. To study reviews of both books, I refer you to Chapters 97 (September 2, 2010) and 127 (November 30, 2011) in the index of Robert Burns Lives!. Both will make clear, in my opinion, that Murray Pittock is one of the top Burns scholars in the world.
Murray is one of an excellent and exciting group of Burns scholars at the University of Glasgow. It is a team of extremely talented men and women dedicated to seeing that Robert Burns regains his rightful place in literature. I can safely say, from my point of view as well as that of a £1 million pound windfall to the university’s Centre for Robert Burns Studies announced last year, that they will succeed in this endeavor. These University of Glasgow folks are, however, not alone in this quest. I am acquainted with other literary scholars at St Andrews, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and other colleges and universities in Scotland, as well as in the United States and Canada, who will no longer allow the long and lowly accepted status quo of Robert Burns to remain as we know it today. They are writing and seeking every chance they get to tell the world that Robert Burns will recapture his place in the academic community as a leader, not one who has been forgotten, overlooked or replaced in the annals of the Romantic era.
Books like the two mentioned above and those listed in Murray’s article below, along with some head turners to soon be published, The Cambridge Companion to Scottish Literature (20 critical studies), Scotland and the Nineteenth Century World (another collection of critical essays), and a revised Burns Encyclopedia, will help restore Burns to his literary greatness. The good news about these men and women is that their works will continue to press the theme that Burns belongs in the forefront of literature and that they will not be content for him to be seen only as a village poet, “the heaven-taught ploughman”.
Welcome back, Murray, you are always welcome to the pages of Robert Burns Lives! And a happy Fourth of July to one and all on both sides of the pond! (FRS: 7.4.12)
NOTE:
Murray Pittock is Bradley Professor of English Literature at the University of Glasgow and a co-editor of the Oxford Burns edition. He has run several funded Burns-related projects, including the 2009 Global Burns Network, and is the author of Scottish and Irish Romanticism (2008) and many other books: he has edited Robert Burns in Global Culture (2011) and The Reception of Robert Burns in Europe (forthcoming). You can read more about Burns and language in ‘To a Louse’ and other poems in Sergeant and Stafford, Burns and Other Poets (2012).
You can read this article at http://www.electricscotland.com/fami...s_lives143.htm
Other articles fro this series can be viewed at http://www.electricscotland.com/fami...rank/burns.htm
The 'Diary' of Sir Thomas Hope (1633 - 1645)
Lord Advocate (1616 - 1646)
OF all contemporary materials for historical study none are more valuable than those ‘human documents,’ Diaries and Letters. The Scottish national character for marked individuality has so seldom indulged in personal revelation of opinion and feeling that it is unwise to overlook the few specimens we have. Such neglect seems to have overtaken the 'Diary’ of Sir Thomas Hope. Published more than sixty years ago by the Bannatyne Club, historical writers have done little to popularise its merits. The editing of the volume gave no help in reading between the lines, though it was a great service even to put into print the very small and obscure writing of the MS., still preserved at Pinkie House by Sir Alexander Hope, the representative of the elder branch of the family founded by Sir Thomas. At first sight but a series of short, disconnected entries, the ‘Diary’ is found to throw a flood of light on the public events of what was one of the most momentous periods of British history. Besides, it reveals the time of an interesting character, his social and professional life in Edinburgh and in his rural retreat, his intellectual calibre, and his attitude to contemporary movements in Church and State.
You can read the rest of this article at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...icles/hope.htm
The Connexion between Scotland and Man
By Arthur W. Moore
OF the four countries adjacent to the Isle of Man Scotland is nearest, and has had perhaps the most intimate connexion with it. So close, indeed, is Nothin (Alban), as the Manxmen call it, that its Galloway coast is visible from Man on every clear day throughout the year.
You can read this article at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...ticles/man.htm
The Scottish 'Nation' at the University of Padua
By A. Francis Steuart
AFTER the thirteenth century the University in Italy to which both Scottish and English students were most indebted was the University of Padua. Bologna previously had been Alma Mater to a few of the travelling Scots, who entered the ‘Natio Anglica’ there, and of these Michael Scot, ‘the wizard', was, it is believed, one. When, however, the University of Padua was founded in 1222, during an eclipse of the older University, it attracted most of the representatives of the northern nations. At first at Padua the 'Natio Anglica’ included all inhabitants of Britain, English, Scots, and Irish alike, and in 1228, at the time when there was an abortive attempt to transfer the infant law university from Padua to Vercelli, we find that the ‘Natio Anglica’ among the Ultramontane ‘nations’ apparently existed, and that it was governed like the French and Norman ‘nations’ by a Rector.
You can read this article at http://www.electricscotland.com/history/italy/padua.htm
The Argyllshire Highlanders
The First Highland Regiment
WHEN King James vacated the throne of England and Scotland, and the Revolution of 1688 was an accomplished fact, William of Orange found himself confronted with a wax in Flanders, a war in Ireland, open mutiny amongst the troops in England, and an almost certain Jacobite insurrection in Scotland—a train of circumstances which necessitated an increase in the army. Amongst those who accompanied the new King to England was Archibald Campbell, who, since the execution of his father, the ninth Earl of Argyll in 1685, had been an exile in Holland, but had since been restored to the property and family dignities. To shew his gratitude to the new Government, and not without an eye to his own further interests, the new Earl, in view of the trouble in Scotland, proposed to raise a regiment of 600 men from among his tenants in the Western Highlands.
You can read this article at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...rgyllshire.htm
The Stirling Antiquary: Reprinted from "The Stirling Sentinel," 1888-1893
A collection like this shows what useful work a local newspaper can do. Here we have a most serviceable group of original and transferred articles mostly touching Stirlingshire. The index can be read and the book downloaded in pdf format at the foot of the page at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...hire/index.htm
Scottish Pewter Ware and Pewterers
By L. Ingleby Wood
This is an admirable book of its kind, well arranged, and excellently illustrated. The subject has a peculiar interest as a historical description of the rise and progress of an important industry, which, though now-obsolete, was once a recognised craft in all the principal towns of Scotland* Its applications in the domestic economy of our forefathers were many and various, and it had also a very considerable vogue in the ecclesiastical furnishings of Scottish churches. In these circumstances it is not surprising to find that the pewterers’ art had a development in Scotland which is of distinctively Scottish character and interest.
You can read more about this book and download a copy at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...les/pewter.htm
Early Scottish Charters prior to A.D. 1153: with notes and an index*
By Sir Archibald C. Lawrie (1905)
Sir Archibald Lawrie served his apprenticeship as a Record scholar lone ago. His name is associated with the most considerable task yet undertaken in Scotland in this branch of learning, the Index to the Acts of Parliament. In the present book, returning to the subject of those early labours, he gives us a work of reference, and an essay in criticism. To gather into one handy and sightly volume a corpus of documents hitherto scattered and in some cases not easily accessible, is a conception so excellent that even serious defects in execution would not be harshly judged. And on the whole the execution is fairly good. Corrections of text and notes, as well as additional Charters, could easily be indicated, but this is a task which every fit student of the book ought to perform for himself.
You can read this article and download the book at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...h_charters.htm
Dunottar and its Barons
By J. Crabb Watt
IN the course of examining some old family papers, the writer recently came upon certain accounts and inventories relating to a line of great noblemen of Scotland, the Keiths, Earn Marischal of Scotland. From these papers an interesting picture may be drawn of the domestic amenities and the equipment of their Castle of Dunnottar, situated on a rock nearly four acres in extent on the coast of The Meams, one mile south of Stonehaven. The direct line came to an end in the two greatest companions—or perhaps they ought to be called acquaintances, for they, at all events, were the soul of honour—of 'Pickle the Spy,’ namely, George Keith, the last Earl, the friend of Frederick the Great and correspondent of Voltaire, and James Keith, his brother, the celebrated Field Marshal of Prussia.
You can read this article at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...s/dunnotar.htm
The Use and Forms of Judicial Torture in England and Scotland
By R. D. Melville
THE employment of torture as an adjunct of criminal administration in both England and Scotland, although in common, indeed, with the rest of Europe, will ever remain as a dark red stain upon the annals of these countries, even while it possesses that morbid fascination which always clings around the tragic and the cruel, or any tale of human suffering. Its history has about it a living, human interest, which causes it to attract even while it repels, and the sympathies of modern humanity go out in mute and futile pity to those innumerable victims of human cruelty and superstition, while the nerves quiver to-day as we contemplate the awful agonies of those wretched beings immolated on the altar of a mistaken principle of justice.
You can read this article at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...es/torture.htm
Some Sidelights on the History of Montrose's Campaigns
By George Duncan
THE Red Book of Clanranald—a Gaelic volume notable in the Ossianic controversy—has been largely drawn on by Mr. Mark Napier and other writers on the subject of Montrose’s campaigns. The reference of these writers was to an inaccurate MS. translation, and, till quite recently, there had been no publication either of the original or of any translation, with the exception of a small portion of one of the translations which is included in the third volume of Mr. W. F. Skene's Celtic Scotland. In the Reliquiae Celticae of the late Rev. Dr. Cameron there will, however, now be found (vol. ii., p. 138) the greater portion not only of the contents of the Red Book, but also of those of another and more obscure volume known as the Black Book of Clanranald. The history of the Red Book has, as is well known, been matter of ancient controversy. The Black Book, on the other hand, is quite a modern discovery, and has never been referred to by the historians of Montrose’s campaigns. It was picked up by Mr. Skene about fifty years ago, among some old Irish MSS., at a book-stall in Dublin, and was by him restored to the present-day representative of its old possessors, the Macdonalds of Clanranald.
You can read this article at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...s/montrose.htm
The Mackintoshes and Clan Chattan
A review
The Mackintoshes and Clan Chattan. By A. M. Mackintosh, pp. xxiv, 566. Printed for the author, 1903.
The history of the Mackintoshes is important, even apart from other reasons, on account of their central position in the Highlands, and their close association for centuries with the town of Inverness. Like that of most of the clans, their origin is shrouded in much obscurity, but the author of this volume has spared no pains to make his information as interesting and reliable as possible. As early as 1880 he published a book on the same subject. This second edition is intended to represent the results of wider research and fuller knowledge. Favourably situated as the author has been for the purpose, he has endeavoured, as he tells, us, to present a correct history of the Clan Chattan generally, and of its component septs in particular. To this end he has carefully piloted his way (by the help of record and documentary evidence alone, disregarding or not insisting on the delusive lights of tradition, taking for granted no statements of family historians as to ancient events, and avoiding all temptation to speculations or guesses of his own, or to 'writing for writing’s sake.’
You can read more of this review and download a couple of books we found about them at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...es/chattan.htm
Thomas Dickson LL.D.
In memoriam by J. Balfour Paul
It is only fitting that some notice should be taken in the pages of the Scottish Historical Review of the demise of one to whom all students engaged in the investigation of the political, social, or family history of Scotland owe a deep debt of gratitude. Other men of eminence in the same field have passed away honoured with the usual column in the daily press, but no such memorial has been given to one who deserves in a very high degree to be remembered for his life’s work. It is perhaps only consonant with the character of the man that such should have been the case; but, on the other hand, it is but proper that some record should be made of one who did so much in the cause of historical knowledge.
You can read the rest of this article at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...es/dickson.htm
Miss Katherine Read
Court Paintress by A. Francis Steuart
THE eighteenth century giants of portrait painting, Hogarth, Hudson, Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Hoppner, are rather apt to make us forget a number of other minor workers who, though overshadowed by these Masters, left a great many paintings of great worth, which have hardly yet been appreciated at their right value. Among these minor painters is Katherine Read, some of whose portraits are frequently attributed to Reynolds himself. Her merit was much more properly estimated in her own time than it since has been. Smollett the historian speaks of her as Miss Read who ‘excelled the celebrated Rosalba in Portrait Painting,’ and Hayley in his Poetical Episdes wrote:
‘Let candid Jastice oar attention lead
To the soft Crayon of the graceful Read.’
It will therefore not be uninteresting to review the life of this forgotten paintress who was so much esteemed in her own day.
You can read this article at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...icles/read.htm
The Charitie of the Boxe
By E. Maxstone Graham
UPON a height in Strathearn, long stood the Parish Church of Gask. The oldest available record of this church was begun 233 years ago, and was continued for ten years. Year by year all through this document a continuous list of money received, and money spent in charity, discloses a state of affairs which, in the light of the present system of poor relief, seems primitive indeed. Moneys were collected every Sunday—boxed' according to the Session-Clerk—and during the week distributed. The Sunday congregation doubtless consisted wholly of peasants, who gave in charity out of a poverty that seems inconceivable in these days. The system was one of deliberately indiscriminate charity, and considering the claims of indigent parishioners, it is wonderful that any sums, however small, were forthcoming in aid of numberless applicants who had no connection with the parish.
You can read this article at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...icles/boxe.htm
The Earl's Ferry
By George Law
IN the time of John de Baliol, King of the Scots from 1292 to 1296, some Englishman wrote a tract which he called Brevis Descriptio Regni Scoiiae: and in it he mentions ‘Erlisferie’ and ‘Queneferie’ as the northern extremities of Lothian. This province was then wide enough to include the castles of Berwick, Dunbar, Edinburgh, and even Stirling; the abbeys of Jedburgh, Melrose, Roxburgh, Dryburgh, Kelso, Newbattle, and Holyrood; the priory of Coldingham ; and the nunneries of Berwick, Eccles, Coldstream, Haddington, and North Berwick. North of it and west of it was the Kingdom of ‘Scotland,’ in which the castles of Dumfries and Kirkcudbright, and the religious houses of Whithorn, Glenluce, Kilwinning, and Glasgow, were reckoned. Beyond the Firth of Forth was the ancient Pictish province or Kingdom of Fibh or Fife, with its great churches of Inchcolm, Dunfermline, Lindores, St. Andrews. To the south beyond Tweed was the North-Humber-land, part of the old Anglic Kingdom of Northumbria, which had withdrawn from both its ancient boundaries, Forth and Humber. The tract of 1292-6 seems to contain the first mention of the Earl’s Ferry, the most seaward ferry connecting Lothian and Fife. The ferry without doubt took its name from its being a franchise held by the Macduff's, earls of Fife, who appear on record in the twelfth century, and became extinct in the fourteenth.
You can read the rest of this article at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...earlsferry.htm
The Scottish Peerage
By J. H. Stevenson
FROM the day ‘quhan Alysander our king wes dede' down to the day when the Chancellor Lord of Seafield laid down his pen and exclaimed, ‘And there’s an end o’ an auld sang,’ the varied thread of Scottish story is mainly the history of a nobility which blended or opposed its ambitions in an endless succession of intrigues and feuds of which even the open wars of the country with the ‘auld enemy,' England, were too often but the opportunity or the result. No country, it has been said, stands so little indebted to its nobles as does Scotland. The saying may be false or true according as we determine wherein lies Scotland's main achievement.*I*think it false. The pride of Scottish history does not He in the patient upbuilding of a great democracy or the solution of constitutional problems, but rather in the exploits of its heroes in War; and its achievement has been the making of a people rather than a nation. While it is true that the Scottish magnates never united to extort a Magna Charta from the Crown, it is on the other hand also true that Scotland never saw its nobles combined to oppress its commons, nor its commons arrayed in form of war against its nobles. In all the blood-welding of this northern people a Wat Tyler or Jack Cade, a peasant war or a Jacquerie was unknown and impossible. And if there is anything in national sentiment, the deeds of Bruce and Randolph at Bannockburn, and the devotion of the eleven earls who died round their king at Flodden—in brief the valiant part played by her nobles in all her wars, is a service they performed to their country for all time.
You can read this article at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...es/peerage.htm
The Municipal Institutions of Scotland
By James D. Marwick
THERE seems to be no reason to doubt that, at a time anterior to any existing Scottish legislation, the little village communities which grew around Royal and Baronial Castles and Religious Houses, or on sites otherwise suitable, cultivated —with the sanction and largely for the benefit of their lords— such scanty trade as was then practicable. But their position was precarious. They were probably in a position of absolute villenage, and had no rights or privileges save such as the policy or caprice of their lords allowed. The protection they enjoyed was also burdened with heavy impositions. But in process of time the Sovereign and the more powerful nobles came to recognise it to be their interest to encourage the development of the little trading communities which had sprung up around them, and this they did by the concession of privileges in the form largely of monopolies and exclusive dealing. In the communities thus formed societies known as*hanses*or guilds were instituted, and the privileged members of these communities, in process of time, claimed the right to administer the affairs of the burgh in which they existed, to the exclusion of the humbler classes of craftsmen. But before this stage of development had been reached, it became obvious to the Sovereign and to the lords, lay and ecclesiastical, that the prosperity of the trading communities, established on their respective territories, conduced to their own advantage, and so it became customary for these communities to obtain farther concessions of privilege. In grants of these the Crown took the lead. The burghal communities established on the royal domains were specially privileged, and, in return for the advantages which they thus secured, the Crown received, in the shape of ferms or rents, tolls and customs, important financial advantages, and accessions of strength through the increase of an industrial vassalage. The baronial superiors, lay and ecclesiastical, of the burghal communities established on their territory, seem lo have followed the royal example, but the burghs of Regality and Barony which were formed under their authority, were subordinate, in rank, position, and privilege, to those burghs which held directly of the Crown.
You can read this article at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist.../municipal.htm
And finally...
Here is a wee joke found in our Rib Ticklers forum in our Community...
Sean is the pastor of a Church of England parish on the Northern Ireland/ Southern Ireland border and Patrick is the priest in the Roman Catholic Church across the road.*
One day they are seen together, erecting a sign into the ground, which says:*
TA END IS NEAR! TURN YERSELF AROUNT NOW*AFOR IT IS TOO LATE!*
As a car speeds past them, the driver leans out his window and yells, "Leave people alone, you Oirish religious nutters! We don't need your lectures."*
From the next curve they hear screeching tyres and a big splash.*
Shaking his head, Rev. Patrick says "Dat's da terd one dis mornin'."*
"Yaa," Pastor Sean agrees, then asks, "Do ya tink maybe da sign should just say, 'Bridge Out?'"
And that's all for now and hope you all have a great weekend.
Alastair