Innholdsfortegnelse for March-April 2022 i History Scotland

With most of winter behind us, thoughts turn to the warmer months and the chance to get out and about to historic sites, archives and museums once again. And even though Covid-19 restrictions look as if they’ll be with us for a while yet, a flick through the pages of this edition of History Scotland shows that research and discoveries still continue. In this issue, we discover how a lockdown walk led to a fascinating discovery about Bridge of Allan in the Ice Age. We also take a new look at long-held beliefs with fresh research on the role of the Vikings in Scotland’s story, and a compelling theory that the first Scottish Enlightenment may actually have started decades before historians originally believed. Enjoy the issue and do sign up…

What – and where – was the Scottish Enlightenment? For the past 50 years, scholars have located it in Edinburgh, in the elegant drawing rooms of the New Town, where Adam Smith and James Boswell held forth; in the book stalls of the Old Town, where one might find David Hume or the historian William Robertson in search of a longed-for volume; or in the bustling halls of the University of Edinburgh, where the philosopher Dugald Stewart and the physician Alexander Monro lectured. According to this story, the whole sprawling body of Auld Reekie formed the epicentre of Enlightenment in Scotland. In my new book, The First Scottish Enlightenment, I make a bold but simple claim: this story is false. Or, rather, this story is true, but only so far…

Old Ways New Roads: Travels in Scotland 1720-1832 Edited by John Bonehill, Anne Dulau Beveridge and Nigel Leask Birlinn, 2021 240 pages Paperback, £20.00 ISBN: 9781780276670 The Covid-19 pandemic has forced many people to change their holiday plans. Instead of jetting off to France, Spain or further afield, holidaymakers have limited their horizons to the British Isles, especially the countryside. For many Scots, this has meant a chance to acquaint themselves with the remoter parts of their country, and to enjoy its spectacular scenery and landscapes. But in becoming the latest travellers to take the road to the isles, they are in many ways rediscovering Scotland using the same routes that the country’s first tourists did. The contrast between old and new is at the heart of Old Ways New…

Elsewhere in this issue (page 20) I discuss the vibrant and distinctive culture of Scotland’s northeast - ‘Scotland beyond the mountains’. While the northeast has had a publication society specifically dedicated to its literary and historical legacy - the now-defunct Spalding Club – the Scottish History Society has also been instrumental in publishing that legacy and laying the groundwork for modern reassessments of north-eastern culture. Indeed, one of the first works published by the society was a spectacular example of that culture poised between Humanism and Enlightenment: James Philip’s Grameid. The Grameid has been described by Murray Pittock as ‘the last major attempt at a Latin epic written in the British Isles’ and is a five-book, several hundred page description of the revolution of 1688 in the style of classical…

Dr John R Barrett is a professional archivist, independent historical researcher and archaeologist, now pursuing these interests chiefly as a determined amateur. His publications include historical fiction for young readers; books and articles on archives, archaeology, landscape and local history; and editions of two major sources for the Covenanter era in Moray. On page 9, John explores the aggressive efforts made by kings of scots in the 12th and 13th centuries to entrench their authority across Scotland through the creation of burghs, particularly in the traditionally independent province of Moray. Dr Kelsey Jackson Williams is a lecturer in early modern literature at the University of Stirling. He studies the cultural history of Scotland, from the Renaissance to the 19th century. In the first of a two-part series (page 20) Kelsey…

The four roundels are said to have come from a house in Blyth’s Close, in the heart of Edinburgh’s Old Town, where Marie de Guise lived from around 1543 to 1554. One carries the combined coats of arms of James and Marie, later used by their daughter Mary Queen of Scots herself. On 8 December 1542, Mary Queen of Scots was born at Linlithgow Palace. Her father, James V, died just six days later, leaving her mother, Marie de Guise, to safeguard her future. Her parents had married in June 1538 at St Andrews Cathedral, in a liaison intended to secure the ‘auld alliance’ of Scotland with France against England and Henry VIII. The imagery associated with the marital union can be seen in an armorial roundel which carries the…

Vol 22.2 May/June 2022 On sale: 9 April Allan Ramsay’s The Gentle Shepherd With a new scholarly edition imminent, we consider the making and legacy of Allan Ramsay’s greatest play, The Gentle Shepherd. Plague returns to Glasgow We explore the little-known outbreak of plague that ravaged Scotland’s biggest city in 1900-01. The police and the royal air force in wartime Berwickshire World War II brought rural Berwickshire into closer contact with the RAF than ever before. What implications did this have for the county’s small and thinly-manned police force? PLUS… WWII air raid archaeology excavation Audubon’s Birds of America exhibition: curator preview The provenance of the Good sir brooch GUARANTEE YOUR COPY Join History Scotland, never miss an issue and save money on the cover price! See our latest UK…

Hidden in Greyfriars kirkyard in Edinburgh stands a grave marker to a man known to many from different circles. There are the Harry Potter fans seeking a glimpse of his name; the historians tutting at the large groups of tourists destroying the grass and monuments; and the die-hard fans, those who truly know the nature of this literary hero. This is the gravesite of poet William Topaz McGonagall, ‘Knight of the White Elephant of Burma’, better known as the worst poet in the English language. The text beneath his name at the gravesite reads ‘Poet and tragedian’. That’s because what McGonagall is most famous for, is being terrible. His poetry wasn’t great, his rhyming patterns were forced and almost childlike. A great example is from his most famous poem The…

Illegitimacy in Medieval Scotland, 1100-1500 Susan Marshall Boydell & Brewer, 2021 264 pages Hardback, £50.00 ISBN: 9781783275885 This book is the first full-length exploration of bastardy in medieval Scotland from the 11th to the 15th centuries. Susan Marshall steers us through the waters of how illegitimacy was defined, which was not as straightforward as one might think. Parents could potentially legitimise their child by marrying after the birth, so you could be born a bastard, but might not remain a bastard. There were detailed explanations in canon law of who was and was not illegitimate, suggesting that illegitimacy was not unusual. The ramifications of being, or having a bastard reached to the inheritance of lands and the royal succession. The Church held that unmarried parents might legitimise their children and…

Congratulations on your appointment. As we look ahead to the library’s centenary, what is your vision for National Library of Scotland in 2025? The vision is the National Library’s vision for its hundredth year – certainly not just mine. We want to carry the culture we look after to the world, especially of course to all of Scotland. Do you think that library users expect more, or perhaps something different, compared to users of the 20th century? We hope they expect more – virtual access to the collections has to make them more available – but also we need actively to tell everyone what riches we have so that they know what can be asked for. What items from the collections interest you the most? As a literary scholar with…

Glasgow Cathedral is one of Scotland’s top tourist attractions, and prior to the pandemic, the building was attracting over 400,000 visitors per year. The Friends is a non-denominational charity which aims to ‘improve the adornment and furnishings of the Cathedral’ and to encourage research into its history. The chairman of the Friends, architectural historian Dr James Macaulay, had the idea of producing an anniversary volume tracing the history of the society and collecting together essays on various aspects of the cathedral. The result is a new volume titled Where Mortal and Immortal Meet, edited by Dr. Andrew G. Ralston, with sixteen chapters covering the development of the cathedral from the time of St Mungo up to the 20th century. The RRP is £29 but, thanks to a special arrangement with…

Over 1,000 years ago, on an island in the Clyde Firth, a child was doodling on a slate. The drawing was of a man with wild long hair and a sword, striding toward an oared vessel. He is leading another figure from a chain, a man with a comically large beard, his hands bound and held aloft. Hanging from the bearded man’s wrists is a box-like object – padlocked manacles, or a house-shaped reliquary? Either way, the scene is unmistakeable: a pirate and his men making off with an elderly hostage back to a longship. This was a child’s-eye view of a Viking raid on a monastery. Not long afterwards, a slate of a different kind was made at Inchmarnock. This was a small, delicately-carved grave marker in the shape…

ONLINE EVENTS Bank records in Scotland, 5 March This Zoom talk for Manchester and Lancashire Family History Society is by Sian Yates, archivist for the Museum on the Mound. Her presentation will centre on the banking records that exist for Lloyds Bank. £3/free entry for society members. Book at https://scot.sh/banks The Peebles Hoard, 17 March Join Peeblesshire Archaeological Society and Emily Freeman, Treasure Trove Manager at National Museums Scotland, to learn more about the Bronze age Peebles hoard, discovered in 2020. Book at https://scot.sh/peebles Little Bruach Caoruinn, 6 April Professor Niall Logan tells the story of this settlement and its survival from forestation and harvesting. An online talk from Loch Ard History Group. £4 for non-members. Book at www.slhf.org/member-event/little-bruach-caoruinn ONSITE EVENTS Scottish stained glass: a mirror to the world, until…

Researchers at the University of Stirling have been working in recent months to create an oral history archive of staff and student interviews about life during the coronavirus pandemic. History lecturer Dr Stephen Bowman, Scottish Political Archive archivist Sarah Bromage, and assistant archivist Rosie Al-Mulla received funding for the project from the university’s Vice-Chancellor’s Fund and are currently conducting interviews with staff across the institution. They soon hope to invite students to participate both as interviewers and interviewees. The oral history interviews will be added to the Coronavirus Pandemic Archive in the University’s Archives and Special Collections. Here, the team explain more about the project and discuss their experiences of carrying out the interviews. WHAT MOTIVATED YOU TO START THIS PROJECT? Rosie: I don’t think I’ve ever lived through something…

‘ONCE UPON A TIME A RICH MAN HAD THREE DAUGHTERS AND ASKED EACH ONE HOW MUCH THEY LOVED HIM. THE FIRST SAID, AS MUCH AS LIFE; THE SECOND, AS MUCH AS THE WORLD; THE THIRD, AS MUCH AS MEAT NEEDS SALT…’THE FAIRYTALE OF CAP O’RUSHES Jean Gordon is best remembered in Scottish history for being the first wife of the notorious earl of Bothwell: Jean divorced her husband so that Bothwell could marry Mary Queen of Scots, a disastrous marriage that contributed greatly to Mary’s downfall. However, there is much more to Jean’s story – including her perhaps surprising involvement as a woman in charge of the development and management of the salt industry and associated coal mining in the highlands, at a time when many people considered the far…

Explore a selection of digital history guides in the History Scotland store: https://scot.sh/hsdownload Edited by Dr Martha McGill reviews@historyscotland.com Performing Scottishness: Enactment and Scottish Identities Ian Brown Palgrave MacMillan, 2020 288 pages Hardback £64.99/paperback £44.99 ISBN: 9783030394066 The work of Ian Brown, professor emeritus in drama at Kingston University and honorary senior research fellow in Scottish literature at the University of Glasgow, has been widely published. His topical book Performing Scottishness is the product of his experience and research over a number of years. It consists of eleven chapters, ranging from historical material on the 1320 declaration of Arbroath, to cultural performances of Scottishness in language, literature, television and theatre. As well as end-of-chapter notes with sources and references, the book offers a comprehensive bibliography and index. It is available in e-book and…

Empire and emancipation: Scottish and Irish Catholics at the Atlantic Fringe, 1780-1850 By S. Karly Kehoe Published by University of Toronto Press £56.50 ISBN: 9781487541071 Empire and Emancipation considers the British empire as a vehicle for the growth of Irish and Scottish Catholic middle classes within its colonial fringes in the north Atlantic. This book will be useful to historians of the Catholic Church, Ireland, and the British empire, as its claims will ‘certainly cause considerable historical debate’. William Burrell: A Collector’s Life By Martin Bellamy and Isobel MacDonald Published by Birlinn £16 ISBN 9781780277608 This new biography is based on recent research, full access to the Burrell archive and in-depth knowledge of the collection. The authors take a ‘candid and considered’ view of whoWilliam Burrell the man was, what…