Some quite interesting facts about Scotland

Compiled by Anne Miller and John Mitchinson

4:27PM GMT 14 Nov 2012

There are two seasons in Scotland: June and winter.

Billy Connolly

Not Scottish

Bagpipes, haggis, kilts, whisky and tartan: none of these originates in Scotland. Bagpipes are from Asia Minor; haggis was eaten in Ancient Greece. Kilts and whisky are an Irish invention. Even the Scots themselves were an Irish tribe who moved to what the Romans had called Caledonia in the fifth or sixth century AD.

“Tartan” is first recorded in English in 1454; it comes from the French tiretaine, meaning “strong, coarse fabric” (from the Latin tyrius, “cloth of Tyre”). In medieval Scotland, “tartan” merely meant woven (as opposed to knitted) cloth. Plaid, now used interchangeably with tartan, was originally the Gaelic word for a blanket.

By the late 16th century, Highland weavers were producing their own tartan cloths known as “setts”. What drove the patterns of the setts was the taste and skill of the weaver, the availability of dyes and the quality of the local wool. It had nothing to do with clan identity.

Scottish

Scotland has given to the world adhesive stamps, bicycle pedals, the breech-loading rifle, Bovril, chloroform, colour photography, a cure for malaria, the decimal point, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the fountain pen, fingerprinting, the hypodermic syringe, the lawnmower, lime cordial, marmalade, motor insurance, the MRI scanner, postmarks, the pneumatic tyre, radar, the reflecting telescope, savings banks, the speedometer, the raincoat, Tarmac, Universal Standard Time, the vacuum flask and, of course, chicken tikka masala, which was invented in Glasgow in the late Sixties.

Scottish independence

The referendum on Scottish independence will take place just months after the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn, in which the Scots routed the English on June 23 1314. Edward II led a huge force of perhaps 16,000 men north of the border; fewer than 5,000 survived.

The Scottish Conservatives have succumbed to a similar rout. From their heyday in 1955, when they won 50.1 per cent of the vote and 36 out of 71 seats, they have inexorably declined to such an extent that currently Scotland has more pandas (two) than Conservative MPs (one).

Jacobites

The last major push for Scottish independence was the Jacobite rebellion of the early 18th century. The Jacobites took their name from “Jacobus”, the Latin version of James (after James II of England had been replaced by his daughter Mary and son-in-law William of Orange). After James II died the focus shifted to his son, James Stuart – “The Old Pretender” – and then to his son, Bonnie Prince Charlie, the “Young” one.

Scotland vs. England

Jacobite mythology depicts the Battle of Culloden in 1746 as a Scotland versus England affair but it was, for the most part, Scotland versus Scotland. There were more Scots in the army which defeated Bonnie Prince Charlie than there were in his own army. As well as three battalions of Lowland Scots, the Hanoverian army under General Cumberland included a well-trained battalion of Highland Scots from Clan Munro, a big contingent of the Highland Clan Campbell’s militia and a large number of Highland foot soldiers from Clans MacKay, Ross, Gunn and Grant fighting under English officers. Three-quarters of the Jacobite army were Highlanders, the rest Lowland Scots, with a small contingent of troops from France and Ireland.

Lost colony

One of the last sovereign acts of Scotland was to invade the Panamanian isthmus of Darién. The scheme was dreamt up by William Paterson, the Scot who founded the Bank of England, who wanted to establish a trading post in Central America as a link between the riches of the Pacific and the trading nations of Western Europe. Patterson raised £400,000 in six months, a vast sum equal to a third of the total collective assets of the nation. Almost every Scotsman who could put his name to £5 invested. In 1698, 1,200 settlers left Leith. They were woefully underprepared and ill informed. The land was an un-farmable, mosquito-infested swamp. The colony barely lasted a year and only 300 people made it home. This was a disaster for Scotland that shattered morale and left the economy almost £250,000 in debt. Seven years later the country signed the 1707 Act of Union and accepted a political merger with England and Wales.

Scot (not): Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Sylvester Severino Maria Stuar wearing Royal Stewart (sic) tartan
Photo: ALAMY

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