The Times: Eminent historian debunks Scottish history as largely fabrication
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This interested me as I recently had to write an essay on the Anglo-Scottish Borders from the late medieval to Tudor period, and have come across a lot of myth there... Mainly though that was to do with the nature of the borders, the origins of Anglo-Scots rivalry, and The Border Reivers.
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From Times Online
May 18, 2008
Eminent historian debunks Scottish history as largely fabrication
A book by the late Hugh Trevor-Roper and due to be published five years after his death argues that Scottish history is based on myths and falsehoods
Stuart MacDonald
SCOTLAND’S history is weaved from a “fraudulent” fabric of “myths and falsehoods”, according to an explosive new study by one of the world’s most eminent historians.
The Invention of Scotland: Myth and History, is the last book, and one of the most controversial, written by the late Hugh Trevor-Roper.
Now, five years after his death, the book is to be published at one of the most pivotal periods in Scottish political history.
It will provide an inflammatory contribution to the constitutional debate as it debunks many claims upon which the argument for independence is founded.
In the book, Trevor-Roper claims that Scotland’s literary and political traditions, which claim to date back to the Roman invasion of Scotland in the first century AD, are in fact based on myth and were largely invented in the 18th century.
Even the kilt, the ultimate sartorial symbol of Scottishness, was invented by an Englishman in the 1700s. The Declaration of Arbroath, presented to the then Pope in 1320 to confirm Scotland’s status as an independent state with an ancient constitution, is dismissed as being loaded with inaccuracies. It contains information on “imaginary” kings of ancient Scotland, created by historians, to provide false evidence that the Scots arrived north of the border from Ireland in the third century AD, before the Picts.
Scots are also accused of fabricating their own literary tradition, culminating in the publication of The Works of Ossian. These were claimed to have been translated from ancient sources in Gaelic about the lives of Celtic heroes, but have long been suspected of being a figment of the imagination of James Macpherson, the 18th-century Scottish poet who claimed to have translated them.
Trevor-Roper also declares that when the Scots were looking for a writer and poet to rival Shakespeare, following the Act of Union in 1707, they found nothing, leading to ancient writings being forged and passed off as Scottish literature.
“It was natural that Scots, seeking compensation for the end of their independent history and politics, should turn to discover and appreciate their native literature. Unfortunately when they looked for it, they could not find it. There was none.
“In Scotland, it seems to me, myth has played a far more important part in history than it has in England.
“Indeed, I believe the whole history of Scotland has been coloured by myth; and that myth, in Scotland, is never driven out by reality, or by reason, but lingers on until another myth has been discovered to replace it.”
The myth of the Highland dress was perpetuated by historians to provide a symbol by which Scots could be universally identified, as well as to support the country’s textile industry.
Trevor-Roper says the traditional dress of the Highlanders was a long Irish shirt and a cloak or plaid, which only the higher classes had woven in stripes and colours creating tartan.
The kilt did not, Trevor-Roper claims, come into being until the mid-18th century, when it was created by Thomas Rawlinson, who was an English quaker from Lancashire.
Rawlinson decided to shorten belted plaids after workmen in the Highlands, where he was staying, said they were uncomfortable.
But Michael Fry, the Scottish historian, said: “I don’t think Trevor-Roper is a very reliable guide to Scottish history. Lots of things emerge in history and just because we can’t pin down their origins it doesn’t follow from that \ everything about it is phoney. There is a distinguished school of medieval Scottish literature, and poetry in something that is recognisably Scots was being written in the 14th century.
“Tartan was worn in Scotland in the Middle Ages . . . and it just so happened that there was an evolution where this pattern, which was common in many parts of Europe, became distinctive in Scotland. His claims about the kilt prove absolutely nothing at all about the history of the dress.”
Related Links
* The fantasy of Scotland's history
This interested me as I recently had to write an essay on the Anglo-Scottish Borders from the late medieval to Tudor period, and have come across a lot of myth there... Mainly though that was to do with the nature of the borders, the origins of Anglo-Scots rivalry, and The Border Reivers.
~~~
From Times Online
May 18, 2008
Eminent historian debunks Scottish history as largely fabrication
A book by the late Hugh Trevor-Roper and due to be published five years after his death argues that Scottish history is based on myths and falsehoods
Stuart MacDonald
SCOTLAND’S history is weaved from a “fraudulent” fabric of “myths and falsehoods”, according to an explosive new study by one of the world’s most eminent historians.
The Invention of Scotland: Myth and History, is the last book, and one of the most controversial, written by the late Hugh Trevor-Roper.
Now, five years after his death, the book is to be published at one of the most pivotal periods in Scottish political history.
It will provide an inflammatory contribution to the constitutional debate as it debunks many claims upon which the argument for independence is founded.
In the book, Trevor-Roper claims that Scotland’s literary and political traditions, which claim to date back to the Roman invasion of Scotland in the first century AD, are in fact based on myth and were largely invented in the 18th century.
Even the kilt, the ultimate sartorial symbol of Scottishness, was invented by an Englishman in the 1700s. The Declaration of Arbroath, presented to the then Pope in 1320 to confirm Scotland’s status as an independent state with an ancient constitution, is dismissed as being loaded with inaccuracies. It contains information on “imaginary” kings of ancient Scotland, created by historians, to provide false evidence that the Scots arrived north of the border from Ireland in the third century AD, before the Picts.
Scots are also accused of fabricating their own literary tradition, culminating in the publication of The Works of Ossian. These were claimed to have been translated from ancient sources in Gaelic about the lives of Celtic heroes, but have long been suspected of being a figment of the imagination of James Macpherson, the 18th-century Scottish poet who claimed to have translated them.
Trevor-Roper also declares that when the Scots were looking for a writer and poet to rival Shakespeare, following the Act of Union in 1707, they found nothing, leading to ancient writings being forged and passed off as Scottish literature.
“It was natural that Scots, seeking compensation for the end of their independent history and politics, should turn to discover and appreciate their native literature. Unfortunately when they looked for it, they could not find it. There was none.
“In Scotland, it seems to me, myth has played a far more important part in history than it has in England.
“Indeed, I believe the whole history of Scotland has been coloured by myth; and that myth, in Scotland, is never driven out by reality, or by reason, but lingers on until another myth has been discovered to replace it.”
The myth of the Highland dress was perpetuated by historians to provide a symbol by which Scots could be universally identified, as well as to support the country’s textile industry.
Trevor-Roper says the traditional dress of the Highlanders was a long Irish shirt and a cloak or plaid, which only the higher classes had woven in stripes and colours creating tartan.
The kilt did not, Trevor-Roper claims, come into being until the mid-18th century, when it was created by Thomas Rawlinson, who was an English quaker from Lancashire.
Rawlinson decided to shorten belted plaids after workmen in the Highlands, where he was staying, said they were uncomfortable.
But Michael Fry, the Scottish historian, said: “I don’t think Trevor-Roper is a very reliable guide to Scottish history. Lots of things emerge in history and just because we can’t pin down their origins it doesn’t follow from that \ everything about it is phoney. There is a distinguished school of medieval Scottish literature, and poetry in something that is recognisably Scots was being written in the 14th century.
“Tartan was worn in Scotland in the Middle Ages . . . and it just so happened that there was an evolution where this pattern, which was common in many parts of Europe, became distinctive in Scotland. His claims about the kilt prove absolutely nothing at all about the history of the dress.”
Related Links
* The fantasy of Scotland's history