My Heart’s in the Highlands – Part 1

The author on the trail
[September 2, 2019]

Some history before hiking

By James T. Carney

The Scottish Highlands have always been considered the heart of Scotland even though only a small percentage of Scotland’s current population of some 6 million live there. About 600,000 live in Glasgow, Scotland’s biggest city, and most live in the Lowlands of the South. Who are the Scots and how do they relate to the rest of the British?
    The British Isles – Great Britain (the largest island) and Ireland and over 6,000 smaller islands – were settled over 2,000 years ago by the Celts, a group of people originating in Central Europe and migrating to modern-day France and Switzerland and the British Isles.

    The Celts were only one of the invaders to reach the British Isles. They were followed by the Romans, with an exploratory expedition led by Julius Caesar landing along the Thames in the 50s BC, and a conquering expedition in 43 AD. The Romans conquered most of Great Britain (modern England and Wales) and even, for some twenty years, occupied the Scottish Lowlands before receding back to Hadrian’s Wall, which had been built starting in 122 AD in one of the narrowest parts of Great Britain. Romanized Celtic Great Britain fell to the Germanic Angles, Saxons, and Jutes after Roman power waned in the 5th century AD. The Germanic tribes seized the eastern part of the island in the 5th and 6th centuries and expanded westward, absorbing the western part – except for Wales and Scotland – over the course of succeeding centuries.
    The southeastern part of Scotland was conquered by the Angles but was separated from the rest of England by the Viking invasions, beginning in the 9th century. The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms ultimately united – particularly when faced with these invasions – to form England, separate from Wales and Scotland. Scotland became a unitary kingdom under David I in the 12th century when he combined the Pictish lands (occupied by the original Celts), the Scottish lands (occupied by the Scots, who were an Irish Celtic tribe), and the Anglicized southeastern Scotland. The Middle Ages were characterized by constant fighting along the border between the English and the Scots, with the Scots frequently having the backing of the French.

King James VI of Scotland/
King James I of England

    Scotland’s connection with England in the 17th century came from two things: One. Scotland became overwhelmingly Protestant (Presbyterian) in the 16th century. (This was a determining force even though the Scottish Presbyterians held the English Anglican Church in total contempt, thinking it to be as bad as the Church of Rome.) Two. King James VI of Scotland acceded to the throne of England as King James I of England. The inevitable union between the two countries occurred in 1707 with the Acts of Union. Although the Scottish Highlands in particular held a romantic affection for James III (“the Old Pretender”) and his son, Bonnie Prince Charlie, they had more limited support in the Lowlands and less in England, where Stuart supporters were happy to toast the “King over the Water” but had no intention of turning out and getting killed when the Bonnie Prince showed up. After the Battle of Culloden in 1745, where the English won a decisive victory over the clans, Scotland was reasonably happily united to England in the United Kingdom of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland – an entity that was sundered in 1920 by the creation of the Irish Free State. Scots were always extremely loyal to the United Kingdom and played a disproportionate role in the British army. The Black Watch (3rd Battalion, Royal Regiment of Scotland) was just one of a number of Scottish regiments that became famous for their feats of valor.
    Now, Scotland, unlike England, has always been a poor country with a short growing season and little fertile arable land. In the 18th century, the Scottish lairds launched the Clearances, which moved their tenants (and fellow clansmen) off their subsistence farms so that the land could be used for sheep, which certainly are well suited for the Scottish countryside. Anyone who remembers the depiction in the 1995 film Braveheart of the division in interests between the Scottish nobility and the Scottish people would hardly be surprised to learn of the Highland Clearances. 18th century Scotland was in many ways an economic disaster, where the most inviting sight, according to Samuel Johnson’s biographer, James Boswell, was the “high road to England.”

Balmoral Castle

    All of that changed in the 19th century due to three individuals: Sir Walter Scott, whose novels created a romantic picture of Scotland; Robert Burns, whose poems (along with Scott’s) helped created Scottish national pride; and Queen Victoria, whose establishment of an elaborate palace (country house) at Balmoral in the Highlands made Scotland a popular tourist destination.
    The decline of Great Britain as a world power has led to restiveness in what one used to call the “Celtic Fringe” – Ireland, Scotland, and Wales – and encouraged the development of local nationalism. These areas, while united with England, had never become English but rather remained the home for the indigenous Celtic population who did not for the most part marry with their English compatriots. In recent years a clamor has arisen for independence in Scotland, which doesn’t make much sense, because all the Celtic lands in Great Britain are heavily subsidized by England. The short-sighted refusal of the English to remain in the European Union – a position bitterly opposed throughout the Celtic Fringe, who wanted to stay in the EU – has reignited in Scotland the demand for Scottish independence.

Copyright © 2020 by James T. Carney