The Scottish Reformation of the 17^th century was at times brutal, destructive and reactionary; and yet, for the most part it was liberating and enlightening. The new church, the Kirk, established poorhouses in every parish, engaged the local population in clerical affairs and brought the Bible and Sermon down to serve the people. The Church of Scotland has a Calvinist doctrine, and at the heart of this theology is the belief that faith is a personal covenant with the Almighty and an understanding of the gospels and laws of the Old Testament. Thus, education stood as a central pillar of the Kirk. It would have unforeseen consequences.

John Knox – Father of the Scottish Reformation

It was a key principal of the new regime that everyone could read the Bible, and so a school was established in virtually every parish in Scotland. As a result, children in Scotland would throughout the 18^th and 19^th centuries receive a full education until the age of 14; something that was completely unheard off across Europe at that time. By 1800 over 75% of all Scots were literate, the highest rate on earth. What the Church hadn’t taken into account was that people would read books other than the Bible; they did, and they ate up literature, mathematics, philosophy, classical texts and humanities with a voracious appetite. Our unique universal education policy laid the foundation for the Scottish Enlightenment.

It took more than education to change Scotland though, it took money as well. Scotland was historically one of the poorest nations in Europe; a problem compounded by an unfavourable climate, and a dearth of good agricultural land. Yet, the Scots are hard working, and following the Treaty of Union with England in 1707 new agricultural techniques arrived into the country, and Lowland Scotland went through a rapid agrarian revolution. Like the Highland Clearances that followed a century later, there was a large population shift, as farming became less labour intensive and smaller units were merged into larger ones. But, for the farmers and the markets they served, it was boom time; and a new middle class began to emerge.

The money being generated, and the wealth flowing across the border also helped to finance new innovation and entrepreneurship. Opportunities in England’s overseas colonies was also breeding a burgeoning merchant class; slowly at first, but then like a hare out of the trap Scotland’s economy blossomed like the heathland being converted to farms across the nation. However, many of these farmers, especially in Ayrshire, around Glasgow and in Fife never realised the untapped wealth their fields covered – a new revolution was coming and like the Reformation before it, it would change the country forever.

The City of Glasgow was well placed on the Clyde to trade with the colonies of North America; and by the mid 1700s was the key tobacco and sugar port in the British Isles. This made the mercantile class very rich indeed, but more was to come. As well as trading with the world, it would be here on the Clyde the world’s shipping would be built. In addition huge coal reserves and iron deposits were discovered across the Central Belt. Forges, steelworks, factories, mills and all sorts of industries sprung up and thrived from Ayr in the south to Dundee in the east. By 1850 Scotland had become the Engine Room of the British Empire. It was a remarkable transformation.

The cities also provided a home for the many in the countryside who couldn’t find work at home, but conditions were grim. Places like the Gorbals in Glasgow or the Hilltown area of Dundee were among the worst slums in Europe – the Gorbals would be forever etched in the national psyche as the epitome of horrific housing and poverty. Still, they poured in, fuelling the Industrial Revolution as much as the coal, steel, ships or jute they were working with. Edinburgh too had its slums and industrial heart, but nothing like Glasgow; and the Scottish capital has long since drawn its wealth and employment opportunities from the service industry.

It was here that the new finance available was sown into something very different, and the ‘Athens of the North’ would become the fulcrum of the Enlightenment. Throughout the late 18^th and all of the 19^th centuries, it would be greatest intellectual seat in Europe; and as the money poured in on the back of all the philosophical advancements so a strong banking sector developed. It was here that Scotland’s special education system perhaps shone the brightest. Yet, across the nation, that great gift of learning was paying dividends: from Watt’s steam engine, and Adam Smith’s economic theories; from the poems of Robert Burns to the medical advancements pioneered by the likes of Joseph Lister. These were gifts that Scotland would export around the world as the British Empire grew to cover a quarter of the globe.

The River Clyde crashes over the Bonnington and Corra Linn waterfalls with an incredible force, a power that industrialists had long coveted. In 1786, one of them, David Dale and his son-in-law Robert Owen took the strength of the river and built a set of new mills in the valley bellow the old medieval town of Lanark. Unlike the slave drivers in Glasgow, these two had a more utopian vision of how a workforce should be treated. New Lanark was, from the very beginning, meant to be something different and more socially enlightened. Owen was the real driving force in this project, a man of real philanthropic ideals. He would take hundreds of families from the slums and bring them to the leafy Clyde valley, and give them a proper life, and from that good, hard workers. It was, and is a fantastic concept. The craziest part is that it worked. Owen even bought out his less enlightened partners to pursue his welfare programmes.

The Mills and Houses of New Lanark

It became a model village, and enterprise; and the great and good from rags to royalty came to see it in action. It was more often than not an eye-opening experience. When the Mills finally shut in 1968, a number of ventures worked to keep the essence of the site intact; and today both the village and the falls are among Scotland’s best kept secret attractions. It remains a fantastic testament to our nation’s industrial spirit and enlightened zeal.

Written by David McNicoll, owner of Highland Experience USA – and for anyone interested in our heritage. www.highlandexperience-usa.com

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From Ayrshire, the land of Robert Burns, across the Central Belt – through Glasgow, Edinburgh and Fife to Dundee – accents are variations on the Lowlands Scots Dialect. There are those who will argue that Scots is a language of its own, separate from English; and while I see this, to me it simply a tongue that developed from the same root and a variation on a theme. Even those who claim to speak it this is not what was taught to them at school. Scotland has her own independent educational system, which is broad-based, and the national curriculum imposes Maths and English as compulsory subjects to the age of 16. The English taught is that of Received Pronunciation or ‘Proper English’ (whatever that might be). Thus, ‘English’ is the written language of Scotland, despite its distinct vernacular.

Lowland Scots has several distinct features both in dialect and accent – the rolling of the Rs, and the famous Glottal Stop: “Scawe-land” rather than Scot-land, “Buh-ur” rather than but-er, and so on. The ‘helpful vowel’ or Svarabhakti is often employed – wur-um and wur-uld for worm and world. These and a large range of words unused elsewhere in the English speaking world (e.g. – ken for know; thrawn for stubborn; drouthy for thirsty; etc.) make the accent instantly recognisable – and account for the stereotype. Outwith the Central Belt, the diversity of the accent becomes even more pronounced, with striking differences in both diction and enunciation.

Perhaps the most striking of Scottish accents is that of the Doric, spoken essentially in Aberdeenshire. The term ‘Doric’ is a reference to the rough speech of the Spartan people (to Athenian ears), and came to mean ‘rustic’ or ‘rural’. One of the most noticeable differences from Lowland Scots is the use of ‘f’ instead of ‘whi’ in words like what, who (pronounced fit and fa’ respectively). Doric speakers share most of the dialectal words used further south, but have plenty others of their own – ‘louns’ for boys, and ‘queans’ for girls being well known examples.

The small village of Auldearn near Nairn is one of Scotland’s linguistic boundaries, where the Doric of the east switches to the lilt and nasal accent of the Inverness area – itself an extension of the Highland dialects of Strathspey, the Great Glen and Easter Ross. The change is not just in phonology, but in grammar and structure. In many ways the language constructs of Highland English mirror that of the Southeast of England, and the Oxbridge world. This is due to the language being first introduced and then forced upon Gaelic speakers over the course of the last 200 years, and more importantly since the Education Act (Scotland) 1872. When a new language enters an area and is systematically taught one generation on another from textbooks, then the formula tends to stick – this is the reason why Inverness is often quoted as having the ‘Best Spoken English in the World’.

As you continue west towards the Hebrides (but also in pockets like Perthshire), where Gaelic is still spoken or was until relatively recently then the English begins to adopt idiosyncrasies from the mother language; which, as a Celtic tongue is arranged in a very different way. As well as more aspiration in the speech, and grammatical constructions which mimic Gaelic, such as “I am after buying a newspaper”, there is the strange phenomenon of the ‘Gaelic Gasp’.

The ‘gasp’ is a sharp intake of breath signifying agreement, often accompanied by an ‘aye’, or a nodding of the head. This breathy acquiescence isn’t restricted to the Highlands, but can be found across the North Atlantic including the Faeroes, Iceland and Norway – which suggests a Viking origin to this linguistic oddity. It also gives us insight to the varieties of English spoken across Scotland: from the sing-song lilt of the islands to the barking gruff of the Lothians. A thousand years ago an Anglo-Saxon (or early English) language was spoken in southeast; Welsh languages dominated both the southwest and central Scotland (Briton and Pictish were part of this family); in the west, beyond the mountains the Picts of Argyll spoke Gaelic; and, in the far north Norse was spoken. Each would contribute to accents and dialects that would emerge in their areas – but why English?

In 1070 King Malcolm III married Margaret Ætheling, an Anglo-Saxon Princess fleeing the conquest of England by William of Normandy. She was a dominant woman, thorough in her religious convictions: establishing abbeys and influencing the Scottish court. She made sure that ‘English’ became the ‘natural’ language of diplomacy. Her son, David I, introduced the feudal system into Scotland – including Royal Burghs (towns with specific trading rights). The linga-franca of these new towns was English: David’s first language. The nobility followed, and by the necessity of trade, so ultimately did the farmers. Formed from a more antiquated Anglo-Saxon, this version of English would evolve into Scots. Words such as ‘kirk’ for a church, or ‘gate’ for a street hint at the older Germanic root; now lost in modern English. This accounts for the origins of the Scots dialect; where the accent differs depends on the level of Celtic/Norse influence beyond adoption.

A second revolution saw the assimilation of ‘Proper English’ – the Reformation of 1560. While a truly Scottish event, the influence of the English Reformation played a part. There, bibles were already printed in English, and while there were significant vocabulary differences, most Scots could read and understand them. The Church of Scotland decided not to bother printing bibles in the vernacular, and so from then on English became the ‘written’ expression of the language. This was cemented in 1603 when James VI of Scotland became the king of England.

In the Highlands, the bible was actually translated into Gaelic, but inroads are long in the making. The decline of Gaelic is well documented and the reasons legion; and the effect on the language remains to this day. The Gaidhealtachd, the Gaelic speaking areas of Scotland, have for a thousand years been receding against the never-ending tsunami of English. There are milestones along the way, and we should be thankful that the language exists far less thrives, in the Hebrides. The Highland line still provides a major boundary, such as Auldearn, or Dunkeld – where the age-old usage of English meets the recently taught variety in the traditional Gaelic lands. Yet, whatever the origin, whatever the accent, the Scottish dialect is vibrant and truly fascinating.

This blog was written by David McNicoll, owner of Highland Experience USA – which specialises in Vacation Packages and Tours of Scotland

Link – www.highlandexperience-usa.com

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