Fodor's Exploring Scotland, 4th Edition (Exploring Guides, 4) - Softcover

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Scotland Is ...The Scottish Image

Misty glens, lochs, mountains, tartan, kilts and bagpipes: these are the most familiar images of Scotland. How these essentially Highland aspects came to represent the whole of Scotland -- Highland, Lowland, urban, and rural -- is one of the oddities of history.

Tartan

Today, you can cross over the border from England and hear bagpipes in a Southern Uplands town, eat shortbread from a tartan wrapper in the middle of Glasgow, and take in a Highland Games within easy reach of Edinburgh. All this is well before you reach the real Highlands. Scotland, at least those aspects of it dealing with tourism, embraces its kilted image wholeheartedly.

The glorious paradox is that if a tartan-clad Highlander had appeared in a Lowland town a few centuries ago, he would have been locked up, if not shot on sight. The Highlanders were regarded as barbarous thieves by Lowland Scots. After the crushing of the final rebellion against the Hanoverian dynasty on Culloden Moor near Inverness, the tartan was even banned by Act of Parliament. Tartan was associated with revolt and lawlessness. Now, thoroughly rehabilitated, the kilt and its associated paraphernalia represent the whole of Scotland, Highland or Lowland, Gaelic-speaking or otherwise, to many of today's visitors.

Bagpipes

The unmistakable tones of the bagpipe or Highland war pipe form the soundtrack to the romantic image of Scotland. Perhaps originally a device for signaling across long Highland distances, the bagpipe survived partly through its use in Highland regiments, and now plays its role in many pipe bands. Most Scottish towns have at least one band, and the pipes create instant Highland atmosphere at all kinds of gatherings, from protest marches to weddings.

Scenery

As for the misty glens (valleys) and bens (high hills), a love for this landscape grew out of a cult of the picturesque embraced by the romantic poets (William Wordsworth, strongly associated with the English Lake District, made several tours of the Scottish Highlands). Today, a taste for wild scenery is for many people the main reason for visiting Scotland.

Scotland Is ...Three Languages

Three languages are spoken in Scotland: Gaelic (Lowland), Scots, and English. All Gaels are bilingual. Some Lowlanders still tend to undervalue their native tongue, while the use of broad Scots vowels by a child of English parents living in Scotland can sometimes be greeted with near horror.

The First Language

Gaelic was once the principal language over much of Scotland, but it has been in slow retreat, originally in the face of Anglo-Norman settlers, for seven centuries. Today, Gaelic's stronghold is the far north and west, notably the Outer Hebrides and the Highlands. However, increased funding for Gaelic broadcasting in the early 1990s has resulted, ironically, in Gaelic being heard in parts of Scotland that have had virtually no Gaelic speakers for centuries. Gaelic enters the vocabulary of Scots and English speakers most often in anglicized or part-anglicized placenames or topographical features such as ben (high hill), loch (lake), strath (river valley or adjacent low-lying grassland), glen (valley), or cairn (heap of stones). Sassenach (Englishman), slogan (war cry), and ceilidh (Scottish hoedown) are other Gaelic words commonly encountered; and many places on the west coast possess only a Gaelic name.

Scottland Is ...Scottish Food

In Scotland of old, diet and wealth were interrelated; the same is true today. But instead of trips to the supermarket to load up the station wagon, the wealthy merchants and lairds and the powerful clan chiefs took advantage of direct trading links across the North Sea to acquire the dainty spices and French wines that went with their status.

A Meager Diet

It is significant that Scotland's most famous dish, haggis, is an ancient folk recipe for using up the cheapest cuts of meat. In a nation with a somewhat unpredictable climate and a history of economic uncertainties, everyday Scots cooking, in the past, had much to do with eking out ingredients.

Today, the poverty in the bleak housing projects of deindustrialized Scotland is a factor in health statistics that no amount of tartan packaging can totally conceal. In low-income households, a dependence on cheap and convenient high-cholesterol and otherwise unbalanced foods ensure Scotland is a poor performer in the healthy-eating league table: deaths through heart disease are the worst in Europe.

Paradoxically, Scotland today has numerous advantages when it comes to "local produce." Peterhead is Europe's largest whitefish landing port. Scottish seafood is sought out by top chefs south of the border and in Europe. (In fact, locals grumble that the best is exported.) Aberdeen Angus beef, though eclipsed by overseas breeds in recent years, is making a comeback and still has considerable cachet. Scots farmers remind anyone who will listen that their beef is "grass-fed" on natural pastures. Meanwhile, Scottish farmed venison, with all its low-fat virtues, is widely available on restaurant menus.