April 6, 2005
Plaid It Again, Uncle Sam
This is the end of a much longer article.
.... Before home-based Scots leap in to tick off over-zealous American Scots, we need to ask ourselves whether we could actually learn something from their transparent devotion to all things Scottish.
See the extended entry for the rest....
It was a question I asked myself at the end of November last year when I was invited to speak at a St Andrew’s Night Dinner in Chicago which had been organised by the Illinois St Andrew’s Society. Every man there was dressed in a kilt, itself not without risk in the Windy City, and we all enjoyed a traditional Scottish meal followed by speeches. Then, without warning, two pipers appeared and led in a tea trolley, pushed by four burly men. On the back of the tea-trolley was a large tartan teacosy. When the trolley appeared at the front of the stage, the teacosy stirred and a tiny girl emerged. She was wearing a tartan pinafore, had plaid ribbons in her hair and waved at the applauding crowd with the aplomb of a movie star. "She’s this year’s Haggis Lassie," one of the ladies at my table explained. "It’s traditional."Posted by Ithildin at April 6, 2005 9:37 AM | PROCURE FINE OLD WORLD ABSINTHEThe Haggis Lassie and the mobile Scottish castle are just two of the ways in which Americans are joyfully recreating Scottish traditions. But if the ways in which American Scots celebrate Scotland can seem a little unusual to Scottish eyes, the sincerity with which they do it isn’t in doubt. "I’ve seen hardened Vietnam veterans cry when they receive their clan tartan for the first time," says social anthropologist Celeste Ray who has studied American Scottish culture. And at Harvard University, sociologist Mary Waters has accumulated evidence which proves how popular Scottish identity has become in the US. Since the publication of Alex Hailey’s Roots in 1976, the hunger which Americans feel to find out about their backgrounds has grown and grown. At the end of the 1980s, a question was added to the American census which for the first time sought information about ethnic background.
When she first conducted her research 20 years ago, Waters found that Scottish identity was the least popular white ethnic identity in America. "Scots were thought to be mean, bad tempered and unfriendly," she says. "Now Scots are the most popular white ethnic identity of all." If one man is responsible for this turn-around in Scottish popularity, it is Randall Wallace, creator of Braveheart, the man who was announced this year as Grand Marshall of the Tartan Day parade in New York.
In the world of the American Scots, Randall Wallace is a demi-god and William Wallace a full-blown deity. Wallace recounts how everywhere he goes he is told how the film has boosted membership of Scottish American societies ten-fold.
To Randall Wallace, his illustrious ancestor is a fully fledged Scottish hero and, thanks to Wallace’s film, the blue-and-white-painted freedom fighter has become a hero to Tamil Nationalists and oppressed Peruvian peasants.
When I watched Wallace speak at a dinner for American Scots, it became all too clear how much Braveheart’s story meant to him. He told a story about taking his father to Stirling and listening to a piper play the bagpipes from the ramparts of Stirling Castle. In the middle of the story, Wallace began to cry. For a full two minutes, he struggled to regain his composure, as the American Scots sat on the edge of their seats. At my table a native-born Scot who had recently relocated to Chicago rolled his eyes: "You wouldn’t get away with this in Glasgow."
He was absolutely right. It’s hard to imagine a greater contrast than that between the colourful, innocent patriotism of Scottish Americans and the glum attitudes of modern, civic, devolutionary Scotland. But, as Tartan day rolls around again, and we all take a grim pleasure in sending up the attitudes of our North American cousins, its time to ask whether we could all be a bit more relaxed about our cultural traditions, and whether we should all put in a little homework in our garages. After all, there are plenty of castles out there crying out to be taken on the road.
