Page 12
www.celtic-connection.com
DECEMBER 2012/JANUARY 2013
Is there life left in the tartan debate or is it all plaid out now?
EDINBURGH - This month I met a friend of a Vancouver friend in Edinburgh, a New Brunswicker keen to explore the inside of one or two Edinburgh howffs.
The Scottish rugby team had just lost to South Africa in the now traditional fashion, interspersing periods of relative competence with the gift of a couple of free tries to the opposition courtesy of interceptions.
Worse was to come. The next week Scotland lost to Tonga (population 100,000 or so).
The Tongans, who regularly have their best players poached by other countries, had several players injured from the ones that were left. They were playing in freezing Aberdeen where nobody would have blamed them if they had skipped the game in favour of staying in the hotel with a hot water bottle and a cup of warm soup.
Instead, they beat the Scots 21-15, which would have sent them homeward to think again if they hadn't been at home already but did persuade the Scottish coach to go in search of a newjob.
That is probably enough about Scottish sporting reverses. I have written of these before and they are so common now as to have assumed a place in the Scottish psyche along other unpleasant things that have to be endured like wind, rain, and fried food.
The most notable thing about the Scottish fans that packed every bar we visited, apart from their good humour in defeat, was that the majority of them were dressed in kilts.
Kilts, that is, in a modern tradition. On international rugby days this means a tartan kilt, a Scottish rugby top and some kind of chunky footwear, often hiking boots.
As if on cue, I returned home to find that Edinburgh University Press had sent me a book called From Tartan to Tartanry.
I admit to being slightly surprised that the Academy still feels there is enough steam left in the tartan debate to reissue in paperback a book that was first published in 2010.
The great Scottish public seems to have moved on, reinventing the kilt to its own liking and wearing it with what looks like pride even in the face of perpetual sporting disappointment.
The introduction to the book quotes BBC commentator Andrew Marr as saying "the deconstruction of the tartan cult is itself in danger of becoming a cult" and it does seem that tartan has some kind of peculiar hold over academia.
Still, for those who are still interested in the subject, From Tartan to Tartanry is as comprehensive an assessment as they will find.
It examines not just the history of tartan, but any number of cultural perspectives from tartan in film to tartan in comedy, rock music and the national football team's Tartan Army.
It is something of a relief to see the book depart from the morbid obsession with authenticity that weighed down the tartan debate through the 1990s in particular.
The cult to which Marr refers can be traced to the work of Hugh Trevor Roper (Tord Dacre) who suggested in
By HARRY McGRATH
an "invention of tradition" essay that the modern kilt was created in the Eighteenth Century and by an Englishman.
Dacre died in 2003 his reputation tarnished, ironically enough, by his "authentication" of bogus "Hitler Diaries" which were subsequently published in The Times newspaper.
His view on the "inauthentic" Scots, is finally laid to rest in From Tartan and Tartanry - first by historian Murray Pittock who questions why Dacre had so much influence "despite [his] obvious lack of acquaintance with Scottish history or Gaelic scholarship" and then by Ian Brown who finds Dacre's evidence on the origins of the modern kilt "notoriously shaky."
The question of the extent of Dacre's influence is still an interesting one given the problematic scholarship and research that underpinned the invention argument.
Diasporic Scots who wore their kilts
with pride queried his analysis from the start and are now congratulating themselves on their perspicacity.
Home based Scots, on the other hand, tended to embrace the "inauthentic," invented-tradition and use it to explain negative feelings they had about any number of things of which wearing kilts was only one.
Clearly those days have gone. Glasgow University academic Alan Riach begins his contribution to From Tartan to Tartanry with an anecdote about his parent's golden wedding anniversary.
His young sons wear kilts patterned on 'The ancient Rangers tartan' and 'The ancient Celtic tartan' and are congratulated on their contribution to world peace.
Another academic is persuaded to wear a kilt to his daughter's wedding and is glad he did or he "would have looked like a penguin in a flower garden."
The sudden ubiquity of kilts and the obvious willingness of Scots to constantly reinvent them (rather than dismiss them as being invented) may yet provide fruitful ground for academia to unleash a fresh storm or 'translations' and 'tropes'.
However, those outside university confines seem happy enough to ditch the hang-ups about kilts in favour of hanging one in the cupboard.
Come Christmas and New Year they will be taken down and worn all over the place in every sense.
Last February The Scottish Register of Tartans even registered a 'Christmas' tartan in green, red and yellow with the colours representing the gifts of the three Kings in the nativity story.
It is woven in South Africa, so if you want to be kilted at Christmas as well as for Christmas, you had better get your order in.
Acclaimed Scottish
actress presents brilliant performance
By DAVID LUNNY
VANCOUVER - Normally a platform for erudite speakers on the culture, history or literature of Scotland, this year's annual St. Andrew's and Caledonian Society lecture, sponsored by the SFU Centre for Scottish Studies, broke with tradition by presenting a theatrical drama to a highly appreciative audience.
OnNovember22,2012, the acclaimed Scottish playwright and actress, Anna Hepburn, performed her one woman play Mary, Queen of Scots - The Last letter to a sell-out crowd at the Fletcher Theatre in Simon Fraser University's Downtown Campus.
First staged with great success at the 2010 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Hepburn reprised the role of the luckless and condemned monarch magnificently.
The set was without adornment and the monologue format was uncomplicated - but the audience, witnessing the inner torment of the Queen composing her last letter to her brother-in-law, Henry III, King of France.
They were riveted by the tour de force depiction of the high and lows, the joys
and the sorrows of Mary's incredible roller-coaster of a life, leading to catastrophe, betrayal and defeat and, after years of imprisonment, to the tragic eve of her execution at the decree of her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I of England.
At the conclusion of her memorable performance, Hepburn earned a standing ovation and the grateful thanks of all in attendance.
Well-known in Scotland and the UK for her repertory theatre work and her film and television appearances {Dear Frankie, Monarch of the Glen, Still Game, Taggart and Rebus), this was Hepburn's first performance of her play in Canada.
While here, she and her husband Gilbert are spending some time with their friends from Perthshire, Donald and Wilma Paton, of West Vancouver.
Wilma's talents as a vocalist are deservedly well-recognized in the Celtic community and beyond and her moving rendition of the folk ballad, The Four Marys, who were ladies-in-waiting to the Queen, provided an added bonus to the evening's entertainment.
FIRST MINISTER Alex Salmond has announced a Scottish referendum on independence in 2014.
Yes Scotland claims 143,000 signed up for independence
EDINBURGH - A pro-independence for Scotland campaign group claims to have 143,000 supporters already - more than the total number of Scots who are members of apolitical party.
Yes Scotland, which is campaigning ahead of the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence, said the level of support was a "tremendous achievement this early in the campaign.
"The figures show a real sense of momentum all around the country and we have lots of people who have never been involved in politics coming to us and putting their names down," said Yes Scotland chief executive Blair Jenkins.
"There is still a long way to go until we cross the finishing line in the autumn of 2014, but reaching this number of declared supporters this early gives us great confidence for a positive result in the referendum."
Supporters of the cross-party group are asked to sign a declaration which says that it is "fundamentally better for us all, if decisions about Scotland's future are taken by the people who care most about Scotland, that is, by the people of Scotland."
But a spokesman for the rival campaign group Better Together, which is opposing independence, questioned the numbers. "The reality is that the overwhelming majority of Scots are not buying what the separatists are selling."
Arecent survey of Scotland's business leaders indicate that the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) is also failing to win them over to the cause of independence.
The poll of250 business chiefs by Ipsos Mori shows that just one in 10 believes prospects would improve if Scotland decided to become an independent country.
By contrast, more than half believe their businesses will suffer as a result
of the country voting Yes to an independent state.
SNP ministers pointed out that the poll was conducted prior to George Osborne's autumn statement, saying independence offered an alternative to the six more years of austerity lined up in the Chancellor's proposals.
But pro-UK figures said the poll illustrated the concerns they had about the possibility of trade barriers being thrown up between Scotland and its single biggest market, England.
Alex Salmond's opponents have also accused the SNP of retreating from its long-standing position that an independent Scotland would have automatic membership of the European Union.
Early this month it emerged that European officials had signalled that a newly independent nation would have to reapply for EU membership.
Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, confirmed that if a territory became independent from an EU member country, existing treaties would "cease to apply" after independence and if the new state wanted to join the EU then it would have to apply in the normal manner.
Patricia Ferguson, Tabour's constitution spokeswoman, claimed that since the commission's view had become known, there had been a shift in the SNP's position.
"The SNP have been telling the people of Scotland for years that EU membership wouldn't be an issue and anybody who suggested differently was just scaremongering," Ferguson said.
"After weeks of turmoil on the EU, Alex Salmond and his government seem to have shifted their position and arrived at the conclusion many of us reached some time ago - that at best this is uncertain, and at worst an independent Scotland would have to join the euro and set up border controls with the rest of the United Kingdom."
Wording for Scot Cancf in CanacCa
Business, Culture, 'Education and government
go to the %Ve6site: www.scottishcanadianagency.com Or Contact Jfarry !Mc(jratfi (Email: harry@scottishcanadianagency.com