Quote Originally Posted by Troglodyte View Post
But despite having reservations about Scotland as a people and a nation, Burt is fair. What criticisms he makes are those of a middle-ranking officer who is used to polite society, and could easily be applied to any of the provincial regions of England at the time. Many of them still are..!
This is, I think, an important and fair point. Much of his bias in storytelling is cosmopolitan, not Teutonic. In particular his dwelling on nudity is a trope that can be traced in a straight line back to the Romans, at least, and has always been shorthand for a lack of sophistication. Now, does he apply it more heavily toward his Scottish neighbors than to his brothers in the English countryside? I can't say, but I can imagine familiarity softening his inclination toward those kinds of embellishments, in the case of the latter.