All I want for Christmas...

[gilmore]

Gilmore, I cannot help thinking that you are taking this FAR too seriously! I parted with my £30.00 partly for the sheer fun of it, in the full knowledge that the entire thing carries no weight at all.

Hamish,

I am glad to hear that you are doing this for the fun of it. You may find it difficult to believe, but there are some who take this, and at least one other online Scottish feudal barony mill, as they are represented. With enough volume these sites can reel in enough suckers to keep themselves in business.

As you probably know, legitimate Scottish feudal baronies are the only European titles of nobility that can be legally bought and sold, and there is a somewhat shady market for them as well. They run in the neighborhood of GBP 10,000 to 100,000 or more, and for that you get nothing more the right to legitimately call yourself a feudal baron or laird. (The coat of arms, crest, etc, cost extra and are bought from the Lyon Court.) There is no land that goes with them anymore, and you would not be called to Scotland's feudal parliament (unless by some miracle the current parliament was abolished and Scotland decided to re-institute its medieval government.) Nor do the baronial courts have legal jurisdiction over anything any more, and haven't for several hundred years. Nonetheless some people, often Americans, are willing to part with that much money merely to "laird it over" their friends and aquaintances. Although legal, they are not taken seriously in Scotland of course, and people there dismiss them as rather ridiculous parvenus with more money than sense.

One of these newly ennobled lairds lives somewhere around here, and somehow got himself named as something called "Chieftan of the Games" of a small highland games and festival not too far away. It has created some controversy, lowered the credibility of the games, and things of Scottish heritage a bit generally---many of which have histories going back no further than the mid-Nineteeth Century and couldn't stand much close scrutiny, anyhow.