Attitudes To The Kilt.

[Scotus]

KMacT:
"There are two types of people in the world: those that are Scottish and those that would like to be."
--Mac, using the words of his grandfather.

[KMacT]

KMacT:
"There are two types of people in the world: those that are Scottish and those that would like to be."
--Mac, using the words of his grandfather.

Is that the wannabe reference? OK, I guess it is. I see it as more snobbish, myself ("I'm Scottish and you aren't"), but I guess it can go either way.

Kevin

[highlander_Daz]

I called him a "wannabee Scot " -I now accept I was wrong- if he was born in Scotland and moved to the states/ canada hes clearly a "dont wannabe Scot!"

I think hes brought it upon himself , using your "birthright" and all this stuff is a bit much but he started it by suggesting Matt was inaccurate because hes in the US and he was right because hes a Scot but then it comes out he actually resides in Canada. he set the criteria for this debate and now hes been "rumbled" all we get is a deafning silence, I would prefer it if Mac came back to the board with a clean slate and we could continue to discuss our views and welcome him back- I for one have no axe to grind with him or anyone else, after all it is a "discussion" board can we move on and hopefully welcome back Mac, if ive upset anyone I apologise, the reason that people are buried under the soil at Culloden is so that we can have the right to express our views and beliefs, lets honour them by continueing to do so

[bubba]

I would prefer it if Mac came back to the board with a clean slate and we could continue to discuss our views and welcome him back

I'm for that. Sure, I disagreed with alot he said and I know the issue got a bit heated. We all have hot button issues. I'm not going to let that become a grudge against anyone. Sometimes you have to agree to disagree and move on.

[Verlyn]

Whew, this is getting to be a long thread.

Matt, as always, thanks for the education. Always amazes me the depth and breadth of your knowledge. Think how much we'd have to pay for that kind of consulting. What I was trying to say is that it did seem he was espousing opinion to me, not fact. Re-reading some of the things, though, your points on facts not overcoming opinion are well put.

Davedove, there are, in fact, articles of military uniforms that it is against the law to wear if you are not entitled to. Rarely enforced, but illegal just the same. Its in Title 10 of the US Code. Most of it deals with rank insignia, warfare pins, and awards. No, the laws are usually not enforces unless they lead to some other infraction (in my ROTC unit some freshman passed off bad checks while dressed as a USMC Capt. They got him on the impersonating and officer and and other title 10 charges because of the bad checks). Just bringing this one up because many people don't realize that the US Title 10 codes do cover those items of the uniform that are restricted by law.

[davedove]

Verlyn, you're completely correct. There are some cases of illegality. What I was mainly refering to is things like unit insignia, branch t-shirts, and things like like. You know, the typical things you could get at a surplus store or from a catalog. A lot of people wear these things as decoration without having any idea what they represent. I was in the Army and it bothers me a little when I see these things.

[Verlyn]

Yep, I think its across the services. Warfare devises particularly in the Navy (especially dolphins; even I twitch when I see someone with a dolphin ball cap and ask what they did on the boat and they bought it on a tour and have no idea what the dolphins mean or what goes into earning them). And don't even go there with Marines and the EGA.

[Alan H]

About being Scottish....or French or Italian or Japanese or whatever. I don't want to pick on Scots, here but I'll just use that particualr culture for an example. I could write something entirely analogous for any culture, including the USA

When does someone become a Scot? Am I a Scot if I move from where I was born, in say,Tennessee and go to Scotland? Do I have to live there for five years before I become a Scot? Ten? Fifty? When my accent changes? Do my children have to be born there, and then THEY can be Scottish? What if I happen to be a black man?

You know, there's a project out there called the "Border Reiver" DNA project. About 600 people from border family descent...Halls, Youngs, Rutherfords and so on have had their Y chromsome DNA sampled and checked for about 300 different genetic markers. Those markers are checked in a database against people from all over the world. In fact, it turns out that a large number of people from the Border Families carry genetic markers that put them rather closely related to several sets of peoples in the southeastern parts of Europe and the middle east. Matter of fact, some of these Scots from the border families are pretty clearly more closely related to the peoples from those lands than they are to their countrymen from, say the Isle of Orkney. Yet would someone who lives on the Scottish side of the border, and who's family has lived there for 200 years somehow NOT be "Scottish"?

Why is this? Because back when the Romans occupied Britain, there was a kingdom in the middle east called Sarmatia. Under the Roman General Marcus Aurelius, the Legions fought with Sarmatians and delivered to them a pretty sound licking. In tribute, the Sarmation king handed over about 8,000 of his best troops, mostly cavalry, as hostages. Those troops were restationed far, far away from their homelands around 175 AD...where were they stationed?

....By Hadrians Wall. A large part of the Roman garrison stationed in Britain along the border was made up of Middle Eastern men from east of the Carpathian mountains. They were used to fighting on horseback and with chariots.

So now I ask you. Are the descendents of those men....are they Scots?


To flip the coin, how long does it take for a Scot that moved to London to become English? A year? A decade? NEVER??? If that man has children by a black woman, and their children have children by asian people, where do they cross the line and stop being "scottish"? Here's another pioint. We like to think that a lot oof ethnic groups have evolved by themselves in their little enclave f the world and in fact there ARE a very few groups that are like that. But for the majority of the world, people have been coming and going and impregnating each other for millennia. 8,000 Sarmatians arriving on the Borders in 175 AD is not terribly different from several thousand Fijians showing up in Edinborough in 1996.

Anyway, so fighting over "I'm Scottish and you're not" just..well...it all just sort of doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to me.

[Verlyn]

See, this is what is so great about this site. If you've even the slightest interest in history, you can get lessons from all perspectives and you don't have to pay for it!. Thanks, Alan, that was a good synopsis and much more interesting than the book I'm currently trying to get through.

[Alan H]

See, this is what is so great about this site. If you've even the slightest interest in history, you can get lessons from all perspectives and you don't have to pay for it!. Thanks, Alan, that was a good synopsis and much more interesting than the book I'm currently trying to get through.

You're welcome, Verlyn.

And FUTHERMORE!!! LOL

Where I got this information is from the Hall Family (Clan???) association newsletter, which so far has been packed with really cool historical information.

Oh, I could go on and on about the Hall name, too. They're a border family, but it's also now the fifth-most common surname in England. I don't know if my Hall ancestor, who married the English-descended Christiana Crockett in Philadelphia around 1800, emigrated to the colonies from Ulster, Scotland, Ireland or England. I know that he got her pregnant when she was 16, though. LOLOL

Case in point, and this perfectly illustrates it for me.... I was at the Livermore Highland Games a couple of weekends ago. Lo and behold, one of the guys manning the Campbell tent was a black man, though obviously of mixed-race. I did a double-take, as I'm sure many people do. But here's the point....that man's father could very well be descended from Lord Argyll for all I know. Maybe that black man is the great, great grandson of a younger son of the Campbell aristocracy that moved to the colonies. Maybe the mother of the man I met happened to be a black woman. Hell, maybe four generations ago that mans ancestor was the slave mistress of a Campbell. It's not like that sort of thing is unheard of, you know? It's also not like that sort of thing never, ever, ever happened in Scotland, either.

So as a matter of fact, that black man's family connection with the Campbells could be a LOT stronger than my pathetic eight-generations-old connection with the MacNaughtons. So where do *I*, or anybody else for that matter, get off thinking that I'm "Scottish" and he isn't? What the hell difference does it makes what the color of my skin is, compared with his?

Beats the hell outta me. In fact, it's so bloody convoluted that the whole thing is pointless to argue about. What is "Scottish"? There's no genetic component to it. There's a heritage, but we've all intermarried and crossbred with God knows who for so long ....which is NO different than it's been for 2,000 years and more...that the argument is specious.

If you ask me, "Being Scottish" is not a genetically inherited thing any more. "Being Scottish",or "Being French" or "Being Japanese" or "Being Mongolian" is a function of where your interests and heart and soul lies. My allegiance is to the United States of America. My heritage lies spread out all over Europe and Canada. My INTEREST and my heart lies in things Celtic.

I signed on with Clan MacNaughton. In the by-laws of Clan MacNaughton,which I got in the mail last night, a "broken man" with no clan can join the clan by *signing up* and paying his dues. Despire my paper-thin McKNight connection, that's me...the "broken man". That's NO different from some guy who wandered over the Cheviot Hills and came north to Loch Fyne in 1560, married a MacNaughton woman and swore allegiance to the MacNaughton laird.

*pfeh*

Rant over.