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5th January 08, 12:56 PM
#10
Sean-- I respond to this because your lengthy, and well argued, reply has shown up. And as an aside, I totally commiserate with you about spending a fair old amount of time knocking out some deathless prose in response to some moronic posting only to have it vanish into thin air when you hit "send".
NOW:
The Duke of Wellington, who was born in Ireland, was once asked if he was Irish. His reply is the now famous line, "Just because someone is born in a stable it doesn't make him a horse."
No one ever seemed to question that Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, was Scottish. But in fact she was born in England. David Lumsden of Cushnie, one of Scotland's most elegant gentlemen, was born in what's now Pakistan, was educated at Cambridge, and spent his working life in Africa. He now resides in a 17th century house in mid-Lothian, having down sized from his ancestral home, Tilliecarin Castle, which he bought as a ruin and restored to all of it's original splendour. He's Scottish, but not by your definition. And what about that icon on the shortbread box, Bonnie Prince Charlie? By your definition I guess he wasn't Scottish, either. Hmmm. This is turning out to be a bad day for royals and aristocarts. Bummer.
So I think you're wrong. But then I would. I'm on the side of all those royals and aristocrats (and hard working Scots not born or raised North of the Tweed).
Or to put it another way, if I had been born on a Navajo Indian Reservation I wouldn't be a Navajo. I'd still be a Scot. To be sure, a Scot with the benefit of an American passort, but a Scot none-the-less. Now this isn't to say being a Navajo is a bad thing. Far from it. Fine chaps, the Navajo. It's just that I prefer to laud my ethnic heritage that happens, by the most happy of circumstances, to be the same as yours. I'm Scottish.
Now don't get too up set by this-- think how it works in your favour. Suppose you get married to a nice, oh I don't know, Tibetan, girl and you end up taking a job in Liverpool. And have children. Guess what? They'll still be Scottish, and can cheer for Rangers or Celtic without being regarded as some sort of pseudo-cultural interlopers . They might be regarded as football thugs and hooligans, but at least they'll be thugs and hooligans with the proper ethno-cultural credentials. Why?
Well just because they were born in Liverpool.... it doesn't mean they're NOT Scots.
Last edited by MacMillan of Rathdown; 5th January 08 at 08:31 PM.
Reason: insert missing word
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