A Modern Scottish View of Clans (and Gathering)

[Bugbear]

That's pretty much it.

Americans of Scots and other British descent are by and large so far removed from that. We also are used to self-autonomy and creating ourselves, creating our own identities, often by appropriating artifacts and identities from other cultures and times as we (mis)understand them and making them our own. We may bend a knee or two, but do so in something of the spirit of a tourist in another country (or a time traveler from another time) who always has the ability, if we wish, to stop pretending and go home to the real world where we really live.

If I were you, I wouldn't complain about it. I would do what others seem to be doing, and try to figure out a way to make money off of us. But that's just me.

Probably because I have had to unlearn most of the traditions, beliefs, and some "facts" I was taught growing upwhile having to pay lip service to them. Or at least that is how I relate to what you're saying, Gilmore.

[macwilkin]

Oh, I pipe and "work" at the tent, talking to people looking to find out more about the clan. I'm great friends with the guys that work the tent in Wisconsin, and it's true that they've invested a lot of money, but it is not the Society's money. They did it on their own out of the love of their clan, just like I do.

And I guess you're right about the scholarship and the museum (which I hope to visit someday), but for me it's just not something that appeals to me that much. With or without a society, I will always be a Gordon and so will the others that I know. We'll always gather at the games and sing "A Gordon For Me"!

Fair enough, and good on ya for giving your time and talents.

T.

[Phil]

And I guess you're right about the scholarship and the museum (which I hope to visit someday), but for me it's just not something that appeals to me that much. With or without a society, I will always be a Gordon and so will the others that I know. We'll always gather at the games and sing "A Gordon For Me"!

I think that sums up the fellowship that people feel membership of a clan can be, without all this silly flummery of feathers, chiefs, lairds plaids etc.. It surely is about belonging to a family.

[macwilkin]

I think that sums up the fellowship that people feel membership of a clan can be, without all this silly flummery of feathers, chiefs, lairds plaids etc.. It surely is about belonging to a family.

Again, in your opinion...what is silly flummery to you may not be to others.

As Barry Goldwater once said, "we can disagree without being disagreeable".

T.

[Bugbear]

I think that sums up the fellowship that people feel membership of a clan can be, without all this silly flummery of feathers, chiefs, lairds plaids etc.. It surely is about belonging to a family.

Perhaps, by "silly flummery," you really mean symbols of something you perceive to be oppressive... I don't know, but there seems to be that undertone in your posts. If so, then I can understand your feelings about this in comparison to similar things in my own life.

That being said, I can also understand what you are saying about the feelings of fellowship and belonging; though not in an exact way. Hopefully, I'm not way off..

[Deil the Yin]

Your description of the Scottish clan system could just as easily describe the American South and the romantic "moonlight and magnolias" view that some still hold today...
Todd

I heard that!

[Deil the Yin]

I find this thread to be very informative and helps understand the beliefs of those in Scotland. I also know that a sense of belonging to something greater is important to so many in the States.
For years, other ethnicities have openly celebrated their heritage, to the point of seeing clothing belonging on another continent, is common. America is a melting pot of ethnicities and cultures, and there is no true American culture. People have come, to escape the hardships and servitude from the Old Country, and to make a life for themselves. They brought with them their love of their homelands, many of those from Scotland. You study the American South and you find the similarity of Scotland... The names, dialect( the Appalachian dialect is said a form of the Scots language).. The flags of the Civil War, the famed Stars and Bars Battle Flag, Alabama State flag is actually the St Patricks Cross (I know that's Irish) as well as others.
True, there is a romantizied view of what Scotland means to people these days, but it comes from the love of the Country that the forefathers brought with them, not the reasons for the leaving of the land, the servitude, the hardships.
I understand exactly what has happened because of my own personal life. I am a first generation American, a naturalized American. My family comes from Ireland by way of England... I am first generation who was not taught Gaelic, I was not sent to Catholic Church, I was actually made to fit into the American way of life. I was later told, it was because my mother did not want me to experience the wrongs she had to, growing up Irish Catholic in England.
I am proud to be Irish(descent) and I wish I had the chance to learn what was kept from me. I will wear my Saffron kilt, identifying myself as being Irish and enjoy the company of those like minded people... Who shares their love of being Scots, Irish, Welsh, Cornish, or whatever Celtic peoples they are descended from..
I respect the views of those from Scotland, and I have learned from them... I hope to learn more about my Scots family...

How fitting that you live in Cleburne, Texas! Is that perchance named after the Confederate General Cleburne (who was Irish himself)?

[Deil the Yin]

I’m afraid I seem to be rather good at that and really must try to be more considerate of the sincerely held beliefs and aspirations of others when it comes to clans, heraldry and other matters Scottish.
In mitigation I would only say that I, and I believe a substantial majority of fellow Scots, have no connection with any so-called “clan” other than an awareness of their existence as historical entities which no longer exist in any meaningful way or with any significance whatsoever to society in the 21st century. The days are not so far off when Scottish people were feudally bound to landowners as vassals and such bondsmen as miners only had this hereditary serfdom lifted in the 19th century. In fact, feudalism generally in Scotland was only abolished as recently as 1974 and I, myself, was a vassal under this system, paying feu duty to a feudal superior for the pleasure of allowing me to occupy the house I had bought.
While this serfdom may come as a shock to some raised to the “land of the free” they should try to understand how it has shaped and coloured the views of those so recently released from their feudal shackles. In particular towards those who would still seek to “lord it” over their fellow man, who live by the trappings of feudal privilege such as lords, chiefs etc., and those who try to exercise a supposed superiority by the use of arcane mediaeval flummery. There was never really anything romantic about the clan system which only existed to perpetuate the privileges of a very few land-owning individuals by holding their many clansmen in abject servitude purely for their own selfish ends. And when these ends no longer required clansmen to till their fields, tend their cattle and spill their blood on their behalf they had little compunction in dispensing with them, frequently in the cruellest ways imaginable. This is how so many found themselves dispossessed, homeless and shipped off to the far corners of the world to face an unknown and uncertain future. It says much for their hard work and determination that they survived in such hostile places and that their descendants survive to this day. It says nothing for the clan system, however, and for those privileged chiefs and other landowners who cast them aside without a further thought. You may, perhaps, understand why I completely fail to understand how anyone would wish to perpetuate something that so completely failed its adherents in the past and has nothing to offer but a simplistic romanticism nowadays.
By all means join clan societies but do so in the knowledge of what they truly represent. That is all I ask.

I'm still rather fascinated with the state of land ownership in Scotland (is it the same in England?). I worked several stints on a sheep croft in Sutherland, and when the owner told me that she owned her house but not the land it sat on... I couldn't get my head around it! Apparently all the land that her village sat on belonged to some Lady Such-and-such (given to her as a birthday present). I imagine it's like having an absentee landlord, but if the landlord is also a slum lord you're really f'd. And it's even worse cause you OWN your house and caint just up and leave... I can certainly understand Phil's frustration and cynicism after having to deal with that in a day to day real life scenario. I've certainly had my share of slum landlords.

I've often wondered myself why the clan chiefs are still "revered" or given some sort of status in British society, since there were really only a handful that were titled nobles (if I understand that correctly?). Were they ever given status as "Peers of the Realm" (I thought that had been discussed some years ago)? It has seemed to me that (especially after the '45) those of the Scottish upper echelon who could gain from joining British society did so, abandoning their Gaelic roots while reshaping their Highland traditions into a British model. That's of course putting a bit of a negative slant on it, but I would also recognise that this could be interpreted as a sense of "survival" in an era of considerable social change, too- adapt or "die" (or immigrate).

Of course from my clan's standpoint, MacGregors have been more or less landless since before the '45, so there's no notion that we (the common clansmen) were disenfranchised by our chiefs (but rather by our kings, ironically enough). Obviously the opposite is true in at least a few other cases. But I can't help thinking that by-and-large the Highland Clan System was not based on a feudal order, being Gaelic/Celtic, and that the Clan chiefs (who were not always thus by birth) were not so raised above their clan as a titular lord might be. Maybe yall would consider that the romantic version, but I've certainly read of historical accounts from 18th century observers who, being from south of the border, were taken aback that their host the clan chief was casually conversing with the labourers in the fields or what might otherwise be called common clansmen.

I'm not quite sure what I was driving at there, but I certainly find the topic interesting. I have to say that I appreciate Phil's candour- not the usual pomp and circumstance we're used to!

[O'Callaghan]

At highland games here in the US I have often thought how ironic it is to see Americans leap to their feet when clan chiefs are introduced as honored guests, in ignorance, sometimes willful, that it was more often than not the ancestors of these very chiefs whose mistreatment of their own ancestors cause them to leave their homes in Scotland to start from nothing, making a new life in a strange country.

I suspect in the imaginings of most of those in the US, their ancestors WERE the chiefs, rather than their serfs, so they happily spend outrageous sums on highland dress, in the belief they are continuing the traditions of their chiefly ancestors, rather than clothing themselves in something closer to the chiefs' lackeys.

Of course times have changed, perhaps more quickly here in the US than in Britain. Every time I go to the UK, it is a bit of a shock to encounter how deeply held class prejudice is, and how pervasive, compared to the US, and on both sides of the salt. (I do not say there are not all sorts of prejudices in the US. There are. It's just that the kind of class prejudice one sees in the UK, one doesn't see here. It's qualitatively different.) It's more akin to racism in the US, I guess, an unpleasant legacy from the benighted past that most people avoid discussing openly, and find more comfortable to ignore.

One could continue this analogy of the Gathering in Edinburgh as if middle and upper income African-Americans from the northern US were to travel to the rural American South, dress in rags, pick cotton and pretend to be happy, content and compliant darkies who rever their kindly masters---to the point that they took their owners' surnames, just as clansmen took their chiefs'--- and enjoy nothing more than waiting on them hand and foot. But this misses the point. And that point is using myth to promote tourism and thus the local economy, benefitting largely the descendants of the oppressed. A past that never existed is foisted upon the unwary.

In England, at least, I would say that the class divide is at least partly racial, i.e. Norman invaders lording it over Saxon serfs, putting it bluntly. Of course, that's an over-simplification to the nth degree, but to those who can't understand why it persists, I'd say that's the origin of it, even if its seldom overtly discussed in this way. This makes it a lot easier to understand than when you try to look at it in economic terms. I don't think that considering class prejudice in the UK in purely economic terms leads to any enlightenment about what's really going on.

Just because descendants of both are white, doesn't stop us from classifying someone when they open their mouth to speak, even today, even if it isn't as bad as it once was. The more you use latin based words (which all entered the language from Norman French) the higher your assumed social class. More Saxon based words marks you out as blue collar. In reality, the speaker's racial origin may have little to do with their vocabulary, because people worked out long ago that we don't look much different and so they 'cheated', but perceived social class is linked to how much you use words from two different racial groups, probably not only in England, but to a lesser extent in all English speaking countries, even where, as in the US, you might have very little of either in your family tree.

For a long time after the conquest, the ruling classes didn't even speak English. Of course, that wasn't English as we know it, but it was the admixture of Norman French with it that created English as we now know it today. Believe it or not, the original reason why French became the most common foreign language taught in English schools, as it still is, had nothing whatsoever to do with wanting to converse with French people from France.

We can call it class prejudice, but it does come from race originally, and even those of the upper classes who weren't of Norman origin were held guilty by association, gradually came to speak like them, and in time intermarried with them anyway.

In the rest of the UK it may be even worse, as there's a tendency to mistakenly identify a Southern English accent as 'posh', even when it's not.

[O'Callaghan]

Some interesting points have been raised. A chief of the name is considered to be Irish nobility in Ireland, and the same goes for a hereditary Scots clan chief, i.e. that they are a Scottish noble, except that the English and later British governments never recognised any of this. Some of them got English titles as well, others not. The victors certainly got to redistribute the spoils.

Most of the above is moot anyway, as most of them have no real power anymore. Even those with English titles don't all get to sit in the House of Lords anymore. The UK Labour Party controlled government reduced the number of peers who sit in the House of Lords to a smaller number of 'representative peers', so the rest have only the title, although of course there are quite a few who still have a lot of the land they were given when their ancestors were 'ennobled'.

The House of Lords is a bit like the US Senate, except that instead of a reconcilliation process, the bills go through the House of Commons (made up of the elected MPs, who are a bit like Representatives), then to the Lords, and then back to the Commons for a Second Reading, where the MPs can undo all the changes the Lords made if they want to, except for 'money bills' which I think don't go to the Lords. Some of the peers in the Lords are hereditary, and some appointed for life by governments as they leave office.