Quote Originally Posted by Jock Scot View Post
It's worse than that and you chaps may find it hard to understand. Much of Scottish history has been so romanticised by the likes of Sir Walter Scott, Landseer, Mel Gibson etc., willingly aided and abetted by assorted propaganda campaigns, by Kings, politicians and with the willing participation of the tourist industry of the last 150 years with their biscuit box version of Scots history. The nett result of all that, is that there is now a legacy of almost total cynicism to almost all of Scottish history by the Scots.I have noticed this effect for many years now and I am quite convinced that this is one of the reasons that the kilt is not seen as regular everyday wear in Scotland.
Jock,

Really though, you could easily take out the references to Scotland in your post, plug in USA, and that would be my observations from working for over a decade in public and academic history. I worked as a park ranger at a Civil War Battlefield, and we dealt with the mythology of that conflict, much of it historically inaccurate, on a daily basis.

Of course, that doesn't deter me from attempting to get it right and tell the story -- my mentor, the State Historian of Arizona, once had a student write on his evaluation, "Missing Mr. Trimble's class is like missing something I bought tickets for!" -- that is something I strive for everytime I take the podium and stand in front of a class.

If anything, your post above motivates me to make history a "well-told story" and hopefully get one student interested in its study -- if I've done that, then I've done my job.

T.