Under the inspiring tutelage of the national bard, Scotland has become one of the drunkenest nations in the world. Among the lower classes of the Scotch cities drunkenness is the preponderating vice. In the rural districts whiskey is the only beverage that finds any sort of favour. There is no occasion of life which does not provoke the average Scotchman to inhibition. Births, deaths, and marriages are all celebrated in drink. On Burns Day, Scotland rushes to the bottle as one man. The same is true of New Year’s Day; and year in and year out everybody “tastes” and “tastes” and “tastes” from morn to dewy eve. The land simply seethes in whiskey, and though you take hold of thewings of the morning you cannot get away from the odour of it. In twelve hours spent in Edinburgh I saw more drinking than could be seen in an English town of the same population in a couple of days, and I know what drinking means.
Whiskey to breakfast, whiskey to dinner, whiskey to supper; whiskey when you meet a friend, whiskey over all business meetings whatsoever; whiskey before you go into the kirk, whiskey when you come out; whiskey when you are about to take a journey, whiskey all along the road, whiskey at the journey’s end; whiskey when you are well, whiskey if you be sick, whiskey almost as soon as you are born, whiskey the last thing before you die—that is Scotland. There is a cock-and-bull tale to the effect that all the finest clarets go to Leith and are drunk in Edinburgh. Practically, there is no really good claret in all Scotland, unless it be at the hotels which have been built for the reception of English and American tourists, and the Scot to the manner born would notgive you a “thank you” for the best claret in the world. “Go bring me a pint of wine and bring it in a silver tassy” was a mere piece of swagger on the part of the bard. Wine is not drunk in Scotland; the Scotchman can get no “forrader” with it, and as for drinking it out of a silver tassy, there are not more than three silver tassies in the country. Whiskey, and that of the crudest and most shuddering quality is undoubtedly the Scotchman’s peculiar vanity. The amount that he can consume without turning a hair is quite appalling. I have seen a Scotchman drink three bottles of Glenlivet on a railway journey from King’s Cross to Edinburgh, and when he got out at Edinburgh he strutted doucely to the refreshment bar and demanded further whiskey. In London, and particularly in Fleet Street, his feats in this connection are notorious. In the more central quarters of London there are a number of hostelries which are almost wholly devoted to Scottish requirements in the way of ardent liquors. Under some Scotch name, such asthe Scotch Stores, the Clachan, the Highland Laddie, and so forth, these places flourish and the proprietors of them wax fat. Here, any morning in the week, you will find brither Scots assembled, elbow on counter, indulging in the whiskey which delights their souls. All day there is plenty of company, plenty of Doric, plenty of discussion on politics and the questions of the hour, but more than all, a steady flow of whiskey. And by elevenP.M.or thereabouts the company begins to exhibit a tendency to song. And at closing time it staggers forth singingScots Wha HaeandMy Ain Kind Dearie Oin various pathetic keys.Scots Wha Haeis a poor song to sing in the circumstances, and as forMy Ain Kind Dearie O, she probably fumes at home and is not in the least kind in her welcoming of her whiskeyful lord. It is certain that the number of persons in Fleet Street employed upon the press either in literary capacities or as advertisement canvassers or printers is very considerable, and among the lower grades of them, the drinking of whiskeyappears to be considered a part of their duty to themselves and to mankind at large. At the same time it is only fair to say that a drunken Scotchman is not by any means a common spectacle, the reason being that the Scot is so inured to the consumption of whiskey from his youth up, that he can take almost any quantity without becoming drunk about the legs. Drink, however, he must and will have, and both at home and abroad he makes a point of getting as much of it as his means will allow. In Scotland it is quite general for men and women alike to drink whiskey raw and to take the water afterwards. This is done at every meal, and if you call upon a Scotch household at any hour of the day you will be at once offered a four-or five-finger dose of the national drink. To refuse it is to be set down for an evilly-disposed person. Burns the Almighty approved of whiskey drinking; with him it was the symbol of good-fellowship, and he is quoted to you continually as the justification of all excesses.
We are na drunk, we’re no’ that drunkBut just a drappie in our ee,
We are na drunk, we’re no’ that drunkBut just a drappie in our ee,
We are na drunk, we’re no’ that drunkBut just a drappie in our ee,
We are na drunk, we’re no’ that drunk
But just a drappie in our ee,
is the great retort used by Scotchmen if one suggests that they have had enough or too much.
It is to the Scot’s amazing capacity for the consumption of spirit that one may fairly attribute some of his minor defects. Dourness, of which every Scotchman possesses a fair share, and of which he is invariably more or less proud, has always struck me as being in a great measure the outcome of too much whiskey overnight. It is not till he is properly exhilarated with drink that a Scot can unbend himself in the smallest degree. Once primed, he does his best to prove himself an excellent and generous fellow by becoming as uproarious as the host of the tavern in which he is drinking will allow him to be. But next morning, when the whiskey is out of him, he is a very sad and sober man indeed. Then it is that he passes for “dour.” You talk with him and get for answers grunts: he cannot smile; he plods heavily away at whateverlabour stands in front of him: he is glum, rude of tongue and dull of mind, and his brethren set it down for you to his “Scots dourness.”
His gift of steady drinking also accounts, in my opinion, for his general mediocrity. Whiskey may be a fine and healthy drink for persons who do not take enough of it; but to be braced up with it by day and to swim in it by night is calculated to have a detrimental effect even on the bright intellects that come out of Scotland. I have not the smallest desire to suggest that there are not plenty of hard drinkers whose blood is more or less purely English, yet somehow there is no kind of man in the world who makes the drinking of furious spirit acultusand a boast in the way that the Scotchman does. To be fou’ or as he would put it, to have a drappie in his eye, is the Scotchman’s notion of bigness and freedom and manly independence. He is a ranter and a roarer in his cups, and on the whole much more distressing to meet drunk than sober, which is saying a great deal.
Burns, like every other Scotchman that has trailed a pen, did not fail to help along the Scottish advertisement with a suitable contribution. He wroteThe Cottar’s Saturday Night, and thereby did a great thing for Scotland, setting up a picture of Scottish home life and piety which the generations seem to regard as authentic. We have all been taught to admire the moral excellences of that cottar, not to mention the moral excellences of his wife and children:
With joy unfeigned brothers and sisters meet,And each for others’ welfare kindly spiers;The social hours swift winged, unnotic’d fleet,Each tells the unco’s that he see or hears.The parents partial eye their hopeful years,Anticipation forward prints the view;The mother, wi’ her needle and her shears,Gars auld claes look amaist as weel’s the new,The father mixes a’ wi’ admonition due.Their masters’ and their mistresses’ commandThe younkers a’ are warned to obey.And mind their labours wi’ an eydent hand,And ne’er tho’ out of sight to jauk or play—And O! be sure to fear the Lord alway.And mind your duty, duly morn and night,Lest in temptation’s path ye gang astray,Implore his counsel and assisting might,They never sought in vain that sought the Lord aright.
With joy unfeigned brothers and sisters meet,And each for others’ welfare kindly spiers;The social hours swift winged, unnotic’d fleet,Each tells the unco’s that he see or hears.The parents partial eye their hopeful years,Anticipation forward prints the view;The mother, wi’ her needle and her shears,Gars auld claes look amaist as weel’s the new,The father mixes a’ wi’ admonition due.Their masters’ and their mistresses’ commandThe younkers a’ are warned to obey.And mind their labours wi’ an eydent hand,And ne’er tho’ out of sight to jauk or play—And O! be sure to fear the Lord alway.And mind your duty, duly morn and night,Lest in temptation’s path ye gang astray,Implore his counsel and assisting might,They never sought in vain that sought the Lord aright.
With joy unfeigned brothers and sisters meet,And each for others’ welfare kindly spiers;The social hours swift winged, unnotic’d fleet,Each tells the unco’s that he see or hears.The parents partial eye their hopeful years,Anticipation forward prints the view;The mother, wi’ her needle and her shears,Gars auld claes look amaist as weel’s the new,The father mixes a’ wi’ admonition due.
With joy unfeigned brothers and sisters meet,
And each for others’ welfare kindly spiers;
The social hours swift winged, unnotic’d fleet,
Each tells the unco’s that he see or hears.
The parents partial eye their hopeful years,
Anticipation forward prints the view;
The mother, wi’ her needle and her shears,
Gars auld claes look amaist as weel’s the new,
The father mixes a’ wi’ admonition due.
Their masters’ and their mistresses’ commandThe younkers a’ are warned to obey.And mind their labours wi’ an eydent hand,And ne’er tho’ out of sight to jauk or play—And O! be sure to fear the Lord alway.And mind your duty, duly morn and night,Lest in temptation’s path ye gang astray,Implore his counsel and assisting might,They never sought in vain that sought the Lord aright.
Their masters’ and their mistresses’ command
The younkers a’ are warned to obey.
And mind their labours wi’ an eydent hand,
And ne’er tho’ out of sight to jauk or play—
And O! be sure to fear the Lord alway.
And mind your duty, duly morn and night,
Lest in temptation’s path ye gang astray,
Implore his counsel and assisting might,
They never sought in vain that sought the Lord aright.
All of which is very fine, and, with much more to the like effect, has helped the Scotch peasant into an odour of sanctity which on the whole does not appear to be quite his element. Indeed, so far from conducting his life in the manner suggested byThe Cottar’s Saturday Night, the average Scot of the lower orders appears to base himself on the more scandalous portion of Burns’s writing.
According to the latest returns, the population of Scotland is 4,472,000. In the year 1900, which is the latest year for which statistics are available, a matter of 180,000 personswere charged with criminal offences in Scotland. So that out of every twenty-five Scotchmen in Scotland one is either a convicted criminal or a person who has been charged with a criminal offence. From the official Buff-book dealing with the subject I take the following:
“The criminal returns for 1900 show an increase over those for the previous year under all the important classes into which crime and offences are grouped, the number of persons charged has risen to close upon 180,000, and if we compare this with the last published English tables for the year 1899, we shall find, for equal numbers of population, Scotland has over three charges for every two in England.
“Furthermore, imprisonments in Scotland continue to be proportionately much higher than in England, and for every three committals in England there are seven in Scotland. The increase in criminal offences during 1900 is distributed under the following heads”:
It will thus be seen that theft and drunkenness bear the gree among Scotch crimes, while the large number of offences against police acts, by-laws, and regulations tends to show that the Scot is not a good citizen. The mere statistics as to crime, however, do not give one anything like an adequate idea of the general depravity of the Scotch character.To understand it properly we must add to the criminal returns the illegitimacy returns.
From Dr. Albert Leffingwell’s[16]book on illegitimacy I take the following passage:
“In 1881 the census of Scotland showed that there were then living in that portion of the kingdom 492,454 unmarried women (that is to say, spinsters and widows) between the ages of fifteen and forty-five. During the ten years 1878-87 there were born in Scotland 105,091 illegitimate children, or an annual average of twenty-one to each thousand unmarried females at this specified age. In England and Wales the corresponding number of the unmarried females was 3,046,431, and the number of illegitimate births during the same period was 426,184, or fourteen to each thousand of the possible mothers. In Ireland, the number of unmarried women at this age was a third larger than in Scotland, or 731,767. Yet toeach thousand of these were born every year less than five illegitimate children during a ten-year period, 1878-87. Here again we are perplexed with the problem why Scotia and Hibernia should present such widely different contrasts. Every year in Scotland there arefive times the proportionof bastards that see the light in Ireland!”
Dr. Leffingwell’s perplexity is the perplexity of the scientific person. That Burns should have anything to do with illegitimacy of Scotia would probably seem ridiculous to the scientific mind, but I believe that Burns, and the spirit of loose living for which he stands, have been to no little extent responsible for bringing Scotland to the discreditable and degrading pass indicated by Dr. Leffingwell’s figures.
In Ireland the rate of illegitimacy is 4.4, in Scotland, 21.5 to each thousand unmarried women. Now, the poet who stands in the same relation to the Irish people as Burns does to the Scotch is Thomas Moore. He has given Ireland quite as considerable a bodyof songs as Burns has given to Scotland. He is just as essentially Irish as Burns is Scotch; but compare the tone of the two men. One of them gives youThe lass who made the bed to me, the other,Rich and rare were the gems she wore. In reading Burns you find that quite two thirds of what he has written is marred by unpleasant and libidinous suggestion, but there is not a line of Moore which would not pass muster in a ladies’ school. To the rantin’ roarin’ Billies of Scotland the difference may form material for a sneer, but in the long run, clearly, the advantage is with the women of Ireland. If Scotland wishes to get rid of her drunkenness and to lessen the crime which arises out of it, and if she wishes to bring herself into line with the ordinary standards of decency, she will, I am afraid, have to put a little less trust in that mighty performer before the Flesh—Robert Burns.
I have been told that there are two kinds of Scotchmen, and that it would be a mistake to confound them, or to suggest that they have any characteristics in common. One kind, and the best kind, I am assured, is the Highlander. The other—and the more disreputable kind—is the Scotchman of the Lowlands. I have met both sorts, and I have not been able to discover that there is much to choose between them. For all practical purposes the blood is identical. It may at one time have been of two distinct strains, but these appear to have become in a great measure fused, and the blend is not beautiful. I think it was Dr. Cunninghame Graham who said of a certain Scotch peddler that helooked like a cross between a low-class Indian and an ourang-outang that had somehow got itself baptised. This, no doubt, is a little severe. But a Scotchman does certainly make one feel that underneath his unsatisfactory and obviously imperfect civilisation the hairy simian sits and grins. Rouse him, thwart him, disappoint him, rally him, and suddenly your cross-eyed, sandy-haired, bandy-legged, but withal sleek, smug, moralising man suddenly “bleezes,” and you perceive in him the ten thousand devils of an ancient and arboreal barbarity. Whether he be Highlander or Lowlander or mongrel, as he mostly is, it is just the same. He is Scotch and compounded for the most part of savage. Like the converted Kroo-boy, he may at any time revert into his immemorial primalism and you can never be sure of him. Whether he hail from the Isles or from the Lothians, the Scot is just the Scot, and there is nothing more to be said for him.
There is, however, a kind of Scot who,while not of Scotch blood, has adopted the manners and habits of Caledonia, and is rather flattered if you take him for a true-born Scotchman. This type of creature usually owes his retrogression to the fact that he has married a Scotch wife. Of Scotchwomen as a body, I do not wish to say anything that will be considered ungallant. If one passes over their abnormal capacity for thrift, I suppose they are pretty much the same as other women. So far as I am aware I have not met more than a dozen Scotchwomen in my life. Two of them I have known intimately, and I have always thanked my stars that I was not married to either of them. But to return to our Scotchman by adoption. Usually, as I say, he is married to a Scotchwoman. Before you arrive at a knowledge of this circumstance, you are inclined to wonder what is the matter with him. His style and proclivities have induced you to set him down for a Scotchman, yet you find that his Doric is bad, that he eats his porridge with sugar and takes his whiskeywith soda, and that he was born in Gloucestershire. Also, he tells you frankly that his parents were not Scotch, and he adds, with a look of supreme satisfaction, “but my wife is.” And straightway he plunges into tender reminiscences of the days of his courtship, touches modestly upon the wealth and importance of his wife’s relations, hints at the fearful expense to which he was put by his many journeys North when he went a-wooing, and gurgles with a sickly smile that it was worth the trouble, and that he does not know “what he would do without her.” All of which is mightily interesting. If you pursue your investigations further, you will find that the man is perhaps a little more to pity than to blame. He has been compelled to become as Scotch as he knows how, willy-nilly. At the head of his table sits the daughter of Scotia—ruddy, chapped, and sharp of tongue; she looks down on things English, her husband included; her children are taught to remember that their grandfather is a provost and magnificent in thejute line; she keeps her house in the Scotch manner, her servants are Scotch, her household linens are Scotch, her beef is Scotch, and her whiskey is Scotch; her little boys wear tartan; tripe is the great dish for supper, and her husband must eat oatmeal to the verge of scrofula. Abroad, too, this man must be as Scotch as the best of them. In his place of business, Scotchmenprotégésof his wife’s relations are the only ware: he loathes them, and they laugh at him behind his back, but he has to put up with them. On Saturdays they instruct him in the mysteries of “gowf”; on Mondays they tell one another what a “damned foozler” he is. His holidays are always spent in the Western Highlands; he is everlastingly seeing his wife off to Aberdeen; he banks at the Bank of Scotland; he smokes the tobacco which has been so ably pushed into fame by Dr. J. M. Barrie; he believes that the Glasgow bailies know what they are about; his money, which has been scraped together on the Scotch principle, is doucely put away in Scotch ventures; andaltogether Scotland does very well out of him. The fact that he is a mean little man does not worry him. The practice and view of life which the lady of his affections has forced upon him is bringing him a due share of this world’s gear, and in that fact he takes consolation for his attenuated honesty, his lost manhood, and his lost nationality. This is one side of the picture and the brightest.
On the other side it were well for us not to look too closely. The Englishman who has been appropriated by a Scotch wife does not always succeed in profiting by the worldly wisdom with which his spouse would imbue him. Then there is trouble. For a Scotchwoman who cannot report to her kindred in Scotland that her husband is “getting on” feels that she has been robbed of the prime joy of existence. Her contempt for the man who cannot win and grip siller eats into her soul, until she has no other sentiment left. Bit by bit she develops into a scold and a curtain-lecturer; the man who found her so fair by the Birks of Aberfeldey becomes afurtive wanderer from her side, and it all ends in too much whiskey, recrimination, and execration. I know an Englishman of parts who has never earned enough money to be under the necessity of paying income tax. He is a man of small stature and limp, and he has a great fear in his eyes. He is one of those men who might have done things and have omitted to do them. The gossip about him is that he is badly married. Once I saw his wife. She was a big, raw-boned Scotchwoman, with a heavy accent on her. It was New Year’s Eve, and she had evidently been “tasting.” At sight of me, out of the bigness of her Scotch hospitality, she proposed a “nep,” and half filled three glasses from a stone bottle. Then, with hand on hip, glass uplifted, and a blaze on her face, she cried: “Here’s tae us and to hell with the English.” We drank the toast in something of a silence. Later, when I was about to leave, my limp friend would have accompanied me to the door. But the mistress of his heart would have none of it. “Ye’ll awa’,” she said,then, “to yer bed; yer friend is no’ that fou but he can find his ain way oot.” So that we shook hands and parted on the stair. The man had had twenty years of it. I understand him.
The idiot who takes to wearing kilts and speaking with an accent for the mere sake of it is scarcely worth notice. But there are such people even outside Colney Hatch. What they see in the Scotch to admire to the point of spuriousness I cannot for the life of me make out. The garb of old Gaul is, no doubt, very fetching from the point of view of the weak-minded, but of its effeminacy there can be no doubt. Really, it is a costume for small and pretty boys who are too young to be breeched. In view of its associations and of its innate childishness,—not to say immodesty,—it is a great pity that any Englishman should go out of his way to wear it.
Although the political relations between Scotland and England would seem to have been of the smoothest since the Act of Union, and in spite of the fact that on the whole the merging of the two peoples under one Government has tended hugely to the benefit of Scotland, it is the Scotch fashion to lament the Union with groans and to insist that 1707 was a black year for Scotchmen. I believe that were it not for the circumstance that Scotland cannot produce capable men even in the way of agitators we should soon have at St. Stephen’s a Scotch party which would be just as troublesome and just as noisy and truculent as is the Irish party. I believe, too, that within twelve months’ time as big ademand for Home Rule and as much disquiet and rebellion could be got up in Scotland as have ever existed in Ireland. Fortunately, however, the Scotch possess neither the requisite agitators nor the requisite pluck to indulge in serious demonstrations against the Imperial Government. So that they have to content themselves with futile grumbling and petty acts of disloyalty. The Scot has always been more or less of a fine hand at a treason. Out of Scotland has come the only treasonable organisation which England can boast of at the present day. I refer, of course, to that absurd group of persons who once a year decorate the statue of Charles I. at Whitehall with cheap wreaths, and circulate leaflets which profess to prove that the reigning monarch in these realms is a usurper, and that our only true monarch is a woman by the name of Mary, who lives somewhere on the Continent. In any country but England these gentry would be laid by the heels; though the mere fact that they are Scotch renders them quite ineffective.We can afford to smile at them. All the same, we must remember that if they could make trouble they would. Even in the matter of the King’s Coronation the Scotch have managed to give us the usual display of stupid insolence. Writing to his paper in May last, the Scottish correspondent of theTimessaid:
“The approaching coronation of the King and Queen seems to have awakened rather less enthusiasm in certain quarters than either the Jubilee or the Diamond Jubilee of her late Majesty. It would be absurd to make much of the difference, but it does exist. In a word, the celebration of the event will be distinctly more official than the rejoicings over the two notable epochs of Queen Victoria’s later life. Two circumstances have helped to bring this about—the Royal proclamation of two successive holidays, and what is known in Scotland as the ‘numeral.’ They are both absolutely sentimental considerations, but they have had a slight influence. Trades councils, becoming ‘permeated’with Socialism, protest against what they are pleased to call the ‘mummery’ in London, and the association of themselves therewith through local rejoicings, and the idea of losing two days’ pay in one week is just sufficient to arouse their resentment, which some corporations have tried to appease by ignoring the proclamation, or applying it, on their own initiative, to one of the days only. The ‘numeral’ connotes the quasi-patriotic objection to the assumption of the title of King Edward VII. by his Majesty. Some Scotsmen persist in refusing to see that, in calling himself the Seventh Edward, the King neither intended to, nor did, insinuate that he was the seventh of that name who had reigned over the United Kingdom, and they declaim in grotesque fashion against the payment of any kind of homage to the Crown. Their insignificance is shown by the snub administered to them recently by the Convention of Burghs, which is nothing if it is not truly and characteristically Scottish: their influence is no less unmistakablein the resolution of several public bodies to omit the ‘numeral’ from the inscription on their coronation medals, and in the untimely fits of economy that have overcome some local authorities not as a rule averse to feasting.”
It is the old tale over again. The Scotch braggart cry—“unconquered and unconquerable”—is made to rend the welkin whenever the opportunity serves. Edward the Seventh, of course, cannot be Edward the Seventh of Scotland. It would never do. Therefore the “numeral” must not appear on Scotch medals, and the rejoicings are to be as far as possible of an official character. The ululation over the loss of two days’ pay also is eminently Scotch. There is a time for work and a time for play, says the wise man; but the whey-faced Scot plays always with a certain disconsolateness because he feels that he is losing money all the time. The fact is, that Scottish life and Scottish manners are almost entirely dominated by the more evil traits of the Scotch character.Independence and thrift must be read into everything the Scotchman does. Poverty-stricken, starveling pride has been the ruin of the Scottish people. It has made many of them sour, disagreeable, greedy, and disloyal; it has made some of them hypocrites and crafty rogues; it has narrowed their minds and stunted their national development; it has made them a by-word and a mock in all the countries of the world, and it has brought them to opprobrium even among Turks and Chinamen.
The career of the Scotchman in England has been picturesquely summarised by Dr. Cunninghame Graham:
“In the blithe times of clans and moss-troopers [he says], when Jardines rode and Johnstones raised, when Grahams stole, McGregors plundered, and Campbells prayed themselves into fat sinecures, we were your enemies. In stricken fields you southern folks used to discomfit us by reason of your archers and your riders sheathed in steel. We on the borders had the vantage of you, asyou had cattle for us to steal, houses to burn, and money and valuables for us to carry off. We having none, you were not in a state to push retaliation in an effective way. Later, we sent an impecunious king to govern you, and with him went a train of ragged courtiers, all with authentic pedigrees but light of purse. From this time date the Sawnies and the Sandies, the calumnies about our cuticle, and those which stated that we were so tender-hearted that we scrupled to deprive of life the smallest insect which we had about our clothes. You found our cheekbones out, saw our red hair, and noted that we blew our noses without a pocket-handkerchief, to save undue expense.… So far so good. But still you pushed discovery to whiskey, haggis, sneeshin, predestination, and all the other mysteries both of our cookery and our faith. The bagpipes burst upon you (with a skirl), and even Shakespeare set down things about them which I refrain from quoting, only because I do not wish to frighten gentlewomen.… King Georgecame in, in pudding time, and all was changed, and a new race of Scotsmen dawned on the English view. The ’15 and the ’45 sent out the Highlanders, rough-footed and with deerskin thongs tied round their heads, … they marched and conquered and made England reel, retreated, lost Culloden, and the mist received them back. But their brief passage altered your views again, and you perceived that Scotland was not all bailie, prayer-monger, merchant, and sanctimonious cheat.… Then Scott arose and threw a glamour over Scotland which was nearly all his own. True, we were poor, but then our poverty was so romantic, and we appeared fighting for home and haggis, for foolish native kings, for hills, for heather, freedom, and for all those things which Englishmen enjoy to read about, but which in actual life they take good care only themselves shall share. The pale-faced master and the Highland chief, the ruined gentleman, the swashbuckler, soldier, faithful servant, and the rest, he marked and made hisown, but then he looked about to find his counterfoil, the low comedians without whose presence every tragedy must halt.
“Then came the Kailyarders, and said that Scott was Tory, Jacobite, unpatriotic, unpresbyterian, and they alone could draw the Scottish type. England believed them, and their large sale and cheap editions clinched it, and to-day a Scotchman stands confessed a sentimental fool, a canting cheat, a grave, sententious man, dressed in a ‘stan o’ black,’ oppressed with the tremendous difficulties of the jargon he is bound to speak, and, above all, weighed down with the responsibilities of being Scotch.”
As I have already mentioned, Dr. Cunninghame Graham is a Scot.
The whole truth about the Scotch relation with England is that the Scot is more than sensible of the advantage it brings him, but being by disposition wise as a serpent, he is afraid that if he did not pretend to deplore it, it might not last in its present comfortable unrestrictedness. Of course, this fear is entirelybaseless. The Englishman is too easy hearted to make laws against needy aliens whether from north of the Tweed or elsewhere. All the same, the Scot continues to howl on principle. He will not have our King, he will not have the “numeral,” to call him English or even include him under the term British is an indignity and an outrage. The Act of Union was a big mistake: the poor Scot has been trodden down forbye ever since, and altogether he is sorry that he is alive. And, for my own part, I am quite inclined to think that there is much to be said for the latter sentiment.
I do not think it is an exaggeration to describe England as a Scot-ridden country. To whatever department of activity one looks one finds therein, working his way up for all he is worth and by not over-scrupulous methods, the so-called canny Scot. In some professions, notably that of journalism, as I have shown, he has made himself more or less predominant. In banks, offices, and manufactories he is to be found as frequently as not, ruling the roost in the capacity of manager or overseer; and in the general atmosphere of Anglo-Saxon business life there is a persistent feel of him. That he should come from his own heathery wastes and starved townlets to a richer land is quitenatural. That he should desire to do his best for himself and for people of his own blood is also natural. But that he should put on airs and forget that, after all, he is an alien and a person who by good right is with us only on sufferance, is the mistake he makes. The power that he has got for himself has been won largely by combination and advertisement. The Scotch superstition is the oyster out of which he lives. That superstition was never more general than it is to-day, and the advertisement of Scottish virtues and Scottish capacities was never in merrier progress. The time has come, I think, for Englishmen to make a stand in the matter. At any rate, the time has come for the Scotchman to be taught his place. One would hesitate to suggest that he should be got rid of entirely, for he has his uses and his good qualities. As a hewer of wood and a drawer of water, as a person fitted by temperament for the exercise of mechanical functions, he is all very well; but in matters where intellect and sparkle are required heshould be left severely alone. To rid the press of his influence would be an excellent thing for the press. It cannot be shown that he is of the least use in journalism, or that he does things any better, whether as reporter, sub-editor, or editor, than the average Englishman. And it can be shown that he has used his influence on the press for purposes which, however legitimate they may appear to him, are not in the public interest. It is not in the public interest that every newspaper one picks up should contain certificates of character for the Scotch; it is not in the public interest that he should be continually written down for a person of especial intellect, probity, shrewdness, humour, and the rest. His intellect, in point of fact, is middling; his probity merely average; his shrewdness questionable, and his humour neither here nor there. As a subordinate he is always a very doubtful bargain. As a person in authority he is just a bully—“a bad master,” as Dr. Nicoll puts it. Employers of labour would find it distinctly totheir interest to look into the question and to find out how far they are being imposed upon by mere sententiousness and wise looks with nothing behind them that is of consequence. It is not too much to say that if you have a Scotchman in your place of business, you are, as a rule, all the weaker for it. If you go thoroughly into him you will find that his only quality is his capacity for plod; as against this he has many ugly traits—jealousy, over-reachingness, and greediness among them. Rarely, if ever, does he understand his business, and of initiative and originality he is, as a rule, devoid. Changes and advances are not at all in his line. If you ask him for something new, something out of the ordinary, he will bring it to you and impress you (by talk) with the notion that you are getting what you want; but if you examine it, you will find that it is not new at all, and that really it is not what you want.
The Scot, in fact, rarely rises above mediocrity; he seldom has an inspiration or a happy thought; he cannot rise to occasions,and while he is most punctual in his attention to duty and most assiduous and steadfast as a labourer, his work is never perfectly done, and too frequently it is scamped and carried out without regard to finish or excellence. Of pride or delight in labour the Scotchman knows nothing. He works in order that he may get money and secure his own personal advancement. His loyalty is a question of pounds, shillings, and pence; he will be loyal to you just as long as you are paying him more than he can get elsewhere, and the moment somebody comes along with a better offer, there is an end of you so far as he is concerned.
There are not wanting signs that, in spite of the manner in which it has been hidden and bolstered up, the Scotchman’s real character is beginning to be properly understood. Nobody can say, with any show of truth, that the Scot is either loved or admired by the peoples with whom he comes in contact outside his own country. Indeed, I believe that throughout England there is a very strong anti-Scotch feeling. I have found it difficultto meet an Englishman who, if you questioned him straightly, would not admit that he has a rooted dislike for Scotchmen. That dislike the Scotchman has himself aroused. His bumptiousness and uncouthness, his lack of manners, his frequent lack of principle, and his want of decent feeling, have brought and will continue to bring their own reward. In this book I feel that I have merely touched the fringe of the subject. Facts that go to prove the main contentions I have laid down abound. I have not been able to use a tithe of them. Every person of understanding can give you instance after instance of the Scotchman’s underbredness, ineptitude, and disposition to meanness. Furthermore, Scotchmen themselves are full of such instances. Indeed, for the material used in most of the chapters of this work I am indebted to Scotchmen. From first to last I have done my best to convict them out of their own mouths, and if I have failed, the fault is not the fault of the Scotch.
For the general guidance of young Scotchmenwho wish to succeed in this country and who do not desire to add further opprobrium to the Scotch character, I shall offer a few broad hints, which are worth taking to heart:
Never apologise before the offence is a good rule, and in certain circumstances a still better rule is, do not apologise at all. I have not the smallest intention of regretting anything that has been written in the foregoing chapters. But I am informed by a Scotchman who has been kind enough to read them in proof that there is some likelihood of their being misunderstood. This, of course, would be a thousand pities. So that I shall venture on what may be termed, for the want of a better phrase, an explanation. When Dr. Johnson was asked to explain his reasons for disliking the Scotch, his reply was of the vaguest. Lamb also did not quite know why he disliked them; and, on the whole, it is difficult to say flatly why one cannot get on with the simple child ofCaledonia. As a matter of fact, my own antipathy always amuses me. Whether it will amuse the Scotch is another matter. But for the sake of their own peace of mind I should like to ask them not to jump to foolish conclusions about various hard things I have said. Since the time of Burns, Scotchmen appear to have yearned for some one who should show them their faults:
Oh wad some power the giftie gie usTo see oorsels as ithers see us!
Oh wad some power the giftie gie usTo see oorsels as ithers see us!
Oh wad some power the giftie gie usTo see oorsels as ithers see us!
Oh wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oorsels as ithers see us!
is as frequent on their lips as “The best laid schemes o’ mice and men,” “A man’s a man for a’ that,” and the rest of them. And, in this instance, I have simply done my best to play the rôle of “some power.” To put an ugly man in front of a mirror is not, perhaps, to do him the most tender of services, especially if you comment upon his style of beauty the while. For all that, I am hoping that in some small measure I may be doing great and useful things for the Scotch as a nation. If they would only be at a littlepains to discover their faults and at a little more pains to correct them, one could encourage hopes for Scotland. “Much may be done with the Scotchman,” said Dr. Johnson, “if you catch him young,” or words to that effect. I am afraid that to all Scotchmen who have passed the age of forty the present volume will be a wasted lesson. But there appear to be a very large number of Scots who have not yet attained the prime of life, and it is among these that I expect my counsel to have effect. They really cannot do themselves the smallest hurt by taking to heart the warnings and advice which, as a result of great labour, are here put before them. Oh, my dear young Scottish friends, let me implore you to be wise in time. If I have beaten you with clubs, be assured that it is as much for your good as for my emolument. If you have bought this book, you never spent a few sixpences to better advantage in your life. If you have borrowed it, as I expect most of you have, you are forgiven, providing you will really try to mend.For all things to which I have set my hand that may cause you pain I am truly sorry. Yet, as the chastisers of one’s youth were wont to say, the punishment hurts me far more than it hurts you. I know you will believe me and do your best to love me. Whether you do or not, I shall ever continue to take a kindly interest in you and to pray for your general reform.
THE END