Is this the best moment to invoke the success of the United Kingdom as a multi-national country, mere months after the election of the Scottish Nationalists?
Well, there's an even more extreme irony than that. When Cartier refers to the "three great races" of the United Kingdom, he means the English, Scottish and Irish (Apologies to those of our readers who may be Welsh, Cornish or Manx.) Whatever the future may hold for the union of England and Scotland, it will doubtlessly be settled more amicably than the union with Ireland was.
But it could be that -- at least to the Scots Nats -- the EU fulfills the role of political nationality within which the races could compete and emulate.
Thinking about civic diversity must be catching. This news article http://www.boston.com/news/globe...sity/?
page=full deals with Hahvahd study. The paper reports that the study concluded that diversity harms civic life. The study found that "the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects."
Well ... "real" Scots - i.e, "Celtic" Scots are Irish via immigration from Ireland starting around 500 CE, I believe, so that means just two "races", of which the Scots aren't either. (There are no Picts still around, last I heard.)
Still, if we allow for the [insert adjective of choice] effect of additional interbreeding with emissaries from the northeast, south and east, perhaps there is a "Scottish" race by now. (gd&r)
As I understand it, the contemporary scientific consensus is that all the indigenous residents of the British Isles are some breed of Basque.
Cheifetz,
Can we speak of "immigration" c. 500 AD? I don't think my forefathers applied for a visa. Anyway, I suggest you go to Glasgow and discuss your groundbreaking genealogical research with the fans at the next Ranger-Celtic match.
Pithlord,
Are you sure he was referring to the Irish? Keep in mind he said "great" races.
"And there always lurks the nightmare of violent breakdown -- one has to trust pretty firmly in habits of civilization to make it work."
This prospect looms large in my imagination. But what does the weaselly term "habits of civilization" mean? Surely it's something similar to "Northern European standards of good manners", as periodic violent breakdowns along ethnic lines are the rule everywhere else in the world, regardless of level of civilization. If that is the case, then multiculturalism is a death-trap.
Fred,
Glasgow's a nice place to visit.
It's also a good place to start if one is going to reverse Johnson's and Boswell's trip around the Hebrides, just don't spend too many days visiting single malt distilleries once one leaves the city or one won't finish the tour.
It's a good thing, though, that the Glasgow burghers realized in time that they couldn't get the buildings' sandstone back to its original colour without sandblasting away all of the sandstone. Nice Harlequin effect, though, in some cases.
I've never been to Rangers-Celtic game. Would they tolerate an apostate Jew who was/is a Tottenham Hotspurs' fan? I can (honestly) claim I once broke a leg playing soccer. Also, I prefer games where the fans watch the players fight, not the opposite.
You're right, of course, that the 500 CE date is wrong. The 6th century CE is when Christianty made it to Scotland from Ireland. (I know: that was the beginning of the end.) There were Celts in Scotland long before 500 CE, as Hadrian's Wall attests. As to the "whenceness" of the ancestral Scots who claim to be Celts, it's not my genealogical research. Perhaps I'm dreaming but, if not, then I have read that the ancestral Scots are, in essence, Irish, even if they didn't emigrate, so to speak. A quick check on the language tree shows that Scottish Gaelic is a child language of the ancestral Irish language whence came modern Scottish Gaelic and modern Irish. If I stumble across something signficant showing who came from where etc, I'll post it.
On the other hand, as I've said, I've a grandparent born in Wales and I think both paternal grandparents, at one point - certainly one, at least - lived in Merthyr Tydsfil.
David
PL: Basque? In that case, how come there's no jai-alai in Bath?
Did this Basque diaspora predate the fonton? Football (real football), rugby, curling, billiards, darts, croquet, cricket (aka baseball on valium) and, of course, Parliamentary representative democracy are many things, but any version of the self-proclaimed world's fastest sport they're not.
We'll leave that "fastest" claim alone, except to say that I've never seen jai-alai played on ice on skates.
Cheifetz,
Glasgow is indeed a marvelous Victorian city. The people are atrocious though - as I was wandering down Sauchiehall Street one Friday night, I noticed a pair of nurses stitching up a young man's head by the side of the road. I imagine if they took every pint-glass victim in the city to hospital, the NHS would be broke by the following Monday morning.
Wasn't Hadrian's Wall to keep out the Picts, not the Celts?
You me be applying an inappropriately Hebraifying the issue of "Irish" migration to Scotland. Just because we wandered around a bit (and before the consolidation of our national identity) doesn't mean we retain an allegiance/identification with our location of origin ("Next year in Dublin" doesn't have much of a ring to it).
Anyway, aren't we all descended from some lady in Africa who lived 140,000 yrs ago?
Fred,
"Next year in Dublin doesn't have much of a ring to it"? How about next Bloomsday, then?
If it was the Picts tricked up in woad who forayed across the line, before and after the wall, and gave the Romans a tickle, then when did the Celts show up north of that divide?
The nurses? Scottish frugality, no doubt. No point carting the lad across the city to fix him up. All that would do was delay his re-entry into the piss-up and make him spend his beer money getting back.
Eve walked out of Africa? You mean evolution has some validity? Besides, I can't trace my ancestors much farther back than the mid 1850s. My surname might be archaic, but the lineage? The bottleneck might be less than 140,000 years ago, now. Didn't one of the more recent studies suggest it could be half that, for most of the people still alive. I think the aboriginal Australians and some of the south African 'pygmy' tribes have the oldest DNA.
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