(no subject)

[tree_and_leaf]

Oh yes: yesterday the Scottish government launched the Homecoming 2009 campaign, which I would be inclined to cast as a piece of towrist-oriented daftness, except that much as I hate to admit it, it actually does stir some sort of response in me, even as I groan at the slight whiff of shortbread'n'tartan. They do have some very nice e-cards with good pictures of Scotland - am especially pleased by the number of Common Riding* pictures, as there's a tendency for the Borders to be ignored.

And then of course there's the video, which involves a number of Scots celebrities singing, trying to sing, or in the case of Mr Connery, intoning, Caledonia. It has, I gather, been much mocked, and probably deservedly, though I think Connery gets away with it, just, by sheer force of Big Tam-ishness. At least with the straight female portion of the audience, anyway:

Though as far as the 'appealing to the sentimental longings of the exile' goes, it can't beat the famous Tennants "Caledonia" ad, which legend has it was strongly objected to by the Scottish Tories as being likely to send the SNP vote up:

(The whole advert is quite cunningly keyed into a whole set of Scottish images of ourselves and of others, specifically London, the big bad city, where you may get on economically, but will never be at home, though there is a hint of ambivalence in the last shot of - presumably - the Girl He Left Behind Him in the Smoke. Notice that not only are the Edinburgh scenes characterised either by space or by happy people, the returning prodigal apparently stops to buy a Big Issue before heading into the pub - that's quite revealing of Scottish myths about themselves: we like to tell ourselves that we're all Jock Tamson's bairns, and there is a tendency to believe that we're better at solidarity than the English.)

Actually, though, the Frank Miller version the ad used is far inferior to the original, as sung by Dougie Maclean:

I'm not sure what these songs sound like to someone who isn't Scottish, but they do, I think, speak quite powerfully to the anxieties of people in the diaspora (especially when you listen to the full version) - no-one forced us to leave, but the tug of home remains, as does the fear of the loss of identity, of roots, of connectedness.


* I once read a very stupid book which argued that Common Ridings were a demonstration of Protestant chauvinism, a la the Orange Walk. This is absurd - there are a lot of different strands in the Common Riding tradition, and the precise combination varies from place to place, but none of them are enthusiastically Protestant. Hawick is frankly pagan, while the good burghers of Lauder proudly follow a blue banner with a picture of Our Lady on it, which you don't generally see Orangemen doing.

Comments

[straussmonster.livejournal.com]

I really, really like the shortbread. Mmmmm.

[wychwood]

What's the musical tag at the end of the Homecoming 2009 video? I think know it, but I can't pin it down...

I do like that song; I first heard it done by the house band at my local folk club, Mad Jocks and Englishmen *g*.

[dolorous-ett.livejournal.com]

I'm already there! Yay!

*tries to be more Scottish*

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

I must remember to look up what Ronald Hutton says about Common Riding - the Northumberland counterpart is Riding the Bounds, principally at Berwick, though it does happen elsewhere, often as a modern invention (such as the Riding the Bounds of the Civil Parish of Ponteland, which would take place in the 1980s).

[el-staplador.livejournal.com]

*is hypnotised by the Connery eyebrow*

[sacred-sarcasm.livejournal.com]

I misread that as 'Tennant's Caledonia Ad', which would certainly have encouraged me to go to Scotland ;)

This sort of thing always makes me sad I was brought up in Berkshire with no... it's not fair to say 'no culture' but I don't get that heart-clutchy feel of 'home' when I go back to Wokingham. (Funnily, I do get it for Cumbria, where my parents moved when I was at university)

[owl]

Speaking as a third-generation descendent of the diaspora, it still works. Although I suspect that part of the effectiveness is the longing to have somewhere where I belong unambiguously, to imagine going home to. Because I'm not Scottish, (or English or Welsh, and who's British?), and yet I'm not really Irish either.