Blethering Skite

By the late 1800s, the number of steamers calling at Rothesay had increased to the point where its steamer pier was second busiest on the Clyde, with only Greenock seeing more traffic. Residents of Glasgow could reach Rothesay in around an hour by rail and steamer, and one result was a dramatic increase in the number of hotels and boarding houses. Once the increasingly mass-market trippers had reached Rothesay, they could progress to Port Bannatyne and from there across the island to Ettrick Bay by tram. The peak year for steamer traffic was 1913, and during the Summer of that year anything up to 100 steamers each day called at Rothesay.

X marks the sport where the Scottish nationalist left, and progressive forces within Scotland need to make a stand and lay down a politics which is explicitly anti-fascist, anti-racist and shows solidarity with both exploited women and girls and those under attack from the far-right.

Scot Scran - CLOOTIE DUMPLING

Scotland is one of the most wildlife-depleted countries in the world. Yet, no reintroduction is on the cards.

According to one study, big predators are necessary to maintain healthy ecosystems. For instance, wolves and their co-predators could help solve Scotland’s biodiversity crisis and bring balance back to Scottish ecosystems by regulating populations of deer, foxes and badgers. In doing so, big predators may also contribute to the fight against climate change by enhancing carbon storage capacities. Overpopulation of herbivores can deplete plant species and trees which capture carbon dioxide emissions responsible for global warming.

But prejudice against large predators still runs deep, especially among farmers regardless of any tangible benefits that predators could bestow even on farmers themselves. The recent downgrading of the legal protection afforded to the wolf in continental Europe is a case in point.

As 2024 closes we’re taking feedback from readers and writers.

That Typeform survey was a bit useless. First time I’d used it. Here are the Questions we asked and the (anonymous) answers given. Feel free to respond in the comments below.

There are some 500 brochs scattered across Scotland, especially across the north and west of the country. Built in the last couple of centuries BC and the first couple of centuries AD they combine features of fort, fortified house, and status symbol, and could easily have served different purposes in different places and at different times. Of all Scotland's brochs one quite literally stands supreme: Mousa Broch rises to 13m high and is both magnificent and awe inspiring.

The name Wemyss Bay is applied to two quite distinct places. The best known of them is the departure point for the CalMac ferries to Rothesay on Bute, and for the associated terminus of the railway from Glasgow. A little to the north, between Wemyss Point and the A78, is the upmarket settlement of Wemyss Bay.

Both aspects of Wemyss Bay date back less than 150 years, to the arrival in 1865 of the railway from Glasgow. Until then many steamers serving the fashionable Victorian watering holes of Rothesay on Bute and Millport on Cumbrae sailed from Glasgow itself. But even in those days, making the maximum use of limited leisure time was important, and the Wemyss Bay Steamboat Company and the Caledonian Railway hoped to steal a march on their competitors by carrying passengers by train to Wemyss Bay before embarking them on steamers making much shorter crossings.

Make no mistake, this is a breakthrough result for Scottish independence. It demonstrates that, with the right message, there is a path to a 66% supermajority for Scottish independence. Two thirds of Scottish voters would support independence if independence were predicated on a Wellbeing Economic Approach with The Wellbeing Pension. More than that, the poll found that of the groups that are least likely to support independence, all of them moved to majority support in answer to this poll question. Meaning a Yes majority amongst demographics known for showing lower support for independence; Females aged over 55, Labour voters and English born voters, is possible if we make the right case for independence.

Just when you think nothing will ever change, and the dark nights and the short days of Midwinter encourage you to despair, a glimmer of light beckons. Winter is here. Spring is coming.

We are in a completely new landscape and this new ground doesn’t have faith in the previously ‘unifying’ idea of a British monarchy. This might seem like a constitutional sideline, an interesting but irrelevant bit of detail but it is far bigger than that. Without the endless bunting propaganda of coronations, births, deaths, marriages and social media distortions Britain is reduced to its harsh realities: destitution, food banks and grotesque inequality.

This is a challenge to the independence parties and movement. How do you create a movement that responds to this?

Yule logs and greenery in Scottish Winter customs

Beyond the Yule breads and celebration Plant lore is the verdant heart of Scottish folk holidays and traditions charring the old wife is a unique Scottish tradition. The Yules are no exception, even though at Yuletide the greenery has all but gone, the ground grasped in winter’s frozen embrace.  If we look beyond this, nature’s gift and sacrifice is found in the burning heart of Yule – the Yule log of ash or birch.

“While Santa keeks doon frae the mantle above,

the Yule log crackles oan this Christmas Nicht,

waurmin’ hearth an’ hame by burnin’ sae bricht.

We coorie thegither, my wife an’ I,

voicin’ oor thouchts aboot the day ganged by.

A’ wheest in the daurk we savour oor love.”

‘When the Yule log Crackles’

– Francis Kerr Young

In Scotland, folk used to sit on the Yule log before it was burnt, and, if it was big enough, when it was on the fire. Each took turns: singing and toasting to a great Yule. Some believe this might represent a way of giving thanks to the tree for its gift of light and heat. Others say it might be a way or propitiating the spirits, like ‘knocking on wood for luck’, or perhaps reminiscent of earlier sacrifices carried out at this time of year.

The Big Question

We have a Norstat panel that has just responded 54% Yes and we want to know how that changes if we suggest an independent Scotland would be a republic - will support rise, suggesting we have some thinking and more research to do? Or will it fall suggesting that people want to end the union of the parliament but not (also) the union of the Crowns.

A fragment of "lost" music found in the pages of Scotland's first full-length printed book is providing clues to what music sounded like five centuries ago.

Scholars from Edinburgh College of Art and KU Leuven in Belgium have been investigating the origins of the musical score—which contains only 55 notes—to cast new light on music from pre-Reformation Scotland in the early sixteenth-century.

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This is a wonderful film about Glasgow and its architecture. Well worth an hour of your time.

Slains Castle today is a slightly unsettling place. It comes as little surprise to discover that Bram Stoker used it as inspiration for his story of Dracula. Earlier distinguished visitors included Samuel Johnson and James Boswell on their tour of the Highlands and Islands in August 1773. You can read Johnson's description here, and Boswell's here.

The front of the castle lies close to the edge of the cliffs, while its rear, beyond what were once its gardens, is protected from unwanted guests by a deep cleft that cuts into the cliffs as far as the main access road. Internally, the castle is a collection of mostly brick-built intersecting corridors wrapped around rooms now deeply carpeted in nettles. In the heart of the castle is the courtyard, though it takes some time to work out which were outside areas in the original design and which were inside.

Slain's general air of creepiness is not helped by the vaulted room accessed down a muddy slide that was probably once a kitchen store or wine cellar complete with large stone storage bins all the way around the walls.

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During the Lighthouse’s operation, fortnightly reliefs were carried out until the disaster of December 1900. Prior to the discovery that the men were missing, the light had not been seen on the islands from the nearest point on Lewis, 16 miles away, for 10 days.

At the time three Lightkeepers were on duty at the lighthouse: James Ducat, Principal Lightkeeper; Thomas Marshall, Assistant Lightkeeper; and Donald McArthur, Occasional Keeper, who was on duty for William Ross (Assistant Lightkeeper) who was absent on sick leave. One other Assistant Lightkeeper, Joseph Moore, was on shore duty on Breasclete.

It was concluded that the men must have left the lighthouse for some purpose in this weather, perhaps to secure some gear or to ascertain what damage had been done. With Moore’s knowledge of the lightkeeper’s working clothes, Muirhead could guess that they had made their way to the landings:

“When the accident occurred, Ducat was wearing sea boots and a waterproof, Marshall sea boots and oilskins, and as Moore assures me that the men only wore those articles when going down to the landings, they must have intended, when they left the Station, either to go down to the landings or the proximity of it”.

NRS, NLC3/1/1

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These types of ancient monuments are found in western Scotland, Ireland and along the coast of Wales. There are also similar sites in north-west France. The project will study sites which are yet to be confirmed at multiple locations in Scotland over the next two years, including ones in Argyll and Bute, the Outer Hebrides and the Highlands, with additional activity in Ireland and Northern Ireland.

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Full documentary - Life in Scotland in 1948

The village of Burghead stands on a narrow promontory of land projecting north-west into the outer Moray Firth a little over seven miles north-west of Elgin. The tip of the promontory remains largely undeveloped, and it is here that you can still see some traces of a fortress that was occupied for around five hundred years and was quite possibly one of the most important centres of power in what later became Scotland.

The fortress, more properly called a promontory fort, at Burghead was large, covering an area of three hectares or 7.5 acres. This made it three times the size of any other centre of power in Early Historic Scotland. The fort seems to have been occupied from the late 300s and continued as a major centre until the late 800s. In 884 Torridun, as it was known at the time, was captured by Sigurd the Mighty, the Norse Earl of Orkney. The indications are that Sigurd rebuilt the fortress and it then became a centre of Norse power in Moray until their defeat by the Scots in 1010. Under the Norse the fortress became known by the Danish name Burghe, which much later became Burghe-head.

Monoglots can push everyone else into speaking only English

But for the first time, the 2022 census showed Gaelic speakers are a minority in the Western Isles. That adds to the already existing issue of trying to hold space for the language to be used in daily life.

It is all too common for monoglot English speakers to complain when Gaelic is used in a social setting. They argue that it excludes them - but this means that if there is one person who speaks only English in any situation, the whole company will have to speak English.

Untold stories of Glencoe

The recent archaeological excavations uncovered MacDonald of Achnacon’s turf-walled house and among the finds was a scatter of 17th century bronze coins, potentially the proceeds of the fateful night’s gambling, lost as the massacre began.

MacDonald of Achnacon, unlike his brother, survived and was taken outside to be shot by the government soldiers. However, as they prepared to fire, he tore off his plaid cloak, threw this over his attackers, and fled off into the winter morning darkness. While excavating just outside this house structure, two volunteers on the 2024 dig found a bent plaid pin and two pieces of lead musket balls; the team think these could be the traces of MacDonald of Achnacon’s escape.

What is a white pudding supper in Scotland and information about this Scottish mealie sausage shaped oatmeal dish with ingredients recipe and photos

White Pudding is a traditional Scottish oatmeal dish though it is also cooked in Ireland. It is usually eaten with mince and tatties, battered and deep fried at a chip shop and served with chips as a white pudding supper and sometimes used as a stuffing for chicken, though usually an alternative white pudding recipe of skirlie is used. Some Scots like to eat slices fried along with their cooked breakfast, though this practice is more common amongst the Irish.

The Flemish are among the most important and perhaps the most underappreciated immigrant groups to have shaped the history of medieval and early modern Scotland. They came to Scotland as soldiers and settlers, traders and artisans, diplomats, and dynasts, over a period of several centuries. Several of Scotland’s major families – the Flemings, Murrays, Sutherlands, Lindsays, and Douglases for instance – claim elite Flemish roots, while many other families can trace their ties to Flemish people who arrived as craftspeople, mercenaries, and religiously persecuted émigrés.

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James Hogg defied categorisation. A prolific poet, songwriter, playwright, novelist, short story writer and parodist, he wrote with equal skill in Scots and English. Labelled as the Ettrick Shepherd, the former Borders farmhand, whose life spanned the 18th and 19th centuries, befriended many of the great writers of his day, including Walter Scott, John Galt and Allan Cunningham.