The Scots Have Influenced My Culture, What Do I Do?

[Bugbear]

The Normans were Scandinavians of course (Norsemen) and Scotts and Scandinavian vocabulary share many words (kirk, ship). No identity stands up well with probing. Let me put it broadly by telling a story. Years ago I lived alone in the Amazonian jungles with no one to talk to and 12 hour nights. There's a limit to how long you can sleep! Studying the plants and their relationships and identities, it came to me that identity is created by death and extinction, a sort of Death and the Maiden thing. If no animal or plant had ever gone extinct, then all forms of life would still be present, and there would be a fluid transition between monkey and ape and man with all shades in between. This it the Tree of Life. The Dark Tree is what creates the valleys and branches through extincitons and separations. Without identity, mating would be problematic as anything could mate with anything (reinforcing Death and the Maiden).

So it is reasonable to adopt any identity you wish and claim it as your own. Because oaks originated in Mexico, doesn't mean that the British don't think of them as their own. Potatoes are Peruvian, but don't tell the Irish!

Norman Borlaug's ancestors were from Norway, if I remember correctly...
By the way, MacBean, my Pereskia corrugata is blooming, and I was out there trying to hand pollinate it earlier today.

I've also been going through a morning ritual of hand pollinating an old variety of blue maize from the Sierra Madre Occidental to increase my seed stock and begin selection. I think that counts as a tradition...

[Bugbear]

Thanks, Jock. Many of my ancestors came from Germany, and a few from France, etc, etc.

[McElmurry]

Let’s see if we can weaken the brick wall a bit. Your first question was:

What do the Scots of the forum make of this mixed culture that goes way, way back in my history?

The one Scot who responded said:

So worry not, a young country like yours will take more than a wee while to really be comfortable with who you are. Who knows, by then, no one in your country will give a damn about clan tartans and Scotland and they will all be able to recognize your State tartans at a glance. All it needs is time. A lot of time.

In the context of this forum I take this to mean we Americans are more than welcome to adopt the kilt but perhaps we try too hard sometimes to prove a Highland connection or find our inner Scottishness. The goal of many of the threads on this site is to help us wear the kilt well regardless of the style in which we wear it.

My combined studies into my genealogy and the history of “The Islands” has so far taught me that history is much more nuanced than what we are taught in school. When we study our genealogy and history we will lose some things we had believed as they will be proven false but we will gain new connections to history that will enrich our lives. For instance I cannot now in good conscience stand at the Butt of Lewis and claim to be a Morrison when it seems much more likely the McElmurrys came from County Down. On the other hand I gained a rich tradition of literature that includes my legendary kin the O’Morna who were sidekicks to Finn McCool.

The first McElmurry of my line born in the new world married a woman from a First Nation. One of my goals is to find out if she was from the Carolinas or the Kentucky/Illinois border area. He was killed and scalped at the age of 32 and his killer was identified by the red headed scalp he was carrying. Their son also married a woman from a First Nation in the Kentucky/Illinois area. If I wanted to honor these families I suppose I would wear a breechclout as I serious doubt any of them ever wore a kilt either in the new world or Ulster.

While I have struggled some trying to understand where I come from my way is made easier because I live in a live and let live state and do not have relatives or friends with a preconceived notion of who I should be and how I should express that. I sense that your world is not as sunny as mine.

I hope somewhere in these ramblings there is something that will make your brick wall a bit softer.

[Bugbear]

Ya, school can be brutal!

On the other hand, I had to... lose... a bunch of attitudes and beliefs from my family when I started school, if you get my drift. That was a good thing, and good it happened early on; painful though it was.

[Bugbear]

I do grow okra, which originates in Africa if I remember correctly, I don't have any growing this year, I also grow it's cousin, hibiscus. I have dwarf sunflowers.

Food and crops are an important part of culture, I would think... I will go look up what the Scots tend to grow, but I read a blog on line about Scots growing sweet corn in a greenhouse the other day.

* Ok, I ran out there and planted a handful of okra seeds; it's late in the season for that though. I had a couple of them growing early on, but something got them.

* Here's the Scottish hog and crop report: NFUS
I'm sure Jock could tell us more on the traditional crops.

[Bugbear]

Here's what The Oxford Companion to Scottish History, Michael Lynch, 2007, says about Caledonian societies outside Scotland.

Many have noticed that the Scots abroad have enjoyed a profile much greater than their actual numbers: "America would have been a poor show if not for the Scotch" is the well-known saying of the industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. It has been argued by Christopher Harvie that the flourish of Caledonian societies in the 1880s allowed the emigrant Scots' communities to dispense with their British imperial identities at a time of its greatest unpopularity. The numeral strength of the Scots diaspora, exaggerated to 10 or 20 million, could strengthen the question why Scots did not govern at home,
and why emigration was "forced" in the first place. Yet the phenomenon of expatriate nationalists continues to sit uneasily with those who remain behind.
Caledonian societies have sustained a sense of Scottishness abroad, and helped financially a number of national causes and campaigns at home including, recently, the new Royal Museum of Scotland. Yet they perpetuate a history of Scotland too often locked in to a romantic and Highland-dominated past which
ignores the socio-economic hardship which prompted so many to seek a life elsewhere. (60)

I'm all in favor of people who have a "sense of Scottishness" being involved with Caledonian societies , and I acknowledge that these and many, many other Scots have done a great deal for my country.

There's been a bit to untangle for me, but I am trying to say that I do not have a sense of Scottishness, I have a sense of having been influenced by Scottishness. I've had to let go of a lot of things in sorting that out- no need to go into the weird myths in my family.

Hope that explains it.

[Micric]

Bugbear,

Since when have Oaks originated in Mexico????????????
And how did they get to GB and the rest of Europe thousands and thousands of years ago??
I await your reply with interest!

(:-)
R.

[muirkirkca]

Cultures have been transposed ever since mankind have been migrating around the globe. Some regional characteristics may stand out such as the love of football in the US. Others migrate such as basketball,golf, hockey etc.
These are in the sports word but the same thing is happening with fashion, music and other cultural identities.

I wouldn't be too fussy about living in a society with a singular religious or national identity. Too constraining.

Summary - don't be too concerned.

[Bugbear]

Bugbear,

Since when have Oaks originated in Mexico????????????
And how did they get to GB and the rest of Europe thousands and thousands of years ago??
I await your reply with interest!

(:-)
R.

Ask MacBean, he's the one who said it...

I've never studied oaks, so I don't have an "off hand" answer, or even know if they did originate in Mexico. However, I do know oaks are all over the northern hemisphere, and have been in America for thousands and thousands of years. So, how does a plant genus spread all over half the globe? The ice ages, squirrels and birds did it! People may have also helped.

I have read, quite a few times, that the horse originated in North America, and later went extinct over here after propagating across the old world. It requires you to think in terms of millions of years, hundreds of millions in some cases, and extremely different climates over time, along with a slowly changing surface structure of the globe.

I view it as gene pools because that, except in human culture, is what is being copied and spread around the globe. MacBean does not put it in those terms.

muirkirkca,

I never can get the multiple quote thing to work. I would not have been able to look at my own culture, and the influences the Scots have had on it, if I had not been able to talk to the Scots on the forum. That direct conversation is what began to make things clear to my point. Over in another thread, I called it family brainwashing. That is what I am trying to overcome.

[wildrover]

I suspect that if any of us were to compare our daily routines, holidays, cultural quirks, likes and dislikes, even our slang, with another country--or even another state, town, borough, or region--that we would find we do indeed have a unique culture.

Also, consider what comes to mind when you think of someone else's culture...separating out the stereotypes, what remains is probably fairly unique.

In other words, I'd say America and Canada, for all their size, do have quite unique cultures...even though the concrete indicators of them may seem to be fleeting, nebulous, or regional.