Celtic Geographies: Old Culture, New Times

CELTIC GEOGRAPHIES

Recent years have seen an upsurge of interest in all things Celtic, providing a

renewed impetus and vigour to Celtic culture and politics. At the same time,

there has been an increased questioning of the exact nature of the Celtic concept.

Celtic Geographies illuminates the dynamic nature of Celticity and Celtic geog-

raphy by exploring the many ways in which an old culture is being re-interpreted

to serve the needs of particular groups of people, in certain places, in modern

times.

Celtic Geographies explores a number of themes that are central to historical

and contemporary Celticity:

• the historical geographies of Celtic peoples;

• devolution and politics in Celtic regions, such as Wales and Scotland;

• the commodiﬁcation of Celticity in the tourism practices of Brittany and

Ireland;

• the role of diaspora in the development of Celtic identities, both in North

America and in the West of Scotland;

• the relationship between Celticity and forms of contemporary culture, such

as music festivals and the appropriation of Celtic motifs.

Celtic Geographies questions traditional conceptualisations of Celticity that rely on

a homogeneous interpretation of what it means to be a Celt in contemporary

society. The various contributors break away from these traditional interpreta-

tions to explore critically a Celticity that is diverse in character.

David C. Harvey is Lecturer in Geography at the University of Exeter, Rhys

Jones is Lecturer in Geography at the University of Wales Aberystwyth, Neil

McInroy is a consultant with the Centre for Local Economic Strategies and

Christine Milligan is Lecturer at Lancaster University.

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CRITICAL GEOGRAPHIES

Edited by Tracey Skelton

Lecturer in Geography, Loughborough University

and Gill Valentine

Professor of Geography, The University of Shefﬁeld

This series offers cutting-edge research organised into three themes of concepts,

scale and transformations. It is aimed at upper-level undergraduates, research

students and academics and will facilitate interdisciplinary engagement between

geography and other social sciences. It provides a forum for the innovative and

vibrant debates which span the broad spectrum of this discipline.

1. MIND AND BODY SPACES

Geographies of illness, impairment and

disability

Edited by Ruth Butler and Hester Parr

2. EMBODIED GEOGRAPHIES

Spaces, bodies and rites of passage

Edited by Elizabeth Kenworthy Teather

3. LEISURE/TOURISM GEOGRAPHIES

Practices and geographical knowledge

Edited by David Crouch

4. CLUBBING

Dancing, ecstasy, vitality

Ben Malbon

5. ENTANGLEMENTS OF POWER

Geographies of domination/resistance

Edited by Joanne Sharp, Paul Routledge,

Chris Philo and Ronan Paddison

6. DE-CENTRING SEXUALITIES

Politics and representations beyond

the metropolis

Edited by Richard Phillips, DianeWatt

and David Shuttleton

7. GEOPOLITICAL TRADITIONS

A century of geo-political thought

Edited by Klaus Dodds and David Atkinson

8. CHILDREN’S GEOGRAPHIES

Playing, living, learning

Edited by Sarah L. Holloway and Gill Valentine

9. THINKING SPACE

Edited by Mike Crang

and Nigel Thrift

10. ANIMAL SPACES, BEASTLY

PLACES

New geographies of human–animal

relations

Edited by Chris Philo

and ChrisWilbert

11. BODIES

Exploring ﬂuid boundaries

Robyn Longhurst

12. CLOSET SPACE

Geographies of metaphor from the

body to the globe

Michael P. Brown

13. TIMESPACE

Geographies of temporality

Edited by Jon May and Nigel Thrift

14. GEOGRAPHIES OF YOUNG

PEOPLE

The morally contested spaces of identity

Stuart C. Aitken

15. CELTIC GEOGRAPHIES

Old culture, new times

Edited by David C. Harvey, Rhys Jones,

Neil McInroy and Christine Milligan

CELTIC GEOGRAPHIES

Old culture, new times

Edited by

David C. Harvey, Rhys Jones,

Neil McInroy and Christine Milligan

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London and New York

•

First published 2002

by Routledge

11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

Rhys Jones, Neil McInroy and Christine Milligan;

individual chapters © the contributors

reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or

other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and

recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without

permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Celtic geographies: old culture, new times/edited by David C. Harvey . . . et al.].

p. cm. – (Critical geographies)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Celts – Great Britain. 2. Great Britain – Ethnic relations.

3. Ireland – Ethnic relations.

4. Celts – Ireland. I. Harvey, David. II. Series.

DA125.C4 C45 2001

305.891′6041–dc21 2001019764

ISBN 0–415–22396–2 (hbk)

ISBN 0–415–22397–0 (pbk)

This edition published in the Taylor and Francis e-Library, 2005.

“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s

collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”

ISBN 0-203-99633-X Master e-book ISBN

CONTENTS

List of plates viii

List of ﬁgures ix

List of tables x

Notes on contributors xi

Acknowledgements xiv

1 Timing and spacing Celtic geographies 1

DAVID C. HARVEY, RHYS JONES, NEIL McINROY AND

CHRISTINE MILLIGAN

PART I

Othering and identity politics 19

2 Imagined geographies of the ‘Celtic fringe’ and the

cultural construction of the ‘Other’ in medieval

Wales and Ireland 21

KEITH D. LILLEY

3 ‘Their families had gone back in time hundreds of years

at the same place’: attitudes to land and landscape in

the Scottish Highlands after 1914 37

IAIN ROBERTSON

4 Identity, hybridity and the institutionalisation of

territory: on the geohistory of Celtic devolution 53

GORDON MacLEOD

5 Welsh civil identity in the twenty-ﬁrst century 69

JOHN OSMOND

PART II

Sites of meaning

6 Sites of authenticity: Scotland’s new parliament and

ofﬁcial representations of the nation 91

HAYDEN LORIMER

7 Our common inheritance? Narratives of self and other

in the Museum of Scotland 109

STEVEN COOKE AND FIONA McLEAN

8 Tourism images and the construction of Celticity in

Ireland and Brittany 123

MOYA KNEAFSEY

9 The Scottish diaspora: Tartan Day and the appropriation

of Scottish identities in the United States 139

EUAN HAGUE

10 Whose Celtic Cornwall? The ethnic Cornish meet

Celtic spirituality 157

AMY HALE

PART III

Youth culture and Celtic revival

11 Edifying the rebellious Gael: uses of memories of

Ireland’s troubled past among the West of Scotland’s

Irish Catholic diaspora 173

MARK BOYLE

12 From blas to bothy culture: the musical re-making of

Celtic culture in a Hebridean festival 192

PETER SYMON

13 Celtic nirvanas: constructions of Celtic in contemporary

British youth culture 208

ALAN M. KENT

CONTENTS

PART I V

Epilogue

14 A geography of Celtic appropriations 229

JOHN G. ROBB

Bibliography 243

Index 269

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CONTENTS

vii

PLATES

6.1 Enric Miralles, ‘celebrity architect’ commissioned to design the

new Scottish parliament 98

6.2 The parliament proposal for Holyrood: a new setting for Scottish

nationhood? 100

6.3 Upturned ﬁshing boats: original inspiration for the parliament’s

central design motif 102

8.1 View of the lakes of Killarney, Co. Kerry 130

8.2 Bretons in traditional costume 132

14.1 Glencolumbcille, Co. Donegal, August 1999: a group of Breton

artist-performers are assisted by locals to install a sculpture

based on Neolithic motifs common to both countries 240

viii

FIGURES

2.1 The spatial diffusion of Breteuil and Hereford law in Wales and

Ireland (1100–1300), and (inset) the Norman advance into Wales

(1066–1100) 28

2.2 Haverfordwest,Wales, showing the suburb of Prendergast and

the Norman castle-town 33

2.3 New Ross, Ireland, showing the Irishtown suburb and the

Anglo-Norman walled town 34

5.1 The ‘Three Wales model’ 81

5.2 The 1997 referendum result 83

6.1 Monumental symbols in Edinburgh’s cityscape: the contested

geography of the Scottish parliament 101

9.1 Full text of US Senate Resolution 155 declaring 6 April to be

National Tartan Day in the United States 140

9.2 Number of Scottish festivals and Highland Games in the United

States (1830–2000) 141

10.1 Sites of spiritual interest in west Cornwall 161

11.1 Location of ﬁeld sites in the West of Scotland 176

11.2 Research diary notes from a ‘rebel night out’, Glasgow

Barrowlands, October 1998 177

14.1 Celtic spaces: the conventional bounded territories of the

contemporary Celtic contain important distinctions between

the core areas of Celtic speech and the national borders 230

14.2 Culmination: a large part of Europe was at some time ‘Celtic’

according to most authorities, though the outline is variable

in extent 235

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TABLES

5.1 National Assembly constituency results, May 1999 70

5.2 National Assembly regional list results, May 1999 70

5.3 The generation divide and the 1997 referendum vote 79

5.4 Geographic dispersion of identity groups within Wales, 1979 81

5.5 1997 referendum result by county 82

5.6 Region and Welsh referendum vote, 1979 and 1997 84

5.7 Welsh, Scottish and English national identity 85

5.8 Westminster voting intention in May 1999 compared with

1997 result 86

5.9 Proﬁle of Plaid Cymru’s Assembly vote, compared with the

1997 general election 86

8.1 Perceptions of Ireland 135

11.1 Irish-born populations in Scotland and Glasgow 175

11.2 Irish rebel songs and their popularity in the scene, 1994–99 186

13.1 Sample of links between popular music and Celticism, 1970–99 214

CONTRIBUTORS

Mark Boyle is a Lecturer in Geography at the University of Strathclyde and

currently serves on the Research Committee of the Royal Scottish Geographical

Society. His research interest lies in the Irish diaspora, with a particular interest

in the politics of commemoration of Ireland’s troubled political past. His recent

publications have appeared in Environment and Planning A, Political Geography and

Progress in Planning.

Steven Cooke is a Lecturer in the Department of Geography at the University

of Hull. His main research interests focus on the relationships between history,

memory and identity, primarily as they relate to museums and Holocaust memo-

rialisation.

Euan Hague is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow in the Geography Division at

Staffordshire University. He completed his PhD at Syracuse University in 1998,

studying the different ways in which people residing in Scotland and the US

represent Scotland.

Amy Hale is a Lecturer in Cornish Studies at the Institute of Cornish Studies,

University of Exeter. Research interests include Celtic identities in Cornwall,

cultural tourism, festival and spirituality. She is the co-editor of New Directions

in Celtic Studies (with Philip Payton).

David C. Harvey is a Lecturer in Historical Cultural Geography at the University

of Exeter. He has published widely on aspects of continuity and change with respect

to notions of power and territoriality, with a particular interest in Cornwall.This has

led him to investigate issues of heritage and contested meanings of the past within a

variety of contexts, most recently with respect to the uses and interpretations of

archaeological monuments in Britain and Ireland, both within historical and con-

temporary contexts. He has published in the Journal of Historical Geography, Landscape

Research,Geograﬁska Annaler B,Landscape History and Cornish Studies,and puts his (hope-

fully) continuing good health down to regular swims in the ‘Celtic Sea’!

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Rhys Jones is a Lecturer in Human Geography in the University of Wales,

Aberystwyth. His main interest lies in the geographies of the state in both a

historical and contemporary context, and with particular reference to Wales. He

is also interested in the changing geographies of group senses of identity.

Alan M. Kent is a scholar and writer who received his PhD, on Cornish

Literature, from the University of Exeter. Recent publications include Voices from

West Barbary: an Anthology of Anglo-Cornish Poetry 1549–1928 and Looking at the

Mermaid: a Reader in Cornish Literature (with Tim Saunders).

Moya Kneafsey is a Research Fellow in Geography, Coventry University, having

completed her doctoral research on tourism and place identity in the ‘Celtic

periphery’ (Liverpool University, 1997). She worked on a major project which

examined the use of regional imagery to promote quality products in lagging

European regions. Since 1999, her research has concentrated on the commodi-

ﬁcation of places and cultures, with a focus on rural tourism and regional speciality

foods.

Keith D. Lilley is a Lecturer in Human Geography at the Queen’s University of

Belfast. His work on the morphology and topography of Norman towns in

England, Wales and Ireland was carried out at the University of Birmingham

(1993–96) thanks to funding from the Leverhulme Trust. Further reﬂection

on the meanings of medieval urban landscapes was possible because the British

Academy awarded him a Post-doctoral Fellowship (1996–99), which he took

to Royal Holloway (University of London), where discussions with Felix

Driver,Rob Imrie,Klaus Dodds and Denis Cosgrove about ‘visualised geographies’

helped him to reformulate his approach to the study of medieval urban form.

Hayden Lorimer is a Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of

Aberdeen. He has published on environmental politics and identity politics in

Scotland. At present he is researching ‘new geographies of outdoor culture in

Scotland’.

Neil McInroy is a consultant with the Centre for Local Economic Strategies

and an Associate Researcher in Urban Policy and Regeneration at Oxford Brookes

University. His research interests focus on urban regeneration policy, including

cultural regeneration, the cultural politics of place, place identity and the geo-

graphies of scale. Aside from a number of urban policy evaluations, he has also

recently published in Space and Polity and Scotlands.

Fiona McLean is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Marketing at the

University of Stirling, which she joined on completing her doctorate at the

University of Northumbria at Newcastle. She has published widely on heritage

and museums and is the author of Marketing the Museum (Routledge, 1997).

CONTRIBUTORS

xii

Gordon MacLeod is a Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of

Durham. His main research interests are in urban and regional political economy,

the politics of place, and the geography of the state in a post-welfare world;

subjects on which he has published in a range of academic journals. His current

research projects include an exploration of homelessness and the politics of public

space in urban Britain, funded by the University of Durham and the Leverhulme

Trust.

Christine Milligan is a Lecturer in the Institute of Health Research at Lancaster

University. Her research interests focus on voluntarism, mental health and health-

care in the Scottish environment. Her recent publications have appeared in Area,

Health and Place and Social Science and Medicine.

John Osmond is Director of the Institute of Welsh Affairs, a policy think tank

based in Cardiff. He is an author, a former political journalist and television

producer. He has written widely on Welsh politics and devolution. His latest

books are Welsh Europeans (Seren, 1996) and The National Assembly Agenda (1998),

published by the Institute, with contributions from 46 experts on all aspects of

the establishment, operation and policies connected with the new Assembly.

John G. Robb is Head of the School of Geography and Development Studies

at Bath Spa University College. He teaches geographies of heritage to MA Irish

Studies students and Geography undergraduates. Over the last few years he has

published articles on ‘ritual landscapes’, Irish prehistoric heritage, King Arthur

tourism and Scottish toponymy. He describes himself as a convalescing Celtomane

looking forward to long-term complications resulting from the heavy dose of

revisionism he took some time ago.

Iain Robertson is a Lecturer in Human Geography at Cheltenham and

Gloucester College of Higher Education. He has published widely on the subject

of protest in the Highlands of Scotland, and more recently has begun work on

heritage and the popular memorialisation of acts of land seizure on the island of

Lewis.

Peter Symon is a Lecturer in the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies at

the University of Birmingham. Current research interests include music and

national identity in Scotland and urban cultural strategies in the UK and the

Netherlands.

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CONTRIBUTORS

xiii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Our thanks go to Routledge and the two anonymous reviewers, and to all

who attended the Celtic Geographies Modules at the 1999 Institute of British

Geographers/Royal Geographical Society Conference at the University of

Leicester. We also would like to thank all the contributors to this volume, who

responded favourably to the various comments we made on their chapters.

The authors and publishers would like to thank the following for granting permis-

sion to reproduce material in this work:

Academic Press Ltd, London, for ﬁgures 1.1 and 1.2 from the Journal of Historical

Geography.

Bord Fáilte, the Irish Tourist Board, Dublin, for plate 8.1.

Brittany Ferries for plate 8.2.

The Builder Group plc., London, for plate 6.1.

Enabler Publications for a quotation from A Time to Travel?, edited by F. Earle

et al.

The Director of the Institute of Welsh Affairs for ﬁgures 5.1 and 5.2 and tables

5.1 to 5.9.

The Scottish Parliament for plate 6.2.

The University of Wales Press, Cardiff, for a quotation from Angles and Britons

– O’Donnel Lectures, by J.R.R. Tolkien, pp. 29–30.

Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders for their permission to

reprint material in this book. The publishers would be grateful to hear from any

any errors or omissions in future editions of this book.

xiv

TIMING AND SPACING CELTIC

GEOGRAPHIES

David C. Harvey, Rhys Jones, Neil McInroy and Christine Milligan

Recent years have seen an upsurge of interest in all things Celtic – providing a

renewed impetus and vigour to Celtic studies, debates, culture and politics.Within

the broad arena of Celtic culture, for instance, there have been sustained efforts

to reinvigorate the indigenous languages of the various Celtic regions.The forma-

tion of the Welsh Language Board and TV Breizh – or Breton-language television

– in recent years can be seen as examples of such attempts to promote the use of

Celtic languages in both the public and the private sectors, making them more rel-

evant to contemporary politics, commerce and culture. Allied to this have been

the efforts to promote various other elements of Celtic culture – with regard to

music, art and dance – and, moreover, to highlight the cultural commonalities that

exist between the constituent Celtic countries.The cultural exchange schemes that

operate between the various Celtic countries, for example,have led to an increased

awareness among Celtic people of the cultures and art forms of their Celtic

‘cousins’.This has, in many ways, helped to foster within the Celtic people a sense

of cultural Pan-Celticism, one which can be represented by the dictum ‘Six nations,

one soul’.

A similar process of revitalisation has occurred in the context of Celtic poli-

tics. Though this is a process which has its roots in the nineteenth and early

twentieth centuries, there is no doubt that the current period has witnessed a

further energisation of Celtic identity politics.This has been most clearly evident

in the process of the devolution of power within the UK in 1997. Even though

this process was couched in terms of democratising politics in the UK, it has

served to emphasise the separateness of Scotland and Wales within the UK nation-

state. Signiﬁcantly, for many nationalists in both countries, devolution is seen to

offer a space within which Celtic identities and politics may be sustained and

developed. Indeed, one of the less publicised outcomes of the Good Friday

Agreement over the position of Northern Ireland was the founding of an ‘Irish

–British Council’. Popularly known as the ‘Council of the Isles’, this statutory

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body will have representatives not only from the sovereign governments, but

also from Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man and the Channel

Islands. Crucially, as well as ‘higher-level’ summits, this body will also meet to

consider a range of named cross-sectoral matters including ‘Celtic linguistic and

cultural concerns’ (Williams 2000: 215).

As well as witnessing a growth in the vitality of Celtic cultures and politics

within the constituent Celtic countries, the present period has also experienced

an exportation of Celticity to the world. This process is partly associated with

the existence of diasporic Celtic communities in various parts of the world, and

is illustrated, among other things, by the interest shown by the inhabitants of

the New World in tracing their Celtic heritage and roots. Historical processes

of migration are not the only explanations for the internationalisation of the

Celtic. In many ways, the signs and symbols of Celticity have been appropriated

by a variety of media of popular culture, ranging from art to music, and from

dance to religion. Pop artists such as Nirvana and many New Age religions, for

instance, see the Celtic as something that is central to their identity and imagery.

Not surprisingly, this Celtic renaissance has also led to a great deal of aca-

demic interest in the whole nature of the Celtic. Academic and lay studies, as

well as university courses, are burgeoning as various individuals seek to tease

out the various forms which Celtic cultures, politics and institutions have taken

in both past and present times. Indeed, this increased appeal in all aspects of

Celticity has led Payton (1997) to proclaim a new ‘self-conﬁdence’ within Celtic

studies.

Running parallel with this growth of interest in ‘things Celtic’, however, has

been an increased questioning of the exact nature of the concept, and a degree

of scepticism concerning the veracity of the term ‘Celtic’ as a meaningful cate-

gory (see, for example, Chapman 1992; James and Rigby 1997; James 1999a).

Chapman (1992), for instance, has argued that the ‘myth of the Celts’ represents

a ‘continuity of naming’ rather than a continuity of experience. He points out

that although many modern writers assume that some groups of people in early

Europe ‘called themselves Celts’ (his emphasis), very little evidence for this actually

exists (Chapman 1992: 30). Rather, the category is purely a social construction,

stitched together from written sources, literary endeavours and archaeological

remains.

In part, the adoption of this more critical stance towards the Celtic stems

from wider changes within academia as a whole, whereby various terms,

categories and analytical constructs have been subject to increasingly critical

examination in relation to the processes surrounding their production and

consumption. Geography, as a speciﬁc ﬁeld of study (including its various sub-

disciplines), has not escaped this move towards more discursive and critical

self-reﬂection, with a number of geographers seeking to question its objectivity

D. HARVEY, R. JONES, N. M

INROY, C. MILLIGAN

as a discipline, by, for example, demonstrating its strong links with powerful

elites and imperial projects (e.g., Driver 1992).

It is our belief, however, that there are more speciﬁc reasons why the ‘Celtic’

has recently been viewed as a label worthy of greater critical examination. On

the surface at least, the ‘old Celtic culture’ has very deep historic roots. However,

there is a widespread perception that in these ‘new times’ it is becoming merely

one among many Celticities. Though traditional territorial or linguistic inter-

pretations of Celticity are still important, they are being supplemented by

alternative versions of Celticity, ones that are characterised by notions of hybridity

and contestation. In a post-modern world, the (perceived) old and secure Celtic

categories of the past are being reworked in interesting and novel ways. This

does not mean that the conventional Celtic category is devoid of meaning in the

contemporary world; rather, it means that it is being complemented by other,

often less place-speciﬁc and more hybrid interpretations of Celticity. As a result

of these changes, it is unsurprising that old ideas, assumptions and preconcep-

tions concerning the notion of Celticism, as well as their current transformations,

are becoming the source of much debate within certain sections of academia.

Given the evident territorial connections associated with Celtic issues, and

the obvious spatial themes inherent in both ‘old’ and ‘new’ interpretations of

Celticity, it is somewhat surprising that the contribution of geographers to this

contemporary academic debate has been largely conspicuous by its absence.

Although there are a few notable exceptions (see, for example, Bowen 1969;

Gruffudd et al. 1999), we would suggest that the Celtic category has not received

the sustained interrogation of space and place that it deserves. This book goes

some way towards redressing this deﬁciency by bringing together a collection of

work by academics that seeks to reﬂect upon, and critically examine, a range of

different aspects of Celticism from a geographical perspective.

The contributors to the book seek, in their various ways, to explore the nature

of both the more conventional aspects of Celtic culture and its more contem-

porary manifestations. Different approaches are adopted by the various

contributors in order to achieve this aim. Some contributors touch upon points

of commonalty between Celtic peoples and lands, highlighting the extent to

which old points of reference remain, and new points of reference are emerging.

These can be viewed as thematic studies – of Celtic politics, culture and iden-

tity, for instance – that draw upon speciﬁc illustrations from all the Celtic

countries and regions. Some contributors emphasise, therefore, that common

themes can run between old and new versions of Celticity, and that broad simi-

larities exist between the experiences of Celticism within various countries and

regions. The majority of the contributors, however, place their emphasis on

exploring particular aspects of Celticism within speciﬁc geographical areas.

Indeed, this explicit focus on case studies from one geographical region is viewed

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TIMING AND SPACING CELTIC GEOGRAPHIES

as one of the strengths of the volume, since it helps to foreground the often

diverse and hybrid nature that Celticity is taking in the contemporary world.

The different approaches used by the various contributors to this volume in

order to explore aspects of Celtic geographies help to underline the plurality of

Celticities in the Celtic world. As a consequence, we adopt a relatively broad

deﬁnition of Celticity in the present volume, one which seeks to reﬂect the ﬂex-

ibility of the Celtic category today. To us, the term Celtic refers to a group of people

living on the Atlantic seaboard of Europe who share common cultural and/or ethnic char-

acteristics, but it has been reworked and appropriated in recent years to include a large

number of other individuals, living beyond the Celtic territories, who feel an afﬁnity to

various aspects of Celtic culture.

The Celtic, and the idea of ‘being a Celt’, form, therefore, a convenient and

very real identity for a range of people and groups, both in the traditional Celtic

territories and beyond. Indeed, we would not wish to belittle the sense of Celticity

felt by those individuals living outside the Celtic territories. For them, the Celtic

is a social and often personal construction that carries weight and a great deal

of meaning. Thus, where Celtic identity is expressed, ‘we must be aware that

these aesthetic responses are the result of deep convictions and personal choices

that need to be treated with the utmost respect’ (Hale 1997a: 97). In this spirit,

we echo Ford (1999: 473) when he celebrates ‘the present experience and efﬁ-

cacy of “the Celtic” rather than the pursuit of it as some kind of historical fact

or veracity’.

In considering the construction of Celticism, the volume has two main aims.

First, it seeks to contribute to the debate surrounding the nature of ‘old’ and

‘new’ Celticities. The book examines the more conventional forms of Celticity,

takes a long-needed critical look at traditional ways of conceptualising Celticity

and also explores new aspects of Celtic identity, politics, culture and historiog-

raphy. Second, it seeks to act as a means of energising the study of Celticity

from a geographical perspective. In this respect, we do not claim that the chap-

ters drawn together in this volume encompass all those aspects of Celticity that

may be of interest to geographers. Rather, they are seen as providing a starting

point – a lens through which it might be possible to examine how a new, revi-

talised Celtic geography might look. We anticipate, therefore, that the various

issues raised here will help to generate further and future interest in the ﬁeld

of Celtic Geography. Celticity, as a category, contributes to the illumination of

a number of issues that are of crucial importance to contemporary society.

Examples include the politics of exclusion, division and subversion within suppos-

edly uniﬁed folk-groups, the promotion of difference as a political, cultural or

economic device, and the search for identity and belonging within a post-modern,

consumerist society. Geographical debate can play a key role in helping to illu-

minate how these issues impact on this socially and/or spatially distinct category.

D. HARVEY, R. JONES, N. M

INROY, C. MILLIGAN

Despite the variety of stances adopted by the contributors to the volume, we,

as editors, have sought to tease out common themes that seem to inform their

varied interpretations of Celticity.These include discussions of: traditional places

and alternative spaces of Celticism; Celtic cultures of homogeneity and hetero-

geneity; the institutionalisation and politicisation of Celticity; and Celticism and

cultural capital.The remainder of this introduction is devoted to a wider discus-

sion of these themes, drawing attention to the ways in which particular chapters

have sought to discuss speciﬁc aspects of them. As a means of developing these

themes, both here and in the subsequent chapters, it is important that we reﬂect

broadly on Celtic studies at the outset, and consider how Celtic culture has been

and is now interpreted. This will serve not only as a means of situating this

volume within the wider study of Celticism, but will also create a basis from

which the study of this old culture can be explored within these new times.

The scholarly legacy and popular (re)interpretations

of Celticity

To contextualise the work within this volume, and as a backdrop to interpreting

the contemporary interest in and understanding of Celticism, it is important to

reﬂect upon the scholarly basis to Celtic studies. Descriptions, commentaries

and rudimentary investigations of ‘the Celts’ ﬁrst came to the forefront of both

academic and popular attention in the nineteenth century in the form of ‘race

theory’ (Kearney 1989: 230–1). Utilising the latest and most fashionable ideas,

‘the Celtic’ was seen by academicians and scholars as an essentially aboriginal

‘British type’. For Arnold (1867), the process of deﬁning ‘the Celt’ involved a

supposedly disinterested scientiﬁc examination of racial characteristics. As was

common with a number of other commentators of the time, he provided a long

list of supposedly ‘Celtic characteristics’, including eloquence and sensitivity,

sociability and hospitality, extravagance and anarchy. ‘He is sensual . . . loves

bright colours, company and pleasure’ (Arnold 1867: 105).These essential char-

acteristics were contrasted with the solid temperament and patience of the

Anglo-Saxon, ‘disciplinable and steadily obedient within certain limits, but

retaining an inalienable part of freedom and self-dependence’ (ibid.: 109). In

other words, the Celts were viewed as a ‘people’ who could make brooches and

petty ornaments, but who could not undertake great works or ‘make progress

in material civilisation’.

Indeed, such scholarly interpretations of Celticity, based on the ideals of race

theory, also gained currency in more popular circles.An editorial in The Economist,

written during the Irish Famine, for example, does not mince its words, simply

proclaiming ‘Thank God we are Saxons!’ (Anon. 1848). It then continues by

listing a number of Celtic characteristics that include excitability, wildness and

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a distinct propensity to unprovoked violence. As part of a wider comparison

between the Saxon and the Celt, The Economist lists as ‘Celtic folly’ the Irishmen’s

‘passionate cherishing of old traditions, their too vivid recollection of the times

when the land which they now till as peasants, or covet without tilling, belonged

to ancestors who lost it by their extravagance and recklessness’ (ibid.: 477).

Based on these interpretations of what it meant to be a Celt, both the Famine

in Ireland and the existence of the British Empire were neatly explained in terms

of essential racial characteristics.

Although such accounts of ‘racial difference’ were obviously written within

the contexts of mid-nineteenth-century academia and popular debate, they reﬂect

a signiﬁcant number of the common strands that have continued to be implicit

in many Celtic commentaries. In the 1860s, for example, Arnold (1867: 100–8)

wrote that the Celts were not ones for business, organisation and politics but,

rather, were absorbed with over-emotional music and poetry, and a strong feeling

for nature. In the 1930s, Bloch (1962 translation) still referred to western Britain

and Ireland as having once been inhabited by a largely undifferentiated Celtic

‘tribe’. But even as late as the 1990s, Hastings (1997: 68–70) maintained that

‘bureaucracy was not the mark of the Celt as it was of the Saxon’, adding that

nationalism in medieval Wales and Ireland was, instead, felt and expressed through

bardic and musical gatherings, ‘something that the English could not conceivably

have done’. Running through all these conceptions of Celticism, it is possible to

see a continuous one-dimensional, oppositional deﬁnition, centred on the idea

of being ‘not English’ – a homogenising outlook that has sought to shoehorn

people and cultures into a common Celtic brotherhood deﬁned by racial char-

acteristics.

It would be unwise, however, to view such deﬁnitions of Celticity as being

solely imposed by a dominant English (and French) core on a Celtic periphery.

Both ‘Celtophiles’ and ‘Celtophobes’ have drawn strength from such culturally

homogenising processes, so that Celtic nationalist rhetoric could form a rallying

cry around a ﬂag of Celtic sports, folk art, music and literature. As Samuel notes

(1998: 35), ‘each after its own fashion worshipped at the feet of race conscious-

ness, that scientistic version of natural selection theory which in the later

nineteenth century intoxicated thinkers of all stripes’.

This simple analysis of Celtic difference – based on ideas of race and ethnicity

– is often matched by an equally simplistic conception of Celtic history. In much

the same way as knowing that the period before 1066 was ‘Dark’, the popularly

held conception is that the period before the Romans was ‘Celtic’, and that the

Celts continued to prosper in those parts which the Romans did not conquer.

The Celts were to suffer, however, as a result of the invading Saxon hordes and

their successors. Thus, in spite of the valiant efforts of King Arthur, the Celts

spent the next ﬁfteen centuries under increasing English subordination, pressed

D. HARVEY, R. JONES, N. M

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into the damp islands and craggy peninsulas of the far north and west of these

islands.Whether they are Braveheart nationalists, or avid Economist readers, people

know that the reawakening of Celtic spirit during the last two centuries has been

characterised by an essential set of Celtic values and attitudes, distinct language

and culture and, perhaps most importantly, a deﬁnite territorial homeland.

Although we may be criticised for presenting too harsh a caricature here, a quick

trawl through any bookshop, and many a museum, would implicitly add fuel to

this popularly held conception.

Though conventional interpretations of the Celtic have sought to promote the

notion of an old culture by using these essential racial characteristics, increas-

ingly there has been an elaboration in these new times of the various, and often

disparate, forms which Celticity can take. Indeed, one particular type of revi-

sionist interpretation has questioned the whole basis of the Celtic category.

Chapman (1992) and James (1999a), for example, stand out as self-proclaimed

‘de-bunkers of the Celtic myth’.Their claims that the Celtic is a bogus category

have made waves that spread well beyond the conﬁnes of academia (James 1999b;

see, however, Cunliffe 1997). In many ways, Chapman’s and James’s revisionist

stance helps to emphasise the more varied and critical interpretations of Celticity

present within current scholarly and popular debates. For instance, we have

witnessed a resurgence in Celtic culture and politics – a resurgence that has

occurred in both the Celtic ‘heartlands’ and, importantly, in other places not

normally associated with Celticity. There has also been an expansion in the use

and adoption of Celtic motifs and symbolism in all forms of popular culture.

These themes, indicative of a broader and possibly more eclectic notion of

Celticity, receive considerable attention in this volume. Robb, for example, offers

a personal account of the rise of new forms of Celticity, one that bears rela-

tively little relation to the Celtic signiﬁers of the past. Similarly, Kent explores

the crucial relevance of Celtic themes and symbols for many aspects of British

youth culture. In both these chapters, emphasis is placed on illustrating some of

the ways in which notions of the Celtic are changing and adapting to meet the

new demands and experiences of contemporary society.

Rather than charting the continuous development of a homogenous folk, with

a destiny founded upon the nostalgia for a common Celtic Golden Age, the

contributors to this book seek to problematise Celtic history and historiography

and explore the myriad identities founded upon notions of the Celtic. In

doing so, the construction of such apparently simple categories as ‘Celtic land-

scape’ and ‘Celtic territory’ are also problematised, as contributors begin to

explore how these complexities might be unpacked within a contemporary Celtic

geography.

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Traditional places and alternative spaces of Celticity

From a geographical perspective, the chapters in this volume help to foreground

the close relationship between ideas of space and place, and traditional and alter-

native versions of Celticity. In this respect, traditional interpretations of Celticity

have tended to stress issues of the spatiality of the Celtic culture-group. The

so-called Celtic ‘regions’ of Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man, Wales, Brittany

and Cornwall are widely recognised as self-evidently bounded territories, whose

signiﬁcance as zones of unique, spatially bounded cultures, centring on language

and attachment to speciﬁc tracts of landscape have, in the past, dominated tradi-

tional Celtic literatures (Beresford-Ellis 1985). This historical role of territory

and language as constructs for forging cultural ‘otherness’ and national identity

is a theme that runs throughout a number of the chapters in this volume. Lilley,

for example, illustrates the process of ‘imagining’ a Welsh Celtic ‘otherness’ by

a hegemonic Anglo-Norman culture. A similar theme is addressed by Robertson,

in his discussion of protests over land in the Scottish Celtic fringe. In many

respects, Lilley’s concept of ‘imagining’ within historical commentary is brought

into the twentieth century by Robertson in his critical examination of the notion

of there being a homogenous Celtic regional identity which can be inextricably

linked to particular notions of land, location and protest.

In our view, the ‘traditional’ place-based sense of Celticness is being affected

in a multitude of ways in the contemporary world, partly as a result of the

processes of globalisation. Such processes have been perceived by many as con-

tributing to a loss – or, at best, a dilution – of local cultures in favour of some

homogenising ‘world view’. From this perspective, the new global society is seen

to have contributed to a sense of displacement and lost identity. Globalisation,

however, can also be characterised as a set of processes that have contributed to

a reafﬁrmation of place-based identities (Harvey 1989, 1993; Massey 1991) –

including that of Celticity. One facet of this is manifest in an apparent ‘Celtic

renaissance’, in which there has been a renewed interest in Celtic societies and

cultures, and an increasing awareness among Celtic peoples of what it means to

be Celtic. The resurgence of Celticism as a place-based reaction to globalisation

and modernism is a theme that runs through a number of chapters within this

book. For instance, both MacLeod and Osmond include illuminating discussions

on the more mature and developed sense of place-based Celticity inherent in

the processes of political and administrative devolution within the United

Kingdom in recent years, thereby illustrating the sometimes strengthening links

between Celticity and place.

While afﬁnity to particular territories is still strong in the construction of

Celticism, some groups have sought to reinvoke Celtic culture in a manner that

breaks down those traditional interpretations of the Celtic which refer solely to

D. HARVEY, R. JONES, N. M

INROY, C. MILLIGAN

a spatially bounded phenomenon. These themes are discussed by contributors to

this volume in both general and speciﬁc contexts. At a general level, Robb

discusses the rise of a ‘new’ Celticism and the ways in which it has questioned

traditional Celticism, particularly in its assertion that there is a singular Celtic

identity which is intrinsically linked to territory. At a more speciﬁc level, we

also see considerable reinterpretation of Celtic landscapes, with many traditional

components being questioned. In particular, Hale illustrates the ways in which

changing constructions of Celticism require us to re-examine traditional read-

ings of the Celtic terrain. In doing so, she demonstrates how the traditional

components of the Celtic landscape of Cornwall, including rurality, wilderness

and unspoilt natural beauty, are being supplemented by a recognition and appre-

ciation of Cornwall’s (post)-industrial landscape. Hale’s work, therefore, exhorts

us to recognise and embrace new readings of the Celtic landscape in a way that

allows for the inclusion of a more nuanced view of the Celtic past. Traditional

notions of the Celtic landscape in Cornwall are thus being disrupted and

reworked, with some ethnic Cornish people seeking to reclaim this industrial

landscape as a signiﬁcant facet of their Celtic Cornish identity.

In a similar vein, Osmond emphasises the existence of a national space which

is riven by linguistic and cultural divides. In doing so, he focuses on the conﬂicting

interpretations of Celtic spaces that are impacting on the development of a Welsh

sense of national identity. Kent also draws attention to the tangled spatialities of

Celticity through his study of Celtic afﬁliation among youth sub-cultures in

Britain. This afﬁliation is seen, simultaneously, to be both territorially speciﬁc

and culturally aspatial. Although Kent focuses on the rise of Celticism among

young Cornish populations, it is a Celticism that does not identify solely with a

speciﬁc Celtic territory, culture or language, but which appropriates a much

wider set of Celtic values, symbolism and imagery. Hence, some expressions of

contemporary youth culture use Celtic imagery and spirituality as an alternative

‘other’ through which they can construct an identity, in that it contains elements

which serve as a convenient focus for reactions against the mainstream.

A particular reading of the relationship between spatial and aspatial Celticities

occurs in the chapters dealing with diasporic Celtic communities. Both Hague and

Boyle draw attention to the signiﬁcant contribution that diasporic communities

can make to an understanding of Celticism in the twenty-ﬁrst century. Their

chapters illustrate the differing ways in which the Celtic diaspora seeks to reinforce

a sense of self and identity through a reappropriation of old (and new) cultural

markers, which, although not territorially bounded, still refer to some notion of

a Celtic core that is rooted in a historical past. Hague, in particular, illustrates how

the lack of a core identity among the heterogeneous society of the USA has led

individuals to construct hyphenated identities for themselves. Identities, such as

Scottish-American and Irish-American, are seen to serve as labels which create

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secure genealogical and geographical linkages to traditional Celtic places and

pasts. Similarly, Boyle, in his chapter, illustrates how memory, and sites of collec-

tive memory, are utilised by young male Irish republicans to recall and invoke

traditional and masculine afﬁrmations of Irish rebellion.Through this questioning

of what constitutes the traditional Celtic heartland, the work within this volume

draws attention to some of the ways in which traditional understandings of

place-bound Celticity are being supplanted by alternative formulations of the

spatial construction of Celticism. Such readings are more likely to be based on

the individual identity and associated attitudinal traits than any territorially

deﬁned ethnic identity. These interpretations highlight the increasing complexity

surrounding understandings of the spaces of Celticity and what it means to differ-

ent peoples, in different places,at different times.Such readings open up the debate

about what it means to be Celtic, reinforcing the timeliness of a text that seeks to

unravel and explore some of these complexities.

Celtic cultures of homogeneity and heterogeneity

Despite covering a range of physical and social geographies, normative consid-

erations of the nature of Celticity have tended to view it as a homogeneous

entity. Indeed, this was the whole basis of the racial construction of Celticity

promoted during the nineteenth century, and discussed above. Even today, under-

standings of what it is to be a Celt, or to be Celtic, invoke ideas that stress a

set of identiﬁable characteristics and practices which the Celtic people and/or

the Celtic lands share. Some understandings of Celticity, for example, stress and

assert the commonalties in terms of a shared linguistic heritage (Borsley and

Roberts 1996; MacAulay 1992), similar artistic forms (Johnson 1986; Megaw

1986), a common history (Green 1995) and a similar politics of peripherality

and latent (and emerging) nationalisms (Day and Rees 1991). These commonal-

ties have been harnessed, developed and socially constructed to the extent that

Celts are now acknowledged as a signiﬁcant ethnic ‘other’. While such a devel-

opment is, in part, a product of contemporary social construction, the basis of

this homogeneous Celticity can also be seen to have arisen from the historical

relationship between the peripheral Celtic lands and a hegemonic, non-Celtic

core. Robb, for example, points to the historical emergence of Celticism as a

signiﬁcant ethnic ‘other’ due to its ability to reﬂect peripheral and marginal

opposition to a dominant core. As such, it is seen to have served as a conven-

ient rallying point and label by which dominant cultural, social and political

colonisation has been repelled. Lilley, on the other hand, highlights how the

notion of a ‘Celtic’ people was unknown in medieval times. Rather, the devel-

opment of an ethnic ‘other’ in the peripheral lands of the British Isles is seen to

have been socially constructed by Anglo-Norman interests. While this volume

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acknowledges this social construction of a homogeneous Celtic other, it also

wishes to explore and question this homogeneity and emphasise the hetero-

geneous, complex and fragmented nature of modern-day Celticism. Though the

book values and acknowledges the existence and usefulness of a coherent and

uniform version of Celtic identity for certain oppositional purposes (both histori-

cal and contemporary), it also seeks to question this implicit homogeneity

empirically, by asserting the heterogeneous nature of Celticism – both within

and between Celtic cultures.

A number of points emerge within this volume which emphasise this Celtic

heterogeneity. Some chapters stress the ways in which our present understand-

ings of historical episodes and events within some Celtic regions are based on a

reiﬁcation of Celticism as a dominated and peripheral culture, resulting in an

over-simpliﬁcation and caricatured understanding of Celticism.As a consequence,

some contributors have sought to disrupt historic notions of Celtic events and

characteristics, acknowledging that the meanings attached to the Celtic people

and their histories are more complex and diffuse than has previously been

purported (see, for example, Robertson’s discussion of protest in the Scottish

Highlands and Islands during the early twentieth century). In addition, Hale’s

and Osmond’s explorations of heterogeneous Cornish and Welsh identities high-

light the disruption of a discrete and uniform Celticity today. The process by

which homogeneous meanings of what constitutes Celticism is thus interrogated

and revealed to be fragmentary and ﬂuid.While pointing to a disruption of homo-

geneous ideas surrounding Celtic history and Celtic identities, the book also

reveals a contemporary disruption of homogeneous readings of Celtic art and

imagery. Kent’s chapter, for example, explores how some aspects of Celtic

imagery and practice are being utilised by contemporary youth culture. In doing

so, his work identiﬁes the ways, and the extent, to which selective and frag-

mentary components of Celticity are being fused and refashioned within

contemporary youth culture to create new Celtic art forms. Indeed, such a view

of the varied nature of Celtic cultures tallies well with Samuel’s (1998: 55) asser-

tion of the need to adhere to a more ‘molecular view of the national past’.

A number of chapters in the volume also highlight the ways in which the

heterogeneity of Celticity can lead to tensions and conﬂict.These ideas are espe-

cially brought out in the chapters that are concerned with the ediﬁces and symbols

of these Celtic nations. For instance, the chapters by Lorimer (Scottish Parliament

Building) and Cooke and McLean (Museum of Scotland) draw attention to the

many competing ideas of Celticity (in this case, Scottish Celticity) that surround

both the symbols that these buildings represent, and the meanings contained

within them. Rather than these buildings reﬂecting a homogeneous notion of a

Scottish nation, there are many different and competing notions of what Scotland

is, and what Scotland should be.

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Competing aspects of the homogeneous, uniform and ordered notion sur-

rounding Scottish Celticity are also explored in Hague’s chapter. Here the desire

of some upholders of homogeneous and exclusionary Celtic identity in the USA

competes and clashes with more heterogeneous and inclusionary notions of

Scottish Celticity. Hale, too, explores how different Celtic groups compete over

interpretations of the Cornish landscape, and how these contestations are rooted

in competing moral Celtic geographies.

What is emerging, therefore, is an appreciation that a homogeneous notion

of Celticity can be used by some groups as a temporary means of repelling ‘other’

identities, and of galvanising opposition. However, as these works illustrate,

Celtic identity, though containing core elements, is neither uniform nor ﬁxed;

rather, it is subject to a process of movement and change both within and between

Celtic cultures. While such a broad conception of Celticity may entail some

conﬂict and tension, it is our view that Celtic identity may also provide an oppor-

tunity through which more inclusive, multifaceted, multi-ethnic, non-territorially

bounded expressions of social cohesion can operate.

The institutionalisation and politicisation of Celticity

Themes of homogeneity and heterogeneity have been most apparent in an insti-

tutional and political context. During the twentieth century in particular,

representatives of the various Celtic culture groups sought – with varying success,

and with no little contestation – to promote a more active and central role for

Celticity in both the institutional arrangements and the political process of the

British and French states (see, for instance, Kearney 1989; see also N. Davies

1999). Efforts towards an institutionalisation of the Celtic have involved the

creation of new administrative structures that have taken into account the distinc-

tive geographies of Celticity within states. Attempts to politicise it have centred

on efforts to promote the notion of the Celtic as a basis for political activism;

one which seeks to supplement, and possibly undermine, the more traditional

class-based politics of the British and French states. Inherent within all these

Celtic political and institutional discourses has been an emphasis on both the

cultural heterogeneity of established nation-states and the cultural homogeneity

of the Celtic regions within them. This is a focus of discussion within a number

of chapters within this volume, particularly those of MacLeod and Osmond.

Of course, the endeavours to institutionalise and politicise Celticity have been

closely interlinked. One of the main aspirations of Celtic political activity has

been to secure a more sensitive appreciation of the peculiar cultural and social

needs of the Celtic people, and has, as such, sought to encourage central states

to devolve power to regional governments and agencies in the hope that these

may develop administrative practices attuned to the needs of Celtic peoples.

D. HARVEY, R. JONES, N. M

INROY, C. MILLIGAN

Similarly, the formation of such regional administrations has further legitimised

Celtic political activity and has led, moreover, to the increased sedimentation of

Celtic identities and politics at a sub-national scale. However, MacLeod’s chapter

emphasises that the above statements only hold true of the Celtic lands and

peoples at a general level, maintaining that the pace and extent of the institu-

tionalisation and politicisation of Celticity has been characterised by much

heterogeneity. Where much of the island of Ireland, for instance, has existed

independently since 1922, Scotland and Wales only gained a degree of partial

self-government in 1997. The other Celtic regions also vary in their institutional

and political attachment to their ‘parent’ territories. These range from a posi-

tion of almost complete autonomy in the case of the Isle of Man, to the situation

in Cornwall and Brittany where the politics of any nascent Celtic nation is still

ﬁrmly enmeshed within the larger state. Explanations for these differences are

varied, and are based on such diverse themes as the vitality and cultural coher-

ence of a particular Celtic grouping, the centralising tendencies of the nation-state

which governs it, and the geo-historical relationship between the Celtic grouping

and the central state (e.g., Rokkan 1975). Therefore, although much may be

gained from exploring the broad similarities in the institutional and political

development of the various Celtic lands and people, we should also be sensitive

to the differences exhibited between them; ones which are grounded in their

respective geographies and histories (Paasi 1991, 1996).

In some instances, such as Ireland, Scotland and Wales, the main vehicle for the

growing institutionalisation and especially the politicisation of Celticity has been

the ﬂowering of Celtic forms of regional or ethnic nationalism; ones which seek

to challenge the hegemony of the long-dominant group ideologies associated

with the nation-states of the UK and France (Samuel 1998: 61–3; see also Taylor

and Thompson 1999). Forms of Irish nationalism, for example, became more

prominent during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Similarly,

Scottish and Welsh nationalisms were institutionalised with the formation of the

Scottish National Party in 1934 and Plaid Cymru (the Welsh Nationalist Party)

in 1925. In many respects, these forms of Celtic national identity adhere to the

classic ideals of nationalist ideology (Smith 1991). Perhaps key among these attrib-

utes is the emphasis placed by Celtic nations on their long-term history as social

and cultural groupings.As with other nations, this is a national history which aims

to mobilise and inspire the nation in the present, as a means of achieving its future

success (see Anderson 1983). Similarly, Celtic nations emphasise the central role

played by a Celtic national culture – in the form of language and customs – in

uniting all members of the national community.

Fuelling much of the growth in Celtic national identities has been the conﬂict

between the central (and predominantly English) British and French states and

the Celtic peripheries. More speciﬁcally, the discourse of internal colonialism,

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popularised by Hechter (1975), has been seen as a talisman – either implicitly

or explicitly – for the various Celtic nationalisms. Focused explicitly on the UK,

Hechter’s thesis revolves around the notion of the cultural division of labour.

Processes of industrialisation and urbanisation in the eighteenth and especially

the nineteenth centuries led to the inhabitants of the Celtic periphery becoming

increasingly marginalised and exploited within the labour process. Rather than

seeing the iniquities of the capitalist process as ones which occurred solely within

a socio-economic context (as per traditional Marxism), Hechter maintained that

inequalities also existed within an ethnic context; in effect, the exploitation of

a Celtic periphery by an English and French core. These ideas have led to much

debate within academic circles, and despite some questioning of the cultural divi-

sion of labour (for instance, Smith 1982: 21–2), Hechter’s ideas still have much

resonance within contemporary Celtic political discourses. Not surprisingly, many

of the chapters in the present volume engage critically with this concept. While

Lilley and Robertson, for instance, engage with the long-term historical devel-

opment of the cultural division of labour, Kneafsey, in her chapter on tourism

practices in Brittany and Ireland, seeks to challenge some of the assumptions

made by Hechter and also later developments in the work of Chapman (1992)

regarding the ‘Celtic periphery’.

The Celtic as cultural capital

Many of the contributors to this volume demonstrate how the Celtic revival can

be viewed as a reaction to globalisation and modernity through a rise of interest

in alternative lifestyles, spiritualism and cultural identity. Some readings of this

resurgent interest in ‘things Celtic’, however, exemplify ways in which the Celtic

renaissance has opened up entrepreneurial opportunities.This is particularly mani-

fested in the commodiﬁcation of the Celtic through its landscape, culture and heri-

tage. Such readings of Celticism highlight the role of cultural capital in shaping

notions of Celtic identity (Bourdieu 1984).Tourism and heritage sites, as evident

in the work of Kneafsey and that of Cooke and McLean, build upon identiﬁable

features of Celtic history and landscape that have some basic appeal to contempo-

rary visitors (Gruffudd et al. 1999). In doing so, these sites are seen to shape not

only the identity of the consumers but also their conception of what it means to

be Celtic.

While these representations of Celticism have a signiﬁcant economic impact,

they often rest more ﬁrmly on the bases of myth and nostalgia rather than on

contemporary visions of a dynamic Celtic society. Both Cooke and McLean, and

Lorimer, for example, illustrate how the production of Celticity is constructed

through institutional representations of Scottishness – the former by the selected

representation of historical artefacts within the new Museum of Scotland, the

D. HARVEY, R. JONES, N. M

INROY, C. MILLIGAN

latter through discourses surrounding ofﬁcial representations of the nation to be

manifest within the new Scottish Parliament building. Cooke and McLean further

examine how these representations are consumed within public spaces, and the

ways in which these spaces serve to construct speciﬁc representations of Scottish

identity and heritage for the consumption of its visitors. In this sense, one facet

of the Celtic renaissance revolves simply around how Celticity has been appro-

priated for economic gain.This is particularly evident in Kneafsey’s contribution

to the volume, in which she disrupts traditional notions of core–periphery

(Chapman 1992), by highlighting the complexity of a relationship in which the

core is seen to deﬁne its Celtic periphery in terms of the commercial value of

its ‘otherness’. Hence, rather than viewing the Celtic periphery as a site of exclu-

sion, its marginality becomes a prized commodity. In effect, the ‘traditional

otherness’ of the Celtic regions – manifest in terms of landscape, culture, heritage

and symbolism – is valued in terms of its potential for economic gain.

Although this is seen largely as a phenomenon with particular territorial asso-

ciations, it is not uniquely so. The ability of Celticism to play an active part in

the global cultural capital market should not be overlooked. Hague, for example,

draws our attention to the ways in which Scottishness has been commodiﬁed

among the diasporic community in the USA through the development of heritage

associations, tartanry and associated gatherings, symbols and motifs. Similarly,

Kent’s work highlights how Celtic art and symbolism have many advocates beyond

the Celtic territories, and are components of a global market in ‘tribal’ body

art, while Symon illustrates the ways in which the popularity of Celtic products

– such as music and music festivals – can be used to attract many non-Celts to

Celtic places as part of a ‘world’ music scene.

Such readings of Celticity illustrate some of the ways in which the processes

of globalisation, manifest in a growing internationalism and a world-wide explo-

sion of trade, travel and communication, have opened up opportunities for the

commodiﬁcation of Celtic culture. This exploitation of Celtic cultural capital is

revealed to operate within, and across, a number of spatial scales that range from

the commodiﬁcation of traditional Celtic landscapes and heritage, to the selling

of cultural markers and spectacles to speciﬁc groups and diasporic communities

that are seeking to reclaim a sense of identity and belonging.

The structure of the volume

The preceding discussion has sought to stress how Celticity – and, as a conse-

quence, Celtic geographies – are complex terms characterised by tensions,

contestations and differing shades of meaning. In addition to the more traditional

aspects of Celticity, focused on issues of territory, ethnicity and language, there

exist other, more eclectic appropriations of Celtic culture, ones which help to

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extend the geographical reach of Celticity on a global scale. The various chap-

ters drawn together in this volume seek to capture the manifold ways in which

Celticity may be advocated, both in historical and contemporary contexts.

We begin the volume with a section which explores the broad themes of

‘Othering and identity politics’. Here, the contributors focus on the long-term

relationship between the Celtic ‘periphery’ and a predominantly English ‘core’.

The ﬁrst two chapters explore these themes in a historical context. Lilley’s

chapter examines the discourses surrounding the process of medieval urbanisa-

tion in Wales and Ireland, while Robertson explores the heterogeneous nature

of ‘Celtic’ protest in the Highlands of Scotland. Building on these discussions are

two chapters which focus on the notion of identity politics. In many ways, this

can be seen to derive from the long-term tensions between the core and periphery

of the UK state. MacLeod’s chapter comprises a general survey of the growing

politicisation and institutionalisation of Celticity at a broad UK level, one which

draws heavily on the geohistory of the UK. Osmond’s chapter, on the other

hand, is a more focused study of the contested nature of Welsh national identi-

ties, especially with regard to the process of the devolution of power in the UK.

The historical and political debates that appear in the ﬁrst section help to

contextualise the second section, which is entitled ‘Sites of meaning’. In this

section, we focus on the often contested meanings assigned to particular Celtic

places. Lorimer’s chapter, which in effect can be seen as a bridge between the

ﬁrst two sections, explores the tensions surrounding the process of constructing

the Scottish Parliament building. Cooke and McLean’s chapter also deals with

another ediﬁce of the Scottish nation: namely, the Museum of Scotland. As well

as illustrating the contested nature of Scottish national identity, their chapter also

helps to illuminate the manifold ways through which Celticism is commodiﬁed,

a theme which also lies at the heart of Kneafsey’s study of tourism practices in

Brittany and Ireland. Hague’s chapter is also concerned with these themes, though

his contribution on the nature of Scottish identities in North America also focuses

on the role of diaspora in the development of Celtic identities. Finally, in this

section, Hale focuses on the different and competing ways in which ethnic Cornish

and spiritual Celts interpret the Cornish landscape and its ancient sites and what

it means to be Celtic in Cornwall.

Part III of the volume examines a critical aspect of contemporary Celticity;

namely, that of ‘Youth culture and the Celtic revival’. Boyle’s object of enquiry

is Irish republican identities in the west of Scotland, but importantly, focuses on

the ways in which republican songs help to constitute and reafﬁrm this diasporic

identity. Symon also explores the musical aspects of Celtic culture, but is more

concerned with the role of musical festivals within Scottish culture. Kent, on

the other hand, examines the appropriation of Celtic motifs and symbols in

British youth culture, particularly as part of the surﬁng sub-culture.

D. HARVEY, R. JONES, N. M

INROY, C. MILLIGAN

The volume concludes with an epilogue, which draws on Robb’s personal

experiences of Celticity. It offers a broad-ranging and rich discussion of the

spatialities and historiographies of Celticity, and as such acts as a beﬁtting conclu-

sion to the volume.

We would hope, therefore, that the book will serve to open up debate

surrounding the spatial and aspatial nature of Celticism, and how spatially bounded

and diasporic communities in an increasingly globalised world seek to reafﬁrm

their identity through the reappropriation of their (Celtic) cultural heritage. It

is our view that such issues are, or at least should be, the stuff of academic

debate within the geographic community, and as such, our aim is to begin the

process of sketching out how a Celtic geography might look. Our book makes

no claim to being all-inclusive or all-encompassing, but merely a starting point

from which the emergent study of Celtic geographies may develop. Many issues

remain to be examined. None the less, we hope that the speciﬁc studies contained

in this volume have the potential to act as a springboard for further study in

other geographical contexts. The contributors draw our attention to a number

of issues that others interested in the ﬁeld of Celtic geography may wish to

explore. We leave it to them to ﬂesh out those themes and further shape new

directions in the study of Celtic geographies.

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TIMING AND SPACING CELTIC GEOGRAPHIES

Part I

OTHERING AND

IDENTITY POLITICS

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IMAGINED GEOGRAPHIES OF

THE ‘CELTIC FRINGE’ AND THE

CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION OF

THE ‘OTHER’ IN MEDIEVAL

WALES AND IRELAND

Keith D. Lilley

Where the rural character of society is as deep-rooted and persis-

tent as in Wales and Ireland, towns may long exist as alien forms.

(Smailes 1953: 76)

The history of Welsh towns is practically the history of English

inﬂuence in Wales.

(Tout 1924: 116)

For a number of years now, ‘imagined geographies’ have been a focus of much

discussion among ‘post-colonial’ geographers, sociologists and anthropologists.

However, most of this work has been concerned with European overseas colonial-

ism and the cultural construction of the colonised ‘Other’ in eighteenth-,

nineteenth- and twentieth-century contexts, and largely overlooks the possibility

that such ‘Othering’ of subject populations has a long history within Europe (see

Driver and Gilbert 1999; Godlewska and Smith 1994; Gregory 1995; Lester

1998). The purpose of this chapter is to examine such processes by exploring

how, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, an ‘Anglo-centric’ feudal aristocracy

viewed the western parts of Britain and Ireland as peripheral (and thus marginal

and inferior) compared with southern and eastern areas of England, and how

they put this medieval imagined geography of the ‘Celtic fringe’ to use in order

to legitimise their territorial claims in Wales and Ireland.

To understand how an imagined geography of Wales and Ireland served the

colonial ambitions of an English and Norman aristocracy, it is necessary to recog-

nise that both place and social identity are closely intertwined. How people and

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places are imagined is fundamental to the cultural construction of social difference

and otherness. That is, ‘where we are’ says a lot about ‘who we are’. Recently,

studies of marginal(ised) social groups and the formation of their ‘placed iden-

tities’ has become an important element of geographical discourse (see Cresswell

1996; Hubbard 1999; Jackson and Penrose 1993; Sibley 1996). Many of these

studies focus on the contemporary world of social inequalities and exclusion,

drawing primarily on a theorised spatial politics that is itself derived from the

post-structuralism of Foucault (1977) and Lefebvre (1991). Historical geogra-

phers have made use of Foucauldian ideas about space and power, and on the

whole have done so in the context of nineteenth- and twentieth-century geogra-

phies of social exclusion and surveillance (see Driver 1993; Philo 1987). My aim

in this chapter is to show how an Anglo-centric view of the placed identities of

the Welsh and Irish was mapped onto the landscape of medieval Wales and Ireland,

and how this served to create geographies of social difference within Britain and

Ireland; difference, that is, between the English and Norman ‘colonisers’ of Wales

and Ireland, and the Welsh and Irish ‘colonised’.

In the following pages my argument will show how imagined geographies of

Wales and the Welsh, and Ireland and the Irish were used to reinforce further

the marginality of the colonised by both Norman and English colonisers during the

twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The latter’s cultural construction of the Welsh

and Irish as an ‘uncivilised’ Other ultimately made them ‘outsiders’ in their own

land. Central to this process was the creation of new urban networks which

worked in the favour of the colonisers. Urbanism was a means by which the

colonisers marked out the Welsh and Irish as uncivilised, a device that has clas-

sical origins (see Lilley 2000a). At the same time, it was also used to provide

the colonisers with a means of encouraging settlement of acquired lands (by

Norman, English, French and Flemish people), thereby marginalising the posi-

tion of the Welsh and Irish even further.

The Norman lords who initiated the colonisation of Wales by outside groups

(from the 1060s onwards) did so a hundred years before their successors (of

English, Norman and Welsh descent) began to colonise large parts of southern

and eastern Ireland (from the 1170s onwards) (see Bartlett 1993; Chibnall 1986).

Yet, to all intents and purposes, the pattern of urban settlement and methods

of social and political control the Normans used in Wales were those used subse-

quently by the ‘Anglo-Normans’ and ‘Cambro-Normans’ in Ireland. It will be

useful to start this discussion by considering the ways in which the Normans

and English depicted Welsh and Irish people during this period of colonisation

and urbanisation.

KEITH D. LILLEY

Wales and Ireland in the medieval English

imagination

The idea of the ‘Celtic fringe’ is a long and persistent one in British historiog-

raphy and chorology. It is to be found in the twelfth century in the writing of

English chroniclers, for example, who saw the Welsh and the Irish as ‘inferior’

peoples living on ‘peripheral’ lands.This view of a remote and peripheral Celtic

fringe still persists today, not least because of the way western Britain and Ireland

have collectively been portrayed in twentieth-century geographical and histor-

ical discourse (see Gruffudd 1994). In this chapter, I shall not be arguing about

the historical validity of the word ‘Celtic’ itself – sufﬁce it to say that in the

Middle Ages neither the Welsh nor the Irish were referred to as such.

Rather,

my concern here is with how the idea of a ‘Celtic fringe’ has medieval roots. I

seek to point out that the signiﬁcance of this lies in the way that this imagined

geography served to project an image of Wales and Ireland as subordinate and

marginal to England: the Anglo-Normans imagined Wales and Ireland as an outer

‘fringe’ to reinforce their own sense of ‘centrality’ and primacy.This ‘fringeness’

can be clearly seen in the accounts that English chroniclers were writing when

Anglo-Norman lords were setting out to colonise Wales and Ireland.

The Anglo-Normans looked upon the Welsh and Irish as people who lacked

civility because they occupied the fringes of the ‘civilised’ (Anglo-Norman) world.

Of course, there were Welsh and Irish chroniclers writing about life in the twelfth

century, but here I am particularly interested in showing how the Normans and

English alike sought to justify their colonisation of Wales and Ireland by portraying

both as lands which they believed would beneﬁt from being colonised and

urbanised. To those more familiar with later periods of English (and western)

colonialism and imperialism, this might seem to be familiar territory. However,

perhaps rather surprisingly, a ‘post-colonial’ critique of ‘medieval colonialism’

has yet to be written, maybe because as far as medieval historians are concerned

‘the colonialism of the Middle Ages is quite different’ from that of ‘modern’

colonialism (Bartlett 1993: 306). Nevertheless, I would argue that the Anglo-

Norman ‘othering’ of subject populations, which went hand in hand with the

process of colonisation in Britain and Ireland, was little different from the

European othering of peoples in Africa, Asia and the Americas in later centuries,

since both relied on constructing imagined geographies to depict the colonised

as an ‘inferior’ Other.

The Norman and English chroniclers’ accounts were primarily concerned with

the lives of kings and the activities of the aristocratic lords, but they also reveal

how the Anglo-Normans perceived cultural differences. Here I shall examine

some of the views of the Welsh and Irish that were being put forward by three

English chroniclers in the twelfth century, pointing out in particular how both

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peoples were seen to be unurbanised, and ‘uncivilised’. The three authors may

broadly be termed ‘Anglo-Norman’, for they were writing from an English

perspective and were of Norman descent. First, there is Gerald of Wales (Giraldus

Cambrensis). Though really better described perhaps as a ‘Cambro-Norman’,

Gerald was descended from Gerald of Windsor who, in the 1120s, was a castellan

of the important Norman castle of Windsor in southern England (Thorpe 1978).

Second, there is the author of the Gesta Stephani (the ‘Deeds of Stephen)’ who,

although anonymous, is now thought to have been Robert of Lewes, Bishop of

Bath, who sided with Henry of Blois during the civil war of Stephen’s reign

(1135–53) (Potter and Davis 1976). Third, there is the author of the ‘History

of the English Kings’, William of Malmesbury, a man of noble Norman descent

(Mynors 1998). These three are not at all complimentary about the Welsh and

the Irish. Only Gerald had ﬁrst-hand experience of travelling and living in the

two countries, and his part-Welsh ancestry may account for his ambivalence

towards Wales and the Welsh.

Gerald of Wales was born in about 1145 in Pembrokeshire, and wrote about

both Ireland and Wales in the latter part of the century. In his ‘Description of

Wales’ (Descriptio Kambriae), written in c. 1191, Gerald wrote how ‘the Welsh,

who for so long ruled over the whole kingdom, want only to ﬁnd refuge together

in the least attractive corner of it, the woods, the mountains and the marshes’.

He noted, too, that ‘they do not live in towns, villages or castles, but lead a soli-

tary existence, deep in the woods’ (Thorpe 1978: 251, 274). Here Gerald depicts

the Welsh as a pastoral and predominantly rural people, living in woodland and

wastes. The Anglo-Normans also believed that such attributes characterised the

Irish. For example, on describing the activities of Henry II in Ireland in the early

1170s, William of Malmesbury asked, ‘What would Ireland be worth without

the goods that come in by sea from England?’, and went on to say that ‘the soil

lacks all advantages, and so poor, or rather skilful, are its cultivators that it can

produce only a ragged mob of rustic Irishmen outside the towns’ (Mynors 1998:

739). This depiction of the Welsh and Irish as ‘rustic’ and ‘solitary’ was used by

the chroniclers to make out that that they were culturally inferior groups

compared with the Anglo-Normans.

Not only were the Welsh and Irish seen to be unsophisticated, rural people,

but their livestock-based pastoral lifestyle was used to mark them out to be

‘animal-like’ themselves.The author of the Gesta Stephani thus notes (like Gerald)

that ‘Wales is a country of woodland pasture’, but then continues with the remark,

‘it breeds men of an animal type, swift footed, accustomed to war, volatile always

in breaking their word as in changing their abodes’ (Potter and Davis 1976: 15).

Here the Welsh transhumant practices (of moving livestock to upland pastures

in the summer) is deliberately used as a way to project an image of the Welsh

as untrustworthy and unreliable. The identity of the Welsh is thus constructed

KEITH D. LILLEY

by the author of the Gesta through their ‘placed’ activities; their animal-based

lifestyle is mapped onto their bodies, both physiologically (‘swift footed’) and

psychologically (‘volatile’), and through the places that they were seen to occupy

– that is, the upland and wooded areas that the Anglo-Normans saw as marginal

and relatively unproductive land.

Both Wales and Ireland were regarded by the Anglo-Normans as lands that were

in need of improvement, inhabited by people who needed civilising. Gerald

referred to the Welsh as a ‘barbarous peoples’ in his Descriptio, before going on to

tell the reader how Wales and the Welsh might be subdued (Thorpe 1978: 271).

Both he and the author of the Gesta saw Anglo-Norman laws and settled agricul-

ture as the way to do this. For example, Bishop Roger recalled how Henry I had

‘perseveringly civilised’ Wales after having ‘vigorously subdued its inhabitants’

(Potter and Davis 1976: 15). He pointed out that, ‘to encourage peace’ in Wales,

the Anglo-Normans ‘imposed law and statutes on them’, and by this means ‘they

made the land so productive and abounding in all kinds of resources that you

would have reckoned it in no wise inferior to the most fertile part of Britain’

(Potter and Davis 1976: 15).So the Anglo-Normans saw themselves as having made

Wales and the Welsh more civilised.An important dimension of this claimed super-

iority relates to the Anglo-Normans’ belief that the Welsh and the Irish were not

urbanised, that they lived without ‘towns, villages or castles’, as Gerald put it (see

above).

The idea that the Welsh and Irish lacked urban life before the Anglo-Normans

imposed their statutes upon them and ‘perseveringly civilised’ them is, of course,

a nonsense. It is now well known that both Ireland and Wales were urbanised

before the arrival of the Anglo-Normans (see Barry 1993; Soulsby 1983). The

important point here, though, is that as far as the Anglo-Normans were concerned,

the Welsh and Irish were Other as they lacked a certain way of urban living: they

lacked the laws, statutes and codes that the Anglo-Normans deemed necessary

to make a place ‘urban’.

And so it was that, despite the presence and existence

of important ‘Hiberno-Norse’ towns in Ireland (such as Dublin and Waterford),

many of which were thriving in the mid-twelfth century,William of Malmesbury

nevertheless talked of ‘rustic Irishmen’ in contrast with ‘the English and French’,

who,‘with their more civilised way of life, live in the towns, and carry on trade

and commerce’ (Mynors 1998: 739). Indeed, until Henry II granted Dublin to

the burgesses of Bristol in 1171 (at the same time giving Dublin’s townspeople

the same legal rights and privileges as those in Bristol), in Anglo-Norman eyes

Dublin was not of equal status to their towns and cities. For the Anglo-Normans,

the urban status of a place was seen to be reﬂected in its laws and customs, and

since towns in Wales and Ireland functioned without Anglo-Norman legal privi-

leges the Welsh and Irish were considered to be rural, pastoral people, lacking

in trade and commercial life.

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IMAGINED GEOGRAPHIES OF THE ‘CELTIC FRINGE’

During the Norman and English colonisation of Wales and Ireland, between

the late eleventh and early thirteenth centuries, Anglo-Norman lords set about

creating legally chartered towns on their newly acquired lordships. On the one

hand they were doing this to encourage more outside settlers to come and live

on their lands and to engage in trade and commerce, but on the other hand they

were also intent on overlaying the landscape and its people(s) with new laws and

statutes, by which all would be bound to live. It seems to me that because the

Anglo-Normans saw the Irish and Welsh as a non-urban Other (which to them

meant an ‘uncivilised’ Other), they believed they were justiﬁed in using ‘urban

laws’ of their own either to create new towns or to charter existing ones. In

their view, to be urbanised was to be civilised, and it was on this basis that the

Anglo-Normans sought to establish and legitimise their cultural superiority, while

at the same time undermining the position of the colonised Welsh and Irish.

Deﬁning difference: geographies of urbanisation in

medieval Wales and Ireland

In medieval Wales and Ireland alike, Anglo-Norman urbanisation and colonisa-

tion were very closely intertwined. As the Anglo-Normans carved out new

lordships for themselves, they established a new network of chartered towns

with ‘borough’ status.With the chartering of these towns, a lord granted special

legal rights and privileges to those who were living there. Normally, the ‘borough

charter’ protected the townspeople’s right to hold a market, as well as their

right to hold property for a nominal rent and to be tried in a borough court in

the town (rather than on the lord’s manor) (see Hilton 1992).These special privi-

leges were enshrined in law, and most historians who have studied medieval

borough charters have used them to deduce chronologies of town foundation

and comment on how favourable the privileges were to local townspeople, the

burgesses (see Beresford 1967). However, in medieval Wales and Ireland other,

rather less altruistic reasons can be found to explain why Anglo-Norman lords

were busy chartering their towns with urban laws.

In the context of recent theoretical discussions on the methods and means of

social surveillance (e.g., Giddens 1990), the urban laws used by Norman lords

enabled them to oversee the activities of townspeople, providing them not only

with a means of controlling and regulating what people did, but also creating

geographies of difference within the towns themselves. Urban laws allowed lords

to favour certain social groups and to exclude others, and so helped to mark

social boundaries and deﬁne who was Other. In the context of the Anglo-Norman

colonisations of Wales and Ireland, the ocular and exclusionary capacity of urban

laws was particularly advantageous, for not only did they help lords to watch

over people at a distance, but they were also a means by which the Welsh and

KEITH D. LILLEY

Irish were made outsiders in their own land.These urban laws ultimately favoured

the coloniser over the colonised, and in the case of Wales and Ireland perpetu-

ated the marginal status of the Welsh and Irish. This then only served to further

reinforce the imagined geographies of Wales and Ireland which the Anglo-

Normans had been busy constructing in order to legitimise their ‘colonial’

activities. Here I shall examine how urban laws provided Anglo-Norman lords

with a means of surveillance and how it gave them a mechanism to create geogra-

phies of social difference within Wales and Ireland.

Social surveillance and the ocular capacity of Anglo-Norman

urban laws

To understand the importance of urban laws as devices that enabled lords to

watch over distant lands and people, it will be useful to consider what Hannah

(1997) calls ‘imperfect panopticism’. Hannah argues that geographers, particu-

larly with regard to Benthamite panopticism, have taken Foucault’s discussions

of surveillance and social control too literally. He suggests that ‘as human objects

we maintain individual unities by virtue of awareness that some of our activities

can be watched or assigned to the same person’, and that ‘while our life-paths

are not entirely visible, many activities are regulated as much by the threat of

observation as by actual surveillance’ (Hannah 1997: 34). In the context of

medieval society, the threat of being watched (or seen) was always felt through

the omnipresent eye of God, as neatly portrayed in many medieval mappae mundi

in the form of Christ watching over the whole Earth. But the ‘life-paths’ of indi-

viduals were also regulated and watched over by other, more earthly means in

the Middle Ages. The threat of being seen was articulated through urban laws, for

these put into place a web of regulatory control, and perceptibly kept people in

their ‘proper’ places.

One particular urban law proved to be popular among Norman and English

lords in the colonisation of both Wales and Ireland.This was the Law of Breteuil,

introduced to England ﬁrst of all by William ﬁtz Osbern, Earl of Hereford.

Breteuil was a small town on William’s Normandy estates. In the 1050s he made

the place a ‘borough’ by granting townspeople favourable legal and economic

privileges (see Bateson 1900). As Earl of Hereford, William granted the Law of

Breteuil to Hereford (see below), while at the same time, in the 1070s, other

Marcher lords, particularly Roger of Montgomery and Robert of Rhuddlan, also

adopted the law in the town charters that they were granting along the Welsh

borders. The westward spread of the law went hand in hand with the westward

colonisation of Wales in the 1070s and 1080s (Figure 2.1). From Hereford and

Shrewsbury, for example, the Law of Breteuil was passed onto newly chartered

towns at Brecon and Builth, and further west, too, into Dyfed.

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IMAGINED GEOGRAPHIES OF THE ‘CELTIC FRINGE’

Figure 2.1 The spatial diffusion of Breteuil and Hereford law in Wales and Ireland

(1100–1300), and (inset) the Norman advance into Wales (1066–1100)

The creation of a network of chartered towns, linked by common urban laws

and customs, conveyed the power and authority of Anglo-Norman lordship across

regions that were by and large hostile to the colonisers. At the same time, the

laws pulled migrants in to settle in the newly chartered towns, thus reinforcing

the lord’s control over land and people. Even where he was absent, as was often

the case, urban laws provided the lord with a means to keep watch over what

people were doing: the chartered towns channelled trade through ‘ofﬁcial’ urban

centres and so ensured that commercial proﬁts went to the lord; they also put

into place a system of law and order that replicated the authority of the lord at

the local scale. At the same time, the laws provided an incentive for outsiders

to come and colonise lands, and so helped them to shift the balance of power

away from the ‘barbarous’ Welsh towards the ‘civilised’ Norman (and English)

settlers who came to live in the chartered towns.

During the twelfth century and into the thirteenth, the Law of Breteuil

continued to be used. In the chartering of towns, the law was passed on further

and further west, from Hereford to Carmarthen and Cardigan; from Shrewsbury

to Montgomery and Aberystwyth.This group of enfranchised Norman towns put

into place a geo-political framework which cast the net of Anglo-Norman power

right across the remoter parts of Wales. As the Normans advanced into Wales

during the late eleventh century, initially in military attacks, the lordships they

acquired became populated with these chartered towns, so that the map of

Norman conquest and colonisation in Wales is also the map of Norman urban-

isation and the outward spread of the Law of Breteuil (alias Hereford) (see

Bateson 1900; Chibnall 1986) (Figure 2.1).

The Law of Breteuil was not just conﬁned to Wales. Once the Anglo-Normans

had established themselves as lords in Ireland in the last quarter of the twelfth

century, there too the Law of Breteuil was adopted in the chartering of

towns.The de Lacy family, to whom Henry II had granted lands in Meath, estab-

lished a new town on the River Boyne called Drogheda (see Bradley 1985).

Just as Brecon had been a hundred years before, Drogheda was granted Breteuil

customs in its ﬁrst charter. For the same reasons that the law was used by the

(Anglo-)Normans to colonise Wales, it was carried by their successors into

Ireland, initially by a group of renegade lords whose interest in Ireland had

been roused by an offer from the King of Leinster of lands there if they sup-

ported him in his bid to gain the control of the island (see Orpen 1911). These

renegade lords were soon brought to heel by Henry II. By 1200, when Ireland

had become subsumed into the Angevin ‘empire’ and English kings held the

lordship of Ireland, the Law of Breteuil allowed absentee Anglo-Norman lords

(like de Lacy, whose main centre of power was Ludlow in the Welsh borders)

to maintain their position on Irish lands and to remind people locally of their

presence.

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Apart from the Law of Breteuil, there were of course other laws that aristo-

cratic lords used to charter their towns and attract new people to settle in their

colonised territories. However, the widespread use of the Law of Breteuil

in western England, Wales and Ireland reveals how uniﬁed the vision of

Anglo-Norman lords was. It was a vision of self-regard and conceited ambition

that hinged upon an ability to make their authority visible and conspicuous. It

was a vision built on the Anglo-Norman idea that they were introducing a more

civilised way of life into Wales and Ireland, an idea which in their view was legiti-

mate because the Welsh and Irish, governed by their own native laws, lacked

urbanism.

The exclusionary capacity of Anglo-Norman urban laws

While urban laws allowed Anglo-Norman lords to keep watch over distant lands

and people,and while they engendered the domination of the Welsh and Irish inhab-

itants of these subjugated territories, it was within the chartered towns themselves

that the laws were most clearly designed to keep the Welsh and Irish in their

place. In so doing, the urban laws made the Welsh and the Irish ‘outsiders’ in their

own lands.The Law of Breteuil once again provides some important evidence of

how this happened, but because of the nature of the written evidence it is neces-

sary ﬁrst to examine the exclusionary capacity of urban laws in the context of an

English town located in the Welsh borders, and then turn to see how the Anglo-

Normans used this model in order to deﬁne geographies of difference in Wales and

Ireland.

The supervisory qualities of urban laws helped to shape and create geographies

of difference because they were, by their very nature, exclusionary.We can see this

in the way that William ﬁtz Osbern introduced the Law of Breteuil to towns in

England in the 1060s, and granted it selectively to people living in Hereford.

The practice was soon being extended into Norman towns in Wales, and then

Ireland. In Hereford, the local (English) burgesses were subject to English borough

law, while Norman urban law applied only to newcomers (largely arriving from

northern France) whom William was trying to encourage to settle in his town on

the Welsh borders. The Law of Breteuil offered much more favourable terms to

Hereford’s newcomers than did the old English urban law (Bateson 1900).

For example, ﬁnes were less severe for those living under Breteuil law. What is

also important is that this inequality was mapped onto the town itself, for as well

as introducing favourable privileges to attract new people to live in Hereford, a

new area of the town was created, outside the area of the English borough (which

dated back to the tenth century). In the new Norman suburb there were large

spacious house plots (burgages) for the newcomers to take up (for an annual rent

of 12d.), and these plots fronted onto a large, triangular market place. All in all,

KEITH D. LILLEY

the Norman suburb was in effect a new ‘town’ added onto an existing English one

(Hillaby 1982).

In Hereford, social inequality between the Norman-French burgesses and the

English burgesses was engendered by differentiating spatially between where the

two forms of urban law applied.

Social inequality was thus written into, and

mapped onto, Hereford’s townscape because ‘space represents power in that

control of space confers the power to exclude’ (Sibley 1996: 113). In the medieval

mind, living on the spatial edge deﬁned one’s identity as Other. This is to be

clearly seen in medieval mappae mundi, like the famous Hereford map of c. 1220,

where the centre of the imagined world was represented by the Holy City

itself, Jerusalem, while the margins of the world were inhabited by unearthly

creatures. A similar trope appears in representations of the Heavenly Jerusalem,

dating from the ninth century onwards, where Christ, rendered as the Lamb of

God, is shown at the centre of a circle of walls (Frugoni 1991). In the case of

the new Norman urban laws, and their selective application to certain spaces

and people, exclusion worked by socially and spatially marginalising English

burgesses.

By granting more favourable laws to those burgesses of Hereford who were

living in the new Norman town, ﬁtz Osbern was effectively recentring the

urban focus away from what had been the centre of the English (pre-Norman)

town. He thus marginalised the English burgesses, and in doing so projected an

image of them as a marginal Other. The English had thus become ‘outsiders’ in

their own town. Such social-spatial divisions and inequalities were apparently

quite short-lived in Anglo-Norman England, for by the twelfth century the new

charters of privileges treated most towns as a whole. However, in some towns

(for example, Nottingham), the division between English and French boroughs

persisted longer.This was also the case for towns chartered by the Anglo-Normans

in Wales and Ireland, as I shall now show.

In Wales, during the early stages of Norman colonisation, newly chartered

towns were granted borough privileges that favoured outside settlers. One such

case is Kidwelly in Carmarthenshire, a new town created by Bishop Roger of

Salisbury in the early 1100s. Here an early writ refers to French, English and

Flemish burgesses but none that were Welsh (Davies 1987: 166). It seems that,

right from the start, Norman lords sought to exclude the Welsh from living in

their towns, or at least to deny them the privileges that outside settlers could

enjoy. Such exclusion persisted until the later Middle Ages. For example, as late

as 1351, a royal borough charter granted to Hope (in Flintshire) explicitly

excluded the Welsh from being able to hold burgages, and those who had somehow

managed to get hold of burgages found them being conﬁscated and redistributed

(Soulsby 1983: 149). Contemporary written sources are not always as forth-

coming as this on how the Welsh were treated in Anglo-Norman towns in Wales.

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However, in the landscapes of these towns it is sometimes possible to detect

patterns of social and spatial marginalisation that match those of ﬁtz Osbern’s

Hereford, a case in point being Haverfordwest in Dyfed in west Wales.

Haverfordwest was one of the earliest towns to be set up by the Normans in

the initial stages of conquest and colonisation in the 1070s and 1080s. At this

date little is known from documentary sources about what the Normans

were doing there, but the urban landscape contains signs that the Welsh were

spatially marginalised in the town. In this sense the landscape of Haverfordwest

is a ‘text’ inscribed by the actions of the early Norman colonisers (Figure 2.2).

Close inspection of Haverfordwest’s urban topography and toponymy shows

that the initial Norman town was a small settlement with a castle overlooking

the River Cleddau and an important bridging point (Lilley 1996). During the

early twelfth century, this castle town had been extended by the addition of

an area to the south centred on a large new market place. Later still, by the

1180s, Haverfordwest had grown to a size which it more or less retained until

the railway age.

Although contemporary medieval sources do not document

where the Welsh were living in this new Norman town, the most likely place is

a suburb on the opposite side of the river from the castle town. The suburb’s

name, Prendergast, together with the dedication of its church (to St David),

both suggest a large Welsh population (see Lilley 2000a). The suburb’s marginal

location, away from the main town, mirrored the marginal place of the Welsh

inhabitants.

The geographies of cultural difference engendered by the Anglo-Normans

through the socio-spatial shaping of their new towns was mapped onto and out

from the marginal places that the Welsh occupied in the towns as well as the

surrounding countryside.The marginality of the Welsh in Anglo-Norman towns,

together with their apparent exclusion from some aspects of urban society,

combined to reinforce the Anglo-Norman view that the Welsh were an inferior

Other. Unlike in England, however, in the case of towns in late-eleventh-century

Wales it is difﬁcult to tell whether this exclusion involved the recentring of

already existing urban foci, or whether the Welsh suburbs were added to the

edges of new Norman towns. Records of pre-Norman urban life in Wales are

elusive, an absence that itself had made the Normans think that the Welsh were

not used to commercial life. In the ﬁnal analysis, it does not really matter whether

the marginality of the Welsh in Norman towns was due to the sort of recen-

tring that took place in England in the 1060s, or whether it was the result of

the Welsh being tolerated so long as they stayed at the edge of the towns – both

still add up to the same thing: social exclusion.

In Anglo-Norman towns in Ireland, the mapping of Irish marginality took

similar forms to that in Wales. In the later twelfth century, Anglo-Norman lords

were busy developing new towns on their newly acquired lands just as their

KEITH D. LILLEY

predecessors had done in Wales a century before. Outside these new towns were

suburbs which later maps refer to as ‘Irishtowns’. Comparatively little is known

about the origins of these suburbs, but their marginal location is equivalent to

that of the Welsh suburb of Prendergast in Haverfordwest. An example of this

core–periphery arrangement comes from New Ross in County Wexford in south-

east Ireland.

In the early thirteenth century, New Ross was known to contemporaries as

la novile ville, ‘the new town’. It had been established on the River Barrow by

William Marshall in the 1180s to replace an earlier Anglo-Norman town which

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Figure 2.2 Haverfordwest,Wales, showing the suburb of Prendergast and the Norman

castle-town

lay some distance away from the river at a place now known as Old Ross (Orpen

1911: 11). William Marshall’s new town extended both alongside the river as

well as away from it, to the east, along a road that led down to a newly built

bridge across the river (Figure 2.3). New Ross was walled in the 1260s (Thomas

1992: 175–6). The new wall cut through part of the town, and outside one of

the gates lay the Irishtown suburb. The suburb may have housed Irish inhabitants

who were already living in the area before the Anglo-Normans arrived. The

evidence for this is an oval-shaped enclosure around the church of St Stephen.

Such enclosures are characteristic of early medieval (‘Celtic Christian’) church

sites. Again, though, as at Haverfordwest, what is signiﬁcant is the marginal loca-

tion of the Irishtown suburb, an indication that its inhabitants were speciﬁcally

spatially excluded from the walled ‘core’ of the Anglo-Norman town.

Excluded Irish inhabitants had their subordinate status mapped onto and

through the urban landscape. One documented case of this exclusion in action

comes from Waterford, a walled city of Viking origin that pre-dated the arrival

of the Anglo-Normans. In a siege on the city, Gerald of Wales (again) records

how the Anglo-Normans managed to break through the walls and the townsfolk

(of Irish and Viking descent) were expelled to an outlying suburb (see Bradley

KEITH D. LILLEY

Figure 2.3 New Ross, Ireland, showing the Irishtown suburb and the Anglo-Norman

walled town (extract from 1st edn 6 in. Ordnance Survey)

and Halpin 1992). The act of expulsion was a spatial act that marked the inhab-

itants as social inferiors, and excluding them from the walled city reinforced this

loss of their status. It is very clear from this that in the minds of the Anglo-

Normans the ‘proper place’ for the Irish was suburban and therefore marginal.

This marginalisation served to reinforce the marginal status of the Irish in Anglo-

Norman Ireland and it reﬂects Anglo-Norman views about the interconnectedness

of place and identity.

Conclusion: mapping place and identity

From the preceding discussion it will have become clear that the Anglo-Normans

articulated their power and authority in Wales and Ireland by putting into place

spatial practices that deliberately kept people in their ‘proper place’. As far as

the Anglo-Normans were concerned, the place appropriate for the Welsh and

Irish was somewhere at the ‘margins’, for this not only helped to reﬂect both

groups as socially marginal but also helped to reinforce the Anglo-Normans’

portrayal of the Welsh and Irish as a marginal Other. Tracing these ‘imagined

geographies’ and ‘placed identities’ back to the twelfth century reveals how, for

the Anglo-Normans, civility was intimately connected with urbanity. Urbanism

provided the Anglo-Normans with a means of deﬁning cultural superiority, while

at the same time urbanisation, through chartering new towns, gave them the

means to colonise lands and reinforce geographies of difference. These notions

of urbanity and civility that the Anglo-Normans were mobilising in the twelfth

century were actually derived from ideas originally put forward in Classical times,

in Ancient Rome and Greece (Lilley 2000a).

What we see in the case of medieval Wales and Ireland is a process of coloni-

sation and settlement that ultimately favoured the colonisers over the colonised.

It did so in ways that made the Welsh and Irish outsiders in their own lands,

and which reinforced cultural constructions of the Welsh and Irish as uncivilised

Others. The mapping of placed identities was both literal and metaphorical in

that the Welsh and Irish were placed in locations that were seen (by the Anglo-

Normans) to be appropriate reﬂections of their perceived inferior status.

This occurred through suburbanising them, and excluding them from the ‘core’

of Anglo-Norman urban life, and it occurred through portraying them as periph-

eral people at the edges of the civilised world. Crucial tools in perpetuating this

myth of the ‘Celtic fringe’ were spatial practices associated with urbanisation,

particularly the role that urban laws played in regulating what people did in

Norman and Anglo-Norman towns in remote regions away from centres of

Norman (and English) authority. Urban laws allowed lords to keep watch over

what people did, as well as mark out social boundaries and deﬁne cultural differ-

ence.The supervisory nature of urban laws was mapped onto the urban landscape,

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and this too further reinforced the geographies of difference embodied legally

in the regulations that governed urban life under the Anglo-Normans.

The idea that the Welsh and Irish were an unurbanised and uncivilised ‘Other’

has long endured in some academic literature on medieval Wales and Ireland, as

the two quotations set out at the start of this chapter show. The idea of the

‘Celtic fringe’ is a powerful one, planted in the minds of Norman and English

colonisers in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and subsequently perpetuated

in modern written accounts of this period. In order to understand this longevity

I have suggested here that it is necessary to contextualise historically the myth

of the Celtic fringe – to look at how and why it was ﬁrst constructed. What we

ﬁnd in so doing is that the perceived ‘fringeness’ of Wales and Ireland is rela-

tional – it derives from an Anglo-centric ‘speaking position’. What is perhaps

more important is how this English perception of Welsh and Irish peripherality

was reinforced by particular spatial practices in the Middle Ages that left their

traces on the landscape, culture and language of Wales and Ireland. In my view,

it is important that the assumed historical rootedness of a British and Irish

‘Celticity’ is destabilised and deconstructed, as much by looking into the

discourses and spatial practices that constituted it in the distant past, as it is by

looking at ‘Celtic worlds’ today.

Notes

1 To contemporaries writing in England in the twelfth century, the Welsh and the

Irish were known respectively as Walenses and Hiberni (for examples of this, see

Thorpe 1978; Potter and Davis 1976).

2 It is important to remember that the Welsh had long had their own customs and

law codes – it was these that the Norman kings (and later the English) were

supplanting (see Jones 1999a).

3 Such social inequalities were also mapped onto the townscapes and townspeople of

other newly expanded Norman towns, like Nottingham and Shrewsbury (see

Stephenson 1933). In these cases too, soon after the Conquest the Norman lords

had quickly created new towns, or more strictly speaking ‘boroughs’, alongside

existing ones. In doing so, in my view they were deliberately trying to marginalise

the English burgesses (see Lilley 2001).

4 This was the time at which the town was mapped by the Ordnance Survey. The

basis of Figure 2.2 is the ﬁrst edition Ordnance Survey 1:2500 scale plan. On this,

see Lilley (1996) and Lilley (2000b).

5 A similar situation is known to have existed at Monmouth, where William ﬁtz

Osbern built a castle in the late 1060s (see Soulsby 1983).

KEITH D. LILLEY

‘THEIR FAMILIES HAD

GONE BACK IN TIME HUNDREDS

OF YEARS AT THE SAME PLACE’

Attitudes to land and landscape in the Scottish

Highlands after 1914

Iain Robertson

In 1918, crofters from the townships of Knockintorran, Balemore and Knockline

invaded and cultivated land at Ard an Runair, part of the farm of Balranald, on the

island of North Uist.They took this action because they believed that Ard an Runair

was rightfully theirs, as their ancestors had lived and worked on it. This belief in

rights to land via custom and inheritance has been recognised in a number of Celtic

regions and has been seen to underlie acts of protest in those regions (Knott 1984;

Withers 1988; Pretty 1989). Furthermore, explicit links have been made between

these otherwise discrete events (Withers 1995), to such an extent as to suggest

that we may begin to speak of a distinct Celtic protest.Thus far, however, it is too

early to make such a claim. Our current understanding of the varying and con-

ﬂicting manifestations of protest is still under-developed for any one region, and

is certainly too fragile to bear the weight of comparison.Therefore, this chapter

does not seek to establish a common basis to a Celtic protest through the notion

of an ideologically derived view of land and land holding. Rather, the intention is

to make problematic our understanding of the belief in rights to land in just one

Celtic region – the Scottish Highlands – in order to begin the process of moving

towards a more meaningful comparison.

The focus here is on the period after 1914, as the protests of this time have

received comparatively little attention hitherto. The focus is also on the notion

of a peasant ideology to protest, which has been used in the past (notably by

Rudé 1980), as a suggested commonality of Celtic protest. The argument will

be made that, while it cannot be denied that the actions of the Highland tenantry

continued to be motivated by a belief in traditional rights to land based on

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custom, occupation and inheritance, issues surrounding this belief, both between

the tenantry and their landlords and within the tenantry, were considerably more

complex than has hitherto been asserted. Out of this comes the realisation that

the view, common to much of Highland historiography, of the ‘crofting commu-

nity’ as an undifferentiated mass, obscures more than it reveals. In turn, this

must raise questions over the notion of a single regional class consciousness and,

indeed, over the efﬁcacy of the class model as a whole to the comprehension

and explanation of Highland protest. Moreover, the suggestion will be made that

this concern with the failure to give weight to gradations within the land-working

tenantry can be extended to other Celtic regions.

Celtic connections in protest?

Land issues have readily been identiﬁed as both central to events of rural pro-

test in north Wales (Dunbabin 1974; Howell 1977), western Ireland (Clark

and Donnelly 1983; Knott 1984) and the Highlands of Scotland (Hunter 1976;

Withers 1988), as well as forming the link between these otherwise discrete events

(Dunbabin 1974; Hunter 1975; Withers 1995). However, no consideration has

been given to periods other than that of the ﬁfty years after 1880, and compar-

isons have never been made for more than two areas. The only explicitly com-

parative paper, for instance, considers just rural Ireland and the Highlands of

Scotland (Withers 1995). Rural Wales, however, would appear to be an equally

valid comparator, and Dunbabin (1974) does at least hint at some wider links

between rural Wales and Scotland. His point of comparison is between the Tithe

War in Wales and the Highland Land Wars of the 1880s. He ﬁnds ‘superﬁcial’

similarities between the two, both taking ‘much the same form’, but because

authorities reacted differently to the Welsh disturbances, these were signiﬁcantly

less successful than the Highland equivalents (Dunbabin 1974: 211). Even ‘super-

ﬁcially’, however, questions must be raised over these assertions. For one thing,

the two wars were typologically distinct, with land seizure being the principal

Highland form of protest, and refusal to pay tithes characterising the Welsh action.

Moreover, in Scotland (and, indeed, for Ireland) the principal issue was access to

land, with the protest being distinctly anti-landlord; in Wales it was principally

anti-Established Church. Nevertheless, Dunbabin (1974: 230) does establish both

land issues and an accompanying anti-landlordism as two parts of the nexus of

causes which comprise the late nineteenth-century opposition movement in Wales.

A more meaningful comparison, however, may well be obtained by drawing

on earlier Welsh events, the most obvious being the Rebecca riots, which Jones

(1989: 374) describes as ‘a great community protest movement’. Although it

was principally a small farmers’ revolt, it also involved labourers and, in south-

east Carmarthen, colliers. Indeed, towards the end of August 1843 labourers in

IAIN ROBERTSON

Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire began to hold their own protest meetings

against the way farmers treated them (Howell 1988: 119). However, although

certain similarities seem to exist in terms of typology, in terms of derivation

the Rebecca riots were very different from rural protests in Ireland or Scotland,

where an ideological motivation existed that seems to be absent from Rebecca

(Howell 1977: 11). This is not say, however, that attempts to ﬁnd a generic

‘Celtic’ protest that was linked to ideologically derived views of landholding in

rural Wales are meaningless. In an alternative view of the Tithe Wars, for instance,

Pretty (1989) recognises the disturbances as the last attempt of a newly prole-

tarianised labour force to reassert their claims to land rights. Furthermore, there

is no doubting the ‘Welsh people’s passionate attachment to the family home-

stead’, which Howell (1977: 62, 71) sees as being founded in ‘the claim that

those brought up on the land had a moral right to remain on it for life’; a senti-

ment recognisable in protest events in both Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland.

If we look beyond the superﬁcial level of rural protest typology, therefore,

and examine the motivating spirit to rural protest, ideological notions of certain

rights to land appear to come to the fore as generators of protest throughout

the Celtic regions. In Wales, this idea seems to be most overt in protests involving

quarrymen in north Wales. As Merfyn-Jones points out (1982: 18–19), some, if

not all, of the quarrymen were also part-time agriculturists, a pattern very similar

to that of the Highland crofting system of agriculture. The early years of the

Welsh slate industry (up to about 1850) were characterised by conﬂicts between

cottager-quarrymen and landowners over access to land. Continued enclosure,

Merfyn-Jones argues (1988: 170–1), gave rise to the belief among cottagers that

the mountains had been taken from them. Sentiments such as these are echoed

in both Scottish and Irish disturbances, but Merfyn-Jones makes the Irish connec-

tion more explicit. He believes that the visit of Michael Davitt to north Wales

in 1886 conﬁrmed to many that the region ‘was moving towards agitation on an

Irish scale’, and raises a number of similarities between the two regions: ‘calls

for land reform; religious sectarianism; a tendency towards direct action’ (Merfyn-

Jones 1988: 166).

There would seem, therefore, to be signiﬁcant elements of congruity between

acts of protest in the Celtic regions, not least in terms of underlying beliefs.

Nevertheless, this congruity must be approached with caution. The central

premise of this chapter is that we have yet to develop fully our understanding

of protest in any one region, and so cannot point to where meaningful compar-

isons can be made. In the historiography of protest in the Scottish Highlands,

for instance, while both Withers (1995) and Hunter (1976) convincingly iden-

tify the importance of land to crofting identity, both insist on treating the crofting

tenantry as an homogenous ‘community’, and while Withers identiﬁes and

acknowledges conﬂict within the tenantry, he does not see this as a threat to his

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ATTITUDES TO LAND AND LANDSCAPE

view of a single oppositional movement and class. This chapter will bring this

view into question and suggest, moreover, that while differences between Celtic

countries were undoubtedly signiﬁcant, of equal signiﬁcance are differences within

countries.

In his approach, Withers (1995) follows the work of Hunter (1976) which,

taking a classically Marxist and economically determinist approach, ﬁrst recog-

nised the emergence of a ‘crofting community’. In this recognition, Hunter

(1976: 5) makes his intentions clear from the outset: to restore ‘the crofter to

the centre of his own history’. Admirable though this search may be, it is not

unproblematic. In using the term ‘crofter’, Hunter is excluding from his histor-

ical restoration both cottars and squatters: groups which were differentiated from

crofters in terms of landholding. It was the crofter who held land; cottars and

squatters constituted the (virtually) landless labouring groups. Even if Hunter

was intending ‘crofter’ to be inclusive (something he never makes wholly clear),

this was ill advised. The term masks real gradations, and both differing ambi-

tions and conﬂict between these groups within crofting society, as the following

section will demonstrate.

For Withers (1995), the land issue in both the Highlands of Scotland and rural

Ireland was perhaps the most signiﬁcant part of a series of shared motivations

to protest. Withers (1995: 172) believes that the Land Wars in both areas were

‘rooted in earlier structural and economic changes’, and that class conﬂict was

a signiﬁcant cause of protest in both. Typologically, actions of protest in this

period originated in a common form – the rent strike – but in the Highlands,

rapidly transformed into the characterising action of that period – the land raid.

This was the forced seizure of previously cultivated land that had been expropriated

by landlords in their drive to convert to sheep run and deer forest. Despite this

typological diversity,Withers (1995: 185) asserts that access to land remained the

‘principal motivation’ in both the Highlands and rural Ireland. He believes that

this desire to gain and maintain access to land drew upon the defence of traditional

rights and customs in relation to ownership, occupation and management of

land. For the peasantry in both areas, land ‘had a cultural signiﬁcance over and

above economic returns and . . . geopolitical connotations’ (Withers 1995: 185).

From this, he argues (1995: 185–6) for agrarian protest in both areas to be seen

as ‘an ideological clash . . . between the practices of custom and the imperatives

of capital’. In seeking to uncover an underlying, unifying ‘motivating spirit’

to protest,Withers (1988: 329) is drawing upon the work of both Knott (1984)

and Rudé (1980). In his exploration of the causes of eighteenth- and nineteenth-

century Irish agrarian disturbances, Knott (1984) insists that we must uncover ‘the

cultural roots’ of these actions if we are to understand them fully. For Knott, the

grievances underlying disturbance came out of a popular consensus of legitimate

practices with regard to the ownership, occupation and use of land. This was, in

IAIN ROBERTSON

turn, based upon ‘a system of social norms, rights and obligations which governed

the relationship between the land, the family and social status in Irish peasant com-

munities’ (Knott 1984: 94). Cautiously preferring to use the term ‘ideology’ to

that of ‘culture’ or ‘belief system’, Knott (1984: 94) believes that, taken together,

consensus and social system formed the ‘ideology of the Irish Peasantry’.

Unfortunately, in an otherwise excellent paper, Knott does not expand upon

either his preference for, or understanding of, this ‘peasant ideology’, apart from

stating that, while it was not ‘in any modern sense “political”, it cannot be

described as entirely non-political either’ (1984: 94).Withers (1988:25, 329–30),

however, does articulate his understanding and, basing it on the work of Williams,

Geertz and, above all, Rudé, looks for an ‘ideology of popular protest’. Rudé

(1980) sees this ideology as being composed of two distinct elements, which he

labels ‘inherent’ and ‘derived’.The former are those beliefs which belong to the

‘popular classes’ exclusively and which derive from ‘direct experience, oral tradi-

tion or folk-memory’. To form an ideology of popular protest, this inherent

element fuses with ‘the stock of ideas and beliefs that are “derived” or borrowed

from others’, such as notions of popular sovereignty or the ‘Rights of Man’.

Included in the inherent element are ‘the peasant’s belief in his right to land’

and the most signiﬁcant part of Thompson’s moral economy – ‘the belief of the

small consumer . . . in his right to buy at a “just” price’ (Rudé 1980: 27–33).

Withers (1988: 327–91; 1995: 187) applies this formulation to events of

protest in both rural Ireland and the Scottish Highlands. He identiﬁes a unifying,

underlying ‘motivating spirit’ to protest, which he deﬁnes (in the context of

Highland protest) as ‘that regional or class consciousness . . . which informed

both individual moments and the general context of protest’ (1988: 329). He

argues (1988: 389) that opposition to cultural transformation was grounded in

‘inherent notions of shared beliefs and consensus claims to land’ and ‘derived

notions of class and class consciousness’. It is possible, however, to raise concerns

over this application.While Rudé (1980:27) explicitly draws a distinction between

the ideology of popular protest and ‘ideology as class consciousness’, Withers

(1988: 389) fails to do so. Furthermore, Withers (1988; 1995) seems to recog-

nise the Highlanders’ sense of class consciousness as ‘derived’ from beyond the

community, raising the difﬁcult implication that it has been, to use Rudé’s (1980)

expression, ‘borrowed from others’. Finally, although in a later paper Withers

(1995: 187) allows that protest was in part a product of disunity within the

(Highland) ‘land-working classes’ (emphasis added), he does not allow this to

disturb his view of a single, regional class consciousness.

This section has demonstrated that issues surrounding access to land have been

considered as central to the explanation of events of rural disturbance in north

Wales, western Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland. Protest across the Celtic

regions is generally accepted to have come out of an underlying, motivating belief

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in rights to land which constitutes an ideology of popular protest, to the extent

that this implies that we may begin to recognise a common ‘Celtic’ form of

protest. However, this section has cast doubts over this possibility. In particular,

concerns have been raised over the way in which this theory has been utilised

in the Highland context. The following section continues to focus on the under-

lying spirit to protest, not with a view to denying the existence of the belief in

rights to land, but, rather, in an attempt to reﬂect better the complexity and

conﬂict that becomes apparent from a detailed exploration of events after 1914.

This, in turn, raises questions over the notion of a single regional class conscious-

ness and has implications for the somewhat reductionist identiﬁcation of the

land-working tenantry as a ‘community’ or ‘class’, both within the Highlands and

across the Celtic regions more generally.

Issues of land in Highland popular protest after 1914

There is an extensive body of literature both on the traditional organisation of

the Highland society and economy, and on the importance of that system for

those who worked the land (see, e.g., Hunter 1976; Shaw 1980; Dodgshon 1981;

Withers 1988; Dodgshon 1998). Traditionally, land in the Highlands had both an

economic and a social function but with the emphasis very much on the latter.

Land was held by the clan chief and permitted to pass down through society for

martial purposes – in order to bind a large population to a particular place.

Landholding was arranged, therefore, to ensure the continued existence of the

clan as a socially and militarily effective organisation. Agricultural efﬁciency and

income were of secondary importance (Shaw 1980: 184; Dodgshon 1981: 281–2;

Withers 1988: 172). For those who worked the land, therefore, the importance

of this system was that it conveyed rights of hereditary occupation; rights which

drew upon the customary notion that the clan which lived and worked upon the

ground had a right to permanent occupation. This belief in rights to land by

custom and inheritance was founded on the ancient Gaelic term duthchas (Hunter

1976: 156–9).This is a difﬁcult and complex term to pin down, but with respect

to landholding, for instance, tenants were said to have the duthchas of a particu-

lar holding – a hereditary right of occupation based upon custom rather than

law. It is important to recognise, however, that this claim could extend beyond

the tenantry to other groups within Highland society (see Dodgshon 1981:

110–13; Withers 1988: 77–8, 331–2, 413–15).

It was this society and economy that the clan chiefs abandoned when they

became landowners.Nevertheless, and despite signiﬁcantly changed circumstances

and their physical removal from the land, the tenantry continued to adhere to

their traditional beliefs regarding land and landholding. It was these beliefs that

would generate acts of popular protest.

IAIN ROBERTSON

Disturbance surrounding land after 1914 cannot be removed from the context

of events prior to that date. Land raiding began in the early 1880s, occurred

across the Highlands and peaked a decade later. Subsequently, events shrunk back

into what Withers (1988: 17, after Fox 1947 and Bowen 1959) terms ‘Pura Scotia’

(the area north and west of the Highland Line). Despite this, by 1913 land raids

and threat to raid had become ‘part of the accepted order of things’ and one

newspaper was able to see ‘ample evidence of a coming revolt’ (quoted in Hunter

1976: 192–5). It was a revolt, however, which was postponed until the end of

the First World War.

Protest did not cease entirely during the war years, but with the end of the

war an immediate and exponential expansion of disturbance took place.The two

principal Government departments involved with the agitation for land were the

Scottish Ofﬁce and the Board of Agriculture for Scotland. From November 1918,

these two departments received an increasing volume of correspondence from

the crofting tenantry expressing their frustrations and motives to protest. In

January 1921, for instance, Donald Mackay wrote that he had been ‘patiently

waiting for long promised land which is now as far off as it was when the

[Pentland] Bill was passed in 1911’.The cause of this was, he believed, the politi-

cal will of the Scottish Secretary. The letter concluded with a threat to raid

Garrynahine Farm on the island of Lewis. Alternatively, the crofters of Boreray

Island felt that the Board of Agriculture responded only to raiding ‘while the

law-abiding applicants are left in the lurch’. To landlords, however, the Board’s

action caused raiding. The solicitors to Sir Campbell Orde, proprietor of the

North Uist estate, wrote that the Board’s actions in opening negotiations and

then failing to conclude purchase meant that expectations had been raised, with

disappointment inevitably leading to raiding.

Protest continued at a high level of intensity until 1926 and, although the rate

subsequently declined, disturbance took place through to 1939 and reoccurred

after 1945. Until the late 1930s, government and landowners remained convinced

of the continued potential for protest and both continued to behave in the way

they had when protest was at its peak.

Notwithstanding the breadth of motivations noted above, the belief in rights

to land was as prominent in this inter-war period as it had been in the last

decades of the nineteenth century. One such manifestation comes from the island

of North Uist in 1920, when crofters seized land on Balranald farm claiming

that the land ‘adjoins the Township and formerly belonged to it. . . . We are

convinced that we are acting right when we take possession of the land from

which our ancestors were wrongfully driven.’

At about the same time a different

group of crofters resumed their agitation for land on the southern portion of

the farm. In May 1920 they wrote that:

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All the crofters in the said township have decided – owing to the scarcity

of fodder and poor pasture – to take possession of the part of Paiblesgarry

(about 150 acres) which was taken from them by James MacDonald,

tenant of Paiblesgarry and Balranald . . . at that time the people were

ignorant about laws and rights and the powerful and wealthy did very

much as they choosed [sic]. . . . why did we send our sons to ﬁght for

this country if it wants to deprive us of our existence . . . they look

on the land that was treacherously taken from them as their own to the

present day.

Claims to land such as these, although often made in writing, were maintained

orally and consequently found their most powerful expression in the oral tradi-

tion. One of the best examples of this comes from the popular memory of the

1920 land seizure on the island of Raasay. It is the recollection of the son of one

of those taking part in the raid that:

Traditionally the people came from, they were removed from these areas

of Fearns and Eyre. And they were desirous of getting back to what

their ancestors had had. So there was some of the MacKays, the famous

Mackay pipers, were in Eyre and Fearns.And then there were MacLeods

there, some of their ancestors were in Fearns and Eyre also.

Question: Is there any idea that they felt that the land belonged to them?

That’s right. They thought that they weren’t taking anything out of the

hands of the [unclear Laird?] or anything else but what was their prop-

erty what they took out of their hands by removing them, their ancestors.

They weren’t a people that were careless who didn’t care whether they

were doing good or not, whether they were breaking the law or not

that’s not the kind of people they were at all. They were very desirous

in keeping the law . . . although they had, for the beneﬁt of their fami-

lies, they had to break it in this sense just to take it at that time before

it was allotted to them, but there was no time, there was no sign of it

being allotted to them if they hadn’t taken that step because some of

them had been in the services during the fourteen–eighteen war.

And when the subject was returned to later in the interview ...

As far as the Raasay raiders were concerned it’s just from their own

personal experience and the want of a proper livelihood that made them

take that moor and besides they were only getting, as we already said,

the land that their ancestors possessed and what they needed because

of their families some of them had . . . there was nine in our own

family.

IAIN ROBERTSON

Although forced to break the law, they did not recognise the legitimacy of that

law as it was made for, and by, ‘the Laird only’.

As the Raasay seizure progressed, the Skye police attempted to arrest the

raiders but were frustrated in their attempts as the men were forewarned by a

member of the local community. The raiders would leave

their houses and they went on the hills d’you see and they were watch-

ing the police at a distance. . . .There was an uncle of mine John Mackay

he was very . . . an ex-navy man and he was very impatient y’know and

he would be peeping up going ‘too far away too far’ giving . . . exposing

himself too much and one of the policeman stopped . . . spotted him

y’know and he made after him so he would John Mackay would go a wee

bit and he would say to the police ‘You needn’t come further’ he says

‘you’ll never catch me and even if you did’ he says ‘I wouldn’t go on that

boat that you have over there.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘I would put my foot through

it’ he says ‘and sink the boat.’‘You would be drowned yourself’ says the

policeman. ‘Not at all’ he says ‘I was in the Navy I would swim the

Channel.’ [Laughter] So there was a hillock there where he was standing

and the police was a bit away from him and we called it Cnoc a

Phoileasmain, the hillock of the policeman, aye [laughter].

The naming of the hillock may at ﬁrst appear inconsequential. According to

Nash (1999: 457), however, ‘the names of places speak of complicated cultural

geographies of language and location’. Therefore, the naming of the hillock is,

in fact, both a reminder of the commitment necessary to undertake illegal acts

of land seizure, and a demonstration of the close links for Highlanders between

people and place. As Robinson demonstrates in his recovery of Irish placenames,

the local naming of place ‘reins in history, folklore, social codes and beliefs, and

ties them through a shared language to a location in space’ (Nash 1999: 474,

citing Robinson 1992). The act of naming Cnoc a Phoileasmain does just that,

while also reinforcing Withers’ (2000) claim that Highland crofters and cottars

did not see the Ordnance Survey map as the authoritative document others

deemed it to be.While there remains much to be discovered on the links between

language and protest in the Celtic regions, there can be little doubt that, for the

Raasay land seizure at least, place, land, landscape and language become impor-

tant points of conﬂict.

All this seems to support the general ideological claims of Withers (1988;

1995) and Hunter (1976), as discussed above. However, several problems are

raised that require further attention. For instance, it is now apparent that expres-

sions of the belief in rights to land were not solely collective, but could also be

individual. In March 1915 an applicant for land in Sconser Deer Forest on the

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island of Skye wrote,‘I have a certain claim of it since my forefathers lived there.’

He wrote again in April,‘I am only asking what I have a claim on as the dwelling

place of my forefathers. I would not be justiﬁed in applying for land elsewhere.’

This individualised manifestation was particularly important to the transmission

of the belief to land rights and its maintenance, and, by implication, shows that

expressions of this belief did not act solely as a cohesive force but could also be

divisive. For instance, on Skye in April 1922, a public meeting took place in

which those present called on the Board of Agriculture to restore ‘the lands of

our ancestors to us’. This call, however, was not prompted primarily by anti-

landlordism but by a desire to protest at ‘servicemen or others from outside to

get [sic] any part of this land from which our forefathers were cruelly evicted’.

Expressions of duthchas could, then, be both individual and divisive. In addi-

tion, it must now be recognised that they were not conﬁned to the landworking

tenantry. During the course of the Balranald agitation the landowner attempted

to justify his continued right to hold the land in terms of a continued and

customary occupation over many generations.

Captain Ranald MacDonald, then,

was articulating a claim to long-term possession of land in terms virtually iden-

tical to those expressed by those of his tenantry who were agitating for the same

piece of land.

We must also question our understanding of the geographical limitations to

expressions of this belief, particularly in areas where the concept of duthchas is

held not to have operated. For instance, in Shetland, claims to land based on

past customary occupation are evident both in the popular memory of land agita-

tion and in the written record. In 1921, for instance, correspondents of the

Board of Agriculture based their claims to land on Quendale Farm on the fact

that it ‘originally belonged to our forefathers’.

According to Knox (1985: 22),

the traditional laws of Shetland were based upon the Norse Udal system, while

duthchas seems to be a remnant of a very different law system (Devine 1994:

10–11). If this is the case, two possibilities suggest themselves with regard to

the roots of the occurrence of the belief in rights to land in Shetland. Either

this was borrowed, consciously or unconsciously, from contemporary newspaper

reports or personal contact, or it suggests that the belief in rights to land can

arise from two different law systems.The more signiﬁcant possibility is the latter,

and so, given the exclusion of the Shetlands from the Celtic areas, this must

raise questions over the recognition of the belief in rights to land as a unifying

motif in any supposedly ‘Celtic’ protest.

Finally, we must now acknowledge that, for a signiﬁcant number of events,

claims to land appear to have become less place speciﬁc. For instance, at Drimore

on the island of South Uist, correspondents justiﬁed their threat to raid in terms

of their inability to ‘get a smallholding in the place where we were born and

brought up’. Similarly, those who seized part of Forsinain Farm, Sutherland,

IAIN ROBERTSON

wrote that ‘we maintain we are the rightful heirs to this place . . . as we were

born and brought up practically on the farm’, while on the island of Harris,

groups threatening to seize land on Borve Farm based their actions on the belief

that they simply had an entitlement to a ‘share of [their] own native isle’.

What

appears to be happening is that as links between Highlanders and their expro-

priated land weakened over the generations, so their belief in an entitlement to

a speciﬁc piece of land weakened also; a weakening that manifested itself in

protest as a less speciﬁc commitment to a ‘share of our own native isle’. This

synthesis suggests that the articulation of the belief in rights to land was signiﬁ-

cantly more complex than has been previously allowed. This complexity must

serve to question Withers’ utilisation of this belief as the Highland peasant ideology

and, in particular, his somewhat uncritical view of an undifferentiated ‘crofting

community’ expressing a regional class consciousness. By extension, moreover,

this must raise doubts over the deployment of the notion of a peasant ideology

as common factor to protest in the Celtic regions.

These concerns are exacerbated by the realisation that this belief was not

present in all acts of protest. Although it is undeniable that disturbance occurred

on the mainland, the belief in rights to land is seemingly absent from these

events.Therefore, the clear implication is that not every participant entered into

protest for identical reasons. Despite the seeming banality of this statement, this

points the way towards a more reﬂexive understanding of Highland protest, as

this diversity of motivation has not been acknowledged in any signiﬁcant depth

before. People entered into protest for economic reasons, and because they

believed they had been promised land, and that this promise had been broken.

They entered into protest out of frustration with agencies of government, and

because they wanted land for a house or as an adjunct to their more urbanised

activities. People entered into protest because they saw others succeeding by it

(Robertson 1996: 172–5).The knowledge that causes were multifaceted compels

us also to add new layers of complexity to our understanding of Highland protest.

Not to do so is a denial of other voices. In March 1917 Peter Stewart wrote

expressing his frustration at being unable to get land, and felt that ‘if the case

was properly laid before the Mackintosh he would do something for me’.

view this in class terms would be to see it as ‘residual deference’.This, however,

marginalises Peter Stewart’s voice.

This multiplicity of voices becomes more ﬁrmly apparent as the range of

conﬂicts embedded within protest is exposed. We must now accept that conﬂict

was not solely between tenantry and landlords but was also between landlords

and agencies of government and, more signiﬁcantly for the present work, within

and between the crofting tenantry (Robertson 1996: 175–83). Here, conﬂict was

apparent between those who went to war and those who did not; between those

who undertook protest and those who did not; but perhaps most signiﬁcantly,

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between groups differentiated in terms of landholding, such as crofters and

cottars. Generally, crofters participated in acts of land seizure and issued threats

to seize land in order to gain enlargements to their existing crofts. Cottars under-

took similar acts to gain crofts. This difference is crucial and was a source of

friction within the tenantry. This difference in aspiration may be a signiﬁcant

indicator of the fact that both groups were beginning to perceive their interests

as separate and distinct from each other. At Balranald, for instance, the propri-

etor believed that the unstated aim of those seizing the land was to gain

enlargements and, to this end, cottars had been purposefully excluded from the

raiding groups. Indeed, the divisive nature of the desire for land was carried over

into the period after the success of the raid. In February 1923 cottars from

Goular wrote to the Board of Agriculture complaining that crofters from Tigharry

who had gained enlargements on Balranald had ‘taken possession’ of a part of

their common grazing. They threatened reciprocal action. Subsequently, a solici-

tor acting for the Tigharry holders informed the Board that the Goular men were

preventing his clients from working their land.

A signiﬁcant number of land seizures and threats to seize were, in part at

least, the product of crofters no longer content to have others on the croft. In

January 1921 cottars from Tobson, Lewis, threatened to raid Croir Farm as they

were ‘warned by the Township [sic] Crofters to clear off our stock’. Some seven

months later the crofters wrote setting out their position. In the township there

were as many squatter families (twenty) as there were crofter families.

That means heavy Congestion on poor Crofters.These squatters has [sic]

got more stock than many of the crofters . . . we can’t put up with them

any longer upon us. . . . I am requested by the crofters to ask you to

remove the squatters . . . before the end of September . . . or else we

shall pay no rent or tax. . . .The state of our Township will be sent to the

Prime Minister. Poor crofters widows and orphans ruined to poverty by

Ex-servicemen heaped upon them.

Conﬂict over access to land within the land-working population, then, is repre-

sentative of emergent divisions between crofters and cottars. Indeed, not only

were crofters recognising their separate and distinct interests but cottars also

were seeking to promulgate their interests over and above those of crofters. At

Scaristaveg, Harris, for instance, cottars acted to seize the farm once they had

decided that the proprietor was attempting to exclude them from a prospective

scheme.

On Tiree, cottar applicants for the disputed land wrote:

When there was ﬁghting to be done we had ﬁrst chance to be shot;

not your precious crofters. Likewise when there is land set out . . . we

IAIN ROBERTSON

shall have ﬁrst share of it, or there will be trouble. In fact we shall have

it all, with no crofter companions.

Tension between cottars and crofters occurred across the Highlands, but the

locale where it was most acute was Barra. Here the focus of attention was

Eoligarry Farm, the last remaining large farm on the island, and it was subject

to much agitation and repeated raiding from before 1914 until 1941. In terms

of tension within the tenantry, however, the decisive period came after 1917,

when land seizures were begun by cottar/ﬁshermen from the east side of the

island who wanted small plots for crofts. Crofter families from the west side

(approximately 100, some of whom were tenants of the Board of Agriculture)

wanted the same land to extend their crofts. They responded to the initial land

seizures by threatening seizures of their own. A near-anarchic situation rapidly

developed, with cattle from both groups freely grazing the farm, illegal cultiva-

tion taking place, and cottars making their occupation permanent by (illegal)

house-building.This conﬂict continued for a number of years and, at times, came

close to violence.

The existence of frictions such as these must, at the very least, lead to a

reworking of the somewhat reductionist view that protest came out of a single

‘crofting class’ and was underlaid by a common belief in rights to land. Indeed,

there are oppositional forces clearly evident within crofting society; this cautions

against any presumption of uncritical unity deriving from a shared crofting

mentalité.

However, if we are to be sensitive towards the subtleties at work within rela-

tionships among the crofting tenantry, then we must admit evidence of

homogeneity alongside conﬂict. In particular, kinship links cut across the frac-

tures within society outlined above. As with protest in rural Ireland (Fitzpatrick

1982), land seizures can be seen as a familial act, carried out by individuals but

for the family. Kinship links often determined the composition of the raiding

party, membership of which was often interchangeable within the extended family,

as revealed by the oral tradition of the land seizures at Orinsay and Stimervay,

Lewis.The two former crofting townships were reoccupied by twenty-two cottars,

of whom twenty-one came from Lemreway. Before settling permanently in the

townships, the membership of the groups agitating for land was ﬂexible but

always drew upon the same families. There were thirty-three occupied crofts in

Lemreway but only eight provided members of the raiding parties, all of whom

were interrelated.

Kinship was the means by which duthchas was reafﬁrmed, and the claim to

land maintained and transmitted via individuals between the generations. Thus,

when these beliefs were expressed, claims were often made to the ancestral land-

scapes of inheritance. In April 1919 Kenneth Ferguson wrote, ‘It my [sic] father

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and grandfather homes we wanted . . . and we are going to ﬁght for it.’ Such

legitimation of agitation was often accompanied by complex genealogies,

showing that the desire to return to an ancestor’s holding was both an individual

expression of claims to land and part of a collective memory and consciousness.

The fact that kin and township links may be seen to underlie protest, the fact

that crofter and cottar did (at times) come together to undertake protest, and

the existence of conﬂicts other than those of class, all combine to question the

over-arching signiﬁcance of the class model to an understanding of Highland

protest. Perhaps more important than that, however, is the fact that the evidence

presented above reveals something of the complex nature of events of popular

protest in the Highlands after 1914 – a complexity that has passed largely unac-

knowledged. This complexity has signiﬁcant implications for our understanding

of these events at the sub-regional, regional and intra-regional levels.

Conclusion

This chapter originated in a desire to explore the possibility of a common base

to Celtic protest and with a view to ﬁnding that common base in the notion of

an ideologically derived view of land and landholding as made manifest in acts

of rural protest.Very rapidly, however, this quest became subsumed by the real-

isation that the implications of the deployment of this belief in Highland protest

(the most effectively documented set of protests) had not yet been subject to

the level of scrutiny necessary to bear the weight of comparison. It became

apparent, also, that the historiography of Highland protest shares with the Celtic

literature more generally, a reductionist, undifferentiated view of the crofting

community. The bulk of the chapter focused on an in-depth exploration of the

deployment of this view of land in the context of acts of popular protest in the

Highlands and Islands of Scotland after 1914.

Much of our understanding of the basis to Highland protest derives from

Withers’ (1995) notion of a Highland mentalité. Evidence has been presented in

this chapter, however, which suggests that Withers’ analysis needs reﬁning. Much

of this comes from the realisation that protest in the Highlands was signiﬁcantly

more complex than hitherto believed. It is now apparent, for instance, that the

belief in rights to land is not equally evident in every act of protest. In addi-

tion, the belief has proved conﬂictual as well as generative of co-operation. Finally,

the basis to the belief has been challenged by arguing that it is evident in places

that did not share the traditional law inheritance of the Western Isles, and it was

deployed by those not of the crofting tenantry.

It is also important to accept that the belief in a right to land could ﬁnd indi-

vidual, as well as collective, expression. For an individual, the expression of

ideological claims to land took the form of a desire to return to an ancestor’s

IAIN ROBERTSON

holding. However, this desire was also an essential component of collective

memory and community consciousness. Therefore, individual and collective

memory informed each other. The complexities of the belief in rights to land

challenge the view of this as ideological.What this may mean is that any attempt

to view Highland conﬂict as class conﬂict, and ordinary Highlanders’ regional

class consciousness as drawing upon an ideologically constituted view of land

and landholding, may well be too reductionist to accommodate the complexity

of relationships made manifest in acts of protest after 1914.

Acts of popular protest have, usually, been interpreted in one of two ways:

either as otherwise discrete events sharing only a generalised typology; or as

manifestations of a class consciousness and conﬂict based upon competing ideolo-

gies. However, it may be possible to see a third way. To compress the diversity

of experience and motivations evident in Highland protest into monothetic expla-

nation is a denial of difference. Protest attests to a complex process of alliance

and fracture.The project in recent Highland historiography has been to put ‘the

crofter at the centre of his [sic] own history’ (Hunter 1976: 5). It may be that

what we should be restoring is not one history but many. And if we are to recog-

nise a multiplicity of histories written into Highland protest, and, indeed, in the

Celtic regions more generally, then perhaps it may be more satisfactory to recog-

nise events of protest as texts, with all the multiplicity of explanation and

understanding that this implies.

Notes

1 Scottish Record Ofﬁce (hereafter SRO) AF67/65, 17/1/21, Donald MacKay to

Scottish Ofﬁce (hereafter SO); AF67/150, 2/6/21, Peter MacDonald and others

to SO; Department of Agriculture for Scotland ﬁles (hereafter DAFS) 26814/2,

Newton, 12/6/21, Solicitors to Board of Agriculture for Scotland (hereafter BOAS).

Please note that on the request of the Department of Agriculture, and because these

remain active ﬁles, all names have been withheld from DAFS material.

2 SRO AF67/147 John MacDonald to SO, 11/12/19; DAFS 8185/1 Balranald, North

Uist, J.A.R. MacDonald, 30/3/14; Hougharry crofters to Board, 30/12/18; SRO

AF67/152, Alexander MacDonald and eleven others to Board, 2/3/20.

3 SRO Malcolm MacDonald and 16 others, Knockintorran to Board, 17/5/20; DAFS,

8185/M cottars from Sollas, 9/3/22.

4 Interview with Callum M., Raasay, 30/9/91.

5 Callum, Raasay.

6 DAFS 1611 Sconser, Skye, 13/3/15 and 8/4/15.

7 DAFS 5863/C Scorrybreck, Skye, 6/4/22.

8 DAFS 8185/1 Balranald, North Uist, J.A.R. MacDonald, 30/3/14.

9 SRO AF 83/693. Letter to Board of Agriculture from nine ex-servicemen, Dun-

rossness, 8/10/21. Interview, Mrs A. Sutherland, Burraﬁrth, 29/9/95.

10 SRO AF83/207, 12/7/19; AF83/328, 9/10/25.

11 SRO AF 83/609, 27/3/17.

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12 SRO AF 67/132 Captain R. Macdonald to Scottish Ofﬁce, 12/4/21; DAFS,

8185/C/2 Balranald, Goular cottars to Board of Agriculture, 9/2/23, Tigharry

holders to Board of Agriculture, 14/2/23.

13 SRO AF67/65 Malcolm Macdonald and others to Board of Agriculture, 24/1/21;

SRO Board of Agriculture Papers, AF83/751, Township Grazings Committee to

Board of Agriculture, 9/8/21.

14 SRO AF 83/795, Scaristaveg, Harris, D. Stewart to Board of Agriculture, 18/3/26.

15 AF 83/267, Tiree cottars to Board of Agriculture, 24/3/22.

16 There is an extensive body of evidence of tensions on Barra in the period under

consideration. See, for example, SRO AF 67/143; AF 67/148; DAFS 1164/C;

1164/M; 1164/RA.

17 This section draws upon a number of extensive interviews and subsequent written

correspondence, with Angus M., Lewis, over the period November 1992 – August

1993. I am grateful also to Angus for his permission for me to draw upon his

genealogical researches.

18 SRO AF 83/363, 10/4/19. An example of this complexity can be found at AF

67/65, 23/8/17.

IAIN ROBERTSON

IDENTITY, HYBRIDITY AND

THE INSTITUTIONALISATION OF

TERRITORY

On the geohistory of Celtic devolution

Gordon MacLeod

The era of big, centralised government is over. This is a time for

change, renewal and modernity.

(Tony Blair, speaking on the day after the

Scottish Referendum, 12 September 1997)

A boundary is not that at which something stops but, as the Greeks

recognised, the boundary is that from which something begins its

presencing.

(Heidegger, ‘Building, dwelling, thinking’, cited

in Bhabha [1994: 1; original emphasis])

Since coming to power in May 1997, the New Labour Government has been

quick to deliver on its pre-election pledge to refurbish Britain’s political system.

As part of a comprehensive programme of constitutional modernisation, a range

of political and institutional capacities have been devolved from London,

England’s regions have been granted non-elected Regional Development

Agencies,

Wales an elected Assembly, and Scotland an elected Parliament with

tax-varying powers. At the time of writing, the search to establish a peaceful

compromise for Northern Ireland continues. However, if we are to compare this

particular blend of representative democracy with most other Western European

states (Keating 1998), then it becomes strikingly evident that constitutional

modernity has bestowed upon the UK a very uneven political geographical expres-

sion. Why is this the case?

One could begin answering this question by pointing to the fact that England

has no counterpart to Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party, each of which

made its presence felt in the mainstream of British politics throughout the

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latter stages of the twentieth century (Breuilly 1993). But this rather superﬁcial

response, in turn, begs a further round of searching questions. Why was Celtic

political expression in mainland Britain to cut so deep during the period after

the 1960s? Why not before? And what were the material and cultural conditions

that served to animate this in the ﬁrst place? We are also little further forward

in explaining why New Labour has granted Scotland a Parliament and Wales an

Assembly. And, of course, none of this helps us to explain why, in 1922, Ireland’s

‘twenty-six counties’ were to form a Republican state, fully independent from

Britain (Brown 1985).

In order to obtain some meaningful response to these questions, we are forced

to explore the geohistory of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern

Ireland and, in the process, trace the roots/routes of Celtic institutional and

cultural expression. In effect, I am arguing that a historical-geographical explo-

ration of Celticism – as represented in landscape, culture, identity and the

institutions of civil society

– can help to reveal much about the eccentric nature

of New Labour’s post-1997 endeavour to instil democratic renewal. In making

this claim, I must acknowledge that my deployment of Celticism relates primarily

to the growing assertiveness of political and institutional expression of Celtic

peoples and an associated conﬁdence in and authorisation of Celtic culture (on

which see Kent, Lorimer, Boyle, Cooke and McLean, and Symon, this volume).

Furthermore, I concentrate on a relatively modern history – more precisely, the

period after 1700 (cf. Lilley, this volume) – and one that focuses primarily on

the case of Scotland, with Wales and Ireland being drafted in for illustrative

purposes.

In the spirit of this book, I argue that when seeking to unravel political change,

we are compelled to ‘expand the scope of our geographical imagination’ (Soja

1999). More speciﬁcally, it behoves us to appreciate ‘the simultaneity and inter-

woven complexity of the social, the historical and the spatial, their inseparability

and often problematic interdependence’ (Soja 1999: 261). In line with this, my

chapter draws brieﬂy on some recent insights from regional geography and

cultural theory to demonstrate how questions of landscape, culture and identity

are closely intertwined with the ofﬁcial institutional expression of nations and

states. I then deploy these scholarly readings to explore (1) the nature of the

institutional practices and civil societal arrangements that were inscribed into

the Celtic nations, and (2) the eventual inﬂuence of these in shaping the UK’s

peculiar state form and landscape of political opportunity. I conclude that this

historical-geographical search to get beneath New Labour’s own particular ‘spin’

on the post-1997 constitutional settlement helps to uncover a series of anom-

alies relating to the future governance of the Celtic nations and the UK more

generally.

GORDON M

LEOD

Locating hybridity and the institutionalisation of

territory

In recent years, amid the growing incredulity of modernist ‘certainties’

such as

that of the mythology of Western progress (Bhabha 1990a) and a deﬁnitive faith

in the nation-state (McCrone 1998), social science scholars appear to have become

increasingly queasy over any ontological search to locate ﬁxity, permanence,

structure and neatly packaged historical geographies. Instead, anthropologists,

geographers, sociologists and social and political theorists are emphasising ﬂuidity,

openness, difference and impermanence in a search to tease out the everyday

practices and rhythms that escort the very ‘becoming’ of social formations like

the city, the state and society (de Certeau 1984; Lefebvre 1996; Thrift 1996).

In this section, I introduce two themes that are in some way or other informed

by this rethinking of the ontological and epistemological frontiers of social

scientiﬁc knowledge.

The ﬁrst relates to the concept of hybridity. Most intriguing here is the way

that ideas of hybridity can cast some light on a cultural politics of identity and

difference (Hall 1992; Smith 1999) and on the possibilities for political resis-

tance to be enacted within spaces on the ‘margins’ or the ‘periphery’ (Bhabha

1990a; Soja 1996).

Stuart Hall (1990; 1992) has been most forthright in drawing

our attention to the way that cultural identities, although often (re-)presented

as ‘a sort of one true self’, are neither ﬁxed nor immutable. Rather, they are

subject to processes of translation and change such that the formation of a Welsh

or Scottish identity should be seen as a concern with ‘routes’ rather than ‘roots’,

as maps for the future rather than trails from the past (also Robb, this volume).

I suggest that this mode of thinking can provide us with added sensitivity in any

investigation of Celtic institutional expression and indeed help us to acquire

useful insights for a more imaginative and progressive cultural politics of differ-

ence in the Celtic democracies.

Furthermore, this emphasis on movement and transgression implies that human

geography itself can provide vital keys to help unlock the shackles of earlier,

often biologically determined or racialised approaches to our understanding of

culture and institutional expression (Soja 1999). It is in such a context that Hall

introduces the term ‘cultures of hybridity’ to help delineate the ways in which

identities are subject to the continuous play of history, culture, geographical

movement, transfer and political power. One critical implication of this is that,

while certainly bound up with notions of ‘collective memory’ (Boyle, this

volume), national cultures and national identities are unlikely to be either unitary

or pure but polyvocal, hybrid, perhaps transient and certainly subject to a

continual process of negotiation and becoming (Hall 1990). This is evident in

the way that people in Wales might identify themselves as both Welsh and British,

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with the balance of this hybrid identity perhaps being tipped in accordance with

the speciﬁc historical context – see Jones (1999b) for an account of the split

loyalties of British state ofﬁcials in early modern England and Wales.

The theme of hybridity also appears in the work of Homi Bhabha. Bhahba has

written widely on the ‘location of culture’ (1994) and on the experience of

blackness in relation to a hegemonic Western liberal public sphere and the latter’s

schizophrenic tendency to ‘entertain and encourage cultural diversity’ while

simultaneously containing cultural difference vis-à-vis the host society’s social and

territorial grid of meaning (Bhabha 1990a). Bhabha is convinced, though, that

the difference in cultures cannot simply be accommodated within any univer-

salist framework, particularly as the ‘national population’ becomes ‘ever more

visibly constructed from a range of interests, different kinds of cultural histo-

ries, different post-colonial lineages, different sexual orientations’ (1990a: 208).

Following on from this, he argues that it makes little sense to assert some form

of ‘in itself’, or ‘for itself’, within cultures since they are always subject to

intrinsic forms of translation. In turn:

if [. . .] the act of cultural translation (both as representation and as

reproduction) denies the essentialism of a prior given original or orig-

inary culture, then we see that all forms of culture are continually in a

process of hybridity. But for me the importance of hybridity is not to

be able to trace two original moments from which the third emerges,

rather hybridity to me is the ‘third space’ which enables other positions

to emerge.

(Bhabha 1990a: 211)

Bhabha goes on to argue that this third space displaces the histories that consti-

tute it (a moot point, I think), while at the same time being active in establishing

‘new structures of authority, new political initiatives, which are inadequately

understood through received wisdom’ (ibid.; Soja 1996). This emphasis on

hybridity as a third space, as a new area in which to negotiate meaning and

representation, and one which can enable the scripting of new histories, new

cultural expressions and a new politics, can help us to explore the emergence

of Celtic devolution. And it may be that the hybrid forms of institutional

expression, which were impregnating the ‘marginal’ spaces of Wales, Ireland

and Scotland, may indeed represent the third space(s) that were eventually to

challenge the endeavours of the British state to contain cultural and political

difference. Moreover, it may have been the case that these third spaces, in turn,

helped to release the energy for new structures of political representation and

a renewed cultural expression in post-colonial Celtic Britain.

I revisit this theme

below.

GORDON M

LEOD

The second theme I wish to raise concerns the ‘becoming’ of regions, nations

and boundaries. In recent years, the Finnish regional geographer Anssi Paasi has

perhaps been the most consistent advocate of the need to develop the theoret-

ical tools with which to understand how regions, nations and territories emerge,

how they continue to exist and perhaps eventually disappear (Paasi 1986; 1991;

1996). At the heart of Paasi’s treatise is an uncovering of the institutionalisation

of regions.What he means by this is the requirement to trace the social, histor-

ical and geographical processes out of which some territorial unit emerges and

becomes implicated, established and clearly identiﬁed in different spheres of social

action and social consciousness. Such an approach may enable us to examine

how, and under which speciﬁc historical and political contexts, Celtic peoples

have identiﬁed most resolutely with the landscape and culture of their respec-

tive nations and indeed come to ‘act’ in the name of Wales, Ireland or Scotland.

It is also important to point out that this perspective renders redundant any

search to establish a once-and-for-all deﬁnition of the region as a modelled ‘areal

extent’ (also Allen et al. 1998). Instead, regions are to be considered within the

context of their very cultural, political and academic conception such that,

depending on the context of the academic inquiry,

the region can refer to a

neighbourhood, a city, a county, a nation or a state (Paasi 1986).

Paasi sees particular value in a geohistorical conceptualisation of the role of

agents and of individual and collective life-histories in the continual transfor-

mation of society and its regional structure.

It is in this respect that he draws

a crucial distinction between region and place, two concepts often used inter-

changeably by human geographers (Pred 1984; Johnston 1991; Massey 1994).

Paasi views place and associated ideas relating to a sense of place (Relph 1976)

as useful in depicting the context and the time-space paths and projects out of

which the everyday lives of individuals are enacted.

Region, on the other hand,

represents a ‘ “higher-scale history” into which inhabitants are socialised as part

of the reproduction of the society’ (Paasi 1991: 249), and therefore symbolises

an explicit collective representation of institutional practices. In other words,

though the regions of a society obtain their ultimate personal meanings

in the practices of everyday life, these meanings cannot be totally reduced

to experiences that constitute everyday life, since a region bears with

it institutionally mediated practices and relations, the most signiﬁcant

being the history of the region as a part of the spatial structure of the society

in question.

(Paasi 1986: 114, emphasis added)

In an effort to uncover the institutionalisation of particular regions, Paasi abstracts

four stages which, rather than implying some linear and teleological sequence,

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are better understood as mutually constituting and recursive processes only distin-

guishable from each other analytically for the purposes of grounded research.

The ﬁrst of these relates to the assumption of territorial awareness and shape, where,

through the localised situating of political and cultural practices, a territory

assumes some form of bounded shape in the individual and collective conscious-

ness and becomes identiﬁed in the spatial structure of society. Although viewing

things from a different perspective, Gwyn Williams’s book When was Wales? (1985)

provides one particularly fascinating account of the struggle to assume a Welsh

nation and territorial shape.

The second of Paasi’s stages is the formation of conceptual/symbolic shape as certain

territorial symbols become established and ‘creatively implicated in the constitu-

tion of [a territory’s] social relations’ (Paasi 1996: 29). This frequently assumes

the form of ﬂags, cartographies, place names, monuments and other symbolic

orderings of space and abstract expression (also Johnson 1995). And of course, in

accordance with the ideas outlined earlier, these expressions are unlikely to be

pure and uncontested but to assume a negotiated and hybrid character.

Paasi’s third stage is the emergence of institutions, which relate to (1) formal

identity-framing vehicles like education, the law and local politics; (2) organisa-

tions rooted in civil society like the local media, working clubs, various societies,

arts, cultural and sporting organisations; and (3) informal conventions, economic

behaviours and social mores.The deeper sedimentation of these institutions into

the spatial matrix of society also helps foster additional symbolic shape, in turn

stimulating an ‘effective means of reproducing the material and mental existence

of the territories’ in question (Paasi 1991: 246). It is in this context that we can

make a comparison between Wales and Scotland, where the latter’s deeper reser-

voir of nationally oriented civil societal institutions did much to foster a Scottish

Constitutional Convention: a cross-class, integrative agent which, between the late

1980s and mid-1990s, was to make great strides in establishing a broad-based

support for political devolution.

The ﬁnal stage concerns the establishment of a region in the popular conscious-

ness, where the region assumes the form of an institutionalised ‘territorial unit’

in the spatial division of society and, in practical terms, is ready to be mobilised

in ideological struggles over resources, power and perhaps political representa-

tion. It seems to me that Paasi’s approach to territorial formation alongside

work on hybridity can help in dramatising a historiography of Celtic political

and institutional expression, and, in doing so, retrieve some critical insights as

to why the political settlements for the Celtic nations have indeed turned out

to be so different. It is a brief examination of this that forms the remainder of

this chapter.

GORDON M

LEOD

Geopolitical ﬁxes, cultures of hybridity and the

institutionalisation of Celtic territories

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK) sits uneasily

alongside the conventional alliance that one presupposes between nation-state,

territory and society (cf. Giddens 1985; Mann 1986). In contrast to ‘standard’

state-societies like France, the UK is a multinational state made up of England,

Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, with the sum of the parts forming a mon-

etary and political union. Deploying Paasi’s framework, we could make a case

that the early territorial, symbolic and institutional shaping of this is intricately

bound up with the English colonial assimilation of the Celtic peripheries in what

amounted to a highly protracted and at times violent history (Harvie 1994; Grant

1984;Williams 1985; Jones 1999a; Foster 1988).The period that I wish to focus

on, however, dates from the early eighteenth century and, more speciﬁcally, the

1707 Union between the English and Scottish parliaments.

Two important factors are worth considering at the outset. First, unlike Wales,

which had been conquered by England in 1282 (Williams 1985), between the

early fourteenth century and 1707 Scotland was to assume the role of an inde-

pendent state, although it had formed a voluntary Union of Crowns with England

in 1603. Second, the 1707 geopolitical ﬁx was to preserve Scotland’s physical

boundary and much of its cultural and institutional landscape, not least some

prize blossoms that had taken root in what had been an independent civil society.

This included the system of local government, legal and educational institutions

(including the four ancient universities) and, most importantly, the hegemonic

Presbyterian Church (Harvie 1994). All these were to become vital stimuli in

the continual translation and transmission of Scotland’s conceptual, symbolic and

institutional shape. And they most certainly helped to secure it as a territorial

unit (Paasi 1991), with a sufﬁciently differentiated institutional landscape to

render its culture and identity ‘much more complex . . . than in those countries

where state and society are one’ (McCrone 1992: 21). In short, the 1707 treaty

did not abolish the nation of Scotland.

By tactically exploiting the arrangements inscribed in the Union, Scotland’s elite

representatives in various spheres of civic life were able to carve out a conceptual

and institutional shape relatively autonomous from the British state (Hechter

and Levi 1979). This was typiﬁed by a series of supervisory boards in education,

agriculture, public health and social policy: organic institutions located between

the people and the state that did much to augment a deﬁnitively Scottish territor-

ial awareness and symbolic shape. An important point to make here is that this

polite form of self-government, which endeavoured to pursue statist ends by civic

means, could also remain acceptable to the London administration, particularly

given the latter’s preoccupation with running the Empire (Paterson 1994).

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At the same time, of course, it is also important to recognise the active role

that was being played by Scots in the constitution and expansion of what was,

remember, a British empire. Indeed, for David Miller (1995: 173), this shared

historical experience and cultural interchange between Scotland and its southern

neighbour helped to sustain ‘a sense of common nationality alongside an equally

powerful sense of difference’. The political theorist Anthony Smith has raised

similar themes in his general claim that:

Movements of ethnic [sic] autonomy recognize the possibility, perhaps

desirability, of dual identities, a cultural-national and political-national

identity or, as they would see it a national identity within a territorial

state identity. . . . In other words, they recognize the duality of histor-

ical memories and political sentiments that cannot easily be severed,

not to mention the economic beneﬁts to be gained by remaining within

an existing state framework.

(Smith 1991: 138–9)

Taking up Smith’s arguments, there is certainly much to indicate that the post-

1707 compromise provided the conditions through which Scotland (or more pre-

cisely, its Lowlands region) was pulled from a relatively peripheral economic

impasse towards a closer integration with the core of European capitalism

(McCrone 1992). None the less, and taking on board the work of Hall and Bhabha,

I suggest that to deﬁne the hybridity of Scottish identity as dual is just too neat and

too simplistic. Rather, there has long been a diversity of local institutional narra-

tives,and this, complemented by a kaleidoscopic symbolic shape, has helped to serve

up multiple translations of Scottishness.All of which is indicative of many cultures

of hybridity and ‘many Scotlands with many identities’ (Rose and Routledge 1996).

For instance, John Agnew (1996) has revealed how one popular representa-

tion – that of Scotland as internally split between a Lowlands and Highlands –

fails to appreciate the complex sources of identity that have variously informed

the geographical imaginations of Hebridean communities located on the islands

lying off Scotland’s north-west coast. And of course this is to say nothing of the

sizeable Hebridean global diaspora, much of it concentrated in North America

and Australasia. Indeed, for Agnew, this diaspora itself is testament to the islands’

long-term socio-economic subordination and to the fact that a transnational global

economy has long been in existence for such Hebridean ‘liminal travellers’.

In his brief incursion into the Hebridean landscape and vernacular, Agnew

allegorises the particular experiences of island life and uncovers an ‘intense sense

of place’ where the signiﬁcant Other is not represented by the Lowlands or

England, but ‘the Mainland’ (that is, north-west Scotland). Furthermore, as

someone born and brought up in Stornoway, I can attest to the fact that people

GORDON M

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from Lewis identify themselves as quite different from, although not hostile to,

those in Harris and the other Hebridean islands. All of which suggests the ‘idea’

of Scotland to be much more geographically differentiated and hybrid than is

often portrayed in popular commentary. To be sure, there may be some shared

historical and social commonalties and these may help in promoting a sense of

‘imagined community’ (Hague 1996; cf. Anderson 1983). But rather than inter-

preting the ‘roots’ of Scotland’s national identity as a ‘totalizing phenomenon,

consuming the entire personality of its carriers’ (Agnew 1996: 33), it is more

fruitful to consider Scotland as ‘becoming’, and how this is articulated out of

multiple ‘routes’, sources, sounds and sites of identiﬁcation (Rose and Routledge

1996). And for many centuries, of course, these have often been routed from

beyond Scotland’s boundary.

To this end, it must be acknowledged that, while entertaining some cultural

diversity, the political form of the post-1707 Union has also stiﬂed certain

Scotlands, as a range of cultural ‘others’ have been contained through the impo-

sition of what Bhabha (1990a) deﬁnes as a territorial grid of meaning. For instance,

Benedict Anderson (1983) argues that Scotland’s failure to mobilise a political

nationalism in the eighteenth century can be explained by an alliance that was

formed between English-speaking Lowland Scots and the London power bloc

which largely ‘exterminat[ed] the Gaeltacht’. Similarly, the British state intro-

duced legislation speciﬁcally aimed to weaken ‘backward’ traditions such as the

clan system (Hague 1996). This indeed supports Paasi’s claim that the nation-

state normally possesses a more ‘obligatory power relation over its inhabitants

than the institutions of subregions’ (Paasi 1991: 246). But notwithstanding these

moments of cultural despotism, with 1707 being ﬁrst and foremost a Union rather

than a hostile takeover, the general feeling was that many Scots could quite conﬁ-

dently assert a conception of themselves as Scottish, in the expectation that

England would respect Scotland as a partner in building the Empire (Paterson

1994). In Paasi’s terms, Scotland had survived to become a distinguished terri-

torial unit within the regionalisation of Britain.

The institutionalisation of Scotland contrasts with that of Wales and Ireland.

Wales’s earlier subjugation to England through the 1284 Statute of Rhuddlan

meant that an indigenous civil society struggled to emerge and civic life was

increasingly integrated into the English state (Paterson and Jones 1999). The

symbolic and institutional shaping of Wales was thus translated more ﬁrmly into

a British vernacular and territorial grid of meaning than was the case in Scotland,

thereby leaving much less capacity for cultural and institutional diversity from

England. For Paterson and Jones:

in contrast to the situation in Scotland, civil society in Wales developed

within a British context with no signiﬁcant administrative structures or

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institutions surviving from a pre-conquest or pre-‘union’ era.Therefore,

as civil society developed in Wales, its ‘Welshness’ – the extent to which

the preﬁx Welsh could be meaningfully attached to the institutions and

practices of civil society – has remained a matter of doubt.

(1999: 173)

Taking this a little further, it may even be plausible to argue that the more

profound efﬂorescence of civil and institutional expression which was to permeate

the Scottish political and cultural landscape has been critical in asserting a ‘national

frame of reference’, and that this ultimately was to provide a key resource in

mobilising for self-government during the latter stages of the twentieth century

(see below).

Although a Parliament remained in existence in Ireland until 1798, its inde-

pendence was highly circumscribed (Foster 1988). Political control of Ireland

was in large measure exercised by London politicians through a system of

patronage, and economic relations tended to be of a ‘permanently subservient’

nature (Lyons 1973; also Hechter 1975). Furthermore, Ireland lacked a recent

history of independent statehood and thereby did not have the self-governing

Church characteristic of Scotland. Nor did it have the set of intermediate insti-

tutions in education and social affairs within which a more profound symbolic

and institutional shape could ﬂourish (Paterson 1994). In addition, with the

majority Catholic population being denied governmental ofﬁce, it appeared that

a British colonial regime was seeking to contain tightly Ireland’s political-economic

landscape, cultural difference and potential sources of hybridity (cf. Bhabha

1990a). Ireland thus assumed many of the characteristics of a colony, with politi-

cal protest throughout the nineteenth century – accelerated by the potato famine

– assuming a vernacular of oppositional nationalism.This contrasts markedly with

Scotland, where blame for administrative failures could often lie with the

autonomous institutions (Paterson 1994).

One notable impact of this was that Ireland’s cultures of hybridity were not

allowed the degree of institutional and civil societal expression found in Scotland.

In addition, certain racist overtones – Britain’s perception of ‘Irish inferiority’,

Fenian demonology of England – were to envelop further what was to be

an uneasy culture of British–Irish relations (ibid.). And in Ireland itself, deep

divisions between Protestants and Catholics discouraged compromise, with the

more powerful Protestants able to impress their suspicions on the British govern-

ment.

In contrast, then, to the gentler expression of Celticism that prevailed

in Scotland (and to a more limited extent, Wales), Ireland was to witness a

prolonged process of agitation and a more powerful Nationalist resistance. And

this bitterly contested ‘third space’ was eventually to lead to a new political

compromise when, in 1922, the British state partitioned Ireland: twenty-six of

GORDON M

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the thirty-two counties were to form the Republic of Ireland and the other six

were to remain under British rule as Northern Ireland.

A close appreciation

of the complexity of this geopolitical ﬁx is critical in any attempt to understand

the current search for a peace accord in Northern Ireland.

Celtic political vernaculars in late modernity

Let us now turn our attention to the institutionalisation of Wales and Scotland

during the twentieth century.As indicated above, throughout the period of moder-

nity, civil society has been slower to mature in Wales than in Scotland (Paterson

and Jones 1999). Now, if we were to follow the logic of the Ireland–Scotland

comparison, we might expect demand for home rule to be stronger in Wales

than in Scotland, given the latter’s deeper institutional fabric and more settled

institutional compromise. But such a functionalist teleology has no place in the

unpredictable and unsettling practice of historical geography. For in the post-

1997 constitutional reforms, it was Scotland rather than Wales that was to see

the greater public appetite for more radical political devolution, and it was

Scotland that was to be awarded the more profound form of political autonomy.

Why was this so?

In trying to explain this political landscape, I wish to highlight ﬁve identiﬁ-

able but tightly interrelated factors. First, throughout the last two-thirds of the

twentieth century, Scotland was to see the emergence of a relatively autonomous

political system. This dates back to 1885, when political agitation forced the

Gladstone government to establish a London-based Scottish Ofﬁce, before further

demands for reform saw it being transferred to Edinburgh in 1939. Aside from

its symbolic value, this Scottish Ofﬁce was to provide a technocracy of profes-

sionals who were to become highly inﬂuential in shaping Scotland’s own version

of the post-war Fordist compromise and in buttressing a corporatism that

embraced industrialists, labour, local government and other agents in civil society

(MacLeod 1998a). The second factor relates to the particular ways in which this

political ‘semi-state’ was to become interwoven with and a further stimulus to

a ﬂourishing of civil society in social and economic affairs. All of this, in Paasi’s

language, helped to instil a deeper institutionalisation of Scotland as a dynamic

territorial unit. A contrast can be drawn here with Wales, not least in that a

Welsh ‘semi-state’ took much longer to emerge, the Welsh Ofﬁce only being

introduced in 1964 (Paterson and Jones 1999).

The third factor is that the symbolic and institutional shaping of Welsh nation-

alism in the pre-1964 period was deeply oppositional to the British state and,

although more radical, it was also more narrowly concentrated on cultural

signiﬁcation. One notable focus of Welsh discontent concerned the fate of the

language, although for many in Wales this was at best of minor signiﬁcance in a

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Welsh politics of identity. None the less, the ‘father’ of modern Welsh nation-

alism, Saunders Lewis, believed that saving the language should be the cornerstone

of any political struggle for self-government

(Parsons 1988). This contrasted

with Scotland, where a thicker institutional and political infrastructure enabled

a climate of pragmatic nationalism to be articulated through myriad economic,

political and cultural channels. In turn, this endowed the national policy network

with the integrity to accrue some signiﬁcant powers from London (Paterson

1994). Such moderate nationalism was aided and abetted by the consolidation

of some deﬁnitively named Scottish organisations and institutions (see Lorimer,

this volume), and the rise and growing circulation of Scottish print and broad-

cast media. Again, this illustrates Paasi’s argument about the importance of

institutions and the symbolic shape in further establishing a territory’s geograph-

ical and political expression. Here, it may also be useful to consider Schlesinger’s

(1991) argument that ‘national identity’ can often be invoked as a point of refer-

ence to mobilise for speciﬁc conditions, without necessarily being activated by

hard-boiled nationalist political strategy.

However, the latter was to intensify in the 1970s with the fourth factor, the

discovery of North Sea oil. This was to become highly signiﬁcant in triggering

images of an alternative economic future and in recasting the terms of political

discourse, not least in licensing additional support for the Scottish National Party

(MacLeod 1998b). Indeed, the threat of Scottish nationalism to the integrity of

the British state was at this time quite tangible, as in 1979 a weak Labour

Government offered referenda for elected assemblies to be established in Scotland

and Wales. The narrow endorsement in Scotland did not meet the required 40

per cent of the electorate, while support in Wales was low (Marr 1995). This

political wavering amid a deep crisis in Britain’s social democratic state was to

open the opportunity for a new political strategy, when in 1979 the Conservative

Party, led by Mrs Thatcher, was swept to power.

This leads on to the ﬁfth factor, the impact of the Thatcherite regime on the

political and social landscape of Wales and Scotland. In trumpeting the free market

while simultaneously strengthening the power of the repressive state apparatus,

Thatcherism displayed little support for traditional industry, regional aid or

national/regional sensibility, and in the process sought to reverse many social

beneﬁts inscribed in the welfare state and the corporatist institutional compro-

mise (Gamble 1994). Paterson and Jones (1999) identify this as a hostility to

civil society, which was to impact particularly profoundly in the Celtic nations

and the north of Britain – nations and regions that had depended on the afore-

mentioned institutional forms for their economic survival and self-identity.

In response,Wales and Scotland were to reject the politics of Thatcherism in

electoral terms. But Mrs Thatcher was to vent particular animosity towards

elements of Scottish civil society, in particular the unions and the legal and

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educational establishments (MacLeod 1998b), while simultaneously moralising to

the Church of Scotland about the value of free market individualism. In many

respects, such crass attempts to intervene in the institutional operation of

Scotland, institutions that embody much of its symbolic and conceptual shape,

were interpreted as ‘an attack on the country itself’ (McCrone 1992).This politi-

cal insensitivity undoubtedly helped to mobilise the institutions within Scotland’s

civil society to campaign for a reworking of Britain’s state machinery, and this

emerged in the form of the Scottish Constitutional Convention (SCC) (see Marr

1995; MacLeod 1998b).

Embodying a ‘civil politics’ that went beyond party-political lines, the

Convention comprised a majority of Scottish MPs, the political parties (except

the Scottish National and Conservative parties), local authorities, the Churches,

business groups, ethnic minority representatives, women’s organisations, and

Gaelic and other civic groups. Although its degree of inclusivity can easily be

overstated (Paterson and Jones 1999), the SCC was certainly indicative of the

capacity of Scotland’s civil society to carve out a meaningful degree of political

assertion. In a sense, the SCC was indicative of a truly modern Celticism, one

that was about reconﬁguring the balance of political power that had been built

into an aggressive British state – much of whose own aggression was centred on

the containment of Celtic difference. It is no small matter that the Convention’s

ﬁnal report was to provide the intellectual impetus for New Labour’s plans to

establish the Scottish Parliament in 1997.

Wales provides a contrast to this political vernacular. In Wales, opposition to

Thatcherism was more rooted in Labourism and tended to run along more tradi-

tional party-political lines. The cross-party consensus that had been at the heart

of the SCC was thus lacking. Moreover, during the 1990s, there was little evidence

of the active civil and institutional expression that had taken root in Scotland,

and the eventual campaign to establish a Welsh Assembly had a much ‘thinner’

expression, being very much led by the Labour Party in the summer of 1997

(Paterson and Jones 1999). All this was undoubtedly reﬂected in the nature of

political autonomy on offer and the resulting voting patterns: whereas a

resounding 74.3 per cent of the Scottish people voted that their nation should

have its own Parliament based in Edinburgh, only 50.3 per cent of the Welsh

advocated an Assembly based in Wales. Of course, as Paterson and Jones (1999:

183) suggest, ‘while Welsh civil society [may not have been] the precursor of

devolution, it may yet be among its progeny’.

Concluding comments

Since 1997, the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, a consummate moderniser,

has been keen to present New Labour’s devolution programme as a meaningful

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renewal of a rather outdated political regime. But as Mr Blair is rapidly ﬁnding

out, the devolution of political power involves more than a quick ‘moderniza-

tion move’ (Nairn 1997a). Elections to the Scottish Parliament have not produced

a Labour majority and Mr Blair’s chosen ‘placeman’ to lead the Welsh Assembly,

Alun Michael, was quickly ousted on a no-conﬁdence vote, leaving the space for

Wales’s favoured candidate, Rhodri Morgan. Furthermore, the thorny question

of English representation in the New Britain has yet to be fully reasoned through

(MacLeod and Jones 2001). While thus acknowledging Mr Blair’s insistence on

the need to look forward, this chapter has made the argument that a deeper

appreciation of the historical and geographical institutionalisation of Celtic devo-

lution – as expressed in landscape, culture and civil society – can tell us much

about the peculiar shape of Britain’s political geography.

This peculiar political geography will almost certainly throw up some new

political challenges, not least when one considers the varying institutional,

political and cultural shape of the newly devolved Celtic democracies. On several

levels, a renewed sense of Scottishness can be seen as a positive assertion of the

nation’s cultures of hybridity. However, such difference is not necessarily by itself

a public good. For instance, considerable care must be taken to ensure that the

institutional and civil fabric of Scotland safeguards against the spread of culturally

expressed initiatives like Scottish Watch and its deeply disturbing sensibility

antagonistic to so-called English ‘white settlers’ (see Marr 2000). Similarly, the

Scottish tabloids’ viliﬁcation of the Scottish Parliament Communities Minister,

Wendy Alexander, as she made an explicit effort to repeal the intolerance inherent

in Clause 28, has revealed a chauvinistic and anti-gay sensibility that has no place

in a modern democracy. Concern has also been voiced by ethnic minority groups,

who believe that a cultural and political ‘break-up’ of Britain might see them

subjected to intensiﬁed hostility. The civic landscapes of modern Britain must

ensure against the likelihood of such intolerance and oppression, with the new

institutions of the Celtic nations at the forefront in establishing democratic

‘theatres for progressive experimentation’ so as to enable generous routes of

belonging and becoming (cf. Amin’s [2000] discussion on Europe).

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to all the editors for their encouragement and patience, and

especially to David Harvey and Rhys Jones for most helpful comments on an

earlier draft of this chapter.

GORDON M

LEOD

Notes

1 For a useful discussion of the variety of ways in which power has historically been

centralised in London, see Peter Taylor (1991).

2 Although a pledge was made to introduce elected regional government where such

an ‘appetite for change’ exists, since being elected New Labour has become increas-

ingly vague on this issue (MacLeod and Jones 2001). One key concern here is that

the new Regional Development Agencies do little to alter the rise of quango gover-

nance that escalated under the previous Conservative governments. It is also worth

mentioning that England’s political representation is given an added twist by the

fact that London, the UK’s only truly global city, has been granted an elected

Assembly headed by a mayor (MacLeod and Goodwin 1999).

3 Civil society generally refers to the practices within a capitalist society, which at

least for analytical purposes are seen to lie outside the sphere of production and

the state, although, of course, in practical terms these often involve multiple and

overlapping spheres of inﬂuence (Urry 1981). It is worth pointing out the way that,

particularly as part of the reaction against statist interventions (not least after the

1989 Eastern European political uprisings), civil society is being appealed to as a

key resource to be mobilised in effecting truly representative forms of democracy

(Keane 1998).

4 From the perspective of human geography, balanced and accessible discussions of

modernity and its post-modern and post-structural critiques can be found in Harvey

(1989), Soja (1989), Rose (1993), Gregory (1994) and Massey et al. (1999).

5 Although they are not completely unrelated, this is a different contextual deploy-

ment of the concept of hybridity that one ﬁnds associated with the actor network

approach to social inquiry, which ‘seeks to implode the object/subject binary that

underlies the modern antinomy between nature and society and to recognize the

agency of “non-human” actants’ (Whatmore 1999: 27).

6 Of course, some scholars would contend that the countries of the Celtic periphery

have been subject to their own form of internal colonialism (Hechter 1975; cf. Lilley,

this volume).

7 In thinking about this it is interesting to note how in International Relations the

deployment of the word ‘region’ to describe the Middle East can be contrasted with

the inclination in Political Science to deﬁne regions as sub-national administrative

units, or the growing reference within International Political Economy to a global

triad of ‘macro-regions’ around North America, Europe and East Asia (Cox 1993).

And all these can be contrasted with the tendency in Economic Geography to see

regions as forming out of agglomerations of economic interdependence, often metro-

politan based (Scott 1988). One can also point to the differing boundaries of ‘real’

regions that are constructed out of sets of social relations and political power

networks: compare the Standard Regions of the UK Government with the regional

boundaries deployed by the European Commission.

8 For applications of Paasi’s thesis on the institutionalisation of Scotland and England’s

northern region, respectively, see MacLeod (1998a) and MacLeod and Jones (2001).

9 A signiﬁcant number of scholars would contest associations of place with this focus

on individual subjectivity. Entrikin (1991), for instance, views place as primarily

concerned with connecting a particular milieu to any subject, whether individual

or collective. Agnew (1987) too has offered a reﬁned multidimensional reading of

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place. Others point to the vigour of place-based collective movements and territo-

rial strategies of resistance and transgression (compare Massey 1994; Cresswell

1996). And on the distinction between place and region, some scholars prefer to

see it as largely one of scale, with the region representing the larger areal context

(Entrikin 1991).

10 ‘Liminal travellers’ were described by Agnew (1996: 34) as ‘people caught for a

long period of time between the presumed “rite of passage” (hence, liminal) towards

a ﬁxed national identity and the demands of other competing identities which draw

them towards more particularistic understandings of themselves and their social-

geographical origins wherever they might live (hence, travellers)’.

11 A form of mutual suspicion which continues to permeate the political landscape of

Northern Ireland and efforts throughout the 1980s and 1990s to attain a peace

accord.

12 Paterson (1994: 151) views this partition to be the UK Government’s attempt to

resolve the dilemma of Nationalist Catholics on the same island as Unionist

Protestants who formed a majority in the remaining six counties in the northern

part.

13 This rallying call did much to establish Cymdeithas Yr Iaith Gymraeg, which laid

the foundation of an era of radical cultural nationalism dedicated to reasserting the

place of the language in modern Wales (see Parsons 1988; also Gruffudd 1995).

GORDON M

LEOD

WELSH CIVIL IDENTITY

IN THE TWENTY-FIRST

CENTURY

John Osmond

A consequence of the devolved polity that now confronts us within the UK is

that matters of identity – who we think we are, and where and to whom we

owe our allegiance – are assuming greater importance than in the past. For much

of the last century, for example, class identiﬁcation was a major tool for analysing

support for the political parties and the reasons for political conﬂict. In the new

century, however, identity politics concerned with civic and ethnic nationality

are likely to be more dominant in our understanding of these questions. This

chapter looks at how competing ideas of identity are inﬂuencing the position of

Wales within the UK and Europe. It examines the background to the decisive

1997 devolution referendum – in which the Welsh population voted for a degree

of self-government – and explains why the outcome was so different from what

had taken place in the earlier referendum of 1979. Following this, the way

geographic divisions within Wales bear on Welsh identity are explored. Opinion

poll evidence suggests that in future the Welsh are likely to emphasise different

aspects of their identity when voting for their different tiers of democratic gover-

nance: at the Welsh, British and European levels.

The 1997 referendum took place in strikingly different political circumstances

from the one held in 1979. It was promoted by a popular Labour government

at the beginning rather than at the end of its mandate, and moreover, a govern-

ment that was anxious for its policy to succeed. There was an effective Labour

Vote Yes campaign, led with energy by the then Secretary of State for Wales,

Ron Davies. Although a few Welsh Labour backbenchers still remained opposed,

they lacked coherence and charisma when compared with the Labour Vote No

campaign in 1979.

However, the changes that took place in Wales between the 1970s and 1990s

were the result of deeper forces than those related to the immediate political

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climate. Most important was a shift in generations. As discussed below, the Welsh

became palpably, indeed patriotically, more Welsh. In 1997, the extent to which

they were able to overcome their fears, discover a new conﬁdence in their

Welshness and support an elected all-Wales institution, demonstrated how far ideas

of Welsh and indeed European citizenship had advanced compared with 1979.This

process was reinforced by the experience of the referendum itself and its after-

math, in particular the ﬁrst election to the National Assembly in May 1999.

That election saw an upheaval in Welsh politics, something that became known

as the ‘quiet earthquake’. Plaid Cymru – the nationalist party in Wales – emerged

for the ﬁrst time as a force to be reckoned with in all regions of Wales, and the

main opposition party to Labour in the Assembly. In the Valleys, there were

extraordinary swings of between 25 and 35 per cent from Labour to Plaid Cymru,

with the nationalists winning the former Labour strongholds of Islwyn, Rhondda

and Llanelli, and coming a close second elsewhere. Tables 5.1 and 5.2 describe

the profound shift that took place. Table 5.1 shows the ﬁrst-past-the-post

constituency results for 40 of the 60 seats in the Assembly. Table 5.2 shows the

list results, decided on a proportional basis for the remaining 20 seats, divided

four each between ﬁve regional constituencies.

The outcome of these ﬁrst elections conﬁrmed that a profound shift had taken

place in the way Welsh people view their place in the world. So far as Welsh

politics and identity are concerned, the key reference point is now an autonomous

civic institution, embracing Wales as a whole (Paterson and Jones 1999). Welsh

JOHN OSMOND

Table 5.1 National Assembly constituency results, May 1999

% Vote Seats won

Labour 37.6 27

Plaid Cymru 28.4 9

Conservative 15.8 1

Lib Dem 13.5 3

Source: Osmond (1999)

Table 5.2 National Assembly regional list results, May 1999

% Vote Seats won

Labour 35.5 1

Plaid Cymru 30.6 8

Conservative 16.5 8

Lib Dem 12.5 3

Source: Osmond (1999)

identity is no longer to be nationalised within Britain. Nor is it something to be

felt primarily as an intensely localised experience, with the Welsh language bearing

an undue weight. The National Assembly that was approved in September 1997

opened up a civic space within which an authentic Welsh politics could occur

for the ﬁrst time.

As such, the changes occurring within Wales form part of broader trend in

which territorial politics have been promoted within the various Celtic nations,

predominantly at the expense of more traditional forms of politics focused on

the established nation-states of France and the UK. At the same time, these

political and cultural developments have occurred gradually and, moreover, have

been characterised by much debate and dispute. The remaining sections of this

chapter explore the change in Welsh politics over the past twenty years and seek

to ground them in related changes to Welsh culture and identity.

The 1979 referendum

Given the result of the 1979 referendum, those advocating an Assembly in 1997

were confronted with an immensely difﬁcult task. In 1979, those advocating

change were defeated by a margin of four to one, something which appeared to

signal the end of the devolution story as far as Wales was concerned (Balsom

1985).Why, then, did the issue resurface with such renewed force in the 1990s?

To answer the question we need to understand the 1979 result, examine the

1997 campaign, and, more to the point, look at what changed in Wales in the

intervening eighteen years.

The 1979 referendum was fought in extremely unfavourable political circum-

stances for those arguing for change (Williams 1985: 295). An Assembly was

being advocated by an unpopular Labour government coming to the end of its

administration. Moreover, the government was held responsible for the ‘Winter

of Discontent’, in which the trade unions disrupted many public services. Mrs

Thatcher and her rhetoric of reducing state intervention was in the ascendancy.

Against this background, the opponents of devolution could effortlessly draw

upon the rallying cry of ‘rolling back the frontiers of the state’ in order to dismiss

any proposal for a new tier of democratic governance. In addition, the Labour

Party was badly split, with its most articulate and charismatic leaders in Wales

leading the No campaign. Neil Kinnock, in particular, was building the founda-

tions of his later career as Opposition Leader on the high proﬁle he achieved as

the main spokesman of the No campaign. The Yes forces were divided across the

parties and found co-operation difﬁcult. The main advocates of an Assembly in

1979 were over-identiﬁed with Plaid Cymru, a party which at that time was a

minority electoral force. In turn, this reinforced the claims of those who said

devolution was the ﬁrst step on a ‘slippery slope to separatism’.

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All of these conditions were as valid in Scotland, with the exception that the

Scottish nationalists were in a stronger position.Yet the Scottish vote resulted in

a narrow majority in favour of the change. What accounted for the difference?

The answer revolves around the twin concepts of citizenship and civic nation-

alism. Scottish identity is closely bound up with institutions that survived the

Union of 1707 relatively intact. As MacLeod argues in this volume, the separate

Scottish legal, ﬁnancial and education systems, together with the Scottish Church,

have provided the Scots with a civic sense of themselves as a nation (see also

Osmond 1988; Paterson and Jones 1999). Scots have an ability to imagine Scotland

as a nation they can relate to in terms of citizenship.

An underlying sense of identity is as powerfully felt in Wales as in Scotland.

However, it is far less easily expressed in terms of institutions to which an idea

of citizenship can be attached. Until now, being Welsh has been much more

diffuse and fractured than is the case with being Scottish.There are, in fact, many

different Welshnesses, for most symbolised by the language and the differences

between the regions of Wales, rather than any uniting civic sense of Welshness as

such. In the past, the Welsh have found it difﬁcult, if not impossible, to imagine

Wales as a single institutional entity. Communications in Wales run east to west,

along the southern and northern coasts, rather than north to south in a way that

would naturally unify the country. Many people in southern Wales have never,

or rarely, been to the north, and vice versa. Instead of seeing Wales as a whole,

the Welsh tend to identify ﬁrst and most strongly with their locality – their

valley, town, village or bro (‘one’s native region’, as the Welsh language more

clearly states it) rather than with a sense of Wales as one entity. Compared with

Scotland, Wales has an under-developed national press. The Western Mail, which

claims to be Wales’s ‘national newspaper’, hardly circulates in north Wales, while

the formerly Liverpool-based Daily Post (now moved to Llandudno) has a weak

penetration below a line drawn eastwards from Aberystwyth. Only 13 per cent

of Welsh households take a daily morning newspaper published and printed in

Wales; in Scotland the ﬁgure is 90 per cent (G.T. Davies 1999). The broadcast

media have a greater claim to national coverage, especially BBC Wales. However,

broadcasters are hampered by the many Welsh households that tune into televi-

sion transmissions from across the border.

Welsh institutions do, of course, exist. Most important is the Welsh Ofﬁce

(now incorporated within the National Assembly) and the all-Wales quangos,

whose number more than doubled to approaching 100 in the closing decades of

the twentieth century. However, these are relatively recent. The Welsh Ofﬁce

was only established in 1964, the Wales TUC was set up as late as 1973, and

the Welsh Development Agency in 1975. For all these reasons, and certainly in

comparison with Scotland, at the time of the 1979 referendum Welsh identity

was relatively weak in terms of institutions, and relatively strong in terms of

JOHN OSMOND

language and a sense of place. In this context it is noteworthy that identity

markers such as language and locality tend to divide people one from another.

On the other hand, institutions held in common tend to promote unity.

Statements made during the 1979 referendum by key opponents within the

Labour No campaign illustrate the point. The leader of the Labour No Assembly

Campaign, Neil Kinnock, was one of the so-called ‘Gang of Six’ Welsh Labour

MPs who opposed their government’s policy.A central passage of their Manifesto

Facts to Beat Fantasies declared:

The view is put forward that Wales has a special identity and urgent

needs which make devolution necessary. The Nationalists and the

Devolutionists say ‘We are a nation, that makes a difference’, ‘We have

a Welsh Ofﬁce, that makes a difference’, ‘We have a Wales TUC, that

makes a difference’. But none of that takes account of the realities.We

are a nation, proud of our nationality. But there is little or no desire for

the costs or responsibilities of nationhood as the puny voting support

for the Nationalists shows. We do not need an Assembly to prove our

nationality or our pride.That is a matter of hearts and minds, not bricks,

committees and bureaucrats.

(Labour No Assembly Campaign 1979, original emphasis)

Another statement from one of the shrewdest and most powerful Assembly

opponents of the day, Leo Abse (1989: 173), then MP for Pontypool (in Mon-

mouthshire), is indicative of the mood at the time.Writing ten years on, in 1989,

he recalled that:

One of the important strands of Welsh socialism was its anarcho-

syndicalist tradition. . . . The essential sense of locality; the small pit or

forge where all worked, when work was available; the comparative isola-

tion of valley villages or townships; the central role of the local miners’

lodge; the cinemas and breweries owned by the miners; and the local

health schemes which were to become the prototype of the National

Health Service, all created a world – now sadly slipping away – where

an intense loyalty was made to the immediate community. . . . Our alle-

giance was to the locality and to the world, and nationalist ﬂag-waving,

Russian, Welsh or English, was anathema to those of us shaped in such

a society.

The allegiance that Leo Abse strikingly failed to mention was, of course, to

Britain; to being British. On the whole, the Welsh have felt comfortable with

being simultaneously Welsh and British (Osmond 1985). Leo Abse’s generation

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was unable to contemplate a radical change to a more Welsh sense of national

civic identity. Instead, it opted in 1979 for subjecthood within a British unitary

state, together with a Welsh sensibility that was ‘sadly slipping away’.

The 1997 referendum

In 1997 the Wales Says Yes campaign was relatively well organised, certainly in

comparison with the Yes for Wales campaign in 1979. The sight of three of the

main political parties in Wales (Labour, Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats)

acting in unison across much of the country was undoubtedly inﬂuential and did

much to promote a sense of consensus around the change. It also emphasised

the fact that, by 1997, Wales had experienced eighteen years of Conservative

government. Despite the majority support for the Labour Party in Wales, succes-

sive Conservative administrations had intensiﬁed and dramatised what became

known as the ‘democratic deﬁcit’.As in Scotland (see McCrone 1992), the imme-

diate inﬂuence was to change the mood in the Labour Party. In the aftermath

of 1979, devolution was a closed subject at party meetings. However, in the face

of successive electoral defeats devolution came back on to the agenda as a project

designed to ring-fence Wales from the worst depredations of Conservative policy

and administration.

In the process, mainstream Labour leaders began to acknowledge the national-

ity of Wales in political terms.The Caerphilly MP, Ron Davies, who later became

Secretary of State, was an outstanding example. He switched his position on devo-

lution in the wake of the 1987 election, the third that Labour had lost since 1979.

Looking back, he explained his decision in the following way (R. Davies 1999: 4):

I vividly recall the anguish expressed by an eloquent grafﬁti artist who

painted on a prominent bridge in my constituency, overnight after the

1987 defeat, the slogan ‘We voted Labour, we got Thatcher!’ I felt the

future was bleak. Despite commanding just 29.5 per cent of the Welsh

popular vote and majorities in only eight of the 38 Parliamentary

constituencies, the Conservatives had won a third consecutive General

Election. . . . For me, this represented a crisis of representation.Wales

was being denied a voice.

The excesses of Conservatism that were washed across the border by the likes

of English Secretaries of State for Wales, John Redwood and William Hague, did

a great deal to focus Welsh solidarity in response. A majority of the Welsh –

certainly, a substantial proportion of the 75 per cent of those who voted other

than Conservative in the 1997 general election – felt that the Conservatives’

identiﬁcation with unfettered market forces and individualistic consumerism was

JOHN OSMOND

offensive to their traditions of community solidarity. It was in reaction to such

ideologies that Welsh voters resorted to a forensic rejection of the Conservatives

in the 1997 general election. Tactical voting in the safest Conservative seats, in

particular Clwyd West in the north, and Monmouth in the south, meant that the

party failed to return a single Member of Parliament from Wales.

The eighteen years of Conservative rule had a further, more instrumental and

paradoxical impact. While they were in ofﬁce, successive Conservative adminis-

trations helped to prepare the ground for devolution on three fronts. First, they

enormously elaborated the Welsh bureaucratic machine, creating a Welsh ‘statelet

in embryo’. The powers and budget of the Welsh Ofﬁce were substantially

increased, so that by 1997 it had full control over every aspect of Welsh educa-

tion, for example, including that of higher education. By 1997 the annual Welsh

Ofﬁce budget was approaching £7 billion. New quangos were created by the

Conservatives, including the Countryside Council for Wales, the Cardiff Bay

Development Corporation, the Welsh Language Board, and Tai Cymru – Housing

for Wales.

Second, the Conservatives reorganised and diminished local government,

replacing a two-tier system of eight counties and thirty-seven districts with a

single tier of twenty-two authorities. At a stroke, this largely removed the ‘over-

government’ argument that had been put with such force in 1979. Third,

Conservative support for the Welsh language contributed to its removal from

the devolution debate as a point of controversy. In 1979 the language was undoubt-

edly a disruptive inﬂuence, with widespread, if irrational, fears about Welsh

speakers’ domination of the projected Assembly at the expense of the majority

English speakers. Though many of the No campaigners in 1997 were still antag-

onistic to the Welsh language, they were unable to mobilise it as an issue. Looking

back, Ron Davies (1998: 3) himself noted how the transformation of attitudes

to the language had changed the tone of Welsh politics:

When I started out as a young councillor in the Rhymney Valley, the

Welsh language was a hot potato which aroused angst and ire all over

Wales. The Welsh language was something you were either ‘for’ or

‘against’: there wasn’t much room for neutrality. But now that mode

of thinking has been largely abandoned. Whether you happen to speak

Welsh or not, there is increasingly the view that the language is part of

what makes our identity as a nation distinctive and unique.The language

is no longer a political football in the way it once was.

The change was symbolised by the success of S4C, the Welsh Fourth Channel,

and the emergence of Welsh-language rock groups, which, by 1997, were breaking

through to an English-language audience.These inﬂuences resulted in the language

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becoming associated with modernity rather than with an emotionally suppressed

past. And it was, of course, the Conservatives, albeit under pressure, who estab-

lished S4C in 1982, and later the Welsh Language Board.These measures, together

with their continued support of the language through the education system –

for instance, establishing it as part of the core curriculum in secondary schools

– did a great deal to depoliticise a debate that had been an important dimen-

sion in the defeat of the Assembly proposals in 1979.

Beyond these political changes, the Welsh economy was transformed between

1979 and 1997 in ways that were wholly positive from the point of view of

devolution. The old smokestack coal and steel industries were largely replaced

by more broadly based manufacturing industry, driven by inward investment.

These new ﬁrms tended to look to European rather than British markets. By

1997 there were more than 380 overseas companies with substantial investments

in Wales, some 170 from Continental Europe, 140 from America, and more than

60 from Japan and the Far East (Jones 1996).

At the same time,Wales’s institutional interface with the British economy was

also being transformed. In 1997 there was no British coal, no British steel and

not even British Rail. By now, institutions like the Westminster Parliament, the

Armed Forces and the BBC were left to bear the strain of the British connec-

tion (see Hutton 1995). In ten years’ time these may be the only public sector

bodies holding Britain together.The monarchy of course remained. But even that

was undermined during the 1990s with a speed of collapse that was astonishing

when compared with its position twenty years before (Osmond 1988).

The above discussion of economic and institutional changes within Wales also

helps to highlight the growing European dimension to the affairs of Wales. This

occurred most emphatically in terms of the modernisation of the Welsh manu-

facturing economy, which took place within an essentially European, rather than

British, milieu. In 1979 the European dimension was scarcely noticeable within

the devolution argument; by 1997 it was providing more and more of a context

for the debate. Decisions made in Brussels were increasingly having a direct effect

in Wales.Acknowledgement that Wales needed to lobby more effectively to ensure

its voice was heard came with the establishment in Brussels in 1992 of the Wales

European Centre, supported by the Welsh Development Agency, the Welsh local

authorities, the University of Wales and others.

There was a growing awareness, too, that Wales stood to beneﬁt from forging

regional alliances within Europe.The Welsh Ofﬁce established links with the so-

called ‘Four Motor Regions’ – Baden-Württemberg, Lombardy, Rhône Alpes and

Catalunya – developing programmes of economic and cultural collaboration and

exchanges.The idea of a ‘Europe of the Regions’ was beginning to emerge, with

democratic representatives from the Regions in Germany, Italy, Spain, France

and Belgium all attending meetings of the new Committee of the Regions in

JOHN OSMOND

Brussels. Prior to the establishment of the Scottish Parliament and the National

Assembly, Britain was the sole large member of the European Union which had

no democratically elected Regional representatives to participate. By 1997,

however, a new Regional vision of Europe was demanding attention, one that

challenged the Europe of the Nation-States. According to this view, if it is to be

democratic, the new Europe must have strong local and Regional governments.

Although still a novel element, this perspective increasingly permeated the debate

in 1997 over the creation of a democratic political culture in Wales.

In this context, it is noteworthy that the Assembly proposed in 1997 was to

have a powerful economic role. In 1979, the Assembly would have had its main

responsibility in social policy areas such as education, health and housing. Control

of the Welsh Development Agency was conceded, but overall responsibility for

Welsh economic policy was left in the hands of the Secretary of State for Wales.

There was no such ambivalence in Labour’s 1997 policy, outlined in the devo-

lution White Paper, signiﬁcantly entitled A Voice for Wales, published a few months

before the referendum (HM Government 1997: 12, especially).This made clear

that the Assembly should take responsibility for the existing budget and powers

of the Welsh Ofﬁce, which included industry and economic development. The

line had been clearly expressed by Ron Davies some years before, in a speech

on the future of the south Wales valleys. A new approach was needed, he argued,

one that concentrated on harnessing indigenous development from within and

looked to Continental Europe for inspiration. It was signiﬁcant, too, that in this

message, delivered in the Rhondda in November 1992 when the devolution

debate inside Labour’s ranks was reaching a new intensity, Ron Davies (quoted

in Osmond 1995: 87) referred to a Welsh Parliament rather than an Assembly:

Creating a strong infrastructure demands extensive government inter-

vention and European experience teaches us that public sector/private

sector partnership can lead to success. I do not believe, however, that

all this can be done by us taking a begging bowl to Westminster. It is

something that we can and must do for ourselves, so we must have

appropriate structures for local accountability and power. The present

régime is thoroughly undemocratic and in the middle of it stands the

Welsh Ofﬁce. For a modern economy we need a modern democracy

and this should be based on an elected Welsh Parliament and strength-

ened local councils. A more democratic and responsive Wales is not only

right for democracy, it is also needed for the sake of industry, jobs and

regeneration.

By 1997, such arguments sounded like so much common sense.Yet in terms of

the devolution debate as it had been experienced in Wales over the previous thirty

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years, it marked a radical break with the past; indeed, an adoption of an entirely

new position. It signalled that an idea of Welsh citizenship, related to Welsh insti-

tutions, was coming to be understood outside the ranks of Plaid Cymru as mean-

ingful and important if Wales was to prosper in a globalising economy.This change

in thinking about the Welsh economy was probably the most signiﬁcant develop-

ment in the devolution politics of the 1990s compared with those of the 1970s. It

explained why an Assembly for Wales was now realistically on the Welsh political

agenda in a way that it had never been before.

The shift in generations

Important though these movements of opinion were, by themselves they could

not explain the profound change in outlook that took place between 1979 and

1997.The reason has to be sought in a more fundamental, in many ways psycho-

logical, shift between the generations that took place during these decades.

Compared with 1979, by 1997 a generation whose formative experience had

been the Second World War, the ﬁght against fascism, and the consciousness and

then loss of empire, had largely passed on. A majority of the older generation

that remained still opposed devolution. It was striking, for instance, that key

ﬁgureheads of the Just Say No campaign in 1997 were in their eighties and nineties.

The President was 88-year-old Viscount Tonypandy, a former Speaker in the

House of Commons, while his close friend, 94-year-old Sir Julian Hodge, a tax

exile in Jersey, bankrolled the campaign. In place of most of their generation,

however, were 600,000 people who in 1979 had been too young to vote.

The shift in the generations was arguably the single most important explana-

tion for the four-to-one majority against the Assembly in 1979 being overturned

into a narrow majority in 1997.The statistics in Table 5.3, derived from a survey

of 700 people throughout Wales within three weeks of the 1997 referendum,

show clearly that age was a key factor in determining the way people had voted.

Those under 45 were more likely to vote Yes by a margin of 3:2, while those

over 45 voted No by a similar margin.

That the 1997 referendum result was still so close is partly explained by the

fact that the younger age groups were generally less likely to cast their votes.

None the less, the age split reveals a good deal about the changes that had taken

place. There is a stark contrast in the divide which says as much about the way

Britain is perceived within Wales as it says about Wales itself. During the 1980s

and 1990s attitudes to Britain changed as markedly as attitudes to Wales (Samuel

1998; Hutton 1995). As already stated, in 1979, the dominant generation was

one that had grown up through the Second World War, and in its wake, through

the creation of a nationalised economy and the welfare state which were distinc-

tively British institutions and experiences. For a generation, they described a

JOHN OSMOND

framework of priorities and common sense within which Welsh politics and politi-

cal identity were understood. In 1979, they were still determining what really

mattered.

In less than two decades, however, virtually the whole of this social, political

and economic landscape had changed unalterably. A generation was assuming

inﬂuence for whom the Second World War was something that had been experi-

enced directly only by their parents. Under the feet of these generations, too,

the nationalised industries were disappearing from view. In place of British Coal,

and much of British Steel, were multinational manufacturing ﬁrms whose main

reason for being in Wales, apart from a relatively cheap and well-educated labour

force, was that it was a convenient location within the European Union.

Of course, many of the values associated with the previous generation remained.

The generosity and self-interest associated with a health service free at the point

of delivery remained common sense, as did a native sense of community solidar-

ity founded on attachment to locality, people and a shared landscape and culture.

But all these things were mutating back more to what it meant to be Welsh than

British – a Welshness, moreover, that now felt increasingly comfortable within a

European embrace. In short, a new common sense about the realities of the Welsh

economy, politics and identity was unfolding. These shifts were reﬂected in the

divide between the generations in the referendum vote in September 1997.

The ‘Three Wales model’ and its limitations

The extremely narrow result in the referendum in 1997 was regarded in much

of Westminster and Whitehall as indicating an overwhelming lack of enthusiasm

for change. In fact, it represented a remarkable 30 per cent increase in votes for

the Yes side, or a 15 per cent swing, compared with 1979. The more emphatic

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Table 5.3 The generation divide and the 1997

referendum vote

Age % Yes % No

18–24 57 43

25–34 60 40

35–44 59 41

45–54 42 58

55–64 49 51

65+ 45 55

Source: Welsh Referendum Survey (1997)

two-to-one majority in the Scottish referendum, held a week earlier, actually

produced a smaller swing of 11.5 per cent.

Signiﬁcantly, there was also a distinct geography to the support for devolu-

tion. Immediate interpretations of the result stressed the apparent internal

divisions it laid bare within Wales, ones which question the existence of a homo-

geneous sense of Welsh identity for the whole of the country. Half the twenty-two

counties, those along the western seaboard and in the Valleys, voted Yes, while

the remaining eleven, along the border, the south-eastern coastal strip and

Pembrokeshire, voted No. Yet this split was not created by the referendum.

Rather, it reﬂected an underlying division that stretches far back into Welsh

history (J. Davies 1990: 80–161; see Lilley, this volume). In modern times, the

division between west and east has been accentuated by the press and media. In

the main, those areas that voted No by a majority coincided with those parts of

Wales that can receive English television transmissions, from ITV’s Granada in

the north to BBC West rather than BBC Wales in the south. It is estimated that

some 40 per cent of the Welsh audience are contained within these ‘overlap’

areas, where there are opportunities to tune in to English as well as Welsh tele-

vision channels. When in answer to opinion polls in the run-up to the 1997

referendum some 30–40 per cent of Welsh respondents regularly stated their

position as ‘don’t know’, in many cases that was genuinely the case. They actu-

ally hadn’t heard the arguments.

As Figure 5.1 demonstrates, the division in Welsh politics described by the

1997 referendum result emerged with a similar clarity in the 1979 Welsh Election

Study which divided Wales into three regions based on responses to the question

(Balsom 1985): ‘Do you normally consider yourself to be Welsh, British, English

or something else?’ Overall, 57 per cent of the electorate believed itself to be

Welsh, 34 per cent British, 8 per cent English and 1 per cent something else.

Strikingly, however, the proportions varied according to a regionality that was

also reﬂected in the 1997 referendum (see Table 5.4).

This became known as the ‘Three Wales model’ (Balsom 1985), which informed

much Welsh political and cultural analysis during the 1980s and 1990s (Paterson

and Jones 1999). According to the model, Wales is divided into three distinct

political areas. The ﬁrst, called Y Fro Gymraeg – the Welsh-speaking ‘heartland’ –

covers north-west and west-central Wales. Here, Plaid Cymru sets the political

agenda and, if not winning all the electoral contests, largely determines which

party does. The second area, which the analysts called Welsh Wales, is made up

of the Valleys, deﬁned by the south Wales coalﬁeld. This is Labour’s electoral

heartland, from which it spread out to dominate Welsh politics for much of the

twentieth century. Furthermore, these are communities which, though generally

not Welsh-speaking, are none the less strongly and distinctively Welsh in terms

of their members having been born in Wales and sharing a collective experience

JOHN OSMOND

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010

20 30 Kilometres

Miles

Figure 5.1 The ‘Three Wales model’

Source: Balsom (1985)

Table 5.4 Geographic dispersion of identity groups within Wales, 1979 (percentages)

Welsh Wales Y Fro Gymraeg British Wales

Welsh 63.0 62.1 50.5

British 30.7 31.8 43.0

Source: Osmond (1999)

of the recent industrial past.The third area, British Wales, is the indistinct remainder

of the country – the south-eastern and north-eastern coastal belts, Pembrokeshire

(‘Little England Beyond Wales’ whose internal Landsker frontier contains the

area dominated by the Normans) and the regions of mid-Wales bordering

England. In the 1997 referendum, in a pattern reﬂecting the close co-operation

between Labour and Plaid Cymru in the campaign, it was Y Fro Gymraeg and

Welsh Wales that united to deliver a small majority (see Figure 5.2).

Table 5.5 shows that those counties that voted Yes by the highest majorities

also tended to have the highest turn-out ﬁgures. It can be seen, therefore, that

in key areas where the turn-out was high, the predisposition to vote Yes was also

high.This was crucially the case in Neath Port Talbot, Gwynedd, Carmarthenshire

and Ceredigion (see Table 5.5). Equally, the counties that voted No tended to

have the lowest turn-out.

JOHN OSMOND

Table 5.5 1997 referendum result by county

% Turn-out Yes votes % Yes No votes % No

‘Yes’ counties

Gwynedd 60.0 35,425 63.9 19,859 35.8

Ceredigion 57.1 18,304 58.8 12,614 40.6

Ynys Mon 57.0 15,649 50.7 15,095 48.9

Carmarthen 56.6 49,115 65.3 26,119 34.7

Neath Port Talbot 52.1 36,730 66.3 18,463 33.3

Bridgend 50.8 27,632 54.1 23,172 45.4

Rhondda Cynon Taf 49.9 51,201 58.5 36,362 41.5

Merthyr Tydﬁl 49.8 12,707 57.9 9,121 41.6

Blaenau Gwent 49.6 15,237 55.8 11,928 43.7

Caerphilly 48.5 34,830 54.7 28,841 45.3

Swansea 47.3 42,789 52.0 39,561 48.0

‘No’ counties

Flintshire 41.1 17,746 38.1 28,707 61.6

Wrexham 42.5 18,574 45.2 22,449 54.6

Torfaen 45.6 15,756 49.7 15,854 50.0

Newport 46.1 16,172 37.3 22,017 62.3

Cardiff 47.0 47,527 44.2 59,589 55.4

Denbighshire 49.9 14,271 40.8 20,732 59.2

Monmouthshire 50.7 10,592 31.6 22,403 66.9

Conwy 51.6 18,369 40.9 26,521 59.1

Pembrokeshire 52.8 19,979 42.8 26,712 57.2

Vale of Glamorgan 54.5 17,776 36.6 30,613 63.1

Powys 56.5 23,038 42.7 30,966 57.3

Wales 50.3 559,419 50.3 552,698 49.7

Source: D. Balsom (1999) The Wales Yearbook 1999, Cardiff: HTV Cymru Wales

Given the closeness of the result, if the turn-out in some of the No-voting

counties had been higher (especially Flintshire,Wrexham, Newport and Cardiff),

the overall outcome could easily have gone the other way. In the event, the rela-

tive determination of the Welsh-identifying regions of Wales, compared with the

relative apathy of British Wales, proved to be decisive.

However, a simple analysis aligning Welsh identiﬁcation by region with votes

cast in the 1997 referendum needs to be qualiﬁed. As the historian Paul O’Leary

(1998) has pointed out, a full 39.3 per cent of the Yes votes were cast in the

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010

20 30 Kilometres

Miles

Ye s

Vote

MONMOUTHSHIRE

NEWPORT

CARDIFF

BLAENAU

GWENT

CAERPHILLY

MERTHYR TYDFIL

CYNON

VALE OF GLAMORGAN

BRIDGEND

SWANSEA

CARMARTHENSHIRE

CEREDIGION

POWYS

GWYNEDD

FLINTSHIRE

RHONDDA

PEMBROKESHIRE

NEATH

PORT TALBOT

TORFAEN

TAFF

WREXHAM

DENBIGHSHIRE

CONWY

ANGLESEY

Figure 5.2 The 1997 referendum result

Source: Osmond (1999)

so-called No counties. To emphasise this point further, we can note that nearly

twice as many votes were cast in favour of the Assembly in Powys, for example,

as in Merthyr Tydﬁl (see Table 5.5), yet Powys is shown as a homogeneous No

county, and Merthyr Tydﬁl as a homogeneous Yes county on maps depicting the

results. In the referendum it was votes, and not the geographical areas within

which they were counted, that mattered. There was, in fact, a signiﬁcant shift

from the No to Yes camps across the whole of Wales, though, as Table 5.6 shows,

it varied signiﬁcantly from region to region.

From the data tabulated and discussed above, it becomes clear that divisions

exist within Wales, based on factors such as the ability to speak Welsh and the

degree to which a given region’s population was born within the country. Of

necessity, these issues raise a series of questions about the varying group iden-

tities existing in the different regions of Wales, and it is to these themes that I

turn in the ﬁnal section of the chapter.

JOHN OSMOND

Table 5.6 Region and Welsh referendum vote, 1979 and 1997 (percentages)

1979 1997 Yes/No

Yes No Yes No

shift

British Wales

Clwyd 21.6 78.4 33.3 66.6 +11.7

Powys 18.5 81.5 35.3 64.7 +16.8

Gwent 12.1 87.9 32.8 67.2 +20.7

South Glamorgan 13.1 86.9 47.5 52.5 +36.4

Welsh Wales

Mid Glamorgan 20.2 79.8 62.7 37.3 +42.5

West Glamorgan 18.7 81.3 45.3 54.7 +26.6

Y Fro Gymraeg

Dyfed 28.1 71.9 57.5 42.5 +29.4

Gwynedd 34.4 65.6 84.3 15.7 +49.9

Source: Evans and Trystan (1999)

Note

The 1979 ﬁgures are the actual results. For 1997, due to local government reorganisation compa-

rable ﬁgures are not available.The ﬁgures reported are from the Welsh Referendum Survey (1997).

Though one cannot read too much into the 1997 samples, which are based on small numbers in

each county (for instance, the West Glamorgan ﬁgures undoubtedly underestimate the Yes support),

the broad pattern of change between 1979 and 1997 is consistent, allowing general inferences

to be drawn. The division of the counties into British Wales, Welsh Wales and Y Fro Gymraeg is

approximate.

Questions of identity

In a broad context, there is some evidence to suggest that senses of group iden-

tity in Wales have changed between the 1970s and 1990s, with a slightly greater

proportion of the population in the latter period identifying with a Welsh sense

of group identity (Evans and Trystan 1999: 100). It may be, however, that such

information paints too simple a picture of the geographies of group identities in

Wales. People living in Wales can participate in a variety of identities, consciously

or unconsciously. They can be Welsh, British, European, or, if they are incomers

from across the border, they often retain their English identity. More often than

not, they combine these attachments in varying degrees of intensity. It has been

said that what distinguishes the Welsh most clearly from the English, for example,

is that the Welsh have a sense of their Britishness as something distinctly sepa-

rate from their Welshness.The English, on the other hand, tend to hold Englishness

and Britishness as being much the same thing. The Welsh have a dual identity,

whereas the English identity might be more accurately described in this sense

as fused. The Moreno scale is a useful tool for distinguishing the relative impor-

tance of such divided or multiple identities that characterise the contemporary

world. Table 5.7 shows the results of a survey in 1997 in which the inhabitants

of mainland Britain were asked to explain the relative importance of their various

group identities.

Such survey evidence can only reveal part of the picture, however. This is

particularly so if, as argued earlier in this chapter, the meaning attached to iden-

tity descriptions such as ‘Welsh’ and ‘British’ changes over time. It was argued

that what people understood and felt as being Welsh and being British changed

signiﬁcantly between 1979 and 1997 due to the generation shift that took place

in that period.This was conditioned by the different life experiences of the gener-

ations and the relative weight they attached to the identities. Moreover, this

survey does not inform us of the extent to which the emerging European dimen-

sion has altered perceptions.

These questions of identity are important, because the way they evolve in the

coming decades will do much to determine the shape of political alignments.

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Table 5.7 Welsh, Scottish and English national identity (percentages)

Wales Scotland England

Welsh/Scottish/English, not British 17 33 8

More Welsh/Scottish/English than British 26 33 18

Equally Welsh/Scottish/English and British 34 29 49

More British than Welsh/Scottish/English 10 3 15

British, not Welsh/Scottish/English 12 3 10

Source: Curtice (1999)

For example, such concrete evidence as there is shows that the elections to the

National Assembly are regarded quite differently by the electorate from elections

to Westminster. In the run-up to the May 1999 election for the National Assembly,

the polls consistently showed Plaid Cymru gaining ground. At the same time,

Labour maintained and in some polls even increased its support when people

were asked how they would vote if a Westminster election were being held, as

Table 5.8 illustrates. On the other hand, in the Assembly election the fortunes

of the parties were quite different, with Plaid Cymru gaining, as we have seen,

largely at the expense of the Labour Party. This is illustrated in Table 5.9, based

on a poll which was undertaken on the eve of the election in 1999.

Differential voting between the national and state-wide tiers of government

are common and persistent elsewhere, notably in Canada, where Québec often

elects a nationalist (Parti québécois) administration at home, but regularly votes

Liberal in Canadian-wide elections.The same applies in Catalunya, where Catalan

nationalists regularly poll a majority in Catalan elections but give way to the

Socialist Party in Spanish elections for the Madrid Assembly. There seems every

reason to suppose that such a pattern may become entrenched in Wales. Certainly,

the initial electoral cycle will tend to reinforce the pattern, with the next Welsh

general elections falling close to the mid-term of governments at the UK level.

Such differential voting behaviour between different levels of government is

recognised by the parties, all of which endeavour to stress particular interpre-

tations of the undoubtedly changing perceptions of identity to suit their cause.

Labour Party intellectuals argue, for example, that the new devolved institutions

JOHN OSMOND

Table 5.8 Westminster voting intention in May 1999 compared with 1997 result

(percentages)

Labour Plaid Cymru Conservative Lib Dem Others

May 1999 56.0 16.0 16.0 10.0 2.0

1997 election 54.7 9.9 19.6 12.4 3.4

Source: Osmond (1999)

Table 5.9 Proﬁle of Plaid Cymru’s Assembly vote, compared with the 1997 general

election (percentages)

Loyal to Plaid Cymru Switching Switching Switching Did not

from from from vote

Labour Conservative Lib Dem

33 38 8 1 16

Source: Osmond (1999)

in Cardiff and Edinburgh are about creating a new brand of Britishness, in which

the nationalities of Britain can share a renewed civic consciousness. Gordon

Brown has argued the case in these terms:

To argue that one is either Scottish or British,Welsh or British is to miss

what Britishness is all about. Perhaps uniquely in the world, Britain is not

just a society of many communities, but also a country of nations – with

large, contiguous areas of distinct national heritage. . . . Britain is

enriched by the strength of all these different cultures. Sometimes they

can be noisy; often they’re awkward. But what a bland country this would

be if all that noise was to fall silent: if Britishness meant we all spoke the

same way, with the same accent, inhabiting a single culture. Instead, how

strong we can be, enriched by all the range of cultures that live here.

Instead of a bland Britain, a Britain buzzing with difference; no longer a

state in monochrome but a nation of living colour.

(1999: 6)

An alternative view, of course, is that the main elements and conditions that

forged Britain have either disappeared or lessened in force (see Hutton 1995).

Parliament has been devolved and the European Union and global economy offer

an alternative political and economic context for the Welsh, Scottish and English

nationalities to make their way in the world. Moreover, the advent of the National

Assembly for Wales and the Scottish Parliament has created new civic forums

where Welsh and Scottish identities can be debated and developed.

In all of this an unknown but probably determining element will be how the

English respond. Will they wish to cling to or redeﬁne a British dimension to

their identity beyond Englishness? The claims of Gordon Brown notwithstanding,

‘Britain’ and ‘Britishness’ have hitherto been terms that denote a state, not an

underlying nation. The difference between the two is likely to prove critical in

the coming decades. Certainly, the onset of devolution has brought a rush of

literature predicting, or implying, the end of Britain: from right-wing politicians

like John Redwood (1998), to left-wing writers like Andrew Marr (1999) and

Tom Nairn (2000). In his The Isles: a History, Norman Davies (1999: 1032–3)

remarks towards the end that in the early 1990s he had doubted whether Britain

would live to see its 300th birthday in 2007:

I have not changed my mind, though now I think that the belated intro-

duction of devolution may prolong the UK’s life for a season or two.

At bottom I belong to the group of historical colleagues who hold that

the United Kingdom was established to serve the interests of Empire,

and that the loss of Empire has destroyed its raison d’être.

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Certainly, the old imperial sense of Britain and Britishness that was still a powerful

force in the 1970s has receded from the view of today’s younger generation in

Wales. The kind of Welshness, combined perhaps with an over-arching sense of

a European identity, that will assert itself in future will undoubtedly be contested.

One reading of history suggests strongly that, since Wales has always been a frac-

tured community, we can expect many different Welshnesses to continue.The key

question for Wales as a nation, however, is whether the new civic and demo-

cratic framework provided by the (signiﬁcantly named) National Assembly will

encourage a new unity as well as continued diversity. Outside inﬂuences will

play a part, not least the intensity of the proﬁles projected by the other Celtic

countries, decisions made by the English, and the progress of European inte-

gration. However, for the ﬁrst time in their history the Welsh also now have the

means to determine their place in the world, to some extent at least, on their

own terms.

JOHN OSMOND

Part II

SITES OF MEANING

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SITES OF AUTHENTICITY

Scotland’s new parliament and ofﬁcial

representations of the nation*

Hayden Lorimer

Nationalisms and the nation-state are well set to retain an intriguing place in the

geographies of the new millennium. All this despite predictions of the increasing

irrelevance of such identity referents posited by ﬁn-de-siècle futurologists, politi-

cians and academics. Tapping a now familiar Zeitgeist, these commentators on

globalisation have cited the blanket spread of corporate capitalism, the hegemony

of international ﬁnancial markets, the establishment of supra-national political

agreements and the all-pervasive inﬂuence of multi-national media and tech-

nologies on ‘independent’ national cultures as key factors in an inevitable process

of homogenisation (Fukuyama 1989; Giddens 1990; Ohmae 1989). Yet across

Europe, the recent rise and re-emergence of nationalisms, whether expressed

through violence or quiet consensus, stand testimony to the continued import-

ance of common identities fused around the romantic nationalist idea of the

nation-state. Paradoxically, the persistence of an ethnically bounded concept of

belonging also gives the lie to the popularly held belief that nationhood is itself

founded on stability, traditionalism or permanence. In a British context, recently

instituted changes to centuries-old constitutional agreements have allowed for

the devolution of political power to Wales and Scotland.

As argued by MacLeod

and Osmond in this volume, such important concessions reﬂect a marked revival,

and reworking, of Celtic nationalisms previously marginalised from the political

map of the British Isles. With majority approval from the resident populations

of each country, debate and decisions on speciﬁc areas of government policy have

been ceded to a national assembly in Cardiff, and more deﬁnitively still, a parlia-

ment in Edinburgh.

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* This chapter was written prior to the untimely deaths of Enric Miralles and Donald Dewar in

April and in October 2000.

Inevitably, academic and political opinion remains divided on these consti-

tutional developments.Whereas for New Labour the decentralisation of decision-

making is a mechanism to ensure the long-term future of the Union, other

commentators less committed to these ends foresee a fundamental power shift

and an opportunity for the afﬁrmation and institutionalisation of contemporary

Celtic nationhood (Nairn 1997b; 2000; Harvie 1994). For mainstream national-

ists working towards their political end-game, devolution is but a stopping-off

point on the route to complete independence. However, most would agree, I

suspect, that a reliance on the traditional and occasionally vulgar emblems of

ethnic nationalism, so often the currency of tensions and animosities within

Britain, has run its course. Instead, the framework of devolved government, both

unionist and secessionist rhetoric suggests, might allow for more assured, less

insular expressions of political and cultural identities. Given the prevailing public

mood, an increased emphasis on liberal, civic nationalism might offer chances

for a more informed take on self and citizenship, while at the same time culti-

vating an expansive European outlook. However, an injection of caution must be

administered to this pulsing vein of New Celticism. Any long-term prognosis of

‘rude health’ will be dependent on the formal, institutional structures used to

facilitate wider change in the body politic. In this respect, the conjunction of

heightened cultural awareness and a renewed political impulse attended to by

the creation of a Scottish parliament – the subject of the present chapter – is

deserving of closer inspection.

On the eve of Scotland’s devolution referendum, Neal Ascherson (1997: 22),

veteran commentator on the country’s political landscape, claimed that the choice

facing the country’s voters would call ‘for the most profound reﬂections on

responsibility and liberty, history and the future’.Whether all those who entered

the polling booths on 11 September 1997 went with these matters of grave

import in mind is debatable.What is not open to question is the result. Devolution

was approved by 74 per cent of the Scottish electorate. Having been given the

‘green light’, civil servants were sent scurrying to their drawing boards. In the

immediate aftermath of the vote, and working to a pressing timetable, they were

called upon to assemble the fabric of government and thus reform one of Britain’s

constitutional curiosities, ‘the stateless nation’ of Scotland (McCrone 1992).

The tasks they faced were various: to arrange for Scotland’s own parliamentary

elections, facilitate the formal transfer of political power from Westminster, stage-

manage an ofﬁcial ceremony to celebrate this process and create an executive

with allied committee structure to enable policy formulation in government.

Forming a colourful backdrop to these events were the hasty arrangements made

for the construction of a new national parliament building.

It is the last of these nation-building projects which provides the focus for

this chapter. In it, I demonstrate how the search to ﬁnd a permanent home

HAYDEN LORIMER

for the new parliament, while never promising to be a simple task, has sparked

a series of heated, divisive and sometimes rancorous debates. These dialogues

reﬂect vested political interests, Machiavellian media plots, traditional provincial

rivalries, the aesthetic tastes of the country’s elite artistic community, and much

less extensively, the preferences of the general Scottish public. However, the

purpose of the chapter is not to document events in chronological fashion.

Instead, my discussion of this rolling news story is structured around four inter-

secting themes: ﬁrst, the paths negotiated between history, memory and identity

in the construction of an ofﬁcial iconography for the modern Scottish nation;

second, the role of the celebrity architect as ‘author’ of such narratives for the

nation; third, the symbolic importance attached to locating the parliament; and

fourth by way of conclusion, a commentary on the omissions, contradictions and

ambiguities which continue to cast shadows over the parliament project.

What I offer here are snapshots of a still evolving entity. My commentary,

itself under continual revision, is on history in the making, and indeed, the

making of history. As architectural concepts become technical blueprints, which

then rise into concrete structures which in turn become meaningful buildings,

the script will inevitably change. Not only will this be Scotland’s ﬁrst parliament

building for 300 years, but it is also a unique opportunity for the country to

ofﬁcially represent itself to a global audience (see also Cooke and McLean, this

volume). While the decisions taken inside the debating chamber will determine

the institution’s ultimate worth, the iconographic importance of the parliament

building as both a touchstone and test-bed for different understandings of nation-

hood should not be underestimated.To examine the evolving symbolic meanings

attributed to the building is also to consider its position within a hierarchy of

geographical spaces. As will become clear, the parliament as a localised public

space in Edinburgh’s cityscape cannot be separated from the parliament which

is integral to changing landscapes of nationhood and governance in Britain and

Europe.

Building monuments to the nation

Recently, cultural geographers have shown considerable interest in the means by

which different understandings of speciﬁc places are inscribed with complex

networks of memory and identity. Attention has focused on the construction of

landscapes, through a braiding together of the material, social and symbolic, at

all scales, from the local to the global. Such cultural processes of signiﬁcation,

often themselves central to the practice of geography, can involve naming,

mapping, locating, siting, (de)territorialising, visualising, surveying and building.

Insightful studies have revealed the cultural symbolism and representational

politics bound up in rituals, ceremonies and spectacles (Stevens 1996; Ryan

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SITES OF AUTHENTICITY

1999), recreational activities (Matless 1995), educational curricula (Ploszajska

1999) and, most notably within the context of this chapter, statuary and monu-

mentation. Studies of the latter do differ in their focus. Notable examinations

of the ofﬁcial narratives constructed by the state, and then sculpted in stone,

include the politics of remembering Britain’s dead in the aftermath of the First

World War (Heffernan 1994), and the layering of fascist symbols into Rome’s

evolving urban landscape (Atkinson and Cosgrove 1998). The importance of

popular, and unofﬁcial, forms of commemoration to the identities of, and stories

told by, local communities has framed work on Clearance memories in the

Scottish Highlands (Withers 1996). Meanwhile, as Johnson (1994) has demon-

strated through her study of public memorials in Ireland, very often both the

act and art of remembering are inﬂected by contestations over the choice of

initial subject and conﬂict in subsequent dialogues over their meaning or inter-

pretation. Johnson’s grounding assertion that public statuary can ‘highlight some

of the ways in which the material bases for nationalist imaginings emerge and

are structured symbolically’ undoubtedly applies in equal measure to the design

of institutional architecture, and more speciﬁcally still, parliament buildings

(Johnson 1995: 52).

If the parliament is to be understood as a national monument, we must ﬁrst

clarify a key constructional speciﬁcation. Given its centrality to the modern

project of the nation-state, the parliament must invent or recreate the ‘authentic’

spirit of the nation in solid form. For patriotic citizens it can then function as

a reminder of this spirit distilled to its purest form, a site of authenticity. This is

not to suggest anything as stark as an imposed consciousness among a popula-

tion of dupes, for as Zolberg (1996: 70) reminds us, a reliance on the myths of

the nation need not ‘necessarily entail falsehood, but emphasises a “truth” incor-

porating symbolic and metaphorical reconstructions’. Yet it is still very difﬁcult

to evade a fundamental tension in this task: how is it possible to make the elusive

qualities of the ‘imagined community’ somehow tangible in glass, stone, metal

or wood? Indeed, this task becomes all the more difﬁcult when we consider the

dynamism, perhaps even the messiness, which characterises contemporary global,

and even national, cultures. The old certainties and totalising orders which

supported the idea of the nation-state are consistently under pressure. We can

now acknowledge that previous understandings of a nation’s past – its presumed

historical authenticity, its ethnic homogeneity and its manifest destiny – were

too inﬂexible and deﬁnitive. Interrupted by postmodern thought, our current

understandings of nationhood are more nuanced, contingent and ambivalent.

Whether bombastic or entirely abstract, attempts to represent national identity

through architecture are a decidedly tricky business (Pearman 1998; I. Bell 1999).

This is not to propose that representative symbols for the nation now suddenly

lack potency – rather, there is a need to recognise the plurality of messages which

HAYDEN LORIMER

they might contain. The historical development of museums, a subject that has

attracted considerable interest of late, provides an excellent illustrative example

(see Cooke and McLean, this volume). Macdonald (1996) has noted how, at the

start of the twentieth century, museums were at once statements of enlightened

thought, political unity and evolutionary continuity. They acted as yardsticks for

comparison with other, less ‘developed’ societies. However, the forms of exhi-

bition they now employ must accommodate ‘ambivalence, uncertainty and

objectivity . . . irony, the disruption of established form, and self-reﬂection’.

Accepting the role of museums as an institution providing order for domi-

nant ideas on society, Lavine and Karp (1990: 1) also point out how museums

have actively contributed to the development of knowledge.They understand the

museum as ‘a process as well as a structure, a creative agency as well as a

contested terrain’. Having confronted us with the complex power relations which

help tell us who we are, these new ‘museologists’ ask us how we might now

represent things more sensitively. This critical re-examination of museums and

exhibition spaces certainly resonates in debates over other institutions which act

as repositories for nations’ memories.

With sculpture and architecture, the staples of monumental representation,

similarly swept along by the artistic currents of postmodernism, the difﬁculties

inherent in the task of creating a new seat of political power become all the

more acute. The Scottish parliament will undoubtedly be ‘a space for telling a

story’ (Karp 1990: 12). It might well be ‘a storehouse of the nation’s qualities’

(Zolberg 1996: 70), but a more pressing issue remains: what story should it tell

and what qualities should it evoke?

Commenting on the enduring attraction of created narratives,Anderson (1983:

19) has noted that,‘if nation states are widely concerned to be “new” and “histor-

ical”, the nations to which they give political expression always loom out of an

immemorial past, and, still more important, glide into a limitless future’.Although

national monuments have functioned primarily as selective celebrations of past

events, they can carefully combine this impulse to remember with the urge to

visualise the future. Through ofﬁcial narratives and symbols, and as a prescribed

site of authenticity, a parliament must attempt to do likewise. The ofﬁcial archi-

tecture of government inevitably attempts to articulate, if not the ideals, then

certainly the aspirations of the nation, and is thus an amalgam of popular memory

and state envisionment. If such expressions of cultural identity are inﬂected by

post-colonial politics, then this task becomes increasingly complex. Vale (1992:

321) has noted how, in states liberated from repressive colonial regimes, parlia-

mentary design has been used ‘as an iconographical bridge between preferred

epochs, joining the misty palisades of some golden age to the hazy shores of

some future promise’. He goes on to highlight the frequent use of architectural

referents which neatly span ‘all troubled colonial waters’.

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The direct application of post-colonial theories on power, culture and repre-

sentation to current domestic debates would be both crude and intemperate,

especially given the complex nature of Scotland’s modern constitutional rela-

tionship with England. But the realisation that misplaced historical revisionism

can empower dangerously skewed histories of subjection and subordination is in

itself a critical one. Just as Eagleton has noted how in anti-colonial movements

‘it is often difﬁcult in practice to distinguish between political self-determination

and ethnic self-afﬁrmation’ (Eagleton 1999: 59), the temptation for Scotland

might well be to embed its new political status in ideas of cultural purity. While

any suggestion of a malevolent impulse in the recovery of symbols and referents

pre-dating Scotland’s political union with England might initially seem risible, it

should not be dismissed out of hand. Seemingly innocent celebrations of belonging

and cultural revival, or the sense of security afforded by territorial bounded-

ness, can all too easily slip into the fundamentalist rhetoric of eternal and rooted

ethnic identities.This latent threat accepted, we ought to think closely about the

ways in which Scotland has previously come to know itself, and how any attempt

to carve out a new position in the British polity might be expressed. One of the

ﬁrst in a potentially long list of national projects, the parliament will inevitably

navigate a potentially hazardous course between wilful remembering, forgetting

and projecting.

Remembering Scotland

If we consider the cultural and artistic legacy of the last three centuries, then it

is fair to say that Scottish society has gained an expertise in certain forms of

collective national representation. Striking a less than provocative note, we might

suggest that from the tartanised Highlandisms of Horatio MacCulloch and Edwin

Landseer, through the musical misdemeanours of Harry Lauder and Runrig, to

the furry gonks and ‘See you Jimmy’ wigs which populate many a tourist trap,

the dominant narrative has been one of tradition and romance. The cultural

capital which these referents retain is such that McCrone et al. (1995: 4) has

described ‘the power of heritage’ as ‘unduly onerous on Scotland’. Heritage has

become perhaps the most powerful signiﬁer of Scottish identity. ‘Indeed’, he

continues, ‘it seems at times as if Scotland only exists as heritage: what singles

it out for distinction is the trappings of its past.’ Rojek (1993: 181) goes further

still, suggesting that the tourist industry has consistently represented ‘Scotland

as land out of time . . . an enchanted fortress in a disenchanted world’. Even

beyond these clichéd and familiar symbols, the accent in self-representation seems

to have been almost wholly retrospective. During the last 100 years, the conserva-

tion of existing historic buildings and monuments has been a favourite pastime

of the country’s concerned middle classes on the hunt for social memories.

HAYDEN LORIMER

Ofﬁcial work begun by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical

Monuments of Scotland has been augmented by voluntary campaigns initiated

by the Association for the Preservation of Rural Scotland, the Saltire Society and

Cockburn Association. Most prominent of all in such efforts has been the National

Trust for Scotland. Granting their own work semi-ofﬁcial status and a public

imprimatur, the organisation has ensured that a great many architectural treas-

ures and relics have been preserved ‘for the beneﬁt of the nation’. In such a

fashion, the properties and holdings of the Trust have been used to tell a selec-

tive version of Scotland’s story (Lorimer 1999).

It is worth noting, however, that unlike in many other European nations, this

evolving historiography has been less well served by ofﬁcial attempts to capture

the essential spirit of Scotland through new iconic national monuments.

Having

functioned for almost three centuries without the obvious impetus provided

by sovereign status, and instead having the civic identities of individual cities

afﬁrmed by ‘boosterist’ construction projects, the country has very little experi-

ence of this route.A review of the last century reveals a limited set of monumen-

tal examples.The centrepiece of Glasgow’s Empire Exhibition of 1938 was a 300-

foot glass and concrete tower. Surrounded by pavilions and water displays in

Bellahouston Park, the structure was the very epitome of modernist styling. Prior

to its demolition, the tower was a ﬂeeting showpiece for national design and indus-

trial endeavour (Lorimer 1999). In Edinburgh Castle, the National War Memorial,

of loss. Elsewhere in the capital, the National Library of Scotland and

St Andrew’s House, the original monolithic home of the Scottish Ofﬁce, are state-

ments of ofﬁcial culture inscribed in urban space (Glendinning et al. 1996). By

stretching our deﬁnition of iconic national monuments, we might also consider

the sweeping grandeur of the Forth Road Bridge, constructed in 1964.This short

historical tour terminates at the gleaming surfaces of the Scottish Exhibition and

Conference Centre situated on the banks of the Clyde in Glasgow. An eclectic

assortment of the carnivalesque, the infrastructural and the civic are representa-

tive of Scotland’s slender modern canon in ofﬁcial, monumental architecture –

reinforcement, perhaps, for the assertion by McCrone et al. that Scotland’s moder-

nity has seemed ‘to make it little different from elsewhere’ (1995: 6). Caught in

gloomy fettle during the mid-1990s, the same authors felt that like many ‘state-

less nations’ such as Catalonia and Quebec, Scotland cannot rely on a pragmatic

deﬁnition in terms of its political statehood. Indeed, they argued at the time,‘given

that it currently has no meaningful level of democratic control over its adminis-

tration, it has even more of an identity crisis than the other two nations’.

Jump forward ﬁve years. Arguably, where civic Scottish society once seemed

content to stake out its distinctiveness around the institutional bulwarks of law,

religion and education, we now ﬁnd an impulse to assert a new-found conﬁdence

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in identity through conspicuous built form. There is a very obvious ‘materiality’

about national projects either completed or initiated in the afterglow of devo-

lution. The act of nation-building is at present being taken on literal terms;

from the New Museum of Scotland to the reconstruction of a national football

stadium and on to the new parliament building itself (MacInnes et al. 1999).The

political shackles which meant that ‘direct democratic control over the means of

[Scotland’s] own cultural construction’ was so severely restricted would now

appear to have been removed (McCrone et al. 1995: 209).

The celebrity architect as author

In January 1997 the task of designing Scotland’s new parliament was awarded

to Enric Miralles (see Plate 6.1), a ‘cult ﬁgure of the younger generation of

European architects’ (Cargill-Thomson 1998: 20). The choice of this ‘celebrity

architect’, ahead of seventy-four other applicant architectural ﬁrms, raises a series

of connected questions relating to authorship, narrative and nationhood. In this

section, the identity of Miralles himself, his abstract working methods and the

plans for the parliament, are each subject to critical examination.

HAYDEN LORIMER

Plate 6.1 Enric Miralles, ‘celebrity architect’ commissioned to design the new Scottish

parliament

Source: Douglas Jones, Building Scotland

The 1990s have been marked by the rise of the celebrity architect. Created

through a combination of vigorous self-promotion and enthusiastic media-

proﬁling, a small coterie of enigmatic (and it should be noted, predominantly

male) artists have secured for themselves iconic status and political inﬂuence. By

taking on commissions for major national developments, their signature is writ

large on a global stage (Glancey 1999). Most notable in this regard is Sir Norman

Foster who, having completed the redesign of the Reichstag building in Berlin

and overseen the completion of Hong Kong’s vast new airport complex, is now

a familiar public ﬁgure. Indeed, Foster has joined Terry Farrell, Michael Hopkins,

Richard Meier and Sir Terence Conran in the design of recent Scottish projects.

In such a cultural climate, the initial media clamour for the appointment of a

promising Scots architect to steer the parliament project, and thus buck the

international trend, was perhaps a little fanciful (Baxter 1998). Reaction to

Miralles’s subsequent appointment, while at ﬁrst quizzical, was generally

favourable and in certain cases gushingly enthusiastic (Linklater 1998a, 1998c;

Sudjic 1998). Most tellingly, for some commentators, the public’s comfort with

the idea of a ‘non-native’ was interpreted as evidence of a new-found maturity

and self-conﬁdence in nationhood (Linklater 1998b; Lewis 1999). Only limited

evidence of ‘enlightened parochialism’ and the absence of any obvious hostility

certainly suggests that cultural debate has moved on from the defensive rhetoric

of the late 1980s, which suggested the possible ‘eclipse of Scottish culture’

(Beveridge and Turnbull 1989). Might Scotland’s much-heralded ability to look

outward from its borders towards Europe be gaining real substance?

The fact that Miralles hails from Catalonia has attracted the critical attention

of media commentators. Considerable political currency has been found in

comparisons drawn between the current resurgence of Scottish nationalism and

the continued push for Catalan separatism in Spain (Lewis 1999). Obviously

conscious that there is little need for him to articulate where any common ground

might lie, in conversations with the media Miralles has reacted by downplaying

his own ethnicity (Linklater 1998d; Cargill-Thomson 1998). Apparently uncon-

cerned by intimations of vested interest or a personal project, and paralleling

the approach taken to architectural commissions in his native Barcelona, Miralles

has sought to transcend the internal murk of Scottish affairs. Instead he has culti-

vated an image of cigar-smoking cosmopolitanism to complement his non-speciﬁc

global mentality. Miralles’s design ‘concept’ for the parliament reﬂects this

purposefully disinterested approach to politics by erring heavily on the side of

abstraction.

For a protracted spell after his appointment as ofﬁcial architect, deﬁnite design

details remained shrouded in secrecy. Inquisitive observers have had to make do

with ‘forms’ and ‘motifs’ from the concept, punctuated with frustratingly gnomic,

if endearingly poetic, statements. ‘We imagine our proposal as a subtle game of

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cross views and political implications’ is an illustrative example of the sugges-

tive but mysterious Miralles manifesto. This rhetoric, both constitutive and

reﬂective of his unorthodox approach to design, has apparently provided the

creative space for a project which is being treated as an evolving process. Eclectic

sketchings and photographs of small wooden models (produced with monoto-

nous regularity by a press corps themselves in search of concrete structure) have

supplemented this lyrical fare (see Plate 6.2). In his public appearances, Miralles

has proved to be a persuasive and compelling speaker, but ultimately abstruse in

explanation. Only latterly has the design gained a greater sense of coherency and

‘situatedness’. The parliament has been brought to life most tellingly via a

computer-simulated magic carpet ride, one of the attractions on offer in the

‘Scottish parliament visitor centre’. Accompanied by Donald Dewar, a rather

more canny and pragmatic guide, citizens begin their journey atop Arthur’s Seat,

the volcanic plug which dominates the Edinburgh skyline. From here they are

swept downhill, skimming the edge of Salisbury crags to hover tantalisingly over

their pixilated parliament building, situated on the edge of Holyrood Park (see

Figure 6.1).

HAYDEN LORIMER

100

Plate 6.2 The parliament proposal for Holyrood: a new setting for Scottish nationhood?

Positioned centrally are the parliament’s central buildings based on the

upturned boat design. Holyrood Palace sits to the far left, while Arthur’s

Seat provides the backdrop

Source: Royal Fine Art Commission for Scotland (RCAHMA) (1998) The Scottish Parliament

Competition, Edinburgh: Royal Fine Art Commission for Scotland

However, all those who have followed developments through the media will

be aware of the now infamous ‘upturned boat’ motif which provided Miralles

with inspiration for the parliament’s central debating chamber (see Plates 6.2

and 6.3). This maritime metaphor has provided a wealth of satirical ammunition

for political diarists and commentators, particularly after the patchy parliamen-

tary performances of newly elected MSPs (Morris 1998).After they had variously

been reported to have been spotted by the architect in the Outer Hebrides and

Orkney Isles, delicious irony was found in the ﬁshing boats’ true location on

Lindisfarne – in England (Dinwoodie 1998). Similarly, unattributed intimations

that the replica steel hulls might have to be constructed south of the Border,

due to the absence of either required skills or appropriate yards in Scotland,

became the sensationalist stuff of Sunday exclusives (Fraser 1998).

Aside from these predictable attempts to stir up stagnant national rivalries,

the design itself centres on a series of low-slung, ﬂuid, neighbourly construc-

tions which, to quote their creator, ‘sit and belong to the land’. Miralles’s

assertions that ‘Scotland is a land, not a series of cities’ and that ‘the land itself

will be a material’ are reﬂected in buildings which gave the impression of rising

out of the site’s impressive natural amphitheatre (RCAHMS 1998). As with all

monuments or buildings, possible readings and interpretations are legion. Never-

theless, two alternative parliamentary narratives are worthy of consideration;

these suggest how contested dialogues over meaning partially satisfy political

separatists and advocates of a continued future for the British state.

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101

Palace of

Holyrood House

New Parliament Site

HOLYROOD

PARK

HOLYROOD

PARK

Royal High

School

National Monument

City Observatory

CALTON HILL

Edinburgh Castle

0 1 km

328 ft

Arthur’s Seat

823 ft

Leith 1 km

Haymarket

1 km

North B

ridge

Figure 6.1 Monumental symbols in Edinburgh’s cityscape: the contested geography of

the Scottish parliament

First, the imaginative observer might well detect a contemporary Scots iden-

tity being forged in opposition to traditional British political culture. Far from

vertiginous, the parliament’s forms can be read as a restrained statement of

intent. The sloping sides of boats’ ‘hulls’ are certainly unorthodox design refer-

ences, some way distant from the imperious gothic façade of Westminster and

the long favoured neo-classical stylings of state buildings. The debating chamber,

elliptical in shape, avoids the confrontational format of the opposing benches in

the House of Commons (Lewis 1999). Nor will the building rely on the delib-

erate cultural anonymity of high modernism and the ‘International Style’, much

aped in recent examples of ofﬁcial architecture. Conversely, a hybridised set of

local referents, which draw on the site’s genius loci, are crucial to the parlia-

mentary design. Sensitive to the gradual erosion of sovereign identities in a

globalising world, Miralles has drawn upon a selection of historical,‘organic’ and

contextual sources for his inspiration. The winning design brief detailed a struc-

ture which would ﬁnd its associations in the distinctive imagery of Scotland’s

landscape; in boats recycled into buildings, but also in plant structures, contours,

piles of stones and the distinctive topography and geology of its immediate park-

land environs. Squinting through the fug of cigar-smoke, we might imagine a

narrative here for national unity, the parliament’s Lowland civility merging with

HAYDEN LORIMER

102

Plate 6.3 Upturned ﬁshing boats: original inspiration for the parliament’s central design

motif

Source: J.A. Hammerton (ed.) (1922) People of All Nations: their Life Today and the Story of their Past,

vol. VI, London: Fleetway 4245

what McKean has described as ‘the Highland countryside of Holyrood Park’

(1999: 3); a public space fusing Scotland’s binary opposites of urban–rural,

metropole–periphery, the natural and the cultural.

While steel and glass are essential to the structural design, Miralles has elected

to use stone, wood and turf on the building’s exterior and as paving materials.

Meanwhile, an expanse of water is planned as a means to assimilate the building

within the wilder environment of the park. Miralles has received considerable

praise for his bravery in using such ideas to break with more staid architectural

stylings. Arguably, however, his choice of elemental symbols and primary signs

as ‘natural’ connections between a ‘people’ and a memory of their primordial

‘land’ is neither radical nor surprising. The idea of the soil as a historical repos-

itory of common ethnic virtue is a reworking of a conventional and potentially

problematic nationalist motif. If Miralles’s intention in prioritising landscape

before politics was to escape the thorny issue of separatism, this has not depoliti-

cised the parliament’s design.

A second, quite different, reading of the design can be offered. We should

note how the chosen architectural approach appeals in equal measure to the

Blairite rhetoric of a generation who ‘have come to terms with their own history’,

and Donald Dewar’s heralding of ‘a nation at ease with itself’. Working in the

same creative space as the Labour Party mandarins who master-minded the 1997

Commonwealth Heads of Government Conference in Edinburgh, and the civil

servants who stage-managed the restrained civility of the parliament’s opening

ceremony, Miralles’s architectural signature can be read as a neat addition to

New Labour’s continuing crusade for a ‘brand’ Britain, synonymous with modern

imagery and architectural innovation (Collier 1997; G. Bell 1999; McNeil 1999).

The architect’s winning preliminary sketches demonstrate a keen interest in social

aspects of Scottish history and culture. Among a pot-pourri of ‘tasteful’ inﬂu-

ences, in no genealogical order, Miralles cites the work of Charles Rennie

Mackintosh, Robert Adam, Edinburgh’s University College, the St Kildan parlia-

ment, the shipbuilding legacy on Clydeside and Edzell Castle in Angus.We might

usefully ask whether the choice of this selective culture heritage, derived from

Scotland’s choice heirlooms, provides another ideological foundation on which

the parliament is to be constructed. In the light of Miralles’s assertion that ‘to

remember is not an archaic attitude’, his design can be read as an attempt to

side-step the romantic Braveheartisms of tartan Scottish culture and assimilate

refreshing indigenous inﬂuences into a contemporary cultural identity.The parlia-

ment will undoubtedly serve as a touchstone with the past, but more critically

it uses architectural history to help deﬁne the future. In spite of supplying tradi-

tional symbols for new dynamic forms of nationhood, these symbols are still

ﬁrmly embedded in a wider political project. The very active role taken on by

Donald Dewar at every stage of the design process was surely not coincidental,

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103

however often the First Minister professed his very personal enthusiasm for the

history of Scottish architecture (MacMahon 1997).

The politics of location

Obviously the ofﬁcial narrative for modern Scottish nationhood as devised in

Millbank Tower or St Andrew’s House, and possibly made manifest in the national

parliament building, has not gone unchallenged.

The debates surrounding the

choice of site for the parliament illustrate these contestations particularly clearly.

As this section demonstrates, in the aftermath of the devolution referendum

bitter struggles to determine the symbolic politics of place, and control the situ-

ated place of politics, have been played out across Edinburgh’s rapidly evolving

cityscape. The result has prompted the re-creation of one site as the terra ﬁrma

of modern government, while consigning others to the political margins, despite

their historic appeal.

Following months of press speculation detailing the respective merits of

numerous sites in the capital, four development proposals were afforded serious

consideration by the parliamentary selection panel.The ﬁrst of these was a water-

front site in Leith, the second a West End location in the Haymarket area, the

third, Calton Hill, a prominent feature on the city’s historic skyline, and the

fourth, on the edge of Holyrood Park, the easternmost extremity of Edinburgh’s

‘Royal Mile’. Of this list, the last two mentioned would eventually become the

most serious contenders (see Figure 6.1). A parliament positioned on top of

Calton Hill was, according to the Edinburgh Evening News, ‘the people’s choice’

following their unofﬁcial public poll.The Holyrood alternative, formerly the site

of a brewery (more satirical fare here), was part of the prime redevelopment

site in a city undergoing a post-devolution building boom. Home to the Dynamic

Earth Museum, the new headquarters for The Scotsman newspaper and the twenty

individual business and residential projects of the Canongate Redevelopment, it

has been vigorously marketed as a ﬂourishing urban locality (Spring 1998). Bound

up in developers’ predictions of an enriched urban neighbourhood, the prevailing

public mood, the contrasting demands of civil servants and the claims and counter-

claims of competing media outlets can be identiﬁed some deep-seated political

motivations. To appreciate these motivations requires a sensitivity to the politi-

cal and cultural symbols already inscribed into Edinburgh’s urban space, combined

with an awareness of the new layers of meaning which are currently being added.

Less than a mile apart, these two locations are separated by a far wider ideo-

logical gap. It is worth brieﬂy considering how they are implicated in wider

processes of political signiﬁcation.

Calton Hill is a particularly emotive site for Scottish nationalists.As the setting

for the long-standing independence vigil, as a traditional venue for public demon-

HAYDEN LORIMER

104

stration and political protest, and as home to the Royal High School and proposed

citadel home for Scotland’s parliament during the unsuccessful devolution

campaign of 1979, the hill has become something of a shibboleth to nationalist

activists.Alex Salmond, leader of the SNP, declared the High School his favourite

building in the city and ‘a symbol for the new Scotland’ (Salmond 1998: 31).

The panoramic and historic qualities of the site were equally appealing to staunch

defenders of the Union; Andrew Neil, editor-in-chief of The Scotsman newspaper,

placed the site at ‘the centre of Scotland’s story’, declaring it ‘the symbolic heart

of the nation’ (Neil 1997: 16). The independent ‘Campaign for Calton Hill’

stressed the site’s many iconographic allusions to classical civilisations and the

democratic and educational ideals of the Enlightenment. As home to the Royal

Observatory and adorned with Scotland’s National Monument of 1822, a replica

Parthenon, Calton Hill was promoted as the location best placed to connect past,

present and future. For the nationalist sculptor Sandy Stoddart (1997), a parlia-

ment standing prominent and proud amid the monumentation of the ‘Athens of

the north’ would have been a huge symbolic step in the restoration of full sover-

eign rights to Scotland. It is presumably for this very reason that Donald Dewar

was so adamantly opposed to the site. Despite considerable political support and

undoubted public popularity, the Calton Hill option was deemed unsuitable and

ultimately unworkable.

By way of contrast, the then Secretary of State for Scotland chose with enthu-

siasm to promote the aesthetic opportunities offered by the Holyrood site, albeit

in characteristically benign and measured tones. While acknowledging that a

combination of naked party politics, environmental considerations and planning

practicalities might have militated in favour of Holyrood, it was worth consid-

ering the symbolic value of the site (McKean 1999). Abutting the city’s most

historic axis, the parliament is embedded in tradition, a new point of interest

punctuating the trip between castle and palace, Edinburgh’s two royal and ancient

seats. Local associations with Union and monarchy are unavoidable, and a helpful

reminder of Scotland’s current place within the British state. Without being

unduly conspiratorial, the Holyrood location can be interpreted as both a phys-

ical and a symbolic bulwark against the aspirations of over-eager secessionists.

Furthermore, being low and neighbourly in character, the deferent parliament

ought not to offend imperious eyes casting a glance from the palace just across

the lawn!

Conclusion: the architecture of democracy?

As a means to draw together the various commentaries offered thus far on the

new parliament, my conclusion considers how the rhetoric, if not the practice,

of consensual and participatory politics has characterised debate over the building.

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105

In April 1998, The Herald championed the parliament’s prospective design compe-

tition as an exercise in public consultation. ‘Nothing unites the Scottish people

as much as a good ﬁght over architecture,’ the national paper trumpeted; ‘it is

the most public of the arts and, since we all have to live with the results, we

all get our chance to have an opinion’ (McIntosh 1998). The sentiments were

meritorious, especially with Scotland’s thin record of modern self-representation

in both civic and governmental architecture in mind. However, the power of

popular opinion is easily emasculated when kept at a careful distance from process.

Throughout its early stages, the parliament project was referred to by govern-

ment spokespersons as an exercise in the ‘architecture of democracy’ (Lewis

1999). The connected buzz-phrase of ‘open government’ is one which hangs

portentously over the institution, its elected members and its planned architec-

ture. In the case of the latter, theory has converted very poorly into practice.

As Cameron and Markus (1998) pointed out, such ﬂimsy rhetoric masked serious

ﬂaws in the decision-making process and a continued vagueness over the parlia-

ment’s role as a public space. However rareﬁed, feelings of disenfranchisement

were made clear at the series of public information meetings organised by the

Royal Fine Art Commission for Scotland in the aftermath of the design decision.

The choice of long-list and short-list applicants, and the ﬁnal selection, were

made by a small and elite panel of judges led by Donald Dewar. Among its six

members was Kirsty Wark, broadcaster and architectural critic, the rationale

behind her inclusion presumably being that she would fulﬁl the role of ‘people’s

representative’. Little reasoning was offered for such an exclusionary selection

structure other than the very tight schedule to which the parliament project was

already running. With so little time to hand, mechanisms enabling public partic-

ipation were limited to two ‘whistle-stop’ touring roadshows displaying models,

sketches and videos, the provision of brief comment slips and a public exhibi-

tion, which opened shortly after the announcement of Miralles’s success. The

unsatisfactory result is that the national media provided the most open forum

for public debate. Indeed, for several months following the formal selection

procedure, an air of ambiguity and misinformation continued to cloak the parlia-

ment’s design. While in part reﬂecting the emphasis which Miralles places on

architectural design as a process, this has left the public with little tangible evidence

upon which to base their opinions, a particularly strange state of affairs given the

building’s ultimate purpose (Linklater 1999). While transparency, ‘openness’ and

accountability have become mythical mantras for a new type of politics in Britain,

the selection of site, architect and design for this new civic institution has failed

to live up to the democratic billing. Given these frailties, it is perhaps unsurprising

that at the advent of the parliament, an early debate calling for a reconsideration

of the entire project, and threatening to scupper its ﬁnancing by the public purse,

was only narrowly defeated (Dinwoodie 1999; Scott 1999a, 1999b). Having

HAYDEN LORIMER

106

charted Miralles’s upturned boat through these choppy waters, the government

has secured an ofﬁcial narrative for the parliament, but one which currently lacks

a ‘bottom-up’ component.

Miralles’s work is undoubtedly innovative, may well be inspirational and might

effectively promote a new Scotland in Europe, but as yet it remains distant from

the main audience at home. There are dangers inherent to an approach which

prioritises expert knowledge to the detriment of popular understanding. As

Lawrence Vale (1992: 321) notes, ‘the rhetoric may be about unity, but the

symbols chosen to represent the state are often the products of an elite with its

own set of group preferences’. Public familiarity and appreciation might well be

fostered through a localised and place-dependent design. Furthermore, we must

readily acknowledge that public interpretation is not necessarily passive or cosily

consensual.The ways in which people conceptualise the building might well differ

greatly from the original intentions of the architect. Yet surely, there is also

currency in Wates and Krevitt’s (1987: 18) assertion that an ‘environment works

better if the people who live, work and play in it are actively involved in its

creation and maintenance’. Iconic monuments, as symbols of the state, should

not bypass democratic participation.This chapter has demonstrated how a series

of intersecting and contesting narratives already surround the unbuilt parliament

on all sides. These will inevitably alter as the structure rises and then evolve in

the light of future events, experiences, ceremonies and memories.

One ﬁnal reﬂection on the future of nationhood remains, holding possible

implications for other Celtic communities within Britain’s evolving geography. I

perhaps cast aside one of Miralles’s lyrical descriptions with undue haste. The

cultural representation of devolved Scotland can indeed be understood as ‘a subtle

game of cross views and political implications’. If heightened national sensibili-

ties continue on their current trajectory, then careful orientation will be required

in the creation of new ‘sites of authenticity’.Wider projects of signiﬁcation, iden-

tiﬁcation and recovery have already entered the public domain. I think here of

the development of Scotland’s ﬁrst ever national policy on architecture, the estab-

lishment of a national cultural strategy, recent proposals for Scotland’s ﬁrst

National Parks and the possible restoration of valued landscapes to their ‘native’

ecological state. The active promotion of these varied efforts as contributory to

a national good can be viewed critically, if not sceptically. Might these be culti-

vating beds for defensive or exclusionary identity politics rather than new

expressions of citizenship or nationhood? The need therefore becomes one of

acknowledging the possibility of ﬁnding, in iconic national monuments and sites,

the ideological space in which to mobilise previously rooted understandings of

‘place’ and rework the desires bound up in ‘belonging’. Our relationship with

the past and the vehicles we choose for remembrance will be critical to these

projects, a point made powerfully by Nash (1999: 476) in her suggestion that,

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‘instead of obsessive re-iteration of the past as justiﬁcation for the divisions of

the present or historical amnesia or wilful forgetting, the past can be remem-

bered differently’. Scotland’s task in a burgeoning culture of civic representation

and national self-awareness must therefore be one of becoming, not being: an

aspiration which, come unveiling day, the parliament building will hopefully

manage to articulate.

Notes

1 The planned devolution of power to Northern Ireland, though comparable in certain

respects to current experiences in Wales and Scotland, is obviously complicated by

the protracted negotiations currently taking place over the implementation of the

Peace Agreement.

2 An extensive literature does exist which examines the inherent ‘Scottishness’ of

Scottish architecture (McKean 1993; Glendinning et al. 1996). Though of obvious

relevance, this debate does not mirror the chapter’s speciﬁc concern with iconic

national monuments.

3 Millbank Tower in London is the party headquarters of New Labour, while St Andrew’s

House in Edinburgh temporarily accommodates the new Scottish Executive.

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OUR COMMON INHERITANCE?

Narratives of self and other in the

Museum of Scotland

Steven Cooke and Fiona McLean

Identity and national identity have assumed new signiﬁcance in contemporary

debates. Identities are deemed to be in ‘crisis’ (Mercer 1990), where traditional

certainties are contested at the personal, national and global levels. The crisis

of national identities is manifested in a number of ways. The political upheavals

in Eastern Europe and the break-up of the USSR have led to a ‘search for lost

identities’ (Woodward 1997: 17), with the reconstruction of a number of

‘nations’. This fragmentation is also discernible in post-colonial Europe and the

USA, where previously marginalised ethnic groups are reasserting their identi-

ties. In Western Europe, where the European Community is asserting a ‘European

identity’, a number of regionalist and nationalist movements have come to the

fore. In this chapter we are particularly interested in the last of these assertions

of national identity, as manifested in contemporary cultural and political devel-

opments in the Celtic Fringe nation of Scotland.

The Celtic Fringe has an ‘indeﬁnite geography’ (Pittock 1999: 2), usually

encompassing Scotland,Wales and Ireland but remaining imprecise about whether,

for example, Central Belt Scotland or Industrial South Wales is to be included

in this deﬁnition. The use of the term ‘Celtic’ is justiﬁed, however, due to a

commonality of experiences in relation to an English centre and the undiffer-

entiated stereotypical image that has often been portrayed in British literature

and propaganda (ibid.). Our interest in this chapter is on Scotland as a Celtic

nation and, in particular, on how images of Scotland are produced and consumed

within a speciﬁc discursive site: that of the Museum of Scotland in Chambers

Street in Edinburgh. By examining the meanings constructed through the mate-

rial culture of the Scottish nation we can begin to understand the ways in which

national identity is manifested in personal accounts. Scotland is already repre-

sented in a number of ways, particularly through the promotion of tourism,

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which often draws on the stereotypical images of the ‘Celtic’ to attract tourists.

The challenge for the Museum of Scotland is to represent Scotland through the

artefacts that have been acquired and have survived within the collections of the

Museum. This representation is both produced and consumed; that is, both the

creators of the Museum’s exhibits and the visitors to the Museum make their

own ‘readings’ of the objects contained therein, readings which in some way

signify ‘Scotland’.The focus of this chapter is on the visitors to the Museum and

the ways in which they ‘read’ the identity of Scotland through the exhibits.

National identity and difference

There are numerous ways of understanding national identity. Our point of depar-

ture is the seminal work of Anderson, who wrote of the nation as an ‘imagined

community’ (1983). Different national identities are imagined in different ways

and it is this that makes difference the marker of identity. This manifests itself

through representational systems, which symbolically mark the self in relation

to others. For example, national identity is often actively afﬁrmed by the banal

symbolism of the signiﬁers of identity, such as the national ﬂag (Billig 1995). By

marking ‘us’ and ‘them’, certain groups of people will be included and excluded.

Since difference is often expressed in terms of a dualism, such as male/female,

English/Scottish, identity is relational (Woodward 1997). The dualism in iden-

tity formation involves an unequal opposition, with a constituent imbalance of

power between the two terms (Derrida 1976). In the case of Scotland, the imag-

ined community has marked boundaries, a geographical space bounded by the

border with England. England, though, has historically been the dominant partner

since the merging of the English and Scottish Parliaments after the Treaty of

Union in 1707. Within this Union, England has dominated politically, although

Scotland enjoyed a distinctive level of autonomy within the UK civic society,

retaining control over the Church, education and the law (Paterson 1994).

However, in cultural terms it has been argued that Scotland has suffered an

‘inferiority complex’ due to its cultural subordination to England, whereby

Scottish intellectuals have devalued Scottish culture in order to ‘undermine the

self-belief of a dependent people’ (Beveridge and Turnbull 1989: 12). This has

been achieved through ‘metropolitan assessments of Scottish life, which inevitably

misjudge its character and potential and automatically codify Scottish culture as

inferior to metropolitan styles’ (ibid.: 15). Such inferiorism is manifest in a ‘dark’

discourse of Scotland that is distrustful of Scottish traditions which are consid-

ered backward.The political dominance of England came to a head in the 1980s

and 1990s, when Scotland was effectively ruled by a New Right government that

it had continually rejected in general elections.The election of a Labour govern-

ment in 1997 provided the opportunity for constitutional change in Scotland.

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The referendum later that year resulted in an overwhelming vote in favour of a

Scottish Parliament, which reconvened for the ﬁrst time since 1707 in 1999.

What cultural identity is being expressed in Scotland and how does it mark

difference? The symbols and myths of Scotland belong to a Highland Scotland

that was appropriated in the eighteenth century as evidence of a distinctive culture

(Pittock 1999). This cultural distinction rested on a Celtic or Gaelic deﬁnition

in contradistinction to Anglo-Saxon England (Chapman 1992). Thus the ‘Celtic’

is a particularly relevant marker within Scottish national identity which has

persisted and retains its resonance at the expense of other markers within Scottish

society. This iconography, which has international resonance, has been appropri-

ated and developed by the Scottish Tourist Board to attract visitors to Scotland.

It typically consists of images of tartan, Highland mountain scenery, Bonnie Prince

Charlie and Culloden, and more recently the ‘Braveheart’ factor of William

Wallace and Robert the Bruce.

The codiﬁcation of difference is thus an essential aspect of identity construc-

tion. These differences are unequal in power where the weaker ‘self’ is more

likely to seek to deﬁne the ‘other’. In the case of Scotland, the dominant ‘other’

has traditionally been England. In the contemporary world, with increased frag-

mentation and weakening of the centre, the periphery is increasingly likely to

seek to deﬁne this ‘other’ through cultural markers (Friedman 1994). Thus, not

only is difference marked through inclusion and exclusion of certain groups of

people, but also symbolically through representational systems. However, as the

centre has weakened with recent constitutional change, not only in Scotland but

also in Wales and Northern Ireland, it has been argued that ideas of Celtic iden-

tity have resurfaced as an alternative signiﬁer in counterpoint to an Anglo-Saxon

centre. This mobilisation of the Celt (McCrone 1998) has seen the dualism

between Celtic and Anglo-Saxon caricatures activated to locate a new Celtic

identity in the ‘personal, the immediate, [and] the social’ (ibid.: 58) as the

antithesis of the perceived Anglo-Saxon centre. Museums are locations where

such contestations over deﬁnitions of national identity take place through the

embodiment of particular narratives of national identity. Therefore the next

section will explore the place of the museum in national identity formation.

Museums, national identity and the Museum of

Scotland

Our starting point for discussion in this section is the symbolic representation of

national identity. According to Woodward, ‘Representation includes the signify-

ing practices and symbolic systems through which meanings are produced and

which position us as subjects. Representations produce meanings through which

we can make sense of our experience and of who we are’ (1997: 14). National

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iconography is central to this meaning-making, as is language. Language, though,

is at its most powerful when it is used in ‘discursive strategies’; that is, the telling

of national cultures (Hall 1996) where the narrative of the nation is told and retold.

As Smith has argued,‘the modern nation, to become truly a “nation”, requires the

unifying myths, symbols and memories of pre-modern ethnic’ (1988: 11). In this,

a sense of a shared past, a common identity is created, where national identity and

history are inseparable (Bhabha 1990b). According to McCrone, ‘the “capture” of

history took its obvious expression in the founding of national museums in which

the nation’s “heritage” could be shown to best advantage’ (1998: 53). National

museums, then, are important signiﬁers of national identity.

In museums, the systems of representation produce meanings through objects

and their display. A museum is deﬁned as an institution that ‘enable[s] people to

explore collections for inspiration, learning and enjoyment. They . . . collect,

safeguard and make accessible artefacts and specimens, which they hold in trust

for society’ (Museums Association 1998). Museums endow objects with value

because their very existence in the museum represents cultural importance,

whether it be monetary value, unusual association or geographical association.

They are imbued with institutional power, the activities of collecting and

exhibiting being political, objects being appropriated and displayed for certain

ends.The museum becomes an arbiter of meaning since its institutional position

allows it to ‘articulate and reinforce the scientiﬁc credibility of frameworks of

knowledge . . . through its methods of display’ (Lidchi 1997: 198). The autho-

rial voice of the museum is also an authoritative voice.The relationship between

the national museum and the nation is one where the museum is the manifes-

tation of the nation, a space where the nation is made visible.

The creation of national museums tends to coincide with surges of nation-

alism (Kaplan 1994). This was witnessed both in the nineteenth century and in

the latter half of the twentieth century (Gellner 1996). The impetus to create

the Museum of Scotland has a long and contentious history dating from the

beginning of the twentieth century. However, the decision to build was made in

1992, before the political developments witnessed in Scotland and other parts

of the UK at the end of the 1990s. Nevertheless, the opening of the Museum

by HM the Queen on St Andrew’s Day 1998 can be seen within the context of

a number of other building projects which indicate an assertion of national iden-

tity in other ‘Celtic’ nations. These include the new Scottish Parliament building

itself (see Lorimer, this volume) and the Millennium Stadium in Wales.

Despite a last-minute rush to complete the exhibitions for the Queen’s arrival,

the Museum opened to both popular and critical acclaim (see, inter alia, The

Scotsman, 28 November 1998, ‘Fabric of the Nation’; The Times, 1 December

1998,‘Queen’s tribute to “ﬁtting” Museum’; The Herald, 1 November 1998,‘Making

St Andrew’s Day’). A number of Scottish national newspapers provided detailed

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plans of the exhibition spaces, and the opening was covered in the majority of

editorials that day (see, for example, The Scotsman, 1 November 1998).The impor-

tance given to the Museum in Scottish identity formation by Scotland’s ﬁrst First

Minister, the late Donald Dewar, was made explicit in the linkage between the

Museum and the new Parliament. He suggested that there had been ‘two momen-

tous happenings. One was the opening of the Museum of Scotland, and the other

was the reinstatement of the Scottish Parliament. The future interplay between

these two key institutions will help shape both our cultural identity and consti-

tutional destiny in the next millennium’ (2000: ix).

The Museum of Scotland employs traditional museological techniques,

whereby the majority of the more than 10,000 artefacts are housed in glass cases

and are contextualised by illustration and text. According to the National

Museums of Scotland (NMS) – the umbrella body that runs the Museum of

Scotland – the artefacts were chosen to ‘present Scotland to the World’ and are

arranged both thematically and chronologically. That is, as the visitor ascends

within the Museum, he or she ascends in time, from the displays on geology and

archaeological ‘Early People’ in the basement, through to the Twentieth Century

gallery on level six.The intervening ﬂoors narrate speciﬁc historical periods and

contain exhibitions dealing with ‘The Kingdom of the Scots’, which displays arte-

facts related to the emergence of Scotland as a nation, and ‘Scotland Transformed’,

which takes the story from the Act of Union in 1707 to the nineteenth century.

‘Industry and Empire’ is located on levels four and ﬁve and contains exhibitions

on the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Contained within this broad chronology,

however, are speciﬁc themes, such as religion, which run throughout the Museum.

In order to explore issues relating to the production and consumption of

national identity in the Museum, in-depth interviews were undertaken with visi-

tors to the Museum of Scotland over a period of two weeks during the spring

of 1999. Interviewees were asked a number of questions that attempted to inves-

tigate issues of national identity formation and how this was related to their visit

to the Museum. The categories of visitor corresponded to the target audiences

of the NMS and comprised visitors to the Museum from Scotland, the rest of

the UK and the rest of the world. Approximately ninety interviews were under-

taken within the Museum of Scotland. These were then taped, transcribed and

analysed by coding.

Presenting Scotland

Deﬁning the other, deﬁning the self

During the interview, the visitors were asked whether they thought that the

Museum of Scotland was ‘saying anything about Scotland’, or whether they

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thought that it presented any particular image of Scotland.Within the responses

of those who identiﬁed themselves as ‘Scots’, three main themes can be identi-

ﬁed. The ﬁrst related to the perceived role of the Museum as a place for the

telling of history, as illustrated in the following comments:

It’s showing what we have historically in artefacts.

It’s just telling its history.

Well, it’s trying to give a broad outline of everything, I think.

However, there was no clear agreement on what that image was. The most

common answer was that the Museum was in some way promoting a positive

image of Scotland, perhaps reﬂecting the core brief of the Museum of Scotland,

‘presenting Scotland to the World’.

It seems to be trying to promote a kind of pride or conﬁdence in iden-

tity. I don’t, I don’t – it’s not particularly nationalistic I don’t think, I

wouldn’t know if some people would think that.

Basically I think it’s just showing Scotland at its best you know. Not a

particular image as such, just shows Scotland in general.

Many visitors were unclear or undecided about whether the Museum was

trying to present any particular image. Others took this a stage further, relating

to the question on a conceptual level, and arguing that the visitors were free to

make up their own minds about the messages in the Museum.

I think there is so much and too many people will come at it from a

different perspective that you can really choose what you take out of

it. There’s no one speciﬁc message.

[Pause] You are free to make up your own mind.

Apart from the idea that the Museum of Scotland could be seen as an ‘ambas-

sador’ for Scotland, presenting a positive image of Scotland to the rest of the

world, the Scottish visitors seemed to have little sense that the Museum had a

deﬁnitional role.

Two main themes also emerged from those visitors from the rest of the UK.

The ﬁrst theme echoed that of the Scottish respondents, relating to what was

considered to be the main function of the Museum: as a place where the history

of Scotland could be represented. For example:

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Just showing a chronology of its history . . . a country of deep heritage.

It’s all about sort of history. From the beginning to the present day I

suppose.

History and the things that have happened.

Well, it seems to have . . . the historical side of it quite well, it’s not

terribly exciting but it’s all right, I don’t really know what it’s trying

to say.

However, the main difference between the people who identiﬁed themselves

as Scots and those who identiﬁed themselves as from the rest of the UK was the

way in which the ‘non-Scots’ saw the Museum of Scotland as in some way deﬁning

Scotland.

Very much of an individual nation.

They are making Scotland’s identity very clear, um, pieces of historical

facts and . . . most objects of Scotland, yeah.

It’s saying about Scotland that it’s got a long history. I formed the impres-

sion in the early part of the Museum of a very war-like history.

[It’s about] the English, battling with the English over the borders.

Although the ‘producers’ of the Museum have distanced themselves from any

suggestion that the Museum was attempting to deﬁne Scotland or had national-

istic overtones,

it is apparent that many of the non-Scots whom we interviewed

did view the Museum in this way. Further, this response appeared to be medi-

ated through their readings of the exhibition displays. This was activated by

confrontations with a number of displays that explicitly connoted the relation-

ship between England and Scotland.

Flagging the nation: the politics of display

Museums construct certain visions of the world through the classiﬁcation and

display of material culture. As we have seen, the production and consumption

of the meanings that are generated through the interrelationships between the

artefacts and the viewer do not always, or necessarily, coincide. Visitors bring

their own life histories, experiences and contexts to the Museum and will ‘read’

the Museum accordingly. This was evident in the responses of the non-Scots we

interviewed. Billig (1995) has argued that one of the ways in which the nation

is constructed is through its continual referencing, often unnoticed, in everyday

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life. The existence of the Museum of Scotland is, itself, part of this ﬂagging

through the understanding that there is this thing called ‘Scotland’ and that

Scottish material culture is a relevant category for collection, interpretation and

display. The non-Scots, however, seemed to recognise a more conspicuous ﬂag-

ging of the nation within the exhibitions, speciﬁcally the Declaration of Arbroath.

The Declaration was a letter to Pope John XXII in 1320 in response to an English

attempt to have Robert the Bruce excommunicated (see Mackie 1991). The

section of the Declaration quoted in the Museum of Scotland reads: ‘for, so long

as but a hundred remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under

English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are

ﬁghting, but for freedom – for that alone, which no honest man [sic] gives up

but with life itself.’ This is written in large letters on the walls of the ‘Scotland

Deﬁned’ gallery, which is the ﬁrst exhibition space in ‘The Kingdom of the Scots’.

It is one of the ﬁrst historical exhibition spaces that the visitor enters and also

contains some of the iconic artefacts of Scottish nationhood, such as the

Monymusk Reliquary, carried with Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn in 1314.

That the Declaration could inﬂuence visitors’ readings of the Museum can be

seen in the following exchange between two non-Scots during their interview.

VISITOR 1: Oh it’s quite dangerous really [laughs].There is, that was the impres-

sion that I got, which is OK by me.

VISITOR 2: No it’s much more subtle.

VISITOR 1: It wasn’t when you came in the front door . . .

INTERVIEWER

: What was it about the door?

VISITOR 1: Well the thing, there’s an inscription on the wall saying you know,

‘we’ll never lose our freedom’. No it’s not the, it’s just before that. There

are two bits of handwriting . . . you know, kind of ‘freedom’ and ‘we don’t

want to be subjugated by anyone’ and you expect that. It’s the nearest to a

‘V’ sign on the building.

Another non-Scottish visitor commented:

Well, I think it’s obviously trying to give a very broad feel of the history

of Scotland right from the sort of the word go. Perhaps one or two of

the introductory displays or presentations are a little bit nationalist in

their ﬂavour, some dangerous perhaps [laughs].

One explanation of why the non-Scots articulated a reading of ‘Scotland’ in

the Museum as a separate nation was because their own ‘national identity’ was

problematised. Said (1978) argues that the representation of the ‘other’ is also

part of the construction of the ‘self’. As part of this process of distinction, non-

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Scots visiting the Museum, as well as learning who ‘the Scots’ are, learn that

they are not Scottish.The non-Scottish visitors articulated a reading of ‘Scotland’

in the Museum as a separate nation. As we shall see, the referencing of the

perceived distinctiveness of material made in Scotland through the narratives of

the exhibition displays seemingly disrupted the idea of an unquestioned British/

English identity.

In order to situate the visitor’s readings of the Museum within a wider context,

another of the questions asked during the interview related to perceived differ-

ences between being English and being Scottish. The answers were many and

varied, and we are unable to deal with them sufﬁciently here for reasons of

space. However, some non-Scots explicitly commented on this sense of disrup-

tion and the resulting need to reconceptualise the idea of ‘England’ in the light

of perceived changes to Scottish identity.

VISITOR 1: Yes, you’ve got your music in a way that we haven’t got a national

music.

VISITOR 2: I think you’re more uniﬁed, culturally. I mean one could go on, the

literature it does cross . . . but the poetry is different.

VISITOR 1: You celebrate, well, you celebrate your nationality in a way that we

don’t.

VISITOR 2: I think we take much more for granted and are more sort of diverse

about it, in some ways we assume it rather than state it, but all this is forcing

us in the end of the decade to come up with what is ‘English’ compared to

‘British’.

These visitors thus articulated how English identity was seemingly predicated on a

uniﬁed ‘British’identity.The perception that such a ‘British’identity is under threat,

either through closer involvement in the European Union, or the rise in Scottish

and Welsh identities, necessitated a rethinking of what it meant to be ‘English’.

The changing conceptualisations of Cohen’s (1994) ‘fuzzy’ British identity were

further evidenced within the interviews. As suggested earlier, it has been argued

that Scotland looks to England as a deﬁnitional ‘other’ due to political and

economic dominance since the Act of Union in 1707. However, Scotland has

been viewed as too small to perform that deﬁnitional role for England (Beveridge

and Turnbull 1989). One of the most interesting themes that emerged from both

the Scottish and non-Scottish respondents was the idea, that for a variety of

reasons, Scotland had a stronger national identity than England. For example,

some Scots commented:

I think we’ve a greater sense of national identity, um, a greater sense

of nationalism without arrogance and I think more self-worth.

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I think they have more of an identity – Scotland. England doesn’t have

an identity. It has some, some small corners of England, in the north-

east it has more of an identity but it doesn’t have a national identity,

England. It’s a mish-mash of a whole load of people. The only thing I

can think of is Morris dancing [laughs]; it doesn’t inspire me that much.

Visitors from England shared these views. For example,

Yeah, the Scottish people are much more competent in their own iden-

tity whereas the English tend to shufﬂe their feet and go ‘I’m British’.

I don’t see it as being that important whether you are Scottish or English

or unless you fervently support, like, football teams and things like that.

I think . . . it’s quite, I suppose it’s quite nice having a Scottish iden-

tity but I mean because being English I don’t, I don’t really feel I’ve

any kind of national identity at all.

Although England does seem to continue to function as a deﬁnitional ‘other’ for

the Scottish visitors in our study, what is also evident is a redeﬁnition of Scottish

identity, conceivably an abandonment of the ‘cultural cringe’ identiﬁed by

Beveridge and Turnbull in 1989. For example, one Scot suggested:

Well, there is bound to be [differences between England and Scotland].

But to pinpoint something . . . I think the Scots generally do carry a

wee bit of a chip on their shoulder, but at the same time they have this

attitude of ‘no one’s like us’. It’s a dichotomy if you like, there’s two

extremes, we feel hard done by, but we know we’re the best really.

A visitor from England echoed this assertion of a positive Scottish identity:

I think, the one thing I notice about Scots in general . . . Scots tend to

be more demonstrative, you know, more outgoing and proud of their

country whereas we in England, we tend to be a bit more holding back

a bit, we don’t shout as much about our history . . . I ﬁnd the Scots

are more proud of being Scottish than the English are of being English,

I think that’s the truth to some extent.

There is, thus, an ambivalence to Scottish identity on the part of the non-Scots.

On the one hand, the Scots are seen as more nationalistic. On the other, this is

considered a potential advantage, being couched in terms of a perceived pride

in being Scottish, compared with a perceived lack of an English identity – ‘It’s

quite nice having a Scottish identity but I mean, because being English I don’t,

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I don’t really feel I’ve any kind of national identity at all’; see also McCrone

(1998) on the denial of English nationalism.

Re-reading history

The readings of the Museum were also inﬂuenced by the contemporary politi-

cal context in which the visit took place. For example, one Scottish visitor

referenced the Museum within the contemporary political context of a newly

devolved Scottish Parliament, noting what he saw as the careful balancing act

that the Museum ‘producers’ had navigated:

VISITOR: I think, it does actually identify Scotland as being a very separate

entity with a very particular history as distinguished from generally British

history. But . . . it focuses very well, I think, on the particular Scottish iden-

tity and, and you know for the ﬁrst time, because we’ve always learned

history in a context with its associations with England and how it is perceived

as a sort of general, I mean it’s quite interesting actually to see it in its very

unique, individual sense.

INTERVIEWER: Do you get the sense that the Museum is trying to present a

particular image of Scotland?

VISITOR: I think there are odd times, odd things that made me smile. They

were being very careful, well, it’s hard to say really, but it’s hard I think

with the, with . . . devolution and the political atmosphere outside to

completely divorce what’s happening out there with, with what the Museum

is saying in here, so yeah [laughs].

As Samuel (1994) has argued, history is a continual process of reinterpreta-

tion for the purposes of the present. Memory is continually ‘changing colour

and shape according to the energies of the moment; that so far from being handed

down in the timeless form of “tradition” it is progressively altered from gener-

ation to generation’ (1994: x). Each generation re-reads history through the lens

of its contemporary context. That the readings of the exhibition spaces of the

Museum seem to be inﬂuenced by the visitors’ own preconceptions is given voice

by one non-Scottish visitor, who explained why he thought the Museum was

attempting to deﬁne Scotland:

It’s saying that Scotland is different. . . . It’s not quite saying that Scotland

is independent but I think that’s, I’m a bit looking for that, having been

alerted to it by the devolution thing. . . . I’ve been looking for infor-

mation about the Act of Union and I’ve found very little about that.

I found an awful lot about William Wallace and Robert the Bruce and

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the Jacobites so I’m bound to see the Museum as part of that reasser-

tion, but also, what’s the word, when you block something out of your

memory? There’s a kind of national – really a sort of . . . Scotland did

become part of the UK scene in the terms of the time and more or

less a voluntary act. So what’s it saying? It says something slightly dodgy

about how Scotland isn’t really part of Britain. I can see it’s quite difﬁ-

cult to straddle these [things] so I’m quite sympathetic to the way that

they’ve handled it.

The idea that Wallace, Bruce and the Jacobites dominated the Museum spaces is

in direct contrast to the main discourses of media criticism of the Museum. One

of the very few public criticisms of the Museum is that it focuses insufﬁcient

attention on such areas of Scottish history as Robert the Bruce and especially

William Wallace: two ﬁgures of great symbolic importance in the mythology of

Scotland (McCrone et al. 1995; Edensor 1997). References to Wallace and Bruce

are conﬁned to excerpts from the Declaration of Arbroath and three exhibition

cases in ‘The Kingdom of the Scots’.

Our intention here is not to adjudicate between different readings of the

Museum. Visitors bring different and often competing visions of the Museum

with them. This particular visitor would certainly be in a minority in his asser-

tion that Wallace, Bruce and the Jacobites dominate the Museum. However, the

important point here is to highlight the different possible readings of the Museum

in a discussion of Scottish identity among the different visitors. For Scots, the

Museum seems to be a space that articulates a positive history for Scotland. For

the non-Scots we interviewed, the Museum is read as disrupting the ‘taken-for-

granted’ British identity by calling attention to a perceived Scottish ‘nationalism’.

This is mediated, though, through references to their conceptions of the politi-

cal, social, economic and cultural landscape of contemporary Britain.

Conclusions

This chapter has argued that national museums have an important role for our

understandings of national identity. National identity is a discourse (Bhabha

1990b), articulated through ‘legends and landscapes’ (Daniels 1993). As a place

where the symbols of a nation are displayed for consumption and where the

national story is made manifest, museums are a fascinating location in which to

explore the relationship between narratives of national identity and the individual

subject. The Museum of Scotland is a place where discourses of national iden-

tity are played out, as a space for the negotiations between difference/sameness,

not only within Scotland but also, as we have argued, in the rest of Britain,

especially England.

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Given the visitors’ conceptions of national identity and their thoughts about

the role of the Museum, it is unlikely that the Museum of Scotland can be

assigned a straightforward role in the production of national identity. In other

words, it would be wrong to attribute a direct inculcation of meanings about

Scotland from producers, via material culture, to the visitors, or indeed direct

from material culture to visitor (‘letting the object speak for itself’).The Museum

should be seen as a space through which various notions of national identity are

articulated, a space for the creative retelling of narratives of Scotland by both

producers and consumers through the relationship between the material culture

and the contexts that each brings to the Museum.

Through the political decisions made by the producers and the arrangement

and juxtaposition of Scottish material culture, it would seem that the Museum

has, however, an important role to play in prompting the ideas of the nation that

visitors bring with them, even if the meanings ‘escape’ the intentions of the

producers. This is not to deny the institutional power of the Museum to tell

authoritative stories of the nation, nor the pedagogic power of the Museum as

an educational resource. Rather, it is to suggest that meaning is produced within

various individual contexts. During the spring of 1999, when the ﬁeldwork for

this chapter took place, the election campaign for the re-created Scottish

Parliament was in progress. With these political developments and the idea of

Britain in such a high-proﬁle state of ﬂux it is, therefore, perhaps unsurprising

that many of the non-Scottish visitors read the Museum as representing an asser-

tion of Scottish national identity.

What is, perhaps, more surprising is the positive connotations of Scottish iden-

tity among many of the visitors, both Scots and non-Scots, given the historical

‘cultural cringe’. More research is needed into this possible reworking of Scottish

identity and into the relationship between the contemporary political context

and the future redeﬁnitions of ‘Scottishness’. For example, what implications

does greater political autonomy have for ideas of Scottish national identity and

how is identity mobilised within political discourse? As the symbols of a nation

change, how do people’s interactions with them change? What is the signiﬁcance

for marginalised identities within contemporary Scotland? Does a place-based

civic conception of Scottish identity allow a greater degree of play between

national identity and other discursive frames of gender, ethnicity, class and so

on? Where does this leave the relationship between Scotland and its traditional

‘other’, England? What implications does this have for identiﬁcation across the

border and for constructions of ‘sameness’? Does the Museum have a role to

play in fostering social inclusion through negotiation of sameness/difference?

This chapter, then, has suggested that the markers of the centre and the

periphery are changing. Whereas England was previously viewed as the domi-

nant nation in the Scotland/England dualism and less likely to seek to deﬁne

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the ‘self’ in relation to the Scottish ‘other’, this research has suggested that the

balance of power is shifting. The contemporary political and cultural context

seems to be paralleled by a new-found conﬁdence among the Scots and a ‘crisis

of identity’ among the English. As ‘Britishness’ waned in the late twentieth cen-

tury (McCrone 1998), it appears that, within the spaces of the Museum, Scots

treat being Scottish as unproblematic, whereas English identity is proving increas-

ingly problematic, particularly when confronted by the ‘other’. Understanding

the narratives of identity within the Museum of Scotland, therefore, has impor-

tant implications for our conceptualisations of centre and periphery and of Celtic

identity.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Leverhulme Trust, which funded a two-year research

project investigating the construction of national identity at the Museum of

Scotland.We would also like to thank the trustees and staff of the NMS for their

kind assistance and support throughout the project.

Note

1 This was achieved by undertaking extensive self-reﬂexive interviews with curators

of the Museum of Scotland. The themes evident within the discourses of the

‘producers’ were not monolithic (see Cooke and McLean 1999). However, the idea

that, although the Museum should be telling a story of Scotland, the story that it

told should be non-proscriptive, was prevalent. Also instrumental in this multi-

vocality is the architectural layout of the museum. The lack of a structured route

through the exhibition spaces is an important part in the ambiguity of meanings

(McLean and Cooke 1999).

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TOURISM IMAGES AND THE

CONSTRUCTION OF CELTICITY

IN IRELAND AND BRITTANY

Moya Kneafsey

Before you go, ask yourself some questions . . .

. . . is there magic in the air?

(Bord Fáilte: http://www.ireland.travel.ie/home/index.asp)

Magic, mystery, music and laughter: these are some of the essential ingredients

of a holiday in Ireland, according to Bord Fáilte’s 1999 tourism literature. These

ingredients could also be construed to be part of an essentially ‘Celtic’ experi-

ence within the context of popular perceptions which tend to link ideas about

the Celt to things spiritual, ancient, ‘alternative’ and natural. It is increasingly

recognised that these contemporary constructions of Celticity have their origins

in the existence of historically layered social relationships whereby Celts have

been positioned as ‘peripheral others’ to a deﬁning ‘centre’. In relation to this,

it is generally acknowledged that ‘[T]ourism is one of the engines which manu-

facture and structure relationships between centres and peripheries’ (Selwyn

1996: 9). The aim in this chapter, therefore, is to consider the extent to which

current tourism images of two ‘Celtic’ places – namely, the Republic of Ireland

and Brittany – attempt to both tap into and reinforce a romanticised social

construction of Celts as ‘peripheral others’ to the modern, urban and industri-

alised ‘centre’.

It is argued that, while such images do continue to use devices which help to

deﬁne the Celts and Celtic regions as peripheral others, broader tourism-related

processes are simultaneously contributing to the destabilisation of these centre–

periphery relations and to the multiplication of sites of the construction of

Celticity. It is suggested that the production of Celticity is becoming more

geographically diffuse as a result of the increased commodiﬁcation and globali-

sation of Celtic images and myths, a trend that is related, in part, to tourism.

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Moreover, a comparative examination of the case of tourism promotion points

to the existence of peripheries within the periphery, with some locations qual-

ifying for the status of ‘most Celtic’ and others attempting to emulate certain

characteristics and create their own Celticised identities. Overall, the observa-

tions presented here suggest that there is a need to complicate the centre–

periphery model of Celtic identity construction by incorporating a recognition

of the multiple and shifting nature of centres and peripheries within the context

of a global market place of images and identities. In order to explore these

contentions further, it is ﬁrst necessary to examine the centre–periphery frame-

work within which the social construction of the Celts can be understood.

The social construction of the Celts: a

centre–periphery framework

As demonstrated by Hale and Payton (2000), the concept of ‘the Celts’ has under-

gone a number of critiques since the 1980s. Some of the earliest challenges came

from work which examined the foundations of nationalism and questioned the

links between language, culture and ethnicity – particularly Anderson (1983) and

Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983). These approaches led to a re-examination of the

‘invented traditions’ and symbols of Celtic identity that were often associated

with nationalist movements. Malcolm Chapman (1992) offered one of the ﬁrst

and most prominent critiques of the idea of the Celts. He argues that the ‘myth

of the Celts’ represents a ‘continuity of naming’ rather than a continuity of expe-

rience. Chapman points out that although many modern writers assume that

some groups of people in early Europe ‘called themselves Celts’ (his emphasis),

very little evidence for this actually exists (1992: 30). Rather, the category dates

from Greek and Roman classiﬁcatory systems and has been stitched together

from written sources, literary endeavours and archaeological remains.

This point is reinforced by more recent research by James (1999a), who states

that there is no archaeological evidence connecting insular peoples of Iron Age

Britain and Ireland with the named Celtic populations of the Continent.According

to Chapman, a fundamental feature of the deﬁnition of the Celts has been that

they are on the edge of a more dominant world. Chapman’s thesis echoes earlier

work on the concept of internal colonialism (Hechter 1975), its crux being that

a central deﬁning power establishes and controls fashion, acting as a hub of inno-

vation which consciously differentiates itself from the periphery, which it ﬁnds

old-fashioned or unfashionable. The periphery, meanwhile, systematically aspires

to be ‘like’ the centre, and thus adopts what it perceives as sophisticated and

modern habits which ‘ripple’ out from the centre.

Chapman introduces the notion of an ‘apparent’ counter-current to the rip-

ples emanating from the centre – namely, romanticism. He argues that until

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the eighteenth century the ‘nations’ of Europe had been preoccupied with estab-

lishing their own political, linguistic, religious and intellectual centrality. Once

this centrality was established, the possibility of celebrating the disorderly but

non-threatening ‘ethnic fringe’ emerged. So, for example, sixteenth-century

stereotypes of the Irish as an uncivilised, pagan race, which had been developed

to support the ideology of English colonialism (Canny 1973; Rolston 1995),

were overlaid by a romanticised version of the Irish as a poetic, spiritual people,

living close to God and nature.Writers, poets and artists cast the minority Celts

as pre-modern peripheral ‘other’ to the modernising core of Western Europe.

The poverty and destitution of many Irish landscapes was avoided or ‘painted

out’ by artists such as George Barret, while authors like William Carleton tried

to make peasant poverty acceptable through picturesque settings or incorporating

scenes of ‘lively melodrama’ into their work (Duffy 1997: 67). As Champion

(1996) notes, romanticism and nationalism also exerted strong formative inﬂu-

ences on academic and scholarly interpretations of archaeological records, which

subsequently came to stand as ‘facts’. At the same time, language came to be

regarded as an expression of both individual and collective identity (Johnson

1997). Celtic peoples and places were thus identiﬁed by the existence of Celtic

languages which were seen as links to pre-modern civilisations and cultures.

The romantic movement originated in England but spread to other European

countries. Kockel (1995), for example, notes that images of Ireland were also

constructed in opposition to notions of German national identity. He cites the

writer Heinrich Böll who, in 1957, declared that ‘in our country almost every-

thing is the opposite of what it is in Ireland’. His book An Irish Journal enticed

thousands of Germans to visit what they ‘perceived as a magical island on the

edge of a civilised world’ (Kockel 1995: 135). Ireland was thus established as an

object for displaced German romantic longings.

In the case of Brittany, constructions of Celticity occurred largely within the

less stable context of French romanticism. Brittany was often a source of royalist,

regionalist and religious opposition to Republicanism and thus a threat to the

stability of the centre. As such, the romanticisation of the region was perhaps

not as well entrenched as that of Ireland. Nevertheless, in opposition to the ratio-

nality of the Republic, a romantic construction of Brittany developed, whereby

the region came to be seen as a feminine, lyrical, ritual and spiritual world: ‘The

minority Celt began to become a metaphor for all that the dominant rationality

was not’ (McDonald 1989: 105).As in Ireland, an elite-led discourse of autonomy

developed, which based its claims for independence largely upon the existence of

the Breton language.This was used as evidence for the presence of a Celtic iden-

tity, consciousness and culture which were different from those of the colonising

French state (Keating 1988; Meadwell 1983; Brubaker 1992). The link between

Celticity and language endures, for although many academics now agree that the

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term ‘Celtic’ is a construction dating from the early modern period, the word

is still widely used to refer to the peoples and languages of Cornwall, Ireland,

Wales, Brittany, the Isle of Man and Scotland (Hale and Payton 2000).

Chapman describes romanticism as an ‘apparent’ counter-current because it

is primarily a new fashion at the centre: ‘The centre looks to the rural fringe,

ﬁnds there archaic cultural features, and turns them into fashionable items; but

this re-evaluation occurs in the centre, for the beneﬁt of the centre, with a logic

determined by the centre’ (1992: 138).This interpretation is still broadly sustain-

able, although it could be added that with the increased commercialisation and

globalisation of Celticity, there is now less correspondence to geographic centres

and peripheries than previously. For instance, as illustrated by many of the contri-

butions in this volume, there are now multiple sites of construction of versions

of the Celt, ranging from Tartan Days in North America (Hague), youth culture

in London (Kent), ‘ethnic’ Cornish and neo-Druidic spiritualists in Cornwall

(Hale) to institutional productions of national histories (Lorimer, Cooke and

McLean) and campaigns to promote tourism such as those discussed here. In

order to explore the extent to which tourism images either reinforce or disrupt

these centre–periphery relations, therefore, the chapter now turns to an exam-

ination of some recent tourism images of the Republic of Ireland and Brittany.

Tourism images of Ireland and Brittany: perpetuating

centre–periphery relations?

The following discussion is based on widely available ofﬁcial brochures produced

by the Irish and Breton tourism agencies since 1994, plus postcards, travel books

and commercial publicity (such as holiday brochures, and Irish and Brittany ferries

brochures). Generally, both places are able to draw on long-established repre-

sentations of themselves as peripheral ‘other’ to England and France, and Europe

more broadly. Three interlinked themes can be identiﬁed which reﬂect this

centre–periphery deﬁnitional framework.

The ‘myth of the West’

In both Ireland and Brittany, geographical westerliness has historically been asso-

ciated with Celticity and ‘otherness’ in general. Indeed, this reﬂects a theme

common to many geographical imaginations:

[T]he invocation of the west as a source of heroism, mystery and romance

goes back at least to antiquity, and is found in many different cultures

under such varied names as Atlantis, Elysium, El Dorado or the English

Land of Cockaigne. In modern times, however, Ireland and the United

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States would seem to be outstanding examples of countries in which

the myth of the west has been elevated to the level of a national ideal.

(Gibbons 1996: 23)

Nineteenth-century artistic representations of the west of Ireland, shaped by

romanticism and reﬂecting the priorities and preferences of Victorian England,

portrayed it as exotic, sublime and picturesque. Its landscapes of ‘horrible beauty’

and the wild people living within them were seen to reﬂect a ‘Celtic cultural

distinctiveness’ which was entirely different from the practical and pragmatic

nature of the English and their landscapes (Duffy 1997: 67). As Johnson (1997)

notes, antiquarian, anthropological and ethnographic research cultivated the

idea of the west of Ireland as the natural repository of the linguistic remnant

of a primitive culture. The ‘myth of the West’ also became a central feature in

the Irish cultural nationalism that evolved towards the end of the nineteenth

century. The rural Irish-speaking margins were posited as the ‘primitive

within’ and valued as the heartland of racial and cultural purity (Nash 1993). In

Duffy’s words, ‘[T]he West was represented as containing the soul of Ireland –

in Yeats’ construction, a fairyland of mist, magic and legend, a repository of

Celtic consciousness’ (1997: 67). Within nationalist imaginations, this imagery

came to deﬁne the essence of nationhood, and post-independence legislation

attempted to demarcate the linguistic heartland through the introduction of

Gaeltacht regions (Johnson 1997).

The idea of the West as a heartland of Irishness has been perpetuated throughout

much twentieth-century travel writing and photographic imagery. In 1978, for

instance, Jill and Leon Uris described ‘the Dying West’, as ‘the Irish conscience’,

lamenting that ‘when it goes, so much of what is great about being Irish will go

with it’ (Uris and Uris 1978: 60). A recent brochure from Celtic Quests holiday

company characterises the West as ‘the source of Irish life’ where ‘the old has

assimilated the new, the times are continuous, all are part of one life’. Regional

marketing strategies make use of similar themes.The westerly County Mayo, for

example, is described as ‘the most Irish part of Ireland’ (‘Mayo Naturally’promo-

tional material, undated). At a national level, the new brand for Ireland makes

reference to West of Ireland symbolism. It is a stylised depiction of two people

embracing and exchanging a shamrock. The colours are intended to evoke the

Irish landscape, ﬂora and painted houses. It could also be suggested that the brand

vaguely echoes Celtic knotwork in its shape and swirling design. In addition,

national promotional campaigns make ample use of iconic West of Ireland images

such as men pushing a curragh out to sea, sunset over the standing stones of the

Burren and moody mountains and seascapes. Overall, as D. Bell surmises (1995:

42), modern tourism representations of Ireland continue to draw on the ‘melan-

choly vision’ of the northern romantic tradition of landscape painting through

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the use of visual codes such as the subdued light of dawn, mist-shrouded ancient

ruins and the gnarled tree on a bare hillside. These codes in turn are strongly

associated with the West and help to sustain the romantic idea of the region as

‘empty space’ and ‘empty time’ (Johnson 1997).

Similarly, Brittany was, through art, literature and academic accounts,

constructed as Celtic ‘other’ to France (see McDonald 1989 for details). The

westernmost parts of the region, where Breton was and still is most widely

spoken, exerted a strong pull on artists such as Gauguin and scholars and anthro-

pologists in search of examples of the last remaining Celts.Thus, in 1788 Arthur

Young, travelling through the roughly deﬁned western half of the region known

as Basse Bretagne, recognised ‘another people’ who were ‘absolutely distinct from

the French’ (1929: 109). As Trollope wrote, over half a century later, ‘the inhab-

itants of this remote province, though certainly not the only remaining lineal

descendants of the Celtic race, yet are by far the most perfectly preserved spec-

imen of it’ (1840: preface).As such, they were an object of curiosity and scientiﬁc

interest, a race left behind on the fringes of Europe. Even today, seen from inland

Europe, Brittany represents

a rocky wild peninsula, pointing into the waves, fogs and storms of the

eternal ocean. Its hills are mountains, its streams are torrents, its rocky

beaches are granite cliffs. For a German family that has driven from the

centre of continental European security to this perilous celtic fringe,

Western Brittany truly feels like the wild end of the world, where

anything might be possible.

(Chapman 1987: 63)

Tourism representations maintain this wild and romantic version of the region,

and as in Ireland, the further west you go, the more authentic things get. Finistère

is portrayed as the most typically Breton of all departments:

Finistère’s name means Lands End. . . . The further west you go, the

more rugged the countryside becomes....The people too are prouder

of their Breton heritage than elsewhere in the country. More of them

speak the Breton language, take part in traditional music and dance and

bring out their colourful Breton costumes for festivals and other special

occasions.

(Comité Départemental de Tourisme 1994: 60)

The Monts d’Arée are even described as ‘un nouveau Far-West’, thus creating

an association with the American West. Pictures show tourists horse-riding on

empty hills and beaches and create a sense of adventure, of something waiting

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to be discovered. The language suggests romance and the powerful forces of

nature: ‘I am the earth and the sea. The breath and the magic. I am the gold of

the moors and the precious stones of the parish enclosures. I am the legend of

centuries . . . I am “la Bretagne intense’’’(Comité Départemental de Tourisme

1995: 3, author’s translation).

Nature

Romantic constructions of Celts tended to portray them as living simple, rural,

pure lives close to nature, in contrast to the complex, corrupt, urban lives of

modern people who had lost their connection to the natural world. Present-day

Breton and Irish brochures continue this theme by featuring many representa-

tions of rural and/or natural settings (see, for example, Plate 8.1).These settings,

in themselves, have powerful meanings attached to them, in the sense that the

countryside is seen as a refuge from modernity, a place of spirituality and authen-

ticity which presents an opportunity to restore one’s self through a return to

nature (Short 1991). Indeed, a sense of the restorative properties of the rural

environment is expressed in promotional materials from both locations. One

Bord Fáilte North America (1998) brochure starts by asking, ‘Do you keep the

promises you make to yourself?’ and goes on to pose questions such as ‘Where

can I get lost and ﬁnd myself?’ These are juxtaposed with images of visitors

walking through the countryside, painting landscapes, playing golf on luscious

green courses, sharing a picnic on an empty beach, talking to locals, catching

salmon and cycling through quiet lanes. The emphasis is very much upon an

active, sometimes solitary engagement with the environment – a physical enjoy-

ment linked to spiritual and emotional fulﬁlment brought about through close

contact with the elements. As one travel writer muses, ‘[T]wo weeks in Ireland

– now, there’s a gorgeous way to feed one’s soul’ (Kilbride 1998: 7). She goes

on to describe long rambles on windblown cliffs, a moment of peace in a lonely

graveyard and waking at dawn to travel to a ‘secret lake’ to ﬁsh for trout.

Breton brochures share an emphasis on the spiritual dimension of the natural

environment and add to this a sense of magic and mystery: ‘Spellbinding, wild,

genuine, natural, Brittany vibrates in the light and clothes its wide spaces in

colour’ (Conseil Régional de Bretagne 1994: 1).Within this region with its ‘magic

of blue’ and its ‘magic of green and gold’, there is a ‘multitude of protected

spaces, where myth and mystique are inseparably involved with Nature’ and

‘magical spots everywhere: places, often solitary, where earth, sky and sea are

united in perfect union’. At any moment, an elf or korrigan may spring into

view ‘amidst the heaths of ﬂowering gorse and broom’ or the ‘White Lady’ might

appear from the ‘Enchanted Lake’. The sense of legend and mystery in Brittany

is reinforced by the widespread sale of postcards featuring depictions of Celtic

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mythology such as the legends of Arthur and the drowned city of Ys (Minard

2000) and the ready availability of Celtic jewellery, music and books.

Within both sets of representations, therefore, there are themes linking a sense

of Celtic spirituality and mysticism with a feeling of ‘oneness with nature’. The

inhabitants of these mystical, almost otherworldly places are often portrayed as

being integral to the rural landscape.The only signs of human activity are often

thatched cottages, quaint gîtes or ruins. In the Irish region of Connemara, for

instance, ‘a dozen cottages cupped in a valley is as urban a sight as you’ll see’

(Kilbride 1998: 7). In brochures for both places, residents are often captured in

activities such as collecting turf, saving hay, bringing the cows home or ﬁshing.

As Edwards (1996) notes, work is hence romanticised by collapsing it into nature;

the ‘Natural Man’ is at one with the environment rather than in a position of

power over it.

Pre-modernity

Tourism representations of both regions maintain the romantic notion of Celts

as pre-modern, somehow untouched by modern characteristics such as order,

logic and the rigid marking of time. A different sense of time is seen to exist,

especially in Ireland, which is portrayed as ‘a world apart from modern society’

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Plate 8.1 View of the lakes of Killarney, Co. Kerry

Source: Photograph by Brian Lynch, reproduced courtesy of Bord Fáilte

that offers ‘genuine unspoilt landscapes’ and the chance to ‘rediscover old world

values’ (Quinn 1994: 64). One of the most important of these old-world values

is the idea of old-fashioned hospitality. A Bord Fáilte North America brochure

assures potential American visitors that ‘as soon as you land in Ireland, you’ll

experience genuine hospitality. The Irish have special words for it – Céad Mile

Fáilte (which simply means “One Hundred Thousand Welcomes”)’ (1998: 6).The

use of short phrases in Irish indicates a distinctive Celtic heritage which, as in

earlier romantic constructions, suggests a living link with a pre-modern civilis-

ation, lifestyles and values. Thus as O’Connor notes, ‘Ireland shares with many

other “peasant” and “primitive” societies the setting up of the “peasant” as a tourist

attraction’ (1993: 73). Indeed, a recent marketing strategy document (Bord Fáilte

1996) recognised the people of Ireland as a most powerful asset. The ‘memor-

able personal experiences’ resulting from a holiday in Ireland are attributed

largely to ‘the ease of interaction with Ireland’s intriguing engaging people’ (ibid.:

11). Similarly, a widely visited website suggests that one reason for Ireland’s

popularity is the Irish, ‘a uniquely loquacious people descended from the Celts.

Famed for our friendliness, laughter and our sense of fun, best encapsulated in

our own word “craic”’ (http://www.goireland.com). Pints of Guinness, laughter

and music are frequently incorporated into these images and descriptions of

hospitality and warmth.

Notable in such claims is the suggestion of a different sense of time, or loca-

tion in time. Ireland (and the west in particular) is a place where ‘time stands

still’ and holidays there are seen as an ‘escape’ from the present.The slower pace

of life is evoked by the ‘Rush Hour Ireland’ postcards that show a few cows on

the road and local ‘characters’ enjoying a leisurely chat. Such themes are also

present in portrayals of Brittany, which is currently being marketed as ‘your anti-

dote to the millennium’ and ‘an alternative to the twenty-ﬁrst century’ (Brittany

Ferries 2000).These images and slogans of course belie a reality whereby Ireland

is now home to Europe’s biggest computer software producers and Brittany has

one of the most productivist, tightly manicured and regulated agricultural land-

scapes in Europe (Dalton and Canévet 1999).

Despite this, people in Ireland and Brittany are often portrayed taking part

in ‘traditional’ practices which in turn become cultural markers that conﬁrm

authenticity. In the case of Ireland, these practices take the form of music sessions,

ceilidhs, Irish sports such as hurling and rural work such as the activities listed

above. In Brittany, the type-casting of people as traditional is even more overt,

with many images of costumed singers and dancers (see Plate 8.2). Continuing

the nineteenth-century romantic tradition, the older woman is often seen as

especially representative of an exotic, primitive and rural culture. As McDonald

shows, those women who still wear the coiffe ‘have been appropriated in their

own lifetimes, with their old-fashioned and parochial . . . headwear having been

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suddenly ﬁxed, revalued and glamourised before they had time to buy a hat’

(McDonald 1987: 126).Younger women or girls – fresh-faced, natural and often

red-haired in the Irish case – are also portrayed in a way that seems to capture

either the elemental joie de vivre or the melancholy of ‘the Celtic spirit’. In both

cases, old men are also pictured, often wearing ﬂat caps and dark clothing, their

lined faces seeming to suggest the wisdom of ages. The idea of pre-modernity

is reinforced in both places by the ready availability of sepia-toned ‘ethnographic

style’ postcards that present a nostalgic view of a seemingly authentic past.

These themes are common to Ireland and Brittany, and some of them are also

common to other tourist destinations, all of which try to establish their ‘other-

ness’ in some way, often through the use of images of rurality and nature. The

distinctiveness of representations of the Celtic regions lies in the suggestions of

spatial, temporal and cultural peripherality which are made through reference

to the mystical, otherworldly and elemental characteristics of the people and

places being promoted.These references are only made possible by the existence

of historically layered meanings of the Celt which have built up within the context

of uneven centre–periphery power relations. Despite this, it may also be possible

that these relations are being destabilised through the commodiﬁcation of Celtic

images, as is explored in the following section.

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Plate 8.2 Bretons in traditional costume

Source: Reproduced courtesy of Brittany Ferries

Destabilising centre–periphery relations through

commodiﬁcation?

Through a summary of the three common themes apparent in representations

of Ireland and Brittany it has been argued that the centre–periphery frameworks

within which notions of Celticity have been constructed remain basically the

same.The ‘otherness’ of the Celts in relation to deﬁning cultural centres is what

endows them with their fashionable status. Nevertheless, the increased commod-

iﬁcation of images of the Celts for tourism and other commercial reasons has

resulted in a proliferation of sites of production and consumption and a weak-

ening of the historical correspondence between geographically located centres

and peripheries. Perhaps the most obvious example of this is the profusion of

websites selling Celtic art, music, books, jewellery and family histories. In effect,

these productions are disconnected from actual places, operating instead in virtual

space and offering, as one website claims,‘a haven in cyberspace for Celtic artists

and audiences who enjoy Celtic music, Irish spoken word, literature and culture

of Ireland and her Celtic sisters, Irish poetry, Irish music, Celtic art and Celtic

folklore’ (http://www.wco.com/~iaf.celtic.html).

These diverse narratives contribute to the construction of hybrid Celtic iden-

tities, whereby Celticity is often elided with other ‘alternative’ discourses such

as Norse mythology, natural healing or Taoism. In most cases, however, the term

‘Celtic’ is used interchangeably with the term ‘Irish’, and, more often than not,

‘Celtic’ is taken to mean ‘Irish’. It seems that Ireland, in effect, acts as a centre

within the Celtic periphery, to which other peripheries look for deﬁnitional inspi-

ration. Scotland is also mentioned frequently as one of the Celtic countries, with

references to Brittany, Wales and Cornwall being less common.

It could be suggested, therefore, that Ireland is likely to be perceived as the

‘most Celtic’ of these destinations. Nevertheless, there is evidence to suggest that

Breton tourism strategies are seeking to emphasise the region’s claims to a Celtic

identity in order to differentiate Brittany from other French holiday destinations

and that they are looking to Ireland for inspiration. This is particularly so for the

département of Finistère, which utilises images of standing stones, empty beaches,

traditional music and costumes, albeit embedded within other distinctively

‘French’ themes such as references to gastronomy, châteaux and gîtes. The 1986

Maybury report on Breton tourism noted that the Bretons were seen (by Breton

respondents) as unfriendly in comparison to the Irish and that this was felt to

be a potential problem for the tourism industry. As one respondent said, ‘the

Breton is not always hospitable’ (Maybury 1986: 30). It was, therefore, suggested

that the Breton tourism authorities needed to investigate ways of cultivating

more hospitable behaviour and imagery. Drawing on Irish examples, the re-

port also advocated the development of cultural tourism based around themes of

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‘la Bretagne mystérieuse’ or ‘Merlin the Enchanter’, and suggested that the ‘Celtic

angle’ and ‘megalithic culture’ should be further promoted. St Patrick’s Day cele-

brations have been initiated in both Paris and Brittany and brochures have recently

begun to include a sprinkling of Breton words. This suggests a reappraisal of

language, and following Chapman’s thesis, a degree of prosperity and stability

within the deﬁning cultural centres of Brittany and France which allows for a

reappropriation of characteristics which were previously considered threatening.

Indeed, Chapman (1992) and McDonald (1989) agree that the marked exodus

from rural areas in the 1960s has contributed to a re-evaluation of the ‘disap-

pearing’ rural world.This found expression in a renewed interest in regional and

minority languages and a growth of cultural events such as the Lorient Festival

InterCeltique. More recently, an article in the Regional Tourism Committee’s

newsletter entitled ‘Our Celtic heritage – a new tourism’, argued for the adop-

tion of strategies based on the region’s language, memory and traditions which

demonstrate ‘incontestably Celtic origins’ (Nicot 1994: 23). As Minard (2000)

acknowledges, individual Bretons may or may not identify themselves as ‘Celts’,

but many of the narratives that are used in touristic promotional materials can

be considered Celtic insofar as they are clearly and consciously linked to tradi-

tions from other Celtic regions. For instance, in contrast to French language

information, which is presented in standard Roman type, Breton lettering is often

written in a font associated with Irish art and, by extension, is Celtic in general.

In this sense, it could be argued that Ireland is acting as a deﬁning centre to

which Brittany is peripheral within the Celtic periphery. Other Celtic countries

can therefore seek to cash in on Ireland’s strong image and the Celtic resonances

within it. Having said this, such a strategy might not be appropriate in a competi-

tive market place, where the emphasis has to be on creating a distinctive image.

The danger for the so-called Celtic regions is that they could all be lumped

together into the same conceptual category.

In addition to this disruption of the normally recognised centre–periphery

relations, the previous relations of economic and political domination and depen-

dency between colonial centres and peripheries have changed dramatically since

the start of the twentieth century. Most strikingly, Ireland’s ‘Celtic Tiger’ economy

has seen unprecedented growth, with per capita GDP exceeding that of the UK

in 1996 (Breathnach 1998). It is notable that promotional accounts of Ireland’s

workforce stress features which are in direct opposition to some of the tourist

images. For instance, Eircom’s website describes the workforce as young, well-

educated, highly skilled, English speaking, motivated, ﬂexible and possessing a

strong work ethic (http://www.eircomus.com/home).This is in contrast to the

stereotypical touristic image of a rural, pre-modern society in which leisure is

foregrounded. Nevertheless, other aspects of the tourist image are reinforced

through reference to Ireland’s leisure pursuits and quality of life, and through

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the use of stock west of Ireland images such as the Cliffs of Moher.

In this way

elements of Celtic imagery are used selectively to create the impression of a

modern, dynamic country which still retains that distinctive ‘otherness’ that helps

distinguish it from competitors. There is, thus, a continuing tension between

promoting a sense of Celtic pre-modernity and promoting a sense of European

modernity. This tension may help to explain why explicit mentions of the word

‘Celtic’ are rarely seen in tourism or promotional materials; rather, the emphasis

is on the creation of ‘brand Ireland’. Indeed, it is notable that recent marketing

strategy advocates a move ‘away from stereotypical images and towards a more

realistic image of Ireland’ (Bord Fáilte 1996: 9). The aim is to replace a series

of old perceptions with new ones, as shown in Table 8.1.

Interestingly, the new perceptions correspond closely to historical construc-

tions of Celtic peoples and places, especially the words ‘authentic’,‘cultural’ and

‘friendly’. Maintaining the romantic perception of Celtic places as being somehow

spiritually, environmentally and emotionally distanced from the modern world,

the strategy argues that ‘the signiﬁcant point of distinction between Ireland and

other destinations lies in the very deep and unique, almost emotional experience

. . . visitors enjoy on holiday in Ireland’ (1996: 10, emphasis added).

Conclusion

The aim in this chapter has been to examine the extent to which promotional

materials for tourism in Ireland and Brittany perpetuate the construction of the

Celts as peripheral ‘others’ to deﬁning cultural centres. In both cases, but espe-

cially that of Ireland, it has been argued that promotional bodies have tapped

into popular romantic perceptions of the ‘otherness’ of the Celts, recognising

that perceived cultural peripherality is key to the continuing success of the myth.

The myth is communicated through the use of signs such as particular land-

scapes, artwork and language that evoke a different sense of time and place.

Furthermore, the people in these images are endowed with characteristics which

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Table 8.1 Perceptions of Ireland

Old perceptions To be replaced with

Macho Active

Not a family destination Authentic

No activities Cultural

Unsophisticated Friendly

Summer only Personal

Memorable

may be described as stereotypically Celtic: creativity, melancholy, humour,

warmth, emotion, closeness to nature, spirituality.

Bord Fáilte’s images in particular can be interpreted as the conﬁdent images

of a centre (Dublin based) which has re-evaluated characteristics that have been

considered primitive (based on the west of Ireland) and is now able to glamorise

these for external consumption. In a sense, this can be seen as an adjustment to

previous uneven power relations, particularly between Ireland and Britain.

However, this is not necessarily carried through to the internal cultural politics of

the country. Although the images are produced in Ireland, they are not necessar-

ily produced by the people in the west – who are supposed to be ‘the real Celts’

– but rather by astute marketing agents and industry representatives who have

successfully read contemporary fascinations with things Celtic and alternative.

Despite images which might suggest otherwise, the Irish language has, over

at least 200 years, been gradually abandoned in favour of English by those who

were traditionally its native speakers – the rural inhabitants of the west of Ireland

(Hindley 1990). A similar situation is found in Brittany, where Breton native

speakers have embraced French and are rarely heard speaking Breton in public

(McDonald 1989). Although there is evidence of a revival in the learning and

speaking of Irish and Breton, this has occurred mainly among urban, relatively

prosperous sectors of the population. In other words, Celtic languages are being

appropriated by members of the deﬁning centres within Ireland and Brittany,

and not those normally associated with the use of regional minority languages

– namely, the rural and farming population. As Chapman (1992: 237) remarks,

the majority of ‘Celtic’ peoples have little interest in minority debate and the

views of those who inhabit the Celtic fringe are often ignored or dismissed. To

complicate matters, the revivals have met with resistance from those within the

deﬁning centres. In the case of Irish, for instance, the language continues to be

met with some derision by certain elements of the largely Dublin-based mass

media. As one disgruntled reader of the Sunday Tribune wrote, ‘certain media

hacks and their paymasters – for reasons not entirely clear to their readers –

would do anything to make sure that Irish doesn’t become cool’ (Sunday Tribune,

19 September 1999).

It is thus questionable whether the diffusion of production and consumption

of Celticity results in a diffusion of deﬁnitional power; that is, the ability to

deﬁne ‘otherness’. Chapman argues that the actual inhabitants of Celtic regions

remain peripheral because they continue to be labelled as Celts by others and

tend not to regard themselves as Celtic. Further research is needed to examine

whether the increased globalisation of Celtic images and identities through media

such as the Internet offers potential for those within Celtic regions to deﬁne

and represent themselves as Celts if they so wish; in other words, to appropriate

Celticity. Yet, if Chapman’s thesis is taken to its logical conclusion and these

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‘genuine’ Celts do succeed in deﬁning and producing their own versions of

Celticity, in effect they will have achieved ‘centre’ status. By this time, however,

the centre will have redeﬁned otherness in new terms and the periphery will

thus remain peripheral.

From a commercial perspective, it could be argued that this inescapable

outcome is actually desirable, as it is the very peripherality of the Celts which

makes them appealing to the centre. Indeed, if the Celtic succeeds in becoming

so central, so mainstream, that the very ‘otherness’ which has so far made it

fashionable is destroyed, the category ‘Celtic’ could be devoured, emptied of all

meaning and signiﬁcance. It would disappear, for a while at least, only to be

rediscovered and re-evaluated in later times. The elusive, ill-deﬁned nature

of the Celts is what keeps them interesting to those located in the centre, and

potentially proﬁtable to the commercial interests that exploit Celtic imagery.

As argued by Bowman (1994), Celticity is a ‘state of mind’ which may be

appropriated by different groups and individuals in different ways and for differ-

ent reasons. In the case of tourism, as Edwards (1996) demonstrates, the control

of the production of reiﬁed tourism images is usually external to the subjects of

the image and thus represents the cultural view of particular sets of people. In

effect, an examination of such images tells us more about the people who are

doing the looking than those who are being looked at. This is not to say that

there is no such thing as a Celtic identity, or that people in the Celtic regions

do not feel distinctive. Rather, identities in these regions may be understood and

expressed in different ways from those projected upon them by external gazes

through, for example, distinctive social relationships, languages, lifestyles, and

cultural and economic activities. Furthermore, myths should not be understood

as somehow separate from reality. The myths of Celtic identity are based upon

real, existing landscapes and activities in Celtic regions. Even though it is possible

to deconstruct romanticised representations of the landscape of the west of

Ireland, for example, it would be difﬁcult to deny that beautiful scenery does

exist, that the light quality is different, that the coastal waters are cleaner than

others in Europe (so far). Although the Breton language is no longer ﬂuently

spoken as it once was, there are still people who do use it on a daily basis

and there are those who feel profoundly Breton as opposed to French. As

Short (1991: xvi) explains, ‘[T]he term “myth” does not imply falsehood to be

contrasted with reality. An environmental myth can contain both fact and fancy.

The important question is not “is it true” but “whose truth is it?”’ In terms

of contemporary Celtic identities, there would appear to be many truths, de-

pending on whether the Celt is being appropriated by marketing agencies,

tourists or more rarely, those who are supposed to be the ‘real Celts’ living in

Celtic regions.

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Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to Bord Fáilte and Brittany Ferries for permission to repro-

duce the illustrations and to the editors and referees for their constructive

comments during the writing of this chapter.

Note

1 Stretching for 8 km and reaching heights of 214 m along the coast of west Clare,

the Cliffs of Moher are one of Ireland’s most famous – and most frequently

photographed – scenic attractions.

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THE SCOTTISH DIASPORA

Tartan Day and the appropriation of Scottish

identities in the United States

Euan Hague

Celtic ethnicities, identities and geographies are, James (1999b: 25) comments,

‘living political, as well as cultural issue[s]’. In this chapter, I argue that this

applies not only within the British Isles, but also in the United States where, for

example, politicisation of Irish-American communities over St Patrick’s Day

parades is well documented (see Davis 1995; Moss 1995; Byron 1999). In contrast

to these historically long-standing Irish-American disputes over representations

of their ‘Celtic’ culture and identity, it has been only in the last ﬁve years that

Scottish-American groups have co-ordinated celebrations of ‘Scottish’ nationality

by marking a date in the calendar. The US Senate formally recognised ‘the

outstanding achievements and contributions made by Scottish Americans to the

United States’ in March 1998, when it unanimously passed Resolution 155 annu-

ally establishing 6 April as ‘Tartan Day’ (see Figure 9.1; Congressional Record

– Senate 1998: S2373).

The designation of Tartan Day is testimony to a growing interest in Scotland

that is part of a broader American trend. Since the late 1960s, many white

Americans have rediscovered their European ancestors and ancestries, subse-

quently asserting from these sources an ethnic identiﬁcation ‘against the backdrop

of what it means to be an American’ (Stein and Hill 1977; Waters 1990; Alba

1990: 319).

By the 1990s it was estimated that around 20 million people in

America claimed Scottish ethnic identity in this manner (Hewitson 1995). Many

are members of clan and St Andrew’s societies, around 200 of which currently

operate in the USA (US Scots 1995). There are growing numbers of magazines

serving this Scottish-American community, most beginning publication relatively

recently. For example, the Scottish Banner, one of the longest-running titles, ﬁrst

appeared in 1977.A similar chronology and expansion can be seen in the number

of Scottish Highland Games held annually in the USA (see Figure 9.2; Donaldson

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1986; Brander 1992, 1996; Hewitson 1995; US Scots 1995, 1996). Many US

states now have ofﬁcial Scottish tartans, and such is the scale of recent attention

that Roberts (1999: 24) believes that Scotland has outpaced Ireland to become

America’s ‘Celtic ﬂavor du jour’.

It is within this context that this chapter considers how Scottish identities are

being reclaimed, reconﬁgured and appropriated in the USA in the 1990s by both

individuals and institutions and in often quite different ways. I illustrate this

malleability by examining three particular geographies at different spatial scales.

These were selected as each invokes understandings and representations of

contemporary America within which the object of focus – be it person or place

– is recognised by its proponents to have been inﬂuentially shaped through having

identiﬁably Scottish origins.

I ﬁrst assess personal understandings of Scottish origins held by participants

in a northern US state’s Scottish-American community.These individuals identify

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105th Congress, 2nd Session, Senate Resolution 155

A resolution (S. Res. 155) designating April 6th as National Tartan Day to recognize the

outstanding achievements and contributions made by Scottish Americans to the United

States.

Whereas April 6 has a special significance for all Americans, and especially those

Americans of Scottish descent, because the Declaration of Arbroath, the Scottish

Declaration of Independence, was signed on April 6, 1320 and the American Declaration of

Independence was modeled on that inspirational document;

Whereas this resolution honors the major role that Scottish Americans played in the

founding of this Nation, such as the fact that almost half of the signers of the Declaration of

Independence were of Scottish descent, the Governors in 9 of the original 13 States were

of Scottish ancestry, Scottish Americans successfully helped shape this country in its

formative years and guide this Nation through its most troubled times;

Whereas this resolution recognizes the monumental achievements and invaluable

contributions made by Scottish Americans that have led to America’s preeminence in the

fields of science, technology, medicine, government, politics, economics, architecture,

literature, media, and visual and performing arts;

Whereas this resolution commends the more than 200 organizations throughout the United

States that honor Scottish heritage, tradition, and culture, representing the hundreds of

thousands of Americans of Scottish descent, residing in every State, who already have

made the observance of Tartan Day on April 6 a success; and

Whereas these numerous individuals, clans, societies, clubs, and fraternal organizations do

not let the great contributions of the Scottish people go unnoticed: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved

, That the Senate designates April 6 of each year as ‘National Tartan Day’.

Figure 9.1 Full text of US Senate Resolution 155 declaring 6 April to be National Tartan

Day in the United States

Source: Congressional Record – Senate (1998: S2373)

genealogical ‘roots’ as a source of their own Scottish identities.

Critical here is

that constructions of genealogy are spatial – one’s ancestry not only provides a

temporal series of forebears, but also identiﬁes their birthplaces and residences.

These locations subsequently become a central source of self-identiﬁcation for

individuals in the present and also material for the construction of ‘hyphenated’

American identities.

Pursuing this investigation of the genealogical construction of identity through

recognition of Scottish origins, I then turn to assessing the League of the South

(LS). A nascent nationalist organisation founded in Alabama in 1994, the LS

claims that the Southern US states have speciﬁcally ‘Celtic’ origins. Using a

discourse of ethnic distinction to construct a ‘Celtic’ identity for the American

South and a territorial claim over this area, the LS advocates Southern secession

and political independence from the USA. Although in many respects quite

marginal politically, the League shows a quite different way in which Scottish and

Celtic origins can be appropriated and deployed. In my third example, I examine

the text of the US Senate legislation establishing Tartan Day, because it too makes

a ‘genealogical’ appeal to Scottish origins, proposing that the US nation-state has

Scottish ‘roots’ of its own. In each of these instances, the American nation, a

region within the nation and individual American citizens are distinguished by,

and understood through, genealogical connections to Scotland. Such recognition

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Date of inauguration

250

200

150

100

1830–1839

1850–1859

1870–1879

1890–1899

1910–1919

1930–1939

1950–1859

1970–1979

1990–2000

Number of Scottish events

Number of Scottish

events inaugurated

per decade

Total number of

Scottish events

Figure 9.2 Number of Scottish festivals and Highland Games in the United States

(1830–2000)

Source: Author

of Scottish origins is shaping America’s ‘Celtic geographies’ at the turn of the

twenty-ﬁrst century.

Constructing ‘Celtic’ geographies in the United

States: genealogical ‘roots’, diaspora ‘routes’ and

hyphenated identities

Making Scotland ‘Celtic’

Roberts’s (1999) observation that Scotland is America’s preferred ‘Celtic ﬂavor’

at the end of the twentieth century attests to a popularly held belief that Scotland

is Celtic. This coalescence of Scotland and Scottish people with Celticity began

in the eighteenth century when the presence of Gaelic speakers in Scotland was

widely understood as evidence of a ‘Celtic’ population. Scholars of the time used

archaeology and linguistics to suppose a connection between these Gaelic-speaking

Scots and their Celtic ancestors. The idea that Highland Scotland was the legacy

of an ancient Celtic civilisation was widely promulgated – for example, by James

Macpherson’s Ossian (1760). By the nineteenth century, representations of a

‘Celtic’ Gaelic-speaking Highland Scotland had come to represent Scotland as

a whole (Chapman 1978, 1992; Womack 1989; Trevor-Roper 1983; Donnachie

and Whatley 1992; McCrone 1992; McCrone et al. 1995; James 1999b). More

recently, the concurrent political emergence and success of organisations such as

the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru have reinforced suggestions that

Scotland is a ‘Celtic’ nation.These politics were initially grouped together under

the title ‘Celtic nationalism’, an ascription that remains, because of their appear-

ance in Scotland, Ireland and Wales, the UK’s so-called ‘Celtic fringe’ (see, for

example, Edwards et al. 1968; Hechter 1975).Thus, since the eighteenth century,

processes of cultural, political and symbolic appropriation have generated

powerful and enduringly popular accounts that assume that an ancient Celtic

civilisation existed in Scotland and that modern Scotland and its inhabitants are

inheritors of this past.

Many of the supposed attributes of Celtic peoples and culture became conﬂated

with those of Highland Scotland and, by extension, with Scotland as a whole.

The result is that the Scottish Celt is ‘an ethnological ﬁction and system of

symbolic appropriation’, but one that is widely assumed to be self-evident and

historically accurate (McCrone et al. 1995: 57). In this construction,‘Celticness’

and ‘Scottishness’ often merge, enabling characteristics associated with Scottish

and Celtic identities to become interchangeable, ﬂexible and available for recon-

ﬁguration as context dictates. As ‘Celtic’ and ‘Scottish’ identities conﬂate, people

identify and position themselves as simultaneously ‘Celtic’ and ‘Scottish’.

Describing the current coalescence of ‘Irish’ and ‘Celtic’ within the Irish-

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American community and in American popular culture, Byron (1999: 261)

analyses how these representations demonise the English while constructing the

Irish as ‘emphatically not Anglo-Saxon but rather a member of a different, purer,

nobler, and more primordial “race”, the Celts’. In much the same way, contem-

porary American depictions of Scotland and Scottish people – for example, the

recent Hollywood ﬁlm Braveheart

(1995) – suppose that Scottish territory and

people suffered, like the Irish, under English oppression. In such a scenario,

Ireland and the Irish, Scotland and the Scots simplistically merge into becoming

‘Celtic’ – antithetical to everything English (Ewan 1995; Morgan 1999). Thus,

in America at the turn of the twenty-ﬁrst century, in popular culture little distinc-

tion is made between ‘Scottish’ and ‘Celtic’ things and people. However inaccurate

this representation is historically, it inﬂuentially shapes how Scotland is viewed

and represented in the USA.

Genealogical ‘roots’ in America

Following Byron (1999), I argue that understanding ‘Scottish’ identities as ‘Celtic’

represents a claim to authenticity and ‘primordial’ origins. It attests to the

longevity of Scottish identity, extended backwards into a distant past, and implies

that Scottish identity exists in and of itself, lying dormant and waiting to be

rediscovered. In the USA, this process of reclaiming Scottish origins has stimu-

lated what Hewitson (1995: 274) identiﬁes as an ‘infectious need’ of many

Scottish-Americans to ‘track down their roots’. In this context, discovering one’s

‘roots’ refers to an active pursuit of genealogy. Since the mid-1970s, according

to Stryker-Rodda (1987: 7), genealogy has become America’s ‘most popular

hobby’. Stimulated by a number of synchronous events – including the nation-

wide celebration of the Bicentennial in 1976, the ideological promotion and

political recognition of ‘multiculturalism’ that merges identity with ethnicity, and

the success of popular television programmes and novels such as Alex Haley’s

Roots – the USA has seen a boom in ancestral research (Beard with Demong

1977; Stein and Hill 1977; Stryker-Rodda 1987; Alba 1990;Waters 1990; Byron

1999). Within this context, self-help guides to discovering one’s Scottish prede-

cessors have appeared (for instance, Cory 1990; Baxter 1991).With this impetus,

the Scottish-American community has grown, as more people discover, and iden-

tify with, their Scottish ancestors.

The search for ‘roots’, as Hewitson (1995) implies, is central to the construc-

tion of Scottish-American identity in the USA. Commonly invoked, the idea of

having identiﬁable, genealogical origins that provide an ethnic identity has today

largely replaced an older discourse and metaphor of American identity, that of

the ‘melting pot’ (Byron 1999).The identities produced by these two metaphors,

‘roots’ and the ‘melting pot’, are somewhat different. In contrast to the melting-

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pot metaphor, which evoked ﬂuidity and assimilation, that of ‘roots’ implies that

one’s identity is natural, stable and ﬁxed in place. In this way, the discourse of

‘roots’ can be seen to construct an ethnic identity that is secure and place-speciﬁc

(Hall 1991). Further, whereas the previous metaphor of American nationality

assumed that one’s past ‘melted’ upon arrival in the USA, identifying one’s

genealogical ‘roots’ symbolically constructs historical continuity with the past

and delineates a trajectory that endows those in the present with an inheritance

bestowed by generations of predecessors. Genealogical ‘roots’, therefore, have a

metaphorical and metaphysical power to anchor an individual’s identity to both

history and geography, tying one’s identity to a speciﬁc physical location beyond

the borders of the USA – in this case, Scotland, and in particular, a ‘Celtic’

Scotland.

As discussed above, conﬂating Scottish and Celtic identities shows, as Hall

(1990) contends, that identities are constructed and represented in ways that are

malleable and vary across time and space. The metaphor of ‘roots’, however,

denies this ﬂuidity. Invoking ‘rooted’, timeless ‘Scottish’ or ‘Celtic’ origins implies

that identity is incontestable, authentic, stable and ﬁxed, despite that fact that

this is contradicted by the very construction of ‘Scottish’ and ‘Celtic’ ethnicities

themselves. An assertion of genealogical ‘roots’ aims to ﬁnd one’s present iden-

tity in some ancestors. Thereafter, an appeal to both a knowable location of

ancestry and an association of place with ethnicity serves to imbed ethnicity in

a territorial location – here, Scotland. This recovery of ‘roots’ is, however, not

the simple discovery it appears. Rather, it comprises a reconstruction that posi-

tions one within a larger historical narrative:

Far from being grounded in a mere ‘recovery’ of the past, which is

waiting to be found, and which, when found, will secure our sense of

ourselves into eternity, identities are the names we give to the different

ways we are positioned by, and position ourselves within, the narratives

of the past.

(Hall 1990: 225)

This conceptualisation suggests that, rather than understanding identities as

having ﬁxed, spatially identiﬁable origins, as epitomised by the discourse of ‘roots’,

it is more appropriate to conceive of identity being constructed by ‘routes’,

namely an awareness of how representations continuously change over time and

space (Gilroy 1993; Hall 1990, 1991; Clifford 1997). Even though they appear

to be stable, ‘roots’ are, Hall (1991: 38) argues, simultaneously ‘routes’ and,

despite metaphorical claims to the contrary, are ‘nothing like an uncomplicated,

dehistoricised, undynamic, uncontradictory past’.

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Routes of the Scottish diaspora

The pertinence of the interrelationship between ‘roots’ and ‘routes’ is grasped

through the metaphor of ‘diaspora’ (Hall 1990, 1995). Over time, the meaning

of ‘diaspora’ has changed, so that it no longer refers ‘to those scattered tribes

whose identity can only be secured in relation to some sacred homeland to which

they must at all costs return’ (Hall 1990: 235). Rather, current theoretical under-

standings of ‘diaspora’ refer to heterogeneous individuals who assert an ethnic/

national identity in different places and in different ways. In this way, the ‘routes’

of diaspora populations are, like the genealogical ‘roots’ to which their members

often refer, spatial. In today’s world, individual decisions to assert ‘ethnic’ iden-

tities when and where one wants mean that diasporas are ﬂuid and ﬂexible cultural

constructs, varying across time and space as people opt in and opt out of member-

ship (Hall 1990; Gilroy 1993; Akenson 1995; Clifford 1997). Thus, when

combined with similar decisions by others, individual identity choices – often

reached through genealogy – construct a sense of participation within what Cohen

(1997) terms a ‘cultural diaspora’, namely a diaspora where connections between

people are not based on shared historical experiences or movement to return

home, but on belief in common ethnic and cultural origins.

As discussed above, past deﬁnition and ideological assertion of ‘American’

identity popularly and politically promoted a ﬂuid, pluralistic, hybrid amalga-

mation of diaspora communities, represented through metaphor as a ‘melting

pot’. Although this understanding remains an important part of the construction

of contemporary American identities, many people seek to reassert their diasporic

heritage by rediscovering their ‘roots’. For some, such as one Scottish-American

whom I interviewed, there is a sense that ‘Americanness is not quite enough’.

Thus, identifying an ‘ethnic’ afﬁliation to sit alongside and augment American

identity produces ‘hyphenated identities’.

Hyphenated identities

The establishment and articulation of an ethnic preﬁx to an individual’s

Americanness is typically reached through genealogical research. Identifying an

ancestral origin beyond the USA enables individuals to distinguish themselves as

simultaneously within and outside the identity provided by the American ‘melting

pot’. For some, assertion of an ‘ethnicity’ is particularly important to self-deﬁ-

nition. Increasing numbers of people in America, Portes and MacLeod (1996:

533) contend, ‘explicitly recogniz[e] a single foreign national origin’ to supple-

ment their ‘American’ nationality. The result is the establishment of individual

identities that are hyphenated, such as ‘Scottish-American’.

When invoking a hyphenated identity, I contend that it is signiﬁcant that the

‘ethnic’ identity comes before the ‘citizenship’ in such a construction; for example,

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‘African-American’, ‘Italian-American’ and so on. A distinction is made not

through recognition of an individual’s Americanness, which remains generic, but

rather by an appeal to an ethnic afﬁliation. It is now all but a requirement in the

USA, Byron (1999) argues, to belong to an ‘ethnic’ group and to grant this ‘ethnic’

identiﬁcation primacy when deﬁning oneself. Having a hyphenated identity seem-

ingly constitutes a stronger deﬁnition of self than being solely ‘American’.Attaching

a genealogical preﬁx to one’s identity has a dual function. Being ‘Scottish-American’

relates both to speciﬁc people and places that can be personally and physic-

ally identiﬁed as ‘Scottish’, while simultaneously providing a rich symbolic cache

of images, representations and characteristics that can be applied as indicators of

Scottishness.

Exploring Scottish ‘roots’ in the United States

Within the theoretical understandings of identity and its construction outlined

above, I now turn to examine constructions of personal and place identities in

the USA that are envisaged through recognition of Scottish origins. Although not

directly comparable, these examples illustrate the malleability of Scottish and

Celtic ‘roots’, and show how differing interpretations of these ‘ethnic’ origins

can be utilised to construct an awareness of place – both personal and territo-

rial – in contemporary America.

The local scale – the Scottish-American community

The ﬁrst example focuses on members of the Scottish-American community,

most of whom construct their identities by recognising personal Scottish origins

through genealogy. Discovering their ‘roots’ by identifying ancestors attains the

‘Scottish’ preﬁx of their hyphenated identities. This understanding of Scottish

origins differs from those proposed by McCrone and colleagues who state that

being born in Scotland, having Scotland-born or Scotland-resident parents, and

residence in Scotland are the sources of Scottishness (Brown et al. 1996; McCrone

et al. 1998). For Scottish-Americans, however, parentage, residence and birth-

place generally provide ‘American’ nationality.The deﬁning criterion of Scottish-

ness within the Scottish-American community is by identiﬁcation of an ancestor

who was born or resident in Scotland.

For Americans interested in discovering an ancestral ethnicity through an asser-

tion of genealogy, to have a range of European ‘ethnic options’ is standard

(Stein and Hill 1977; Alba 1990; Waters 1990). Although the resultant identity

is suggested by some commentators to be a false, ‘dime store’ ethnicity (e.g.,

Stein and Hill 1977), I found that decisions to follow Scottish ancestors rather

than pursue other possibilities offered by genealogy are common and are not

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considered by Scottish-Americans to be erroneous ethnic identiﬁcations. For

example, 41-year-old medical professional and bagpiper Dorothy Kerr explained

her understanding of Scottish-American identity:

People reach an age where they need to ﬁnd a kind of sense of place

and the analogy for that is traditionally the family. That is why people

go back and discover their ethnic roots and then join heritage groups.

These groups to some extent manufacture that sense of belonging, be

it Italian, German, Scots or Irish. They enable one to build a kind of

surrogate family around us, our own family being spread far and wide

across America. This constructed family is not deﬁned by blood rela-

tion, but comes from a sense of shared ethnic derivation.

With the average American, even ﬁrst or second generation immi-

grants, and I’m seventh or eighth generation, their primary identity is

as an American, but if you push them back in time, or if they are inter-

ested in history, they may say they belong to another ethnic group. I

am actually Scottish, Irish, German and Dutch. Due to the history of

our country we’re all mongrels and don’t have that purity of roots that

you do in Britain and France. I think that you need to know where you

are from to give yourself an anchor in this nomadic society, but even

then ethnicity is only one conduit, it may not appeal to everyone as

their anchor.

(Dorothy Kerr)

In her comments, Dorothy Kerr asserts that ‘roots’ provide an ethnic ‘anchor’

for many people in the USA, and explains that a ‘sense of place’ comes from

recognition of family, attesting to the spatiality of genealogy.

Similarly, the following quotation from an interview with James Donaldson

also recognises that ‘roots’ provide passage through the ambiguities of ‘national’

identity within America. James Donaldson regularly attends Scottish events as

a member of a Clan MacDonald society, purchasing a kilt and other Scottish

attire at a cost of approximately US$1,000. His Scottish ancestor is his great-

grandfather. Recounting the ﬁrst Highland Games he attended as a member of his

clan society, James describes the members of the Scottish diaspora he encountered:

A lesbian couple came and inquired and they were very excited about

their MacDonald connection. I think that the clans have nothing to do

with how people usually sort themselves, e.g. by class, race, sexuality

or whatever. I suppose there are not many African-Americans though –

one deﬁning feature must be that most of those at the Games are white,

but that doesn’t mean that African-Americans have no connections.Alex

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Haley explored and told of his Roots. Now, he was half Irish but these

were not the roots he explored. There were, of course, good reasons

for his choice to explore the African side. But apart from the crowd

being mostly white, there’s not really any other distinguishing category.

There was this one woman who came to our tent who was clearly

Sicilian, but she had a great grandparent who she felt was important. I

think that the whole issue of roots is part of the attraction. American

culture is struggling with the issues of national identity versus ethnicity.

That’s part of being a pluralistic society. The American people are, well

I am, interested to gain a sense of contact with where I came from.

Americanness is not quite enough.To be an American is to be someone

who has the experience of heritage and American history. My ancestor

left his home village and went to Aberdeen from where he got a boat

to America in the 1830s or 1840s. There were tens of thousands like

him, all of them leaving their homes for their own reasons. There are

many different stories but despite that, all these people ended up here

as immigrants. Each of us, as their descendants, is different from each

other, yet we also share that commonality of experience too. I share

the past, although not in the details, of that Sicilian woman.

(James Donaldson)

In this excerpt, James Donaldson depicts the Highland Games as welcoming

people regardless of sexuality, class and, from the example of the Sicilian woman,

regional identity or gender. He conceives of Scottish-American identity as inclu-

sive and multicultural, although he notes that African-Americans rarely visit

Scottish-American events.

He proceeds to clarify, however, that some African-

Americans would be Scottish-African-Americans if they chose to identify

themselves as such through recognition of their Scottish ‘roots’.Within this inclu-

sive understanding of Scottish-American identity, James Donaldson affords

particular importance to ‘the clans’ – not a reference to historical Scottish social

communities founded upon extended families, but to American clan societies

today. Although it was through such a society that James Donaldson became

involved in Scottish-American events, not everyone who attends Highland Games

in America feels as welcomed by these organisations.

Far from ﬁnding ‘the clans’ to be inclusive, Susie Martin, a white, middle-aged

woman whose involvement in Scottish-American events is occasional and largely

through her husband’s participation, angrily described feeling excluded by

clan societies at an annual Highland Games in this Northern US state. ‘The clans

are unfriendly,’ she said. ‘You walk around and see your name is not on any lists.

Not surprisingly there is no Lapowski clan, but that means I am not welcome or

that I’m not allowed to go.’ Susie Martin’s statement illustrates that not every

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person attending Highland Games feels included in the ‘Scottishness’ these events

offer, or views them as opportunities to explore their ‘ethnic options’ or hyphen-

ated identities.

Clan societies are organisations founded upon an assumption that Scottish-

Americans share common ‘roots’, and have conducted genealogical research to

identify the clan to which they ‘belong’. Yet this identiﬁcation of genealogy is

not always as simple a process as it seems. As James Donaldson explained above,

people left Europe ‘for their own reasons’, often hiding their pasts as a result.

Another interviewee, Debbie Logan, whose grandfather moved to the USA from

Scotland as a teenager, explained that her mother’s family ‘on the English side

left England as “Wood” and arrived here as “Cooper” – no one really knows quite

why’. Other interviewees spoke of gaps and absences in their genealogies where

no information was known and of instances where disputes resulted in relatives

being disowned.

Many immigrants changed their names, altered their identities and started

anew in the USA. Some deliberately divested themselves of their pasts upon

arrival in the New World, others had their names changed and identities removed

due to inaccurate records made by immigration ofﬁcials (Portes and MacLeod

1996).The resurgence of interest by US citizens in exploring their ethnic ‘roots’

brings them to recover these erased pasts and rediscover their ancestors. Such

processes are typical, Gilroy (1993: 30) argues, of ‘the continuing aspiration’, in

the face of the apparent ﬂuidity and uncertainty of contemporary Western society,

‘to acquire a supposedly authentic, natural, and stable “rooted” identity’. The

collective American experience of being descended from immigrants, to which

James Donaldson refers, leads people to assert their place within the ‘pluralistic

society’ of modern America by ﬁnding their ‘roots’ and constructing their

(Scottish) identities through genealogical recognition of an ancestor’s place of

origin.

The regional scale – the League of the South

In the previous example I outlined how some individual interviewees identiﬁed

their genealogies and understood Scottish-American identities to be shaped by

having ancestors who could be placed in Scotland. Here I turn to examine a

very different utilisation of Scottish ‘roots’, wholly unconnected to the individ-

uals with whom I spoke in 1997–8, other than that it too seeks a sense of

authentic Scottish and Celtic identities through which to comprehend the contem-

porary USA.The League of the South (LS) envisages that a region, the American

South – in particular, the states that formed the Confederate States of America

during the US Civil War (1861–5) – is shaped by Celtic origins. Through this

example, I will show how the malleability of Scottish and, more generally, Celtic

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genealogies can be manipulated to make a political claim for a distinct regional

identity based on an assertion of ethnic difference.

The League of the South has grown rapidly since its foundation in 1994 and

is currently estimated to have around 9,000 members (SPLC 2000; Sebesta

2000).The League has a nationalist, separatist agenda that calls for the American

South to secede from the USA and re-form a Confederate States of America.

Basing this claim for secession on an understanding that America was shaped by

ethnic division, the LS argues that America’s Southern states were distinctively

Celtic in their origins and composition, whereas the Northern states were English.

In the decade before the LS was founded, its future president, J. Michael Hill

(see, e.g., Hill 1986), and, in particular, its future director, Grady McWhiney

(see, e.g., McWhiney 1981, 1988, 1989; McDonald and McWhiney 1980;

McWhiney and Jamieson 1982; McWhiney and McDonald 1983, 1985), had

regularly argued for this ethnic distinction. ‘Yankee culture was in large part

transplanted English culture; southern culture was Celtic – Scottish, Scotch-Irish,

Welsh, Cornish, and Irish’ (McWhiney and Jamieson 1982: 172). And ‘[C]ultural

conﬂict between English and Celt not only continued in British North America,

it shaped the history of the United States. British immigrants – English and Celtic

– brought with them to America their habits and values as well as their old

feuds, biases, and resentments’ (McWhiney 1988: 7).

Within the arguments forwarded by the LS’s leaders, both before and since the

establishment of this organisation, Scottish identity is recognised as a prominent

contributor to these Celtic origins. LS literature and historical analysis construct

a trans-historical, transatlantic relationship that sees Celt, Scot and American

Southerner as composed of the same group of people who, over centuries, have

geographically relocated from Europe to North America. Such an understanding

of the Celtic roots of the American South led the LS to convene a ‘Southern Celtic

Conference’ in Biloxi, Mississippi, in 1996.The date for this event was 6 April –

the date that became America’s National Tartan Day two years later.

Identifying an ethnically divided USA in the past is critical to the LS’s current

agenda. It enables the LS to claim the Confederate States of America in the nine-

teenth century as ethnically particular. It argues that historically identiﬁable and

ethnically distinct nations have a right to self-rule, so that recognition of a ‘Celtic’

South subsequently justiﬁes the League’s separatist, neo-Confederate position.To

assert that the South has ‘Celtic’ origins, the League analyses the US Civil War

(1861–5) as a struggle between two ethnically differentiated populations – the

English, Northern Union states and the Celtic, Confederate South.

To ‘prove’ their contention, the League’s theorists appropriate ‘Celtic’ and

‘Scottish’ military history to demonstrate how Confederate soldiers in the US

Civil War were inheritors of 2,000 years of ‘Celtic’ ﬁghting prowess. The LS’s

leaders maintain that soldiers who fought for the Confederate states at Gettysburg

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in 1863 were descendants of those ‘Celts’ who battled the Romans at Telamon

in 225

and the British army at Culloden in 1746. The evidence given is that

the styles and tactics of combat in each of these battles was identical:

Celtic warfare may best be described as a continuum. Not only have

the people of Celtic culture exhibited an abiding love of combat; they

have fought much the same way for more than two thousand years.

Consider, for example, the similarities of three climactic battles in Celtic

history: Telamon, Culloden and Gettysburg. In each of these battles

Celtic forces used the same tactics with the same results. Boldly they

attacked a strongly positioned enemy, who knew what to expect and

was prepared to meet the charges.The enemy always had better weapons;

in each encounter, superior military technology and defensive tactics

overcame Celtic dash and courage.

(McWhiney and Jamieson 1982: 174)

These images of Celtic warriors and Scottish soldiers as heroic underdogs strug-

gling against the odds remain popular in the USA (witness the recent success of

Braveheart) and neatly coincide with the LS view of the Confederate troops in

the US Civil War. Representing the US Civil War as an ‘ethnic’ war enabled

another future director of the League to claim this division, between ‘Celtic

South’ and ‘English North’, to be ‘the largest ethnic rift in American history’

(Wilson 1988: 23).

Although made for a historical period, the League projects its claim that

America’s Northern and Southern states are ethnically distinct into both the

present and the future. The LS proposes that ‘Anglo-Celtic’ culture is a funda-

mental basis of Southern life and that this is irreconcilable with the dominant

culture in the rest of the USA.

Hence, the best future for ‘Celtic’ Southerners

would be to secede from the USA and gain political independence.The LS promo-

tion of ethnic difference within the USA is, therefore, used to justify demands

for national secession and claim that the American South was once, and will again

be, a nation-state in which a ‘white, Anglo-Celtic’ population is ‘dominant’

(J. Michael Hill, quoted in Roberts 1997: 20).

Such reinterpretations of Scottish origins differ from those made by members

of the Scottish-American community, yet despite being articulated by a group

that occupies a relatively marginal political position they illustrate another manner

in which Celtic and Scottish representations provide a rich source of material

around which individuals and groups can develop conceptual and political posi-

tions. Further, this example illustrates a construction of place identity through

the LS’s recognition of the ‘Celtic’ origins of the American South and its belief

that these origins remain a fundamental inﬂuence on the USA.

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The national scale – Tartan Day

In my ﬁnal example of an appropriation of Scottish ‘roots’ in the USA, I brieﬂy

return to the national scale and the US Senate’s creation of Tartan Day (Figure

9.1, p. 140). Like the example of the League of the South, however minor

Resolution 155 may be politically, it provides an indication of how Scotland is

thought about in America and is further illustrative of how recognition of Scottish

origins is currently utilised to connect the American present to the Scottish past.

When introduced by Senator Trent Lott in November 1997, Resolution 155

was the third attempt to enact an American observation of Tartan Day (Young

and Macfarlane 1998). In the following months, around thirty individual sena-

tors, representing states from Hawaii to Maine, added their names as co-sponsors

of this Resolution, and the Scottish-American community pushed its members

to ask their government representatives to support the creation of Tartan Day.

When voted upon in March 1998, Resolution 155 passed unanimously and

National Tartan Day was established in the USA.

The text of Resolution 155 is an acknowledgement of Americans who deﬁne

themselves using ethnic and hyphenated identities. The Tartan Day ruling uses

‘Scottish Americans’ and ‘Americans of Scottish descent’ interchangeably and

regularly throughout this short legislative text, implying that these two phrases

are equitable and that ‘Scottish-American’ identity is attained through ‘Scot-

tish descent’ – namely, genealogical ‘roots’. The text describes the role of

‘Scottish Americans’ in the development and achievements of the USA and com-

mends ‘the more than 200 organizations throughout the United States that honor

Scottish heritage, tradition, and culture’ (Congressional Record – Senate 1998:

S2373).

As well as honouring the Scottish ‘roots’ of those acknowledging Scottish-

American identities in the USA, Resolution 155 also identiﬁes some Scottish

‘roots’ of the modern American nation-state.The Tartan Day Resolution contends

that people with Scottish ‘roots’ were inﬂuential within eighteenth-century politi-

cal processes which culminated in the American Declaration of Independence, a

document that symbolically represents the foundation of the United States (Wills

1978). The Resolution makes three such connections between Scotland and

America. First, Resolution 155 notes that ‘almost half of the signers of the

Declaration of Independence were of Scottish descent’ (Congressional Record –

Senate 1998: S2373). Second, it emphasises that ‘Governors of 9 of the original

13 States were of Scottish ancestry’ (ibid.). The third identiﬁcation of America’s

Scottish genealogy within this Senate Resolution does not refer to the Scottish

ancestry of individual politicians, but to the Declaration of Independence itself.

Arguably the least veriﬁable of the claims that this Resolution makes is that

‘the American Declaration of Independence was modeled’ on the Declaration

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of Arbroath,

a document written 450 years previously (ibid.). Arguably, iden-

tifying this ‘root’ bypasses a contemporaneous Scottish inﬂuence on authors of

the American Declaration – namely, Scottish Enlightenment philosophy (see Hook

1975, 1999; Wills 1978) – to accredit an older, and implicitly therefore more

authentically ‘Celtic’ source of Scottish inﬂuence on the USA, the Declaration

of Arbroath. This ‘root’, in turn, provides the rationale for the US Senate to

designate a date for National Tartan Day, ‘because the Declaration of Arbroath,

the Scottish Declaration of Independence, was signed on April 6’ (Congressional

Record – Senate 1998: S2373).

This ﬁnal example has suggested that, in acknowledging the Scottish-American

community, the US Senate Resolution establishing Tartan Day, albeit a relatively

unimportant piece of government legislation, also constructs a national place

identity – that of the USA – through recognition of Scottish origins. Identifying

both Scottish-American individuals and historical Scottish documents as impor-

tant inﬂuences on the formation of the USA elevates Scotland to an esteemed

position in America’s cultural imagination.

Conclusion: globalising Celtic geographies

That identities are ﬂexible and constructed enables their articulation and expres-

sion in a myriad ways.Yet metaphors like those of ‘roots’ paradoxically generate

popular belief that identities are essential and stable. In this chapter, I have exam-

ined the relationships between this ﬂuidity and ﬁxity through examples taken

from the USA. Celtic identities, including Scottishness, are increasingly part of

global geographies, being practised, produced and consumed far beyond those

areas in north-western Europe traditionally associated with Celts.Thus, as Celtic

identities travel across routes, their meanings are continuously being transformed

as they are utilised by different actors, organisations and institutions.

Whereas other contributions in this book show how Celticity can be invoked

spiritually or rebelliously (see, for example, the chapters by Hale and Boyle), the

symbolic resources and resonance of Celtic identities mean they can also be

employed in many other, disparate ways. Recent evidence collected by the

Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC), an organisation monitoring neo-Nazi and

white supremacist activity in the USA, identiﬁes an ‘obsession with Scotland among

the klan and hardcore militia groups’ (Potok, quoted in Seenan 1999: 12). The

SPLC also argue that, currently,‘The Celtic thing is huge with white supremacists’

(Potok, quoted in Roberts 1999: 29).

Further, unsolicited extremists have begun

to target Scottish-American events. In 1998, a neo-Nazi organisation distributed

ﬂyers proclaiming a California Highland Games to be ‘one of the only places in

San Diego County where a WHITE person can gather with his or her own race in

a peaceful and harmonious celebration of pride’ (upper case in original).

This

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appropriation of Scottish and Celtic elements to constitute a white racial identity

cannot be ignored and, I suggest, warrants further inquiry.

As an example of an active reworking and refashioning of Scottish and Celtic

symbols and identities, that one such interpretation can serve an unsavoury politi-

cal agenda provokes questions about who has the power to deﬁne and perform

nationalities and ethnicities. Aspects of Scottish and Celtic identities, cultures

and histories can be selectively utilised to support many diverse personal and

political positions. The ascription of Celtic origins to Southern US states by

the League of the South

is one example of such processes, and connecting the

Declarations of Independence and Arbroath, as seen in the US Senate’s designa-

tion of Tartan Day, is another. On a local scale, individual members of Scottish

heritage and clan societies in the USA interpret their genealogical pasts and arrive

at hyphenated Scottish-American identities having inherited ancestral ethnicity.

It is in ways such as these that constructions of place and personal identities

through recognition of Scottish origins are shaping the Celtic geographies of the

USA.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the interviewees for their participation and the Scottish-

American societies for their assistance.Yamuna Sangarasivam and Bruce D’Arcus

were forthright in their comments and criticism. Ed Sebesta and Diane Roberts

provided valuable information about the League of the South. Thanks must also

be forwarded to the editors, who were patient with their support and incisive

with their comments.

Notes

1 This decision followed a similar designation made in 1991 by the Provincial legis-

lature of Ontario, Canada.There are also Tartan Days in Australia and New Zealand,

where they are celebrated on 1 July.

2 It is interesting to note that many studies re-examining ‘white ethnicities’ appeared

in the USA in the 1960s and early 1970s (e.g., Glazer and Moynihan 1963; Novak

1971; Ryan 1973; Stroud 1973). This suggests that an awareness of ethnic origins

and identities among white Americans developed as the Civil Rights movement

politicised African-American identities and discourses of multiculturalism emerged

challenging the assimilationist metaphor of the American ‘melting pot’ (Byron 1999).

3 In order to examine constructions of Scottish-American identity I participated

in Scottish heritage events in a Northern US state, and spoke with people who

attended these activities in 1997–8. I attended meetings of both a local St Andrew’s

Society and a Highland Games Committee, subsequently placing requests for inter-

viewees in these groups’ newsletters. In total, twenty people were interviewed who

were active in this Scottish-American community to varying degrees. Discussions

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were not tape-recorded; ﬁeld notes were made both during and immediately

following conversations. The testimonies reproduced are transcribed from my ﬁeld

notes. I have given the interviewees pseudonyms.

4 By 7 November 2000 Braveheart had grossed US$202.6 million at the box ofﬁce world-

wide – US$75.6 million of this in the USA alone (Internet Movie Database 2000).

5 See Barnes and Duncan (1992) for discussion of the use of metaphor in geograph-

ical analysis.

6 Rowland Berthoff (1982) observed a similar absence of African-Americans from

Highland Games he attended in the USA in the 1970s.‘There may be black Macleans

and Macleods’, he wrote,‘but they are tacitly assumed to have no properly Scottish

ancestors and no place at Scottish-American gatherings’ (1982: 26).

7 It must be emphasised that the League of the South (LS) has a speciﬁc political

programme and objective. The LS is neither representative of, nor afﬁliated to, the

Scottish-American community. The League does not speak for Scottish-Americans

and operates wholly independently of Scottish-American clubs, societies and heritage

groups.

8 See, for example, the LS’s recent Declaration of Southern Cultural Independence, which

exhorts: ‘The national culture of the United States is violent and profane, coarse

and rude, cynical and deviant, and repugnant to the Southern people’ (League of

the South 2000).

9 At times the LS identiﬁes an ‘Anglo-Celtic’ South, but explain: ‘The Anglo preﬁx

merely signiﬁes use of the English language, a useful classiﬁcation because there are

still several native Celtic languages that have survived into modern times.While Anglo-

Celt can apply to many people in the British Isles and large parts of the population

of various ex-British colonies, it is the South where Anglo-Celts established a home-

land and have retained many of their core cultural traits’ (McCain 1996: 35).

10 Following its successful adoption, members of the Scottish-American community

and leading Scottish politicians have joined its instigator, Republican Party Senator

for Mississippi, Trent Lott, on subsequent Tartan Days. In 2000, Lott received the

inaugural William Wallace Award from the American Scottish Foundation. He

accepted this while wearing a kilt with a tartan pattern pertaining to his own Scottish

ancestral ‘roots’ (Butters 2000; McCaslin 2000).

11 The Declaration of Arbroath (1320) was a letter sent by members of the Scottish

nobility to the Pope demanding the recognition of a Scottish kingdom and that the

Pope should refuse to acknowledge English claims on Scotland.

12 The Ku Klux Klan, for example, has long had Scottish ‘roots’ (Wade 1987; Hewitson

1995). Founded by Scottish-American ex-Confederate soldiers in 1866, the organ-

isation is also the subject of Thomas Dixon’s 1905 novel, The Clansman: a Historical

Romance of the Ku Klux Klan, which explains that nineteenth-century Klan members

were ‘the reincarnated souls of the Clansmen of Old Scotland’ (Dixon 1970: 2).

Dixon adapted his novel, turning it into the screenplay for the ﬁrst Hollywood

blockbuster, D.W. Grifﬁth’s notoriously racist 1915 ﬁlm, The Birth of a Nation.More

recently, Scott (1997) reports that the Ku Klux Klan now recommends Braveheart

to its members.

13 Other right-wing political organisations – for example, the Council of Conservative

Citizens – have recently targeted Highland Games in America for the distribution

of literature outlining how ‘Third World’ immigration will make ‘American Scots’

an ‘endangered species’ (Citizens’ Informer 1998, 1999).

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THE SCOTTISH DIASPORA

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14 It must be emphasised that the ‘racial’ character of Scottish and Celtic identities in

the USA is not representative and does not reﬂect the political beliefs of the persons

with whom I spoke or the Scottish-American community as a whole.

15 While this manuscript was under review, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC

2000) classiﬁed the League of the South as a ‘hate group’.

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156

WHOSE CELTIC CORNWALL?

The ethnic Cornish meet Celtic spirituality

Amy Hale

At the end of the twentieth century the controversy over what can and cannot

be legitimately labelled as ‘Celtic’ is raging. Patrick Sims-Williams has deﬁned

the debate as a ‘battleground’, where scholars from different academic traditions

establish criteria for determining a ‘Celt’ or even in some cases trying to dismiss

the notion altogether (Sims-Williams 1998: 1). Many Celtic scholars deﬁne

‘authentic Celticity’ (both ancient and modern) by the linguistic criterion; they

argue that a person or group must speak (or have access to) a Celtic language

in order to qualify (or have qualiﬁed) as a Celt. Others use material or geograph-

ical criteria: a Celt is deﬁned either by particular characteristics of material

remains, or by the boundaries of where the Classical Greek and Roman writers

delineated named Celtic populations. Problematically, many of these criteria are

not consistent with discrete and bounded Iron Age and medieval European groups

(if indeed such discrete entities ever existed), and certainly not with postmodern

populations. Contemporary Celtic phenomena are decidedly tricky to isolate and

‘authenticate’. Many of those who live in a territory widely considered to be

‘Celtic’ do not speak a Celtic language. Some people’s Celtic identity is a case

of elective afﬁnity, rather than their having been raised in a Celtic territory.

Furthermore, Simon James has contested the notion that modern Celtic terri-

tories even have the historical precedent to be labelled as Celtic (James 1999b).

However, a number of scholars now realise that, rather than emphasising the

lack of continuity between the ancient Celt and contemporary Celts and focusing

on the ‘inauthenticity’ of contemporary Celtic traditions, the ambiguities and

complexities surrounding the Celts and various expressions of Celtic identity are

in themselves worthy of study (see Hale 1998; Leersen 1996; Brown 1996;

Tristram 1997). Cornwall in particular is well suited for this type of research

and is an interesting site for exploring the nature of postmodern and contem-

porary Celtic identities.

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At the end of the twentieth century there exists an incongruity in Cornwall.At

present, there are two different groups who claim an afﬁliation with a Celtic her-

itage: the ethnic Cornish and those who participate in one of the many forms of

Celtic spirituality. Sometimes these two groups, the Cornish and the spiritual

Celts, are distinct and separate in their visions of Celtic Cornwall, and some-

times they are motivated by similar key symbols and concerns – for instance, the

importance placed on Druids and Arthurian legends as emblems of ‘Celticity’.

However, at their cores, they are distinct populations with different purposes and

ideological motivations behind the constructions of their own Celtic identities.

Sometimes these two groups’ claims of Celtic inheritance are in conﬂict, and

nowhere is this more evident than in how the land and the ancient sites scattered

throughout Cornwall are to be used and interpreted, indicating that sometimes

clashing moral geographies underscore the beliefs of the two populations.

Here I will focus on the different ways in which these groups interpret the

Cornish landscape and its ancient sites, which aspects of the landscape are sacred,

disagreements concerning who has the right to use the sites and in what manner,

and how these beliefs inform the sometimes conﬂicting notions of what it means

to be Celtic in Cornwall. Research for this study was carried out between 1994

and 1998 as part of a wider project on Celtic identities in Cornwall.The research

involved analysis of ‘insider’ literature, participant-observation and interviews

with both Cornish cultural activists and people interested in Celtic spirituality,

particularly Neo-Pagans.

Ethnic Cornish activism: people and territory

Although Cornwall and the Cornish have been considered ‘Celtic’ by antiquar-

ians, historians, language scholars and cultural activists since the early eighteenth

century (just as the term ‘Celtic’ was starting to be attributed to living popula-

tions), the nature of its Celticity has been often contested. Notably, at the very

beginning of the twentieth century during the ﬁrst wave of pan-Celtic activism,

the question of Cornwall’s entrance into the newly formed Celtic Association

was hotly debated on the grounds that its Celtic language was no longer in

everyday use. Some delegates wished to argue that the territory was considered

too ‘Angliﬁed’ to qualify for membership (Hale 1997b). However, the argument

for Cornwall’s inclusion was strong, and in 1904 Cornwall was made a member

of the Celtic Association, which provided the vehicle for a wider understanding

of Cornwall’s Celtic identity both inside and outside Cornwall.

In fact, Cornish cultural and political activism was a growing phenom-

enon throughout the twentieth century. At present, Cornwall has two nationalist

political parties (Mebyon Kernow and the Cornish Nationalist Party), and a

number of pressure groups which campaign for the recognition of Cornwall and

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158

Cornish culture (for example, Cornish Solidarity and the Cornish Gorseth), as

well as those who work to promote the Cornish language (the Cornish Language

Board and Teere ha Tavaz). However, despite the cultural, linguistic, social, politi-

cal and economic difference that Cornwall has persistently demonstrated from

England (Payton 1992), the fact that Cornwall is administered as an English

county has consistently added to the ambiguity over identity issues.

In addition to the indigenous Cornish movement in Cornwall, there has also

been a long tradition of migration to Cornwall by individuals or groups inspired

by Cornish ‘difference’. Much of this results from the highly romanticised con-

struction of Cornwall by artists and writers since the mid-nineteenth century as

a place of wild, elemental landscapes inhabited by a primitive, naïve people – the

Cornish (for details of this argument, see Payton 1992; Deacon 1997; Kent 1998).

Paradoxically, both the native constructions of Cornwall and the romanticised con-

structions of ‘outsiders’ emphasise Cornish ‘difference’, albeit sometimes in con-

ﬂicting ways. Since the mid-nineteenth century this Cornish ‘difference’ has been

most often characterised as a result of Cornish ‘Celticity’, by both ‘outsiders’ and

increasingly by the ethnic Cornish themselves.The increase in awareness of Cornish

identity can be seen as part of a wider trend in Europe towards the resurgence of

small nations and regions in response to a number of factors, including globalisa-

tion, mass tourism and second-home ownership (Boissevain 1992: 43–52).

However, it would be misguided to consider this awareness as an entirely twenti-

eth-century phenomenon; it is simply the most recent assertion of it.

Celtic spirituality in Cornwall

To deﬁne brieﬂy what I mean by ‘Celtic spirituality’: ‘Celtic spirituality’ is an

umbrella phrase which covers a wide range of spiritual activity that practitioners

associate with a real or imagined ‘Celtic’ past. It is a very wide-ranging phenom-

enon, and today includes such diverse but related groups as Neo-Druids,Wiccans,

Celtic shamans, New Agers, New Age Travellers, Goddess worshippers, New Age

Christians and Pagan eco-warriors. Practitioners of contemporary Celtic spiri-

tuality are informed and inspired by what they believe to have been the religion

of pre- and early-Christian Celtic areas (Bowman 2000). For practitioners of

Celtic spirituality, Celtic ethnicity is not an issue – one does not have to be

Cornish, Manx, Breton, Welsh, Irish or Scottish to take part. As Bowman has

shown, many of these people are ‘Celtic’ solely on the basis of elective afﬁnity.

She refers to practitioners for whom Celticity is a thing of the spirit rather than

culture as ‘Cardiac Celts’ (Bowman 1996: 246).

In Cornwall, it is difﬁcult to discuss the phenomenon of Celtic spirituality in

terms of a single demographic. In fact, spiritual tourism probably accounts

for the majority of practitioners in Cornwall and their contact with permanent

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residents is most likely to be ﬂeeting and transient. Therefore, it is probably

more accurate to think of Celtic spirituality in Cornwall as a continuum of beliefs

and practices shared by a wide variety of people rather than a singular cohesive

community. Although there are practitioners living throughout Cornwall, most

of the ‘Celtic-inspired’ ritual activity is focused in two regions: the area of north

Cornwall surrounding Tintagel, and West Penwith (see Figure 10.1). Each of

these areas has a somewhat different role in the development of Celtic spiritu-

ality in Cornwall. Since the writings of Geoffrey of Monmouth in the twelfth

century,Tintagel has been known as the legendary birthplace of King Arthur and

has been a centre of spiritual pilgrimage since the late nineteenth century. Other

sites of interest near Tintagel include the Rocky Valley Maze carvings, St Nectan’s

Kieve and the Museum of Witchcraft at Boscastle. West Penwith is the area in

which the majority of megalithic monuments in Cornwall are concentrated.

Since the 1960s this area has been a focus predominantly for spirituality centred

on ‘earth mysteries’, the central precept of which is that sacred sites have been

consistently built on areas that contain a high magnetic or electrical force which

can be accessed through ritual (Michell 1995). The most signiﬁcant sites include

Men an Tol (a holed stone), Boscawen Un stone circle and the Carn Euny Fogou

(a long, Iron Age subterranean chamber). In addition to these two regions, it is

worth noting that there are other sites that exist in no particular concentration

throughout Cornwall which appeal to both Pagans and Celtic Christians for a

variety of reasons. These include churches, Celtic crosses, holy wells and saints’

way pilgrimage trails.

The conﬂict over ritual activity

For practitioners of Celtic spirituality, Cornwall is a prime site for expressing

their beliefs, but it is not the only site. It is part of a wider network of places

throughout Britain where pilgrims travel to ‘re-create’ a native British spiritu-

ality. John Lowerson has identiﬁed Cornwall, along with Glastonbury, Lindisfarne

and Iona, as one of the most signiﬁcant areas for Celtic religious tourism in the

UK (Lowerson 1994). Many visitors come to Cornish sites as a form of pilgrimage

to leave offerings and perform rituals at certain times of the year, yet there are

also resident practitioners who use the sites regularly. However, in the context

of the more general heightened awareness of Cornish ethnic identity in the late

1990s, the ritual activities of visitors to the sites has become part of a discourse

of ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’, ‘native’ and ‘foreign’ activity. As Bowman has

remarked, there are sometimes cultural conﬂicts between ‘traditional’ ethnic

Celts and ‘Cardiac Celts’ concerning not only who has the right to the label,

but also over issues of appropriation of sites and customs (Bowman 2000).

Although Pagans and Celtic Christians living in Cornwall, and of Cornish origin,

AMY HALE

160

use these sites regularly, the activity is still often interpreted as ‘foreign’. The

conﬂicts over ritual activities at Sancreed and Madron wells are examples.

Sancreed and Madron wells have been associated with healing lore for centuries

and have been, on and off, the focus for offerings and ritual behaviour. Writers

in the nineteenth century attested, particularly at Madron well, the hanging of

‘clouties’ (known also in Cornwall as ‘jowds’) which are small rags tied to the

branches of the trees surrounding the well (Hunt 1865: 295–6).This was initially

supposed to act as a form of sympathetic magic whereby, as the rag was dissolved

by the elements, so would the illness for which the rag was hung.The comments

made by some respondents in my research indicated that this practice died out

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Men an Tol

Madron

Sancreed

Carn Euny

Boscawen Un

ST IVES

ST JUST

LAND’S END

PENZANCE

Figure 10.1 Sites of spiritual interest in west Cornwall

at Madron for several decades in the twentieth century (although young women

still continued to perform divination at the sites in the 1950s and 1960s), but

it has been revived certainly in the past ten years, and has increased dramat-

ically in the past ﬁve.Today, rags are hung at these wells, and at many other sites

around Cornwall, more as an offering – a gift to the spirit of the well, inter-

preted by contemporary ‘cloutie’ hangers as a continuance of an ancient Celtic

tradition of votive offerings in wells and rivers.

In the autumn of 1996, Meyn Mamvro, a magazine based in Cornwall dedi-

cated to ‘earth mysteries’ such as the alignment and ritual use of megalithic

monuments, ran a feature concerning the hostile interactions between some local

Christians and Pagans practising Celtic spirituality in Cornwall. Much of the

debate focused on the practice of hanging ‘clouties’ at well sites. Although the

editors of Meyn Mamvro were writing about perceived religious discrimination,

the issues also concerned struggles over representation and identity.The ‘clouties’

and other offerings at holy wells sparked a substantial debate when they were

removed from the Sancreed and Madron wells in the summer of 1996. A local

Methodist church group apparently removed the ‘clouties’ while they were cutting

down branches on the trail leading to Madron well. The church group argued

that the branches were obstructing the entrance to the baptistery, so they cleared

the branches as well as the ‘clouties’ hanging on them. Druids and other Pagans

were outraged, claiming that their sacred site had been desecrated, and their

traditions treated disrespectfully. Likewise, all the branches with ‘clouties’ were

removed from Sancreed well, but why and by whom are less clear.

Meyn Mamvro reprinted a news article from The Cornishman in which a Druid

living near Sancreed well stated that Pagans and Druids view holy wells as sacred

sites of pilgrimage, and that the well has healing energies: ‘People have been

leaving offerings there since pre-Christian Celtic times. It is very sad indeed if

the branches have been cut off the tree because someone has decided to impose

their religious beliefs over ours’ (Meyn Mamvro, no. 31, 1996: 7). Although the

vicar of the Anglican church in Sancreed, which owns the well, condemned the

cutting of the branches, he did say that ‘local people’ were upset at the ‘misuse’

of the site and had cleared rags off the branches in the past.They were in general

not opposed to people visiting the site but did not want it to be ‘abused’ (ibid.).

Although the Pagans invoked the Celtic tradition of well offerings to justify the

practice of tying ‘clouties’, the vicar of Sancreed reported that many of the

‘locals’ found the activity inappropriate. The vicar’s use of the term ‘locals’ does

not seem entirely accurate, for some of the ‘cloutie’-hangers are actually resi-

dents of the area. The vicar is actually establishing a distinction between his

congregation’s perceptions of ‘native’ and ‘imported’ uses of the well site.These

comments may also indicate wider fears about outsiders’ appropriation of Cornish

land and Cornish customs.

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162

Megalithic monuments are also highly contested areas in Cornwall. Cornwall

has the highest concentration of megalithic sites in Britain and they are the focus

for a great deal of regular ritual activity. Cornish author N. Roy Phillips illus-

trates the tensions over these monuments in his novel The Horn of Strangers (1996).

The novel concerns many of the contentious issues arising between the Cornish

and non-Cornish in Cornwall, from everyday relationships to economic devel-

opment and even spirituality. In one section, Barny, the Cornish protagonist, is

taking a woman to visit the Men an Tol.When they arrive, they witness a proces-

sion of thirteen people, clad in black robes, performing a ritual:

‘Who are they?’ Louise demanded for a second time. ‘I don’t know.

Bloody cranks! Going to the Maen an Tol [sic] for some stupid ritual. As

it said in the paper the other day, I remember it....“The growing

spell of the mysterious stone not only draws thousands of tourists to

wonder at its meaning, but troops of astronomers, geomancers, dowsers,

occultists, mystics, UFOlogists, folklorists and many others.”What have

we come to!’

(Phillips 1996: 175)

Phillips then describes the pair witnessing a ritual of healing at the stones and

then leaving before they are convulsed with ﬁts of laughter, which would obvi-

ously reveal them to the ritualists. Barny feels that the ritual is frivolous, yet

Louise, who is not Cornish, asked,‘Why did he dismiss others visiting the stones

as “bloody cranks” when, as she surmised, he himself went to the stones for revi-

talization?’ (ibid.: 178).

I asked the author what inspired this section of the novel. He told me that

he had few sympathies with those who practise Celtic spirituality at ancient

sites: ‘I understand the impulse to experience the divine in nature, but the sites

are being abused by too many visitors now.’ Phillips also believes that the prac-

tices of contemporary Celtic spirituality have no historical precedence. He and

his partner both recalled Madron and Sancreed holy wells from their youth, and

said that no one ever tied ‘clouties’ to the branches at those wells at that time.

These sentiments concerning ‘inauthenticity’ of ritual practices were echoed

by other Cornish people with whom I spoke. One Cornish activist in his early

thirties described an incident that occurred when he went to visit the Men an

Tol and found people crawling through it, as he described, ‘the wrong way’. The

activist tried to tell them how it was ‘traditionally’ done, ‘and they started

gabbering about “reverse polarities” or something’. Like Roy Phillips, this activist

believes that there is no historical precedent for these contemporary practices.

Clearly, this seems to be a case of differing interpretations of Cornwall’s Celtic

past.

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Differing moral geographies

In addition to the conﬂict over sites and their usage there is the essential matter

of what aspects of the Cornish landscape are revered and are considered ‘Celtic’

by the two populations. Many Cornish view the remains of Cornwall’s indus-

trial past – such as the abandoned tin mines, and to a lesser degree the debris

left from clay mining known as ‘tips’ – as icons of Cornishness of which they

are proud. Bernard Deacon has remarked that in the nineteenth century, as the

idea of ‘Celticity’ was developing, Cornwall’s industrial landscape was never

considered to be ‘Celtic’ (Deacon 1997: 17).This is no longer the case.Although

today the abandoned mines are not icons of the Celtic revival in Cornwall in

the same way that the Cornish language and the annual gathering of Cornish

bards known as the Gorseth may be, there is no doubt that the remains of native

industry are embraced by revivalists, and underscore a Cornish sense of ethnic

difference – a difference that is often expressed within the discourse of ‘Celticity’.

These industrial areas are recognised as part of the Cornish heartland, and have

acquired great symbolic value by virtue of their importance in Cornish cultural

and economic development. The discarded mine stacks are emblematic of a past

Celtic vitality, almost as sacred to some Cornish people as the megalithic monu-

ments. However, these industrial areas are less likely to be visited by tourists

and are not the sort of places in which immigrants choose to settle.

Yet it seems clear from the literature generated for the Celtic spirituality

market that industrial centres are not perceived by many enthusiasts of Celtic

spirituality as having any spiritual value, and are probably not considered to be

‘Celtic’ at all. In fact, certain writers based in Cornwall believe they tend to be

symbolic of exploitative and abusive attitudes towards the Earth and its resources.

For instance, The Sun and the Serpent is a book in which Paul Broadhurst and

Hamish Miller give a detailed account of their spiritual journey through Cornwall,

dowsing the energy line of St Michael.When the authors approach the Camborne

and Redruth area, what they describe as ‘the closest thing you can get in Cornwall

to industrial conurbations’ (Miller and Broadhurst 1989: 40), they note that the

ley line they were following curved dramatically: ‘The line seemed to be giving

the Camborne/Redruth area as wide a berth as possible, deliberately steering

clear of this concentration of sprawling industrialism’ (ibid.: 41). The writers

imply that there can be no spirit in this landscape, or that industrialisation

somehow is repellent to the natural soul.Their depiction of the china clay mining

area around St Austell is even more damning:

The line ran right through the centre of this beautiful and strangely

moving place, and as we gazed across verdant countryside to the unnat-

ural lunar landscape of the Cornish clay country, where the countryside

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164

has been raped unceremoniously of its mineral content, the mood was

poignant as the stark contrast presented itself. . . . It is impossible not

to wonder how such devastation might affect the secret forces of Nature.

. . . Continuing through the disturbed landscape of China Clay works

and skirting the slopes of Knightor, the course of the current took little

account of the damage caused by man in search of mineral wealth. The

impression was of a vast and powerful body whose skin had been torn

and wounded, leaving ugly scars that were superﬁcially devastating, but

which left the basic life force unaffected. Nevertheless, it was a relief

to leave behind the scenes of despoliation and travel once more through

the seductive Cornish countryside.

(ibid.: 46–7)

Yet people have been spiritually moved within these industrial landscapes, for

these were the most potent sites of Cornish Methodism. Jack Clemo, blind and

deaf poet of the china clay area, was of Methodist stock, yet he considered

himself to be a Calvinistic mystic. Clemo wrote often about the intersection of

his spiritual revelations and the industrial landscape in which he lived. Clemo,

who called himself a Celt, although his views on Cornish nationalism were ambiva-

lent (Clemo 1980: 139), saw clay-mining production itself as metaphorical in

regard to the processes of conversion, puriﬁcation and sacred marriage (Clemo

1991: 9). Likewise, the nineteenth-century poet John Harris, who was a miner

from an early age, often blended industrial and spiritual imagery in his work

(Thomas 1977).

There are many ways in which to read this conﬂict of values. First, according

to the ‘Other’-driven construct of ‘Celticity’ described by Malcolm Chapman in

his controversial 1992 work The Celts: Construction of a Myth, Celts are consis-

tently constructed as peoples of nature not of culture, at least not as far as heavy

industry is concerned (Chapman 1992: 129–30). Writers such as Miller and

Broadhurst (1989) reinforce these constructions. In the insider literature of Celtic

spirituality rurality is emphasised, industrial development is bad, and the further

away the seeker is from urban centres, the more likely she or he is to become

spiritually aware. Conversely, within Cornish Methodism the hard labour and

production which created the industrial landscape were the road to salvation.

Ecology was not yet part of the equation.

In addition to the dominant construct of Celt as rural peasant, the interpre-

tations and usage of land are also shaped by insider/outsider and class-based

perceptions. Although certainly there are Cornish people of all classes, research

by Adler (1986), Chapman (1992), Heelas (1996) and Luhrman (1989) on Neo-

Paganism and the New Age indicates that New Age religions, of which Celtic

spirituality is an example, are middle-class driven. Celtic spirituality is not to

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be equated with New Ageism, yet its current popularity and inﬂuence in Britain

should be understood primarily within the framework of that movement. No

large-scale demographic or statistical research has yet been done to assess how

many practitioners of Celtic spirituality there are and what their general proﬁle

is. However, survey research on Paganism, with which Celtic spirituality is often

associated, indicates that the people involved tend to be middle income and well

educated (Adler 1985: 446–7; Luhrman 1989: 107). Both Adler and Luhrman

commented on a high proportion of Neo-Pagans having jobs in technical ﬁelds

such as computer programming.

Some writers have also linked the tendency to view Cornwall as ‘picturesque

landscape’ to class, as well as origin. Bernard Deacon and Ronald Perry have

both commented on the romanticised and anti-industrial biases that incomers to

Cornwall have historically projected onto the Cornish landscape. Deacon observes

that the perception of Cornwall as an anti-industrial and picturesque region is

relatively recent, for prior to the end of the nineteenth century Cornwall was

predominantly recognised throughout Britain as a region of industry (Deacon

1997: 7–24).Yet it is the conception of Cornwall as non-industrial and remote

that is the main attraction for incomers today. Economist Ronald Perry, who

researched migration patterns into Cornwall in the mid-1980s, has argued that

most in-migrants choose to move to Cornwall because of the quality of the envi-

ronment and to escape urban conditions (Perry et al. 1986: 89). Both Deacon

and Perry maintain that the non-industrial construction of Cornwall is linked to

middle-class values (Perry et al. 1986: 129; Deacon 1997: 24). Perry comments

that: ‘the picture that emerges from our study is of a Cornwall swamped by a

ﬂood of middle-class, middle-aged, middle-browed city dwellers who effectively

imposed their standards upon local society’ (Perry et al. 1986: 129).Thus, these

two groups in Cornwall are assessing the value of the landscape according to

different criteria linked to class and origin.

Deacon and Perry’s research correlates with Malcolm Chapman’s conclu-

sions concerning the different perceptions people hold of the Lake District

and the surrounding northern industrial towns. In fact, Chapman offers a useful

model for how the Cornish landscape is understood and viewed. Chapman

maintains that tourists to the Lake District wish to ignore the industrial areas,

and as a result the inhabitants of those villages and towns view the tourists as

privileged, middle-class and even contemptible (Chapman 1993: 203). Chapman

writes:

Those who live in West Cumbria are not, typically, rich or powerful,

and they tend not to be at the hub of British economic, political and

literary activity. Visitors to Lakeland, by contrast, contain among them

an unusually high proportion of well-educated and middle-class people

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166

from urban southern England.They have come to indulge in the worship

of the countryside, open spaces and mountains which is so striking a

feature of the leisure thought and practice of privileged English people.

One aspect of this worship of the countryside, of course, is a tendency

to regard urban industrial life as inherently unpleasant and undesirable,

and best avoided. The Lake District is, as it were, a highly controlled

‘natural’ environment, within which thoughts such as these can be

enjoyed without obstruction. Those thinking along these lines do not

know about industrial West Cumbria, and do not want to know.

(Chapman 1993: 206)

In Cornwall lies a similar conﬂict. Although there are many people interested in

Celtic spirituality who are not tourists in Cornwall – they reside there – the

literal worship of the non-industrial, ‘unspoiled’ countryside, which is a funda-

mental tenet of contemporary Celtic spirituality, is somewhat at odds with a

native population whose identity is steeped in a strong industrial past. As a result,

the clay tips near St Austell, and the remnants of the mining industry in

Camborne/Redruth, have greatly contrasting meanings for those who view them.

There is a secondary conﬂict, because both groups within the territory are

working within a Celtic paradigm and they may believe that their contrasting

attitudes towards the land are, to a degree, a continuation of their interpreta-

tion of Celtic heritage. Some Cornish may view Pagans and Celtic Christians as

part of the middle-class ‘English’ establishment who are appropriating their land

and misinterpreting their customs, and who are not ethnically Celtic. However,

‘Cardiac Celts’, regardless of their background, would not like to be associated

with the excesses of modern middle England, and feel they are modelling their

value systems on a higher ‘Celtic’ ideal which they believe is a legitimate part

of their wider British past. Furthermore, many spiritual Celts in Cornwall are

sympathetic to the struggle of the ethnic Cornish to deﬁne themselves as Celts

– some are showing solidarity by learning the Cornish language (see also Bowman

2000 for a wider discussion of this phenomenon) – even if they hold the native

extractive industries in some contempt.

Traversing the boundaries

However, the divisions which I have outlined are still generalisations. Although

there is conﬂict, there is also change. There are individuals in Cornwall who are

aware of these ideological boundaries, and who traverse them and consciously

merge them, which may indicate a shift in how ‘Celtic Cornwall’ is ultimately

perceived. Some are reinterpreting Cornwall’s industrial landscapes as sites of

spirituality, and others are interpreting megalithic sites as almost proto-

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industrial, thus establishing a uniquely Cornish continuum which is all at once

Celtic, industrial and spiritual.

For instance, sculptor David Kemp has created a mock archaeological exhibi-

tion of a ﬁctitious Cornish Iron Age society where the mines were Celtic temples

of solar worship. Kemp is a sculptor working with the scraps of industry, and

he has created sets for the Cornish drama troupe Kneehigh Theatre out of found

objects. He was commissioned to create an exhibit for the 1997 ‘Quality of

Light’ art festival in St Ives, sponsored by the Tate Gallery, and the resulting

installation, ‘Art of Darkness’, was exhibited at the derelict Botallack mine in

West Cornwall. The museum guide states:

Welcome to Cornwall’s ﬁrst and last Museum of the Future. Here at

Botallack, at the very end of Europe, the ruins of an antiquated culture

perch dramatically on the cliff-tops, battered by the mighty Western

Ocean. In this post-industrial landscape, history lies higgledy-piggledy.

Bronze Age barrows lie humped amongst heaps of broken granite from

the ruined mines, their shafts choked with the bones of more recent

inventions. At some point in the far distant future an important cache

of Iron Age artifacts will be discovered below these ruins. This preemp-

tive exhibition anticipates some of the artifacts that may be discovered.

(Kemp 1997: 1)

The exhibit is one of ‘artifacts’ from an invented (or reinterpreted?) solar deity-

worshipping people in Iron Age Cornwall, and he incorporates familiar Iron Age

Celtic iconography such as images of horses, chariots and wheels.Yet this display

is not one of delicate, ﬁnely tooled metals, carved with La Tène spirals and intri-

cate animals. It is one of rusty horned gods, heavy gears, chains, wires and broken

glass created from mining debris. Here we see a horned, helmeted warrior with

a protruding phallus, horse-drawn chariots and ‘the hounds of Geevor’, a pack

of ﬂoppy-eared dogs constructed entirely out of rubber work boots, that,

according to the exhibit notes, were said to guard the ‘solar temple’ of Geevor

tin mine. Kemp’s work is simultaneously ‘modern’ and ‘primitive’, and it is

obvious that he researched early Celtic stylistic and symbolic idioms for this

exhibition.Within Kemp’s invented mythology, mines were temples, and mining

was invented to bring the people closer to their solar gods. In the notes to the

exhibit we read:

Excavation of the ruined shafts and subterranean passages has provided

material evidence of a sophisticated culture at the tip of this remote

and windswept peninsula.Amongst the collected fragments, cult objects,

artifacts and tools, there persists a re-occurring device, common to both

AMY HALE

168

the mythology and the technology of this developing society. The solar

disc appears as both a sacred symbol and as a practical tool.

(Kemp 1997: 4)

Text describing the development of this imagined society through Early, Middle

and Late periods accompanies the displays of solar-cult relics, and early techno-

logical development based on the control of ﬁre and light:

The Middle Period saw a rapid development of ﬁre-box technology.

Heat provided the energy for an extraordinary diversity of cunning

devices. An enterprising culture eventually found ways to imitate the

powers of their own sky gods. Fire-wheeled vehicles rose into the air,

solar boats ploughed the seas, and the iron-horse rolled, ever westwards

across new continents, ultimately completing the symbolic circle of

global circumnavigation.

(Kemp 1997: 5)

The ruined tin mines had been for Miller and Broadhurst (1989) a desecration

of sacred ground, but for Kemp (1997) they remain a vision of Cornwall not

devoid of spirituality; indeed, they are its former temples.

Others have reinterpreted monuments which are now the modern sites of

Celtic spirituality within the framework of a mining economy. Ian Cooke has

suggested that the underground chambers known as ‘fogous’ were designed for

rituals to petition Mother Earth to provide a greater yield of tin and copper

(Cooke 1993). Although this is a contemporary interpretation of the ‘fogou’,

there is a precedent for this kind of belief. From a Christian standpoint, Cornish

miners believed that the mineral wealth of Cornwall was given to them by the

deposition and redistribution of the Earth’s resources in the aftermath of the

biblical Great Flood (Jenkin 1972: 42). William Pryce noted, as early as 1778,

that miners believed that minerals grew from the Earth ‘just like trees on its

surface’ (Rowe 1993: 67.2). This paradigm transfers an industrial and extractive

activity into something organic and harmonious.

Industrial sites in Cornwall increasingly have a spiritual relevance for the

Pagans who live there.A Cornish Pagan whom I will refer to as ‘M’ once described

to me his relationship with a particular hill called Carn Marth, near where he

grew up, which contains an old mine shaft. In his description, Celtic industry

and spirituality meet:

Much of the imagery associated with mining, especially in the clay area

seems to be associated with violation and rape, but I disagree. Perhaps

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at the beginning the mining was a violation, but now Carn Marth has

reclaimed the mine.That’s where I go to connect with Cornwall.When

I go there and sit down in the shaft, I feel like I’m in the middle of

Cornwall itself.

(Cornish Pagan: M)

These convergences of ideology and the re-envisioning of the Cornish landscape

allow for a more complex reading of Cornish and wider Celtic identities as

performed in Cornwall.The polarities described by writers such as Deacon and

Perry are now becoming merged as we move to more postmodern construc-

tions of space. The interpretations of landscape which used to be divisive are

now becoming closer. While new generations of the ethnic Cornish have come

to see that Celtic spirituality (both Pagan and Christian) is helping to reassert

Cornish difference, the previous ‘outsider’ spiritual community has moved

towards a more nativist understanding, and in some cases an explicitly nation-

alist position. Whereas a century ago it might have been impossible to consider

an industrial landscape as an inherent part of a Celtic spiritual construct, a deeper

picture is now starting to emerge. It is in within these fuzzy boundaries that

complex and multiple Celtic identities in Cornwall may emerge which will help

further inform our understanding of what ‘Celtic’ actually means.

AMY HALE

170

Part III

YOUTH CULTURE

AND CELTIC REVIVAL

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EDIFYING THE

REBELLIOUS GAEL

Uses of memories of Ireland’s troubled past among

the West of Scotland’s Irish Catholic diaspora

Mark Boyle

This chapter forms part of a wider programme of research examining the histor-

ical geography of memories of Ireland’s troubled political past which are produced

and reproduced within the Irish diaspora. Central to this research programme

is the belief that at various points in time and in various locations in the dias-

pora, narrations of the Irish nation which invoke themes of ‘Celtic’ or more

speciﬁcally ‘Gaelic origins’,‘British colonisation of Ireland’ and acts of ‘resistance

and rebellion’, have emerged to the fore. At the core of these narrations have

been different kinds of ediﬁcation of the ‘rebellious Gael’.

Documenting and explaining the historical geography of these narratives is of

critical importance.There is now a growing body of scholarship which conceives

the ‘nation’ as a relatively recent social construction that grew out of material

conditions prevalent from the late eighteenth century (Gellner 1983; Jackson

and Penrose 1993; McCrone 1998; Smith et al. 1998). Far from being natural

or organic entities,‘nations’ are best conceived as ‘invented’ or ‘imagined commu-

nities’, which exist primarily at a discursive level (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983;

Anderson 1983).

Of vital importance in the preservation of the integrity of the ‘nation’ is the

capacity of nationalists to marshal coherent historical biographies (Smith and

Jackson 1999). Here, both popular memory and indeed popular amnesia prove

to be implicated. Myths about the past emerge as the raw materials through

which biographies are constructed. The production and reproduction of memo-

ries of Ireland’s troubled political past therefore need to be approached within

the wider context of the production and reproduction of the concept of the Irish

nation itself.

Set against this wider backdrop, this chapter operates with a narrower brief.

Through an examination of the emergence of a new socio-cultural phenomenon

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173

in the West of Scotland, referred to herein as the ‘rebel music scene’, the aim

is to both document and make sense of the uses of memories of Ireland’s politi-

cal history within one particular contemporary diasporic community, West of

Scotland Irish Catholic, at one speciﬁc point in time, the 1990s. In so doing, it

is hoped that the chapter contributes to emerging literature which is seeking to

show the ways in which ‘the process of scattering that makes diasporas leads to

different ways of narrating the nation in different places and at different times’ [italics

added] (Smith and Jackson 1999: 18).

The chapter is constructed around three sections. First, in an effort to demon-

strate that the rebel music scene stands as a qualitatively new expression of Irish

nationalism in the West of Scotland, a brief outline of its character will be offered.

Crucially, this section will also seek to clarify my positionality in relation to the

scene. Second, by way of reﬂecting upon the utility of wider analytic tools, the

chapter will then consider the complexities of Irish nationalism, the concept of

social memory and its relevance to studies of nationalism, and the role of music

as a bearer of memories of Ireland’s troubled political history.Third, using insights

gained through these reﬂections, one interpretation of the uses of rebel music

in the West of Scotland in the 1990s will then be offered.

The rebel music scene in the West of Scotland

in the 1990s

That a sense of Irish nationalism has persisted among Irish Catholics in the West

of Scotland is somewhat remarkable given the relatively long existence of this

community (Table 11.1). Despite consisting today principally of second-, third,

fourth- and even later-generation immigrants, it is clear that the West of Scotland

diaspora continues to reﬂect its Irish heritage. Throughout its history none the

less, expressions of Irish nationalism in the Scottish diaspora have varied both in

their intensity and in their form. Using the growth of a ‘rebel music scene’ in

the 1990s as an object of analysis, this chapter begins with the claim that across

the last decade there has been a qualitatively important development in the

currency of particularly virulent and potent memories of Ireland’s past, among

at least some sections of the Irish Catholic community. For these sections – at

ﬁrst glance, at least – the patriotic ﬂame would seem to have been re-ignited in

the most trenchant of ways.

By the term ‘rebel music scene’, I am referring to the growth of a particular

form of ‘entertainment’ (McCann 1985). The scene consists of a range of bands

playing Irish rebel songs in clubs, pubs and concert venues, normally on a weekend

afternoon or night. Bands normally consist of four or ﬁve members, and an

entrance fee of between £3 and £15 is charged. With the exception of periodic

visits to Glasgow by a number of Irish bands, most notably the Dublin-based

MARK BOYLE

174

Wolfe-Tones, it was extremely rare to ﬁnd pubs and clubs across the West of

Scotland hosting rebel nights on a regular basis, if at all, by the late 1980s. Since

then, however, there has grown a vigorous scene consisting of a range of both

Irish visiting and Scottish-based bands.There now exists a host of venues where

rebel bands play regular weekend spots.With more bands, more varied types of

session, and more venues coming into existence, the scene shows no apparent

signs of abatement.

Although always on the periphery of my own social networks, as a male

growing up in the West of Scotland Irish Catholic community in the 1980s and

1990s, I have always had some knowledge about the existence and development

of the rebel music scene.The research reported upon below nevertheless repre-

sents the outcome of a more self-conscious and systematic effort to attend and

gain information on the scene between 1994 and 1998. My shifting positionality

in the course of conducting the research has important bearing on the thesis

articulated below and therefore deserves comment. Given that the scene is so

‘naturalised’ as a part of the social life of at least some diasporic groups, I scarcely

had any moral qualms or appreciation of its ideological signiﬁcance prior to

undertaking the research. However, as I became more aware of the various songs

being played and types of performances organised, I became more and more

uneasy about the conception of the scene as mere ‘entertainment’.

This unease deepened towards the end of the research, when I became fully

conscious of the extent to which some rebel songs glamorised violence and death

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Table 11.1 Irish-born populations in Scotland and Glasgow

Date Total pop. % Scottish Total pop. % Glasgow % British

Irish born in pop. Irish Irish born pop. Irish pop. Irish

Scotland born in Glasgow born born

1831 — — 35,544 17.5 —

1841 — — 44,345 16.2 —

1851 — — 59,081 18.22 —

1861 204,083 — 62,084 15.7 —

1871 207,770 6.18 68,330 14.3 2.49

1881 218,745 5.86 67,109 13.1 2.17

1891 194,807 4.84 66,071 10 1.58

1900 205,064 4.59 67,712 8.9 1.31

1911 174,715 3.67 52,828 6.7 1.04

1921 169,020 3.26 — — 0.96

1931 124,296 — — —

1951 89,007

1991 49,200 0.98 10,384 1.6 1.2

Sources: Adapted from Aspinal (1996) and Owen (1995)

Figure 11.1 Location of ﬁeld sites in the West of Scotland

within communities that are still freshly scarred by the recent troubles in Northern

Ireland. I now ﬁnd many – although not all – Irish rebel songs, and ‘perform-

ances’ which speak in very ‘raw’ terms about recent conﬂict, as disturbing and

upsetting. What began as peripheral to my social networks by accident has now

become peripheral by design.

Consequently, my aims in writing this chapter have now moved beyond simply

wanting to document an interesting example of social memory, to wishing to

make a contribution to promoting greater understanding of the social processes

that need to be tackled if Glasgow’s ‘uneasy peace’ (Gallagher 1987) is to be

muted. That it has taken me some time to complete the research and commit

my views to writing reﬂects this transition.

Given the central importance of participant observation, the research materials

reported upon here are essentially qualitative in character. Although I cannot

make claims about the representativeness of performances I attended, I believe

them to constitute a fair cross section. They include therefore, attendance at a

variety of different venues (from small pubs with audiences of thirty people to

concerts with audiences of 2,000), locations (Greenock, Glasgow, Motherwell,

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IRELAND’S PAST AND THE DIASPORA IN SCOTLAND

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The audience consisted of 2000 younger males, most drunk by the end of the night if not

the start. Many sported IRA memorabilia, and some had black berets and dark sunglasses.

The hall was covered in Irish tri-colours. Around me, a number of people spoke in Irish

Gaelic, greeting each other with the popular catch phrase

Tiocfaidh ar la

(Our day will

come). The night began with a large banging of a drum and almost hysterical screaming to

‘Get the Brits out now’. Then the bands came on and played the usual range of rebel

songs, some fast and stirring, others slow and remorseful. It was surprising how the mood

of the audience could change, with anarchy and fighting inside the venue giving way to

tranquillity and lament. One song, by

Erin Og

, mourning the death of

Pearse Jordan

, an

IRA volunteer shot dead by the Royal Ulster Constabulary on the Falls Road in Belfast in

1992, resulted in a spontaneous kneeling of 2000 people, in complete silence, hands

clasped as if deep in prayer. At one point, a Glaswegian member of the IRA who had

recently been released under the

Good Friday Agreement

was brought on to the stage to

thunderous applause and shouts of ‘No decommissioning’ and ‘F. . . the peace processes’.

This was followed by a raffle, the first prize of which was a framed drawing of Bobby Sands,

the first hunger striker to die in 1981. The night ended once more in anarchy when,

intoxicated with drink and propaganda, the audience exploded to the two favourites

Go On

Home British Soldiers, Go On Home

, and the

SAM Song

, gleefully celebrating the IRA’s

acquisition of Surface to Air Missiles in the mid-1980s. Again in a bizarre mood swing, the

crowd descended into almost total silence, everyone standing with their hands behind their

backs and heads to floor. The last song of the night was the Irish National anthem, the

Soldier’s Song

, sung in Irish Gaelic. Wild with excitement and super-pumped up, the

audience flocked back on to the streets of Glasgow with the

Strathclyde Police Force

stewarding the event outside the subject of extreme verbal abuse and threatening

behaviour. Stripped of any kind of civilising influence, one cannot help wonder how these

young men can go safely back into their normal everyday lives.

Figure 11.2 Research diary notes from a ‘rebel night out’, Glasgow Barrowlands,

October 1998

Coatbridge, Cambuslang and Wishaw – see Figure 11.1) and bands (including

all the main Scottish players such as Athenry, Blarney Pilgrims, Charlie and the

Bhoys, Saoirsie, Timbuk Five and Erin Og, and visiting Irish bands including the

Wolfe-Tones, Irish Brigade, Tuan and Summerﬂy). In order to impart to the

reader some sense of the scene, Figure 11.2 provides a summary of research

diary notes compiled following attendance at a ‘rebel night out’ in the Glasgow

Barrowlands, a run-down concert hall in one of the most deprived areas in

Glasgow’s East End. Three bands played: two Scottish bands, Athenry and Erin

Og, and one new Irish band, Tuan.

Irish nationalism, social memory and music

The crowded landscape that is Irish nationalism

What analytic tools are available to make sense of the growth of this scene?

Evidently, a preliminary answer to this questions begs investigation of what is

meant by Irish nationalism, what forms of memory underpin Irish nationalist

movements, and what contribution music makes in the production and repro-

duction of these memories. Given its complex origins and multi-faceted

development, it would be folly to search for a singular notion of Irish nation-

alism (Kierbard 1995; Kirkland 1999). The rise and fall of both political and

cultural nationalist movements has served to produce myriad different strains of

nationalist identity (Boyce 1982; O’Mahony and Delanty 1998). With speciﬁc

reference to forms of Irish political nationalism – for instance, Boyce observes

a ‘crowded landscape’ comprising a

confusion of beliefs ranging from democratic theory to jacobinism, from

constitutionalism to revolution, from comprehensive nationality to

sectarianism, from French republicanism and enlightenment to the ‘semi-

narist gallantry of Trent’, from Marxism to near Fascism.

(Boyce 1982: 380)

Focusing speciﬁcally on cultural nationalist movements, Hutchinson (1987), like-

wise, notes the rise (and fall) of three different forms of nationalism, embodied

chieﬂy in the activities of the Society of United Irishmen in the late eighteenth

and early nineteenth centuries, the Young Irelanders’ group in the 1840s, and

the Gaelic League in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

In order to provide a context for the Scottish case study, I wish to introduce

brieﬂy just one account, articulated most clearly by Eoin MacNeill, arguably the

founding father of twentieth-century Irish history. According to Hutchinson

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178

(1987), the analysis of Ireland’s past which MacNeill helped develop, constituted

the most successful of Ireland’s ﬂirtations with cultural nationalism; propelling

the rebellion of Easter 1916, was the historical imagination that was most

enshrined with the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1921.

Adapting Hutchinson’s (1987) account, four broad types of mythic structure

can be recognised to form the backbone of MacNeill’s historiography.

First, origin myths recall the uniqueness of Ireland’s Celtic, and speciﬁcally

Gaelic heritage, the legitimacy of the land claims made by the Gaels over their

new homeland on arrival between 500 and 300

, the foundation of Gaelic

society as a distinct polity, and the continuous and harmonious descent of the

Gaels over the ﬁrst millennium. Second, central to many of these myths – myths

of a golden age – are the tales of the legendary ﬁgures of Gaelic Ireland, such as

Cúchulainn, Fionn MacCumhaill and the Fianna, and Caítlin N

i Houlihán; they

seek to recall the greatest achievements of Gaelic society at its pinnacle before

foreign intervention. Invariably, these tend to focus upon the period from the

sixth to the eighth century when Ireland became the European centre of reli-

gious and secular learning. Third, myths of the national character seek to portray

the stoic suffering the Irish have endured under British colonisation and colonial

rule, heroic acts of resistance they have put up to this rule, and the assertion

that Ireland’s Gaelic past will never be extinguished and will prevail despite

anglicisation. British rule is invariably traced back to the landing of Strongbow

in 1169, and thus resistance is represented as occurring over an 800-year period.

Fourth, myths about the British character function to represent the British as driven

by imperial greed, capable of acts of evil and at times cowardly aggression in

pursuit of cultural and economic supremacy, and immune from any appreciation

of the rights of other peoples.

Social memory and the popular mobilisation of nationalist

historiography

Sketching out the framework provided by one historiography of the Irish nation

is helpful, but the question remains as to how this account is actually mobilised

in practice. Particularly, in what sense is the concept of popular memory of use

in this context? By its very nature, the growth of nationalism assumed and implied

a new form of time consciousness; what Anderson (1983) terms linear, Western

or calendrical time consciousness.Within this framework, it is crucial to realise

that there exists a wide range of commemorative practice, from professional

history to popular memory. It is fashionable for commentators these days to

attempt to blur such distinctions. In treating memory and history as different

practices here, I do not mean to ascribe one greater status. Like memory, history’s

claims to truth occur in speciﬁc social contexts and can never escape those

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contexts.The distinction I wish to draw rests upon the way in which both treat

linear time consciousness. It is in the provenance of memory that events can be

pulled and stretched, exaggerated and dramatised, clothed with passion and

emotion, exempliﬁed with ﬁction and metaphor, and heavily stylised (Samuel

1994). History, in contrast, by virtue of its adherence to the canons of social

scientiﬁc inquiry, is bound by a more regimented form of time consciousness.

In short, while memory does rely on an assumed concept of linear time conscious-

ness for its cogency, its embrace of such consciousness is more inventive, creative

and imaginative.

In the case study to follow, I wish to join recent work which has begun to

problematise conventional Cartesian assumptions about how memory works

(Middleton and Edwards 1990). Unlike ‘conventional’ academic psychology, I do

not see memory as the property of an individual, working according to cogni-

tive processes ‘inside the head’. Such an approach attributes failings in memory

to impaired cognitive processes operating ‘under the skull’. As such it effectively

depoliticises the experience of recollection (Shotter 1990). In contrast, I approach

memory as fundamentally a social phenomenon. In so doing, I make use of two

recent developments in the conceptualisation of memory: ﬁrst, the notion that

memory is a social practice; and second, the claim that memory is structured

by the conceptual schemas which are available in any society (Thelen 1989;

Carter and Hirschkop 1996).

The notion that memory is a practice that performs functions in certain social

contexts was ﬁrst articulated by Halbwachs (1951). According to Halbwachs,

memory is best conceived as structured by inter-subjective relations. As such,

the key question is not whether a particular memory accurately reﬂects a partic-

ular reality, but, given prevailing political, economic, social and cultural

conditions, what kinds of social functions memories serve (Samuel 1994). This

kind of treatment of memory raises the question of the kinds of social condi-

tions Irish diasporic communities have endured and how these have helped nurture

periodic inﬂammations of nationalist memories (Jacobson 1995).

There now exists a substantial literature making the case that the contem-

porary period is marked by a growing sense of existential insufﬁciency, with

the increasingly rapid turnover of models of identity resulting in a loss of mean-

ing and legitimacy (Giddens 1991). One of the more sophisticated conceptual

frameworks of relevance in this context is that provided by Pierre Nora (1989).

Nora draws a distinction between what he refers to as milieux de mémoire (living

memory), lieux de mémoire (‘merely’ sites of memory) and history. Living memory,

according to Nora, is ‘unself-conscious, commanding, all powerful, spontaneously

actualising’, and a feature most clearly found in the ‘so called primitive or archaic

societies’ (Nora 1989: 7). History, in contrast, represents a critical and formalised

investigation of the past.

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180

Nora’s interests lie in theorising the links between what he calls the ‘accel-

eration of history’ and the ‘ﬂaring up of memories’. For Nora, the anxiety to

and historical consciousness. In times of ﬂux, memory ‘crystallises and secretes

itself’ in a number of lieux de mémoire. Lieux de mémoire privilege history over

memory, and memories come to be besieged, conquered, tyrannised and erad-

icated by history: ‘What we call memory today is therefore not memory but

already history. What we take to be ﬂare-ups of memory are in fact its ﬁnal

consumption in the ﬂames of history’ (Nora 1989: 13). Against the backdrop of

the restless landscapes of capitalism, Nora’s thesis is that lieux de mémoire look

less like ‘memory’ and more like ‘history’. Lieux de mémoire, therefore, are

‘moments of history torn away from the movement of history, then returned,

no longer quite life, not yet death, like shells on the shore when the sea of living

memory has receded’ (1989: 12).

The second dimension of the concept of ‘collective’ memory rests upon the

claim that memory is patterned by language and, more generally, semiotic systems

(Shotter 1990). A bold version of this claim is that these systems furnish people

not only with different ways of apprehending the past, but also with the very

cognitive faculties to remember as an intellectual process in the ﬁrst instance

(Lattas 1996). As such, populations socialised into different cultures are best

conceived as having different intellectual competencies to remember in different

ways. In the present context, this approach leads one to consider the kinds of

techniques of historical retrieval with which different bearers of Irish nationalist

memory furnish diasporic communities. In what ways, for instance, do the

different media (literature, poetry, theatre, ﬁlm, music, monuments, festivals and

so on) through which nationalist memories are codiﬁed and rendered compre-

hensible promote commemoration of different types of past?

Moreover, embedded within any one carrier of memory are different tech-

niques of recall. In his historical review of Narrative Singing in Ireland, for instance,

Shields (1993) makes a distinction between four kinds of song: lays, which are

tantamount to heroic poetry, with their focus on the fantastic tales of the mythic

champions of Gaelic Ireland (such as Cúchulainn, Fionn MacCumhaill, Caitlín

Ni Houlihán and Oisín); early ballads, a late import from Europe, which narrate,

in contrast, less heroic ﬁctional tales which are not bound to the golden age of

the Gaelic past; the later ballads or the come-all-yes, which function as journal-

istic narratives of real events; and songs in Irish Gaelic, which lack the narrative

structures so evident in the ﬁrst three categories. Rebel music is permeated

by all of these categories and, as such, produces a variety of techniques of

historical recall itself.

It will be argued that it is only by bringing both notions (memory as a social

practice and memory as a culturally deﬁned apparatus of historical recall) together

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in a more holistic concept of ‘social’ or ‘collective’ memory, and reﬂecting upon

the ways in which social context and cultural repertoires intermesh in partic-

ular ways at particular times in particular locations in the diaspora, that a fuller

understanding of the signiﬁcance of nationalist memorial practices can be obtained

(Giddens 1987). Armed with this perspective, the ﬁnal section of this chapter

now presents one interpretation of the rebel music scene in the West of Scotland

in the 1990s.

A reading of the rebel music scene

The rebel music scene as a lieu de mémoire

Literature on the West of Scotland is marked by the claim that, while far from

trouble-free, the Irish Catholic community found assimilation somewhat easier

than their counterparts in British cities elsewhere – for instance, Liverpool (Gilley

and Swift 1985; Lowe 1989) – and in the various eastern seaboard cities of

North America which served as reception centres – for example, Boston and

Chicago (Funchion 1976; O’Connor 1995; McCaffrey 1997). Among the more

complex twists which mark out the West of Scotland case, for instance, have

been the greater than expected acceptance of the very earliest nineteenth-century

pre-famine migrants among the Scottish Protestant working class (Mitchell 1998),

and the growth of the Liberal Party as the dominant political force in the late

nineteenth century which held together the immigrant–native divide (MacLean

1983; Smith 1984).

According to Gallagher, the last major outbreak of sectarianism in Scotland

was in the 1930s, when Irish Catholic immigrants became scapegoats for the

more general economic malaise of that decade. In part a consequence of the

shared experience of the Second World War, and crucially as a result of the

improved standards of living enjoyed across the ‘glory years’ of 1945–73, the

absorption of the Irish has since been relatively harmonious. Indeed, according

to Boyle and Lynch (1998), the Irish have now ‘come out of their ghetto’.

Gallagher concludes:

If sectarianism is still capable of a last hurrah in Scotland, the evidence

presented in these pages suggests that it will not be on the scale witnessed

in Northern Ireland. Scotland does not face an identity crisis as sharp

as that encountered in Ulster. . . . Bilateral relations between groups

like Catholics and Protestants in Ulster and the west of Scotland range

along a continuum from a genocidal to a symbiotic one. In the 1970s,

it became apparent that Scots were more to one side of this spectrum,

whereas the peoples of divided Ulster were located perilously near the

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opposite edge. . . . Perhaps greater awareness of the progress Scots have

made in healing their religious differences may inspire some of those

in Northern Ireland who seek peace, by showing that their aspirations

are not altogether beyond reach.

(1987: 354)

Perspectives like these, while having the virtue of downplaying sectarian divisions

in Glasgow, clearly tend to fail to take seriously the periodic outbursts of nation-

alism that still exist in cultural terms. Not only on the football ﬁeld with the titanic

struggle between Glasgow Rangers (representing a predominantly Protestant con-

stituency) and Celtic (representing a predominantly Irish Catholic constituency),

but also in terms of the continued salience of Orange and Republican ﬂute bands,

it is clear that ‘British’ and ‘Irish’ consciousnesses remain strong (Bradley 1995).

How can one make sense of these cultural practices? Speciﬁcally, how is one to

understand the growing currency of the rebel music scene?

According to some, to see these practices as signiﬁcant of a sectarian under-

belly is to afford them properties they do not have (McCrone and Rosie 1998).

Bruce (1985), for instance, has argued that the apparent sectarian divisions one

observes on the football terraces represent nothing more than a cultural hang-

over from the past; not the tip of an iceberg, but all that remains as the iceberg

beneath the surface melts away. Not only is such cultural froth nothing more

than the dying embers of the past, but by virtue of the fact that it offers a rela-

tively innocuous mode of catharsis, it might well be part of the drive to extinction,

providing a safety valve for remaining sectarian residues. Although this contains

a kernel of truth, there is surely a danger in such analyses of failing to appre-

ciate fully the potential, if not the potency, of nationalist-related cultural practices.

Indeed, it may be complacent to dismiss emergent socio-cultural phenomena

(like the rebel music scene) in such an offhand way. A more serious analysis is

required.

At one level, one might make use of Nora’s (1989) concept of lieux de mémoire

and hypothesise that it is precisely the erosion of a sense of Irish heritage wrought

by assimilation which has stimulated the kinds of commemorative vigilance that

rebel music represents. The tradition which is passing away is Irish nationalism

itself, and the rebel music scene is one ‘secretion’ of that tradition that attempts

to ‘block’ the work of forgetting.

In contrast to this somewhat ‘obvious’ reading, the claim which I wish to make

in this chapter is that across the 1990s, the growing virulence of certain Irish

nationalist memorial practices has reﬂected a deepening crisis of identity along

not just one, but a multiplicity of axes (age, gender, class and so on, as well as

nationality).These identity crises have in turn stimulated a search for a redemp-

tive identity. The rebel music scene, functioning in a multiplicity of ways for

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different groups, has grown in currency because of its potential to provide such

an identity. Given that certain Irish nationalist memorial practices furnish cogent

and seductive models of identity (Nash 1996; Walter 1999), the search for a

redemptive sense of worth might well then be taking a sectarian turn.The rebel

music scene in this context might well be serving as a displaced cultural politics

of identity, blocking the passing away of not only Irish nationalism, but also of

other identity models based upon a variety of axes.

For instance, McCrone and Rosie (1998) claim that the continued veneer of

sectarianism represents nothing more than a ‘boy’s game’. In the context of a

number of difﬁculties experienced by second-, third-, fourth- and later-generation

young adult males in working-class Glasgow, for example, McCrone and Rosie

see Irish nationalism as functioning as a kind of assertion of masculinity.Whereas

there were once Glasgow gangs, there might now be Irish rebels. It could be

that any revival in investment in Irish nationalist identities derives not from a

sudden awakening of the intrinsic merits of concepts of the Irish ‘nation’, but

instead represents a kind of displaced cultural politics of masculinity.As one example

of how the rebel music scene might function to resolve displaced cultural poli-

tics of identity, then, in the remainder of this chapter I shall seek to contemplate

the relevance of this more general argument to young adult males speciﬁcally.

Using the language of Nora (1989), it may be proﬁtable for research to explore

the utility of the concept of lieux de mémoire in this more oblique sense. Given

the profound restructuring of the West of Scotland economy and labour market,

bringing long-term male unemployment, more ﬂexibility to the labour market,

and deepening deprivation in parts of Glasgow particularly (Pacione 1995), and

given shifting gender relations, with an increasing number of female heads of

households, rising divorce rates, rising numbers of single-parent families, and

increasing numbers of males living alone (McKendrick 1995), might not the

rebel music scene be conceived as an effort to ‘crystallise and secrete’ models

of masculinity which restore a sense of ontological security to young adult males

uncertain about their place or role in society? Might not the rebel music scene

be their lieu de mémoire?

The rebel music scene as a displaced cultural politics

of masculinity

At the simplest level, the rebel music scene’s function as a context within which

various concepts of masculinity are produced and reproduced can be appreci-

ated if attention is drawn to the demographic make-up of participants. In terms

of the audience, no statistical proﬁle has been, or probably could have been,

obtained through primary research. Through participant observation, neverthe-

less, I can say with certainty that most of the audiences comprised males between

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184

16 and 40 years of age. In some venues, women do attend, although almost

always with a male partner. Further, in some of the smaller pub and social club

venues, older people do participate and can make up the majority of the audi-

ence. Nevertheless younger adult males hang out mostly in rebel bars.

That young adult males constitute the backbone of audiences, however, clearly

in itself does not establish the veracity of the claim that concepts of masculinity

are produced and reproduced through the scene. For some, attendance might

be motivated by more prosaic reasons, including perhaps voyeurism. Moreover,

the extent to which macho concepts of masculinity offered through the scene

are important in securing a deep and long-lasting shift in identity is clearly open

to question. It is likely that the kinds of masculinities which are constructed in

the variants of Irish nationalism that are celebrated both crystallise and dissolve

in equal measure, and that for some, the scene constitutes at most only a tempo-

rary ‘identity moment’.

These points of qualiﬁcation noted, I wish nevertheless to conclude by drawing

attention to three features which help to build a case in support of the claim

that memories of Ireland’s troubled political past are being put to use as part of

an assertion of machismo: the time geography of performances; the historical

events that rebel songs recollect; and the pre-eminence of a particular hero-

martyr genre of song. What follows is an attempt to generate a ‘hypothesis’

through a priori reasoning. It is accepted, none the less, that further research

into the ‘psychology’ of consumers of rebel music will be needed if the propo-

sition advanced herein is to have a more secure footing.

The time geography of performances

In the new rapprochement between music and geography suggested by Leyshon

et al. (1998), the need for geographers to recognise that the meaning and signiﬁ-

cance of music is contingent upon the spaces and times in which it is performed

is afﬁrmed and promoted. Their approach

presents space and place not simply as sites where or about which music

happens to be made, or over which music has dispersed; rather, here,

different spatialities are suggested as being formative of the sounding

and resounding of music. Such a richer sense of geography highlights

the spatiality of music, and the mutually generative relations between

music and place. Space produces as space is produced.

(1998: 4)

Rebel music, whether it be sung at home at private parties, within the conﬁnes

of Celtic Football Club’s stadium, alongside Republican ﬂute bands, or at ceilidh

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Table 11.2 Irish rebel songs and their popularity in the scene, 1994–99

Date Song Rebellion

1798 General Munroe, Henry Joy,The West’s awake*, United Irishmen’s rebellion

Irish soldier laddie*,The rising of the moon,

The boys of Wexford,Wearing of the green

1803 Bold Robert Emmet, Anne Devlin, Robert Emmet’s insurrection

Back home in Derry*

1848 A nation once again* Cultural nationalism of the Young Irelanders and rising

1867 God Save Ireland*, Bold Fenian men Fenian rising

1916 Grace**, James Connolly**, Padraig Pearse, Banna Strand, Easter 1916 rebellion

The foggy dew**,The boys of the old brigade**, Soldiers’ song**,

Merry ploughboy*, Ireland un-free shall never be at peace

1919–23 Kevin Barry*, Michael Collins, Beal na Blath, War of Independence, 1919–21

The broad black brimmer**, Black and Tans**,

The riﬂes of the IRA, On the one road**, Civil War 1921–23

Wrap the green ﬂag round me boys

1942 Brave Tom Williams*, Ireland’s ﬁght for freedom, Northern Campaign, 1942

1957–62 Sean South of Garryowen**, Patriot game* Border Campaign, 1957–62

1969–present Ballad of Billy Reid* IRA volunteer shot dead by the army, 1971

Men behind the wire* Internment of suspected republicans, 1971–75

The helicopter song Helicopter escape from Mountjoy Jail, Dublin, 1973

Bring them home* Transfer of Price sisters from Brixton Jail, 1974

Ballad of Michael Gaughan* IRA volunteer who died on hunger strike

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Joe McDonnell**, Roll of honour**, Deaths of 10 hunger strikers, 1981

Bobby Sands MP*, The people’s own MP,

The H Block song, Farewell to Bellaghy,

Only our rivers run free, The time has come

Rock on Rockall*, Conﬂict over ownership of Rockall crag, 1981

Little Armalite**, SAM song** Gloriﬁcation of IRA’s acquisition of the Armalite and

subsequently Surface to Air Missiles in the 1980s

Nineteen men a-missing Breakout from Portlaoise Jail, Eire, 1975

Loughall Martyrs** SAS shooting dead of 8 IRA volunteers

Aiden McAnespie** Shooting dead of civilian by army, 1988

Fighting men of Crossmaglen**, Auf wiedersehen Crossmaglen* Exaltation of republican Crossmaglen, S. Armagh

Pearse Jordan* Shooting dead of IRA volunteer, 1996

The Black Watch* Denigrating the Black Watch regiment of the army

Provo lullaby, My old man’s a provo** General songs promoting the Provisional IRA

General, non-time-speciﬁc songs

This land is our land, Four green ﬁelds, Crude panoramic historical vistas on Anglo-Irish

Go on home British soldiers, go on home** history

Let the people sing* Celebration of the place of rebel music itself

Fields of Athenry** Cruelty of British landlords in the West of Ireland

during Great Famine of 1848–50

Notes

1 Songs in bold form part of the ‘hero martyr’ genre.

2 Songs followed by * are among the more popular.

3 Songs followed by ** are the most popular of all.

dances, requires to be properly situated in time-space if its meanings are to be

best appreciated.

The pub, club and concert environments of greatest interest here are indeed

fundamental to understanding the status of this particular kind of nationalist

memorial practice. In most instances, venues are located in the more deprived

and run-down parts of town, and are accurately characterised as ‘dark’, ‘dingy’,

‘primitive’ and ‘rough’. Indeed, even those inside the scene tend to refer to

venues in such terms as ‘skid row’ or ‘bandit country’. Adorned with Republican

memorabilia, they often have ‘tatty’ interiors. Given these descriptions, and the

fact that most performances take place at night, normally between 9 p.m. and

12 a.m., venues can elicit a high sense of fear. For some, they are risky, dangerous

and intimidating places. Such images prove crucial to how these environments

work, because they are by their very nature ‘hard man’ environments, where

only the meanest and toughest dare go.The environments encourage rebel music

to be seen as subversive, the provenance of only the strongest, hardest and most

streetwise of males. Attending a performance, therefore, makes in itself a state-

ment about the character of the individual, and produces ‘solidarity’ among those

involved and a sense of exclusion among those who are not. Quite simply, the

rebel scene could not work in the way in does in wine bars or cafés situated on

Glasgow’s gentriﬁed waterfront.

The historical events which are remembered

Rebel songs mobilise only a subset of the range of nationalist memories identiﬁed

above in the analytic taxonomy of myths inherent in MacNeill’s version of cultural

nationalism.As such, they were selective in the historical events they chose to rec-

ollect.An effort has been made in Table 11.2 to identify the most commonly played

and popular rebel songs in the West of Scotland scene between 1994 and 1999.

Although not claiming to be exhaustive, a total of sixty-four songs are listed as

being sufﬁciently in circulation as to merit inclusion. Of the four mythic struc-

tures identiﬁed in the above analytic taxonomy (see p. 179), the vast majority of

the rebel songs focus only upon the third and fourth categories.That is, attention

is most normally concentrated upon recounting tales of Irish rebellion and, often

simultaneously, denigrating the British presence in Ireland and the British charac-

ter. For the most part, the Gaelic heritage of the Irish people, the right of the Irish

people to territorial ownership of the island of Ireland, and the ‘fact’ of British

illegal colonisation of Ireland, are assumed and left implicit in songs. The conse-

quence of this selective amnesia is that the richer memories carried in origin myths

and myths of a golden age lack currency within the West of Scotland diaspora.

Not only do the songs tend to concentrate upon acts of Irish resistance but also

the focus is upon some of the most traumatic, bloody and violent events to have

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188

occurred in Irish history. In 1916, Padraig Pearse, leader of the Easter rebellion,

professed in the now famous Irish Proclamation that six times in the past 300 years

Irish people had taken to arms to assert their right to exist as an independent

nation. Kee (1980) has taken this to refer to the Great Rebellion of 1641, the

Jacobite war of 1689–91, the rise of the United Irishmen and the republicanism

of Wolfe Tone in the 1790s, Robert Emmet’s rebellion of 1803, the Young

Irelanders’ movement of the 1840s, and the Fenian rising of 1867. If the Easter

rebellion of 1916 constituted the seventh such event, then it is possible to iden-

tify the War of Independence of 1919–21 and the Civil War of 1921–23 as the

eighth, the Northern Campaign (1942) and the Border Campaign (1957–62) as

the ninth, and the recent troubles beginning in the late 1960s as the tenth.

At least with regard to the 1798 rebellion onwards, it is apparent from Table

11.2 that the majority of rebel songs sung in the scene during the 1990s were

based upon or refer to one of Ireland’s physical force traditions. This penchant

for the most bloody of events produces a further bout of historical amnesia in

so far as it fails to appreciate the much fuller history of Irish resistance to British

occupation, including the paciﬁst movements led by Daniel O’Connell in the

early nineteenth century, for instance, and the work of Charles Stewart Parnell

and the Land League in the late nineteenth century. This is despite the existence

of numerous rebel songs recounting the triumphs of these leaders of Irish resis-

tance (Zimmerman 1967; Busteed 1998).

The vibrancy of the rebel music scene in the West of Scotland in the late

1990s is indicative of the currency which is given to certain forms of memory

over others.Techniques of recall which focus upon Ireland’s longer Gaelic heritage

carry little value. Ireland’s Gaelic heritage is assumed. Furthermore, Ireland’s

wider tradition of resistance to British rule, including its paciﬁst advocates, are

given little attention. Instead, the focus is upon the grotesque, the extreme and

the most violent episodes in Ireland’s past. The privileged status ascribed to

memories which recall tales of blood and gore, violence and death, is indicative

of an appetite for models of masculinity which only the tradition of physical

force offers. Masculinity is embodied chieﬂy in armed resistance to domination:

standing up to the bully in the most aggressive manner possible.

Edifying the rebellious Gael: the ‘hero-martyr’ genre of

rebel song

Finally, it is clear from Table 11.2 that there is a general appetite for one partic-

ular type of rebel song in the West of Scotland: the ‘hero-martyr’ genre (McCann

1985). By recounting the heroic life of a variety of Irish martyrs in the tradi-

tion of physical force, this genre is explicit in its endorsement of particular

models of masculinity. The construction of the ‘rebellious Gael’ enshrines

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certain qualities as deﬁning what it truly means to be a man of outstanding

character.

First, the theme of endurance encapsulates the popular republican myth that

victory will ultimately come to those who suffer the most, rather than to those

who inﬂict the most suffering (see, for instance, songs about Michael Gaughan

and the ten hunger strikers who starved themselves to death in the Maze Prison

in 1981). Second, the theme of daring is popular in those songs that pay testi-

mony to the courage and bravery of resistance ﬁghters who take on challenges in

the face of overwhelming odds (for instance, songs about the 1798, 1803 and

1916 rebellions, and also songs about Michael Collins and Sean South). Third,

the theme of the intellectual, artistic and moral qualities of Irish martyrs is present

in a number of songs, which try to present heroes as having more than simply

physical courage. For instance, Padraig Pearse is portrayed as a ‘Gaelic Scholar

and a visionary’, James Connolly as ‘a lover of the poor’, and, in The People’s Own

MP, Bobby Sands as ‘a poet and composer’.

Fourth, the theme of loyalty to the cause emerges in many songs to represent

martyrs as being honest and straight, and often imbued with integrity despite

the offer of a bribe (see, in particular, songs about Anne Devlin, Robert Emmet’s

faithful secretary, and Kevin Barry who, at 18, was hanged for insurrection during

the War of Independence).

Finally, the theme of sacriﬁce pays tribute not just to volunteers’ preparedness

to die for a cause, but also to the sacriﬁce they have to make in relation to

parting with loved ones for the cause. In Grace, Joseph Plunkett dies despite his

profound love for his wife-to-be for instance, and in The Time Has Come, a hunger

striker pleads with his family who are at his bedside to let him die.

Conclusion

Following Nora (1989), it has been argued that the development of a rebel music

scene in the West of Scotland Irish Catholic diaspora in the 1990s might prof-

itably be conceptualised as a growth in a new lieu de mémoire. Lieux de mémoire

are characterised by a conscious secretion of ‘traditions’ in times when the very

existence of these traditions is under threat.Whereas the gradual erosion of Irish

heritage might provide one context within which to understand the currency

given to the growing rebel music scene, this chapter has sought to approach the

rebel music scene as embodying a range of displaced cultural politics of identity.

Employing the notion that the identity problems faced by young adult males in

the West of Scotland are being exorcised through investment in selective memo-

ries of Ireland’s troubled past, one (arguably core) example of displacement has

been presented. The basic thesis advanced herein is that the construction of the

‘rebellious Gael’ performs a restorative function for young adult male audiences.

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Given that the trends which underpin the erosion of conventional models of

identity – what Nora (1989) calls the acceleration of history – show no sign of

abating, my fear is that growing sectarian expressions in the cultural sphere might

well ﬁnd routes into those social worlds which have ironically managed to purge

themselves of the worst excesses of bigotry. Instead of describing the rebel music

scene as nothing more than a ‘boys’ game’, my concern is that it could be

providing the raw materials for a regeneration of sectarian practices in tradi-

tional spheres such as labour and housing markets. In August 1999, Scotland’s

leading composer, James MacMillan, caused a furor when he delivered a lecture

at the Edinburgh International Festival claiming that Scotland was riddled with

anti-Catholic bigotry and institutional sectarianism (Kane 1999). In striking at

the heart one of Scotland’s most historic fault lines, relations between Irish

Catholic diasporic communities and both Irish Protestant diasporic and indige-

nous and predominantly Protestant Scottish communities, MacMillan, it seemed,

opened up a scar which had not properly healed. MacMillan was criticised for

failing to provide strong statistical evidence to verify his claim (Devine 2000).

Nevertheless, one consequence of the debacle is that the Scottish Parliament has

now agreed to include a question on religious denomination in the 2001 Census.

It is to be hoped that the data, which will subsequently be published, will

encourage a more vigilant watch to be kept over levels of sectarianism practised

by both communities in Glasgow today.

Historically, the Irish diaspora has played an important role in the production

and reproduction of the ‘imagined community’ of the Irish nation (Akenson

1993).As such, closer scrutiny needs to be given to the manner in which different

social conditions in the diaspora shape different memories of the nation’s biog-

raphy, including memories of its troubled political past. Given that other Celtic

‘nations’ too have large diasporic worlds, it would be of interest also to broaden

the focus to examine the periodic eruptions of memories of the past which visit

different Celtic diasporic communities at different points in time. Do Celtic dias-

poras, for instance, demonstrate historical geographies of memories of their

nation’s biographies different from, say, the Jewish, Palestinian or Caribbean dias-

poras? Does the fact that they are Celtic diasporas make a difference to the social

conditions under which memories become inﬂamed, and the techniques of

retrieval which they employ as part of the recovery of their pasts? It is hoped

that the small-scale case study presented in this chapter provides a stimulant to

future work which seeks to address these larger questions.

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FROM BLAS TO BOTHY CULTURE

The musical re-making of Celtic culture

in a Hebridean festival

Peter Symon

Celtic music has formed a popular niche in the growing world music market.

With origins in the traditional and folk music of Ireland, Scotland,Wales, Brittany,

Galicia and other parts of the Celtic fringe of Europe, it is a hybrid, permeable

and commoditised musical category, borrowing from and contributing to main-

stream rock and pop music forms. It is increasingly featured in festivals of folk

and world music in Europe and North America. Yet relatively little is known

about the strategies employed by festival organisers for selecting and presenting

different types of Celtic music in such events, or about local public attitudes

towards the music and the festivals.

This chapter presents a study of the organisation and local reception of the

Hebridean Celtic Festival, held in Stornoway on the island of Lewis in the Outer

Hebrides (also known as the Western Isles). These islands lie off the north-west

coast of Scotland, in the country’s remote maritime Gaeltacht.The chapter exam-

ines the origins and development of this relatively new festival of contemporary

and traditional Celtic music by drawing on interviews with an organiser of the

festival and with others professionally concerned with Celtic music and media

in Scotland. Most of the ﬁeldwork was carried out during and around the time

of the 1998 Hebridean Celtic Festival. Press reviews of the event have also been

used. These research methods were selected in order to identify some of the

reasons for the festival’s format and, in particular, the strategic presentation of

Celtic music.

The chapter begins by reviewing the recent geographical debate about festi-

vals, noting the range of different festive forms, outlining the tensions between

place marketing and artistic objectives which run through most events, and

discussing the development of Celtic music festivals. The second section brieﬂy

reviews the recent Celtic cultural resurgence in the Western Isles. Next, the

192

chapter discusses the management and presentation of different forms of Celtic

music in the 1998 Hebridean Celtic Festival. The festival programming strategy

aims to develop a sense of Celticity as part of broader contemporary youth

culture and also to negotiate everyday Hebridean culture.The chapter concludes

that the commercialisation or mainstreaming of Celtic music in such festivals is

one of the keys to engaging local people in the event and to the renewal of

Hebridean Celtic culture and identity.

Towards a geography of Celtic music festivals

The ‘cultural turn’ in Anglo-American human geography provides a useful starting

point from which to examine the strategic presentation of Celtic music in festive

settings. There is a revitalised interest within cultural geography in the role of

music in social life and its ‘(re)construction in place’ (Waterman 1998: 62). The

silence, noted by Smith (1994), in geographical notions of landscape has given

way to a growing number of studies examining the ways in which music and

sound help to construct and contest the imagined meanings of places and to give

shape to the uses of public spaces (e.g., Smith 1997; Leyshon et al. 1998). Most

spaces of public festivity and celebration volubly attest to the signiﬁcance of

musical activity, singing and dancing in ritual and ceremonial collective behav-

iour. ‘It is as if a celebration cannot be classed as such without the framing of

music’ (Finnegan 1989: 334). The public space of the Celtic music festival has,

however, received little attention, although some relevant studies are discussed

below. This lacuna notwithstanding, the ‘geography of popular festivity’ (Smith

1995) does address several themes of common interest to the study of festivals.

In the main, geographers have not addressed ‘music festivals’, which have in fact

received little attention in the social sciences generally (Waterman 1998).

However, ritual and ceremonial festive events often involve music as an integral

part of colourful and noisy festive displays in streets and other public spaces.

Musical activity is one way in which ‘situational ethnicity’ is negotiated in popular

festive settings.

Reading such events as politically charged demonstrations of local solidarity,

geographers have drawn inspiration from studies by cultural anthropologists, such

as Abner Cohen (1993), whose work considers the cultural politics of modern

carnival celebrations.The interplay between hegemony and resistance, inclusion

and exclusion, insider and outsider has been documented, for example, in studies

of carnival (Jackson 1988), Toronto’s Caribana (Jackson 1992), the Peebles

Beltane (Smith 1993) and other Common Ridings in the Scottish Borders (Smith

1995).These sorts of events may give the impression of being vibrant and volun-

tary celebrations of place. As Smith comments, the ‘Beltane and festivals like

it are popular events, which are taken seriously by participants, enjoyed by

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everyone, and form an integral part of local biography’ (ibid.: 161). However,

cyclical commemorative events like the Common Ridings involve the revitalisa-

tion of neglected ‘folk’ rituals to celebrate a sense of local cultural distinctiveness

which is perceived to be threatened by growing cultural homogenisation

(Boissevain 1992).

Cities have also become increasingly interested in the strategic use of arts and

cultural festivals as a means of developing infrastructure, upgrading the image

of the locality, attracting tourism and addressing social problems (Schuster 1995;

Sjøholt 1999). Contemporary examples include large-scale events like La Mercè,

the ﬁve-day festa major of Barcelona in late September, and First Night, the New

Year’s Eve celebrations in Boston, Massachusetts. Many of these events have

become ‘part of the shared life of the community, participation is encouraged if

not expected, and citizens are actively involved in creating, conducting and main-

taining the festival’ (Schuster 1995: 174). In contrast, tensions can occur where

events, perceived by local audiences as ‘carnivals for élites’ (Waterman 1998),

also receive signiﬁcant amounts of public subsidy. For example, Glasgow’s year-

long reign as European City of Culture in 1990 was the centrepiece of the city’s

longer-term place marketing and image repair campaign (Wishart 1991; McInroy

and Boyle 1996). But 45 per cent of Glasgow residents questioned in a post-

event survey believed that too much public money had been spent on the city’s

‘Year of Culture’ – particularly the £43 million which was spent on the Glasgow

Royal Concert Hall and other large capital projects (Myerscough 1991: 99).

Interestingly, Scotland’s largest Celtic music festival, Celtic Connections, arose

out of the need of the newly opened Glasgow Royal Concert Hall to expand

audiences in January, a low-season month for tourism in the city (Symon 1998).

Launched in 1994, the festival borrowed the title of an eponymous BBC Radio

Scotland show, Celtic Connections. Like the radio programme, the Celtic brand is

used inclusively by the Concert Hall to group together, over three weeks each

January, a series of fairly diverse concerts of contemporary Celtic music. Celtic

Connections regularly features artists from ‘Celtic nations’ (such as Altan,

Capercaillie and Gwerz) or from nations of the ‘Celtic diaspora’ (notably Canada),

alongside other artists whom it would be difﬁcult to describe as ‘Celtic’ (like

Billy Bragg or Emmylou Harris). With skilful marketing and media exploitation

the festival soon captured the public imagination and became the largest item in

Glasgow’s cultural budget.

Celtic Connections clearly illustrates the usefulness of Celtic music for selling

cities. It also illustrates the growing ‘tension between festival as celebration and

festival as enterprise’ (Waterman 1998: 67). Such a compromise may be inevitable:

A festival goes a long way towards ﬁlling the gap between the tensions

that exist between a genuine desire to provide an aesthetically satisfying

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event for participants and audiences and simultaneously satisfying the

needs of a place to promote itself commercially. Though often down-

played, the two go hand in hand.

(Waterman 1998: 61)

Like most successful arts festivals, as Celtic music festivals take on commer-

cial objectives they tend to become market followers rather than market leaders.

Opportunities for artistic exchange on the ‘festival circuit’ (Waterman 1998) can

be enlarged but may also be limited as the event grows in size and becomes less

intimate. For example, the mundane inﬂuence of ﬁre safety regulations meant

that the Celtic Connections organisers had to restrict access to spaces used for

after-hours informal musical ‘sessions’ (Symon 1998).

In Scotland, a growing festival circuit has largely replaced folk clubs as the

main arena in which would-be professional musicians can develop a career in

Celtic music. In organisation, ethos and form, many events still adhere to the

‘folk festival’ model: predominantly small-scale, often in rural settings, usually

organised by volunteers and held over one weekend (Mackinnon 1994). These

events offer ‘the experience of the folk ideal, the experience of collective partici-

patory music making’ (Frith 1996: 41). In ethos, if not in organisation, these

folk festivals are akin to the ‘free festivals’ of the romantic ‘Albion Free State’

movement (McKay 1996) in 1970s England.The ‘children of Albion’ were offered

in free festivals ‘a new Albion, a landscape with music which looks “back” to an

imagined Celtic past’ (Blake 1997: 191).

In contrast, a growing number of contemporary Celtic music festivals look

forward as well as to the past – for example, by presenting emergent electronic

music styles alongside the more purist traditional forms. They also depart from

the folk festival model in terms of their objectives. Due to a requirement for public

subsidy or private sponsorship, small events now increasingly share the place

promotion and marketing concerns of Celtic Connections.With these commercial

as well as artistic or political objectives in mind, Celtic festivals in Scotland are

now often designed to attract the ‘children of Albion Rovers’.

In other words,

they are designed to appeal to young working-class people accustomed to consum-

ing mainstream (English-language) commercial popular music.Through the ‘active

processing of culture’ by audiences (Waterman 1998: 62), and through increasing

media and marketing coverage, Celtic festivals potentially become signiﬁcant sites

for the construction and maintenance of Celtic identities. Musicians travelling

around the expanding Celtic festival circuit provide an important common

reference for audiences to construct a sense of shared cultural identity:

Music is interestingly one feature which seems to unify the Celtic festival

phenomenon on an international level: the individual festival events may

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serve the needs of particular and often localized communities; but it is

often the musical performers who cross all national boundaries to play

at several festivals throughout any given year.

(Hale and Thornton 2000: 99)

A growing number of these Celtic musicians now are Scottish as well as Irish.

Despite the inclusiveness of the Celtic music ﬁeld, in Scotland there is a long-

standing perception that Celtic music is dominated by Irish music and musicians

(Symon 1997). The suspicion that American consumers tend to conﬂate ‘Celtic’

and ‘Irish’ also continues to prevail in Scotland. Such a suspicion may indeed be

conﬁrmed by an entry in the index of a recent book on world music, which

advises: ‘Celtic music: see Irish music’ (Taylor 1997: 263).

A recent study of the Celtic Music and Arts Festival in San Francisco illustrates

the tension between national and transnational deﬁnitions of Celticity (Hale and

Thornton 2000).The festival was conceived by the Irish Arts Foundation as a forum

to showcase contemporary Irish music. It was held in a warehouse in the redevel-

oped docks area of the city. On the one hand, national afﬁnities remained strong.

Irish musicians tended to see the term ‘Celtic’ as ‘too vague and too closely asso-

ciated with commercial marketing strategies to hold any musical value’ and saw

little afﬁnity, for example, with Breton musicians (Hale and Thornton 2000: 104).

On the other hand, Celtic is ‘something people “feel an afﬁnity for” regardless of

their own ethnic background’ (Hale and Thornton 2000: 107). The appeal of the

Celtic transcends the national and ethnic backgrounds of Americans, being based

on ‘cultural values associated with the importance of heritage, language and shared

history forming the basis of nationhood, and by a particular aesthetic referencing

an ideal past as well as a contemporary lifestyle’ (Hale and Thornton 2000: 106).

The Celtic aesthetic was given commercial expression not only by music but

also by the Celtic merchandise on sale at the festival (Hale and Thornton 2000).

On one level, the merchandising of Celtic music and crafts reﬂects the tension

between market and artistic objectives that Waterman (1998) identiﬁes in most

contemporary arts festivals. But, as noted above, tensions also arose out of ‘the

increasing consciousness of ethnicity in contemporary American life and the

concomitant commodiﬁcation of ethnicity in music’ (Taylor 1997: 7).

Through the expansion of commoditised forms of Celtic music, performers

and audiences together create a ‘Celtic music festival’ circuit. For performers,

there are both economic and artistic motives for participating in festivals. They

can promote their CDs, expand their audience, meet other musicians and share

material in an informal environment. Audiences are attracted not only by the

musicians but also by the people who go along, just as night club-goers ‘consume

the crowd’ as part of the clubbing experience (Malbon 1999; Thornton 1995).

Thus audiences produce the Celtic festival environment; they ‘ “make” festivals in

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the way that they react to performances and spend money’ (Waterman 1998:

68). In a relatively informal setting, concentrated in time and space, networks

are activated and extended (Slobin 1993). Feedback between audience, per-

formers and organisers is created. Through these processes, the culture – and

the place – is ‘re-made’ and the audience ‘asks for more’.

The foregoing discussion suggests that Celtic festivals may be signiﬁcant spaces

in which new forms of Celtic identity are negotiated. It also suggests that the

Celtic festival is distinct from both the folk festival and the popular ritual or

ceremonial event. However, it has features which are shared with most festive

forms, including tensions between different organising interests (artistic and

commercial), the potential for (if not the realisation of) multi-vocal expressions

of identity, and the celebration of locality and place through heightened aware-

ness of shared heritage, values and aesthetics. However, less is known about the

strategies employed by festival organisers to present Celtic music and culture

within the ‘Celtic fringe’.To a large extent, the function of Celtic festivals within

the Celtic fringe itself is still an open question. One study of a small Breton

community, for example, put a pessimistic view (Chapman 1992). Local people,

it was argued, largely ignored the large Festival Interceltique held every summer

in the nearby town of Lorient. Instead they preferred to consume French (and

Anglo-American) popular culture: records, radio and television. The culture of

the festival was argued to be too remote from that of everyday life in the area.

However, if that was the case at that time, the growing commoditisation of Celtic

culture since then may have brought the Celtic culture celebrated in the Lorient

festival much closer to mainstream popular culture. Subsequent research indi-

cates that the Lorient festival not only functions as a rallying point for Celtic

cultural activists in Celtic countries and for enthusiasts from outside (Hale and

Thornton 2000); it also draws the largest number of spectators of any festival

in France (Négrier 1996). The appeal of Celtic festivals seems to have grown

for young people, including those living in the Celtic fringe. The current revival

of Celtic festivals may reﬂect the growing interest and investment in Celtic

culture, generally, among younger people in the Celtic fringe.

The development of newer forms of Celtic music festivals has taken place

alongside the continuation of longer-established ones:

In Celtic countries events such as Scottish mods, Welsh eisteddfodau, and

Brythonic gorseddau of Cornwall, Wales and Brittany function as fairly

self-conscious, culture-speciﬁc expressions of Celtic ethnicity.

(Hale and Thornton 2000: 98)

The events mentioned by Hale and Thornton are amateur, competitive music

festivals. In Scotland, the annual National Mod is the main activity of the

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membership organisation An Comunn Gaidhealach, which was founded in 1891

with a mission to defend and develop Gaelic as a living language. By the 1980s,

however, both the Mod and An Comunn Gaidhealach had begun to receive signiﬁ-

cant criticism from younger Gaelic speakers for failing adequately to reﬂect

contemporary Gaelic culture, for being too formal and for being internally

divided.The Mod has, since 1997, included a rock music competition and, because

of the growth of Gaelic-medium schools (see below), there has recently been a

growth in the number of children participating in the junior competitions

(Christine Stewart, An Comunn Gaidhealach, research interview, 21 July 1998).

The following section traces the development of this interest in Gaelic culture

in Scotland’s Hebridean islands.

Hebridean cultural renaissance

When Runrig, the pioneering Scottish ‘Gaelic rock’ group from the Hebridean

island of Skye, started touring Scottish venues in the late 1970s and early 1980s,

they had initially to contend with public antipathy to the notion of ‘Celtic’ music.

In Scotland, for example, ‘Celtic’ (pronounced with a soft ‘c’) is commonly

understood as a reference to Glasgow Celtic Football Club (with Irish and Catholic

associations), which is both territorially and socially divided from Glasgow

Rangers Football Club (with Protestant associations). Public encounters with the

term ‘Celtic’ could, thus, be misunderstood. An anecdote by the band’s former

lead singer, Donnie Munro, illustrates the point:

We did the ﬁrst big Plaza (Ballroom) night [in 1980] and billed it ‘Celtic

Rock Night’.We were ﬂyposting at Bridgeton Cross late at night (Rangers

territory) . . . these guys came along and said, ‘Ho! What the f— is this

Celtic music by the way?’ ‘K,’ we said, trying not to panic, ‘it’s Keltic.’

(Wilkie 1991: 180)

Ten years later, Runrig and other Gaelic groups had overcome the hostility

of many working-class Scots to Gaelic language and culture. Celtic music had

become lodged in the consciousness of Scottish working-class youth.

Part of the

popularity that Runrig had achieved by the early 1990s was due to national poli-

tics. The band had attained the status of an emblem of national cultural

distinctiveness during a period of growing assertiveness in Scotland over the

question of national political autonomy.Yet, at the same time, part of their success

is owed to the ability of Celtic culture and identity to transcend national and

ethnic differences, as discussed earlier in this chapter.

Runrig’s success, however, also needs to be seen in the context of a remark-

able upsurge in artistic, cultural and media activity involving the Gaelic language

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in Scotland during the past twenty years (Macdonald 1997: 251; Pederson 2000:

153).This has taken place across Scotland, notably in the Glasgow-based national

media, but particularly in the Western Isles, where many of Scotland’s approxi-

mately 65,000 Gaelic speakers live.With an economy characterised by low-quality

jobs, relatively high unemployment and out-migration, projects in the Western

Isles were awarded a total of £26 million European Regional Development Fund

(ERDF) structural funding (intended to promote economic and social cohesion

across the EU by redistributing regional aid to less favoured areas) in the six

years 1994–9, as part of the EU’s Objective 1 programme for the Highlands

and Islands of Scotland (which also included some £30 million agricultural sub-

sidies).

Around 4 per cent of the ERDF awards were taken by seven projects

in the ﬁelds of tourism, heritage, arts and media, the largest of which (£520,000)

was for the development of ﬁlm and television studios in Stornoway.

Long experience of adverse economic conditions has reinforced a sense of

cultural distinctiveness from Mainland Scotland shared by Islanders.Agnew (1996)

suggests that a sense of fatalism and of ‘liminality’ (a sense of being ‘in-between’),

associated with a history of out-migration and diaspora, together with strict

Sunday observance by Presbyterian Free Church congregations,result in ‘a popular

social psychology based on oppositions between prohibition and license. . . .You

are either tee-total or a total drunk’ (Agnew 1996: 36). Indeed, alcoholism,

described in the Stornoway Gazette as the ‘No. 1 social problem in the Western

Isles’, is still ‘largely a taboo subject’ in Island life (Stornoway Gazette, 16 July

1998: 5). Hebridean cultural politics are marked by concerns for the violation,

by outsiders, of such local taboos, including ‘the rules governing Sabbath (Sunday)

observance’ (Agnew 1996: 39).

The linguistic distinctiveness of the Western Isles has also been the source of

economic development (Pederson 2000). Signiﬁcantly, young people are particu-

larly positive about the expansion in Gaelic employment related to arts and

culture in the Western Isles (Sproull and Chalmers 1998).The Gaelic renaissance

appears to have boosted the self-conﬁdence of young Hebrideans, long accus-

tomed to being ‘scoffed at and demeaned within the larger Scottish society’

(Agnew 1996: 40). Many of the educational, cultural and media developments

in the Western Isles have aimed to strengthen the relevance of Gaelic language

and culture for young people. For example, in the early 1980s on Barra (one of

the southernmost of the Western Isles), parents decided that their children were

not being taught enough about Gaelic language and culture in school. In 1981

they started a grassroots cultural movement, Fèisean nan Gàidheal (Everitt 1997:

59). Fèisean – local non-competitive music festivals (Pederson 2000: 157) –

bring children together to be taught skills in Gaelic singing, dancing, drama and

traditional musical instruments, galvanising an interest among young people in

Gaelic culture (Matarasso 1996: 3). Assisted by Pròiseact nan Ealan (The Gaelic

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Arts Agency), the national development agency for the Gaelic arts, established

in Stornoway in 1987 by the Scottish Arts Council and the Highlands and Islands

Development Board, the movement soon spread. By 1998 there were some

twenty-eight fèisean in Scotland.

Broadcasting media have also been used in the campaign to engage and develop

young Hebrideans’ interest in Gaelic language and culture. In 1992, a £9 million

annual government subsidy for Gaelic broadcasting was launched, administered

in Stornoway by the Comataidh Craodlaidh Gàidhlig (Gaelic Broadcasting

Committee). This funding produced a Gaelic-language TV soap opera, Machair,

produced by Scottish Television in Stornoway and transmitted (with English sub-

titles) in peak viewing time (Dunn 1998/9). The soap opera concentrated on

storylines emphasising young people’s concerns, centred on life in a ﬁctional

Island college.

However, other developments in Gaelic media have not engaged young

Islanders but have driven them away. Stornoway-based BBC Radio nan Gàidheal

was transformed in the early 1990s from a small bilingual local FM radio station

(BBC Radio nan Eilean) into a nationally networked Gaelic-language station.The

change included the prohibition of presenters from playing records with English-

language lyrics (yet, perversely, they could use recordings with lyrics in any other

language – for example, Spanish). The station gained listeners nationally, but its

music output (including classical, contemporary Celtic, traditional Gaelic and

country music strands) was geared towards older listeners. The former local

radio station’s pop music programme was dropped, and younger local listeners,

who ‘don’t want to listen to traditional music’, according to one presenter,

migrated to national BBC Radio 1 or bilingual community radio stations Isles

FM and Loch Broom FM for pop music (Mairead MacLennan, BBC Radio nan

Gàidheal presenter, research interview, 20 July 1998).Young Islanders were inter-

ested in engaging with Gaelic language and culture, but they were also keen to

remain in touch with broader, English-language, youth culture. As the empirical

study in the next section illustrates, the pursuit of mainstream popular appeal

was a key feature of the strategy followed by the organisers of a new Celtic

festival on the Island.

Hebridean Celtic Festival

The Hebridean Celtic Festival was launched in 1996 as a grassroots initiative by

two women, Fiona Morrison and Caroline MacLennan, who wanted to bring

professional musicians from the growing Celtic music circuit to the Island.

Although Stornoway is the largest population centre in the Hebrides, commer-

cial promoters avoided the town because the largest venue, the Town Hall, has

an audience capacity of under 300.With growing arts, cultural and media activity

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on the Island, the appropriate professional and technical skills could be drawn

on locally to form a management committee and organise an outdoor festival of

Celtic music.

The festival visibly and aurally disrupts the everyday landscape of Stornoway

for four days in mid-July every year. Activities are centred on a large marquee

tent.The ‘Festival Tent’ (standing capacity 1,500 people) is pitched in the grounds

of Lews Castle College, a few minutes’ walk from the centre of Stornoway. The

tent is complemented by several small venues (Stornoway Golf Club, An Lanntair

art gallery, pubs and hotels). Together these provide the setting for an intense,

yet informal, festival experience concentrated in time and place.There are oppor-

tunities to socialise and to participate in informal instrumental music ‘sessions’

in local pubs.

By 1998, the Hebridean Celtic Festival was producing six concerts in three

venues. Total ticket sales were approaching 3,000. There were also storytelling

events, pub music sessions, workshops, a festival club and organised tours of the

Island.

With a budget of around £70,000, the festival claimed to have made an

impact of more than £250,000 on the local economy in 1998. Although much

of this money was brought by visitors to the Island, the event had not grown so

quickly, or so large, as to concern Islanders about the numbers of ‘outsiders’

from the mainland or beyond. The cost of travelling to this part of the Celtic

fringe means that the Island tends to attract families, relatively afﬂuent tourists

and backpackers. The festival markets itself to these groups by emphasising the

‘family’ nature of the event and by advertising on the Internet.The festival effec-

tively extends by around a week the main tourist season in the Western Isles.

By 1999, the event had become ‘the island’s biggest tourist attraction’, according

to one report (Paul 1999).

The Hebridean Celtic Festival does not mark a particular date in the Celtic

calendar or celebrate a revitalised Hebridean ritual.

Nevertheless, it has rapidly

become embedded in Island life as an annual event. Positive local attitudes to

the festival are evident in at least ﬁve respects. First, coverage of the event in

the press and on the radio has been consistently supportive.The Stornoway Gazette

repeatedly emphasised the ‘professional’ and ‘well-organised’ management of the

event. Second, approximately one-third of the festival’s income was raised locally

through private sponsorship, even though there are no large companies on the

Island. In fact, the 1998 festival raised more income from private sponsorship

than had the much larger Celtic Connections event in Glasgow earlier in the

same year.Third, around one-third of the festival’s income was provided by subsi-

dies from six public agencies, including European Union regional development

funding.

Fourth, the festival mobilised skilled in-kind assistance from more than

thirty volunteers, providing joinery, plumbing, scaffolding, lighting, sound, media

and even medical services.

Fifth, although stretched, the volunteer committee

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had run the event without any permanent paid staff. The only service bought in

commercially for the 1998 festival was professional security, for a particular

organisational reason.‘Everyone knows everyone’ on the Island, so six men (‘Rock

Steady Event Security’) were brought over from the mainland in order to avoid

the awkwardness of Islander volunteers having to deal with a largely Islander

audience.

Local public discourse over the Hebridean Celtic Festival has continued to

reﬂect a concern more for the ‘Hebridean’ than the ‘Celtic’ aspects of the festival.

Two examples stand out. First, local sensibilities regarding the ‘taboo’ subject of

alcoholism were carefully managed.The Stornoway Gazette reassured readers about

the absence of trouble at the main evening event in the ﬁrst festival in 1996,

quoting one of the festival organisers: ‘The police said to us that this was the

ﬁrst Friday night they could remember when they hadn’t had any calls from the

town.This was amazing compared to the usual Friday night’ (Caroline MacLennan,

quoted in Stornoway Gazette, 27 June 1996: 6).

Likewise, the Gazette approvingly reported police comments on the 1998 festi-

val.There had been ‘no problem at all’ as far as alcohol bye-laws were concerned:

‘drinking was conﬁned to the speciﬁed areas . . . the event had been very well

stewarded and people were well behaved’ (Stornoway Gazette, 23 July 1998: 3).

Sabbatarianism is another Hebridean factor which inﬂuenced the organisation

of the festival. Organiser Fiona Morrison commented, ‘We have to wind down

on Saturday whereas other festivals would have that on Sunday’(research inter-

view, 18 July 1998). Accordingly, the 1998 festival’s main evening attraction was

held on the Friday night rather than the Saturday night, attracting audiences of

some 1,300 and 800 respectively.The Friday evening event started at 9 p.m. and

the headlining band came off stage around 1.30 a.m. On the Saturday, the event

started earlier, at 8 p.m. and was ﬁnished by 11 p.m. There is no way of leaving

the Island by public or commercial transport on a Sunday, so an enforced day

of rest was imposed on visitors wishing to stay until the end of the festival.

Anticipating this, many visitors to the festival left the Island on the Saturday to

return to the mainland. The festival organisers did not publicise an informal

beach party, for artists, organisers and friends, planned for the Sunday after the

end of the festival.

The festival programme emphasises ‘quality music’. Performers were carefully

screened and selected by the two main organisers. ‘We don’t book people’,

organiser Fiona Morrison told me,‘unless we’ve seen them ﬁrst’ (research inter-

view, 18 July 1998). The expanding Celtic music circuit in Scotland means that

she can often see new or unfamiliar acts without having to travel further than

to Glasgow. For example, the Québécois group, La Bottine Souriante, were seen

performing in Celtic Connections (effectively a showcase of professional Celtic

music talent) in January 1997. They then topped the bill at the Hebridean

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Celtic Festival later that year, attracting ‘the largest gathering in Stornoway since

Runrig came in 1991’ (around 1,400) (Malcolm Roderick, Stornoway Gazette,

24 July 1997: 11). They returned to the festival in 1999 (along with The Barra

MacNeils from Cape Breton in Nova Scotia, who, like many Canadians, are

descended from ‘diasporic’ Hebrideans).

The 1998 festival followed what one of the organisers called the same ‘recipe’

as the festival in 1997. The whole event was designed to have cross-generation

appeal and particularly to attract younger sections of the indigenous Island popu-

lation. Most of the events, certainly those in the Festival Tent, followed the

conventions of the ‘mini rock festival’ rather than the ‘folk festival’: for instance,

separation of audience and artists through the micro-geography of stage/back-

stage arrangements, ticket pricing, security, sound and public address systems,

lighting, performance conventions (such as set lengths and encore arrangements)

and the presence of ‘star’ performers on the Celtic music circuit. The strategy

was thus to construct the festival setting as a ‘cool place’ (Skelton and Valentine

1997) in which Celtic music was presented following the conventions of ‘main-

stream’ youth culture: ‘We are trying to make it very mainstream. . . . We are

not a folk festival, because a lot of young people around here would not bother

with it if it was one’ (Fiona Morrison, research interview, 18 July 1998).

On the other hand, due to its styling as a popular music festival, the organ-

isers had to assuage local concerns about the event losing its focus on Celtic

music, growing enormously or becoming an out-and-out rock and pop festival.

Although stating that they ‘had tried to make the event as big as they could’ and

that it would continue to grow, the organisers reassured readers of the Gazette

that ‘the focus would stay on Gaelic and Celtic music and another Glastonbury

or T in the Park was not on the cards’

(Fiona Morrison, Stornoway Gazette,24

July 1997: 1).

It may seem ironic that Celtic culture should have to be presented as part of

‘mainstream’ popular culture in order to appeal to young people living in the

Celtic fringe. But, like most young people, most young Hebrideans would tend

to consume and judge a live music event according to what Frith (1996) calls

the ‘evaluative discourse’ of popular music rather than of folk music. Furthermore,

Hebrideans are used to being stereotyped in Scottish culture and media as rusti-

cated. For many young Islanders, therefore, the more traditional forms of Celtic

culture are tainted by the stigma of rustication associated with them and are to

be avoided.

Alongside the mainstream youth audience on the Island for rock and pop

music, however, there is also a strong interest in traditional music among school-

children and young people.The festival provided a platform for local musicians,

provided that they passed the ‘quality’ threshold on which the festival organisers

insisted. Programmes of Scottish and Gaelic music performed by young Islanders

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were presented at concerts in the intimate settings of two small venues in the

town (the Golf Club and An Lanntair art gallery). They featured traditional

instrumental music for ﬁddle, clarsach (the small Scottish harp) and bagpipes,

songs and puirt a’ beul (mouth music). Storytelling sessions were broadcast on

networked BBC Radio Scotland immediately before the launch of the main

festival, helping to advertise the event nationally. There were also educational

workshops in Celtic music and song and Gaelic language at Lews Castle College.

The aim was to showcase and contextualise Gaelic and Scottish culture along-

side that of other ‘Celtic nations’:

We are trying to put Scottish music – not just Gaelic music – within an

international context. We are saying to people, ‘Yes, your culture is

important, but it is only important if you put it up against other things.’

That’s what you get conﬁdence from. . . . The best of our culture, the

best of Irish culture, the best of Breton culture....It is not introverted.

(Fiona Morrison, research interview, 18 July 1998)

The same approach was taken to the programming of individual concerts.

Different national strands of Celtic music were juxtaposed. The mix of music

also reﬂected the festival organisers’ strategy of producing events designed to

bridge the ‘generation gap’ by appealing to different age groups. For example,

in the opening concert in the Festival Tent on the Thursday evening, the support

act was a traditional Scottish ceilidh band,Vast Majority (‘a band you would like

to play at your wedding dance’, according to the critic from the Gazette). In

contrast, headlining group Llan de Cubel were from Asturias in Spain, and ‘created

a considerable impact’. Despite heavy rain, the concert attracted an attendance

of 600 people: the largest Thursday night audience in the three years of the

festival’s existence.

Young and vibrant Gaelic-medium musicians were showcased to a predomi-

nantly local audience in the ﬁrst act on stage in the Friday evening concert in the

Tent. Blas (from the Gaelic word for ‘taste’) were four young Hebridean women

singers.Although using a sound system, the group used a traditional Gaelic reper-

toire and a local vernacular mode of musical expression.Their performance drew

on what the organiser of Pròiseact nan Ealan termed ‘the hardcore tradition, if

you like, the wellspring’ of traditional Gaelic song and music:‘. . . the much less

glamorous, more difﬁcult, less accessible, core of the tradition, on which all of the

experimentation depends in the long run’ (Malcolm Maclean, Pròiseact nan

Ealan, research interview, 17 July 1998). The organisers were careful to present

this material in a multicultural framework.As one of the organisers observed,‘We

were aware of the audience proﬁle and designed the programme with it in mind’:

the programme was ‘designed to go from pure Gaelic to techno via some Irish

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music [box star Sharon Shannon’s group] . . . because the audience was eclectic in

terms of age’ (Fiona Morrison, research interview, 18 July 1998).

The evening’s headline act was Martyn Bennett and Cuillin Music.The set com-

prised electronic ﬁddle and ‘bagpipe techno’ music, drawn largely from Bennett’s

solo-produced 1997 album Bothy Culture. Classically trained at the Royal Scottish

Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, Bennett mixes inﬂuences from roots

music around the world (including Islamic) with Scottish and Irish traditional

sources and instruments. These are combined with elements of contemporary

electronic dance music styles.The set featured a light and laser show ‘the like of

which has not been seen in these parts before’, according to the Stornoway Gazette

(3 July 1998: 3). Many of the younger members of the audience responded by danc-

ing enthusiastically. Older members of the audience towards the back of the tent

were content to sway more staidly, tap their feet or simply watch the goings-on.

There appeared to be few of the problems of audience segmentation often

faced by those programming ‘multicultural’ concerts, where groups of people

leave the audience when the act on stage changes. By 1998, festival participants

had become more curious about unfamiliar music, although some older members

of the audience at the Friday evening concert conﬁded to me that they didn’t

really care too much for the more electronic music, one person saying that the

music lacked ‘soul’. As the critic from the Gazette observed, ‘People seemed to

be coming more for the whole of an evening rather than for speciﬁc acts’

(Stornoway Gazette, 23 July 1998: 3).The festival was a multivocal space in which

different musical interpretations of Hebridean Celticity, from the purist to the

experimental, were juxtaposed. In the process, Hebridean Celtic culture was

revitalised and re-made.

Conclusion

Three broad conclusions emerge from the study of contemporary Celtic culture

presented in this chapter. The ﬁrst point concerns the relevance of music festi-

vals for contemporary cultural geography. Alongside a more established interest

in popular street festivals, the role of music festivals like the Hebridean Celtic

Festival in the production of ‘place’ also merits attention. Part ‘celebration’ and

part ‘enterprise’, the event is typical of a growing number of Celtic festivals in

the way that it presents particular forms of commoditised Celtic culture. All

festival programmes are selective, and here one of the main criteria was the need

for the festival to appeal to young Hebrideans. For the audience, therefore, the

event constructs their place in the Celtic world as one that is increasingly

connected with other places through a shared afﬁnity for contemporary Celtic

music and style. Hebridean Celticness is therefore presented as something

modern, young and vibrant.

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The second point is to show how the local context of an event can inﬂuence

the interpretation of Celtic culture in arts and cultural festivals. In the example

presented here, the festival negotiated local sensitivities towards Hebridean

‘taboos’ of Sabbath observance and alcohol. It was also designed partly to show-

case local musical talent. Drawing on Gaelic-medium artists for part of its

programme, the festival is an example of the Scottish Gaelic renaissance in action.

Hebridean Celticity is positioned in a global context through the festival. On

the one hand, it nurtures local Gaelic talent such as Blas (several of whom had

participated in a training course, organised by Pròiseact nan Ealan, for aspiring

music professionals). On the other hand, it provides opportunities for local musi-

cians to hear (and perhaps be inspired by) live performances by performers with

more established Celtic musical reputations, such as Martyn Bennett, who are

already becoming integrated into the transnational Celtic music circuit. The

festival thus illustrates the potential of this type of event to act as a forum for

the revitalisation (and defence) of Gaelic culture, while also indicating some of

the limits of revival movements in relation to the dominant Anglo-American

nexus in popular music. Further research, beyond the modest scope of the project

reported in this chapter, would be likely to reveal more insights into the ways

in which this sort of event feeds into new understandings of the diversity of

linguistic, cultural and social experience in Scotland and the UK.

Although the festival is clearly an event that is designed, partly, with motives

of cultural tourism in mind, the third point is that there were minimal tensions

between ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’, Islander and Visitor. There was strong local

support for the festival. A local audience was engaged rather than alienated. The

number of visitors did not overwhelm the limited resources of the Island required

to host them. The event appears to have enriched cultural provision in this rela-

tively remote rural area of Scotland. There are signs that the Celtic festival is

helping to close the gap between the culture presented in the ‘folk festival’ and

the everyday culture of communities in the Celtic fringe. The extent to which

the Hebridean Celtic Festival presents a model for other localities is, therefore,

a question of particular interest in the agenda for research on contemporary

Celtic cultural landscapes.

Notes

1 Part of the research was carried out between June and September 1998 in the

International Social Sciences Institute at the University of Edinburgh with ﬁnancial

support from the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland.

2 The term alludes to a Scottish football team and also to an eponymous collection

of short stories on topics from everyday urban life in contemporary Scotland by

some of the so-called ‘new wave’ of young Scottish writers (Williamson 1997).

3 Similarly, Scottish-Canadian musician Martyn Bennett, interviewed in a BBC Scotland

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206

television programme about Celtic Connections, broadcast on 17 March 1997 as

part of the X–S documentary series, observed that he would not describe himself

as ‘Celtic’.

4 Stewart Cruickshank, Senior Producer,Arts and Entertainment, BBC Radio Scotland,

research interview, 9 September 1998.

5 Information on EU subsidies was provided through personal communications with

Fiona Robertson (Highlands and Islands Enterprise) and Derek McKim (Comhairle

nan Eilean Siar/Western Isles Council).

6 Around 1,300 attended the main evening concert of the festival (Friday); around

600 and 800 attended on Thursday and Saturday respectively; plus three smaller

concerts (ﬁgures provided by festival organisers).

7 ‘Tourist numbers stay up on Isles with hope of more to come, chief says’, Stornoway

Gazette, 23 July 1998, p.1, reporting comments of Angus Macmillan, Director of

Tourism in the Western Isles. Before the Hebridean Celtic Festival, the tourist season

on the Island started in late July after the English schools closed for the summer.

It lasts until the end of September.

8 The ﬁrst Hebridean Celtic Festival took place in 1996 around the midsummer

solstice. It coincided with a small gathering of young people camping out at the

nearby Calanais stones. The timing of the festival was subsequently moved to mid-

July, in order to fall during the summer holiday for Island schools.

9 Subsidy was received from Western Isles Council,Western Isles Enterprise,Western

Isles, Skye and Lochalsh LEADER II, the Foundation for Sports and the Arts,Western

Isles Tourist Board and the Scottish Arts Council.

10 The value of a ‘small army’ of skilled volunteer staff had been observed by organ-

iser Fiona Morrison at a festival on a small island off the coast of Normandy in

France. Her sister’s band,The Iron Horse, were playing there on a tour of Normandy

and Brittany in 1995. Most of the festival staff were actually doing national service.

11 Glastonbury and T in the Park are two of the largest open-air rock and pop music

festivals in England and Scotland respectively.

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CELTIC NIRVANAS

Constructions of Celtic in contemporary

British youth culture

Alan M. Kent

Camden Lock Market: Britain, bootleggers

and Wilde Celts

The Camden Lock Market area of London appeared to occupy the same func-

tion in 1990s British culture as had Carnaby Street and the King’s Road in the

1960s. In Camden can be found a diverse range of products and services that

are part-craft centre, part-alternative, part-trend-setting, part-retro. Additionally,

several things caught my eye as I wandered this British cornucopia. The ﬁrst, at

35 Middle Yard, was a shop – ‘Wilde Celts’ – which sold a range of Celtic-motif

jewellery, music and artwork, as well as some Irish and Welsh greetings cards,

a limited range of books and a heady mixture of Neo-Pagan and New Age prod-

ucts. People browsed there in the same way that they browsed stalls selling

bootleg Oasis and Metallica videos, as well as shops selling other ‘genuine’ cultural

goods from other ethnic groups such as Native American, Australian Aborigine

and Indian.The second product I observed was along Camden High Street. High

on a vendor’s stall was a black T-shirt, with a bright purple Celtic design, yet

emblazoned at the top of the shirt was the name of 1990s grunge icons ‘Nirvana’.

The shirt was obviously not a licensed piece of merchandise, but what interested

me was why the bootlegger had seen ﬁt to combine a Celtic design with ‘Nirvana’.

As I walked away from the vendor, I saw other examples of Celtic artwork and

tattoos offered, blended and combined with industrial and neo-tribal designs,

and I began to question the close relationship between these somehow contrasting

cultural images.

The answer may seem simple: in the world of youth culture, Celtic is per-

ceived as it has often been perceived in the past – that it is alternative, a cultural

‘Other’, a perception as prevalent now as when primarily English scholars ﬁrst

considered peoples from Celtic territories to be more primitive, more spiritual,

208

more in tune with the Earth. Nirvana, perhaps one of the most inﬂuential groups

of the late twentieth century, actively represents another kind of cultural ‘Other’:

alienated, reacting against the mainstream, adopting a hardcore punk ethos,

resisting exploitation, and even reacting against the music business itself. This

‘Other’ produced an emotional whirlwind, which culminated in the suicide of

Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain.

This explanation suited me ﬁne for a while but, upon closer scrutiny, it would

seem that Celtic iconography and youth culture have had a longer and more

complex history which, for each generation, have evolved and reasserted them-

selves.These performances of Celticity should not be easily dismissed, particularly

when they are meaningful and important to so many.This chapter therefore aims

to demonstrate how curiously, and perhaps paradoxically, youth culture activi-

ties such as popular music, tattoo art and surﬁng have helped to construct and

shape images of Celticity for both non-Celtic and ethnically Celtic peoples, actu-

ally culminating in so-called traditional ways of asserting political Celticity, as

well as new, non-traditional ways of asserting political nationalisms.

For lack of space in this chapter, I refer the reader to some of the debates

over Celticity presented by contributors to Tristram (1997), or the work of

Chapman (1992) and James (1999b), where long-held linguistic and cultural

deﬁnitions of Celtic have been re-examined and in some cases deconstructed. I

hope that this chapter sits within that process of re-evaluation, as I argue that

expressions of Celtic identities legitimately exist outside those linguistic or archae-

ological boundaries which are currently under critique. Additionally, the space

of important scholarship on youth culture has been in part shaped by the work

on Frith (1983), Sinﬁeld (1989) and the arguments presented by Storry and

Childs (1997). The ‘plundering’ (Sinﬁeld 1989: 153) of ethnic Celtic symbols

and icons by those engaged in the production and manufacture of ‘youth culture’

paradoxically assists in reinforcing the resistance that characterises both youth

cultures and Celtic ethnic politics. Thus, I hope to tread a cautious but produc-

tive line somewhere between these two ﬁelds of scholarship: Celtic Studies and

Cultural Studies.

In terms of orienting the reader, I wish to make it clear here that I acknowl-

edge that some youth cultures of these islands adhere to what may be described

as more ‘traditional’ forms of Celtic culture (language, dancing, traditional instru-

mentation and sport). Though many of these have now been reinvented and

redeﬁned in the light of other media (‘Riverdance’, and so on),

they are an

important means of cultural expression for many young people. What I posit

here is that these methods of expression do not appeal to all youth cultural

groups, some of whom wish to display Celtic cultural allegiance in other ways.

While clearly the phenomena discussed in this chapter originate from a variety

of sources and are consumed by an array of youth and subcultures, the theme

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of ‘Celtic’ and its equation to resistance appears consistent throughout the variety

of contexts. I will thus be discussing contemporary constructions of Celticism,

which stand as a kind of alternative frontier of Celtic identity.

Hobbits and human rights: Celtic discourse,

theory and text

In his critique of ‘the Celts’, Malcolm Chapman (1992) quotes J.R.R. Tolkien,

the author of The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings trilogy (1954–5), in

an attempt to highlight what he perceives as the ambiguity in ‘Celtic’ expres-

sions of culture. This quotation also expresses some of the key themes guiding

popular Celticism since the 1960s, which are salient to this chapter:

To many, perhaps to most people outside the small company of the

great scholars, past and present,‘Celtic’ of any sort is . . . a magic bag,

into which anything may be put, and out of which almost anything may

come. . . . Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight, which is

not so much a twilight of the gods as of the reason.

(Tolkien 1963: 29–30)

The problem with Tolkien’s observations, and with the eventual conclusions of

Chapman (that the Celts are simply the ‘Other’ of the dominant cultural and

political traditions of Europe), is that they do not acknowledge the struggle of

ethnic Celts in the contemporary world, for recognition, human rights and self-

determination from other colonising and dominant cultures. I do, however,

recognise the juxtaposition between the needs and performances of ethnic Celts

as well as other performances of Celticity, but whereas some Celtic Studies crit-

icism veers strongly away from the latter, reasserting the former – in particular,

in linguistic terms – like Chapman, I recognise the need for explanation of the

myth of Celtic. However, I also aim to demonstrate within this chapter that

there is a closer and important relationship between the popular and the counter-

cultural notions of Celticity, and that, paradoxically, this is inﬂuencing ethnic

Celticity and its ability to assert itself linguistically, politically, culturally and

spatially. In several subcultures Tolkien’s vision of Celtic and that, say, deﬁned by

the Celtic League, set up a curious opposition, which we will next explore.

Beardy weardies: a history of performances of Celtic

in popular music and alternative culture

The connection between alternative cultures and constructions of Celticity is

long established. There are – as contributors to Bell (1995) and to Westland

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210

(1997) have suggested – a set of ground rules for cultural activity on the periphery

of Britain, and these have often been expressed in terms of ‘the spiritual’. For

example, as Maddox details, in 1917 D.H. Lawrence went to Cornwall in search

of a geographical and cultural ‘Other’, where he could be immune from normal

metropolitan pressures and where he could establish his ‘Ranamin’, his planned

Utopian community (Maddox 1995: 224–63). Furthermore, Heelas (1996) has

shown how important the Celtic periphery of Britain has been in the develop-

ment of the ‘New Age movement’, while Toulson (1987) has demonstrated the

growth of centres such as Iona and Lindisfarne as demonstrative of alternative

‘Celtic’ Christianity. Broadhurst (1992) has identiﬁed the importance of Tintagel

and its subsequent place in the development of contemporary New Age spiritu-

ality and Neo-Paganism. Meanwhile Bowman, using the term ‘Cardiac Celts’,

effectively has drawn attention to images of the Celts in Paganism, and the rela-

tionship of ‘Cardiac Celts’ to ethnic Celts in contemporary Celtic territories

(Bowman 1996: 242–51).

Thus alternative lifestyles and spirituality have a complex and highly inter-

changeable relationship with ‘Celtic’, which is constantly being negotiated. The

roots of this relationship may, as Piggott (1989) has demonstrated, be traced

back to antiquarians from the late sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries

who sought to discover Britain’s ancient and mythical past, and consciously to

reassert a British mystical tradition. The efforts of scholars such as William

Camden and William Stukeley were to have a profound effect on notions of

popular culture and belief about Britain’s heritage, and eventually their studies

on places such as Stonehenge and Avebury were welded with alternative culture.

The late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw the growth of Neo-Druidism,

and a wider awareness of the importance of Druids and, during the early to mid-

twentieth century, the growth of an alternative epistemology with these ancient

spatial icons a key component (Carr-Gomm 1996).The belief system then became

absorbed into the wider movement of Neo-Paganism.

It is perhaps the semantic links between ‘the Celtic’ and ‘the spiritual’ which

have most dictated the use of Celtic imagery in popular music. In the mid-1960s,

as Frith (1983: 27–38) and Goldstein (1992: 154–9) detail, frustration among

young people combined with economic buoyancy formed what amounted to a

‘counter-culture’.The movement was dispersed and confused, but as Sinﬁeld has

detailed, at its most ambitious ‘it aspired to replace the dominant ideology by

projecting existential and personal values with new urgency into the public and

political domain’, and asserted that ‘the ways business and government were

abusing technology were declared contrary to personal needs and therefore to

nature and humanity’ (Sinﬁeld 1983: 109, 110). One response by this devel-

oping counter-culture was to promote a new respect for the ‘natural ecological

balance’ and to conceive of human beings as ‘part of nature’, expressed in a

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simpler, more primitive way of life (often by ‘dropping out’). India and Morocco

became popular sites for young people to visit, as were the Celtic territories,

for a mixture of spiritual and mystical reasons. Importantly, as Sinﬁeld further

demonstrates, history, geography and philosophy were ‘pillaged’ for likely expres-

sions of this reaction to modernity: ‘Zen Buddhism, yoga, transcendental

meditation, Suﬁsm, Krishna Consciousness, astrology, spiritualism, witchcraft,

Satanism, black and white magic – anything that was not, like conventional

Christianity, part of “the system”’ (Sinﬁeld 1983: 111).

Of course, the Celts were also ransacked for their philosophies, and ‘Celticity’

became a central deﬁning feature of British counter-cultural activity from the

late 1960s onwards.There were a variety of means by which this occurred. Celtic

mythology and texts provided a ‘native’ spirituality and philosophy that suited

counter-cultural values, and a growing anti-metropolitan ethic. Ethnic Celts were

perceived as peoples who were unaltered by the effects of modernisation; even

their Christianity was believed to be older and more ‘genuine’. Importantly,

‘Celtic’ was interpreted as ‘native’, and not necessarily containing an ethnic

dimension within Britain. It was interpreted by English youth culture as the

earliest native cultural stratum, and a cultural inheritance that was theirs as well.

Druidry also took on a new importance for counter-cultural expression. Druids,

as Carr-Gomm has argued, were symbolic of the older Celtic order, and of the

regained status of the original native Britons (Carr-Gomm 1996). The Druids,

like the Native Americans and Aborigines, were believed to have mystical links

with nature, which ﬁtted counter-culture’s calls for ecological balance. Druidry

offered a spiritual path which, by effectively reinventing an early ‘green’ and

communal society, exempliﬁed counter-cultural values. It was then only a short

step for Stonehenge (the focal point of British Druidry over centuries), Avebury,

Glastonbury, Callanish, the Hurlers and the Merry Maidens

of Cornwall to be

claimed by the counter-culture, both as sites of this emergent spirituality but

also as sites of wider festival and musical activity.

Earle et al. have shown how, out of the Isle of Wight festivals of the late 1960s

and 1970s, evolved the ﬁrst Stonehenge People’s Free Festival in 1974 (1994:

1–20). The event brought together many strands of alternative society, some of

which later evolved into the New Age Travellers. Their philosophy was exem-

pliﬁed in the Albion Free State Anthem, which combined Blakesque mythological

imagery with left-wing political activism:

Giants built Stonehenge, giants built this land,

Let’s sprout up like mushrooms and seize the upper hand.

(Earle et al. 1994: 2)

ALAN M. KENT

212

Of course the music of the late 1960s and 1970s reﬂected these themes, often

having recourse to Celtic images. The ethos of the Stonehenge festivals was

captured in the music of groups such as Hawkwind, who merged ‘cosmic’ space

themes onto this wider interest in Celtic mythology (Jasper and Oliver 1983:

141–2). Other artists of the era embraced progressive rock, which facilitated

grander themes and musicianship. The rock group Yes was inspired by Celtic

mythology and fantasy literature. Individual members of Yes employed Celtic

themes in solo projects, Rick Wakeman’s The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and

the Knights of the Round Table (1975) being the best example. Roger Dean, the

illustrator behind Yes’s highly individualistic and ‘Otherworldly’ album covers,

clearly drew inspiration from classically ‘Celtic’ landscapes, with sweeping moun-

tains, waterfalls, Druidic groves, islands, tors and cliffs (Hedges 1981). Centrally,

the English musical groups Led Zeppelin and Jethro Tull also embraced this

interest in things Celtic in both their music and lyrics during the 1970s (Jasper

and Oliver 1983: 186–8). Lyrically, Led Zeppelin drew upon fantasy ﬁction and

the works of J.R.R. Tolkien (‘Battle of Evermore’ and ‘Ramble On’), mysticism

(‘Stairway to Heaven’) and the occult (Jimmy Page lived in a former home of

British occult theorist Aleister Crowley), as well as on the landscape of Wales

(‘Bron-Y-Aur Stomp’). Jethro Tull’s principal composer and lyricist, Ian Anderson,

has also maintained an interest in Celtic mythology and subject-matter.The latter

has ranged from stone circles (‘Dun Ringill’ and ‘In a Stone Circle’) to the dislo-

cating effects of the North Sea oil industry on Gaelic speakers (‘Broadford Bazzar’)

and the fate of Scottish soldiers in the Falklands War (‘Mountain Men’) (Schramme

and Burns 1993).

By the late 1970s the ‘counter-culture’ had changed and had become more

absorbed into the mainstream. However, the use of Celtic imagery in lyrics and

album design continued into the 1980s, when, under a Conservative govern-

ment, new strands and types of youth resistance were emerging. In some cases,

the root of alternative expression has been via forms of Celtic Englishness (see

Tristram 1997). In the work of Scottish ‘prog-rock’ artist Fish, songs which stress

non-standard forms of English,are matched by the illustrations of Mark Wilkinson,

who selects speciﬁcally standard ‘Celtic’ imagery for his record covers (stone

circles, Celtic knotwork, mountains, mining). The use of Celtic imagery by such

an artist gave the impetus to lyrical exploration of subject-matter such as metro-

politan England’s ignorance of the Celtic periphery and a call for greater

self-determination.

‘Celtic’, therefore, was still being interpreted as profoundly non-Conservative

and anti-materialist. It was also perceived as being progressive and dynamic,

while maintaining community spirit.This wider feeling within the Celtic periphery

of Britain was eventually reﬂected in the 1997 general election, when Cornwall,

Wales and Scotland returned not one Conservative Member of Parliament.

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Table 13.1 Sample of links between popular music and Celticism, 1970–99

Date Artist and title Lyrical content Album cover art

1970 Led Zeppelin – III Bron-Y-Aur Stomp Psychedelic/Whimsical

1971 Led Zeppelin – IV Stairway to Heaven/Tolkien Man carrying a bundle of sticks/

Urban decay/High rise ﬂats

1972 Yes – Fragile Heaven/Sky/Sunrise Island/Trees/Water

1972 Yes – Close to the Edge Seasons/Eclipse/Teacher Waterfall/Stones

1975 Rick Wakeman – The Myths and Legends of Arthuriana Excalibur

King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table

1979 Jethro Tull – Stormwatch Dun Ringill/Dark Ages Oil industry/Seascape

1982 Jethro Tull – The Broadsword and the Beast Epic/Swords/Heroes Ship/Warrior/Fairy

1984 Pendragon – Fly High, Fall Far Excalibur/Identity Ocean/Fairy

1984 Solstice – Silent Dance Celtic wheel of the year Celtic knotwork/Pentagram/

Yin and yang/Men an Tol

1985 Beltane Fire – Different Breed Identity/Difference/King Arthur/ King Arthur on a battle steed

Paganism

1987 Celtic Frost – Into the Pandemonium Epic/Mythic themes/Heroes/Fantasy Hironymus Bosch/Les Edwards

1989 Sabbat – Dreamweaver: Reﬂections of our Tolkienesque/Witchcraft/Sorcery/ Sheela-na-gig/Celtic knotwork/

Yesterdays Anglo-Saxon/Celtic Fairies

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1989 New Model Army – Thunder and Consolation Freedom/Identity/Anti-authoritarian Large, red Celtic knotwork

1991 Red Hot Chilli Peppers – Blood Sugar Freedom/Urban angst/Quest for Neo-tribal/Celticism/

Sex Magik meaning Tattoos/Body art

1991 Fish – Internal Exile Identity/Thatcherite Britain/Exile/ Mining/Shipbuilding/Celtic

Alienation knotwork/Traditional costume

1993 Back to the Planet – Mind and Soul Anti-authority/Freedom/Mother Celtic knotwork uniting different

Collaborators Earth/Environmentalism ethnicities

1994 Fish – Suits Anti-materialism/Landscape/Travelling Stone circles/Mountains/

Trees/Spirals

1995–97 Skyclad – all albums Mythical narrative/Tradition/Jigs Knotwork in unusual space/

‘Celtic’ landscape

1995 The Levellers – The Levellers Freedom/The land/Civil rights/ Abstract faces

Men an Tol

1997 Solstice – Circles Access to Stonehenge/Wheel of the Spirals/Dreamcatchers

year/Paganism/Peace

1999 Dagda – Celtic Trance Druids/Harps/Primal gods/Sacred Spirals/Knotwork/Masks

kings/I am Celt

Although rock music on its own had not created the change, it had been an

ingredient and had aided the cumulative effect of Celtic self-determination, even

for those at the centre.

Table 13.1 sets out a chronological sample of the links between popular music

and Celticism from 1970 to 1999. In addition to some of the artists mentioned

here, I allude in the table to others as well.

New Model Armies: metal and punk soundscapes

During the 1980s and particularly the 1990s, it was evident that the overall rise

of interest in Celtic cultures led to a more coherent use of Celtic iconography

as a marketing strategy. While there has been some discussion of this phenom-

enon as related to music which is identiﬁed as ‘ethnically Celtic’ or even New

Age, the use of Celtic imagery outside these genres has not been widely addressed.

I would argue that although ‘Celtic’ sells, the co-opting of Celtic images (and in

some cases, sonics) in rock music and album covers represents not so much a

coherent attempt at marketing as, instead, a continuing acknowledgement that

‘Celticity’ can signify to speciﬁc youth audiences a wide range of counter-hege-

monic strategies.

It may be argued that the mass marketing of a musical product as ‘Celtic’

somehow detracts from and diminishes its ‘authenticity’, and possibly cheapens

the thrust of the associated ethnic politicality. I would argue the converse: that

young ethnic Celts actually reclaim these products in shaping their own identi-

ties and reﬁning the values of their political activism.

In contrast to the more tempered progressive and folk rock of the 1970s and

1980s, surprisingly ‘Celticity’ is now employed most predominantly in contem-

porary ‘heavy’ rock music. Heavy rock music is notoriously difﬁcult to deﬁne

and pin down as different varieties and sub-genres emerge: thrash metal, black

metal, techno metal, industrial, gabba and punk rock are only a few examples.

That heavy metal music has adopted Celtic as a construct is particularly inter-

esting; it continues to imagine ‘Celtic’ as rebellious, non-materialist, spiritual,

green and ‘ethnic’, but perhaps in opposition to the more ‘peaceful’ construc-

tions of earlier musical groups, much of the lyrical content of recordings and

the covers of CDs also reveal a distinct interest in the ﬁerceness, warrior-nature

and ‘alternativism’ of Celtic. There is perhaps a slight semantic shift here from

‘community’ to ‘tribe’.

It would clearly be impossible to detail every band of the genre which has

seen ﬁt to use Celtic imagery within their work. There are in fact thousands.

However, some groups and records are worth considering more closely.A progres-

sive avant-garde thrash-metal band of the late 1980s/early 1990s, curiously of

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216

Swiss origin, was ‘Celtic Frost’, who presumably saw in its name the connec-

tion between the cold mountains of Switzerland and La Tène material culture –

perhaps the deﬁnitive style associated with the Iron Age Celts. Celtic Frost’s

most inﬂuential album was Into the Pandemonium (1987), which featured

‘Otherworldly’ artwork drawn from the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch (The

Garden of Delights) and Les Edwards (Ya-Tour of the Universe-Tombworld). Clearly,

Celtic Frost knew that its name would guarantee a particular set of associations

with its fan-base. Paradoxically, ‘Celtic’ here would be associated with myth and

legend, with heroes and villains, sorcery and magicians, yet its name

came directly from an archaeological construction of ‘Celtic’ in its native

Switzerland.

The thrash-metal groups Sabbat and Skyclad have more overt associations with

Celtic imagery, again employing the connections between Celticity and spiritu-

ality, in this instance with reference to modern witchcraft. In 1989, Sabbat

released a ground-breaking album of the genre titled Dreamweaver: Reﬂections of

our Yesterdays. The work was a concept album, primarily based upon the

Tolkienesque ﬁction of Brian Bates in his 1983 novel The Way of the Wyrd. Though

the novel was subtitled Tales of an Anglo-Saxon Sorcerer, much of the imagery and

philosophy within the text is identiﬁably Celtic. Sabbat’s musical version of the

novel makes much of this mythical Britain; the album cover itself surrounded by

Celtic knotwork and dogs, as well as a sheela-na-gig, a female ﬁgure with her

hands parting her labia, found as an architectural feature in Scotland and Ireland.

This may sound like a recipe for a kind of thrash-metal Dungeons-and-Dragons,

though it would be naïve to view it as such. Sabbat’s development of Celtic and

Anglo-Saxon mythology within Dreamweaver is not a fumbling with legend but,

rather, an important retelling in a new genre.

Likewise, the lyrics and sonics of Skyclad (formed by former Sabbat singer

and lyricist Martin Walkyier) blend Celtic musical elements and ‘thrash’ even

more closely, as evidenced by their productive usage of the ﬁddle (played, unusu-

ally in a thrash-metal band, by a woman) and other instrumentation associated

with traditional Celtic music within their sound. In their album artwork, Skyclad

advanced a closer allegiance with constructions of ‘Celtic’, by using knotwork,

spiral motifs and birds to deﬁne their musical vision (1995, 1996a, 1996b, 1996c,

1997).

Sabbat’s and Skyclad’s use of ‘Celtic’ is highly articulate and carefully executed,

drawing on a number of shared assumptions with their audience. Celticity here

is ‘spiritual’ and ‘Otherworldly’, deﬁned along mythological lines in one of the

ways suggested by Chapman. The production and consumption of this kind of

thrash metal is far removed from the critique of Straw, who sees heavy metal –

and, by extension, thrash metal – appealing to certain groups of fans because it

‘dissociates masculinity from being good at archival learning’ and because it

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‘makes it more available to those who live far from the centres of avant-garde

rock action’ (Straw 1993: 368–81). Paradoxically, groups such as Celtic Frost,

Sabbat and Skyclad are successful because they choose to draw on archival learning

and because they embrace the avant-garde, where the latter is deﬁned in terms

of ‘Celticity’. The adoption of ‘Celticity’ here, therefore, has allowed a crashing

and a reconstruction of the genre’s stereotype, as well as wider consumption

and reception.

An entirely different, yet equally oppositional, construction of the Celtic within

rock music is promoted by New Model Army. Formed in Yorkshire, the group dis-

plays an acute awareness of what Jewell calls the ‘North–South Divide’ in Britain,

in particular during the years of Margaret Thatcher and John Major’s Conservative-

led governments, between 1979 and 1997 (Jewell 1994).Their music, like that of

the 1970s counter-culture, was a polemic, founded on socialist principles, against

perceived globalisation and materialism. New Model Army also have extremely

devoted fans who relentlessly follow them around Britain and are characterised by

both their wearing of clog-boots and adornment of kit-bags,

and their use of tem-

porary accommodation after the evening’s concert. Consequently, New Model

Army have generated a ‘traveller’ fan-base which is signiﬁcantly alternative and

critical of government policy.

The synthesis of the politicality of their lyrics and their interest in the Celtic

(where ‘Celtic’ is alternative, rebellious and freedom-seeking) is achieved in their

1989 album Thunder and Consolation, which saw an engagement with Celtic knot-

work and imagery on both this album cover and on the single bag of the violin-led

Vagabonds.The rejection of materialism and metropolitanism on which the album’s

subject-matter centres interestingly paralleled the late twentieth-century British

phenomenon of New Age Travellers, who arguably continue the inheritance of

the 1960s and 1970s counter-culture. Certainly the music of New Model Army

and other Celtic-inspired groups such as the Levellers, Moondragon,The Dolmen,

The Afro-Celt Sound System and Ozric Tentacles formed a ‘soundtrack’ to the

many Travellers who looked to the periphery of Britain for desirable alternative

lifestyles. Wales, Scotland, Ireland, the West of England and Cornwall had the

right set of pull factors; the latter two territories in particular offered a fervent

mixture of ‘ancient’ locations such as Avebury, Stonehenge and Glastonbury, as

well as stone circles, holy wells, King Arthur and Lyonesse (Earle et al. 1994).

Spatially, the implications of this have entailed contestation over territory and

landscape, and how those territories and landscapes are to be used and by whom.

‘Celtic’, as Lowerson has argued, was here read in terms of ‘New Age’ (Lowerson

1994), although, as Amy Hale argues in this volume, often such interest in

Celticity by inmigrants brought about cultural clashes with those indigenous

Celts. However, many of these inmigrants saw and heard in this music an ethos

which helped to deﬁne a new vision of themselves as ‘tribal’.

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These ‘tribal’ anti-metropolitan inmigrants paradoxically also brought about

an increased awareness by the Welsh, Cornish, Scottish and Irish peoples of their

difference. Interestingly, much of the literature produced from ‘nationalist’ Celtic

positions parallels many of the green, anti-development values of ‘tribal’ incomers

and Travellers (see Deacon et al. 1988; Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg 1992). In

the late 1990s, the association between alternative and Celtic was perhaps closer

than ever in such territories (see James 1997; Ellis 1999). The link between

Celtic imagery and the 1999 solar eclipse in Cornwall would require a separate

study, but the mergings of landscape, Celticity and alternative culture (symbol-

ised by the organisation of Glastonbury-type music festivals) were very clear. In

popular music, then, we may conclude that, though to the cynical observer the

use of Celtic imagery may dissipate the ‘essential’ elements of Celtic cultures,

in fact the reverse has happened. Popular culture is actively reinforcing both new

and old constructions of Celtic.

Tattoo you: a permanent reminder of Celticity

Body art has become an important component in identifying with these musical

cultures. Merely in glancing at the storefronts of tattooists in Britain one sees a

wide range of Celtic designs available for body adornment. As Camphausen has

shown, since the 1950s tattoos and body adornment have been linked to subcul-

ture. Often they indicated resistance against prevalent social norms (Camphausen

1997: 10–13). In the 1970s, punks, apart from often wearing tattoos, also adopted

such ‘tribal’ techniques as piercing and colouring their hair in rich colours, as

well as adopting the Mohawk hairstyle (Savage 1991). In 1977, Fakir Musafar

invented the phrase ‘Modern Primitives’to describe this movement. His renowned

predilection for an almost ascetic attitude towards body modiﬁcation helped align

the notions of spiritual and tribal among a new wave of body art enthusiasts

(Camphausen 1997: 11). Celtic designs are one area of this resurgence.

In the 1990s, when ‘Celtic’ was increasingly being read as a particular ethnicity,

and highlighted several human-rights concerns over territory, self-determination

and language, the tribal renaissance already in progress was enhanced by several

different, yet paradoxically interrelated events. The cultures surrounding rock

music remained highly inﬂuential. Musician Perry Farrell, one-time singer with

Jane’s Addiction, created the ﬁrst so-called Lollapalooza tour of the USA (a kind

of mobile ‘Glastonbury Festival of Performing Arts’, aiming to challenge the

spatial and cultural perceptions of conservative America), with Farrell himself

being tattooed, and adorned with multiple piercings, and the show began with

a kind of wild, tribal-like gathering combining entertainment with political and

human-rights concerns.

Another highly inﬂuential group, the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, are also adorned

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with a variety of Celtic-inspired tattoos (as seen on the cover of the 1991 album

Blood Sugar Sex Magik), and although none of the group has openly spoken of

their interest in Celtic subject-matter, the symbolism on their bodies implies

or suggests some afﬁliation to the spiritual, environmental and possibly mystical

conceptualisations of Celtic history. Celtic artwork and designs also began to be

reinterpreted and reworked by tattoo artists in terms of ‘industrial’ and other

neo-tribal designs, which facilitated a merging of Celtic motifs with other ‘prim-

itive’ groups such as Samoans and Maoris. Celtic tattoos therefore helped to

create a conceptualisation, however nebulous and problematic, of the Western

European mystic tradition, representing again the spiritual, the earthy and the

primitive. An interpretative reading suggests that ‘Celtic’ for Perry Farrell and

the Red Hot Chilli Peppers was just as much an alternative to late twentieth-

century materialism and the ‘rat-race’ as it was for D.H. Lawrence. It denoted

power, rebellion and freedom from the societal norms – exactly the kind which

Matthew Arnold had identiﬁed with the Celts over a century earlier (Arnold

1867).

This interest in the tribal was also paralleling cinematic constructions of

‘Celtic’, in which body adornment symbolised difference and rebellion, in a

speciﬁcally ethnic context. In Mel Gibson’s 1995 vision of the life of William

Wallace, Braveheart, the Scottish army’s faces are smeared in woad. Their tattoos

and plaited hair reinforced classical images of Celtic (speciﬁcally Pictish) soci-

eties only a step removed from the Asterix narratives of Goscinny and Uderzo

(1969). The woad was historically inaccurate, yet the vision of ‘modern tribal’

was absolute. The ‘Celtic’ of Lollapalooza’s musicians is matched here with the

ﬁlm’s text: Wallace’s deﬁance of a king, his army ﬁghting as ‘warrior poets’,

combining strength with sensitivity, and his ﬁnal gallows cry of ‘Freedom!’ are

Celtic archetypes (Wallace 1995: back cover). Originally separate from the vogue

of ‘modern primitives’, Gibson’s vision has contributed much to contemporary

notions of ‘Celtic’ and the appropriateness of body adornment for Celtic peoples.

Tattooing with Celtic motifs and piercing with metal objects bearing Celtic

designs appears to be on the increase and its popularity is dependent upon several

factors. First of all, it is part of a wider reaction against modernity, and the quest

for identity within the seemingly unstoppable rollercoaster of globalisation.

Equally, for those committed to the political and cultural determinations of their

territories, such tattoos and piercings can be a visible and permanent reminder

to others and to themselves of their allegiance and commitment to their culture.

For instance, there is a photograph of a young man sporting a chough tattoo in

a magazine devoted to Cornish culture (Cornish World/Bys Kernowyon, 13, 1997).

Finally, such practices may be synthesised, or may be separate to a wider subcul-

tural trend which aligns ‘Celticity’ with ‘alternative’. ‘Celtic’ therefore may be

enjoyed by those wishing to adorn their bodies by either permanent commit-

ALAN M. KENT

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ment to Celtic culture, or to alternativism and their own identity, but also for

any one or two of these interchangeable reasons.

Fundamentally, however, the combination of ‘Celtic’ and ‘tattoo’ still provide

a reaction against a canonical order of adornment and fashion established by

perceived Anglo-centric,‘mainstream’ white societies.The Celts were among the

ﬁrst ‘tribes’ to be conquered by the Anglo-Saxons, and subsequently tattoos and

the involvement (however heady and problematic) of ‘Celtic’ in alternativism

and subcultural trends is part of the conquered Celtic territories writing back.

Body art, as ever, is an important marker of ethnic afﬁliation.

Hanging ten: surﬁng with the Cornish

The iconography of ‘Celtic’ as ‘alternative’, ‘tribal’, ‘ethnic’ and subcultural has

become particularly explicit in Newquay, one of Britain’s premier surﬁng towns.

Sport is important as an indicator of ethnic afﬁliation. In the cultural politics of

Pan-Celticism in the early years of the twentieth century, Hale has shown how

‘sport was thought to be important to the Celtic Association, and certain games

were earmarked as particularly Celtic’ (Hale 1997a: 193). In Cornwall the mani-

festation of sport as a signiﬁer of identity has, for much of the twentieth century,

been rugby, though also importantly, wrasslin’ (wrestling) and hurling.

However,

towards the end of the century, perhaps the sport and leisure activity most readily

associated with Cornwall was surﬁng – so much so that, in 1998, the International

Celtic Watersports festival took place there, a large component of which is dedi-

cated to surﬁng. Cornwall also regularly holds the Headworx World Championship

Surﬁng competition in Newquay. Since the 1950s there has been a steady growth

in surﬁng in Cornwall, and it has assumed as great a prominence as rugby in

the modern Cornish mind as a marker of ethnic afﬁliation. In fact, in 1993, the

Cornish Gorseth

created the ﬁrst Bard for services to Cornish surﬁng in recog-

nition of how important the sport had become in deﬁning identity. More

importantly, for youth culture, the iconography, image and culture of surﬁng are

as important constructions of Celticity in contemporary Cornwall as other overtly

revivalist symbols such as the Cornish Gorseth.The lettering and logos of many

surf boards, clothing and tattoos are Celtic and tribal, suggesting a link between

Cornwall’s ancient past and present. Surﬁng, in many ways, appears as a ‘green’

activity, in some measure connecting human beings and nature in a non-destruc-

tive and therefore ‘Celtic’ way.

From surﬁng, therefore, has come a dynamic youth culture. Representative of

this culture is the 1995 surﬁng ﬁlm Blue Juice, starring Ewan McGregor and

Catherine Zeta Jones, which was ﬁlmed in Cornwall. The surﬁng community

presented is fairly accurate. Aspects of rave culture, Cornish New Ageism in the

form of Heathcote Williams (playing a kind of Neo-Pagan Celtic-surﬁng shaman)

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and biker culture are blended to offer insight into the immediacy of late

twentieth-century youth culture in Cornwall. It does so by using its village

location as the setting for a series of cross-cultural clashes between a number of

subcultural types. Against this, the raves take place in a post-industrial landscape

of ruined copper mines and tin-streaming works, and the Cornish youth enjoy

a vibrant life, despite being on the periphery. This rave culture has done much

to reclaim Cornwall and Cornish Celticity for the young.

Surf culture has generated interesting new notions of Cornish Celticity within

the past ten years. A former student interviewed during research for this chapter

commented on how he had come to understand his Cornish (and therefore Celtic)

identity while he was at Bristol University during the early 1990s. He realised

that, although in Cornwall it was de rigueur to wear surﬁng-style clothing to

almost any youth culture event, students from elsewhere in Britain faced no such

requirement. He began to perceive that, peculiarly, Cornwall had developed a

performance of Celticity which was highly distinctive, territorial and reﬂected

in fashion.This, coupled with his distinctive accent and knowledge of the Cornish

language, allowed him to synthesise several strands of Cornish identity, combining

the wearing of the distinctive black and gold Cornish rugby jersey with clothing

from other Cornish-based surﬁng manufacturers. Even the juxtaposition of the

Cornish designs with many of the larger Australian manufacturers rewrote a

century-old association between the two territories based on Cornish emigrants

and mining communities in Australia, while also perhaps suggesting connections

between ‘indigenous’ Celts and ‘indigenous’ Australians.

Celtic jewellery in Cornwall is also big business.The leading manufacturer is St

Justin who designs both overtly traditional ‘Celtic’ and more ‘tribal’ knotwork

pieces primarily for the youth market, though the South Crofty company (using

tin from the South Crofty mine, marketing Cornwall’s mining heritage) has

also made a considerable niche in this market.There are now at least three major

manufacturers of Celtic-style jewellery in Cornwall alone. St Justin markets inter-

nationally and has products listed in catalogues and to be found in stores in the

USA. Furthermore, a majority of shops in Cornwall selling jewellery carry their

range and other Celtic-style jewellery. This industry taps into a youth culture in

Cornwall which recognises Celticity, and wants new ways of expressing it. It would

seem that, whereas in Camden Lock Market ‘Celtic’ appealed to the average

market-goer since it held a ‘mystique’ and ‘ancientness’ (aside from those who

considered themselves ethnically Celtic and lived in or were visiting London), in

Cornwall, this was present, but the jewellery was also worn to symbolise more

closely their Cornishness. Despite Cornwall’s accommodation into England, it

would seem clear that young people, although unable to learn Cornish in the

National Curriculum, nevertheless perceived themselves to be Celtic and

expressed that in their fashion.

ALAN M. KENT

222

This may be most evident in the surﬁng town of Newquay. In many ways the

high street shops of Newquay exemplify the blend of Celticity, Cornishness and

neo-tribalism. Surf wear, surf boards, fashion and jewellery sit alongside body

piercing and tattoo artists; all offering contemporary Celtic motifs, often blended

with Maori or ‘industrial’ ﬂourishes.The distinctive leisure clothing made by the

Cornish-based ‘Flying Dodo’ company allows young people in Cornwall to nego-

tiate a cultural space and identity between several scenes – surf culture itself,

imported American ‘grunge’ culture and so-called Brit-pop.There is also an indi-

cation of an ethos of environmental care and concern, echoing the counter-cultural

values of the 1960s and 1970s.This was speciﬁcally reﬂected in the work of the

pressure group ‘Surfers against Sewage’ who, throughout the 1980s and 1990s,

led successive campaigns for better sewage treatment from South West Water

and for a reduction in the efﬂuence entering Cornish waters.

The creation of identity which has emerged in surﬁng culture in Cornwall is,

therefore, highly stylised, incorporating ‘modern’ trends and emergent musical

culture, and reﬂecting current awareness among the Cornish of their own

Cornishness and Celtic identity. It also shares some of the same preoccupations

and interpretations of earlier manifestations of ‘Celticity’ in youth cultures, where

‘Celtic’ is tribal, earthy and green.

Beyond the board: ‘grunge’ meets ‘Celtic’ in Kernow

Surf culture also accentuated other moves in Cornish youth culture. Seattle in

Washington State, USA, the home of ‘grunge’ music and bands such as Nirvana,

Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Mudhoney, was also, until the explosion of that

scene in the mid-1980s, seen as an interesting if peripheral part of the country.

Cornwall’s similar status as an interesting if peripheral part of the Atlantic arch-

ipelago is well documented (Kent 1995; Lester 1995; Payton 1996).Youth culture

in Cornwall saw bands from Seattle wearing similar clothes, and it was only a

short step to match ‘grunge’ with surf and musical culture in Cornwall.

Newquay has several ‘grunge’ clubs, and Cornwall itself has witnessed the

British post-grunge emergence of two types of rock group. First, there was the

success of Rootjoose, a funk-grunge band whose lyrics reﬂect the ideology of surf

culture. Second, and perhaps more interestingly, the group Sacred Turf combined

more traditional ‘Celtic’ instrumentation (ﬁddles and ﬂute) with contemporary

sonics.This expression of Celticity involved more of a merging of Celtic Revivalist

iconography with contemporary youth culture. It is an eclectic mix, but one in

which Sacred Turf are as comfortable at Revivalist Celtic festivals such as Lowender

Peran as they are playing the working men’s clubs of the china clay mining region.

This synthesis, which was started by the progressive and folk rock bands of the

1970s (Jethro Tull et al.) and their Cornish variants (Bucca), was seeing other,

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larger folk rock bands such as the New Age Traveller-friendly and anti-Criminal

Justice Act the Levellers play concerts in Cornwall. The Levellers, too, placed

much emphasis on Cornwall’s Celticity.Their song ‘Men-an-Tol’ (1995), inspired

by the holed stone in the Penwith hinterland, gives expression to Cornish lan-

guage and culture, so emphasising Cornish difference, and how, in John Leerson’s

words, ‘In the spectrum of modern Celticism, Cornwall has come almost to rep-

resent a British Tibet; distant, valued by outsiders and threatened by an occupy-

ing power’ (Lowerson 1994: 135). Put another way, a seemingly vibrant synthesis

of new and old performances of Celticity were colliding together in Cornwall.

In part they were reﬂected in the more dynamic image of the Cornish language

both in Westcountry Television’s ground-breaking ‘Kernopalooza!’ (1998) (the

ﬁrst youth-culture, Cornish-language programme to be produced by a main-

stream company), as well as in the increase of more popular music entries (as

opposed to the more overtly ‘folk’ entries of the past) in the 1999 Pan-Celtic

Song Contest.

Elsewhere, far from being derided in the way that Cornwall has been in the

past by youth culture for not being trendy enough or for being distant from

where ‘style and fashion’ were happening, the rock group Reef, who also reﬂect

surf culture, offer positive images of Cornwall. In an interview in 1997, lead

singer Gary Stringer commented: ‘Cornwall is always the bollocks’ which turns

around negative perceptions about the territory’s perceived peripherality

(Kerrang!, 20 December 1997: 50).

Mebyon Kernow – one of Cornwall’s most active nationalist parties – has

used images of surﬁng and has taken on speciﬁcally the concerns of youth culture

in Cornwall to motivate activism in self-determination. A group formed in the

early 1990s called Pennskol Kernow/University of Cornwall, to indicate support

for the campaign for a university campus in Cornwall, organised a concert which

reﬂected the interests of Cornish youth culture, using groups and DJs active

within Cornwall’s indigenous music scene.

The widespread media coverage during the closure of South Crofty – ‘Europe’s

last remaining tin mine’ – also witnessed youth culture in Cornwall ﬁghting back

against perceived political centralism. Their frustration in their struggle came

out in music, events, political action (the formation of ‘Cornish Solidarity’ – a

multi-party pressure group) and direct action (the stopping on the Tamar Bridge

of holiday trafﬁc entering Cornwall). Another weapon was mural painting:

depicted were the conﬂicts between Cornwall and England in 1497 and 1549,

as well as a proliferation of permanently etched black and white ﬂags on the

Cornish landscape, along the major tourist route (the A30 on Bodmin Moor),

on tors and underpasses. There were also grafﬁti, both cultural (‘Teach Cornish

children language, culture and history’) and economic (‘Cornish boys are ﬁsh-

ermen, and Cornish boys are miners too, but when the ﬁshing and mining are

ALAN M. KENT

224

done what shall Cornish boys do?’). The angry soundscape which had evolved

was reﬂecting an even angrier landscape.

This afﬁrmation of being Celtic, while at the same time being modern and

‘cool’, has a multiplicity of origins and a set of results which paradoxically move

us away both from notions of ‘New Ageism’ and from the reinterpreted ‘Celtic’

youth culture adopted throughout the country. In Cornwall, both cultural and

political nationalism are part of the result of this increased conﬁdence shown by

youth culture. ‘Positive’ constructions of Celticity had reinforced ethnicity.

Celtic nirvanas: realities or impossibilities?

Certainly, there is an argument that Celtic imagery combined with popular music

is a mechanism for giving some disaffected youth groups (both non-Celtic and

Celtic) ways to form a cultural identity. This notion of ‘identity’ is a product of

the multitudes of postwar counter-cultures colliding and negotiating cultural

space with a peripheral ‘Celtic’ difference. In British youth culture in general,

there is undoubtedly a naivety and ignorance concerning the political, cultural

and economic status of Celtic territories within the British Isles. Following on

from this is the same naivety and ignorance over the symbols and images of those

cultures (reﬂected here in popular music) and what they mean to those cultures.

This, however, does not mean that those cultures have exclusive access to them,

nor that those symbols should not be reinterpreted and used in new and exciting

ways for meaningful expression. The Nirvana T-shirt made by the Camden Lock

Market bootlegger may be an example par excellence of a general lack of under-

standing of Celtic territories and culture. However, as demonstrated by several

Celtic subcultural activities (counter-culture, heavy metal, body adornment and

the speciﬁc example of surf culture in Cornwall), the merging of the ‘popular’

culture actually reinforced it, entrenching residual notions of Celticity, and also

accentuating and promoting new ways of expressing that identity.

The strength of that identity proves that, although the theory of a merged

Celtic nirvana sounds impossible, even ludicrous, and somehow a long way from

established academic constructions of Celticity, the reality is that, coupled with

other symbols of ethnicity, the proposed union between such disparate entities

can signiﬁcantly help to promote Celtic peoples and territories in the age of

MTV, e-mail and the CD. Issues of Celtic cultural nationalism, devolution and

‘difference’ are heightened by their engagement with popular culture. In an era

of Kurt Cobain and Celtic knotwork, disparity does not necessarily mean that

such a reality must be called into question, or its signiﬁcance misunderstood.

Celtic, to quote Cobain, ‘smells like teen spirit’.

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Notes

1 ‘Riverdance’ was an innovative production of traditional Irish dance, ﬁrst staged at

the Eurovision Song Contest in Dublin in the mid 1990s. It was seen as a break-

through production which developed the artform. Other stage shows, such as ‘Lord

of the Dance’, have followed.

2 These are popular megalithic monuments and other sacred sites around Britain.

3 Followers of the group have been characterised by wearing these shoes. Clog-boots

are a symbol of working-class consciousness. The kit-bags generally came from ex-

military equipment stores.

4 Wrasslin’ is the Cornu-English expression for wrestling. Cornish wrestling is a long-

established sport in the territory and Cornishmen were renowned for their wrestling

skills. The Cornishmen who marched behind Henry V at the battle of Agincourt

carried a banner depicting two wrestlers. During the nineteenth century, wrasslin’

tournaments lasted several days. Tournaments are still held today.

Hurling is a sport similar to rugby where two teams range over a wide area chas-

ing a metal ball, trying to achieve goals. In contemporary Cornwall, the most famous

competition takes place at St Columb Major on Shrove Tuesday. Both sports carry the

Cornish-language motto ‘Gware wheag yeo gware teag’ (Fair play is good play).

5 The Cornish Gorseth, held on the ﬁrst Saturday of every September, is a commem-

orative ceremony honouring Cornish cultural achievement.Those who are honoured

become ‘bards’. The ceremony is held in the Cornish language.

6 See Hale, Chapter 10 in this volume.

ALAN M. KENT

226

Part IV

EPILOGUE

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A GEOGRAPHY OF CELTIC

APPROPRIATIONS

John G. Robb

According to Cunliffe (1997), Europe is in the grip of a New Celtomania which

offers a comforting vision of past unity and creativeness at a time when ethnic

divisions are becoming increasingly painful and disturbing. The Celtic now has a

wider spatial claim than Atlantic Europe, and more personal meanings besides

mother tongue and ancestry. It is a proliﬁc consumption style: in Piccini’s

(1996) words, ‘Celts sell’. Celtic musical styles have transcended folk and ‘gone

global’, and the promise of Arthurian romance attracts thousands to sites such

as Tintagel and Glastonbury (Robb 1998; Bowman 1993). Bowman’s (1996)

‘cardiac Celts’ seeking an ‘Anglo-Saxon bypass’ may ﬁnd refuge in this expanded

identity, which differs radically from the traditional conception of the Celt.

I will examine the spatial and temporal dynamics of contemporary Celticism

as an academic enquiry and as a group identity. However, as the identity is one

that I partly share, I should declare an interest. I will therefore begin with a

more personal account, as subsequent interpretations are signiﬁcantly inﬂuenced

by biography and socialisation. Following this, I will demonstrate how the Celtic

has been appropriated, commercially and politically, as an attractive and mysteri-

ous set of images, redolent of nature and aboriginality, and capable of transcending

more usual markers of territory, nationality and language.

It appears that popular, and to an extent ofﬁcial, meanings associated with

‘Celtic’ are now detached from those endorsed by the small pan-Celtic move-

ment and language activists (Rogerson and Gloyer 1995; Berresford Ellis 1993b).

The community use of the languages continues to decline, as more superﬁcial

consumption forms grow and spread – through music and tourism, for instance

(O’Connor 1993). Both phases of Celtomania, in the late nineteenth and late

twentieth centuries, provoked critical reactions. In the former, the duality of

Celt and Saxon carried gendered and racialised overtones of inevitable inequality,

resulting in, for instance, a reconceptualisation of the Celtic within Irish nationalist

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229

imagery (Nash 1993; Johnson 1993, 1997). In the latter phase, a more profound

critique has sought to discredit the Celtic as a coherent historical identity before

1700, and as a contemporary identity adopted by native Celtic users, rather

than imposed by zealots (Chapman 1992; Tristram 1996; Piccini 1996; James

1999a). This wave of criticism has not yet undermined Celtic studies: university

courses are experiencing unprecedented student demand for broader curricula

including religion, history, folklore, art and music (Meek 1998), and scholars

continue to argue for a self-evident Celtic past (Cunliffe 1997). Signiﬁcantly, the

term ‘Celticism’, once signifying ideological commitment, has been subtly revised

by one scholar to ‘the history of what people wanted the term to mean’ (Leersen

1996: 3).

JOHN G. ROBB

230

Figure 14.1 Celtic spaces: the conventional bounded territories of the contemporary

Celtic contain important distinctions between the core areas of Celtic

speech and the national borders

Source: Author, based on Abalain (1995), Derouet (1989), Hindley (1990), Johnson (1997) and

Rogerson and Gloyer (1995)

The Celtic appears now to comprise two spatial realms. The core tradition

resides in a tightly drawn geography of language spaces, nested within the terri-

tories of the ‘Celtic nations’ (Figure 14.1). In contrast, the consumption style is

global in scale, varied in form, and untied by ancestry or territory, though the

bulk of Celtic consumption is probably located in non-language ‘Celtic nationals’

living at home and abroad. Angus Og’s (1999) US-based listing numbered 747

Internet sites, including craft outlets, musicians, associations, cultural events and

gatherings, mysticism and spirituality, Celtic tarot, publishing, body culture,

genealogy, web page design, tourism, sport and so on.

Becoming Celtic

As I researched this chapter, it became apparent that my own experience, social-

isation, knowledge and presumptions were necessarily part of the enquiry. A

reading of the critical arguments led to surprise, some dismay and discomfort,

and then reﬂection on unquestioned truths underlying my own identity and that

of fellow Scots. It became clear that I would have to examine how I became

aware of the Celtic in my background, what it meant to me and to others. Hence

my decision to write this chapter in the ﬁrst person, and to begin with a biograph-

ical account of how I learned to be Celtic.

There is no doubt that most Scots learn they are Scots at an early age, as I

did. At some point I learned that my paternal grandmother had spoken Gaelic,

but had not passed this on to her children, in common with many Highland

migrants. In this knowledge lay the seeds of that ‘passionate regret’ (Macleod,

quoted in Brown et al. 1996: vii) which I believe forms a common experience

of those who claim Celtic descent.

Childhood holidays were invariably spent in the Highlands, and my ﬁrst

extended contact with Gaelic was toponymic. I learned that Loch na h-Oidhche

means ‘Night Loch’ as the sun never shone there. Highlanders were teuchters or

‘country bumpkins’ (McCrone et al. 1995) in the robust Lowland family lore,

yet there was a strong sense of identiﬁcation with the Highlands, as a region

quintessentially Scottish. Everyone knows about the Glencoe Massacre, Culloden

and the Clearances, but holiday appreciation was mostly of the ‘unspoilt natural

wilderness’ described by Fraser Darling and Morton Boyd (1964) (see also

Toogood 1995; MacDonald 1998).

I can’t remember the ﬁrst context in which I encountered the term ‘Celtic’,

other than that of the football club. Celtic FC is a reminder of the Celtomania

of the recent ﬁn de siècle, set up so that Irish Catholics could beat Scottish

Presbyterians ‘at their own game’ (Harvie 1996: 233). Though ambiguous, the

name is a constant reminder to Scots of this element in their identity. In my

early teens I remember heated debates in a café near school about the reality

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and possible whereabouts of King Arthur. The consensus favoured Camelon, on

the Antonine Wall, with the enigmatic Arthur’s O’on temple site nearby. The

depth of the Dark Age mystery impressed us – a gap in empirical knowledge

into which legend and folklore seeped inexorably, inviting speculation.

At university, despite leaning towards social and urban studies, I was drawn

to historical geography by the strength of these earlier interests. I reasoned with

myself that I would be good in what interested me, even if it was largely ‘irrel-

evant’. I was impressed that at least in origin Scotland was not a nation, but a

multi-national state, as indeed was England. The knowledge that people in

Strathclyde once spoke a form of Welsh contributed a frisson of the exotic and

a knowledge that few modern residents shared. For instance, the place name

Lanark was once known in the early Welsh form of Llanerch. I began to under-

stand that Celtic heritage is esoteric, which, as I now realise, was an important

part of the personal appeal.

During the 1970s, nationalism made political gains, though in my circle the

Scottish National Party (SNP) were ‘tartan Tories’. Singing rebel songs in the

Students Union was fashionably leftish for agnostics of Protestant tradition like

myself. An interest in the Celtic was, in retrospect, part of a non-nationalist

strategy to imagine Scotland in an international, cross-denominational way, as

part of a European culture. I liked the idea that, while the Celtic provided distinc-

tive identities and histories, it could also subvert nation-state politics. The Celtic

realm offered an alternative discourse to essentialist notions of Scottish nation-

hood and anti-English xenophobia. I had recognised the supremacy of class and

power relations in the history and geography of these islands and thus came to

see the Celtic realm in the light of capitalist exploitation and internal colonisa-

tion (Hechter 1975; Fraser Grigor 1979).

The only extended period I have ever spent living in an active Celtic-speaking

community was in Wales in the early 1980s, and I was ready to embrace Welsh

in a way most Scots would ﬁnd strange. I could read the Brythonic linguistic

imprint on the toponymy of Lothian, my home region (Robb 1996). I knew

about the Gododdin, a legendary Dark Age tribe that was transplanted from

Lothian to North Wales to repel Irish incursions. Celtic solidarities and enmi-

ties were never as simple as the critics expected.The reality of habitual community

use of Welsh by people of all ages impressed me, contrasting with the margin-

alisation of Scottish Gaelic.That time also coincided with a new interest in what

I understood to be Celtic music. The Chieftains and Planxty were gaining new

audiences, and though Irish, were immediately recognisable as related to the

Scottish musical traditions that I had grown up with.

A quest for purity led to Robin Williamson’s (1977) accounts of possessive

claim and counter-claim to airs and arrangements between Scottish and Irish

musicians. The afﬁnity between Irish and Scottish ‘traditional’ music is probably

JOHN G. ROBB

232

the most widely understood of modern pan-Celtic characteristics, sometimes

incorporating Gaelic lyrics (for instance, in the music of Caipercaille, Altan and

Runrig). I suspected that a good deal of the Irish–Scottish commonality was

comparatively recent in origin, as modern Celtic music is composed by artists

travelling regularly between the Celtic regions. The Scottish pipes (louder and

deeper than the reedy Breton biniou) are now heard in Breton tourist centres in

the summer.These developments I saw as a revived Celtic tradition of borrowing

and adoption which had ancient roots, rather than being a modern pastiche. I

imagined this exchange to be essentially Celtic, as folk tradition in England and

France seemed more insular.

The bagpipes are a potent symbol of Celticity, though Chapman (1992) is

correctly dubious of this appropriation, preferring instead to see such pipes as

a neutral European vernacular now limited to the periphery. However, Chapman’s

model of an abject and passive Celt standing at the end of a cultural conveyor

belt emanating from a metropolitan core I ﬁnd unconvincing. Chapman’s thesis

is the crudest sort of diffusionism, which accords all innovation to the metro-

politan cores. Irish music has been successful in gaining wide recognition for a

modern fused Celtic musical style, with motifs appearing in mainstream rock,

jazz and pop.Through song lyrics, Gaelic is now heard and acknowledged, though

probably not understood, by more people than ever before.

Music is an important focus of interest in ‘Celtic tourism’. Johnson (1997:

174) and O’Connor (1993) suggest that in Celtic regions the inhabitants are

often represented as ‘Other’, little more than vessels of an archaic tradition.

Unreﬂexively, in my own visits to Celtic lands, I have indulged myself in searching

after the essentially Celtic: common threads besides language and music, unseen

or disregarded by local people, but revealed to the ‘discerning’ traveller. Half-

serious talk with friends in Brittany centred on cider, vernacular architecture,

foods (the prevalence of butter in shortbread, Welsh cakes and kouign amann),

folklore, even mannerisms, observed as common to the Celtic rural fringe.

Chapman (1992) has since revealed this to me as a vain and potentially dangerous

quest for the essential in a set of overlapping rural European lifestyles and

economies which are independent of any single language or cultural heritage,

and the products of quite recent changes and numerous long-distance inﬂuences

(Desforges 1999).

My reading of the Celtic has been based on language, folklore, history, music,

dance, art and design. Archaeology provided a ﬁrm anchor in prehistory, and

continuities into the Middle Ages seemed self-evident.The dialectic between this

thesis of evolution from a common cultural root and the antithesis of parallel

development in similar environments was a mental game played over years of

observation. Environmental determinism was anathema, and the multiplicity of

similarities seemed to favour continuity. Neighbouring peoples suffering similar

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oppressions, it seemed clear, would ‘rediscover’ any common culture further

back in time, which metropolitan hegemonies working through reoriented

patterns of trade, war, alliance and religion had obscured or effaced.

In Scotland, ‘enclosed’ Celtic narratives neglect the pan-Celtic context, and

promote an exceptional national myth that was, to me, excluding and partial.

Similarly, the development of a masculine ‘Gaelic Irish’ identity emerged in reac-

tion to the weaknesses of the feminine ‘Celtic Irish’ construction in the ﬁrst two

decades of the twentieth century (summarised by Johnson 1994: 88).The middle-

class poets and artists of the Irish Celtic revival were internationalists, whereas

the muscular Gaelic nationalism espoused by republicans was more introspective

and exclusive.The celebration of a speciﬁcally ‘tartan’ national story has succeeded

in separating Scottish self-perceptions from dangerous liaisons in Ireland or

outlandish liaisons with the Welsh, Cornish, Manx and Bretons. However, I do

not think this is as true of the other Celtic countries, and requires further study.

I am not, as a result of these experiences, a Celtomane. I have not suffered

a crisis in my own identity, nor reached a point of scholastic repudiation. I am

aware of naïveté in early understandings, and the critical authors have revealed

errors and a quantum of alienation that now colours my thinking.With the other

authors of this volume, I continue to understand the Celtic phenomenon as intrin-

sically and historically ‘real’, though certainly distorted by modern construction

and revival. Part of the reason for Chapman’s conclusions, in my view, is his

minimalist deﬁnition of Celtic spaces and peoples, conﬁned to native speech areas

in Scotland and Brittany. However, language is an important and perhaps growing

part of the identity of non-Celtiphones living inside and outside these spaces.

The discovery that a language has been lost in the course of a few generations

must be a common experience but is neglected in scholarship. For my own part,

regret for the passing of the language did not arise from any prompting by

language partisans as Chapman suggests is common.

Celtic spaces

The ancestral Celtic claim for Europe extends from Ireland to Galatia (Anatolia)

(Figure 14.2), though recent discoveries of Tocharian graves containing fabrics

identiﬁed as ‘tartan’ has excited comment on the possibility that the ancestral

Celtic realm reached the gates of China (Berresford Ellis 1999). This vast area

has debatable borders, and is largely based on artefactual and toponymic distri-

butions, traditionally thought to infer a linguistic connection. Celtic ancestries

have been proclaimed on this basis in a number of Continental countries and

regions, and provide a common ancestry to the European identity (Champion

1996). Partisan and critical accounts of Celticism agree that language is the funda-

mental modern Celtic characteristic. ‘No language – no nation’ was a maxim of

JOHN G. ROBB

234

European bourgeois nationalism of the early nineteenth century and was embraced

in the early twentieth century by ‘Celtic communists’ such as Ruaraidh Erskine

of Mar (Harvie 1996: 253). Decline has been a common experience of the Celtic

languages, around which political action has centred in varying degrees. To

Chapman (1992), the personal decision to discard a language of lesser prestige

in favour of one of greater prestige is a matter of no surprise and little regret.

It is those native speakers who are made to carry the burden of language preser-

vation by the militants who deserve sympathy, in his view.

In my view, this emphasis on language is misplaced. The signiﬁcance of the

Celtic languages extends well beyond the spaces of intensive current use. In my

experience, it is a complex symbol of loss, regret, curiosity and oppression. In

the new climate of interest in Celticism, further erosion of the heartlands seems

to strengthen this symbolic power and enhances the visibility and audibility of

the languages over wider regions. Part of this symbolic power, ironically, derives

from a variety of experiences at the interface of language and non-Celtiphone,

whether as a tourist, migrant or compatriot.

For language militants, preserving community use of the language within the

survival areas ultimately depends upon language revival throughout the national

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Figure 14.2 Culmination: a large part of Europe was at some time ‘Celtic’ according to

most authorities, though the outline is variable in extent

Source: Author, based on Cunliffe (1997), Derouet (1989) and James (1999a)

territory. Revivals have been noted in urban areas outside the surviving Celtiphone

spaces, based on voluntary second-language learning, though the implications are

debatable (Aitchison and Carter 1987; Maguire 1987; Rogerson and Gloyer 1995;

Mac Giolla Chríost and Aitchison 1998). Bilingual signs and forms, Celtic-

language broadcasting, Celtic-medium schools and language rights in courts,

council chambers and the devolved assemblies have been hailed as successes for

the campaigners, yet fall well short of popular revival (Berresford Ellis 1993a).

In many cases these changes have not directly compromised the needs and

aspirations of resistant non-Celtiphones, and have contributed to the touristic

appeal of the Celtic countries. Indeed, the gradual, uneven and often controver-

sial spread of bilingual road signs throughout Celtic Europe arguably meets the

needs of several stakeholders.These might include the intermediate aspirations of

minority activists, local authorities faced with the costs of maintaining defaced

signs, a visible and ‘ofﬁcial’ assertion of distinctiveness for non-active citizens and

tourist businesses serving the New Celtomania. In Cornwall, for instance, Penwith

District Council approved bilingual signs in 1997, joining a list of local authorities

which includes Finistère, Côtes d’Armor, parts of Skye and Lochalsh, the Western

Isles and the Welsh counties, and Gaelic-only signing has been a feature of the Irish

gaeltachtai since 1922. ‘Ofﬁcial’ roadside Celtic has brought the languages into

public view in many areas where they are no longer spoken in public or at all, and

where the total quantum of epigraphic Celtic is very small.The broadcast media

now transmit Celtic into homes where it would never otherwise be heard: second

homes, holiday cottages and hotel rooms.

The spreading use of Cornish on business signs, house names and tourist

attractions shows the parallel nature of private enthusiasm and business engage-

ment with an identity widely endorsed beyond the numerically tiny language

revival movements.Travellers alighting at Penzance railway station are welcomed

by a sign in Cornish, and the Cornish ‘national ﬂag’ of St Piran’s Cross is much

more evident than years ago. It has been suggested that the dominant ‘industrial-

Methodist’ tradition has been eclipsed in recent years by a popular revival in

Celtic feeling (Deacon and Payton 1993). Kneafsey (2000) contrasts the ‘cultural

economy’ of communities in Ireland and Brittany. Whereas in County Mayo the

Irish language is used to promote heritage tourism relatively unproblematically,

in Finistère she found that such language use was largely the initiative of incomers,

with the Breton language being seen as a sign of backwardness by local people.

However, it is unclear whether people of Breton ancestry were among those

enthusiastic entrepreneurs of cultural capital. Clearly, the dynamics of revival,

and the attitudes of locals, do vary considerably.

In Scotland, Gaelic is widely acknowledged as the Celtic language of the nation.

Antiquarians at one time asserted that the Picts spoke a form of Gaelic before

the Scots brought it from Ireland, in order to establish an indigenous origin for

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236

the national language (Skene 1837).Watson (1926) identiﬁed a scatter of adapted

Gaelic place names across the south and east of the country, which he inter-

preted as the result of generations of settled Gaelic speakers. His case can be

interpreted as a Gaelicist discourse which has selected lowland Gaelic toponymy

and neglected other linguistic elements, a habit repeated by toponymists compiling

for popular markets (Robb 1996). Place names, particularly those of natural

features, suggest that Gaelic was never the majority language of the south and

eastern coastlands, nor of the northern isles. There is historical evidence of a

form of Welsh being spoken in Strathclyde as late as the twelfth century, acknowl-

edged by Watson (1926). Welsh may on this basis be claimed as the ancestral

language of lowland Scotland, as its use predates Gaelic, and may have survived

longer than Gaelic in some places.

The possibilities of Dark Age Celtic survival in England include a meaningful

Celtic share in the ancestry for large numbers of English people.The traditional

view equates with ‘ethnic cleansing’, a modern term used in Dark Age contexts

by Berresford Ellis (1993a: 22–3). In the sixth and seventh centuries, the British

Celts were driven west and north, or exterminated.The lack of archaeological evi-

dence for massacres, and doubts about the reliability of the historical sources, have

allowed a reappraisal. This postulates a gradual loss of Celtic language and iden-

tity as succeeding generations adopted the higher-status culture, with the marriage

between female Celts and male Saxons sometimes suggested (Härke 1995). It has

also been suggested that Celts were using artefacts of ‘Saxon’ design during the

ﬁfth century, and that many previously supposed ‘Saxon’ burials may really be of

Celts (Rutherford Davies 1982; Esmonde Cleary 1989;Evison 1997;Härke 1995).

Ideological Celticism responds to these more peaceful accounts with renewed

emphasis on the records available, typically Gildas and the battle-strewn Anglo-

Saxon Chronicle (Berresford Ellis 1993b). Gildas, a British monk, writes of ﬁre

and sword, but other scholars interpret him as more ﬁre and brimstone, an alle-

gorical tract which uses the image of a ravaged Britain as a polemic against his

real enemies, certain godless British rulers (for a dispassionate account, see

Higham 1991). Berresford Ellis (1993b) is scathing about what he sees as an

attempt by the English to sanitise their bloody history, and take from the Celts

a memory of persecution and resentment. However, the archaeological evidence

to decide this debate has been slow to appear.

A search for evidence of Celtic language survival in England may be related to

this divergence in opinion (Gay 1999), as might the upsurge of interest in Celtic

Christianity, identiﬁed with sites such as Glastonbury and Lindisfarne (Meek

1996). Continuity, however tenuous and obscure, is more attractive to the current

mood, as people of English culture ‘discover’their Celtic roots in a round of appro-

priation which is antithetical to interpretations that portray sustained conﬂict

between Celts and Saxons from the ﬁfth century to the present day.

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Diasporic survivals are recognised by pan-Celticists in Chubut Valley,Argentina,

and Cape Breton, Canada, but further territorial aggrandisement by Celtdom is

otherwise limited to national territories from which Celtic speech has retreated.

The experiences of Celtic speakers in the wider diasporas are of little direct

relevance to struggles to protect and extend community use of the languages,

as this is unlikely in the metrolingual cities of America and Australasia. Occa-

sionally, an article will appear in the Celtic League organ Carn, looking at the

position of Breton in Quebec or Irish in Boston, but as these communities are

outside the nationalist political nexus, the global experience of Celtiphones,

whether in or out of ‘recognised’ communities, is neglected.

The claim of Celtic identity made in Galicia and Asturias, however, is rejected

by Berresford Ellis (1985: 22). The sole criterion of ideological Celticism is

language, so the lack of any Celtic language tradition in Galicia or Asturias debars

the region from full membership of the Celtic League. Energetic lobbying by

Galician musicians and ﬁlm makers succeeded in gaining recognition from Channel

4 and the Celtic Film and TV Festival, in spite of this. In the 1980s, the Celtic

League deliberated the admission of Galicia, Asturias and possibly Cumbria as

‘Lands of Celtic Heritage’. A softening of the strict language criterion to recog-

nise this intermediate category can be detected in some sections of ‘ideological

Celticist’ opinion, and may represent a concession to the New Celtomania

(Derouet 1989; Heusaff 1997).To Berresford Ellis (1985), however, this is tanta-

mount to admitting England or France to Celtdom.

In this debate within the pan-Celtic movement I think we can see recogni-

tion by some of the participants that the authenticity of language no longer rests

exclusively on contemporary currency. Celtic languages are now more visible

and audible in history, heritage, toponymy, signage, advertising and the media,

beyond the core areas of habitual use. A Celtic past can be appropriated for iden-

tity and consumption just as effectively as a Celtic present.

Disconcertingly, although the notion of Celtic ‘race’ has been discredited,

medical researchers still use the term in studies of genetic ancestry (for instance,

Long et al. 1998).This is evidently common in Australia, where ‘Celtic’ or ‘Anglo-

Celtic’ is now used as a label of ethnic origin equating with ‘British and Irish’.

The semantic spread of the term is seen in sports journalism, denoting the exten-

sion of the ethnonym to a group of nationalities irrespective of the linguistic

criterion. The habilitation of the ‘Celtic Sea’ as an ofﬁcial marine designation

may be seen as part of this semantic appropriation, as might the Flora Celtica

(1999) project at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh. Such ‘stretchings’ of

the core meaning to admit spaces and species to the Celtic identity are bound

to raise expectations in the public mind about what is ‘Celtic’. ‘Ofﬁcial’ sanc-

tion, even as a shorthand term, legitimates utility. The traditional deﬁnition of

the Celt, as a person who speaks a Celtic language, is being eclipsed by deﬁnitions

JOHN G. ROBB

238

which admit other criteria, and in some cases omit language altogether. To me,

the former is legitimate; the latter is not credible.

Celtic times

The temporal Celtic realm has uncertain origins. The development of modern

archaeology has progressively postponed the arrival of the Celts, and the recent

scepticism (Chapman 1992; James 1999a) has raised doubts about whether there

ever was a Celtic civilisation or proto-nation. Chapman (1992) pokes fun at the

vogue for illustrating books on Celtic themes with images of much earlier monu-

ments. His The Celts: the Construction of a Myth carries a picture of the stones of

Carnac, and he writes ironically,‘I have followed in this ﬁne tradition’ (1992: v).

The history of temporal allocation began with the use of ‘Celtic’ as a catch-

all term for pre-Roman artefacts, partly as a result of developments in comparative

philology and over-reliance on classical narratives (Champion 1996). William

Stukeley, the eighteenth-century antiquarian and self-appointed Archdruid, ﬁxed

an association between Stonehenge and the Celts which ‘is now ﬁrmly imbedded

in the popular imagination and is thus truly part of the myth of the Celts’

(Chapman 1992: v).

By 1900, ‘Celtic’ had shifted from signifying ‘prehistoric’ to ‘cultured prehis-

toric’. Romilly Allen (1904) attributed pre-Celtic origins to unadorned ﬁeld

monuments, and situated the beginning of the Celtic period in the later Bronze

Age. He identiﬁed the rock art of the Newgrange passage tomb in Ireland with

early Celtic arrivals: the ‘aboriginal’ population was considered to have been

racially inferior and incapable of metallurgy and abstract art. The curvilinear

motifs from Neolithic sites, now dated to the fourth millennium

(Cooney

and Grogan 1994) are superﬁcially similar to the La Tène art style, but the latter

is a fundamental part of the core Celtic tradition. Romilly Allen (1904) has been

inﬂuential, contributing to an eclecticism in the identiﬁcation of prehistoric and

Dark Age art styles as ‘Celtic’ by the motif-hungry appropriations of the New

Celtomania.This appears to have been transmitted via pattern books such as Bain

(1977), bypassing more recent scholarly revision.

The relegation of the prehistoric Celts to the European Iron Age, roughly

from 500

, is the result of a consensus about what constituted the Celtic mate-

rial culture, and better dating techniques, during the ﬁrst half of the twentieth

century. The geographical distribution of megalithic monuments along the

Atlantic seaboard coincides quite closely with the historic areas of Celtic speech.

Dolmen, menhir, cairn and cromlech are Celtic words adopted into archaeology and

used to denote monument types. This use extends beyond the historically

Celtic-speaking territories – to Iberia and Corsica, for instance (Helgouac’h

et al. 1997). Cooney (1994) points out that Irish megalithic monuments have

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long been integrated into Gaelic toponymy, topophilia and folklore, which form

part of the modern interpretation at many Irish sites.This is by no means conﬁned

to Celtic folklore, of course, but suggests that the association between Celts and

megaliths is not simply a matter of popular attachment to outdated scholarship.

Plate 14.1, for instance, illustrates a contemporary inter-Celtic encounter at

which these much older traditions are celebrated.

With a few exceptions, the monolithic Celtic ethnonym is the earliest avail-

able to a popular imagination that prefers named peoples to animate the past.

This ‘cultural-historical’ narrative remains embedded in school curricula and

motivates visitor expectations at monuments and museums (Clarke 1996).‘Were

these people Celts?’ asks Brett (1996: 137), regarding the Neolithic pioneers at

Céide Fields, County Mayo. This is a doubly problematic question for modern

interpretation, given the archaeological invisibility of speech habits, and deep

modern scepticism about the necessary unity of language, material culture and

identity.

The traditional story of one or more Celtic invasions from 500

being the

most likely vehicle of cultural change in Britain has recently been questioned.

James (1999a) has written an eminently readable explanation of ‘post-Celticism’,

JOHN G. ROBB

240

Plate 14.1 Glencolumbcille, Co. Donegal, August 1999: a group of Breton artist-

performers are assisted by locals to install a sculpture based on Neolithic

motifs common to both countries

Source: Author

which emphasises the absence of evidence for a Celtic invasion of Britain and

Ireland. Instead of a civilisation, he envisages a divided landscape of small, unstable

polities evolved from Bronze Age or earlier communities. Local cultural conti-

nuities were revised gradually by elite contacts and trade. What we now know

as ‘Celtic’ languages may have developed out of indigenous tribal tongues that

gradually converged into regional dialects over a long time period.The imported

art style can be seen as an elite fashion, sufﬁciently abstract to bear interpreta-

tion within variable local cultures. In agreement with Chapman (1992), James

(1999a) concludes that the modern Celts were invented, around

1700, and

archaeologists have mostly complied with this invention from that time.

This theory of ‘cumulative Celticity’ does not necessarily undermine the histor-

ical claims of ideological Celticism. It may be easily adopted into a revised

prehistory of coalescence, preﬁguring the modern pan-Celtic goal of confeder-

ation. The British–Irish Council is a current constitutional innovation of great

signiﬁcance to pan-Celticism, a potential shift of the geopolitical centre of gravity

of the Anglo-Celtic isles for the ﬁrst time since the establishment of the Irish

Republic. However, the interaction of Celticism with nationalist politics has not

resulted in the adoption of Celticist programmes or imagery.The cultural dimen-

sion of pan-Celticism and its national variants has been more productive than

the political dimension, which has singularly failed to capture nationalist agendas

in recent decades. Notwithstanding greater nationalist success in the 1999 elec-

tions to the Welsh Assembly and Scottish Parliament (Curtice 2000), I do not

discern stronger Celticism in nationalist politics. Plaid Cymru may need to

broaden its appeal beyond its historical attachment to language issues and Y Fro

Gymraeg (Osmond 1985), and McCrone et al. (1995) have already noted a disso-

ciation of politics from heritage in Scotland.

Celtic cultural issues are less relevant to the nationalist parties in the Celtic

countries than they were in the 1960s and 1970s, with the possible exception

of Sinn Féin. The ‘increasingly ﬂuid perceptions of Irishness’ (Graham 1997b:

200) may have robbed the Celtic of its strongest institutional basis in the Gaelic-

nationalist identity fostered by the Irish state since independence. In Scotland,

the progressive retreat from a speciﬁcally or even partly Celtic identity, as

expressed by nationalists, is notable. Alasdair Gray’s (1997) recent historical

polemicWhy Scots Should Rule Scotland contains no mention of the term ‘Celtic’

at all. Modern Scotland cannot attach itself to a single heritage tradition, though

a Celtic identity would probably have the largest subscription (McCrone et al.

1995). The political parties have agreed that citizenship, for the purposes of

electing the Scottish Parliament, will be civic rather than ethnic, admitting current

residents of all cultures as Scots. This further diminishes the relevance of what

is one of several historical identities.

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Conclusion

The future of the Celtic appears to me to lie in two realms beyond the dwin-

dling geographies of native speech. The ﬁrst realm is in the global constellation

of beliefs, interests and consumption tastes which have been partially detached

from the residual core realm.These meanings are expanding to ﬁll (or reﬁll) the

outlines of the Celtic, ﬁrst established by archaic scholarship, and supported by

continued use of the term in ofﬁcial and academic contexts. These are the Celts

of the spirit – those who choose to be Celtic.

The second realm embraces those populations that share a sense of Celtic

ancestry, and that ‘passionate regret’ for language loss which provides motiva-

tion for urban language revivals, and much of the market for Celtic music and

tourism. This realm overlaps with the ﬁrst in many aspects of consumption, but

potential conﬂicts may arise over ancestry, authenticity and belonging, where the

appropriations of the ‘spirit’ Celts appear to trespass on the rights and beliefs of

‘blood’ Celts.

JOHN G. ROBB

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New Ageism 165–6; and Paganism 166;

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practitioners of 159–60; and re-interpretation of

monuments/industrial sites 168–70; sites of 161

Celticity: ambiguity in 210; as authentic 157;

connection with music/alternative culture

210–13, 214–15, 216; construction of 4–5, 123;

critical stance toward 2–3; as cultural capital

14–15; cumulative 241; deﬁnitions of 4, 6;

globalisation of 126, 153; Hebridean 205; and

history 6–7; homogeneity/heterogeneity 10–12;

hybrid nature of 133; and identity 4; images of

135–6, 208–9; institutionalisation/politicisation

of 12–14; Other-driven construct of 165; and

politics 1–2; and racial difference 5–6;

(re)interpretations of 5–7; renaissance in 1–4,

8–9; revisionist stance 7; scholarly legacy of 5–7;

as state of mind 137; and tattoos 219–21;

traditional places/alternative spaces of 8–10;

visual codes 127–8; websites on 133

Celts, social construction of 124–6

centre–periphery 124; destabilisation through

commodiﬁcation 133–5; internal/external views

of 136–7; perpetuating relations 126–32;

romantic notion 124–6; urban 33–5

Champion,T. 234, 239

Chapman, M. 2, 7, 14, 15, 111, 124, 126, 128, 134,

136, 142, 165, 166–7, 197, 209, 230, 233, 235,

239, 241

Chibnall, M. 22, 29

Clark, S. and Donnelly, J.S. 38

Clarke, D. 240

Clemo, J. 165

Clifford, J. 144, 145

Cockburn Association 97

Cohen, A. 117, 145, 193

Cooke, I. 169

Cooke, S. and McLean, F. 92, 121

Cooney, G. 239; and Grogan, E. 239

Cornwall 13, 126, 211, 220, 234; Celtic spirituality

in 159–60; conﬂict over ritual activity in 160–7;

differing moral geographies in 164–7; ethnic

Cornish activism in 158–9; identity in 157–8,

159; industrial/rural views of 164–7; migrant

patterns in 166; mock archaeological exhibition in

168–9; political parties in 158–9; sites of spiritual

interest in 161; surﬁng in 221–3; traversing the

boundaries in 167–70; youth culture in 223–5

Cory, K.B. 143

Cresswell, T. 22, 68

culture 1, 54, 56

Cunliffe, B. 7, 229, 230

Dalton, R. and Canévet, C. 131

Daniels, S. 120

Davies, G.T. 72

Davies, J. 80

Davies, N. 12, 87

Davies, R.R. 31, 74, 75, 77

Day, G. and Rees, G. 10

de Certeau, M. 55

Deacon, B. 159, 164, 166; et al. 219; and

Payton, P. 236

Dean, R. 213

Declaration of Arbroath (1320) 116, 153

Derouet, J. 238

Derrida, J. 110

Desforges, L. 233

Devine,T.M. 46

devolution 53–4; nationalist views on 92; in Scotland

66, 87, 92; in Wales 76, 77–8, 80, 87

diasporas 9, 16, 60, 173, 191, 203, 238; music

182–90; roots/routes relationship 144, 145

Dinwoodie, R. 101, 106

Dixon,T. 155

Dodgshon, R.A. 42

Donaldson, E.A. 139–40

Donaldson, J. 147–8, 149

Donnachie, I. and Whatley, C. 142

Driver, F. 3, 22; and Gilbert, D. 21

Druids 162, 211, 212

Duffy, P. 125, 127

Dunbabin, J.P.D. 38

Dunn, D. 200

duthchas 42, 46, 49–50

Earle, F. et al. 212, 218

Edwards, E. 130, 137

Edwards, O.E. et al. 142

Entrikin, N. 67, 68

Esmonde Cleary, S. 237

Evans, G. and Trystan, D. 85

Everitt, A. 199

Evison, M. 237

Ewan,E.143

Facts to Beat Fantasies (1979) 73

Ferguson, K. 49–50

Finnegan, R. 193

Foster, R. 59

Foucault, M. 22

Fox, C.A. 43

Fraser, D. 101

Fraser Darling, F. 231

Friedman, J. 111

Frith, S. 195, 211

Frugoni, C. 31

Fukuyama, F. 91

Funchion, M.F. 182

Gaelic League 178

Gallagher,T. 177, 182–3

Gamble, A. 64

Gay,T. 237

Gellner, E. 112, 173

Geoffrey of Monmouth 160

geography 2–4

Gerald of Wales (Giraldus Cambrensis) 24, 34

Gibbons, L. 127

Gibson, M. 220

Giddens, A. 26, 59, 91, 180, 182

Gilley, S. and Swift, R. 182

Gilroy, P. 144, 145, 149

Glancey, J. 99

Glazer, N. and Moynihan, D.P. 154

Glendinning, M. et al. 97, 108

INDEX

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Goldstein, R. 211

Graham, B.J. 241

Grant, A. 59

Gray, A. 241

Green, M.J. 10

Gregory, D. 21, 67

Grifﬁths, D.W. 155

Grigor, F. 232

Gruffudd, P. 23, 68; et al. 3, 14

Hague, E. 61

Halbwachs, M. 180

Hale,A. 4, 157, 158, 221; and Payton, P. 124, 126;

and Thornton, S. 196, 197

Haley, A. 143

Hall, S. 55, 60, 112, 144–5

Hannah, M. 27

Härke, H. 237

Harris, J. 165

Harvey,D.8,67

Harvie, C. 59, 92, 231, 235

Hebridean Celtic Festival 192; and alcohol 202;

Celtic/Gaelic juxtapositions 204–5, 206;

generational appeal 204–5; and insider/outsider

tensions 206; launch of 200–1; and

local/traditional music 203–4; as part of Island

life 201–2; as popular/mainstream 203; as quality

music 202–3; and Sabbatarianism 202; as tourist

attraction 201

Hebrides see Hebridean Celtic Festival;Western Isles

Hechter, M. 14, 62, 67, 124, 142, 232; and Levi, M.

Hedges, D. 213

Heelas, P. 165, 211

Helgouac’h, J. et al. 239

Hewitson, J. 139, 140, 143, 155

Highland Land Wars 38; background 42–3;

claims/justiﬁcations for 42, 43–7; friction in

48–9; and kinship 49–50; and land raids 40,

43–5, 48

Hill, J.M. 150, 151

Hillaby, J. 31

Hilton, R.H. 26

Hindley, R. 136

history, re-reading 119–20; and social memory

179–80

Hobsbawm, E.J. and Ranger,T. 124, 173

Howell, D.W. 38, 39

Hunt, R. 161

Hunter, J. 38, 39, 40, 42, 43, 45

Hutchinson, J. 178–9

Hutton,W. 76, 78

hybridity: of Celtic identity 133; concept of 55;

cultures of 55–6; locating 55–6; as third space 56

identity 4, 11–12, 13, 16; ambivalence toward

118–19; British 87–8, 117–18; changes in 149;

civic/ethnic 69, 72; Cornish 157–8, 159; cultural

95–8; and difference 110–11; duality of 110,

111; formation 55; hybrid 55–6; hyphenated

145–6; imagined 110; Irish 183–4; multiple

60–1; and museums 111–13; national 64; political

69, 74–6, 85–7; presentation of 113–20; Scottish

72; and search for roots 143–4; and social

marginalisation 31; symbolic representation of

111–12;Welsh 69–71, 72–3, 85–8

insider/outsider discourse 158, 160, 165, 206

institutionalisation 12–14, 57–8, 61–3

Ireland: Celtic Tiger economy of 134; as centre of

Celtic identity 133; diasporic music scene

182–90; imagined geography of 21–2;

institutionalisation of 62–3; magical construction

of 123, 125, 127; in medieval English imagination

23–6; mythic structures of 126–8, 179, 188;

natural environment of 129, 130; place/identity

in 35–6; political/cultural movements 178–9; and

popular mobilisation of nationalist historiography

179–82; pre-modern notion of 130–2; tourist

images of 126–32; traditional elements 131, 132;

urbanisation in 26–7, 29–30, 34–5; work images

of 134–5

Irish nationalism: multiple notion of 178–9; rebel

music scene 174–5, 177–8, 182–5, 188–90; and

social memory 179–82, 191

Irish-Americans 139, 142–3

Isle of Man 13, 126, 234

Jackson, P. 193; and Penrose, J. 22, 173

Jacobson, M.F. 180

James, D. 219

James, S. 2, 7, 124, 139, 142, 157, 209, 230, 240,

241; and Rigby,V. 2

Jasper,T. and Oliver, D. 213

Jenkin,A.K.H. 169

Jethro Tull 223

Jewell, H. 218

Johnson, N. 10, 125, 127, 128, 189, 230, 233, 234

Johnson, N.C. 94

Johnston, R. 57

Jones, D.J.V. 38

Jones, G. 76

Jones, Rh. 36, 56, 59

Kane, P. 191

Kaplan, D.H. 112

Karp, I. 95

Kearney, H. 5, 12

Keating, M. 53, 125

Kee, R. 189

Kemp, D. 168–9

Kent,A.M. 159, 223

Kerr,D.147

Kierbard, D. 178

Kilbride, C. 129, 130

Kirkland, R. 178

Kneafsey, M. 236

Knott, J.W. 37, 38, 40–1

Kockel, U. 125

land issues: and access to land 40, 41–2, 48–9; and

causes of agrarian disturbances 40–1; Celtic

comparisons 38–9; and class consciousness 38,

41, 42; collective aspects 51; conﬂict over 48–9;

and Highland raids 40, 43–5; individual aspects

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272

46, 50–1; and kinship 49–50; and naming of place

45; and oral tradition 44; and place speciﬁcity

46–7; tenant/landlord conﬂict 46

language 1, 8, 233; Celtic 125–6; Cornish 164, 167,

224, 236; decline in 229; diasporic survivals 238;

in England 237; Gaelic 198, 198–9, 200, 204,

236–7; limited revival of Celtic 136; and national

identity 112; reappraisal of 134; romantic 129;

signiﬁcance/usage of 234–7;Welsh 63–4, 72, 73,

75–6, 84

Lattas, A. 181

Lavine, S.D. and Karp, I. 95

Law of Breteuil 27, 28, 29–30

Lawrence, D.H. 211, 220

League of the South (LS) 141, 149–51

Leersen, J. 157, 230

Lefebvre, H. 22, 55

Lester, A. 21, 223

Levellers,The 224

Lewis, P. 99, 102

Leyshon, A. et al. 185, 193

Lidchi, H. 112

Lilley, K.D. 22, 32, 35, 36, 67

Linklater, A. 99, 106

Logan, D. 149

Lollapalooza 219, 220

Lorimer, H. 64, 97

Lowe,W.J. 182

Lowerson, J. 160, 218

Luhrman, T.M. 165, 166

Lyons, F. 62

Mac Giolla Chríost, D. and Aitchison, J. 236

MaCauley, D. 10

McCaffrey, L.J. 182

McCain, B.R. 155

McCann, M. 174, 189

McCaslin, J. 155

McCrone, D. 55, 59, 60, 74, 92, 111, 112, 119,

121, 142, 173; et al. 96, 97, 98, 120, 146, 231,

241; and Rosie, M. 183, 184

MacDonald, F. 231

McDonald, F. and McWhiney, G. 150

McDonald, M. 125, 131–2, 134

Macdonald, S. 95, 199

MacInnes, R. et al. 98

McInroy, N. and Boyle, M. 194

McIntosh, S. 106

McKay, G. 195

McKean, C. 103, 105, 108

McKendrick, J. 184

Mackie, J.D. 116

Mackinnon, N. 195

McLean, F. and Cooke, S. 121

MacLean, I. 182

MacLeod, G. 63, 64, 65, 67; and Jones, M. 66, 67

MacMahon, P. 104

MacNeill, E. 178–9

Macpherson, J. 142

McWhiney, G. 150; and Jamieson, P. 150, 151; and

McDonald, F. 150

Maddox, B. 211

Maguire, G. 236

Malbon, B. 196

Mann, M. 59

mappae mundi 27, 31

Marr, A. 64, 65, 66, 87

Marshall,William 33–4

Martin, S. 148–9

Massey, D. 8, 57, 67, 68

Meadwell, H. 125

Meek, D. 230, 237

Megaw, R. 10

memory: collective 55, 181–2; and history 178–82;

living 180, 181–2; milieux de mémoire/lieux de

mémoire difference 180–1, 190; as social

phenomenon 180

Mercer, K. 109

Merfyn-Jones, R. 39

Middleton, D. and Edwards, D. 180

Miller, D. 60

Miller, H. and Broadhurst, P. 164–5, 169

Minard, A. 130, 134

Miralles, Enric 98–104, 106–7

Mitchell, M.J. 160

monuments: and architecture of democracy 105–8;

building of 92–3; celebrity architect as author

98–104; choice of/conﬂict over 94; and cultural

identity 95–8; iconographic signiﬁcance of 93;

and nationhood 94–5; and politics of location

104–5; and role of museums 95; as site of

authenticity 94; studies on 93–4

Morgan, S.J. 143

Morris, A. 101

Morrison, F. 203–5

Musafar, F. 219

Museum of Scotland 109–10; creation of 112;

deﬁning self/other 113–15, 120; image of 114;

and national identity 111–13, 120–2; non-Scots

view of 115; opening of 112–13; and politics of

display 115–19; and re-reading history 119–20;

role of 114; see also Scotland

music: and body art 219–21; Celtic inﬂuences

214–15, 216–19; counter-culture movement

211–13, 216; as focus of Celtic tourism 233;

grunge/Celtic connections 223–5; Irish/Scottish

afﬁnity 232–3; see also music festivals; rebel music

scene

music festivals 192–3, 212–13; appeal to youth 195,

198; and Celtic aesthetic 196–7; in cities 194–5;

commercial objectives 195, 197; and cultural

identity 195–6, 197; geography of 193–8;

Hebridean 198–205; local inﬂuences on 206;

political aspects of 193–4; relevance of 205;

support for 206; see also music; rebel music scene

Myerscough, J. 194

Mynors, R.A.B. 24, 25

myths 2, 7, 124, 133, 137, 173, 211; about the

British character 179; of a golden age 179, 188;

Irish 179, 188; of national character 179; of

origin 179, 188; of the West 126–9

Nairn, T. 66, 87, 92

Nash, C. 45, 107, 127, 184, 230

nation, construction of 115–19, 173

National Museums of Scotland (NMS) 113

National Trust for Scotland 97

nationalism 13–14, 61, 63–4, 91, 92

Négrier, E. 197

Neil, A. 105

Neo-Pagans 158, 208, 211

New Age 159, 165–6, 208, 211, 212, 216, 218, 225

New Celticism 92

New Model Army 218

Nicot, J. 134

Nora, P. 180, 181, 183, 184, 190–1

O’Connor, B. 182, 229, 233

Ohmae, K. 91

O’Leary, P. 83

O’Mahony, P. and Delanty, G. 178

Ong, A. 231

Orpen, G.H. 29, 34

Osbern,William ﬁtz, Earl of Hereford 27, 30, 31

Osmond, J. 72, 73, 76, 77, 241

Other 10–11, 15, 16; and coloniser/colonised 22,

25; deﬁning 113–15; geographical westerliness of

126–7; inferiority of 32, 35; marginalisation of

31; people/place imaginary 20–1; perception of

208–9; representation of 116–17; as

unurbanised/uncivilised 36

Outer Hebrides see Western Isles

Paasi,A. 13, 57, 58, 59, 61

Pacione, M. 184

Pagans 159, 160, 162, 165, 166, 167, 169, 211

Parsons,W. 68

Paterson, L. 59, 61, 62, 64, 68, 110; and Jones,

R.W. 61–2, 63, 64, 65, 70, 72, 80

Paul,L.201

Payton, P. 2, 159, 223

Pearman, H. 94

Pederson, R. 199

Perry, R. et al. 166

Phillips, N.R. 163

Philo, C. 22

Piccini, A. 230

Piggott, S. 211

Pittock, M. 109, 111

place, deﬁned 57

Portes, A. and MacLeod, D. 145, 149

Potter, K. and Davis, R.H.C. 24, 25, 36

Pred, A. 57

Pretty, D.A. 37, 39

protest 37–8; Celtic connections in 38–42;

differences within/between countries 39–40;

diverse reasons for joining 47–8; and issues of

land 42–50; and language 45; motivating spirit to

39, 40, 41–2; multiplicity/complexity of 51;

popular ideology of 41, 50

Pryce,W. 169

Quinn, B. 131

Rebecca riots (1843) 38–9

rebel music scene: as displaced cultural politics of

masculinity 184–5; growth of 174–5; hero-

martyr genre 189–90; historical events

remembered 188–9; as lieux de mémoire 182–4;

location of ﬁeld sites 176; participant observation

of 177–8; songs and their popularity 186–7; time

geography of performances 185, 188; unease

concerning 175, 177, 191; see also music; music

festivals

Red Hot Chilli Peppers 219–20

regions: and assumption of territorial

awareness/shape 58; deﬁned 57; and emergence

of institutions 58; establishment of 58; European

76–7; and formation of conceptual/symbolic

shape 58; institutionalisation of 57–8

Relph, E. 57

Robb, J. 229, 232, 237

Robert of Lewes, Bishop of Bath 24

Roberts, D. 140, 142, 151

Robertson, I.J.M. 47

Robinson,T. 45

Rogerson, R. and Gloyer, A. 229, 236

Rojek, C. 96

Rolston, B. 125

romantic movement 124–6

Rose, G. 67; and Routledge, P. 60

Rowe,J.169

Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical

Monuments of Scotland 97

Rudé, G. 37, 40, 41

Rutherford Davis, K. 237

Sabbat 217–18

Said, E. 116

Salmond, A. 105

Saltire Society 97

Samuel, R. 6, 11, 13, 78, 119, 180

Schlesinger, P. 64

Schramme, K. and Burns, G.J. 213

Schuster, J.M. 194

Scotland 126, 234; and Act of Union (1707) 59, 72;

and the British Empire 60; and construction of

parliament building in 92–3, 94; devolution in

66, 87, 92; as home of ancient Celtic civilisation

142; identity in 72, 110–11; images of 109–10,

111; as independent state 59; institutionalisation

of 61–2; Irish nationalism in 174, 191; multiple

identities in 60–1; peasant protest in 37–8;

political aspects 63, 64–5; post-First World War

land issues 42–50; pre-First World War land issues

38–42; remembering 96–8;Thatcherism in 64–5;

voluntary union with England 59; see also Museum

of Scotland

Scott, A.J. 67

Scott, D. 106

Scottish Constitutional Convention (SCC) 65

Scottish parliament building: choice of architect

98–104, 106–7; design of 100–4; location of

104–5; rhetoric concerning 105, 106, 107

Scottish Watch 66

Scottish-Americans, clan community of 146–9;

growing interest in Scotland 139–40; and League

of the South 141, 149–51; and Tartan Day 141,

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152–3; and understanding of/search for roots

140–1, 143–4

Shaw, F.J. 42

Shields, H. 181

Short, J.R. 129, 137

Shotter, J. 180, 181

Sibley, D. 31

Sims-Williams, P. 157

Sinﬁeld, A. 209, 211, 212

Skelton,T. and Valentine, G. 203

Skene,W. 237

Skyclad 217–18

Slobin, M. 197

Smailes, A.E. 21

Smith, A.D. 13, 60

Smith, G. et al. 173; and Jackson, P. 173, 174

Smith, J. 182

Smith, S.J. 193–4

Society of United Irishmen 178

Soja, E. 54, 55, 56, 67

Soulsby, I. 25, 31, 36

Sproull, A. and Chalmers, D. 199

Stein, H.F. and Hill, R.F. 139, 143, 146

Stephenson, C. 36

Stevens, A. 92

Stewart, P. 47

Stoddart, S. 105

Storry, M. and Childs, P. 209

Straw,W. 218

Stryker-Rodda, H. 143

Sudjic, D. 99

surf culture 221–3

Symon, P. 196

Tartan Day 139, 140, 141, 152–3

Taylor, T.D. 196

Thomas, D.M. 165

Thornton, S. 196

Thorpe, L. 24, 25, 36

Thrift, N. 55

Tithe War (Wales) 38, 39

Tolkien, J.R.R. 210

Toogood, M. 231

Toulson, S. 211

tourism: Celtic images 126–32; in the Lake District

166–7; and music 233; spiritual 159–60

To u t, T.F. 21

Trevor-Roper, H. 142

Tristram, H.L.C. 157, 209, 213, 230

Trollope, A. 128

United States of America: and construction of Celtic

geographies 142–6; and ethnic afﬁliations 146;

exploring Scottish ‘roots’ in 146–53; genealogical

‘roots’ in 143–4, 149

urban laws: exclusionary capacity of 26, 30–5; ocular

capacity of 26, 27, 29–30; supervisory qualities of

30, 35–6

urbanisation: Anglo-Norman laws 26–35; attitude

toward 25–6; and marginality of suburbs 32–5;

and surveillance 27, 29–30

Uris, J. and Uris, L. 127

Urry,J.67

Vale, L. 95, 107

Wade,W.C. 155

Wales 126, 232, 234; and allegiance to Britain 73;

changes in 69–70; devolution in 76, 77–8, 80,

87; divisions in 80, 84; effect of Conservative

policy on 74–5; generational shift in 70, 78–9;

identity in 70–1, 72–3, 85–8; imagined

geography of 21–2; institutionalisation of 61–2;

institutions in 72; language in 63–4, 72, 73,

75–6, 84; and links with Europe 76–7; in

medieval English imagination 23–6; newspapers

in 72; place/identity in 35–6; political aspects

63–5; 1979 referendum in 71–4; 1997

referendum in 74–8;Thatcherism in 64–5;‘Three

Wales model’ 79–80, 82–4; transformation of

economy in 76; urbanisation in 26–7, 29–33

Wallace, R. 220

Walter, B. 184

Waterman, S. 193, 194–5, 196, 197

Waters, M.C. 139, 143, 146

Wates, L. and Krevitt, P. 107

Watson,W. 237

Western Isles 192; Celtic Festival 200–5; cultural

renaissance of 198–200; economic conditions

199; linguistic distinctiveness of 199–200

Westland, E. 210–11

Whatmore, S. 67

Wilkie, J. 198

William of Malmesbury 24

Williams, C.H. 2, 59, 71

Williams, G. 58

Williamson, G.A. 206

Williamson, R. 232

Wills, G. 152, 153

Wilson, C. 151

Wishart, R. 194

Withers, C.W.J. 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 45, 50,

Womack, P. 142

Woodward, K. 109, 111

Y Fro Gymraeg 80, 81, 82

Young, A. 128

Young Irelanders 178

youth culture 16, 126; and alternative lifestyles

211–12; and Celtic nirvana 225; and generational

shift of views 70, 78–9; and grunge 223–5;

metal/punk soundscapes 216–19; and

perception of Celtic ‘Other’ 208–10; and

surﬁng 221–3

Zimmerman, G.D. 189

Zolberg,V. 94, 95

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274