Scottish Studies is the journal of the School of Scottish Studies, University of Edinburgh. The journal reflects the eight main research areas of the school: tales, custom and belief, material culture, song, instrumental music, place-names, dialectology and social organisation.
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Understanding Scotland Musically: Folk, Tradition and Policy, ed. Simon McKerrell and Gary West
Gun Sireadh, Gun Iarraidh: The Tolmie Collection, ed. Kenna Campbell and Ainsley Hamill
Standing on the Edge of Being: Scotland 1850 to COP 26, by Richard D. Oram
The Order of the Elephant': Symbols and Power in the Policing of Land Agitation in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland
The Crofters’ War of the 1880s saw widespread protest at the unequal and exploitative modes of land management used in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. In this article, a study is made of medals awarded by William Ivory, the Sheriff of Inverness-shire, to police in the Isle of Skye for their involvement in the arrest of land agitators. Using a material culture approach, the medals are analysed in terms of their symbolism and placed in the context of the Highlands and Islands, Britain and its Empire. The main source is a memorandum on the medals compiled by Sheriff Ivory, encompassing letters and statements intended to defend them, as well as an extant medal awarded by Sheriff Ivory and communication on the design of a second. The biases of the memorandum are balanced with primary source material from newspapers and Gaelic songs that reveal contemporary views on the issues discussed. The discussion offers insight into the power dynamics involved in the policing of land agitation, and how the role of the police was perceived at the time.
This study focuses on Agnes Randolph (1312–1369), famous for her defence of Dunbar Castle in 1338, and the origins of her nickname, ‘Black Agnes’. Nearly without exception, authors of the last two centuries explain the name as a reflection of her physical appearance, stating that she had a dark complexion. But is this explanation anachronistic? This article argues that the nickname ‘Black Agnes’ would have had significantly different connotations in the fourteenth century, with ‘black’ carrying political, literary, and even folkloric nuances. Arguing from detailed analyses of evidence adduced from literary sources, contemporary chronicles, medieval agnominal practices, and overlooked manuscripts, this article casts new light on the many shades of meaning that combine to constitute Agnes’s ‘Black’.
Join Together, Fight Together, Die Together: Scottish Sportsmen, the Great War and Enlistment
Significant numbers of amateur sportsmen in all sports enlisted, and their sacrifice had an effect on sporting engagement and sporting communities across Scotland for many years. The Pals Battalions of The Great War have been the subject of increasing research in recent years. Within this research into enlistment the Sportsmen’s Battalions have been less of a focus, despite sport being an embedded social and cultural presence in Scottish communities. While the main focus in Scotland has been the professional footballers of McCrae’s Battalion, few have examined the contribution of other sportsmen to the war effort. This paper explores the nature of enlistment and experiences from other sports such as athletics, rugby and shinty, as well as amateur football, through media representations by drawing on contemporary sources and archive material of various clubs. In addition to considering the narratives prevalent at the time regarding the contribution of sportsmen and enlistment, the paper also examines the competing discourses associated with social norms associated with signing up, and the wider need to preserve morale during a time of national crisis.
A copy of the fourth edition (1834) of the poems of Donnchadh Bàn Mac an t-Saoir (1724 – 1812) held in the Centre for Research Collections at the University of Edinburgh has a pencil-drawn portrait of a man on the inside front cover. Although Donnchadh died in 1812, over twenty years before this edition was printed, there is some circumstantial evidence to indicate that this may be a portrait of the poet himself. If so, it would be the only extant portrait of the bard.
Student Singing and Song Books in Scotland
Students have always sung in the four Ancient Universities of Scotland. They were much later than German and North American universities, and a little later than England, in arranging the compilation and publication of national song books for students. These were The Scottish Students’ Song Book and The British Students’ Song Book and their few successors. The figure behind their creation was Professor John Stuart Blackie. Organised student singing in Scotland began in the late nineteenth century and continued until the middle of the twentieth century, when it gave way to other activities.
Catastrophe at St Kilda: Vulnerability and Resilience in an Island Community
A ‘sea of islands’ approach to the history of the Hebrides increases the possibility that aspects of St Kilda’s relatively well-recorded ethnography may be productively extrapolated to the wider and less well documented Hebridean region. However, cultural continuity in the archipelago may have been affected by two ‘catastrophes’, after which depleted populations were augmented by people from throughout the MacLeods’ domains. Island communities had low immunity to introduced diseases and were exposed to regionally endemic violence. In economic and political terms it made sense for chiefs (lairds) to re-populate islands demographically damaged by catastrophes, in order to continue the uplifting of food renders and other exports and to provide their travelling retinues with activities such as hunting, fishing and fowling; St Kilda would have presented abundant opportunities in this respect. In recent centuries, re-population may have introduced widespread Hebridean folklore and stories. The perpetuation of Norse words for seabirds and words connected with boats, and of toponyms particularly relating to the most important seascape features, may relate to the development of a lingua franca which would have aided cultural continuity during episodes of major population renewal.
Chronological Index: Contents of Volumes 1-40
A bheil am feur gorm fhathast?: Some problems concerning language and cultural shift
Sport and the Calendar: Archery and rifle shooting in Scotland in the nineteenth century
Conceptualising Neighbourhood: Charity Labour Gatherings in Rural Perthshire, 1850-1950
A Historical Review of Second Sight: The Collectors, Their Accounts and Ideas
Scottish Studies, Volume 33 (1999): Full Volume
The Scottish Fair as seen in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Sources
Those Having Business There: Fairs in Scottish Almanac Lists