[Sca-cooks] Scottish food

[johnna holloway]

There was a series that ran in the UK back
in 1984-85 called Scotland's Story.
It was a series that detailed the history
of Scotland. One of the things that I remember
best about it was part of one of the last
programs. Most of a village had gotten together
and made the choice to emigrate to either Canada
or the USA back in the early-mid 1800's. The ones
that stayed were still scrambling for a living in
the 1980's on a very hard unforgiving land. The
descendants of those who went to the USA and Canada
were all teachers, doctors, lawyers, professional
people with careers and good jobs. When queried as
to what this meant, someone from the US responded
about the situation with the words "Be glad they got
on the boat!" Certainly in terms of US history
the Scots and Scots-Irish can't be overlooked
in terms of their contributions, be they the stock of
a marginal land or not.

As to if the Scots were losers or not in terms of
history, I certainly wouldn't overlook the fact
that their kings had the unfortunate habit of going
out and getting themselves killed so that the heirs
to the throne could be crowned as mere children.
Never a good situation and it happened again and again.

Johnna Holloway Johnnae llyn Lewis



Volker Bach wrote:
>
snipped out 'lanie and stefan's comments
>
> My guess would be that marginal lands go together
> with thin population densities and long distances,
> which means you get lots of small, largely
> self-contained communities without enough suplus
> to sustain anything resembling orderly government.
> These communities are more likely to become
> violent over the necessities of life as a) they so
> often lack them, b) they have no higher authority
> they could see coming to their aid or punishing
> their actions and c) they feel less solidarity
> with their neighbours, them being distinctly
> 'other'. Violent habits breed violence and
> mistrust, which in turn creates more violence.
>
> Also, I think most such cultures are, in broad
> historical strokes, 'losers' that is they have
> been displaced from more desireable areas by more
> successful cultures (not necessarily in terms of
> refugee movements as much as in terms of cultural
> change). The main virtues that make successful
> cultures, historically, are manifold but almost
> invariably seem to include a high degree of
> organisation enforcing internal peace.
> Organisation takes material resources to run on,
> so it works best where these are plentiful. Of
> course, peace and organisation also pay dividends
> in terms of productivity which in turn aids the
> stability of organisation patterns. Perhaps the
> best historical examples for such a development is
> found in China/Mongolia. China had the resources
> to run a high degree of organisation. Mongolia did
> not. Hence Mongolia has a history of tribal
> raiding and poverty, China one of stability and
> wealth. Giano