Thomas_More
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If we are to find the historical groups of the British Isles confusing, woe betide us when attempting to unravel the jigsaw that is ancient Greece and its innumerable city states and groups! Good grief!
Lowland Scots are not Scots. The Scots were the Gaels from Ireland who migrated to the Pictish Highlands and Isles in the 5th century, settled and mixed with the Picts, whom they absorbed.
In the 18th century Lowland and English redcoats would taunt Highland prisoners by yelling at them in broad “Scots'” dialect, which the Highlanders couldn’t understand a word of, being Gaelic speakers.
But of course, all such divisions are linguistic and cultural, since all humans are humans, cousins to chimpanzees. Nationalism is ridiculous.
Albion was the Britons’ (the Welsh) name for the whole island.
Bede the Saxon is really still the finest source for information on the British Isles.
Scottish nationalism has no bearing on the Wall.
Not only were there no Scots in Caledonia until the 5th century,
but the “Scots” of today are of Anglo-Saxon and Norman ancestry.The whole thing was a statement of might and of terror.
A recent documentary i recall spoke of the Roman terror raids on Pictish tribes, slaughtering large numbers of people. The Antonine Wall was an earthwork which was booby trapped with lethal stakes for impaling unwary people, even after the Romans had left it so.
The Wall itself was used to police a large area and it ruthlessly curtailed movement which had been free and peaceful too, and not just warlike. The northern tribes might have hoped it might “keep the Romans out” instead of themselves, but no such luck. The Romans raided numerous times, sowing havoc and fear.” Schadenfreude is a hollow type of happiness.”
Ambrose Bierce defines happiness as the feeling that comes over us upon witnessing another’s misfortune.
More talk of sending troops to Ukraine.
