Culture In Scotland Research Articles

Toponymy of Celtic Scotland

It has long been known that there is a certain link between a geographic locality and its name. The paper attempts to link the history, geography, and culture of Scotland with the names of its cities, homesteads, rivers, streams, mountains, hills, and other localities that are either man-made creations or natural phenomena. Despite covering mere 80,000 km2, Scotland is a unique region. Scotland is almost completely washed by sea, although most of its territory lies on the uplands. Mountains, hills, valleys, rich in diverse vegetation, conjure up an attractive look of Scotland. This very landscape forged the features of Scottish place names, one of the oldest place names on the world map. The paper will touch upon the earliest period when the names of Scottish geographic localities appeared, the period when this amazing country, currently part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, was conquered by the Celtic tribes who penetrated this land in different centuries. First, the author dwells on word-building formants enabling to classify the place names of Scotland as part of the “Celtic” period of language evolution. Some elements including aber, ach, auchter/ochter, bail/baile, barr, blair, coil, dal, gart, inver, mach, pit, tulach , dating back to Celtic language culture, are part of most units of the place-name vocabulary of Scotland and primarily denote natural features of the landscape of the target region.

The Red Gown: Reflections on the In/Visibility of Menstruation in Scotland

During the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s, menstruation became more present in public discourse in Scotland. Despite this, little attention has been paid to the complex interplay of visibility and invisibility that characterises menstruation’s place in the nation’s wider cultural landscape. In this article, we explore the context of menstruation in the town of St Andrews specifically and Scotland more broadly, during the late 20th and early 21st century, and ask what this reveals about menstrual absence and presence in public debates. The University of St Andrews lies at the centre of this case study because it has been one of the Scottish institutions that has initiated a rollout of free menstrual products as a result of the Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) Act of 2021. The University’s Centre for Contemporary Art also hosted Bee Hughes as artist-in-residence, whose practice focuses on the visible and invisible aspects of menstruation. Although impacted by a university strike and the Covid-19 pandemic, our collaboration has explored collections of menstrual culture in Scotland and broader questions of menstrual representation, reflecting on how established symbols with other connotations (notably the ceremonial red gown at the University of St Andrews) might provide a way of thinking about menstrual in/visibility. In this article, we discuss how these histories might be both present (institutionalised) and absent (when not on display). This paper presents our findings, in which the artist documents their first visit to St Andrews prior to the strike and pandemic, in relation to historical and contextual materials we located together.

Just Like the King's Road, Only Nearer: Scotland's Boutique Bonanza, 1965–1970

The fashion entrepreneurs of so-called ‘Swinging London’ — John Stephen on Carnaby Street or Mary Quant on the King's Road, for example — fundamentally changed British fashion in the 1960s: from old to young, dull to vibrant and, crucially, from shop to boutique. But while the impact of ‘Swinging London’ is well recorded in the historiography of English fashion and retail, less is known about its effects further afield. This article considers the impact of ‘Swinging London’ boutique culture in Scotland between 1965 and 1970. Taking the example of the Glasgow fashion design and manufacturing business Marion Donaldson as its main case study, it draws on a variety of oral history, archival and media evidence to trace the dissemination of boutique fashion culture in Scotland across multiple retail contexts. From the urban centres of Glasgow and Edinburgh to the towns and regions beyond, it offers new analyses of the opportunities boutique retailing afforded Marion Donaldson and the Scottish fashion industry more generally, and thus provides new insight into the impact of the so-called ‘boutique boom’ of the 1960s on Scottish fashion and enterprise culture.

Reshaping a farming culture through participatory extension: An institutional logics perspective

Historically the dominant farming culture in Western developed countries, such as Scotland and New Zealand, has been based on maximising food production and maintaining the family business. However, this culture of production and family is under pressure from societal calls to increase the uptake of environmental practices in farm management. The pressure is leading farmers to adopt environmental practices, which causes a clash with the beliefs and values underlying the culture of production and family business. This clash is problematic, as it might form a barrier to sustained environmental change, for which not only practice change is required, but also a change in beliefs and values guiding the farming culture. This study explores the clash using an institutional perspective to: i) analyse how farmer practices, beliefs and values change due to external pressure to adopt environmental practices; ii) identify mechanisms via which this change unfolds; and iii) understand the role of participatory extension programmes in this change. An institutional perspective enables this study to move beyond the role of individual's attitudes and behaviours in adoption of environmental practices, towards considering how farmers' practices, beliefs and values together constitute the culture of farming, and how these are shaped by societal and institutional mechanisms. Twenty Scottish and 52 New Zealand farmers participated in qualitative, open-ended interviews and were observed during discussion groups or advisory meetings. Our findings show that all farmers are guided by a ‘business’, ‘lifestyle’ and/or ‘learning’ logic. The institutional clash influenced practices underlying the business logic to change from being purely based on maximising productivity, to including environmental aspects. However, no change in values was observed. Participatory extension programmes influenced practices, beliefs and values underlying the learning logic (changing from a ‘linear’ to ‘multi-actor’ logic) and thus can help facilitate more effective practice change by providing support via micro-mechanisms and enabling dynamics. The study contributes to current literature by introducing a new lens for understanding change induced by participatory extension programmes and by providing change agents, such as extensionists, with more in-depth knowledge about the main logics guiding the culture of farming, and the mechanisms by which farmer practices, beliefs and values may change. The in depth-knowledge will help to communicate, frame and organise extension initiatives. • Farming culture in Scotland and New Zealand consists of a business and family logic. • Farming culture change is identified after external environmental pressures. • Change is observed in practices and beliefs, but not in values of farmer participants. • Participatory extension can support change, via e.g. timing of programme initiation. • Additional policy instruments are required to generate change in farming culture.

Collaging Cultures: Curating Italian Studies

This essay aims to contribute to current debates about how to research and teach within the disciplinary frame of modern languages in light of the knowledge that recent patterns of global migration have made the conventional fusion of national territory and language untenable. The challenge is to reimagine histories of cultural practice and production critically in spite of the national frame that continues to shape our thinking. Starting from theoretical prompts by Doris Sommer and Okwui Enwezor, I suggest that contemporary curatorial practice offers one model for reworking how we practice Italian Studies in light of the decolonizing imperatives of work in diasporic, postcolonial, and transnational studies. Emphasizing a spatial model of cultural connectedness, I work with a notion of the haptic to investigate (as a kind of case study) how an encounter with the variegated traces of Italian culture in Scotland may lead researchers and students toward a pragmatic understanding of connectivity that does not depend on the blood lines of what Sommer calls “inherited frameworks.” I argue that contemporary curatorial practices revising both the optics and ownership of (Italian) culture can radically alter the presuppositions of our research and pedagogy.

Death in modern Scotland, 1855–1955. Beliefs, attitudes and practices. Edited by Susan Buckham , Peter C. Jupp and Julie Rugg . (Studies in the History and Culture of Scotland, 6.) Pp. xvi + 338 incl. 27 black-and-white and colour figs, 10 charts and 1 table. Frankfurt–New York: Peter Lang, 2016. £46 (paper). 978 3 0343 1821 1; 1661 6863

Death in modern Scotland, 1855–1955. Beliefs, attitudes and practices. Edited by Susan Buckham , Peter C. Jupp and Julie Rugg . (Studies in the History and Culture of Scotland, 6.) Pp. xvi + 338 incl. 27 black-and-white and colour figs, 10 charts and 1 table. Frankfurt–New York: Peter Lang, 2016. £46 (paper). 978 3 0343 1821 1; 1661 6863 - Volume 68 Issue 4

A Latin Renaissance in Reformation Scotland? Print Trends in Scottish Latin Literature, c. 1480–1700

The full extent of the large body of Latin literature produced by Scots in the early modern period has long eluded scholars. However, thanks to a growing range of research in this field, and particularly to the appearance of several major new bibliographic and electronic resources, it is possible for the first time to map out one aspect of its broad contours. This article uses a database comprising all currently known published first editions of Latin texts by Scots between 1480 and 1700 to examine the extent of Scottish Latin culture in print in the early modern period; how this related to the rise of printed texts in Scots and English; and the major genre types in which Scottish Latin authors published. The database reveals several major trends: firstly, that the publication of Scottish Latin texts reached its zenith in the reign of James VI and I, bolstered by the arrival of a domestic print market but also in part by an increased focus on literacy and education after the reformation; secondly, that by far the largest genres of printed Scottish Latin were poetry and academic theses, and not religious or political texts as might perhaps be expected; and thirdly, that the use of Latin as a literary and academic language in Scotland declined rapidly and irrevocably in the second quarter of the seventeenth century. The article concludes that the production of Latin literature by Scots was unique as an aspect of renaissance culture in Scotland because it had no strongly-defined presence before the reformation of 1560 and only became fully manifest in King James's later reign. It offers potential reasons as to why this may have been the case, and examines some implications the data has for understanding Scotland's developing intellectual and linguistic relationship with England after the union of the crowns. However, the article acknowledges the limited picture provided by print evidence alone and ends by calling for further research to assess how far this trend applies to all Latin literature produced by Scots, particularly the surviving corpus of Latin manuscripts.

Tartan and tantrums: critical reflections on the Creative Scotland “stooshie”

On the 1 July 2010 a new cultural development body for Scotland was established. However, by 2013 the organisation was embroiled in a public dispute with a number of the individuals and organisations it was established to support. This short paper considers this “crisis” as a discursive event [Wodak, R., & Meyer, M. 2009. Methods of critical discourse analysis. London: SAGE], and informed by a discourse analysis of various texts, it identifies the core narrative as being one in which a distiguishable body of “artists” and their supporters are resisting a dangerous ideological power-grab by “non-artist” bureaucrats. It proposes that this relies upon the well-worn discursive knot of the instrumental versus the intrinsic, which facilitates a continuing obscuration of the prevailing power relationships within the network of publicly subsidised culture in Scotland. In its discursive focus on the relationship between an imagined egalitarian “cultural community” and Creative Scotland (CS), the narrative of the dispute overlooks the extent to which both CS and the majority of organisations it funds are primarily tools of governance by which the Scottish Government seeks to strategically shape the production and dissemination of culture in Scotland. It concludes that many of those individual artists arguing for various degrees of change were thus unwittingly complicit in supporting a status quo that makes the change they desire unlikely while simultaneously limiting public input into what sort of culture merits subsidy.

Cult and culture in a medieval community: Ayton and Coldingham, 1188–1376

It was assumed only recently that there was little to be said about popular religious culture in Scotland, below the level of rural gentry or the urban classes, for any period much before 1400. Charters and account rolls do exist however which, read with synodal statutes and liturgical texts, reveal such features of cultural life as the churching of women, marriage settlements, widowhood, the neighbourly pax, blessed bread or the commemoration of the dead, all in a rural parish. The cult was appropriate to an illiterate society, deploying ceremony, drama, art, music, textiles and architecture. Foreign evidence, English and continental, provides comparison – as do aspects of Orthodox religious practice. The texts studied for Ayton and Coldingham reveal both parochial benefactions and popular religious objectives, while the archival context identifies grants to the parish church. A calendar is being prepared, but in the meantime outline lists are given here. Coinciding with the launch of a database of the ‘People of Medieval Scotland’ (PoMS), this paper suggests that we can develop the study of that people's religious culture in ways well beyond those imagined as recently as 2008.

Cromwell's Edinburgh Press and the Development of Print Culture in Scotland

Alasdair Mann, the noted scholar of book culture in early modern Scotland, has suggested that a significant change had occurred in Scotland's relationship with the printed word by the late seventeenth century. This study sets out to explain how the interregnum served as a ‘watershed’ during which a consumer demand was created for popular print and how this in turn necessitated a significant increase in the production and distribution of printed material. Beginning with the sale of the press and patent of Evan Tyler to the London Stationers’ Company in 1647, the article charts the key factors that transformed Scotland's printing industry from the production of official declarations and works for foreign markets to the production of polemical texts for a Scottish audience. These developments also witnessed publication of the first serial news journal and the growth of a competitive market for up-to-date printed news. More than just an anomaly that flourished during a decade of occupation, these fundamental changes altered Scotland by introducing the large-scale consumption of chapbooks and printed ephemera, thereby initiating the nation's enduring print culture.

Review of Scottish Arts Council Report, Taking Part in Scotland 2008

The review looks at the 2008 report by the Scottish Arts Council (SAC) into audience involvement in the arts and culture in Scotland. It notes that the research is part of a continuing attempt by the SAC to map trends in audience participation in the arts, and that the survey often provides an in-depth account of how people spend their leisure time. However, it notes some deficiencies in its remit and questions whether the limitations of the report make it a valuable contribution to the SAC's future direction and policies.

Mytilus species under rope culture in Scotland: implications for management

Mussel (Mytilus spp.) production is one of the most economically important aspects of global aquaculture and, in Scotland, production has increased from 262 t in 1986 to 4,219 t in 2006. Until recently, mussel production in Scotland was considered to be based exclusively on the blue mussel Mytilus edulis, the native species. In Europe, production is known to consist of M. edulis and M. galloprovincialis, while a third less profitable species M. trossulus occurs in the Baltic Sea, where it is unexploited. In Scotland, the sympatric occurrence of M. edulis, M. trossulus, M. galloprovincialis and their hybrids in cultivation in Loch Etive has recently been reported, with significant losses in production attributed to the presence of M. trossulus. Samples of mussels were taken at three depths from 10 rope-farm sites in Loch Etive. The distribution of the Mytilus species and their hybrids in Loch Etive was investigated using the Me 15/16 nuclear DNA locus for species and hybrid identification. All three species and their hybrids were detected and the data were in agreement with the Hardy–Weinberg model suggesting panmixia. Frequencies of M. galloprovincialis and its hybrids were very low. Overall, M. trossulus (37%) was found to be more common than M. edulis (30%) and 23% of the sampled mussels were M. trossulus × M. edulis hybrids. Species distribution did not correlate with year of settlement nor with salinities taken at the time of sampling. There were significant differences in species distribution due to site location and depth, with M. edulis being more frequent at 8 m depth and M. trossulus more common at shallower depths. These differences might be exploitable in management strategies for continuing production, for example to decrease the prevalence of M. trossulus at shellfish farms in favour of the more desirable M. edulis.

The Thistle and the Brier: Historical Links and Cultural Parallels between Scotland and Appalachia (review)

Reviewed by: The Thistle and the Brier: Historical Links and Cultural Parallels between Scotland and Appalachia Gregory Hansen The Thistle and the Brier: Historical Links and Cultural Parallels between Scotland and Appalachia. By Richard Blaustein. (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland and Company, 2003. Pp. vii + 174, bibliography, illustrations, index, notes.) Richard Blaustein pairs the thistle with the brier to compare the history and culture of Scotland with Appalachia. The thistle is a well-enshrined emblem for the Scottish motto "None Touch Me with Impunity," whereas the brier's nascent symbolic associations with Appalachia are more subtle. Although the term "brierhopper" has a history as an even more offensive synonym for "hillbilly," the brier appears as an emblem for Appalachian identity mainly in Jim Wayne Miller's recent writing in Appalachian studies. In his scholarship, activism, and poetry, Miller transforms the brier from a badge of shame into a symbol of pride, Blaustein writes, and The Thistle and the Brier illustrates how this type of symbolic transformation plays out in Scotland and Appalachia. These apt symbols become resources for understanding the importance of folklore and literature in maintaining and reviving the cultural identity that links Scotland to Appalachia. Blaustein develops rich comparisons by working carefully with these prickly symbols. He uses a number of comparative approaches, and much of the book focuses on historical legacies and cultural affinities common to Scottish and Appalachian people. A wealth of scholarship connects vibrant Scottish and Scotch-Irish analogues to Appalachian folk music, storytelling, material culture, and other forms of traditional culture. Blaustein summarizes the major points of connection and then makes an interesting move: after delineating parallels between writers and historians from the two regions, he demonstrates that they share common political and social values, largely shaped by a legacy of colonialism and economic duress. Referencing Rodger Cunningham's theory of metropolitan cores within world systems, Blaustein explains how the isolation and rural character of Scotland and Appalachia influence their political and economic marginalization. Blaustein is careful not to overextend his comparisons, but he provides important and poignant examples of negative stereotyping and cultural denigration associated with ethnic and regional cultural identity. Along with comparing history, expressive culture, and psychological analogues, Blaustein looks at relationships between contemporary Scottish and Appalachian writers. This approach lends an engaging variety to the book's eleven chapters, which include interviews with writers and cultural activists, theoretical discussions about intellectual history, historical sketches, and essays. Although the book occasionally reads like a pastiche, Blaustein's comparisons and generalizations unify this compilation into a cohesive volume. The book's major theme is a reassessment of cultural revitalization movements in Scotland and Appalachia. Recent arguments have challenged the contention that Appalachian cultural traditions are strongly rooted in Scottish folk culture. Using a wealth of recent scholarship and solid evidence, Blaustein traces direct cultural connections between Appalachian regional identity and Scottish ethnicity. He not only convincingly delineates long-standing Scottish cultural influences on Appalachia, but also critiques the concept of "invented tradition," showing how all traditional activities are [End Page 130] invented over time. Blaustein then considers the deconstruction of concepts such as "folk culture" and "tradition" that began in the 1980s with David Whisnant, Hugh MacDiarmid, Tom Nairn, and other critical theorists. Acknowledging that their work has led to important insights into the politics of culture, Blaustein recognizes how putative invented traditions and imagined communities can bolster unreflective jingoism, colonialism, and strident militarism. The Thistle and the Brier includes a careful critique of the negative repercussions of romantic nationalist ideology in folklore's intellectual history. The major argument that Blaustein sustains throughout the book, however, is that a highly politicized, stridently post-Marxist deconstructionist rhetoric is a suspect form of intellectual discourse. Critical theory and deconstructionism may be useful when one analyzes how hegemony is established and sustained, but the same symbolic forms and political mechanisms that support jingoistic cultural nationalism can also serve as resources for political resistance. Whether these types of resistance truly challenge the established political order is a highly debatable and thorny point in cultural critique. Blaustein's central tenet is that symbolic expression provides essential resources for community cohesion. He provides strong support for this argument by...

Orangeism in Scotland: Unionism, Politics, Identity, and Football

For almost two hundred years the Orange Institution has been a feature of the religious, social, and cultural life of West Central Scotland. Although a matter of some contention, the Order has developed a powerful political meaning in Scotland, affecting the political allegiances and identities of a wide variety of constituencies. Despite an Irish birth, the Orange Institution has at its core a uniquely Ulster-Scottish perception of both its own constitution and its function to British identity. ********** The data much of this study is based upon derives from an attitudinal survey designed to elicit the background and attitudes of a sample of members of the Loyal Orange Institution of Scotland. Over the course of 1990, I surveyed one hundred and eleven members from the four defined Orange counties of Scotland: Ayrshire, Glasgow, Central Scotland, and the East of Scotland. The survey and subsequent interviews took place at Orange meetings and social clubs. For comparative purposes, I surveyed members of the Church of Scotland and other prominent and relevant Scottish groups such as Catholic Church attenders and football fans. The initial sections of this paper briefly look at the historical evolution, social structures and demographic characteristics of Scottish Orangeism. Because anti-Catholicism is so central to Orange ideology and practice in Scotland, I will proceed to examine Orange perceptions of Catholicism and the way these notions shape political attitudes. To extend the exploration of unionist culture in Scotland beyond the realm of formal and informal politics, the data also references the attitudes and identities of the supporters of the Glasgow Rangers Football Club. The essay concludes with a discussion of the political, cultural, and social parameters of Orange identity and its place in modern Scotland. HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT Originating in the north of Ireland in the 1790s as a response to the rise of Catholic popular politics, the Orange Order was a pan-Protestant institution designed to protect Protestant privilege in Ireland and Britain. It was first brought to Scotland by soldiers returning to south Ayrshire from their duties in Ireland. The Order spread quickly; by 1807 there were Orange lodges in Maybole, Tarbolton, Wigtown, Girvan, Stranraer and Argyle, and by 1813 one in Glasgow. In 1821 the first ceremonial parade took place in Glasgow. The following year police and military had to intervene as Irish Catholics confronted the marchers; 1824 witnessed the first Twelfth of July demonstration to take place in Lanarkshire in the town of Airdrie. Due to the violence that Orange marches produced, it was not until the 1840s that such parades were allowed to return. Scotland had its own long and potent tradition of anti-Catholicism. Its equivalent of the early institution in Ireland was the Protestant Association, an ill-defined amalgam of extra-religious and extra parliamentary forces, whose sole intention was to block any movement toward Catholic relief. (1) The power and significance of the anti-Catholic tradition in Scotland can be seen by looking at the demographic make-up of late eighteenth-century Glasgow. As two separate studies have noted, in the 1790s there were actually more anti-Catholic societies in Glasgow than Catholics! (2) Despite these common religious and cultural ties, the Orange Order struggled to attach itself to the potent forces of Scottish anti-Catholicism. Unlike its Irish counterpart, Scottish Orangeism never became the primary mechanism for respectable Protestant politics, a fact that helps to explain the Order's relative weakness in modern Scotland. As Elaine McFarland explains: By the early 1860s Orangeism in Scotland had gained a high public profile, but largely in terms of a party or fighting society and certainly not as a credible organisational mechanism for propagating militant Protestantism. …

For the Betterment of Mankind: Scotland, the Enlightenment and the Agricultural Revolution

Here I stand at what is called the ‘Cross of Edinburgh’, and can, in a few minutes, take fifty men of genius and learning by the hand.This intriguing and impressive observation from a learned Englishman in the 1770s was recorded by the Edinburgh printer, antiquary and biographer, William Smellie. The latter half of the eighteenth century is regarded as a period that saw an extraordinary outburst of intellectual activity now identified by historians under the title of the Scottish Enlightenment. A product of this intellectual activity of the Enlightenment was the improvement of agriculture, a process conventionally labelled as the agricultural revolution. This short study will examine some ways in which contemporary ideas were articulated and by whom in this period, together with processes by which the theory of discussion and debate filtered through experimentation into practical husbandry and the material culture of Scotland.

Sport, Nationalism and Culture in Scotland

(1999). Sport, Nationalism and Culture in Scotland. The Sports Historian: Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 97-124.

Land, Democracy And Culture In Scotland

That is the Land out there, under the sleet, churned and pelted there in the dark, the long rigs upturning their clayey faces to the spear-onset of the sleet. That is the Land, a dim vision this night of laggard fences and long stretching rigs. And the voice of it the true and unforgettable voice you can hear even such a night as this as the dark comes down, the immemorial plaint of the peewit, flying lost. That is the Land though not quite all. Those folk in the byre whose lattern light is a glimmer through the sleet as they muck and bed and tend the kye, and milk the milk into tin pails, in curling froth they are The Land in as great a measure. (Lewis Grassic Gibbon, 'The Land', reprinted in The Speak of the Mearns , 1994, p. 152)

Alan James Bruford, 1937–1995

It is my sad task to announce the loss of Alan Bruford who died suddenly earlier this year. Dr Alan James Bruford had been archivist of the School of Scottish Studies since 1965. As archivist, field worker and teacher, he was a tireless advocate for the traditions and culture of Scotland. Born in Edinburgh in 1937, he was educated at Edinburgh Academy and Winchester College. He went on to read History and Anglo-Saxon at St John's College Cambridge. He then returned to Edinburgh to pursue post-graduate research at Edinburgh University. This included a year at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies where he worked, among other projects, at the Irish Folklore Commission. He was appointed archivist at the School in 1965 and remained there in that capacity until his death. Although he himself was born in Edinburgh, Alan had a particular interest, as well as family connections, in Orkney and Shetland. This is reflected in his field work, broadcasts and in several articles, the most recent being his contribution on Identity of the Good Neighbors in Orkney and which appeared in Peter Narvaiez's collection of contemporary fairylore studies, The Good People (New York: Garland, 1991). Folk song and folk music also featured among his interests and his publications. This is reflected in his studies on Highland fiddle music, the subject of a pamphlet in collaboration with Ailie Munro in 1974 and in several articles on the folk song and music traditions of Orkney and Shetland and in numerous contributions to Tocher.

The Re-evaluation of Scots Renaissance Architecture

It is increasingly apparent that the notion of 'British Architecture' has only periodic application to Scotland. The re-evaluation of the built culture of Scotland which is now underway1 began, at least in Renaissance studies, with the RIAS Edinburgh Festival exhibition on Scottish Renaissance Architecture.2 This paper summarises some of the progress and Findings of research since that time and draws attention to an earlier re-appraisal of the Scottish Renaissance by the young Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

Influence of improved feed quality and food conversion ratios on phosphorus loadings from cage culture of rainbow trout, Oncorhynchus rnykiss (Walbaum), in freshwater lakes

The expansion of freshwater cage culture in Scotland during the 1980s led to concern with respect to the impact of nutrient, particularly phosphorus (P), discharges on water quality in lakes. The primary route by which P enters the aquatic environment from cage farms is through the feed administered to the fish. In recent years, there have been considerable technological advances in feed manufacturing and improved feeding practices at farm level. This paper investigates how P inputs to freshwater lakes from cage farms may be reduced through changes in diets and improved food conversion ratios. The results demonstrate that there has been a significant improvement in the P content of freshwater trout diets in recent years and that it is possible to reduce waste P loadings from cage sites through the use of better-quality diets and improved feed management. In Scotland, production levels in freshwater cages are commonly set by the regulatory authority assuming a soluble waste P loading of 10 kg P tonne−1 of fish produced. This study suggests that actual soluble waste P loadings are likely to be far lower than this and that, as a result, increases in water column total P levels may be overestimated.