Lowland Scotland Research Articles

Women, poetry and song in eighteenth-century Lowland Scotland

An important aspect of eighteenth-century Scottish culture was its transitional, interactive nature in relation to oral and written forms in literature and music. Its song culture, in which women played a primary role, is of particular significance. Scottish academic studies of the period, however, are still to a large extent male oriented in their focus and word and print based. This article seeks to draw attention to the marginalisation of both the song culture and the women of the period through a discussion of poetry and song transmission by a representative selection of women in eighteenth-century Lowland Scotland. It argues that “listening to the women” in poetry and song not only means bringing back into the eighteenth-century world picture the place of song alongside Enlightenment philosophy, historical studies and the printed poetic forms of Ramsay, Fergusson and Burns. It also means bringing what Virginia Woolf called “women's values” into our understanding of this important historical period.

Ravens (Corvus corax corax L.) in the British landscape: a thousand years of ecological biogeography in place‐names

Abstract Aim To investigate the information content of place‐names regarding the habits, habitat and biogeography of ravens in Britain over the past millennium.Location England, Scotland and Wales.Methods Linguistic and ecological analysis of over 400 British place‐names that have a putative ‘raven’ derivation.Results Most of the ‘raven’ place‐names are Old English in origin. Some of these (a minority), however, derive from personal names. The derivations of most names reflect landscape rather than man‐made features; the majority relating to high, craggy ground or coastal features, a minority to wooded situations or human habitations. In lowland Scotland and the Scottish borders the colloquial name corbie dominates ‘raven’ place‐names, perhaps reflecting French influence. In the Highlands and the Western Isles the Gaelic fitheach and its derivatives are predominant. Relatively fewer place‐names that have ‘raven’ roots have been educed in other parts of the Celtic West, i.e. Wales and Cornwall (only one traced in the latter).Main conclusions Comparison of the geographical distribution of ‘raven’‐derived place‐names with the present‐day distribution of the species in Britain reveals the extent of the contraction in the raven's range to the West over historical time, most notably during theprevious two centuries, associated with changed land‐management practices in particular.

Hydrological controls on nutrient concentrations and fluxes in agricultural catchments

Like many streams draining intensively farmed parts of lowland Scotland, water quality in the Newmills burn, Aberdeenshire, is characterized by relatively high nutrient levels; mean concentrations of NO 3–N and NH 3–N are 6.09 mg l −1 and 0.28 mg l −1, respectively, whilst average PO 4–P concentrations reach 0.06 mg l −1. Nutrient concentrations vary spatially and temporally with levels being highest under arable farming during the autumn and winter. Annual fluxes from the 14.5 km 2 catchment are estimated at 25.67 and 1.26 kg ha −1a −1 for NO 3–N and NH 3–N, respectively, and 0.26 kg ha −1 a −1 for PO 4–P. Hydrological controls exert a strong influence on both nutrient concentrations and fluxes. Over short timescales nutrient concentrations and fluxes are greatest during storm events when PO 4–P and NH 3–N are mobilized by overland flow in riparian areas, particularly where the soils have been compacted by livestock or farm machinery. Delivery of deeper soil water in subsurface storm flow, facilitated by agricultural under-drainage, provide large contributions of NO 3–N on the recession limb of hydrological events. In contrast, groundwater inputs generally have lower NO 3 concentrations implying that denitrification may be a pathway of N loss in the saturated zone. Approximately 75% of the N loss for the catchment occurs during the autumn and early winter when high flows dominate the hydrological regime. The close coupling of hydrological pathways and biogeochemical processes has major implications for catchment management strategies such as Nitrate Vulnerable Zones (NVZs) as it is likely that significant groundwater stores with long residence times will continue to cause N losses before water quality improvements become apparent.

The evaluation of key sites for breeding waders in lowland Scotland

This study considers the selection of sites based on the densities of breeding waders that would be considered to be distributed widely across common habitats in Scotland: so-called ‘wider countryside’ species. Five methods to provide a hierarchical classification of sites are assessed. Fifty percent of the populations of redshank ( Tringa totanus) and snipe ( Gallinago gallinago) occur on just 2 and 4.5% of Scottish lowlands, respectively, yet neither are suitably protected by conservation measures and both would benefit from a carefully targeted approach to their conservation. Three species, lapwing ( Vanellus vanellus), curlew ( Numenius arquata) and oystercatcher ( Haematopus ostralegus) are more appropriately considered to be dispersed species. We propose that, if the density of a breeding wader on a site exceeds the threshold level predicted for the top 1% of Scottish lowland for that species, and if the area of the site exceeds 1 km 2 then that site be considered to be a key site for farmland waders. The minimum density (in pairs km −2) must exceed 16.8 for lapwing, 10.1 for oystercatcher, 6.1 for snipe, 7.5 for curlew or 3.6 for redshank.

Nature Contested: Environmental History in Scotland and Northern England since 1600.

This book is about how we have treated nature in some of the most valued landscapes in Europe. Combining social and cultural history with ecology and geography, T.C. Smout has written an environmental history that is both profound and accessible. The Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland, the Lake District and the northern moors and plains of England form a natural region. The crags, moorland, woods and wetlands have been both treasured for their beauty and biodiversity and reviled as unproductive deserts to be improved and reclaimed. The fields have been made more fertile for production and the waters tapped for industrial use, but at a certain cost. The contest between two views of nature - conservation versus development; use versus delight - is at the centre of the book. The author begins by taking a hard look at our encounters with the natural world. He shows how the Scots and the northern English never shared the southerner's view of their environment as intimidating, and describes how conflict between using and enjoying the land gradually arose and gave birth to modern conservation ideas. He reveals how the history of the woods - especially the 'Great Wood of Caledon' - is quite different from popular myth, and examines the history and fate of the soil and the fields; of the rivers, lakes and lochs; of the hills and mountains; and of the modern quarrel over the countryside. 'By the end,' the author writes, 'I hope to have presented on my theatre a dramatic tale that tells us a fair amount not only of northern Britain, but something about the globe and the European west as a whole over the last four hundred years.'

‘Metropolitan’ and ‘Parochial’/‘Core’ and ‘Periphery’: a Historiography of the Neolithic of Scotland

Error is an occupational hazard of the literary life. As soon as a man sets pen to paper he sets himself open to two sorts of error: one, his own, which is bad enough; and, two, the misunderstanding of those who read him, which is infinite. (Allan 1952, ix)This paper explores some of the ways in which the cultural and political history of the United Kingdom has affected writing about the Neolithic in what is now Scotland. It uses the terms ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ as they have been applied by historiographers writing about the operation of the cultural and political relations within the United Kingdom in the last three centuries. The paper is in two parts. The first part presents a summary of relevant literature generated by 20 years of debate about Scottish and ‘British’ identity, history, literature, and culture. The second part considers the ways in which the general issues have affected the writing of Scottish prehistory, concentrating on the Neolithic of lowland Scotland and examining in particular the writings and influence of Fox, Childe, Piggott, and Atkinson.

Organising the Irish Migratory Potato Workers: The Efforts in the Early Twentieth Century

In the writing on institutional organisation and collective strike action among agricultural workers in Lowland Scotland during the early twentieth century until the outbreak of the Second World War, Richard Anthony has provided an extensive discussion on farm servants.2 However, in general, little attention has been given to casually employed workers. One such group, known as the Achill workers or the Irish ‘tattie howkers’, employed to harvest the potato crop in south-western and central Scotland, attempted to organise themselves and pursued collective strike action on a number of occasions. That group, which comprised some 1,500 to 2,000 workers, undertook strike action in 1907. That action was followed by intensive campaigns in 1918, 1919, 1920, 1921, and 1938; a further attempted strike was also reported in 1912. Much of their collective action was assisted by institutional support from unions which were already organising workers. But workers also attempted to organise themselves with the assistance of these existing unions in the years 1918 to 1921, 1925, 1926 and 1929, and to form their own union in 1909, 1910 and 1938. This paper will examine these attempts during this period.

The learning region in an age of austerity: capitalizing on knowledge, entrepreneurialism, and reflexive capitalism

A recent round of academic analyses (e.g., Castells, M., 1996. The Rise of the Network Society. Blackwell, Oxford) are emphasizing the effective production and translation of knowledge as a critical factor in establishing a sustainable post-Fordist regime. A notable inference of these accounts is that such productions and translations appear to be gravitating towards certain regions. In an emerging regional political economy, illustrious regions in Western Europe and the United States are being hailed as exemplars in terms of convening economic reflexivity, capitalizing on knowledge, and socializing risk. In turn, those less illustrious regions are being summoned to activate interactive learning, reflexive knowledge networks, innovation, and social capital. The author reviews and critically assesses this new regionalist thought in economic geography. He then draws on this to analyze Lowland Scotland’s ongoing policy endeavor to establish a new form of ‘reflexive capitalism’. In undertaking this he make two claims. First, much of the new regionalist thinking has paid insufficient attention to the intricate social relations between the recent regional renaissance and the restructuring of the state. Second, many of the policy innovations associated with the new regionalism should be seen as running parallel alongside a deeper political effort to ‘manage’ the erosion of the Keynesian welfarist institutional settlement. In a concluding section drawing on the work of Ulrich Beck, he argues that these emerging social geographies of reflexive capitalism require to be highlighted to the extent that they constitute an important sociopolitical backdrop with which to locate the more specific imprint of risk in economic development.

Reregulating a Regional Rustbelt: Institutional Fixes, Entrepreneurial Discourse, and the ‘Politics of Representation’

During the mid-to-late 1980s, a number of theoretical approaches were deployed to account for some major changes in the sociospatial form of capitalist development. One influential approach—which drew loosely on French regulation theory—chronicled a shift from Fordism to a post-Fordist flexible accumulation, which is characterised, in part, by the rise of ‘new industrial spaces’ . Such accounts were criticised for playing down the constitutive effects of social and political factors in energising such regional prosperity. As debates in the 1990s have sought to address this weakness, much research has demonstrated a greater readiness to address the social and institutional regulation of these new industrial spaces, and more recently, of old (rustbelt) industrial regions. In some respects, though, what we are witnessing is the replacement of a one-dimensional reading of regional transformation—that based on production—by an ‘institutional turn’, which is variously guided by some new directions in the regulation approach, networking theory, and institutional sociology. By fusing the recent work of Jessop and Jenson, the authors seek to deploy a discourse-theoretic regulation approach towards understanding some complex shifts in the regulatory fabric of Lowland Scotland—an archetypal rustbelt region. However, in order to escape a drift towards a one-dimensional ‘institutionalism’, they revisit much (old) contextual ground in an attempt to simultaneously locate the region's political economic mechanisms of transformation and the accompanying ‘politics of representation’ amidst the contemporary transition. The authors conclude that within the United Kingdom, following the institutional possibilities opened up by the late 1990s reconstitution of national and regional governance, there is a real danger of lapsing into a ‘soft institutionalism’ if future analysis on regulation and governance fails to locate socioinstitutional forms within the broader dynamic of political and economic forces.

Entrepreneurial Spaces, Hegemony, and State Strategy: The Political Shaping of Privatism in Lowland Scotland

Throughout the mid-1990s, considerable misgivings have emerged about the value of regulation theory for concrete research. Whilst acknowledging much of this critique, I seek to operationalize some recent interpretations of the ‘geography of regulation’ and regulation-theoretic state theory towards an analysis of the governance of economic development in Lowland Scotland. I argue that, when suitably contextualized, these approaches help to foreground some complex issues of scale, particularly the interactions between national, regional, and local levels, as well as to highlight the integral politics which surround the governance of urban and regional spaces. In substantive terms, this paper focuses on the decision to replace the Scottish Development Agency with the Scottish Enterprise Network. The latter was heralded by the Conservative government as a new private-sector-led hegemon within Lowland Scotland's emerging form of ‘entrepreneurial’ governance. However, the discussion below demonstrates two key factors. First, that the formation of such ‘local enterprise’ was a highly politicized endeavour; one which needs to be understood within the context of the broader dynamics of a (then) centralizing British state. And, second, a key net effect of the new structure is that the informal networks and partnerships which characterized the mode of governance in the 1980s under the hegemony of the Scottish Development Agency have been jeopardized in and through the ‘turf wars’ which have accompanied the post-1991 institutional milieu. This political shaping of privatism within one of the United Kingdom's more institutionally endowed and relatively autonomous spaces thereby provides some lessons for a New Labour government committed towards reconfiguring the contours of regional economic development in the regions and nations of the United Kingdom.

The Anatomy of an Eviction Campaign: The General Election of 1868 in Wales and its Aftermath

One of the most striking aspects of recent scholarship concerning electoral politics in the Victorian countryside is the widespread consensus that has developed that landlords did not – as was so commonly averred by Radical politicians at the time – use the threat of eviction as a weapon with which to terrorise farming tenants into voting as they were instructed. In the work of Norman Gash, Richard Olney and Frank O'Gorman, English tenants are represented as being quite happy to follow the lead offered them by their landlords, both from a ‘semi-feudal’ sense of loyalty and from a sense of gratitude for past favours and the hope of further favours to come. Even in Ireland, where a historiography dominated by Pomfret presented a much bleaker picture of landlord-tenant relations, the process of revision has considerably modified the received view. J. H. Whyte has argued that the landowners were far less tyrannical than had been generally thought, and regards as particularly erroneous the idea that landlords had regular recourse to eviction to punish tenants who had voted contrary to their wishes. This policy was not used, he suggests, because it patently did not work. Whyte's insights, though they have been modified in certain respects, were recently upheld in W. E. Vaughan's study of landlord and tenant relations in mid-Victorian Ireland. The history of politics in the Irish countryside is thus seen as having approximated that of England, and recent scholarship suggests a similar picture for Lowland Scotland, where, outside the Famine years, patterns of eviction were similar to those in Ireland. In only one country do the landowners still retain intact their reputation for electoral tyranny: Wales.

Poverty or Prosperity? Rural Society in Lowland Scotland in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries

Poverty or Prosperity? Rural Society in Lowland Scotland in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries

Poverty or Prosperity? Rural Society in Lowland Scotland in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries

Poverty or Prosperity? Rural Society in Lowland Scotland in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries

‘Institutional thickness’ and industrial governance in Lowland Scotland

Summary This paper draws on the ‘institutional thickness’ framework of Amin and Thrift to examine some recent policy responses to globalization within the Lowland Scotland regional economy. Although shown to be institutionally well endowed vis‐à‐vis the governance of economic development, Lowland Scotland suffers a shortfall in the networks, inter‐institutional synergy and ‘corporatization of economic life’ that are regarded as necessary to engender a diffused entrepreneurship, characteristic of more illustrious growth regions in mainland Europe.

Change and Invariance in the Traditional Performing Arts

This article draws upon evidence from four areas of the traditional performing arts in Scotland oral balladry, popular printed song, the light music (ceol beag) of the Highland bagpipe, and piobaireachd to examine the mechanisms of change and consider whether these may be in some way inimical to 'tradition'. 1 The traditional performing arts are closely related. Singers borrow tunes and re­ create words; musicians develop ideas from their own and adjacent musical fields; the instrumental tradition is in turn inseparable from the dance culture which it serves. Words are linked to all these activities through 'genealogies of learning,' (the process by which performers trace their descent through a succession of distinguished schools or master teachers), 2 verbal teaching routines and performance directions, and tales of every sort concerning the famous players and composers, ranging from anecdotes about people like Niel Gow, to folk tales about doomed MacCrimmons grappling with nameless horrors in the Cave of Gold. 3 All of these strands may be present in a single individual: for example, the Highland piper is an instrumentalist sometimes a multiinstrumentalist, adept also at the small-pipe, fiddle, or accordion; he will also be a singer, using chanted vocables to convey tunes and interpretations of them; many of his piobaireachds have song versions; he may also be a dancer; and he will certainly be steeped in the rich verbal lore that surrounds the pipe and its culture. Some scholars are responsive to this cultural breadth. For example, David Johnson's Music and Society in Lowland Scotland in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1972), takes the whole musical culture of the Lowlands and the institutions which supported it under review, from the most serious of 'serious' music to the most 'folksy' of folk, and traces their links with Scotland's richly varied song tradition. More recently, John Purser's comprehensive general survey, Scotland's Music. A History of the Traditional and Classical Music of Scotland from Early Times to the Present Day (Edinburgh, 1992), likewise shows a keen awareness of the creative links between the various different forms. The general tendency, however, has been to treat each strand of the traditional performing arts as an autonomous field of study. Ballad scholarship has displayed this feature particularly markedly during the last hundred years, often treating songs simply as poems which happened to possess an accompanying air which could be safely ignored in analysis. 4 A wider perspective is necessary before we can begin to generalise safely about 'tradition' and how it works. The concept of tradition is itself problematic and theories invoking it are many and various. 5 One of the most important to appear in recent years directs our attention to a phenomenon called 'invented tradition.' This springs from the perception of neoMachiavellian theorists of the right that society is dominated by elites manipulating a

Restoring the agricultural landscape: the impact of government policies in East Lothian, Scotland

Aerial photographs, agricultural census data and information from questionnaire surveys are used to investigate changes in the agricultural landscape of East Lothian, Scotland, during the 1970s and 1980s. Photographs for 1972 and 1988 provide a guide to changes associated both with farmers' responses to the European Community's Common Agricultural Policy, operating in the United Kingdom from 1973, and to government initiatives advancing landscape amenity. Attention is given to changes that have reversed post-war removals of longstanding landscape features, notably hedgerows. The impacts of schemes promoting hedgerow replanting and landscape restoration are discussed. Although this part of lowland Scotland has experienced marked agricultural intensification, in the 1980s the majority of farmers became involved in government-sponsored schemes intended to improve the visual appearance and general amenity of the landscape.

Wet meadows in lowland west central Scotland — an almost forgotten botanical habitat

Summary The composite picture presented of how Scotland's former wet meadows (which include both flood and water meadows) were managed for bog-hay is based almost entirely on agrarian literature of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Reasons for these meadows' virtual disappearance from the agricultural scene are discussed. Within the author's area of search in lowland west central Scotland, a small number of remnant wet meadows were found, all in an advanced stage of decay. Examples of surviving botanical communities are given. The account concludes with a brief description of a wet meadow restoration project.

Alfred Maurice Binnie, F. Eng. 6 February 1901—31 December 1986

The Binnie family may be traced back many generations to the Eastern Lowlands of Scotland, early records of the surname being associated in the 13th century with Uphall, West Lothian. The Armorial Bearings granted to a distant ancestor, a ‘horse's head furnished with a wagon proper’, and an ambiguous motto, ‘virtute doloque’ (by courage and policy [or deceit]), recall an incident of history–or myth—of the year 1313 in which a yeoman farmer, William Binny, who supplied hay to Edward II of England's garrison troops of a peel, Linlithgow Castle, adopted the ruse of stalling his wagon on entering the castle so that neither could the drawbridge be raised nor the portcullis lowered. Scottish soldiers emerged from beneath the hay and, with local irregulars, took the castle in the name of Robert the Bruce of Scotland.

The Cult of Enterprise in a Networked, Learning Region? Governing Business and Skills in Lowland Scotland

The Cult of Enterprise in a Networked, Learning Region? Governing Business and Skills in Lowland Scotland

Toponymy in Lowland Scotland: depictions of linguistic heritage

ABSTRACT This paper proposes a heritage approach to the geographical analysis of place-names. Variation between different authors' selection and interpretation of place-names is analysed, from a sample of place-name publications intended for academic and general readerships. The conclusion suggests that an orthodoxy in toponymic explanation and discourse influences these products. This is characterised by presumptions of Gaelic etymology and various acts of selectivity in the public presentation of the country's place-name heritage. The general acceptance of Gaelic-Highland cultural origins in the Lowlands is identified as a wider context to this perception.