Celtic Cabal

“Thirty million, mostly fools.”
(Writer and economist Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), responding to a question on the size of the population of England.)

“Blythe to meet,
Wae to part,
Blythe to meet aince mair”
(This is known as the Bon-Accord toast – “Happy to meet, sorrowful to part, happy to meet once again.” “Bon-Accord” was the password used by the citizens of Aberdeen in 1308 when they rose up, killed the English garrison and captured the town for Robert the Bruce. Bon-Accord is now the motto of the City of Aberdeen.)

“The shout of the welder in the din of the great Clyde shipyards; the speak of the Mearns with its soul in the land; the discourse of the Enlightenment, when Edinburgh and Glasgow were a light held to the intellectual life of Europe; the wild cry of the pipes; and back to the distant noise of the battles of Bruce and Wallace.”
(First Minister, Donald Dewar, at the opening of the Scottish Parliament, on 1 July 1999.)

“Do try to sound the “r” although not with the exaggerated trill usually given to it by so-called Scots comedians. But, again this to my English readers, don’t even attempt to get the guttural sounds of “ach” and “loch”. You will only strangle yourselves. To say “ach!” correctly you need generations of Scots blood behind you and you must have been born with the peat-reek in your nostrils and the sight of the hills as the first thing ever you clapped your eyes on.”
(Ronald MacDonald Douglas (1889-1987) writer – and nationalist.)