Caledoniphilia

Ith posts an excerpt from an article discussing the rising American veneration of all things Scottish in contrast with the, er, more realistic assessment of the culture by actual Scotsmen, and warning the Scots not to be too quick to dismss the sincere intentions of the 'Muricans to honor them.

Although the rise of this particular phenomenon is fairly recent, this kind of American rosy-glasses culture worship is nothing new - just ask any honest American Anglophile (of which I am one, by the way). We revel in Rule, Britannia, the stiff upper lip, the Queen, fox hunts and stirrup cups, the playing fields of Eton, a pint and a plowman's, all things "cricket" and the rest of it, fully aware that modern Britain bears little resemblance to this image (I lived in London for a while) and also that our concept of it is often at odds with a history a good deal grittier and more complicated than we usually choose to remember. We don't care, however, because what we're interested in is the ideal of the Civilisation - that we believe the Brits attempted to achieve. That is what we're really honoring. (P.G. Wodehouse knew all about this phenomenon, by the way, and painted what Evelyn Waugh called his "idyllic [English] world" specifically with his American audience in mind.)

I think the same thing is true of the American obsession with Scotland. We cull what we think to be the best and the brightest of Scots values, culture and history and then we give them what might be called the American Super-Size treatment. The result, as the article notes, is Americans turning out events, pageants and traditions that are more Scottish than the Scots themselves.

(Just as an aside, the article talks a goodish bit about the movie Braveheart being a spark of the most recent wave of enthusiasm. Steve-O and I were talking about the movie one time. Almost the first words out of my mouth were, "Y'know, Edward Longshanks really got a raw deal in that film...." Steve-O doubled over with laughter.)