"SCOTT-LAND."

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 209, 3 September 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

"SCOTT-LAND."

WHAT A GREAT GENIUS DID. WELDER AND INTERPRETER. (By W. D. MORRISON SUTHERLAND.) Colonel John Buchan, whose life of Scott, published this year, has won universal commendation, was spenking lately at a Scott • celebration not far from Abbotsford. In the course of his speech he remarked that we spell Scotland with one t, but that modern Scotland might well be spelt ■ with two t's, for it was the land of Scott. No other had done so much for the soul and body of his native land. It was a remarkable tribute, but not one bit exaggerated, and, taking it as my text, I want to mention some of the reasons why the great genius, well called the "Wizard of the North," who stands in. the front rank of the men who adorned the golden age of a century ago, has claims on the gratitude, only of his own'countrymen, but on the gratitude of the whole English-speaking world. These claims we must all remember in this centenary month, when the world will pay homage to Scottr The Scottish People. We speak of the Scottish race, but, strictly speaking, there was no early Scottish race. There wae an early Welsh race, and there was an early Irish race, but the Scots were not a distinctive people to begin with. When the Romans were, in control of Britain, with their frontier stretching as far north as the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde, they were akin to'tlie Welsh. As time passed, bands of Englishmen made their way across the Tweed and took possession of the fertile Lothians. Then a large Irish contingent crossed the channef and made their home in Scotland, taking with them the Gaelic tongue, whilst the Vikings peopled the coasts and the islands with Scandinavians. It was from this mixed stock that the Scottish people were evolved, so that we can say of them, a,s we say of certain cattle, .that they are crossbred; their struggles .and misfortunes welding them into as strongly marked and well defined a race as any on the face of the earth. Now Scott took a keen interest in their breeding and development, and made a close study of it, and one of the things he has done for us is this, he has shown us the blendings of the strains of Picts, Celts, Angles and Norsemen, and the marked and distinctive featuree that have resulted from the iblendings, and f-om the struggles and

misfortunes of centuries. As Lord Bryce used to say, had he not been a poet and a writer of. romantic stories, he might have been, a professor of history, he had so much the natural love of disquisition, of tracing effects to causes, and deducing principles from facts. He has certainly ehown the Scottish people and the world the kind of people the Scots are. He' has given their history in his. poems and prose writings, transfiguring by his genius the past into the present. He has thrown light on England, France, Germany and Palestine, but chiefly on Scotland. But he made one mistake; he caricatured the Godfearing, freedom-loving men we call the Covenanters, and, for this, he was rightly talfen to task by competent scholars at the time. His distorted pictures of these men were due, devout' Christian though he was, to his dislike of their Calvinism and love for evangelical religion, and to hie intense Toryism. He was prejudiced; in the same way, against radicals, so prejudiced, in spite of his natural goodness of heart, that he called them a set of blackguards. And yet his writings are obviously the work of a gentleman; we come now and' then on bad men and sordid' scenes, but they are never obtruded on us, and the deeerts that deceit and cruelty and tyranny get all come out naturally. It is true that he was not greatly interested in the growing industrialisation

of the Scotland of his own day. Nevertheless he was deeply interested in his countrymen, and .understood their essential charact >r, and, in general, reveals it to the life. Two Scotlands. Now, as everybody knows, Scotland is divided into two halves, the dividing line being, roughly, the Grampians. In the south and east are the Lowlands; in the north and middle west aie the Highlands. It was Scott who brought them together, who niade Lowlanders and Highlanders one people. Before his day they did not understand each. other and they did not like each other. The Lowlander, in especial, hated and distrusted his Gaelic speaking neigabour. And it is not to be wondered at. The Highlander was impecunious, and turbulent, and had no love for the Sassenach, and no respect for his cattle or property. It. was Sir Walter who showed his Lowland readers the finer qualities of the Gael, his ferv6nr, his self-forgetfulness, his loyalty, and his inbred refinement. It was he.who made them friends and who made ; it clear to them that they were heirs and the members of a common country. At tba saint , time lie brnupM the high and the low. the rich and the poor together; he showed, them the better qualities of them all, and qualities in them that were

unsuspected even by themselves. He showed them their faith, their' loyalty, their heroism; he made clear to them their human and their political interest to each other; and he inspired in them a new spirit of love of their native land, and of love of independence. ; And all this ho wassable to do because he was the embodiment of themselves, and an ardent patriot, because of his wide imagination and strong and vivid genius, because of his sympathy and the depth and richness of his humour, arid because he was familiar with their dialect with its rhythm and naturalness. Then it was he who broke down the English prejudice against the Scots, and the English jealousy of them, a prejudice arid a jealousy that began when one of the Scottish khi£s, James the Sixth, became. king of England as well, under the name of James the First, and took south with him and in his wake a number of Scottish nobles and professional and business men. We still see, clinging here and there, traces of the prejudice and jealousy in the jibes we sometimes Hear about the niggardliness of the Scots and their lack of humour, jibes that are both historically and actually' untrue —but only traces. His Country's Interpreter. It was he, too/ who made Scotland really known to the outside world. He opened the astonished eyes of the world to the charm and grandeur of its glens and hills, the fairy-like scenes of districts like the Trossachs, and the desolate beauty of parts of Highlands and Lowlands.. He revealed and illumined its lochs and woods, and picturesque and spacious bays, its lonely islands and the stormy splendour of its stern grey coasts. He showed the world the kind of country Scotland is. He laid his spell on it and taught men to speak of it as "bonnio Scotland." And who does not know his lines? Breathes there a man with soul so dead Who never to. himself hath said. This is my own, my native land. No man ever had a greater pride in the land of his birth, or wrote of it witli more enthusiasm, or did more for it. It is due to him more than to any other that tens of thousands of men and women flock to it year after year from all quarters of the globe. No wonder his countrymen long years ago erected to his memory the magnificent Gothic structure that is the glory of the chief street of hi§ "own romantic town," the town where he first saw the light, a monument to his genius and to his eervices to hi 3 country and to the whole English-speak-ing race that is not surpassed by that erected to the memory of any other man of letters. John Buchan spoke the simple truth when he said: "We spell Scotland with one t, but modern Scotland might well be spelt with two t's. for it is the land of Scott. . . No other has done" so much for the soul and body of hie native land."