MDDM Ch. 76 The Exotick

[Dave Monroe]

"'Be not deceiv'd by any level of the Exotick they may
present you, Kilts, Bag-Pipes sort of thing.  Haggis. 
You must keep unfailing vigilnace.'" (M&D, Ch. 76, p.
747)

Cf. ...

"Savage flowers of the Indies, demurer Blooms of the
British garden, stripes and tartans ...." (M&D, Ch.
16, p. 169)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0111&msg=62834&sort=date


"'Be not deceiv'd ...'"

All Things Scottish: Material Culture and the Scottish
Revival in North America

Invented Tradition

In the introduction to the book, The Invention of
Tradition, the historian Eric Hobsbawm argues that
invented tradition includes, both "traditions"actually
invented, constructed and formally instituted and
those emerging in a less easily traceable manner with
a brief and dateable period - a matter of a few years
perhaps - and establishing themselves with great
rapidity." These "invented traditions" are "a set of
practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly
accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature,
which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of
behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies
continuity with the past." Usually, they try to
establish links with a suitable historic past  but
their connection with this past is tenuous at best. In
sum, Hobsbawm writes, invented traditions  "are
responses to novel situations which take the form of
reference to old situations, or which establish their
own past by quasi-obligatory repetition."
  
Hugh Trevor-Roper recounts three aspects of the
Highland tradition of Scotland which, he argues, are
invented traditions in the sense described above.  The
first of these is the invention of a Scots-Gaelic epic
poet called Ossian who's supposed writing was
"discovered" and "translated" in the 1760s. Promoters
of Ossian, Trevor-Roper contends, popularized the idea
that Scottish-Highland culture was a distinct and an
ancient one. The second is the invention of the modern
kilt sometime after about 1727 by a Quaker
industrialist named Thomas Rawlinson and its quick
adoption in many parts of the Highland and Northern
Lowlands by about 1768.
 
The third invented aspect of the Highland tradition of
Scotland, Trevor-Roper argues, is that of tartan.
Family tartans, as they are now generally conceived,
probably never existed. Instead, tartans probably were
regionally based with different patterns belonging to
different areas of the country. What tartan one wore
was mainly a decision based on preference or fashion.
The wearing of kilt and tartan became popular in the
nineteenth century because of  the romantic interest
in the idea of the noble savage and the exploits of
the Highland regiments in India and America. Thus,
following the lifting of the ban of Highland dress
that was imposed after the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion,
Highland noblemen, anglicized Scottish peers,
improving gentry, well-educated Edinburgh lawyers and
prudent merchants of Aberdeen - "men who were not
constrained by poverty and who would never have to
skip over rocks and bogs or lie all night in the
hills" - took to wearing the modern kilt as a new
fashion. In this way, the entire Scottish nation
adopted the bogus Highland symbols of kilt and tartan.


http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/history/material_culture/rmclean/html/trad.htm

Trevor-Roper, Hugh.  "The Invention of Tradition:
   The Highland Tradition of Scotland."  The Invention
   of Tradition.  Ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence
   Ranger.  New York: Cambridge UP, 1983.  15-41.

http://books.cambridge.org/0521437733.htm


Kilts

... a uniquely Scottish material symbol such as the
kilt might also yield a variety of meanings about its
importance to domestic and immigrant Scots at
different periods in history. The kilt ... is a
message-bearing entity. For instance, the kilt was at
one time used as a metaphor for the political state of
the nation....

One might be able to derive many other additional
meanings with further examination. For instance, the
Highland regiments in the late-eighteenth, through the
nineteenth and in to the twentieth century, wore kilts
and much was written of their participation in the
Empire's expansion. The members of those regiments
wore the kilt like any badge of  honour. During the
First World War, for instance, German troops nicknamed
the kilted regiments "the ladies from Hell". It also
seems clear that the Scottish symbols that
Trevor-Roper argues are invented traditions were used
to recruit Scots during the First World War. Paterson
notes that recruiters during the First World War used
these symbols with great effect. The "kilt, the pipes,
and the romantic version of Highland history", he
writes, "came together in the image of the modern
soldier as the direct descendant of the old clan
warriors, steeped in martial glory." 

http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/history/material_culture/rmclean/html/kilt.htm


Bag-Pipes

http://www-bprc.mps.ohio-state.edu/~bdaye/bagpipes.html

http://www.bagpipeweb.com/


Haggis

http://www.gumbopages.com/food/scottish/haggis.html

http://www.smart.net/~tak/haggis.html

The Scottish viscera drill?  Let me know ...

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