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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Angusmclellan (talk | contribs) at 01:42, 21 January 2006. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Gareth Hughes 21:06, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Personal sandbox

Hi there, just thought I'd let you know that your talk page should probably be reserved for comments. You might want to move your (rather fine) work on History of Scotland to a subpage, like a Sandbox. Click here to make one. Thanks, Alphax  10:38, Mar 16, 2005 (UTC)

Fortriu

Your recent edit regarding Fortriu was a bad edit. Not only has it "recently been argued" it has been effectively proven. You'll have to take my word for it, because you don't know what you are talking about just now; I'd suggest emailing around, or what not. I've reproduced enough of the arguments to make a southern identification absurd. Reinserting Strathearn and Menteith is silly in any case, because even if it did correspond to S. Pictland, it's unlikely to follow the piffle in de Situ Albanie. - Calgacus 16:07, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Clearly I'm being incredibly stupid today. I'd like to blame it on overindulgence but that would be a lie. Biorhythms maybe ? Humble apologies. Angus McLellan 17:25, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Talk:Scottish People

Oh dear ! Someone has stolen my scone. I reread Scottish People and it gets ever closer to an Unfeatured Award. I was going to stick in a comment, but it's late and perhaps I'm being unreasonable. Saved for later use.

Starts here "==Still candidate for unfeatured award=="

If I was being picky, I think I could easily add a good dozen (fact) templates to the article, and probably a (POV) as well. It appears to me that the page is chock-full of errors. Among the questions that came to mind as I just read it are these :-

• How do we know that Scots people are "indigenous" (and why does this article link to the irrelevant Indigenous people) ?
• How do we know that Scots are an ethnic group (as opposed to just a bunch of people, a Non-exclusive ethnic group) ?
• How are they readily distinguishable ?
• How do we know that Scottish ethnicity is heritable ?
• If we are sure it is heritable, through how many degrees ? If you were born in Canada, to pick a non-random example, is one Scottish-born parent enough make you Scots, one grandparent, one great-grandparent, one great-great-grandparent ?
• How would we reconcile this Jus sanguinis approach to identity with the fact that Scotland was (I assume before 1707 too) more or less Jus soli in law until the black day in 1981 ? How do we square it with findings by the OSI, the Institute of Governance and the 1997 General Election Scottish Social Attitudes survey on the question of identity ? If anyone is entitled to answer the question "Qu'est ce que c'est qu'un ecossais ?" it would surely be the people of Scotland. And why should we ignore what Scottish national identity has to say ?
• How do we know that there were "Beaker People" (rather than a Beaker culture) ?
• Why is Caledonia, a name from the 1st century AD, mentioned together with the 2nd-3rd millennium BC Beaker Culture ?
• Why are megaliths, which appear in the Neolithic, attributed to "Beaker People" ?
• Why is the origin of the Picts singled out as "uncertain" ? Are the others certain ?
• Do we really know that the Picts were named "Picti" because they were painted ?
• Why mention the legend that Picts came from Scythia and not the comparable myths that had Britons coming from Troy, Gaels coming from Greece and Egypt and made the kings of Northumbria descendants of Woden ?
• Do we really know that the Gaels came from Ireland ? How do we know that they were hardy ?
• Weren't the Northumbrian attempts to "spread north and west" of Edinburgh only "shortlived" so far as the "north" part is concerned ?
• Did Angles settle in Lothian ?
• If there are "five million people with varying degrees of Scottish ethnicity" in Scotland (which appears to be unlikely as it would require everyone living in Scotland to be Scots), why are the "Scottish" populations overseas, self-evidently less "ethnically Scottish" (whatever that is) not even more qualified ?
• Why is the Anglicisation (Scotticisation surely) of Bruce, Campbell, Marshall, &c mentioned in the context of the Act of Union 1707 ?
• Did Jamie the Saxt really banish all of the border families to the north, England and Ulster ?

There must be a point at which it would better to start again with a blank page, and I think that point has long since passed.

Ends here.