>>> Given my context, I have a hard time hearing that as anything but >>> racist. >> Oh, Help! The toast was written long before "racism" was considered. > And I daresay that at the time, Scots were likely the least prejudiced in > the north of Europe. How many progressive-minded thinkers has Scotland > given the world? Like in so many fields of endeavour better than its > share is my guess.
Assuming that toast originated in the eighteenth century, some Scots at the time were among the most repulsively evil racists to be found on the face of the planet. Look at the bunch of slavemasters most of the streets in the Merchant City of Glasgow were named after. Damn near every stone of Georgian Glasgow was paid for by slave labour in the tobacco and sugar industries. And at the same time Burns composed his "Slave's Lament", and Tytler wrote the "Petition of the Sharks of Africa" (on my website), both at great personal risk, to oppose the racism their society's elite was profiting from. That is, racism *was* considered. By some it was profited from and by others it was rejected, just like now. Historical relativism is shit. As far as this specific toast is concerned, I read it the same way Nigel does, but it seems to me to have such a large element of self-parody that you can't take it literally. =================== <http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/> =================== Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music & Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
