INVENTION OF TRADITION
• Most Europeans assume that many of
the rituals, customs, popular
celebrations, holidays, and festivals
that they practice are of relatively
ancient antiquity
– This is sometimes true but is not
always the case
• Many are of relatively recent
vintage and were “invented”
relatively recently by a small
group of people either to
manipulate public opinion or
simply to make money
– Bastille Day
– Trappings around the British
monarchy
SCOTTISH HIGHLAND
TRADITION
• Tradition includes the kilt, the tartan
plaid which differs from clan to clan
and gives each its unique identity,
bagpipe music, etc.
– Most people believe that all of this
is very old, stretching back at least
as far as the Middle Ages
• But it all was developed fairly
recently during the 18th and 19th
centuries in reaction to the
union of Scotland with England
and the subsequent absorption
of Scottish culture by the allconquering Anglo-Saxon
culture
Lowlanders
Viewed by
most as mean,
lazy, predatory,
corrupt, and
ignorant
barbarians who
had never been
touched by
civilization
Historic
Scotland
consisted of two
distinct groups
of people
Irish Celts who
had left Ireland
for one reason
or another and
who moved to
the western
coastal islands
and west coast
of Scotland
Generally
literate and
enjoyed
many
cultural links
with the
English
Highlanders
AtThis
the beginning
of the 18th
century,
invented Highland
tradition
an independent,
and
soon
overwhelmedglorious,
all of Scotland
colorful
tradition
allegedly
and became
the(of
tradition
forgreat
all
antiquity) was
created for the
Scots
Highlanders
Culturally
depressed
backwater
until the
1600s
CREATION PROCESS
• Three stages
– Rewriting of early Scottish history in order to
create a cultural tradition for the Highlands that
was both independent from and superior to that of
mother Ireland
– The artificial creation of new Highland traditions
that were presented as ancient, original, and
distinctive
– The process by which these traditions were
offered to, and adopted by, the people of Lowland
Scotland
• All three stages took place in the 18th and 19th
centuries
– Relatively recently
THE MACPHERSONS
• James MacPherson and
Reverend John MacPherson
committed a joint act of
blatant forgery and created
an ancient, native, literature
for Highland Scotland
– And also rewrote Scottish
history to support the
claims of this literature
• Both this new literature and
its supporting history,
insofar as it had any
connection with reality, was
stolen from the Irish
James
MacPherson
Reverend John
MacPherson
COMMITTING FRAUD
• James MacPherson
collected some Irish
ballads that had circulated
in Scotland for centuries
and mixed them together
to produce an elaborate
epic poem in which all
references to Ireland were
replaced by Scottish ones
– Claimed the fake was
very old and that all
modern Irish poetry and
ballads were second
rate imitations of it
COMPOUNDING THE FRAUD
• Reverend John MacPherson wrote
book entitled Critical Dissertations
– Claimed to find evidence of a
“Celtic Homer”
• Wandering Highland poet named
Ossian (100 AD) who wrote
James MacPherson’s forged epic
poem
– Argued that, during Dark Ages, Irish
barbarians invaded Scotland and
took this literature back home with
them
• Served as a model for all
subsequent Irish literature
• Transformed uncultured, barbaric, and
wantonly violent Highlanders into the
culture saviors of the Celtic heritage
REASONS FOR FRAUD
• Macphersons never said why they
committed their fraud
– Maybe it was to gain a
scholarly reputation for
themselves
– Maybe the complete lack of a
Highland cultural tradition
offended their Scottish pride
– Maybe the union of Scotland
with England made them worry
that Scotland would be
swallowed up culturally as well
and made them determined to
create a strong, native culture
that could not be co-opted by
the English
A SUCKER BORN EVERY
MINUTE
• Hoax was a spectacular success
– Even Edward Gibbon fell for it
• Gave it international credibility
and prestige
– Put Highlanders on the map
• Now celebrated as the Celtic
heartland that produced
Ossian, the finest epic poet
since Homer
– Also cut the Highlands’ link with
Ireland and created an
independent cultural tradition for
the region
Edward Gibbon, author of
The Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire
FASHION
• Highland dress was originally the
same as Irish dress until the 16th
century
– Long Irish shirt, a tunic, and a cloak
• In the 17th century, Highland
“fashions” changed due to weakening
of links with Ireland
– Highland nobles adopted plaid
trousers called “trews”
– Highland commoners adopted the
belted plaid
• Similar but not the same as the
kilt
– Mark of poverty and low
social status
THOMAS RAWLINSON
• Leased large wooded area from the
MacDowell family in the Highlands
and built an iron forge there
– Employed 2-3000 Highlanders to
cut trees, make charcoal, and work
the forge
– Realized belted plaid was
inconvenient and impractical for
the type of work they performed
• Invented the kilt to replace the
belted plaid
– Single skirt-like garment with
pleats and about kneelength
TRIUMPH OF THE KILT
Belted plaid
Kilt
• Ian MacDowell started wearing the
new kilt and his clansmen rapidly
followed his example
– Soon spread to other areas in the
Highlands
• Mainly because it was more
convenient and practical than
belted plaid
– Also eventually penetrated the
Lowlands
• Highland kilt is a purely modern
costume, first introduced by an
English Quaker industrialist in order
to make Highlanders better industrial
workers
THE TARTAN
• According to tradition, each
Highland clan had its own
distinctive plaid pattern
– Developed over the centuries
into its own distinctive
configuration
• However, surviving portraits that
exist of Highlanders before the 18th
century does not indicate any plaid
differentiation according to clan
– Many members of the same clan
wear different plaid patterns
• Before the 18th century, the choice
of a tartan was a matter of
individual taste or of necessity—
not of clan loyalty or membership
Guthrie tartan
ENGLISH CRACK DOWN
• Highlands rebelled against English rule in 1715 and
1745
– Both failed
– But they provoked the English to disarm all
Highlanders, take away legal privileges of clan
chieftains, and to prohibit the wearing of
“traditional Highland dress”
RAMIFICATIONS
• Common people switched to
trousers and found they liked
them
• Highland upper classes, who had
never worn the belted plaid or kilt
before, adopted the tartan kilt
– Wearing it in the privacy of
their homes or at private
parties to avoid arrest
• When the prohibition against
“Highland dress” ended in 1780,
the fashion spread among more
upper class Highlanders and also
among middle and upper class
Lowlanders
HIGHLAND REGIMENTS
• In the 1760s, William Pitt the Elder
created the so-called “Highland
Regiments” to divert the violent
energies of Highlanders in a
useful direction
– Ordered the design of their
distinctive dress uniforms
• Plaid kilts and the works
• Just as the English government
attempted to stamp out
“traditional Highland dress” in
Scotland, it simultaneously
preserved it within the British
army by means of the distinctive
uniforms of the Highland
regiments
RISE OF THE TARTAN
• Number of Highland Regiments increased with time
– And to tell them apart at a distance, each regiment
developed its own distinctive plaid
– This principle of “tartan differentiation” was easily
transferred from regiment to clan, once civilians were
allowed to wear plaid again
• It was the fame of the Highland Regiments, and admiration
for their colorful uniforms, that:
– Caused the fashion of the kilt to be adopted by the
Scottish upper and middle classes
– Invented the idea that each clan should be differentiated
by a unique tartan
MARKETING PLOY
• Trend towards tartan differentiation by
clan was strengthened by the
publication of The Costumes of the
Clans by John Sobieski Stuart (John
Allen) in 1844
– Invented an entire history of tartan
differentiation by clan
– Stuart worked for Wilson and Son
(company that made tartans for the
Highland Regiments)
• Book was an effort to widen
market for their tartans
AN ANCIENT TRADITION IS
BORN
• Stuart’s book inspired others
– James Logan’s Clans of he
Scottish Highlands and General
James Browne’s History of the
Highlands and the Highland
Clans
• Perpetuated and validated,
through repetition, the myth
of different tartan patterns for
different clans
CONCLUSION
• The invention of the Scottish Highland
tradition is a near perfect illustration of
how popular culture and tradition can
be manipulated
– How human beings can, and often do,
create their own cultural environment
– How popular customs and traditions are
seldom what they seem to be at first
glance
ROBIN HOOD
• Robin Hood never existed
– But he has nonetheless
become the greatest hero
in English popular legend
• He was basically a terrorist
– Robbed and killed
landowners and waged
virtual guerilla war against
authority
– Why then was he so
popular?
FIRST MENTION
• First mention of Robin
Hood appeared in
William Langland’s
allegorical Piers the
Plowman (1370s)
• Robin Hood ballads
probably began to
circulate orally in
England in the late
1200s
– Not written down
until the late 1300s
FOUR ORIGINAL BALLADS
• Gest of Robyn Hode
• Robin Hood and the
Monk
• Robin Hood and
Guy of Gisborne
• Robin Hood and the
Potter
MERRY MEN?
• Robin and his band were not
“merry men”
– They were mean and violent
• Why?
– Middle Ages were a violent
time in general
– Late Middle Ages were
especially bad
• Breakdown of feudal
system and rise of new
royal administrative
systems
– Attacked local power of
nobility and made them
cling stubbornly to their
social and economic
rights over peasantry
POWER STRUGGLE
• Peasants were caught
in middle of power
struggle between
monarchy and nobility
– Kings trying to exert
direct control over
them with new
officials, new laws,
and new taxes
– Nobles, on the other
hand, continued to
impose old exactions
on them
SYMBOLIC ATTACK
• Struggle between king and nobles
acted out symbolically in Robin Hood
– Evil Sheriff of Nottingham
represented growing power of the
central government
• King was never blamed for new
taxes and interference in lives of
peasants
• Robin Hood was a powerful symbol of
what peasants would have liked to do
to resist the encroachment of central
authority upon local lives
– Robin concentrated his efforts
against agents of this
encroachment, not the real source
of the problem—the king
REAL LIFE TRAGEDY
• Intense hostility to royal
officials combined with naïve
worship of the king would
find tragic reflection in real
life
– English Peasants’ War
(1381)
• Robin Hood ballads arose
within the context of growing
peasant unrest against the
increasing power of the
central state
– Also revealed the
ideological weakness of
this opposition
THE NOBILITY
• Growing power of central state
also threatened local nobles
– Put them on same side as
peasants
– Reason why nobles do not
appear as villains in Robin
Hood ballads
• Not because peasants saw
them as allies
• But because ballads were
popular among nobles too
• By the time the ballads were
written down, whatever negative
references to the nobility that
originally existed in them had
been deleted
PARADOX
• The growing power of the state was the common
enemy of both peasants and local nobles
– Made Robin Hood, and the resistance he
symbolized, attractive to both groups
• Even though they were never allies in reality
• As the ballads entered the realm of noble culture,
they lost whatever anti-noble themes they may
have originally possessed
– By the time they were written down, there is not
a noble villain to be found
PROXY VILLAIN
• Peasants certainly had
grievances against
local nobles but crossclass audience for the
Robin Hood ballads
prohibited any specific
reference to the
increased exploitation
of peasants by nobles
• So a “proxy villain” was
created that was
acceptable to both
peasants and nobles
– The churchman
ST. MARY’S
• Major villain in Robin Hood ballads (after the Sheriff
of Nottingham) is the abbot of St. Mary’s monastery
– Huge Benedictine monastery in Yorkshire that
controlled thousands of acres of farmland
• Which it rented out to local peasants
– Abbot was example of “unrelenting landlordism”
PERFECT VILLAIN
• Church landlords were notorious
for exploiting their local rights and
for being completely
unsympathetic to peasant
complaints
– Also held mortgages on estates
of minor local nobles
• Churchmen therefore made perfect
local foils for Robin Hood
– Since they symbolized the
greedy demands of local
landlords to peasants
• And the callousness of high
finance to nobles
– Both audiences saw the
churchman as a villain in real
life and he also appears as such
in Robin Hood ballads
SUMMARY I
• Robin Hood therefore did have a
certain reality in the social and political
conditions of the 13th and 14th century
England
– His story originated, evolved, and spread
as a means of symbolic resistance to the
intrusion of the modern state into local,
rural life
SUMMARY II
• Robin Hood ballads were also more than
mere expressions of vicarious revenge
against forces that local people were
helpless to oppose
– Local people did actively try to resist
encroachments of the centralized state
• English Peasants’ War
• Demonstrated that Robin Hood not only
represented a symbol of resistance but
also a model of active opposition
DEATH
• Death is a subject that has interested sociologists,
anthropologists, painters, poets, and morticians for
a long time
– But not historians
• Who have assumed that it has no history
• Traditionally have preferred dramatic events
and famous people to the so-called “great
constants” of the human condition
– Birth, childhood, marriage, old age, and
death
• But the “great constants” do have a history
– They do change over time
– This change is often slow and gradual, but it did
occur and it had important ramifications
THE “GOOD DEATH”
• In the late Middle Ages, a dying man
played a central role in a supernatural
drama
– He staged and directed his death
according to a prescribed ritual
• Conscious of the fact that his life
had reached its climax and that
he could only save his soul by
making a “good death”
– Must resist temptations of
demons and sincerely repent
his sins
HORROR OF SUDDEN DEATH
• Men in late Middle Ages had an
absolute horror of sudden death
– Might deprive them of their
role in the metaphysical drama
of death
– Was the responsibility of
doctors to warn their patients
if death appeared to be even a
remote possibility
• So they would not be
caught unaware and have
time to prepare for good
death
HOW A “GOOD DEATH”
WORKED
• Deathbed scene always took
place in public
– Priests, doctors, family,
friends, and even passers-by
crowded into the room of the
dying man
– He then took stock of his life,
forgave his enemies, blessed
his children, repented his
sins, received last
sacraments, and then died
• His will regulated his burial
• After prescribed period of
mourning and isolation, family
members returned to normal life
BAD DEATH
• “good death” was a
cultural ideal
– Something to be ideally
strived for
– In actuality, most people
were unable to act out
the ritual of the “good
death”
– A good death was what
most people hoped for;
a sudden, painful, and
lonely death was what
they usually received
ACCEPTANCE OF DEATH
• Death was not the feared, hidden,
virtually unspoken menace that it
is today
– It was instead familiar and allpervasive
• Public executions were
major spectator events
• Dead found lying along side
roads, in haylofts, and on
city streets
• Graveyards were often
places of entertainment
• Even if the “good death” seldom
materialized, death itself
permeated late medieval society
and people accepted it
AMERICAN WAY OF DEATH
• 85% of deaths in the United
States occur in hospitals or
nursing homes
– Most Americans die in
isolation, surrounded by
strangers and medical
technicians
• Who often hide the fact
the patient is dying
• Patient has no control
over the situation and
often does not even
know that the situation
exists
A TABOO
• Problem is more than just
one of hospital
management
– Part of a taboo
embedded deep in
American culture
• Americans don’t like
death, don’t like to
see it, don’t like to
talk about it
– So it is hidden
away as much as
possible
DIFFERENCES
• Art and literature of Late Middle
Ages dealt with death matter-offactly and realistically
– Dwelt on skeletons, worms,
decomposition, etc.
• Today, American morticians
make up bodies to look alive,
put them in water tight caskets
and airtight vaults to slow down
decomposition, and bury them
in graveyards disguised as
gardens
– We even avoid the term
“death” as much as possible
and substitute “passed
away,” “terminal,” and
“deceased.”
DERITUALIZED DEATH
• Modern people have deritualized death
– Traditional mourning is on the decline
– Wakes are disappearing
– Ritual gesture of sending flowers is often discouraged
– Children often do not attend funerals
– Code of behavior at funerals prescribes suppression of
grief
– Funeral industry has taken over expression of grief and
exploited it for profit
• And transformed it into a sterile, meaningless, and
repressed ritual
MEDIEVAL VIEW OF DEATH
• One explanation argues
that medieval people
saw death as a
collective destiny
– Ordinary, inevitable,
and not particularly
frightening because
it would engulf all
Christians like a
great sleep until they
woke up again in
Paradise after the
Second Coming of
Christ
ERA OF THE “GOOD DEATH”
• Around 1200, emphasis shifted
away from the collective
character of death towards
them impact of death on the
individual
– Death became the supreme
moment in a person’s
individual quest fro
salvation
• Era of the “good death”
• But death remained a
familiar thing surrounded
by prescribed rituals
VICTORIAN DEATH
• In the 19th century, death came to be
viewed in more affection-laden, familyoriented terms
– Came to mean separation from loved
ones and was no longer viewed as an
ordinary part of the life cycle
• Now seen as a catastrophic rupture
with one’s family and loved ones
– Death was now viewed as a horrible
event that took away a loved one from
his family forever
• And now was accompanied by
emotional excess
– Hysterics, screaming, long
periods of mourning, elaborate
tombstones,ect
• Seen as abnormal, extraordinary,
and disruptive
TRANSITION
• Reaction to emotional and
physical excesses to 19th
century view of death caused
Western people to adopt
modern attitude towards death
– First developed in the U.S.
and then spread to England
and northern Europe
• Currently making inroads
in southern Europe and
Latin America
– Traditional rituals of death
have be abandoned and
death is now hidden from
the dying person and
transferred from the family
to the hospital
• Terminal moment has
become a technicality
PHASES
• Attitudes towards death has passed
through four distinct phases
– Traditional “tamed” death of the first 1000
years of Christian era
– The more personal death of the next 750
years (the “good death” era)
– The family-oriented obsession with “thy
death” which prevailed from late 18th to the
early 20th centuries
– The “forbidden death” of the last 100 years
METHODOLOGICAL PROBLEMS
• Assumes that there are clear transition points
from one set of attitudes to another
– In reality, the shift from one to another was
gradual as one set of attitudes blended into
another and coexisted for a long time
• Does not take into account differences between
different socio-economic groups in regard to
death
• What caused changes in attitudes towards death?
– Relationship between the changing role of
religion in people’s lives and attitudes towards
death remains unclear
THE END
• Work performed thus far indicates that
even a subject as apparently timeless
and unchanging as death does have a
history
– People’s perceptions of death did change
over time and these changes tell us quite a
bit about the lives of people in the past
and the way they view themselves and the
world around them