I was listening to the corries today and found my self getting rather angry. Why? I hear you say. What's it got to do with polotics?

Well it was the song. It seems that if a band wants to play up on it's scottishness then the thing they do is sing of the glories of the jacobites and bony prince charley.

Now I am not a rangers fan, if you had to shoe horn me into a t-shirt it would be green (please don't) BUT my family were Williamites. Like many many other scottish families.

Popular culture (not just music but TV too) tells me that this somehow makes me less scottish.

The jacobite/williamite issue was not a catholic/protestant thing.

It was no more and english/scottish thing than it was a scotish/irish thing. It was a dingdong between scots who decided there wern't enough claymores so they called on their allies. (england for william and ireland for James)

And it was NOT a importing of german royalty. Mary was bony prince charlies sister (100% scottish) and William was his cousin (50% scottish) .

What it WAS was a fight between two ideas. a divine right monarchy (jacobite) vs. a constitutional monarchy (williamite)


It seems unfair that half of scotland doesn't get to celebrate their heritage and is left too feel less scottish because they fought for the idea of a constitutional monarchy.


So how do we go about bringing a more balanced view of this very public part of our past?