...He is wearing WOAD. All that blue stuff on his body. Surely that is English? See below*
This has to be the worst Scottish themed movie since David Niven was Bonnie Prince Charlie.
Of course both of them should should have been wearing Nicky Tams to ever get involved in Scottish history - such a rats' nest of a theme!
I am certainly going to invest in Nicky Tams** because when I watch today's movies 90 percent of them make me feel as if tiny rodents are running up my thighs. Or maybe I should find a less funky cinema. (I hear something out there in the dark, scratching.)
Well no-one ever said it was easy being an unpaid movie critic.
*Julius Caesar tells us (in de Bello Gallico) that the Britanni used to mark their bodies with vitrum; this has often been assumed to mean that they painted or tattooed themselves with woad. However vitrum does not translate to "woad", but probably more likely refers to a type of blue-green grass which was common at the time.[1] The Picts may have gotten their name (Latin Picti which means painted folk or possibly tattooed folk) from their practice of going into battle naked except for body paint or tattoos. However, more recent research has cast serious doubt on the assumption that woad was the material the Picts used for body decoration. Contemporary experiments with woad have proven that it does not work well at all as either a body paint or tattoo pigment. Highly astringent, when used for tattooing or placed in wounds woad produces quite a bit of scar tissue and, once healed, no blue is left behind. The common use of dung as an ingredient in traditional woad.
**Nicky Tams: e pieces of string ring used by farm workers to tie their trousers below the knee. But you knew that...
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