Regional Strength and English Language Literature: A Note on Scotland and Our South

REGIONAL STRENGTH AND ENGLISH LANGUAGE LITERATURE: A NOTE ON SCOTLAND AND OUR SOUTH By Kiffin Rockwell When I was a boy, thinking I could write, I worried that I had nothing to say. Now, no longer concerned with writing, Everything that happens is a poem. As in the United States the great cleavage is between North and South, the great cleavage in Great Britain is between England and Scotland. There is blood-kinship linking North Britain and American Southerner, and a host of historic parallels, of which the critical ones are Calvinism and military defeat. Indeed, in my own boyhood in North Carolina, and particularly among my cousins of the Scotland Neck region, it was rather hard to distinguish the tradition of the Confederacy from that of The Forty-Five. The Scots proper were probably the first definable "ethic," English-speaking group of Americans. Their descendants are in every state, but nowhere , I suppose, more frequent than in Southern Appalachia. Every community in Western North Carolina has its Buchanans. Erskines are fewer, but gave their name to what used to be a very typical small college—one that I hope may survive (Buchanan was, you may remember, the President before Lincoln). The writer's own connection includes Abernathy (or Abernethy), Ayres (or Ayers), and Marshall (or Mareschal, etc. ) in addition to other North Britain names not always distinguishable from the Sassenach form. Brown, James, Johnson, and Smith (or Smythe) may be Scotch or English. But Stewart and Stuart, like Scott, are always Scot. A great augmentation of Scottish blood came to the South by way of Northern Ireland. These Scotch—Irish provided the type of Andrew and Thomas J. Jackson (called Stonewall). If Washington and Lee represent the best English component in America, Alexander Hamilton (though he was born on the wrong side of the planet, and between Europe and America) and John Calhoun represent the troublesome brilliance of the Scots (notorious from Saint Augustine's day to our own). At least half the governors, senators, and millionaires of the Southeast seem to have been, at least loosely, of the quasi-mythical "Scotch-Irish" stock. But arts and letters have their representation, too. The name Fa(u)lkner is Scotch-Irish, though I don't know the man's family tree. Ellen Glasgow's origin is obvious, but whether directly or by way of Ulster, I can't say. If you take her back far enough, she would be related to those "Kerns and Gallowglasses" whom Macbeth slew for Good King Duncan. Edward Macdowell, the leading American composer of a previous generation , and a soldier or two of the same name, bear Scotch-Irish labels. In fact, if an American has a name in Mac-or in O-, but is protestant, the family is very likely to 38 be "Scotch-Irish." (This term I write with or without quotation marks to indicate that it is a little too precise to be always put into quotation, and a little too vague always to go unmarked. Scotland has, like the South, a tradition of Calvinism and unsuccessful rebellion. It also has a very important mountaineer, highland population. This was in the mind of Kephart who called the first major contribution to the literature, Our Southern Highlanders. The folk-arts, the speech, and numerous traits of Appalachian people, derive (not exclusively, of course) from Scotland, as do tools, dietary habits, and superstitions. It would be worth the trouble to investigate how the mountain use of corn follows a previous use of oats; to what extent is the old mountain cabin, which is not the Scandinavian type, though our books trace the log-cabin to the Swedes on the Delaware, a descendant of Scots domestic building. (The principle differences result from the scarcity of timber in Scotland, and its former abundance in America.) The great difference between Scotland and the South was in education: like North Germany, North Britain received with the Protestant Reformation one great blessing, general literacy and the drive for intellectual distinction. If Hamilton is a fine example of the displaced Scotsman, perhaps the greatest philosopher of modern times is another. Emanuel Kant was a Scottish Prussian, who may perhaps not...