Posted by Ed Kiser on December 09, 2006 at 16:34:04 from 64.12.116.6 user Kisered.
In Reply to: Re: coals to.. was'Teach Your Grandmother' posted by Jon on December 08, 2006 at 17:13:14:
As one that spent the first 40 years of life in North Carolina, I am indeed aware of the strong Scottish influence on that area.
I grew up in the county called "Scotland". The town I lived in was called Laurinburg, named after the McLaurin clan that originally settled that area in the colonial days. A near-by small college is called "Flora McDonald College" which we affectionally called "Flossie Mac".
In the mountains of western North Carolina is held annually the Highland Games which is very much a reflection of the Scottish heritage, with the wearing of the kilt, tossing the Caber (we called it throwing a telephone pole), and bagpipe playing with dancers doing the very traditional Scottish Fling and other assorted dances of that ilk.
In high school, it was decided that the band uniform would be Scottish with the wearing of the tartan of the clan McLaurin. It was decided not to have majorettes, as "such was considered to be unseemly." Interesting word. Interesting that I should remember its usage in this context. But there was some disappointment that there would be no majorettes, expressed by half the school students (guess which half...) Instead the band was to be lead by four pipers who, along with the Grand Major leading the band with his long baton, wore the tall beaver hat that is so obviously British in origin. The band teacher was a former veteran of the British army during WWII, and taught the band to march in the very traditional British army manner, with the swinging of the hips (which is exaggerated by those kilts) and the high stomping of the feet when halting - all so very different from what we were accustomed to doing. But with a bit of work, and some yelling some expressions that, being originally very British in nature, were perhaps luckily not all that well understood by the band members, but did carry the message of his disappointment in the execution of some move. But we did make quite a grand showing when the band appeared in parades along with other bands from other schools. It was quite a magnificent display. Oh, yes, they played some music too.
Many of my teachers there in that high school had Scottish last names, descended from those original settlers of that area. It was the custom that if you did not know someone's name, you called him "Mac" and that was quite acceptable, and probably not far wrong.
My first exposure to "American History" was taught by a McKensey from a book that was printed by the "Oxford Press". Not an American publication. The American Revolutionary War was presented from the British point of view, with expressions such as, "General Lord Cornwallis and his Army of British Regulars, and rebel leader Washington and his band of rabble." The accounts of the battles were defined as losses or victories as defined by that British point of view. It was a year or two later, as the American History subject came up again, that I realized that "we" had been on the other side.
This British view was perhaps encouraged from the fact that during that conflict, many of the local colonials were Loyalists, and fought on the British side, under command of British officers. The "Battle of King's Mountain" (in North Carolina, just above the South Carolina line, and west of Charlotte, NC) was between British forces let by Colonel Fergeson (the inventor of the Fergeson breech loading rifle) and his Redcoats consisting of Loyalists from the Scotland County area against those settlers in the mountain area of North Carolina, not a regular army, just a band of frontiersmen resenting intrusions into their mountains, who lived by hunting with their rifles daily. The British force was almost totally destroyed by the encounter, with the Colonel being buried there on the top of that King's Mountain, there still today. So the local Scotland County folk refer to that as the "Disaster of King's Mountain" as it was their ancestors that paid the heavy price for their loyalty to the King.
Perhaps then it is no small surprise for me as a youngster to become to thrilled by these stories by a British author about British children on Holiday in the Lake District of England. There is a lot of respect for that Mother Country that was taught me early in those schools of Scotland County by teachers named McLean, McGregor, McKensey, McCloud, McLaurin, McGee, McGill. So Ransome came easy to me, as perhaps it was a touch of that other "home."
Ed Kiser, Kentucky