by W.M.
Originally published in The Argosy (Strahan & Co.) vol.1 #1 (Dec 1865).
Are all Scotchmen alike? Is it enough to say of a man that he is a Scotchman to convey a full and accurate idea respecting him? On the contrary there is perhaps a greater diversity of character in Scotland than in any other country. Let a classification of Scotchmen be, with equal fairness, brevity, and modesty, attempted by one who thinks that though national peculiarities cannot be artificially maintained, yet that their decay is ever to be lamented, and that cosmopolitanism is infinitely detestable.
The Canny Scot is so well known as scarcely to require description. He carries caution, cunning, and selfishness to excess. Deceitful when a purpose is to be accomplished, he is not habitually deceitful. One thing he never loses sight of—his own interest. But of his own interest he is not the most enlightened judge. His sycophancy disgusts, and he forgets that a cowardly reserve may war with a comprehensive prudence. As a general rule, address accomplishes more than tact, tact more than talent, talent more than genius. It is to address, to adroitness, to astuteness, that the Canny Scot trusts. For the most part the Canny Scot is a native of the north-eastern part of Scotland. The weakness of the Canny Scot is, that he is glad—not from hypocrisy, but from vanity--to get credit for virtues that he does not possess. So far from being the normal Scotchman, the Canny Scot is nowhere so warmly hated as in Scotland itself.
It would be more easy to demonstrate that the Uncanny Scot is the normal Scotchman. The Uncanny Scot has many noble qualities:—he is romantic, chivalrous, generous; an idealist, but wild and reckless. From vice he is altogether free, but almost every step that he takes is a folly, and almost every word that he utters is an indiscretion; and he is more terribly punished for his indiscretions and his follies than other men for their vices. The tragic remorses, which from time to time assail him, do not make him wiser; they simply intensify his lawless and anarchic temper. Yet he is keenly-sensitive to ridicule and to good report. He dreads calumny, and would fain stand well with earnest men. It is in the reaction against the Canny Scot, and in the loathing for the ecclesiastical despotism of Scotland, that we must seek the secret of the Uncanny Scot's conduct. His life is a painful and fruitless fatality, and his faculties and aspirings are invariably wasted. His consolation when dying must be that, if he has accomplished little, he has had magnificent dreams.
The Dour Scot is the grim, hard, pertinacious Scot. Work is for him a fierce and gloomy pleasure. Necessity may turn him from his purpose—reason never. Though a singularly unamiable mortal, he can do memorable things if you set him to the right sort of labour, humour him a little, and carefully abstain from thwarting him.
The Pawkie Scot is the Scot who is shrewd, and who prides himself on his shrewdness. He is a born lawyer, Jesuit, casuist; he is at once an intellectual athlete and an intellectual detective; and he is often guilty of monstrous cruelties and villanies, but from the love of intellectual excitement and triumph, not from avarice or ambition. The devil he admires, not for being wicked, but for being clever.
The Snell Scot resembles in many points the Pawkie Scot; but it is the reward, and not the pursuit, which principally fascinates him. His intellect is sharper than that of the Pawkie Scot, but not so robust. The Pawkie Scot has a thousand different schemes, the Snell Scot fastens through life on one scheme. He scruples not to employ all means, yet he prefers a strict economy of means. In every profession he may be found; but whatever his occupation, you always see him going straight to his object.
The Blate Scot is the bashful Scot. Now there are bashful men everywhere, but the Blate Scot carries bashfulness to its most absurd degrée. Yet if Scottish bashfulness is unmatched, Scottish impudence is unmatched too; and it has not, like Irish impudence, any atoning attributes. It is coarse, ugly, fierce, and greedy.
The Holy Willie Scot is an accomplished hypocrite, though not a hypocrite of the Tartuffe type. He has no tragic dignity, he is simply the caricature of Scottish Calvinism. The Scotch have strong appetites and strong passions. As they are taught, however, from infancy, that passion and appetite are things in themselves evil, they are always in open or secret revolt against nature. Holy Willie is one of the secret rebels. Being orthodox, moreever, he does not think himself obliged to be moral.
The Neerdoweel Scot resembles the English scapegrace. For the English scapegrace, however, there is hope; for the Scottish Neerdoweel, none. The Scotch heart, though full of tenderness, has no mercy for the sinner, and hunts him down with the ferocity of the bloodhound. Hence, if the Scotch blackguard is the worst and most incorrigible of blackguards, it is the fault of his grimly merciless country.
The Dominie Scot is the pedantic Scot. Few Scotchmen are quite free from pedantry. Nearly all young Scotchmen think that they are bound to play the Dominie—bound to instruct and illuminate the universe. The moment a young Scotchman enters England, he appoints himself reformer, professor, missionary, and judge; he knows everything, and he wants to teach everybody. Gradually he learns a little wisdom and modesty. But there are Scotchmen who, whether they remain at home, or travel the world over, can never put off the Dominie. A Scotchman is, spite of genuine and noble qualities, not a very attractive animal at the best, and his dominie mania does not add to his popularity.
The Guffawing Scot is the man whose life is one long, loud laugh. Only the most conceited of cockneys can venture to maintain that the Scotch have no wit and humour. They have abundance of both. But the enjoyment of laughter is, with the Scotch generally, and with the Guffawing Scot in particular, a thing apart from humour and wit. The Scotch are better laughers than the English, and the Guffawing Scot is the best laugher in the world. There is talk in these days of Homeric, truly colossal laughter; but Homeric laughter is transcended by the Guffawing Scot.
The Douce Scot is an Epicurean, but a sort of earnest Epicurean. He is not a coward, and he is not selfish. His pleasures, however, and his good qualities, are all of the quiet kind. Delighted to serve others, he is still more delighted to brood on his own thoughts. He has contentment and cheerfulness as a natural heritage, and they are his whole philosophy and religion.
The Braw Scot is the handsome, gallant Scot, who represents not the higher attributes of his countrymen, but their normal virtues, their spontaneousness, their sympathy. He is neither canny nor uncanny, but joyous, brave, unaffected—a natural gentleman, with just as much of the mountaineer's wildness as is pleasant. Of his huge strength he manifests no more than is sufficient to keep fops and fools from insulting him.
The Wearifu' Scot is the monotonous creature who insists on dragging you into the barren realm of.cants and commonplaces and provincial platitudes. He is prosaic as a grindstone, and has about the same amount of music and of meaning in him. With his own small affairs, and with Scotland's small notabilities, he bores you to death. If he were a leech seizing you, he could at least be shaken off; but he is a tapeworm, piercing into your vitals, and there abiding. Keep clear of this dreary mortal if you wish to avoid a worse death than his who perishes of thirst in the desert.
The Pirnickety Scot is the being who seems as if he had been made with a pair of the smallest scissors, and as if he thought that a pair of the smallest scissors were the fittest weapon to apply to all questions. He is sharp, subtle, always darting from point to point, and always talking about precision.
The Thrawn Scot is the rancorous, cantankerous Scot, who is so perverse that he is never so displeased with himself as when he has so far forgotten his nature as to be pleased for a moment with something or somebody. He cultivates bad temper, half with artistic skill and half with religious zeal.
The Arglebargleing Scot is the disputatious Scot. He is the pest of Scotland, and England would rejoice if Scotland kept him to herself. It is really no small annoyance, when you have made the most unimportant and inoffensive statement, to be immediately assailed by a whole battery of arguments against it. Not the smallest assertion does the Arglebargleing Scot allow you to make, without giving it a direct and decided denial. Even if you yield the point, he goes on combating. THe finds that you have yielded too much, or have not yielded in the right fashion. Your very silence is provocative of deadly conflict.
The Flodden Scot is the Scot who maintains that the Scotch lost the battle of Flodden by mistake; that the English are a match for the world, and that the Scotch have always been more than a match for the English, and that all the most famous British victories for two hundred years have been gained by Scottish valour. The belief is harmless enough.
The Auldfarrant Scot is a kind of village Socrates. He is shrewd, knows a great deal, but does not parade either his shrewdness or his knowledge. People trust his counsels, like to hear his discourse; but he does not obtrude the former, and is not lavish of the latter. The characteristic of the Auldfarrant Scot is general sagacity.
The Bawbee Scot is the sordid, saving Scot. That the Scotch are a mean people, is about as true as that they are destitute of wit and humour. They are unboundedly hospitable, and, both as individuals and as a nation, they can be magnificently generous. For the things that really interest them, such as religion, they give enormous sums in the most ungrudging spirit. But it must be confessed that Scotch penuriousness is tragically minute, and cuts very keen; and the Bawbee Scot, without being absolutely a miser, has, in his cupidity, a good deal of the maniac.
The Montrose Scot is the Scot whose whole being is grace and genius and chivalry and devotedness. In the hero and martyr, Montrose, Scotland saw all her divinest elements blending into radiant beauty. But Scotland has had many Montroses, and she will have many more as long as the poetry and the pride of national memories are dear to her heart.
The Irving Scot is the prophetic Scot. Prophecy is not so much prediction as inspired and godlike utterance. The Scotch are, the English are not, a prophetic people. Of all recent Scottish prophets, incomparably the greatest was Edward Irving: a man whose nobleness the world knew not till the world saw his face no more. Those worship at his tomb who vilified and ridiculed him when he marched, a giant in the midst of the living. It is to the Irving or prophetic Scot that Scotland must look for moral and religious regeneration.
We have given some—we do not say that we have given all—of the types of the Scottish nature.
In the days when France and Scotland were allies, the French thoroughly understood and warmly valued the Scotch. The English have never either understood or valued them. It cannot be said that herein the English have been influenced, even by prejudices. They have simply repeated some absurd jargon about the Scotch which had once been uttered, a jargon which might be called a calumny, if it were not so helplessly absurd.