There's Scots and "Scotch-Irish" in my DNA, and I like to think about Bannockburn and Culloden, Wallace and the Bruce and Bonnie Prince Charlie, but romanticism has its limits in the age of the EU.
I have no vote in this, but think I'd vote "no" if I did, and in any event I plan to raise a glass (I think there's a dust-covered bottle of Laphroaig in the basement somewhere, though I rarely touch the hard stuff these days) and toast Alba gu bràth (Scotland forever, for the Saxons among you, and cognate for you Irish ti Eireinn go bragh).
In the British Empire's high period the Highland regiments were the elite vanguards of Empire, though themselves no longer independent, a memory with a Middle Eastern theme in the pipe tune, "The Barren Rocks of Aden"
[view whole blog post ]