These are the stories from Scottish history we should all know

I was recently challenged by a reader to say why I thought this had happened. My answer was simple and straight to the point. Generations of Scots are ignorant of this nation’s extraordinary history because they were never taught it at school. If they were taught it at all it was in the context of British history. Yes, some teachers would educate Scottish children about Robert the Bruce and Sir William Wallace, and Mary, Queen of Scots might get a mention, and maybe even John Knox and Rabbie Burns, though not usually in a positive way in the RC schools I attended.

And that was about it. That is why we have generations who know about Alfred the Great burning the cakes, the Norman conquest of 1066, Henry VIII and his six wives – legally only three because three of his marriages were annulled so technically never happened – and Elizabeth Gloriana and Oliver Cromwell, all of which are dated to before the Act of Union of 1707.

I have no problem with Scottish people learning ancient English history, and I quite accept that post-1707 we can talk of and learn about British history, but the fact is that Scotland did not cease to be a country at the Union and our long history should never be erased by people whose aim is to promote British nationalism – and by that I mean English nationalism.

It is my firm belief that if more Scots knew about Scotland’s history, especially as a truly independent nation for the best part of 900 years, then they would grasp this truth that can never be stated enough – those of us in the Yes movement are not out to win independence, but to regain it. To regain the nation, and we will not be creating a new independent country; we will simply be re-establishing Scotland as the nation it was and can be again.

The reader also asked me for my opinion on what events and personalities from Scottish history all Scots should know about. She asked: “What’s the 20-or-so things we need to know about Scottish history?”

That is a tough one, because inevitably I will miss something out that someone will consider an absolutely crucial facet of our history. Nevertheless I will give it a go today and over the next two weeks with subjects that I think all Scottish people should view as a primer on Scottish history – and principally I will show how Scotland was for almost 900 years an independent country and is still a nation itself, though trapped in an artificial construct – an unfair and unequal state we call the Union.

The great thing is that you can learn about the prime subjects from the many books written by experts in recent years. I would recommend any of Professor Sir Tom Devine’s works, as well as those of Michael Lynch, while Magnus Magnusson’s Scotland, the Story of a Nation and Alistair Moffat’s Scotland: A History from the Earliest Times are both highly readable zips through most of the basic stories. Mind you, don’t believe everything you read about Scotland on Wikipedia, but the Electric Scotland website is reliable.

I will write this question-led primer in chronological order, so let’s start this “need-to-know session” at the very beginning.

How old is Scotland? Let us distinguish between the nation of that name and the land mass that became Scotland, which is quite literally one of the oldest places on Earth. Some of the rocks in the north west are hundreds of millions of years old, such as Lewisian gneiss found in the hills and mountains of the Isle of Lewis and the far north-west of the mainland where some rocky outcrops have been found

to be up to three billions years old.The oldest fossil of a once-living creature was discovered at Cowie by fossil hunter Mike Newman, suggesting that life forms first emerged from the primordial soup here in Scotland more than

 million years ago.

INTERESTINGLY, for many millions of years Scotland was not attached to England. Indeed the two land masses that would later form our two countries inhabited different supercontinents, Scotland on Laurentia and England on Gondwana. They only joined together when continental drift crammed Scotland and England together along a line roughly between the Rivers Tweed and Solway.

Who were the first Scots and where did they come from? It is only in recent years that researchers using DNA samples have shown that Scotland’s first people possibly came from a variety of places including northern Spain and even Africa. Most palaeontologists and archaeologists agree that the last ice age about 20,000 to 30,000 years ago – also responsible for much of our dramatic landscape – was crucial in bringing people across the “bridge” from the European continent, but where exactly they came from and who they were and where they settled are all matters for ongoing research and debate.

We do know that skilled and cultured people were on Orkney for certain some 5000 years ago and more, for they created quite amazingly well-planned and engineered stone buildings such as Skara Brae around the time the Egyptians were thinking about building pyramids and Stonehenge was not even dreamt about. We know precious little more about prehistoric Scotland and those early Scots because they left behind only a modicum of tantalising clues such as stone circles and nothing in writing.

Already there was evidence of a distinct people occupying the islands of Scotland; perhaps we can consider those Orcadians as the first Scots.

Were the Romans the first to conquer Scotland? In the absence of any other available evidence about invaders, we can say that Imperial Rome came, saw and only partially conquered Scotland. They were the first visitors who recorded their activities and gave this land its first name – Caledonia. The historian Tacitus wrote of a great battle between the invading Roman legions and the Caledonian tribes under their leader Calgacus – the first Scot named in written history.

According to Tacitus he gave a stirring speech before the Battle of Mons Graupius in 83 or 84AD, but the Romans liked to exaggerate the prowess of their enemies to make themselves look good, while the legions were commanded by Tacitus’s father-in-law Agricola – for whom Tacitus was an excellent PR man.

The Caledonians may have lost that battle but their fierce resistance to Roman rule can be shown by the fact that the Romans built two walls to keep them out, Hadrian’s Wall and the Antonine Wall.

They abandoned the latter, which crossed almost 40 miles of the central belt between Old Kilpatrick on the Clyde and Bo’ness on the Forth, only eight years after it was completed in 154AD, retreating behind the much larger and more fortified Hadrian’s Wall, which became the de facto border of Scotland.

WHO were the Picts? The Roman time in Scotland remains an interesting period to study, not least because they gave us the name used for the tribes who occupied the land north of the Forth and Tay – the Picti, or painted people. Whether these tribes really did paint themselves blue or were just early patrons of tattoo parlours we do not know, as we have so little information about them, not even their language.

Archaeologists, though, have made progress in recent years in increasing our understanding of these fascinating people. We do know they were impressive warriors because they defeated an invading force from Northumbria at the battle of Dun Nechtain or Nechtansmere in 685, a defeat in which the Northumbrian king Ecgfrith was killed – a fact which probably convinced rulers south of the Forth to stay there and eventually retreat to Northumbria.

We also know that the Picts traded with the Romans at times of peace and also with Celtic tribes in continental Europe. Archaeologists have made sufficient finds of objects indicating such contacts, yet apart from their stone monuments, they left no legacy that we can say defines the Picts.

We know, too, that the Picts interacted with people who came from Ireland, the Scots who occupied what is now Argyll and called their kingdom Dalriada.

Whether the Scots defeated the Picts in battle or simply integrated with them, possibly through marriage, is uncertain. We do know that both Scots and Picts were Christianised by missionaries such as Columba of Iona in the sixth century, though Christianity had actually come to Scotland at Whithorn in Galloway more than a century earlier.

With all the tribes of Scotland becoming Christian, it is easier to imagine that mergers and marriages were less difficult to contract, yet it is likely that battles also took place as rival kings and lords sought to dominate the land and its peoples. The Picts were the main force preventing the warlike Northumbrians from invading Scotland but they had help from the Scots, and at Athelstaneford in 832, Pictish king Oengus II defeated the enemy from the south after a dream in which Saint Andrew told him he would win. A white cross in the shape of an X appeared in the blue sky on the morning of the battle, and thus the St Andrew’s Cross or Saltire became Scotland’s flag – one of the oldest, most continuously-used flags of any nation.

Though we don’t know exactly how it happened, by the year 843 the Scots and Picts were sufficiently united to have one king who ruled over both peoples. His name was Kenneth MacAlpin – we do not even know whether he was a Pict or Scot, but his unification of Scots and Picts under one crown is, to me, the real foundation of the nation of Scotland.

The kingdom of Strathclyde, centred on Dumbarton, was still a Brythonic entity and the Lothians remained in the hands of the Northumbrians, who themselves were stubbornly refusing to join the Anglo-Saxon takeover of England, but Kenneth and his dynasty ruled over what was recognisably Scotland. Indeed by the reign of Donald II, who died in 900AD,  there was no longer a Pictish kingdom or Dalriada, but one kingdom known as Alba.

That period of Scottish history is woefully unknown to most Scots, and the events in Scotland in the seventh to 10th centuries are mostly deduced from Irish and English clerical sources, yet we should all be aware that this was when a truly independent Scotland came into being. It would be nearly a century before England could claim nationhood as we understand it, and it would be a long time before such niceties as borders were decided, but Scotland was now a nation.

Was Macbeth a good king or a homicidal maniac? No-one in Scottish history has had their personal reputation more traduced than Macbeth, who was King of Alba from 1040 to 1057. He did indeed gain the throne by violence, but killed King Duncan in battle rather than in his bed.

According to some accounts, Macbeth’s reign was largely peaceful and he did indeed visit the Pope in Rome, where he spread alms to the poor like confetti. He had to fight off an English invasion of his territory, but was killed by the future King Malcolm III at the Battle of Lumphanan.

We’ll learn more about Malcolm Canmore next week.