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“Scotland's contribution to American balladry is a subject which was either glossed over or neglected entirely by Cecil Sharp, the English folklorist and ballad collector, when he came over to the United States in search of traditional song poetry. Over here we are indebted to Sharp and to Miss Maud Karpeles for exploring the back country and helping us find what we had. Their visits were fruitful and their English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians is an exemplary work. But it is regrettable that a Scottish folklorist, familiar and in tune with Lowland traditions, was not close at hand to make a few claims of his own. Somebody needed to suggest that Scotland had as good a claim to half the British ballads Sharp collected in Tennessee, Virginia and North Carolina as England has. Somebody might have suggested that English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians is a misleading title - that British Folk Songs would have been more accurate. For, after all, the most authoritative editor in the business, Francis J. Child, had clearly recognised two national traditions in his monumental English and Scottish Popular Ballads, which is the keystone work on which all subsequent studies have been based.”

“Scotland's passage from a mainly pastoral and agrarian society to a commercial and industrial one was brutal, rapid and relentless. In that transition, an entire peasant class, the cottars - perhaps as much as half of the rural population - was lost forever. They and tens of thousands of even poorer people were forced off the land across the Lowlands, Highlands and islands. They ended up in towns, cities and planned villages, they worked in mills, mines, quarries and iron works, or they emigrated to other parts of the world, or became soldiers, sailors, engineers, administrators and merchants in the service of the British Empire or the companies that thrived under its bellicose protection. Many prospered, many did not.”

“Scotland's potential independent membership of the EEC may be important here. The tightening of our links with the Common Market could broaden our intellectual horizons to include Paris, Frankfurt and Milan, as well as Oxford and London (this would, of course, be a reforging of intellectual ties between Scotland and Continental Europe). In discovering these other traditions, we may be stimulated to rediscover our own, buried intellectualism. But without this European dimension, it may well be, Scotland will remain culturally chained to England, even if politically sovereign.”

“Scotland was a coal economy and it was from the coalfields of Fife, the Lothians, Lanarkshire and Ayrshire that modest six-coupled steam locomotives of late-Victorian design hauled trains of wagons to the towns and cities, where coal was then used for heating, industry and transport. Practically every room in every household had a coal fire and the belching chimneys of factories ensured that the air in industrial areas was usually filthy with sooty smoke and, in autumn and winter, thick smogs enveloped the cities. The porous sandstone from which most of central Scotland's buildings were constructed was consequently uniformly black with absorbed pollution. People smoked everywhere - at home, at work, on transport, in cafes, bars and restaurants and even at their seats in the cinema. Clothing became saturated in smoke from coal and tabacco alike and so, for housewives, doing the washing was a constant burden.”

“Scots are born exiles, and Scotland the perfect country to be exiled from. Do not imagine that I am running down Scotland. Far from it. ... No, what I mean is that Scotland's beauties, though undeniable, are obvious ones, easy to carry in the heart, easy even to describe to the benighted members of less fortunate races. Lakes, islands and mountains, heather and rowan, broad straths and narrow glens - these are jewels easily worn in the memory.”

“Scots have sat to sip alcohol with friends for centuries. The coorie roadside coach houses with space to tether a horse may since have been upgraded into speakeasies with copper fittings but the original idea endures. They are still a place to let thoughts uncoil after a tough day out in the world, where it is possible to be solitary and sociable at the same time.”

“Scots is a West Germanic language with a literature going back more than 800 years, yet Scotland is a country where only English is compulsory in school, and where Scotland's history is barely taught beyond primary school, and where (non-Scottish) newspaper owners have been known to prohibit the reviewing of Scottish books on the grounds that this would be 'provincial', while the myopic hegemony of the Anglocentric media enshrines a set of attitudes which routinely ignores or belittles our culture.”

“Scots words to tell to your heart how they wrung it and held it, the toil of their days and unendingly their fight. And the next minute that passed from you, you were English, back to the English words so sharp and clean and true - for a while, till they slid so smooth from your throat you knew they could never say anything that was worth the saying at all.”

“Scott Brooks you mean the world to me. I love you. You as a man, I never met anybody like you. So selfless. You don't take the credit for nothing, Even though you deserve all of it. I love you and your family for always taking me in, Believing in me, Texting me late at night when I was going crazy. Thank you. Thank you.”

“Scott Brown may be the last Republican to win a statewide fight in Massachusetts for a very long time. He caught the machine flat-footed in January 2010 when he out-hustled Martha Coakley and stole the Senate seat Ted Kennedy held all those years. And since then, the Democrats haven't lost a single statewide fight.”

“Scott could feel the contents of his stomach flip over and over on themselves. He turned to the side and retched, frothy yellow bile spilled out onto the newspaper covered floor, filling the room with the putrid stench of previously ingested alcohol. 'Look's like someone can't hold their drink,' McBlane said, and Dominic and Shugg laughed. Scott was still staring at the steam rising from his evacuated stomach contents as he heard the hammer fall. The dull crack of bone splintering under its weight.”

“Scott has to be one of the most talented artists I've ever seen. He really captures his subjects in a unique way. He is extremely generous as well. How many artists are willing to donate some of their best works to charity? The Texas Sports Hall of Fame has benefited greatly from Medlock's donated paintings, which are the cornerstones of our auction!”