The aim of this study has been the examination of the form, structure, metre, language and style of that body of verse written in Middle Scots which is characterized by long lines whose metre is accentual and marked by alliteration in certain consecutive stressed syllables. Most of the Middle Scots works which merit this description are composed in alliterative stanzas of thirteen rhyming lines: nine long lines followed by a wheel of four short lines. The method followed has been to first submit one long poem to detailed examination and to apply the data and comparisons thus assembled, and a tailored version of the method, to an examination of the other works.

At the beginning of the twenty first century, thousands of adult Europeans are playing Scotsmen. They dress up in kilts and tartan, parade in military-style bagpipe bands, toss tree trunks at Highland Games, commemorate Scottish soldiers of the past, and re-enact their vision of Scottish history at ‘Celtic’ and medieval fairs. Their largest festivals attract more than 25 000 people each year, and their more elaborate clubs are recognised by Scottish Clan chiefs. The ‘Scots’ of Europe do not usually claim to be Scottish – neither by birth, descent, or residence. Their performances are Scottish masquerades, and openly declared so. Unlike their cousins in North America and Australasia, the European impersonators only very rarely insist that their Scottish performances express their ‘ethnic’ identity. And yet, the European masquerade is a quest for roots and ancestors, too. This study demonstrates that by playing Scotsmen, the ‘Scots’ of Europe attempt to reconnect with their Celtic, Nordic, or otherwise pre-modern heritage. They feel that their own customs, songs, games, and tribes were lost to the forces of modernisation – but that some of it survived in the Scottish periphery. They employ Scotland as a site of memory, as ersatz history. This thesis is a study of European nostalgia. It examines the many men and women who attempt to rediscover their traditions and histories. It is concerned with what Jay Winter calls the ‘memory boom’; the growing public preoccupation with history and its remembrance. It argues that Scotland – or rather, dreams of Scotland – have a special resonance in the European memory boom. This study touches upon the fields of public history, memory, and festive culture. In order to understand how the past is remembered and re-imagined in Europe today, the author left the archive and questioned the commemorators. This study relies on original fieldwork conducted in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Scotland during 2009 and 2010. The thesis’ focus is a qualitative one.

This thesis examines publicity exploitation in practice and the possible legal response of Scots law to that exploitation. It argues that the common law in Scotland is not capable of providing a coherent and principled right of publicity for individuals, and that a statutory right is instead required. By examining the nature of publicity exploitation and the activities that constitute publicity, it becomes clear that there are a number of different methods by which an individual’s “persona” – name, image, identity and reputation – can be used to enhance the goods and services of others, and that this enhancement is something for which other parties are willing to pay. The first part of this thesis explores publicity in practice, in order to derive a framework and vocabulary on which to build the subsequent legal analysis. One conclusion reached here is that, whereas much case law and academic commentary focuses on the unauthorised use of persona, authorised exploitation is more common and more lucrative for the individual. Both authorised and unauthorised use therefore need to be represented in a publicity right. The second part explores justifications for establishing a legal right to regulate the exploitation of publicity and to enable the control of such exploitation by the individual in question. These justifications reflect the dual interests at stake in publicity rights, being dignitarian interests in the use and control of one’s persona, and economic interests in the financial value of such use. The third part of the thesis draws upon the findings of the first two parts in order to assess the most appropriate legal classification of a right of publicity. The conclusion reached is that publicity cannot be sufficiently protected through established real rights or personal rights. Instead, the hybrid nature of publicity, comprising dignitarian and economic interests, should most appropriately be protected through a right in the nature of exclusive privilege (a concept already known in Scots law). This right is capable of enabling the necessary control of persona for the individual, subject to appropriate limitations to recognise the competing interests of other parties. These limits include freedom of expression and cultural communication. The final conclusion is that such a statutory right of exclusive privilege would be best placed to give principled and coherent effect to a right of publicity in Scots law.

Spatial competition indices for Scots pine and birch growing in heterogeneous Caledonian forest in Glen Affric were developed. Competition indices (CIs) have frequently been used in empirical models of individual tree growth. However, the contribution of CIs to the predictive ability of growth models is often very small. The poor performance of CIs may relate to the choice of spatial descriptors and functional form of the index. To improve CI performance a novel approach utilising neural networks and simulated annealing for the optimisation of CIs was developed.

Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) represents around 16% of the area of commercial conifer plantations in Great Britain, but around 30% in north and north-eastern Scotland. Most of the timber produced from these forests goes into lower-value markets such as fencing and panel products, and only a small proportion is converted into high-value structural timber. In order to maximise financial returns from this resource in the medium and long term, it will be necessary to increase the outturn of structural timber. However, this requires knowledge of the variation in those wood properties that influence structural timber performance and of the effects of silviculture on wood quality. Changes in silvicultural practices in recent decades—wider initial spacings, a preference for artificial regeneration, and an increased use of mechanised thinnings, have led to concerns about the suitability of Scots pine timber for use in structural applications due to potentially poorer stem form, a greater proportion of juvenile wood and larger, more numerous knots. As part of the research presented here, novel predictive equations were developed for the key physical, mechanical and branching properties that determine structural timber quality in Scots pine, namely: microfibril angle, wood density, clearwood bending strength and stiffness, and branch number, size, insertion angle and status (alive or dead). Simulations were carried out using these equations to examine the effects of different silvicultural regimes on each wood and branch property of interest. Based on these simulations it is recommended that in order to produce high quality Scots pine timber, trees are planted at narrower initial spacings and grown on longer rotations than currently prescribed, and, where appropriate, thinnings should be delayed. Together, these measures will restrict final branch size and the amount of mechanically inferior juvenile wood in the final crop.

Thesis (doctoral)--Berlin, 1935. / Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. [vii]-viii).

This investigation into the origins of Scottish Standard English in the eighteenth century is conducted using the correspondence of James Duff, 2nd Earl Fife, to his factor William Rose over a 26 year period in the late eighteenth century, supported by biographical and historical linguistic data. The presence in Fife's writing of contemporaneously identified Scotticisms has been used as an indication of Fife's use of Scots language. A linguistic analysis of the Scotticisms found in Fife's writing showed no restriction in the use of any linguistic category. A quantitative investigation as to which extralinguistic factors of influence promoted the use of Scotticisms showed that the topic of Fife's communication was the greatest influence on his of Scotticisms but that purpose also played a part in determining his Scots language use. Fife's use of Scotticisms was also influenced by his social networks, with an increase in Scots lexicon in letters from Scotland and an increase in Scots syntax when there was no social pressure present to maintain Standard English. A qualitative analysis of Fife's use of Scotticisms showed that he employed Scots variants for pragmatic purposes. Referring to theories of second language acquisition and language contact, these results were interpreted to suggest that Fife maintained the Scots language of his childhood and acquired Standard English by education to become a bilingual adult, although from the relatively standardised nature of his writing. it appears that some vernacular shift had taken place throughout his lifetime. The evidence from Fife's correspondence suggests that any Scots language remaining in the otherwise generally Standard English in Scotland might be due to incomplete shift to Standard English, requirements of register, and pragmatically motivated selection of Scots. All these options require that the emerging speakers of Scottish Standard English had a degree of bilingualism in Scots and English.

No description available.

From 1603 until 1707, England and Scotland were joined by what scholars have described as the regal union. A dynastic accident that came into being when James VI of Scotland inherited the English throne as well, it forced the two kingdoms to share a single monarch without creating a unified legal system, religious hierarchy, political structure or British culture. This dissertation re-evaluates the resultant Anglo-Scottish relationship by examining what English people actually said about the Scots and Scotland during moments when this union was strained. Specifically, it explores discourses about the Scots that circulated immediately after the regal union, and those which appeared during the Bishops’ Wars (1638-40), the Cromwellian Union (1651-59), the Popish Plot and Exclusion Crisis (1679-81), and the parliamentary union of 1707 that renegotiated the terms of engagement. By doing so, it challenges widespread assumptions that an uncomplicated xenophobia dominated English approaches to the Scots, and illuminates the existence of a more nuanced Anglo-Scottish dynamic that still informs British politics today. The Scots were too similar to be Other, and too different to be wholly Same – their “familiar alterity” creating difficulties for the English. At the start of the regal union, the notion of what constituted a Scot was malleable and utilitarian, which encouraged the English to reject their partnership in the creation of a new British kingdom. During periods of outright Scottish assertiveness, however, the English were forced to remember their northern neighbours. At each of these moments, the Scots variously became beggars, locusts, radicals, worthy partners in empire, protestant deliverers and even role models, before the English were able to write them out of the equation again. Finally, in 1707, a parliamentary union mandated that within official discourse, the Scots were to be interpreted as familiars and as equals, in an attempt to cement their position and thus solidify the Anglo-Scottish relationship. In many ways, this meant nothing more than a divergence between official and popular discourses, but it did permanently intertwine English and Scottish development, no matter how intense divisive pressures became. / Thesis (Ph.D, History) -- Queen's University, 2011-04-13 14:40:43.595

The French Wars of Religion were more than a battle for outright military victory. They were also a battle for the hearts and minds of the population of France. In this struggle to win over public opinion, often apparently peripheral or collateral issues could be engaged to make partisan points. Such was the case with the polemical literature surrounding Mary Queen of Scots. Mary was a very French figure. But Mary's complex career- her brief marriage to the dauphin Francois, her adoption of a tolerant religious policy in Scotland, her implication in the murder of her husband, and her imprisonment and execution at the hands of a Protestant monarch - inevitably made her an ambiguous subject for polemicists, Catholic and Huguenot alike. Based on a bibliographic survey of over four hundred and twenty sixteenth century editions in French relative to the Queen, and extensive reading of these works, this study explores both the general contours and finer detail of French public interest in the Queen of Scots. Chapter one discusses the shifting historical relationship between Mary and France, while chapters two and three deal with the steady stream of Catholic and Huguenot publications relating to Mary that appeared in the public domain between 1548 and 1586. The heart of this study, however, can be found in its final two chapters, which deal with the polemical literature that poured off the presses in response to the execution or martyrdom of Mary. These chapters investigate the interface between the printed word and other media in the Catholic response to the 'tragedy' of Fotheringhay, and examine the many facets of the image of the martyred Queen. The martyrdom of the Queen of Scots and dowager Queen of France became one of the most prominent themes in the propaganda of the Catholic League. Over one fifth of Catholic polemic in the period 1587-1588 touched on the event, contributing to the radicalisation of popular opinion against the king of France, Henri III.