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This dissertation examines Scottish unionist political thought and intellectual history in the period from 1885-1886 to 1965. It provides an analytical examination of unionist positions examining such areas as political history, ecclesiology, sectarianism, historiography and unionist-nationalist sentiment. It contextualises unionist thought within Scotland's history and offers findings based on both archival and primary sources research along with a thorough background of historiography. It both contextualises and examines the complexities of Scottish unionism during this vital period between the Liberal Party's split over Irish Home Rule until the reorganisation of the Scottish Unionist Party in 1965. It illuminates the spectrum of unionist discourse during this period and demonstrates the complexities of Scotland's constitutional and cultural relationship with the rest of the United Kingdom.

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Glasgow, 1994. / Ph.D. thesis submitted to the Department of Celtic, Faculty of Arts, University of Glasgow, 1994. Includes bibliographical references. Print version also available.

This thesis is formed from original research into the cultural impact of Modern Spiritualism in Scotland during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Until the twenty first century academic scholarship has failed to recognise the historic importance of the Spiritualist movement's widespread popularity and the influence it had on art during this period. The findings of this research provide a new understanding and greater appreciation of art from this time. As academic investigation into Spiritualism's historic significance is largely absent, this study focuses on primary sources from an extensive range of Spiritualist literature, including Spiritualist magazines and newspapers. The number of cited artworks, which were discovered and analysed during this research, support the notion that investigation into Spiritualism's influence during this period is necessary. This thesis is divided into two parts: Part One focuses on artworks by Spiritualists intended for Spiritualist audiences. Chapter 1 outlines a history of the Spiritualist movement in Scotland for the first time in order to establish a context for discussion in the following chapters. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 highlight unknown artworks by Spiritualists, such as Jane Stewart Smith and David Duguid, and analyse how those artists responded to private and public Spiritualism in Scotland. Part Two reveals new interpretations of mainstream Scottish art but which art historians have not previously acknowledged as having Spiritualist associations. In Chapter 5, case studies of members of the Royal Scottish Academy demonstrate that Spiritualism did influence mainstream Scottish artists, such as Alfred Edward Borthwick and George Henry Paulin. Chapter 6 reconsiders the Celtic Revival in Scotland, specifically by re-evaluating current interpretations of John Duncan's work with reference to Duncan's Spiritualism. The final chapter examines war memorials in Scotland as a response to mass social bereavement and Spiritualism's increased popularity during and after the First World War.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Lehigh University, 1998. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 233-250).

In this paper, I first examine the Middle Scots poem, "Christis Kirk of the Green" (referred to as "Christ's Kirk"), and then study the poems in the Scottish vernacular which have been influenced by it. "Christ's Kirk", which may have been composed in the fifteenth century, has popular merry-making for its theme, and its creator has used a distinctive stanzaic form in his depiction of the sights of a rural fair. In my investigation, I have considered first the structural and thematic antecedents of "Christ's Kirk". My next step has been to examine its bibliographical and literary history. Thereafter, I have studied other poems of the same genre composed before the year 1560: "Peblis to the Play", "Sym and his brudir", and "The Justing and Debait at the Drum". The employment of the "Christ's Kirk" stanza — or a modified form thereof — for satirical accounts of social gatherings in eighteenth-century Scotland is the theme of Chapter 5, and its use by a modern poet describing the Edinburgh International Festival is examined in the final chapter of this thesis. By a study of these poems, drawn from five centuries of Scottish vernacular literature, I have demonstrated that the tradition established by "Christ's Kirk" has continued to be useful up to the twentieth century as one literary method of chronicling, in a satiric fashion, the actions of people at popular gatherings. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

This thesis examines the relationship between the character 'Deirdriu', depicted within Longes mac n- Uislenn, and the woman later referred to as Derdri, Deirdri, Deirdre or Derdrinne. It explores the initial construction and gradual evolution of this character, in relation to the manuscript tradition of Longes mac n-Uislenn and its descendants within the Ulster Cycle. It is proposed that the characterisation of Deirdriu constitutes a form of commentary upon the flawed nature of Conchobor mac Nessa’s kingship of Ulster, but that she is not a figure of sovereignty in the sense in which it has been understood by previous critics of the tradition. The thesis reassesses the contents, structure, and manuscript tradition of the textual witnesses to Longes mac n-Uislenn and Oidheadh Chloinne hUisneach, its later development, and assesses the validity of regarding both tales as primarily concerned with the portrayal of Deirdriu. It is argued that several distinct strands of material relating to the relationships between Deirdriu, the sons of Uisliu, Conchobor mac Nessa and Fergus mac Róich may be identified, ranging from the Early Medieval to the Early Modern period, and that these strands have exercised varying levels of influence upon subsequent revisions of these relationships, up to and including the period of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Irish Renaissance. The conclusions of this thesis proceed from close textual analysis of the primary source material, supplemented, where appropriate, by narratological theory. Chapter 1 introduces the issues to be considered, and reviews the relevant literature to date. Chapter 2 outlines the methodological approaches adopted throughout the following textual analysis. Chapter 3 defines the episodic structure of Longes mac n-Uislenn, and analyses its contents. Chapter 4 presents a detailed consideration of the Glenmasan Manuscript, the earliest extant witness to Derdriu’s evolution within the Early Modern period. Chapter 5 argues that the characterisation of Deirdriu within the Ulster Cycle constitutes a form of commentary upon the flawed nature of Conchobor mac Nessa’s kingship of Ulster – within the earlier tradition – and upon the compromised honour of Fergus mac Róich within the later.

In Scotland, the fact that the Scottish church was not reformed until quite late, at least in comparison to most of the rest of the Protestant churches on the continent, has meant that many historians and theologians have concentrated more on contemporary parallels of the 1550s and 1560, particularly Geneva, and tended to ignore other possible origins for the ideas of the Scottish Reformation. Certainly during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when Humanism finally ended the academic monopoly of the medieval Scholastics, Scots were familiar figures in the universities of France and western Germany. This would have allowed many Scottish students to experience the 'magisterial reformation' of the 1520s. This development of reform ideas by university magisters had its roots in the conciliar movement of the fifteenth century and in the radical nee-realist philosophy of Wyclif and Hus. In Scotland this can be traced as a tradition of progressivism which was passed down from one academic generation to the next. After the nee-realists who had been at Cologne during the 1440s, returned to Scotland in 1450, they helped to establish an academic atmosphere which encouraged continued study at Paris, Cologne and Louvain, and facilitated the introduction of Humanism by Bishop Elphinstone and Hector Boece towards the end of the fifteenth century. The reform ideas of these progressive academics were then adopted by John Adamson who was responsible for reforming the Dominican order in Scotland after 1511. Significantly, many young friars of this order appeared among the Scottish supporters of Luther a generation later. When Cologne and Paris Universities both condemned the Humanist Reformers during the 1520s, Scottish progressives were left with three broad options: acceptance of revived scholasticism at Paris, adoption of the radicalism of Zwingli in Zilrich, or support for the German reform of Luther. Few chose to make the long, unfamiliar trip to Switzerland, and many Scots took the first choice. Some however, chose to follow the trade routes to Denmark and the Baltic in order to reach the previously avoided nominalist centres of eastern Germany, particularly those Scots who had been influenced by the study of Greek which is associated with Erasmus. There they were exposed to the conciliatory personality and slightly more radical Lutheran teachings of Philip Melanchthon. These characteristics of the Greek lecturer at Wittenberg soon began to appear frequently in the lives of Scots who had contact with that university. Thus, the nonconfrontational yet progressive example of Melanchthon becomes a factor in the appearance of unity which emerged among reformers in Scotland in 1560. In this way, the long-established academic tradition of educated Scottish society can combine with the Baltic trade of the early sixteenth century to bring an example of moderate foreign reforms to the north-east of Scotland by the 1540s. Also, since most supporters of the reform movement in Scotland in 1560 had at least as great an association with Lutheran ideas as with the more recent developments of Calvinism, the study of the Scandinavian/Lutheran example helps to explain the origins of the regional diversity of ideas and practice in Reformation Scotland.

Despite the scarcity of source material and the difficulty of interpreting such evidence as exists, it is clear that the development of royal justice led to the emergence of a unified common law in medieval Scotland. This was achieved although no structure of central courts like that of England emerged until the fifteenth century. Instead royal justice was administered by courts based in the localities such as those of the sheriff and the burghs, or by courts such as those of the justiciar which went on circuit through the kingdom. Within this structure there operated from the thirteenth century a rule that actions concerning the recovery of land from intruders had to be raised by pleadable brieves. There were various types of such writs; the relevant ones were the brieves of dissasine and mortancestor, pleadable in the justiciar's court, and the brieve of right, pleadable in the sheriff and burgh courts. It appears that round these brieves there developed a considerable body of law, and at least some of them remained in use until the sixteenth century. It is against this background that the exclusion of the developing 'central' courts of the fifteenth century from cases concerning fee and heritage, or landownership, must be considered. These courts developed as a method of handling the judicial functions of parliament and the king's council. To begin with these functions were confined to the supervision and correction of the ordinary courts of the common law, but by the mid-fifteenth century the jurisdiction of council in particular as an alternative forum was established in most areas other than that of fee and heritage. This limitation, it is argued, continued because the common law still required that pleadable brieves (which were not addressed to either parliament orcouncil) be used to commence actions of that kind. Only when the pleadable brieves had fallen into desuetude in the first half of the sixteenth century did the council come to have jurisdiction in fee and heritage.

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