In the last forty years, there has been a steady increase in research on Scottish traditions of music and song. Growing from its roots in ‘collection’, the field (in Scotland) has been dominated by rather limiting methodological approaches. The study of Scottish folk music has seriously neglected post-­‐1960s cultural practices and the influences of hybridisation, professionalisation and commercialisation. These and related areas of the field are largely uncharted in departments of Music and Scottish Studies. One result, stemming from this problem, is a continuing confusion in the use of descriptive and ideological terms. ‘Folk music’ is the most widely used concept and its problematic and elusive meaning, its function for and understanding by industry professionals, is the focal point of this thesis. The aims of this thesis are to position current understandings of ‘folk’ as a term and a practice in the wider social and historical contexts of British folk music and to investigate the ways in which the discursive history of folk music informs contemporary cultural practices. My objective was to uncover, in particular, what, according to today’s performers and other industry participants, gives Scottish folk music its contemporary meaning. My thesis is designed to shed new light on the ideological and aesthetic constructions of folk music in Scotland.

This thesis examines the careers of the first four Lindsay earls of Crawford, 1380-1453. Each of these four Scottish earls played an important role in Scottish politics, though they have not been closely examined since A. W. C. Lindsay’s Lives of the Lindsays, or a memoir of the Houses of Crawford and Balcarres, published in 1849. This is despite the fact that these men figured in some of the major events in late medieval Scotland. David 1st earl of Crawford can be linked to the murder of David Stewart duke of Rothesay in 1401-2. David 3rd earl of Crawford (d. 1446) was a marriage ally of William 6th earl of Douglas who was judicially murdered in 1440 by William Crichton and James Douglas earl of Avondale in 1440. Evidence suggests this marriage alliance was a factor in the decision to commit the murder. Alexander 4th earl of Crawford (d. 1453) was involved in the famous Douglas-Crawford-Ross tripartite bond which cost William 8th earl of Douglas his life. All of the first four earls were involved, in different ways, in the disputes to determine the succession of the earldom of Mar during their careers. Although the barony of Crawford was in Lanarkshire, the earls’ main sphere of influence was south of the Mounth, where they held lands stretching from Urie near present-day Stonehaven to Megginch near Perth. Glen Esk, their largest holding, was in Forfarshire, which was where they exerted the most influence. They also maintained a degree of influence in Aberdeenshire, where they were the hereditary sheriffs. A few factors explain their ability to maintain this sphere of influence. The first was an ability to call out a significant armed band of men, something which the first, third and fourth earls of Crawford are all recorded to have done. Most also had an income from annuities from various burghs including Aberdeen, Dundee, and Montrose totaling about £200, and they can be demonstrated to have owned a house in Dundee and maintained connections with burgesses there. This may suggest they were involved in trade. David Lindsay, 1st earl of Crawford (d. 1407), who used all of the above means to propel himself to the top ranks of Scottish politics, also promoted himself through active engagement with the culture of chivalry and crusade. This earned him much praise from the contemporary chronicler, Andrew Wyntoun. There are hints that the third and fourth earl may have maintained this interest as well.

The thesis explores the history of the Scottish Enlightenment in its transatlantic context and, in particular, the diffusion of Scottish Enlightenment moral philosophy in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Scotland and the United States. This project is the first full-scale attempt to examine the tensions between late eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment intellectual culture and counter-Enlightenment interests in the Atlantic World. My comparative study focuses on two of the most influential university educators in Scotland and the newly-founded United States. These are Dugald Stewart at the University of Edinburgh and Samuel Stanhope Smith at the College of New Jersey (which later became Princeton University). Stewart and Smith are ideal for a transatlantic comparative project of this kind, because of their close parallels as moral philosophy professors at the University of Edinburgh (1785-1810) and the College of New Jersey (1779-1812) respectively; their conflicts with ecclesiastical factions and counter-Enlightenment policies in the first decade of the nineteenth century; and finally their uses and adaptations of Scottish Enlightenment moral philosophy. The broader question I address is how the diffusion and fate of Scottish Enlightenment moral thought was affected by the different institutional and, above all, religious contexts in which it was taught. Dugald Stewart’s and Stanhope Smith’s interpretations of central philosophical themes reflected their desire to improve the state of society by educating enlightened and virtuous young men who would later enter careers in public life. In doing so, their teaching of natural religion and metaphysics brought them into conflict with religious factions, namely American religious revivalists on Princeton’s Board of Trustees and members of the Scottish ecclesiastical Moderate party, who believed that revealed religion should provide the foundation of education. The controversies that emerged from these tensions did not develop in an intellectual vacuum. My research illustrates how the American and Scottish reception of the French Revolution; the 1793-1802 Scottish Sedition Trials; Scottish and American ‘polite’ culture; Scottish secular and ecclesiastical politics; American Federalist and Republican political debates; American student riots between 1800 and 1807; and American religious revivalism affected Smith’s and Stewart’s programmes of moral education. While I identify this project as an example of cultural and intellectual history, it also advances interests in the history of education, ecclesiastical history, transnational history, and comparative history. The thesis has two main parts. The first consists of three chapters on Dugald Stewart’s system of moral education: the circumstances in which Stewart developed his moral education as a modern version of Thomas Reid’s so-called Common Sense philosophy, Stewart’s applied ethics, and finally, his defence of the Scottish Enlightenment in the context of the 1805 John Leslie case. Complementing the chronology and themes in part one, the second part consists of three chapters on Smith’s programme of moral education: the circumstances that gave rise to Smith’s creation of the Princeton Enlightenment, Smith’s applied ethics, and finally, Smith’s defence of his system of moral education in the contexts of what he saw as two converging counter- Enlightenment factions (religious revivalists and rebellious students) at Princeton. In examining these areas, I argue that Dugald Stewart and Samuel Stanhope Smith attempted to systematically sustain Scottish Enlightenment ideas (namely Scottish philosophy) and values (‘Moderatism’) against counter-Enlightenment movements in higher education.

Over the last generation scholars have demonstrated the fundamental importance of astrology in the early modern European worldview. While detailed studies have been undertaken of England and many areas of continental Europe, the Scottish experience has been almost completely overlooked. This thesis seeks to address that gap in the literature and recover a lost dimension of early modern Scottish intellectual life, one that was central and influential for a considerable period of time. The thesis examines the place of, and perceptions about, astrology in Scotland ca. 1560-1726. It demonstrates that despite well-worn arguments against it on theological, theoretical, moral-psychological and effectiveness grounds, astrology was largely accepted throughout all sectors of Scottish society until at least the final quarter of the seventeenth century. Opportunities to learn about it were widespread after the Reformation. As evidenced by student notebooks, it was taught in all of the universities, whose library contents reflect the subject's importance, and it was readily available to a large proportion of the populace through almanacs and other popular literature. Its uses, too, were widespread and various. Medical practitioners, both qualified and non-qualified, drew on it as a diagnostic, prognostic and therapeutic guide and natural philosophers used it to ponder the phenomena and cycles of nature and human chronology. For those involved in negotiating the environment it was an aid to the timing of activities, while individuals interested in predicting future events and conditions could attempt to do so using the rather more suspect judicial astrology. By the last two decades of the seventeenth century, however, astrology was losing credibility among the educated, and the thesis examines and evaluates the factors that contributed to this, which include the ousting of scholasticism from academia by new approaches to understanding the natural world, the increasingly tainted image of the astrologer and the difficulty, if not impossibility, of subjecting astrology to the new experimental methods of the virtuosi.

The purpose of this study is to understand the transplantation and sustainability of Tibetan Buddhism through an ethnographic case study of the branches of Rokpa International in Scotland.  Using Bourdieu’s (1992) concepts of ‘field’ and ‘habitus’ this thesis examines the organisation and practice of Tibetan Buddhism in Scotland.  In so doing this thesis contributes a much needed sociological perspective to transplantation studies of Buddhism to the west. The themes of ‘detraditionalisation’ (Heelas, 1996b) and ‘cognitive surrender’ (Berger, 1973) are explored from a sociological rather than a theological perspective.  It is consequently argued that Rokpa Scotland can maintain claims of traditional authenticity by controlling the detraditionalisation process and regulating the flow of knowledge to western participants.  However, potential dangers to these claims were identified in the form of participants who adapt teachings outwith the control of the organisation.  Thus Rokpa Scotland need to manage different levels and types of participant in a milieu and understanding this milieu helps to understand the role and organisation of religion in the west in general.

Extensive literature has argued the important role that education plays in the process of language shift. Within this literature, it is widely acknowledged that education in which the target language is also the medium of instruction can make a positive contribution toward Reversing Language Shift. For users of minoritised languages in particular, having access to education in one’s own language has important status and educational consequences: helping to support the prestige of the target language and also reducing the kinds of educational inequalities that are often associated with minoritised languages. In keeping with the prime importance of language-as-medium education to language planning goals, there is a growing body of research which focuses upon Gaelic Medium Education in Scotland. The role that second or additional language education can play in Reversing Language Shift is acknowledged to a much lesser extent. This is especially true within the context of Scotland, where the relevant education provision within state secondary schools, Gaelic (Learners) Education, has only received passing recognition. This thesis aimed to address this gap in knowledge about the way in which education contributes to development goals for Gaelic in Scotland by questioning what, if any, role the Gaelic (Learners) Education programme has to play in the reversal of language shift. The first aim of the dissertation was to identify a theoretical foundation for the role that second or additional language education can play in Reversing Language Shift. Several prominent theoretical approaches were reviewed and a hypothesis posed that Gaelic (Learners) Education was beneficial to both Acquisition and Status development. Subsequent analyses of policies at the macro, meso, and micro levels confirmed the relevance of this hypothesis. However, it was also found that there was a lack of overt policy acknowledgement for Gaelic (Learners) Education in Scotland overall, suggesting that the stream was not regarded as being particularly relevant to Reversing Language Shift. The next aim of the thesis was to clarify the ways in which the stream could be used to help contribute to the reversal of language shift. This focused on identifying areas in which this educational programme could be improved. Using data elicited in semi-structured interviews with education professionals and gathered through surveys of pupils within GLE classes, several blockages for Gaelic (Learners) Education could be identified including aspects of capacity, opportunity and attitudes.

It is now almost thirty years since puritan apocalyptic thought was first subject to academic analysis, and twenty years have passed since the last flowering of texts on this subject. Since then our understanding of the puritan movement has progressed, and theoretical trends within historiographical and literary thinking now require new approaches to the investigation of puritan ideology. The approach of our own millennium and the recent devolution of barriers between academic disciplines make timely an investigation of the theological, historical and literary developments within puritan apocalyptic thought. Writing at the edge of the promises: negotiating the puritan apocalypse offers a reading of texts and contexts from the Marian exile, in the 1550s, to the Glorious Revolution one hundred and thirty years later. Canonical texts (like the works of John Milton and John Bunyan) are situated alongside titles representing individuals and groups which have achieved less prominence in recent literary-critical narratives (John Foxe, the Geneva Bible, James Ussher, George Gillespie, and John Rogers). This juxtaposition highlights the variety of eschatologies within the 'puritan apocalypse' and illustrates the many uses to which these eschatologies were put. Underpinning the variety of the puritan apocalyptic enterprise, however, is a basic exploration of the Calvinist aesthetic maxim: finitum non est capax infiniti. This unity of aesthetic thought represents a new angle on the 'Calvin and the Calvinists' debate, and argues for a basic continuity in the reformed theologies of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Similarly, the interplay of ideas and values across the boundaries of each of the 'three kingdoms' offers hope for discovering the value of Scottish writing in the notoriously silent seventeenth century. Far from dampening artistic exploration, as the received orthodoxy of Scottish studies argues, Calvinistic eschatological thought is presented as the catalyst for some of the most intriguing of post-Renaissance literary strategies.

George Campbell Hay (1915-1984) is acknowledged as one of the towering figures of 20th c. Gaelic poetry, and also respected outwith that linguistic tradition for his work in Scots and English, yet since the appearance of his three poetry collections shortly after the war, the greater part of his work has been unavailable, and its appreciation limited to a handful of Gaelic poems. Even the 1970 anthology which brought his non-Gaelic poems to wider attention has long been out of print, and his master-work - the unfinished long narrative poem Mochtar is Dughall - only emerged from almost forty years' obscurity in 1982. In short, there is an urgent need for the totality of Hay's work to be made available again, both for the enjoyment of the poetry-reading public and to enable a proper assessment of his contribution to Scottish literature. This thesis aims to provide the basis for such a Collected Edition. As a scholarly edition, however, it does not seek to provide single ideal texts or an editor's anthology, but to present the development of each poem through all its variants (shown in a critical apparatus), and bring some light to bear on the creative process. The poems are given in a separate volume, in chronological order, with no interfering classifications (such as by language, or publication status). In the way of introduction, I first give an account of Hay's life. This is based primarily on the man's own correspondence, to complement already published portraits drawn in the main from personal reminiscence. I have stressed the socio-political context in which Hay operated up till the war, as his passionate evangelical nationalism held such a dominant place in his poetry throughout his life. The following chapter looks in more detail at Hay's poetic activity in the 1940s, marked by his growing reputation and his association with the Scottish Renaissance of Hugh MacDiarmid, and culminating in the publication of Fuaran Sleibh, Wind On Loch Fyne and 0 Na Ceithir Airdean. A third chapter surveys the principal themes which exercised Hay's poetic imagination. In view of the edition's eschewal of categorisation, such a thematic classification may be of help in giving an overview of Hay's poetry; its aim however is not to create artificial segregations, but to stress both the diversity and the underlying philosophical unity of the poetry. Hay was a poet of virtuosic technique, and a final chapter examines both his own professed attitudes to poetic technique and his practical craftsmanship; this includes the linguistic and musical aspects of his work. The edition proper is preceded by a statement of editorial policy, illuminating some of the problems posed by the differing nature of the sources, and by Hay's inveterate tendency to revise his work. There follow notes to the poems, appendices of material which did not find a place in the main body of the edition, and an illustrated index of the Argyll place-names which so copiously populate Hay's poetry. An index to the poems is also supplied.

Highland history of the middle ages continues to be regarded generally as separate from the history of the Lowlands, as well as the political history of Scotland. To a large extent, the perception of two distinct societies within Scotland during this period has been swept aside, but few moves have been made to integrate fully the history of clanship into that of Scotland as a whole. This case study of the Mackintoshes and Clan Chattan seeks to examine clanship from a sociological as well as a historical perspective. Kinship was a fundamental characteristic of clan society, but these relationships were not limited to blood relatives. The creation of Active kinship through ties of customary obligation within a clan reinforced clan solidarity and cohesion, a vital factor for the geographically disparate Clan Chattan confederation. Within the locality, Active kinship was established by the contraction of more formal alliances which had social, political and economic objectives. The creation of these relationships enabled the clan to survive and expand. For central Highland clans like the Mackintoshes and Clan Chattan who lived in close geographic proximity to Lowland society, the extension of fictive kinship facilitated easy assimilation across the perceived divide in Scottish society. The realisation on the part of clan chiefs that cordial relations with the crown would be beneficial to the clan as a whole saw a movement throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries towards closer integration with Lowland society. This examination of clanship places the history of the Highlands into a wider political and social context. While clanship was a unique phenomenon within Scotland, it should not be examined in isolation, but rather as an integral part of Scottish political life.

Neil Gunn was one of the principal writers of the Scottish Literary Renaissance movement, the earlytwentieth century flowering of modernist literature in Scotland. Although some commentators have noticed the frequent mentions of psychoanalysis in his work, until now no wider study has been undertaken. In this thesis, I look at Gunn's interest in psychoanalysis in a number of different ways. This is down with the two-fold aim of first, providing a modern assessment of Gunn's work, and second, examining more broadly the history of modernism in Scottish literature. In the introduction, I propose an understanding of modernism based on the literary exploration of new theories of, in this case the mind. I argue that a complex understanding of the interplay of these new theories and literature serves better than a more simple concern with either intellectual developments or changes in literary form alone. In the first section, I look at Sun Circle and The Serpent in the light of psychoanalytic theories of 'primitive' psychology and the history of religion. In the second, I look at Highland River and The Silver Darlings in the light of Freudian and Jungian theories of personal development, regression, and childhood. In the third, I look at the way in which Gunn explores Freud's theories of the warring life- and deathinstincts in both The Shadow and The Lost Chart. I conclude by looking briefly at how Gunn's literary explorations of psychoanalysis link with the work of later writers such as Muriel Spark, Robin Jenkins, Alexander Trocchi, Alasdair Gray, Kenneth White and Alan Spence.