Why didn't emigrant Scots settle like the Irish or Chinese?

This is what often happens when I write about Scotland and we who bear its stamp.

To start with, I must proffer a bow – so deep and obsequious that it belongs in the court of King Louis XIV – towards Billy Connolly.

He used to do this bit about going to parties in Glasgow where, at the fag end of the evening, some alcoholically ruined bloke would haul himself to his feet, hand his half-empty can of bravado to his wife and break into a visceral, heart-bruising song about his towering love for Scotland.

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On he would wail, verse after Jacobite verse, each one crammed with glens, Morag, claymores and the damned redcoats. Oh, how he misses the land of his birth. Even though he may be “far across the sea”, the dear old place abides in his heart.

Of course, he isn’t far across anything from anywhere … he’s in a two-bedroom flat in Partick. But his unjustified yearning for the far-from-distant land of his forebears is real and leaves many in that third-floor front room in tears. But that may just be the Buckfast shots.

So what about Scots who actually are far across the sea? Evidence suggests that the Scottish diaspora will always regard us through a prism of tears, to the distant echo of a plaintive accordion. Nothing aches for Auchtermuchty like a Scots-Canadian, nothing pines for Possil like a Kiwi. Chicago, too, is annually awash with Highland games, Tartan Days and screenings of Braveheart.

My expat sister went to a few of these Scottish Days, in South Florida, and aside from the 100% humidity and fluorescent Crocs, you could have been at a Highland Games in Crieff.

But I am not talking about geographically disparate, Scottish-identifying people congregating once in a while to eat tablet and listen to a Runrig tribute band. Nor even of the communities, such as in Argentina, Brazil or Poland, where migrant Scots landed and assimilated, contributed, introduced football, and built schools and churches while holding their heritage in high esteem, rolling it out every St Andrew’s Day to remember where they came from.

All of this is fine and dandy, but my question is: why did Scots never ghettoise? In the mid-19th century Hell’s Kitchen in New York became Ireland removed. Other parts of the five boroughs saw clusters of Italians, Puerto Ricans, Russians, Poles and Jewish folk.

In San Francisco it was Chinatown, in Miami, everywhere is little Havana. Of course, many British cities have their own Chinatowns, as well as Bangladeshi, Indian and Pakistani areas – neighbourhoods of people who eat, pray and live in a similar fashion.

So why do we not find Scots Town in one of America’s big cities? Where are the vibrant streets, with a restaurant every 50 metres, flooding the air with the aroma of cullen skink or stovies? Where are the bars showing SPL games and shops selling kilt material?

Dancers perform during the Chinese Lunar New Year parade in Chinatown in New York (Image: AP)

Where are the tartan streamers criss-crossing the thoroughfare between tenement windows, as pipe music skirls up and into the atmosphere, letting every stranger know exactly on whose streets they tread? (Although I admit It’s beginning to sound like some hellish urban Brigadoon.)

Surely the benefits are obvious, to a newly arrived, financially strapped demographic, of having somewhere that feels more like home? You can do business with people who speak your language, in all senses.

Camaraderie and family aside, it would seem to make economic sense.

But are the benefits that obvious? Given Scots’ historic adventurousness and willingness to go out and do something amazing, tethered to the kind of nationalistic enthusiasm that informs scenarios such as the one in that Partick front room, it is a mystery why Scots never clustered abroad for warmth and succour.

Do we not WANT to be with our ain folk? Is there something about us that we would rather not be grouped in with other Scots? Unless it’s for a once-a-year party in the park with a piper for hire. Why did we arrive in foreign climes and proceed to keep our collective heads down?

Perhaps “collective” is the pertinent word, because there has never been any doubt that Scots function, and indeed excel, when they are on their own. Our quite unbelievable abilities when it comes to invention, engineering, science and medicine suggest this is not a nationality that hides its light under a bushel.

We are world beaters when it comes to personal achievement. But perhaps that is the point. Scots are more than happy to shine individually, beavering away in some spider-annexed shed to conceive a brand new gadget which will change and improve people’s lives.

But ask us to band together with other Scots in a generalised, celebratory support network and we run a mile. Sometimes I suspect the only time you get Scots gathering together in foreign parts is when the Tartan Army is mobilised for the football.

So what is it about us that is fine with being Scottish, to an extent ... but not so much that we end up like the Irish in Boston, where St Paddy’s Day sees everyone painted green, in a vast parade undulating through the city like a big, drunk python. Is self-loathing at play here?

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Is it a national insecurity issue? The Clearances? I can only guess. Maybe our history betrays us. Has our historic subjugation by England made us collectively meek? Has it left us inclined to keep a low profile?

Maybe, but look again at the Irish. Their necks were under the boot heel of England for as long as ours, but they reached new lands and became collectively and visibly more Irish, on a day-to-day basis. Why not us?

Again, my apologies for the lack of clarity or anything approaching an answer. Maybe it’s a Scottish thing.