ONE of my favourite childhood books was 1066 And All That by WC Sellar and RJ Yeatman. It was not a parody on English history per se but on the way history was taught in English schools at the time. Sellars and Yeatman wrote a series of articles in Punch in the 1920s and compiled them into a book which was published in 1930. A stage production followed five years later.

I would have loved to have satirised the way Scottish history was taught when I was a wee boy back in the 1960s but we barely got a word of our history as almost everything we were taught was “British” history, so that we knew more about Lord Nelson and Winston Churchill than we did about Sir William Wallace and King Robert the Bruce. There was no such separate subject as Scottish History back then.

While 1066 And All That does mention several Scots, I wondered why there was no Scottish equivalent to Sellar and Yeatman’s masterly work. I take Scottish history very seriously, as regular readers will know, but every so often I have to step back and have a laugh, more usually a snigger, about items from Scottish history and, given what we are taught – or not as the case might be – there’s just a wee bit of room for a parody.

So, as a little divertissement for Christmas and New Year, today and next week I am presenting 1513 And All That, A Memorable History of Scotland, Comprising All The Bits You Can Remember including Lots of Woad, several Kings, a couple of Bad Queens, a Reformation and – boo! – a Union.

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I would have called it 1314 And All That but that fine writer Scoular Anderson has already used that title for one of his books and yes, it’s funny and engaging and I would recommend it to you. And there’s inevitably some crossover but I will try to write about some of he subjects Anderson doesn’t cover.

So why 1513? Well that’s the date of the worst defeat in Scottish history just as 1066 was the worst for the Anglo-Saxons (and their pals the Danes, England still being a mongrel nation at that time). In came the Normans after the Battle of Hastings and changed not just England but Scotland, too, as we shall see.

I’ll take it you know all about ancient pre-history and how the land that became Scotland floated around some primordial oceans – just think, we could have been a tropical paradise – until we had the misfortune to become hitched to the bit of rock that became England.

Fast forward to the beginnings of history as we know it when people on Orkney learned how to make houses out of stone and invented Scotch Broch. Then everybody promptly forgot how it was done and our ancestors moved on to live in wooden huts, many of them on lochs, these homes being called crannogs, hence the saying every nook and crannog.

They did put up standing stones around the place but these were not exactly tenements and, lacking walls and windows, were very draughty.

The Romans having conquered the tribes down south, they came north and took on the united tribes of Caledonia, fierce people who painted their faces with a blue dye called woad. Scientists have long speculated that this was a form of camouflage but if so, it wasn’t much use as the Romans could see them coming from miles away.

According to the acclaimed documentary Braveheart (1995) woad was still being used by the Scots 12 centuries later, and very fetching they looked, too.

One legion, supposedly the Ninth, went deep into the Highlands and promptly disappeared, with the Roman commanders presuming the Caledonians had defeated and eaten them. So after that the Roman general Agricola decided to deal with the pesky Caledonians and he marched a huge army – including many English warriors who were now subjects of Rome – north to confront the natives at a place called Mons Graupius in AD 83. And no, I don’t know where it was either … ACCORDING to Roman historian Tacitus, who might just have been a tad biased as he was Agricola’s son-in-law, the Caledonians were called out by their leader Calgacus, who gave a memorable rousing speech which Tacitus probably invented to make his father-in-law look better.

What Calgacus actually said was “ite domus, Romani illegitimi” though his line about the Romans “making a wasteland and calling it peace” is the one most people remember.

Anyway the Caledonians lost that battle but the Romans could not conquer them and eventually drew back behind Hadrian’s Wall. They did build a further wall between the Forth and Clyde and called it Antonine after the then emperor, but frankly it was not one of their better jobs and VisitScotland curse their workers to this day as there’s barely enough left for a decent tourist attraction unlike Hadrian’s Wall.

The Romans went away and what we now call Scotland was divided up between the tribe in the north and east called the Picts, a name that meant painted people to the Romans – more of that woad again – while the west went to the Scots who had drifted over from Ireland over many decades and become established around what became Argyllshire. They brought a mysterious stone with them, said to be Jacob’s Pillow – aye, right – which became the Stone of Destiny.

This is where 1066 And All That gets it seriously wrong, stating: “The Scots (originally Irish, but by now Scotch) were at this time inhabiting Ireland, having driven the Irish (Picts) out of Scotland; while the Picts (originally Scots) were now Irish (living in brackets) and vice versa. It is essential to keep these distinctions clearly in mind (and verce visa).”

One things the Picts and Scots shared was Christianity, brought to them by St Columba, an Irish troublemaker who was exiled to Iona. He worked many miracles, including saving a man from the Loch Ness Monster. Honest.

The National:

Confusingly at this time, the tribe called the Britons occupied the south of Scotland with their headquarters at Dumbarton, the ancient capital of the Britons’ kingdom of Strathclyde. King Arthur was probably a Scot born in the Dumbarton area though some say he was from Govan. Yup, Arthur was a Weegie … The Lady of the Lake was really the Lady of the Loch, as Loch Lomond was surely the place which surrounded Avalon, the wondrous island which could only be Inchmurrin. Descendants of Merlin romp there naked even now … The Scots and Picts were united in opposing invaders from England, one of whom was Athelstane of Northumbria, who led an army to the Lothians and was met by a united force led by Angus, King of the Picts, around 832. Angus saw a Saltire in the sky, (obviously the vapour trails of two passing chariots of Viking gods) and promised he would make St Andrew’s Flag the national flag of Scotland if his army won.

They duly battered the Northumbrians and Athelstane fell dead in a burn, so that the Scots used his body as a bridge, which is why the place was named Athelstaneford.

ADECADE or so later, the Scots and Picts united under the acknowledged first king of Scots, Kenneth MacAlpin, though whether unity was achieved by inter-marriage, warfare or just plain laziness – why bother with two kings when we can have one? – will never be known.

The new joint kingdom soon had a name Alba, which is pronounced Al-a-ba, apparently. They all agreed to speak Gaelic and the Pictish language disappeared – we still don’t know what it sounded like.

Mentioning the Vikings, they came a-calling from the ninth century onwards and, after they had stopped pillaging and rampaging, they settled down in Shetland, Orkney and some of the Western Isles. They brought with them some fine traditions such as Up Helly Aa and the need for your first foot at Hogmanay to be tall and dark because that meant he wasn’t a nasty Viking.

A succession of Kings of Scots who were crowned at Scone on the Stone of Destiny fought off the Vikings but King Macbeth was busier fighting his fellow Scottish earls so that he could win the throne. His Queen was Gruoch – not Lady Macbeth as named by that chancer William Shakespeare – who had previously been married to Gille Coemgain, the Mormaer or Earl of Moray.

He was roasted to death along with 50 of his men in 1032. King Malcolm II was behind that murder and that of Gruoch’s brother, which is why she promptly married Macbeth, as he wasn’t scared of any king – which he showed by killing King Duncan in 1040.

It is just not true that Gruoch was a Bad Queen capable of inspiring her husband to regicide – Macbeth was perfectly capable of doing that himself but only in battle.

Macbeth and Gruoch reigned peaceably, with Macbeth even going to Rome to visit the Pope until Malcolm, son of Duncan, came to Dunsinane disguised as a tree in 1057 and inflicted fatal wounds on Macbeth at the Battle of Lumphanan. Gruoch’s son by her first marriage, Lulach, had been adopted as son and heir by Macbeth and became King of Alba only for Malcolm Duncanson to kill him, too. Not surprisingly, nobody else challenged Malcolm’s claim to the throne and he was crowned on April 25, 1058, according to the unreliable chronicler John of Fordun.

Malcolm III got the nickname Canmore, which either means “big heid” or great chief. He had a Norse wife, Ingeborg, who gave him three sons but she disappears from history. That was convenient, because after William the Bastard conquered England in 1066, Malcolm was able to marry Margaret, whose brother Edgar Atheling should have been the English king.

William the Conqueror wasn’t very chuffed at Malcolm’s marriage, and came north to claim the overlordship of the whole of Great Britain. I’d love to tell you that Malcolm sent William away with a flea in his ear, but at Abernethy in 1072, Malcolm shared the local biscuit with William and did homage to him. Nobody noticed that he had his fingers crossed behind his back so it was all a ruse to get William to go home.

Malcolm and Margaret had a fruitful marriage and she spent most of her time doing holy things. She did not, as some have suggested, devastate the Culdees, Scotland’s chief brand of priests, but did introduce more Romanised ways. That’s the main reason she was canonised as a saint after her death. Her sad end came from her grief a few days after Malcolm Canmore and his son and heir Edward were killed at the Battle of Alnwick in 1093.

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After the rest of Malcolm’s sons had their turn, David I came to the throne in 1124. He had spent some time at the Norman-English court of Henry I and had made many friends there.

On becoming King of Scots he invited quite a lot of his old chums from England to come north and in return for lands and titles they gave him their homage and, more importantly, agreed to provide him with soldiers. Thus David brought to Scotland what 1066 And All That designated as the Feutile System.

Given their Norman background, David and his new lords introduced such things as sheriffs and burghs, while he was a great enabler of the new fashion for abbeys and monasteries.

David is now generally seen as a Good King, but even he largely kept out of the Highlands and Islands and we shall see why next week.