A thousand-year rivalry exists between Scotland and England, rooted in battles, political strife, and deep-seated cultural differences.
In this episode, we'll discuss how these ancient conflicts still shape modern relationships and national identities today.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is the start of another three-part mini-series.
[00:00:26] This time we are going to be talking about “British divisions”.
[00:00:30] In part one, this episode, we’ll talk about the thousand-year rivalry between Scotland and England.
[00:00:37] In part two we are going to get even more granular and talk about the rivalry and differences between the north and the south of England.
[00:00:47] And in part three we are going to talk about a time when English rivalries resulted in one of the bloodiest internal conflicts in British history: The Wars Of The Roses.
[00:00:58] You can, of course, choose to listen to each episode individually, but I hope that they will be even more interesting when listened to together. As you probably know already, but as we will talk about in-depth in this mini-series Britain is far from one, unified, United Kingdom.
[00:01:17] Ok then, let’s get started and talk about the rivalry between Scotland and England.
[00:01:25] You can tell a lot about a country by its national anthem.
[00:01:30] The French national anthem, La Marseillaise, is about revolution, about overthrowing the flag of tyranny.
[00:01:38] The English national anthem, God Save The King, is an ode to the king, its subjects singing about how much they love living in a monarchy.
[00:01:51] As to the Scottish national anthem, or I should say the “unofficial” national anthem, you might be tricked by its innocent-sounding name: The Flower of Scotland.
[00:02:04] Cute, you might think, it’s about flowers and the beautiful nature one might find in the Scottish countryside.
[00:02:12] Indeed the first few lines of the anthem might suggest it’s about a flower.
[00:02:18] It goes:
[00:02:19] O flower of Scotland
[00:02:21] When will we see
[00:02:23] Your like again,
[00:02:25] Lovely. But then you start to realise that it’s not about flowers.
[00:02:32] The song continues:
[00:02:34] That fought and died for
[00:02:37] And the rest of the anthem continues to talk about the time Scotland beat England in battle, and how they can do it again if they want to.
[00:02:50] There are also some unofficial lyrics that you will hear at a football or rugby match, being belted out from the crowds.
[00:02:58] When the official lyrics are “Proud Edward's Army”, which refers to the soldiers of the English king, there are loud shouts of “BASTARDS!”
[00:03:10] Now, this song was composed in the late 1960s, and the battle it refers to is the Battle of Bannockburn, which was in the year 1314, almost 700 years before the song was composed.
[00:03:28] Of course, to say that the average person in Scotland or England for that matter spends much of their time worrying about a battle from the 14th century would be an exaggeration, but it is just one example of the extent to which historical rivalries are still felt today.
[00:03:48] So, in this episode, we are going to explore the relationship between Scotland and England.
[00:03:55] We will start with the long and complicated history of the relationship, and then talk more about the political and cultural divisions that still exist to this very day.
[00:04:07] Going back a couple of thousands of years, there was no England or Scotland. There were a series of warring tribes in Britain. In the north of the country, in modern-day Scotland, there were the Picts and the Scots.
[00:04:23] And in the south, in modern-day England and Wales, there were tribes such as the Iceni, which you might remember from episode number 251 on Boudicca.
[00:04:34] When the Romans arrived, first in 55 BC and then properly in 43 AD, they landed in the south of Britain. This was purely for practical reasons; it was the closest land to Europe.
[00:04:52] The Romans occupied Britain for almost 400 years, mainly subduing the local tribes, and importantly, they only occupied the south of the country.
[00:05:04] To the north were murderous, violent tribes, barbarians, and the Romans did what all self-respecting powers do to keep unwanted invaders out: they built a wall.
[00:05:18] This wall came to be known as Hadrian’s Wall, and in fact you can still visit its ruins today. It is right at the northern part of England, close to the border with Scotland.
[00:05:32] The reason to mention this is that this artificial division of the country by the Romans served as the first division between what we know today as England and Scotland.
[00:05:46] Fast forward a few hundred years, and by the early 10th century both Scotland and England were their own kingdoms. No longer were they a collection of warring small tribes, but two countries ruled by their own kings.
[00:06:05] England was the more powerful kingdom in every sense. Its population was larger, 3 or 4 million to Scotland’s under a million.
[00:06:15] It had a more developed agricultural system, it was richer, it had better access to military technology, a bigger and better-trained army.
[00:06:25] And in the late 13th century the English king, Edward I, did what powerful kings do, he invaded his weaker neighbour, marching north into Scotland.
[00:06:38] There had been a complication when the king of Scotland, Alexander, had died without leaving a surviving direct male heir, and King Edward of England had seized his opportunity.
[00:06:51] What happened next was the Scottish Wars of Independence. It is a long and bloody story, and in fact, you may remember part of it from episode number 186, on William Wallace.
[00:07:06] We’ll have to skip over the juiciest parts for today’s episode, but the point is that this was a sixty-year period of fighting between Scotland and England. There are no reliable figures for the number of people who died–it’s most likely in the tens of thousands–but what is undeniable is that this formed the basis of the rivalry that still exists today.
[00:07:34] If you remember “Proud Edward’s Army” from the Scottish national anthem, The Flower of Scotland, this was King Edward II, the son of Edward I, the king who had first marched north into Scotland.
[00:07:48] Now, with the wars of Scottish independence over in the late 14th century, Scotland and England existed as two separate kingdoms.
[00:08:00] Like all good European rulers, they made sure that alliances and relationships with other countries were reinforced through marriage, so Scottish and English princesses would be sent off to marry European princes, and European princesses would be brought to Britain to marry Scottish and English princes.
[00:08:23] And occasionally English and Scottish royalty would marry, to maintain the peace.
[00:08:31] All well and good, but what happened in the early 17th century, in 1601 to be precise, was an event that underlined quite how linked the Scottish and English royal families were.
[00:08:47] Queen Elizabeth I of England died childless, and her closest relation, the next in line to the throne was a man called James, who just so happened to be James VI, King of Scotland.
[00:09:05] So, the King of Scotland also became the King of England, King James VI of Scotland also became King James I of England.
[00:09:16] This was an event that would bring the two countries together like never before.
[00:09:22] The King of England would, of course, not declare war on The King of Scotland because he was the same person.
[00:09:30] Importantly, however, this was not a political union, it was called the Union of The Crowns, meaning that the two countries would share the same monarch, but have different laws and political systems.
[00:09:45] It wouldn’t be until 1707 that Scotland and England officially became one country, Great Britain, ruled by one parliament and one monarch.
[00:09:57] Now, the British history buffs among you will have realised that I’ve missed out on quite a few important things along the way, like the English Civil War and the brief period when neither England nor Scotland had a king, and when Bonnie Prince Charlie tried to mount a rebellion and overthrow the English king, but for the purposes of today’s episode, we must move on.
[00:10:20] Since 1707, Scotland and England have been united, one country, one currency, ruled by one monarch.
[00:10:31] But perhaps surprisingly, not everything was united, not everything was shared.
[00:10:38] Scotland kept its own religious system, its own education system and its own laws.
[00:10:46] If you have ever spent any time reading the small print of the terms and conditions of a UK-registered company, you will often find that it refers to “the laws of England and Wales”, not “the laws of the United Kingdom”. This is because there is no “UK law”, there are in fact three different legal systems.
[00:11:08] There’s Northern Irish law, and then there is Scottish Law and English law.
[00:11:14] Now, we don’t want to get bogged down in legal jargon, but the point is that England and Scotland were united as one country, but there were still important differences.
[00:11:26] And, to state the obvious, just because Scotland and England were now united, this didn’t mean that all cultural and regional differences simply vanished, and all previous rivalries and memories of past wars were forgotten.
[00:11:42] Far from it.
[00:11:43] Especially in Scotland, people are far more likely, and increasingly more likely, to consider themselves Scottish than British.
[00:11:54] In a survey from 2022, 72% of people in Scotland said that they thought of themselves primarily as Scottish, which is up from 57% ten years before.
[00:12:08] In England, it is the opposite, with over half of the population identifying as British only and a mere 15% identifying as English.
[00:12:21] Why is this?
[00:12:23] Well, it's not so different really than the reason that someone from Barcelona might say that they are Catalan, not Spanish, or even that someone from Sicily might tell you that they are Sicilian, not Italian.
[00:12:38] It implies particular pride in where you are from, and that pride is often more intense if you are from a smaller part of a larger nation, a part that has to fight harder to maintain its own identity, customs and traditions, or even a part that believes it should be its own independent country.
[00:12:59] Now, for the past 200 years or so, there has been relative peace between Scotland and England.
[00:13:07] Many Scottish people move to England, especially to London, the capital, where there are the most economic opportunities, as we’ll talk about in the next episode. There has also been an increasing trend of English people moving to Scotland, especially people retiring to Scotland, where house prices are lower, they have better access to healthcare and can enjoy the wonderful Scottish countryside.
[00:13:33] Of course, many families are mixed, including mine. My mother is English, my father is half Scottish and half Welsh.
[00:13:43] And the rivalry between the two countries, between England and Scotland, is now much more one of friendly jokes rather than deep-seated hatred.
[00:13:54] Scottish people love to tell jokes about English people, often playing on the stereotype of English people being reserved and gullible, easily tricked by their more intelligent northern neighbours, or that Scottish men are stronger and more “real men” than English men.
[00:14:12] And English people do the same, with the stereotypes typically being of Scottish people being cheap, not liking to spend money, being less civilised, or talking with an unintelligible accent.
[00:14:26] I’ll leave you with an example of jokes of both, a joke about English people and then a joke about Scottish people.
[00:14:34] So, here’s the first one.
[00:14:36] An Englishman is hiking in Scotland and he pauses to drink from a stream. A passing shepherd calls out "Dinnae drink frae that, it's all fulla coo piss an shite!"
[00:14:50] The Englishman says to him in a cut-glass accent "I'm terribly sorry, my good fellow, would you very much mind repeating that in the Queen's English?"
[00:15:01] And the shepherd says "I'm terribly sorry sir, I was only asking if you would like to borrow this cup and get a proper drink?"
[00:15:08] In case you didn’t understand what the shepherd said in my Scottish accent, the Scotsman says that the water is full of cow piss and shit, excrement, but the Englishman doesn’t understand what he says.
[00:15:23] And then he offers to lend him a cup to drink from it.
[00:15:26] OK, now in the interests of balance, here's an example of a joke about Scottish people, and remember that one of the stereotypes that English people have about Scottish people and often use in jokes is about Scottish alcohol consumption.
[00:15:44] This was something that the Duke of Edinburgh, the husband of Queen Elizabeth I, was reported to have said to a driving instructor in Scotland.
[00:15:53] He asked them “How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test?”.
[00:15:59] Now, the relationship between Scotland and England is complex and multi-faceted.
[00:16:05] The two countries have shared a common monarch for over 400 years, and have been in a political union for 300. There is a huge amount of shared cultural heritage, it is probably no exaggeration to say that Scottish and English people have more in common with each other than with any other nation, English-speaking or otherwise.
[00:16:27] Yet especially on the Scottish side, there is a fierce sense of nationalism, or pride in being uniquely Scottish, rather than British.
[00:16:38] And as you will hear firsthand if you ever find yourself at a sporting event between England and Scotland, and the proud cry of “bastards” rings out at the mention of a 14th-century English king, some history can never be forgotten.
[00:16:56] OK then, that is it for today's episode on the history of the rivalry between Scotland and England, and that’s it for part one of this mini-series on British divisions.
[00:17:07] As a reminder, next up we’ll be talking about the North vs. South divide in England, and in part three we will finish off with a time when internal division and conflict led to a 30-year war, in the form of The Wars Of The Roses.
[00:17:22] Oh, and we have made quite a few episodes about many of the topics we covered in passing in this episode, including the lives of Elizabeth I, Bonnie Prince Charlie, William Wallace, and Boudicca, as well as a mini-series on the broad theme of Scotland.
[00:17:37] So, if those are of interest, you can find all of those on the website, leonardoenglish.com.
[00:17:43] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:17:48] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is the start of another three-part mini-series.
[00:00:26] This time we are going to be talking about “British divisions”.
[00:00:30] In part one, this episode, we’ll talk about the thousand-year rivalry between Scotland and England.
[00:00:37] In part two we are going to get even more granular and talk about the rivalry and differences between the north and the south of England.
[00:00:47] And in part three we are going to talk about a time when English rivalries resulted in one of the bloodiest internal conflicts in British history: The Wars Of The Roses.
[00:00:58] You can, of course, choose to listen to each episode individually, but I hope that they will be even more interesting when listened to together. As you probably know already, but as we will talk about in-depth in this mini-series Britain is far from one, unified, United Kingdom.
[00:01:17] Ok then, let’s get started and talk about the rivalry between Scotland and England.
[00:01:25] You can tell a lot about a country by its national anthem.
[00:01:30] The French national anthem, La Marseillaise, is about revolution, about overthrowing the flag of tyranny.
[00:01:38] The English national anthem, God Save The King, is an ode to the king, its subjects singing about how much they love living in a monarchy.
[00:01:51] As to the Scottish national anthem, or I should say the “unofficial” national anthem, you might be tricked by its innocent-sounding name: The Flower of Scotland.
[00:02:04] Cute, you might think, it’s about flowers and the beautiful nature one might find in the Scottish countryside.
[00:02:12] Indeed the first few lines of the anthem might suggest it’s about a flower.
[00:02:18] It goes:
[00:02:19] O flower of Scotland
[00:02:21] When will we see
[00:02:23] Your like again,
[00:02:25] Lovely. But then you start to realise that it’s not about flowers.
[00:02:32] The song continues:
[00:02:34] That fought and died for
[00:02:37] And the rest of the anthem continues to talk about the time Scotland beat England in battle, and how they can do it again if they want to.
[00:02:50] There are also some unofficial lyrics that you will hear at a football or rugby match, being belted out from the crowds.
[00:02:58] When the official lyrics are “Proud Edward's Army”, which refers to the soldiers of the English king, there are loud shouts of “BASTARDS!”
[00:03:10] Now, this song was composed in the late 1960s, and the battle it refers to is the Battle of Bannockburn, which was in the year 1314, almost 700 years before the song was composed.
[00:03:28] Of course, to say that the average person in Scotland or England for that matter spends much of their time worrying about a battle from the 14th century would be an exaggeration, but it is just one example of the extent to which historical rivalries are still felt today.
[00:03:48] So, in this episode, we are going to explore the relationship between Scotland and England.
[00:03:55] We will start with the long and complicated history of the relationship, and then talk more about the political and cultural divisions that still exist to this very day.
[00:04:07] Going back a couple of thousands of years, there was no England or Scotland. There were a series of warring tribes in Britain. In the north of the country, in modern-day Scotland, there were the Picts and the Scots.
[00:04:23] And in the south, in modern-day England and Wales, there were tribes such as the Iceni, which you might remember from episode number 251 on Boudicca.
[00:04:34] When the Romans arrived, first in 55 BC and then properly in 43 AD, they landed in the south of Britain. This was purely for practical reasons; it was the closest land to Europe.
[00:04:52] The Romans occupied Britain for almost 400 years, mainly subduing the local tribes, and importantly, they only occupied the south of the country.
[00:05:04] To the north were murderous, violent tribes, barbarians, and the Romans did what all self-respecting powers do to keep unwanted invaders out: they built a wall.
[00:05:18] This wall came to be known as Hadrian’s Wall, and in fact you can still visit its ruins today. It is right at the northern part of England, close to the border with Scotland.
[00:05:32] The reason to mention this is that this artificial division of the country by the Romans served as the first division between what we know today as England and Scotland.
[00:05:46] Fast forward a few hundred years, and by the early 10th century both Scotland and England were their own kingdoms. No longer were they a collection of warring small tribes, but two countries ruled by their own kings.
[00:06:05] England was the more powerful kingdom in every sense. Its population was larger, 3 or 4 million to Scotland’s under a million.
[00:06:15] It had a more developed agricultural system, it was richer, it had better access to military technology, a bigger and better-trained army.
[00:06:25] And in the late 13th century the English king, Edward I, did what powerful kings do, he invaded his weaker neighbour, marching north into Scotland.
[00:06:38] There had been a complication when the king of Scotland, Alexander, had died without leaving a surviving direct male heir, and King Edward of England had seized his opportunity.
[00:06:51] What happened next was the Scottish Wars of Independence. It is a long and bloody story, and in fact, you may remember part of it from episode number 186, on William Wallace.
[00:07:06] We’ll have to skip over the juiciest parts for today’s episode, but the point is that this was a sixty-year period of fighting between Scotland and England. There are no reliable figures for the number of people who died–it’s most likely in the tens of thousands–but what is undeniable is that this formed the basis of the rivalry that still exists today.
[00:07:34] If you remember “Proud Edward’s Army” from the Scottish national anthem, The Flower of Scotland, this was King Edward II, the son of Edward I, the king who had first marched north into Scotland.
[00:07:48] Now, with the wars of Scottish independence over in the late 14th century, Scotland and England existed as two separate kingdoms.
[00:08:00] Like all good European rulers, they made sure that alliances and relationships with other countries were reinforced through marriage, so Scottish and English princesses would be sent off to marry European princes, and European princesses would be brought to Britain to marry Scottish and English princes.
[00:08:23] And occasionally English and Scottish royalty would marry, to maintain the peace.
[00:08:31] All well and good, but what happened in the early 17th century, in 1601 to be precise, was an event that underlined quite how linked the Scottish and English royal families were.
[00:08:47] Queen Elizabeth I of England died childless, and her closest relation, the next in line to the throne was a man called James, who just so happened to be James VI, King of Scotland.
[00:09:05] So, the King of Scotland also became the King of England, King James VI of Scotland also became King James I of England.
[00:09:16] This was an event that would bring the two countries together like never before.
[00:09:22] The King of England would, of course, not declare war on The King of Scotland because he was the same person.
[00:09:30] Importantly, however, this was not a political union, it was called the Union of The Crowns, meaning that the two countries would share the same monarch, but have different laws and political systems.
[00:09:45] It wouldn’t be until 1707 that Scotland and England officially became one country, Great Britain, ruled by one parliament and one monarch.
[00:09:57] Now, the British history buffs among you will have realised that I’ve missed out on quite a few important things along the way, like the English Civil War and the brief period when neither England nor Scotland had a king, and when Bonnie Prince Charlie tried to mount a rebellion and overthrow the English king, but for the purposes of today’s episode, we must move on.
[00:10:20] Since 1707, Scotland and England have been united, one country, one currency, ruled by one monarch.
[00:10:31] But perhaps surprisingly, not everything was united, not everything was shared.
[00:10:38] Scotland kept its own religious system, its own education system and its own laws.
[00:10:46] If you have ever spent any time reading the small print of the terms and conditions of a UK-registered company, you will often find that it refers to “the laws of England and Wales”, not “the laws of the United Kingdom”. This is because there is no “UK law”, there are in fact three different legal systems.
[00:11:08] There’s Northern Irish law, and then there is Scottish Law and English law.
[00:11:14] Now, we don’t want to get bogged down in legal jargon, but the point is that England and Scotland were united as one country, but there were still important differences.
[00:11:26] And, to state the obvious, just because Scotland and England were now united, this didn’t mean that all cultural and regional differences simply vanished, and all previous rivalries and memories of past wars were forgotten.
[00:11:42] Far from it.
[00:11:43] Especially in Scotland, people are far more likely, and increasingly more likely, to consider themselves Scottish than British.
[00:11:54] In a survey from 2022, 72% of people in Scotland said that they thought of themselves primarily as Scottish, which is up from 57% ten years before.
[00:12:08] In England, it is the opposite, with over half of the population identifying as British only and a mere 15% identifying as English.
[00:12:21] Why is this?
[00:12:23] Well, it's not so different really than the reason that someone from Barcelona might say that they are Catalan, not Spanish, or even that someone from Sicily might tell you that they are Sicilian, not Italian.
[00:12:38] It implies particular pride in where you are from, and that pride is often more intense if you are from a smaller part of a larger nation, a part that has to fight harder to maintain its own identity, customs and traditions, or even a part that believes it should be its own independent country.
[00:12:59] Now, for the past 200 years or so, there has been relative peace between Scotland and England.
[00:13:07] Many Scottish people move to England, especially to London, the capital, where there are the most economic opportunities, as we’ll talk about in the next episode. There has also been an increasing trend of English people moving to Scotland, especially people retiring to Scotland, where house prices are lower, they have better access to healthcare and can enjoy the wonderful Scottish countryside.
[00:13:33] Of course, many families are mixed, including mine. My mother is English, my father is half Scottish and half Welsh.
[00:13:43] And the rivalry between the two countries, between England and Scotland, is now much more one of friendly jokes rather than deep-seated hatred.
[00:13:54] Scottish people love to tell jokes about English people, often playing on the stereotype of English people being reserved and gullible, easily tricked by their more intelligent northern neighbours, or that Scottish men are stronger and more “real men” than English men.
[00:14:12] And English people do the same, with the stereotypes typically being of Scottish people being cheap, not liking to spend money, being less civilised, or talking with an unintelligible accent.
[00:14:26] I’ll leave you with an example of jokes of both, a joke about English people and then a joke about Scottish people.
[00:14:34] So, here’s the first one.
[00:14:36] An Englishman is hiking in Scotland and he pauses to drink from a stream. A passing shepherd calls out "Dinnae drink frae that, it's all fulla coo piss an shite!"
[00:14:50] The Englishman says to him in a cut-glass accent "I'm terribly sorry, my good fellow, would you very much mind repeating that in the Queen's English?"
[00:15:01] And the shepherd says "I'm terribly sorry sir, I was only asking if you would like to borrow this cup and get a proper drink?"
[00:15:08] In case you didn’t understand what the shepherd said in my Scottish accent, the Scotsman says that the water is full of cow piss and shit, excrement, but the Englishman doesn’t understand what he says.
[00:15:23] And then he offers to lend him a cup to drink from it.
[00:15:26] OK, now in the interests of balance, here's an example of a joke about Scottish people, and remember that one of the stereotypes that English people have about Scottish people and often use in jokes is about Scottish alcohol consumption.
[00:15:44] This was something that the Duke of Edinburgh, the husband of Queen Elizabeth I, was reported to have said to a driving instructor in Scotland.
[00:15:53] He asked them “How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test?”.
[00:15:59] Now, the relationship between Scotland and England is complex and multi-faceted.
[00:16:05] The two countries have shared a common monarch for over 400 years, and have been in a political union for 300. There is a huge amount of shared cultural heritage, it is probably no exaggeration to say that Scottish and English people have more in common with each other than with any other nation, English-speaking or otherwise.
[00:16:27] Yet especially on the Scottish side, there is a fierce sense of nationalism, or pride in being uniquely Scottish, rather than British.
[00:16:38] And as you will hear firsthand if you ever find yourself at a sporting event between England and Scotland, and the proud cry of “bastards” rings out at the mention of a 14th-century English king, some history can never be forgotten.
[00:16:56] OK then, that is it for today's episode on the history of the rivalry between Scotland and England, and that’s it for part one of this mini-series on British divisions.
[00:17:07] As a reminder, next up we’ll be talking about the North vs. South divide in England, and in part three we will finish off with a time when internal division and conflict led to a 30-year war, in the form of The Wars Of The Roses.
[00:17:22] Oh, and we have made quite a few episodes about many of the topics we covered in passing in this episode, including the lives of Elizabeth I, Bonnie Prince Charlie, William Wallace, and Boudicca, as well as a mini-series on the broad theme of Scotland.
[00:17:37] So, if those are of interest, you can find all of those on the website, leonardoenglish.com.
[00:17:43] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:17:48] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today is the start of another three-part mini-series.
[00:00:26] This time we are going to be talking about “British divisions”.
[00:00:30] In part one, this episode, we’ll talk about the thousand-year rivalry between Scotland and England.
[00:00:37] In part two we are going to get even more granular and talk about the rivalry and differences between the north and the south of England.
[00:00:47] And in part three we are going to talk about a time when English rivalries resulted in one of the bloodiest internal conflicts in British history: The Wars Of The Roses.
[00:00:58] You can, of course, choose to listen to each episode individually, but I hope that they will be even more interesting when listened to together. As you probably know already, but as we will talk about in-depth in this mini-series Britain is far from one, unified, United Kingdom.
[00:01:17] Ok then, let’s get started and talk about the rivalry between Scotland and England.
[00:01:25] You can tell a lot about a country by its national anthem.
[00:01:30] The French national anthem, La Marseillaise, is about revolution, about overthrowing the flag of tyranny.
[00:01:38] The English national anthem, God Save The King, is an ode to the king, its subjects singing about how much they love living in a monarchy.
[00:01:51] As to the Scottish national anthem, or I should say the “unofficial” national anthem, you might be tricked by its innocent-sounding name: The Flower of Scotland.
[00:02:04] Cute, you might think, it’s about flowers and the beautiful nature one might find in the Scottish countryside.
[00:02:12] Indeed the first few lines of the anthem might suggest it’s about a flower.
[00:02:18] It goes:
[00:02:19] O flower of Scotland
[00:02:21] When will we see
[00:02:23] Your like again,
[00:02:25] Lovely. But then you start to realise that it’s not about flowers.
[00:02:32] The song continues:
[00:02:34] That fought and died for
[00:02:37] And the rest of the anthem continues to talk about the time Scotland beat England in battle, and how they can do it again if they want to.
[00:02:50] There are also some unofficial lyrics that you will hear at a football or rugby match, being belted out from the crowds.
[00:02:58] When the official lyrics are “Proud Edward's Army”, which refers to the soldiers of the English king, there are loud shouts of “BASTARDS!”
[00:03:10] Now, this song was composed in the late 1960s, and the battle it refers to is the Battle of Bannockburn, which was in the year 1314, almost 700 years before the song was composed.
[00:03:28] Of course, to say that the average person in Scotland or England for that matter spends much of their time worrying about a battle from the 14th century would be an exaggeration, but it is just one example of the extent to which historical rivalries are still felt today.
[00:03:48] So, in this episode, we are going to explore the relationship between Scotland and England.
[00:03:55] We will start with the long and complicated history of the relationship, and then talk more about the political and cultural divisions that still exist to this very day.
[00:04:07] Going back a couple of thousands of years, there was no England or Scotland. There were a series of warring tribes in Britain. In the north of the country, in modern-day Scotland, there were the Picts and the Scots.
[00:04:23] And in the south, in modern-day England and Wales, there were tribes such as the Iceni, which you might remember from episode number 251 on Boudicca.
[00:04:34] When the Romans arrived, first in 55 BC and then properly in 43 AD, they landed in the south of Britain. This was purely for practical reasons; it was the closest land to Europe.
[00:04:52] The Romans occupied Britain for almost 400 years, mainly subduing the local tribes, and importantly, they only occupied the south of the country.
[00:05:04] To the north were murderous, violent tribes, barbarians, and the Romans did what all self-respecting powers do to keep unwanted invaders out: they built a wall.
[00:05:18] This wall came to be known as Hadrian’s Wall, and in fact you can still visit its ruins today. It is right at the northern part of England, close to the border with Scotland.
[00:05:32] The reason to mention this is that this artificial division of the country by the Romans served as the first division between what we know today as England and Scotland.
[00:05:46] Fast forward a few hundred years, and by the early 10th century both Scotland and England were their own kingdoms. No longer were they a collection of warring small tribes, but two countries ruled by their own kings.
[00:06:05] England was the more powerful kingdom in every sense. Its population was larger, 3 or 4 million to Scotland’s under a million.
[00:06:15] It had a more developed agricultural system, it was richer, it had better access to military technology, a bigger and better-trained army.
[00:06:25] And in the late 13th century the English king, Edward I, did what powerful kings do, he invaded his weaker neighbour, marching north into Scotland.
[00:06:38] There had been a complication when the king of Scotland, Alexander, had died without leaving a surviving direct male heir, and King Edward of England had seized his opportunity.
[00:06:51] What happened next was the Scottish Wars of Independence. It is a long and bloody story, and in fact, you may remember part of it from episode number 186, on William Wallace.
[00:07:06] We’ll have to skip over the juiciest parts for today’s episode, but the point is that this was a sixty-year period of fighting between Scotland and England. There are no reliable figures for the number of people who died–it’s most likely in the tens of thousands–but what is undeniable is that this formed the basis of the rivalry that still exists today.
[00:07:34] If you remember “Proud Edward’s Army” from the Scottish national anthem, The Flower of Scotland, this was King Edward II, the son of Edward I, the king who had first marched north into Scotland.
[00:07:48] Now, with the wars of Scottish independence over in the late 14th century, Scotland and England existed as two separate kingdoms.
[00:08:00] Like all good European rulers, they made sure that alliances and relationships with other countries were reinforced through marriage, so Scottish and English princesses would be sent off to marry European princes, and European princesses would be brought to Britain to marry Scottish and English princes.
[00:08:23] And occasionally English and Scottish royalty would marry, to maintain the peace.
[00:08:31] All well and good, but what happened in the early 17th century, in 1601 to be precise, was an event that underlined quite how linked the Scottish and English royal families were.
[00:08:47] Queen Elizabeth I of England died childless, and her closest relation, the next in line to the throne was a man called James, who just so happened to be James VI, King of Scotland.
[00:09:05] So, the King of Scotland also became the King of England, King James VI of Scotland also became King James I of England.
[00:09:16] This was an event that would bring the two countries together like never before.
[00:09:22] The King of England would, of course, not declare war on The King of Scotland because he was the same person.
[00:09:30] Importantly, however, this was not a political union, it was called the Union of The Crowns, meaning that the two countries would share the same monarch, but have different laws and political systems.
[00:09:45] It wouldn’t be until 1707 that Scotland and England officially became one country, Great Britain, ruled by one parliament and one monarch.
[00:09:57] Now, the British history buffs among you will have realised that I’ve missed out on quite a few important things along the way, like the English Civil War and the brief period when neither England nor Scotland had a king, and when Bonnie Prince Charlie tried to mount a rebellion and overthrow the English king, but for the purposes of today’s episode, we must move on.
[00:10:20] Since 1707, Scotland and England have been united, one country, one currency, ruled by one monarch.
[00:10:31] But perhaps surprisingly, not everything was united, not everything was shared.
[00:10:38] Scotland kept its own religious system, its own education system and its own laws.
[00:10:46] If you have ever spent any time reading the small print of the terms and conditions of a UK-registered company, you will often find that it refers to “the laws of England and Wales”, not “the laws of the United Kingdom”. This is because there is no “UK law”, there are in fact three different legal systems.
[00:11:08] There’s Northern Irish law, and then there is Scottish Law and English law.
[00:11:14] Now, we don’t want to get bogged down in legal jargon, but the point is that England and Scotland were united as one country, but there were still important differences.
[00:11:26] And, to state the obvious, just because Scotland and England were now united, this didn’t mean that all cultural and regional differences simply vanished, and all previous rivalries and memories of past wars were forgotten.
[00:11:42] Far from it.
[00:11:43] Especially in Scotland, people are far more likely, and increasingly more likely, to consider themselves Scottish than British.
[00:11:54] In a survey from 2022, 72% of people in Scotland said that they thought of themselves primarily as Scottish, which is up from 57% ten years before.
[00:12:08] In England, it is the opposite, with over half of the population identifying as British only and a mere 15% identifying as English.
[00:12:21] Why is this?
[00:12:23] Well, it's not so different really than the reason that someone from Barcelona might say that they are Catalan, not Spanish, or even that someone from Sicily might tell you that they are Sicilian, not Italian.
[00:12:38] It implies particular pride in where you are from, and that pride is often more intense if you are from a smaller part of a larger nation, a part that has to fight harder to maintain its own identity, customs and traditions, or even a part that believes it should be its own independent country.
[00:12:59] Now, for the past 200 years or so, there has been relative peace between Scotland and England.
[00:13:07] Many Scottish people move to England, especially to London, the capital, where there are the most economic opportunities, as we’ll talk about in the next episode. There has also been an increasing trend of English people moving to Scotland, especially people retiring to Scotland, where house prices are lower, they have better access to healthcare and can enjoy the wonderful Scottish countryside.
[00:13:33] Of course, many families are mixed, including mine. My mother is English, my father is half Scottish and half Welsh.
[00:13:43] And the rivalry between the two countries, between England and Scotland, is now much more one of friendly jokes rather than deep-seated hatred.
[00:13:54] Scottish people love to tell jokes about English people, often playing on the stereotype of English people being reserved and gullible, easily tricked by their more intelligent northern neighbours, or that Scottish men are stronger and more “real men” than English men.
[00:14:12] And English people do the same, with the stereotypes typically being of Scottish people being cheap, not liking to spend money, being less civilised, or talking with an unintelligible accent.
[00:14:26] I’ll leave you with an example of jokes of both, a joke about English people and then a joke about Scottish people.
[00:14:34] So, here’s the first one.
[00:14:36] An Englishman is hiking in Scotland and he pauses to drink from a stream. A passing shepherd calls out "Dinnae drink frae that, it's all fulla coo piss an shite!"
[00:14:50] The Englishman says to him in a cut-glass accent "I'm terribly sorry, my good fellow, would you very much mind repeating that in the Queen's English?"
[00:15:01] And the shepherd says "I'm terribly sorry sir, I was only asking if you would like to borrow this cup and get a proper drink?"
[00:15:08] In case you didn’t understand what the shepherd said in my Scottish accent, the Scotsman says that the water is full of cow piss and shit, excrement, but the Englishman doesn’t understand what he says.
[00:15:23] And then he offers to lend him a cup to drink from it.
[00:15:26] OK, now in the interests of balance, here's an example of a joke about Scottish people, and remember that one of the stereotypes that English people have about Scottish people and often use in jokes is about Scottish alcohol consumption.
[00:15:44] This was something that the Duke of Edinburgh, the husband of Queen Elizabeth I, was reported to have said to a driving instructor in Scotland.
[00:15:53] He asked them “How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test?”.
[00:15:59] Now, the relationship between Scotland and England is complex and multi-faceted.
[00:16:05] The two countries have shared a common monarch for over 400 years, and have been in a political union for 300. There is a huge amount of shared cultural heritage, it is probably no exaggeration to say that Scottish and English people have more in common with each other than with any other nation, English-speaking or otherwise.
[00:16:27] Yet especially on the Scottish side, there is a fierce sense of nationalism, or pride in being uniquely Scottish, rather than British.
[00:16:38] And as you will hear firsthand if you ever find yourself at a sporting event between England and Scotland, and the proud cry of “bastards” rings out at the mention of a 14th-century English king, some history can never be forgotten.
[00:16:56] OK then, that is it for today's episode on the history of the rivalry between Scotland and England, and that’s it for part one of this mini-series on British divisions.
[00:17:07] As a reminder, next up we’ll be talking about the North vs. South divide in England, and in part three we will finish off with a time when internal division and conflict led to a 30-year war, in the form of The Wars Of The Roses.
[00:17:22] Oh, and we have made quite a few episodes about many of the topics we covered in passing in this episode, including the lives of Elizabeth I, Bonnie Prince Charlie, William Wallace, and Boudicca, as well as a mini-series on the broad theme of Scotland.
[00:17:37] So, if those are of interest, you can find all of those on the website, leonardoenglish.com.
[00:17:43] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:17:48] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
