A Rant

I am going to be franker than usual in today's post, perhaps down to the fact that I am hospitalized following an accident and on heavy medication. (Or in other words, drugged out of my mind, such as it is)

So here goes. I just read a sample of a novel supposedly set in the Scottish Highlands. It made me throw up in my mouth.

"Verra" is not a Scottish word, dammit. In the Highlands, the chances are they would have spoken either Scots Gaelic (Gàidhlig) although if they were noble, they might have spoken Scots or French as those were also languages of the Scottish court. NEVER would they have said "verra" which is not a word in Scots or Gàidhlig. It is at best an idiotic dialectical spelling of a Lowland Scot speaking English.

Scotland was part of the medieval European world in which there were royalty, nobles, the small nobility and their adherants. While the Gaelic culture was extremely important in Scotland as was the Norman culture, imported when a Scottish king gave lands to Norman followers, neither were the rather peculiar romaticised version you find in these novels.  Scots were not some barbarians who painted their faces blue. A Scottish "warrior" in the middle ages does not even make sense.

The Scotland in "Highland Romances" is a made up place that never existed.

Do you have a right to write in this made up world? Yes, but PLEASE try not to make it insulting by writing a dialect on the level of "negro minstrels" or assuming that Scots were barbarians. And if you love to read it, that is your right, too, but PLEASE be aware that it has nothing to do with the real Scotland or its actual history.