Scottish HIstory Respource and More

Funny how one thing leads to another.  I was looking up Scottish folk songs. I specifically wanted one from the time of Edward Longshanks, Hammer of the Scots. I did not exactly find that, but I did find this enchanging BBC program about Scotland and spent entirely too much time watching all of episode 2, Hammers of the Scots.

Note that it does show some gore and disturbing scenes and have disturbing information at times.  It's England and Scotland in the 13th and 14th centuries, after all.  Still, I think they approached those issues about as well as they could. 

I was really enjoying the narrator's voice  (Americans are such suckers for almost any UK accent,and I am not and exception to that), but I didn't know who he was, so I looked him up, and found this:
 

TV historian Neil Oliver wants to resurrect the 'manly man' by telling tales of old-fashioned heroism, says Roya Nikkhah

• Read an exclusive extract from Neil Oliver's new book
• Listen to Neil Oliver read an extract from his book

When Ernest Shackleton planned the "last great journey on Earth" - a hazardous attempt to cross the Antarctic continent via the South Pole - he went about recruiting for his expedition team by placing an advertisement in a newspaper.

It read: "Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success."

More than 5,000 aspiring adventurers replied to that 1913 advertisement. What would be the odds for generating so much enthusiasm for such a daring, even foolhardy, mission these days?

Small, according to historian and archaelogist Neil Oliver. "Frankly, the only thing that would get so much interest these days is an advert for bloody Big Brother," he sighs.

 
 So he wrote a book to inspire the boys of today, Amazing Tales for Making Men Out of Boys.

With a title like that, I was curious about the Amazon reviews.  There was a shining review by an actual boy, several reviews that were negative because, as the reviewers explained, they'd been expecting a book for four year olds and it is apparently for 12 and up.  There were a couple charges of chauvinism, and one of those also cmoplained:

Who would read the story of Thermopylae to an 8 year old before bed time?

Guilt as charged, except I think it was Bullfinch's Mythology or Homer and it was a newborn. 

turns out Neil Oliver of the plummy voice has written other books as well.A History of Scotland: Look Behind the Mist and Myth of Scottish History, Two Men in a Trench, and a couple others.

I never did find my folk song, but Edward Longshanks, William Wallace, and Alexander II, who had the infant child of a rival to his claim brutally murdred, and who then himself died when he fell from a horse on a stormy night and broke his neck.