I have a friend from Yorkshire who's never been to Scotland, even though it's only 100 miles up the road from where he grew up. He's a keen traveller, he's been to South America and lives in East Asia, yet never once has he gone to the Highlands, or Glasgow, or Edinburgh. When he told me this, my jaw dropped. It just seemed so strange at the time to meet an Englishman, especially a northerener, who had never once been north of the border. I can't think of anyone I know in Ireland who hasn't been to Scotland and, of course, we can't drive there.
Maybe I shouldn't have been so surprised. The fact is that I, as an Irishman, have far more in common with the Scots than he does as an Englishman. Our two countries are remarkably similar in many ways. They look the same for a start. They are roughly the same size and have comparable populations. They each have two large cities, some smaller ones, and lots of loughs, mountains and coastline.
The people of the two countries, with their strong sense of history and place, their hospitality, their drunkenness and their bigotry, are cast from the same mould. Those of us from the North of Ireland even sound a lot like the Scots. Several times English people have mistaken me for Scottish. Though amused by their ignorance, I was never in the least bit offeneded.
Over the centuries the Scots and the Irish have always moved to each other's countries. The connection between the North of Ireland and the West of Scotland, between Belfast and Glasgow, is particularly close. In days gone by the narrow stretch of water dividing the two countries was far more accesible than the interior of either. Relatively speaking, the Irish Sea was a bridge, not a barrier. Of course, roads are much better these days but the movement continues. In at least one Scottish university, the majority of students are from Northern Ireland.
But perhaps more than anything else, Scotland and Ireland are alike becasue of what they are not. They are not England. It is the curse of both places to live in the shadow of another country ten times their size in population terms. Because of this, should you ever make the mistake of refering to a Scot or an Irish person as "English", you will find yourself abruptly "re-educated".
Any portrayal of the relationship of England to her Celtic neighbours as purely conforntational is ridiculous. But likewise, one cannot speak of these relationships without acknowledging their violent history. In both cases, the relationship with the English is so long and complex that it defies simple categorisation, at least in a short blog like this. So what I'm about to say is by necessity a simplification.
Perhaps the crucial difference between Ireland and Scotland is their relationship to their larger neighbour. Until the conflict in the North is finally resolved, Ireland and England remain, in some ways, at loggerheads. Violent struggle between the two countries is a living memory for nearly everyone. This is not the case with Scotland. There has been no war between the Scots and the English since the Battle of Culloden in 1745. The days of land battles in Britain have long been consigned to history.
In spite of this, it is always striking to me just how "Scottish" the Scottish have remained. They retain their own courts, their own educational system, their own church and now their own parliament. But more than that, more than at the institutional level, Scots are different from the English. Most English people still have little problem accepting the label "British". Indeed many are unable to understand, no matter how often a Celt explains it to them, that the terms "English" and "British" are not interchangeable.
The Scots by contrast have always been semi-detatched Brits, happy to accept the benefits of membership but unwilling to embrace the identity entirely. Certainly, they have adamantly refused to place Britishness ahead of Scottishness. Some, like the Scottish Nationalist Party, reject the label "British" outright, calling for their country to be independent. As yet, most Scots have refused to go this far.
Sitting in a pub in Edinburgh last Hogmanay, a Scottish acquaintance of mine gave me chapter and verse on why independence for his country was a ludicrous idea. While this person was clearly British in a political sense, I suspect he would still proudly describe himself as Scottish first and foremost.
For years I thought that the concept of Britain was doomed (and I relished it's demise). I convinced myself that no system with three constituent parts could survive forever when one of the parts was so much bigger than the other two. Eventually, I believed that Soctland, and maybe also Wales, would come out from England's shadow and take what I believed to be their rightful place in the world, as small nation-states.
Now I'm not so sure. Devolution in 1999 seems to have drawn a lot of the sting from Scottish nationalism. No longer ruled directly from London, there seems less need now to break away entirely. On my last visit to Scotland, I didn't sense any great desire to push out further than devolution.
Indeed, one could argue that the Scots don't want further change because they have it made. They have day-to-day control of their lives through the Scottish parliament while retaining membership of a reasonably powerful state in which they more than play their part (Tony Blair's cabinet and the BBC, to give just two examples, are awash with Scots).
And most of all, they have what they have always had: a seemingly effortless ability to retain their sense of self and their sense of difference.