As Scottish as heather ... but are they really?
The first pipes were a few reeds poked in a goat’s skin bag by Ancient Egyptians, yet there’s a good chance they still made as piercing a “wail” as today’s versions.
About as Scottish as Fortnum & Masons, which is precisely where they originated.
Original Highland dress involved swathes of fabric wrapped around the body.
The shorter “walking” kilt is attributed to Lancashire-born Thomas Rawlinson, 18th century boss of a Fort William ironworks, who suggested removing the bulky upper fabric for a simpler bottom half.
A ball and club sport pops up in Ancient Roman records called “paganica”. In 1360, well before the game is mentioned in Scottish documents, a Brussels magistrate outlawed the playing of “club and ball” game in the streets. Bad move, Brussels.
chiefs from the Western Isles to the Lowlands.
They were known to make use of medicinal plants and traditional therapies at a time when others relied on superstition and myths as often ill-fated cures for illnesses and injuries.
As word spread of their comforting drink, whisky stills spread across Scotland.
Scotch whisky was first recorded on the Exchequer Rolls in 1494 when a friar called John Cor, distiller at Lindores
American inventor Elisha Gray went to his deathbed raging that Edinburgh-born Alexander Graham Bell pinched his idea.
Barr’s soft drink is 100 per cent Scottish but
“Iron Brew” pops up in 1898 in records kept by London-based Stevenson & Howell. While in New York, chemicals company Maas & Waldstein were selling “Ironbrew”, a muddy brown vanilla concoction in 1889.
Abbey in Newburgh, Fife, and servant to the court of James IV, was noted to have made “aqua vitae, VIII bolls of malt”.
While the Beaton’s fellow countrymen pursued distilling their own Irish whiskey, Mr Park says Scots’ ingenious methods of circumventing taxes and American prohibition laws – when Scotch was allowed as a “medicinal” product – helped embed whisky as the premium spirit.
Later, shrewd marketing practices with their focus on Highland history
It gets murky and there’s not an accepted history of how whisky came about