You Take the High Road and I'll Take the Low Road

You Take the High Road and I'll Take the Low Road

Scotland is commonly divided into the lowlands and the highlands and isles. In the public consciousness the lowlands are then thrown in the bin. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, Scotland is the highland culture - glens and lochs, clans and tartans, insane charges with claymores and doomed romantic rebellions. "Scotland" and "highland" are almost synonymous.

But the importance of the Scottish highlands to the world outside can be largely summed up as "nuisance". It's the Scottish lowlands that actually matter to world history - Edinburgh as a centre of learning and innovation, Glasgow as a centre of industry. Adam Smith, John Logie Baird, Alexander Fleming, Alexander Graham Bell, James Clerk Maxwell, James Watt and so many others have made the Scottish ethnicity something that crops up in history the way Jews and Greeks do. The people who dragged the world, kicking and screaming, into the industrial age.

That we care so much about one and so little about the other is a sad comment on the inadequacy of our geekiness. You take the high road - I'll take the low.