love.like.oxygen

5 months ago
1 January 2012
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suekay:

adialogue:

Happy Hogmanay everyone! I hope you’ve settled your debts, cleaned your fire out and you’re getting ready for the bells. I’ll wish you well, health and happiness in the coming year and leave you with a wee history.
You may not know but Christmas was virually banned in Scotland for approx. 400 years until the 1950’s. This has it’s roots in the Protestant reformation, when the Kirk portrayed Christmas as a Popish, Catholic feast. Many Scots had to work over this time and it was New Year when families and friends gathered and exchanged gifts - Hogmanay. (The word probably comes from the “auld alliance” with the French.)
It is traditional to welcome friends and strangers. The “first foot” in the house after midnight, for the sake of good luck, should be a dark haired male. This is believed to be a throwback to Viking days when any stranger with blonde hair meant trouble. This dark haired man should bring coal, shortbread, salt black bun and whisky - all symbolic. Well, the whisky is not symbolic, that’s to offer your host a dram. Thus, going around the homes of your friends and neighbours (after midnight) became known as first footing.

My mum is a little superstitious about First Footing - she reckons if your First Foot is a person you don’t like, you’ll have bad luck all year long…So guess who normally has to walk outside with a bottle of whisky and ring the doorbell? Yup…me! At least I know she doesn’t hate me, lol!

25 notes
5 months ago on
1 January 2012

Scotland in 2011

(Source: subtlecats)

6 months ago
11 November 2011
Reblog

andersrum:

Edinburgh, Scotland by Sarah Kotlova on Flickr.
The first place on my list of where I want to go

6 months ago
8 November 2011
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suekay:

cephalopods4eva:

scotland

I live somewhere in the lime green bit :)

8 months ago
12 September 2011
Reblog

109

youknowyourebritishwhen:

Salisbury Crags in the distance and rows of rooftops in the city of Edinburgh.
©Britainonview / - Britain on View

9 months ago
22 August 2011
Reblog

596

bookmania:

Voltaire & Rousseau, Glasgow. Voltaire & Rousseau is everything that a great second-hand bookshop should be. Silent, dishevelled and rammed to the rafters with great books. It has been quietly sitting in Otago Lane for over 30 years, becoming a mecca for Glasgow’s students and intellectuals. It’s not a big place but every inch is chock full of something. What I love most about it is that there’s no real sense of hierarchy. It gives the impression that no book is too unfashionable, too old or too shabby. New books mingle with old. Hardbacks and paperbacks come together, pamphlets are fair game. If the spine is broken or the dust jacket’s ripped that’s fine, no one stands on ceremony here. It feels like more a tribute to the printed word than a business. (photo by wild goose chase)

20 notes
9 months ago on
14 August 2011

Interesting fact #5:

youknowyourebritishwhen:

Scotland was an independent country until 1603 until the King of Scotland became the King of England, however the two countries governments did not merge until 1706 to form The Kingdom of Great Britain.

(Source: eupedia.com)