Tyree is a Scottish name, one I married into, and also Scottish is the maiden name of my paternal grandmother, MacLean.
The windy Isle of Tiree, the outermost of Scotland’s Inner Hebrides, is mighty close to the Isle of Mull, the seat of the MacLean Clan.
I questioned MacLean Clan historian Detta MacLean when I took on the Tyree name and she said my new husband was probably a MacLean. “I grew up on Mull and knew everyone on Tiree. They are all MacLeans!”
Detta MacLean’s point might be a stretch, but it’s very Scottish thinking. Very clannish.
As it happens, the Scots have a good deal in common with the Jews, according to Duncan A. Bruce, author of the 1996 history, The Mark of the Scots. And the parallels, taken together, have landed these two groups a good deal of trouble throughout the ages. Take a look at the list:
- Passion for education
- Clannishness.
- Understanding of money: ” From peddler to shop owner to money lender to banker”
- Diaspora.
Anytime you take a close-knit group that insists on studying, bettering themselves, sticking together, saving money, learning to invest — and then leaves home base to start life anew elsewhere, you have a recipe for trouble. It’s called envy, and as the old saying goes, “Envy rarely wears her own dress.”
Germany: Trade between Scotland and Germany goes back to before 1297 and it wasn’t long before the Scots were successful:
….Germany in the Middle Ages was teeming with prosperous Scottish (and Jewish) peddlers. The word Schotte was used to mean “peddler” in Germany as early as 1330.
…..But the hard working and clannish Scots were as envied and disliked in Germany as they had been and were to be elsewhere. They imported their wives from Scotland. They maintained their own language, schools, churches, charities and hospitals. And, of course, their great sin was that they made money. In 1539, in Rügen, there was a complaint against “illegal” trading by Schotten. A threat to naughty children in Prussia was “Warte bis der Schotte Kommt” or roughly, “Look out, the Scot will get you.”
The Scottish and Jewish peddler in Germany had to endure near-Russian winters, wolves, many recorded murders at the hands of the peasantry, harsh discriminatory laws, confiscation of merchandise, jail terms, and the strong and continuous opposition of the guilds. Near the end of the seventeenth century, the guild merchants of Königsburg prayed in a successful petition “the Scots skim the cream off the milk of the country” and even if they were German-born, Scots were forbidden to peddle there and the town gates were shut against them. (Mark of the Scots, p. 175)
Poland: When Poland recovered Gdansk (Danzig) from Germany (1454), Scots started arriving, realizing that Poland had virtually no commercial class other than Jews: the country was a goldmine. The Scots became very successful and, like the Jews, resented:
Their achievement in Poland was so obvious that in 1606 even in England an opponent of union with Scotland, speaking in the House of Commons, could say, “if we admit them into our liberties we shall be overrun with them…witness the multiplicities of the Scots in Polonia.”
When many noble estates had been mortgaged to Scots the prejudice grew, and in 1594 King Sigismund III issued a mandate against “Jews, Scots and other vagabonds,” and similar edicts were issued in various cities. (Mark of the Scots, p. 185)
As time passed, German and Polish Scots either returned to what had become Great Britain — easily enough done as they had retained English as their primary language — or assimilated into the local populations. They had the advantage of being Christians.
The Jews did not assimilate…..
Author Duncan A. Bruce was interviewed when his book The Scottish 100 was published in 2000:
Q: Please comment on the intriguing and interesting statement in your book that “a feeling of brotherhood with the Jews was a common idea among Scots and Presbyterians throughout the English-speaking world.”
A: I’m glad you picked up my comments about the Scottish affinity with the Jews. It is important to me as my wife is of Jewish descent and, therefore, my daughters are also.
I got my first look at this from my Highland immigrant grandmother who, with my grandfather, founded a Presbyterian church in Johnstown, PA. I call my grandmother the only true Christian I have ever known, and she taught me, on her knee, about what good the Jews had done and how wrong the Nazi persecution was.
….but the main point is that The National Covenant made the Scots a covenanted people like the Jews. It was an agreement with God between Him and a particular people (see page 301).
The Scots thought of themselves as the New Israel.
David Daiches, a prominent Scottish Jew, has pointed out that Scotland is the only country where there has never been a serious anti-Jewish act.
Besides, there are the achievers. Many people think that the Scots and the Jews have contributed the most, at least per capita, to the progress of civilization.
Study! Work! Save! These apply to both groups. Someone told me that the average Jewish-American has two years of graduate school. The U.S. Census says that Scottish-Americans have the highest level of education of any national group.
Here’s to the Jews, then, and here’s to the Scots: Mol an latha math mu oidhche/Praise the good day at the close of it.