Scotland



""[A] notion has been entertained that the moral spine in Scotland is more flexible than in England. The truth however is, that an elementary difference exists in the public feelings of the two nations quite as great as in the idioms of their respective dialects. The English are a justice-loving people, according to charter and statute; the Scotch are a wrong-resenting race, according to right and feeling: and the character of liberty among them takes its aspect from that peculiarity.""

- John Galt, Ringan Gilhaize (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1823) vol. 3, p. 313

Scotland is the country on the north of the British Isles. Historically an independent state, it was formally merged with England into the United Kingdom by a treaty in 1707.

Compare Canada, Eh? (more "English" Canadians claim Scottish ancestry than any other. Make of that what you will.)

The Kilt
The most famous thing about Scotland (to people overseas) is the kilt (the plural is "the kilt", by the way). These are mostly worn by men and have a variety of accessories, such as the sporran (a pouch worn on a loose belt) and a knife called Sgian Dubh ("Black Knife" in Gaelic), which can be carried in public (tucked into your over-the-calf sock) when worn with a kilt. A notable hat is the tam o'shanter, after a character in a Robert Burns poem.

Often in American (and even English!) television, all Scottish people will be wearing the kilt all the time. It also seems to be believed that Scottish people often go without underwear—especially when they compete in the Highland Games or when Highland Dancing. In reality you would almost never see a kilted person walking the streets of a Scottish town, and if you did they were probably on their way to a wedding or similar. Basically, in any situation where an American would wear a tuxedo, a Scotsman would wear a kilt. And underwear is actually required at the Highland Games and in Highland Dancing competitions! It's also a requirement to wear undergarments with rental kilts for far more grave reasons than embarrassment. Although if you own a kilt and are wearing it, it's far more common than is realised to go without underwear. It's more of a personal choice thing. You'll occasionally see a kilted person playing the bagpipes on certain high streets for charity or because they are part of an actual bagpiping club, but that's it.

In recent years this has changed somewhat, with some sport fans - mostly rugby and football - choosing to wear a casual version of the kilt and their team's jersey on the streets or to matches.

Private schoolgirls (mostly those in North America and a few other places) wear plaid skirts, which are not kilts - they just look an awful lot like them.

A number of Scottish military regiments use the kilt in their uniform, but they have not been used in combat since 1940, not least because of a very good and nightmare fueleriffic reason involving mustard gas puddles on the battlefield. During World War One, the Black Watch (now part of the Royal Regiment of Scotland, but retaining their name as the 3rd Battalion of it) were supposedly dubbed "the Ladies from Hell" by the Germans, for their fierceness in battle.

The stereotypical "kilts, bagpipes, thistles, Highland cows" view of Scotland is often referred to as "the shortbread-tin version", after the packaging in which shortbread biscuits/cookies are marketed to tourists.

Clans
The familiar feudal system which we know from Ivanhoe and King Arthur and which comes to mind when we think of the phrase "Middle Ages" was actually far more limited in scope in Real Life history. In any case it only took partial root in Scotland. Instead, especially in the Highlands and border regions, feudalism was rather light and merged with the Celtic Early Medieval pseudofamilial societies that we call The Clan. A Scottish clan was a tribal network named after it's first patron. It included the chief, the clan elders and the clansfolk which were often the tenants of the chief as well. Each clan operated like an independent principality. For instance the Macdonalds, who held the title of Lords of the Isles(rulers of Hebrides)were a great sea power in their own right and had history been just a little bit different, they could have been an independent power or been the subjects of the Crown of Norway. Several larger clans could field several thousand warriors. The clan system ingrained itself into Scottish life and was a referent for delicate matters of internal politics. For instance one King of Scots, when deciding how the Roma should be integrated into the system, simply declared one of them "Chief of the Egyptians"(Gypsies), thus effectively deciding that Roma were another Clan.

The Clan system along the English border was slightly different from that in the Highlands; it's nature came from the constant warfare between England and Scotland, but lasted even after(roughly)amiable relations were established in the reign of Elizabeth of England and James of Scotland. When James succeeded Elizabeth forming the United Kingdom, the Border clans were ethnicly cleansed. After that they tended to be resettled in areas where highly ferocious people could be out of sight of The Government but not out of sight of indigenous peoples whom the crown also found inconvenient. In Ireland they formed much of the ancestry of the Ulstermen. In North America they became the "Scots-Irish" which settled in the Appalachians and further West. The Highland Clans took longer to subdue. They tended to take the side of the Stuart dynasty in the various civil wars and were almost eliminated culturally after the Battle of Culloden in 1745. They were saved by two quirks of history. One was that it was realized that Highlanders in fact made useful soldiers and were as apt to serve the crown as rebel against it. The other was the Romantic movement in literature, notably as represented by Sir Walter Scot. During this time ethnic exoticism became seen as colorful instead of dangerous, and the clans became fashionable in the ruling classes of Great Britain. Many of the customs we associate with the Clans in fact date from this period. For instance, the Tartans or clan heraldry on the kilts were in fact not standardized until this period. In another way, however this was a bad time for the Highlands, as it was the time of the notorious Clearances in which landholders(I.E. Chiefs) were evicting the tenants for the sake of changing the agricultural products. Some of the evicted tenants survived by migration, to North America and other places and others survived from the pay for soldiering. In any case the Clan system as in old times exists today more as a focus of identity then as the political system it once was.

Scran
On a day-to-day basis, Scots follow the same "meat and potatoes" diet as the rest of the UK/Western World. Nevertheless, traditional dishes still coexist happily with the modern internationalised diet, McDonald's, KFC, Starbucks and the rest.

Scotland does have the dubious distinction of eating even less healthily than America. Scots will deep-fry anything that will stand still long enough, so it's not surprising that Scotland has some of the worst rates of heart disease and bowel cancer in the Western world.

Some Scottish foodstuffs include:
 * Cock-a-leekie Soup: Yes, that's what it's called. Basically chicken, leek and potato soup. Really only memorable for the title, and that it originally contained prunes. Y'know, for the protein!
 * Other famous Scottish soups include Scotch Broth and Cullen Skink. Both of which are nice if made well from good ingredients.
 * Kippers: A smoked herring that's being split down the middle. Vibrant orange-yellow in colour, they can be eaten cold as well as hot. Eaten by sufferers of Knight Fever. Arbroath Smokies are haddock smoked in a similar way.
 * Haggis: "Great Chieftain o' the puddin' race", as Robbie Burns put it. Probably the most widely recognised form of Scottish cuisine. A sheep's stomach stuffed with the rest of its innards, suet and spices. Tastes far better than it sounds. Also available in dumpling, sandwich, and deep-fried forms. God help us all.
 * Demonstrating how traditional and international food can be deliciously merged: The Spicy Haggis Panini.
 * Irn Bru: Pronounced "Iron Brew". Scotland's other national drink. Radioactive orange in color; alleged to have energy-giving properties, and to be made from girders. Believed to be a good cure for hangovers, which may explain its popularity.
 * Scotland's other other national drink is Red Kola which is pretty much the same as Irn Bru only instead of radioactive orange it is radioactive red. Pretty much anything you hear about Bru can be applied to Red Kola, with all the same caveats. Red Kola is most popular in Ayrshire and the surrounding, for the obvious reason that that is where Curries used to make the stuff before being bought out. Also available in a boiled sweet form which is called Red Kola Kubes.
 * For anyone confused and wondering, Scotland's first national drink is of course Whisky of which there are huge amounts of types, brands, varieties, labels, and distilleries. Tasting them all and debating which is best is the work of a lifetime, so is debating exactly how many there are and which type is which for that matter. One which definitely isn't, is whiskey with an "e", which is Irish. Getting that wrong can also be a debate that will last a lifetime, (but also less than half an hour) if uttered in the wrong place.
 * Deep-fried Mars Bars: Are actually real. They originated as a novelty item somewhere in some corner of darkest Scotland - although its true origins are shrouded in the mists of time - and have since spread to become a novelty item everywhere else: a kind of national joke and conspiracy, but if a tourist asks for one, he's getting one. (Note that what is marketed as a Mars bar in the UK more closely resembles the American Milky Way bar than the American Mars bar.) Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dundee all claim to have invented it.
 * Scotch Pies: a Scottish institution even more than the 'White Pudding Supper'. If they went away, what would the football fans eat instead? It doesn't bear thinking about.
 * The Macaroni Pie variant comes as a particular shock to tourists, who often find it difficult to wrap their heads around the idea.
 * The Bridie is a meat pastry, resembling the more widely known Cornish pasty. The Forfar Bridie, a variety originating in the eponymous Angus town, uses shortcrust pastry, rather than the usual flaky pastry, which the inhabitants stubbornly maintain is the "true" recipe.
 * The Scotch Egg, a hard-boiled egg that has been de-shelled, wrapped in sausage meat, rolled in breadcrumbs, and--yes—deep-fried.
 * Contraray to popular belief, the Scotch Egg was actually invented in Victorian London. *nods*
 * The Swally (beer&alcohol). Scotland also brews the official strongest beer in the world. It is made by the Brew Dog brewery, is 41% alcohol by volume (that is around 80 proof for those on old money) and called Sink The Bismarck.
 * A note on Scottish beers, a weary traveller may find beers labelled as 60, 70, 80, or 90 Shilling. This due to a quirk of past Scottish licensing laws (The BBC has a good article here) Basically the lower the shilling, the weaker the beer. Lager is generally Tennents' (who used to put pictures of half naked women on their cans) and they do a lot of sponsorship of major events.
 * As with Whisky (above) there are a number of microbreweries making specialist beers. Once again, sampling them all would be the work of a lifetime.
 * Scotland also has number of Fruit Wine makers, most famous are probably Cairn O'Mohr (say it out-loud) and Moniack Castle.
 * Be warned, alcohol is Serious Business here so tread lightly.
 * Square Sausage: Sasauge. Shaped like a square. Can be eaten as breakfast, lunch or dinner; in the former cases, often combined with a roll. Can be sold either refridgerated or frozen forms; the latter has twice been mistaken for SemTex at English airport security, the second occassion being with the star of police drama Taggart. Needless to say, this was funny as hell.

Scotland does things differently
The Scottish legal system has historically been different from that of England, and the separate legal system was guaranteed by the 1707 treaty, and diverged a bit more with devolution (but not much, since the main change is that the same separate Scottish law is now mostly made at Holyrood, rather than Westminster: it's still the same law). An interesting example is that in Scotland, there are three court verdicts: Proven, Not Proven (otherwise known as "not guilty and don't do it again" or the "bastard verdict"), and Not Guilty. Owing to the prevalence of Anglo-American media, very few people in Scotland know this. Also, Scots receive more tax per capita than they do in England, which has caused a degree of outcry in the past. The justification given is that Scotland has a greater amount of sparsely populated rural areas than England and as a result, fewer schools, hospitals, etc. are needed. Some also argue that, if it were a separate nation, Scotland would rightfully claim enough of Britain's North Sea gas deposits- which are held by the Union as a whole- to offset this apparent imbalance. It has also been observed that certain areas of England receive a similarly above-average revenue, particularly the former industrial heartland Oop North, which has suffered from a similar post-industrial depression in recent decades.

The Act of Union also guaranteed a separate Established (though not state) Church. The Church of Scotland is Presbyterian, the Free Church of Scotland has no established status but a religious monopoly in most of the Western Isles and is even more Presbyterian (they take "T' S-habbath" like Orthodox Jews). Then again there's the Free Church (Continuing), the Associated Presbyterian Church and the Free Presbyterian Church, they all broke off from one and other over the past three centuries, it's all a bit People's Front of Judea. Whilst Britain's other established (and for that matter state) church; the Church of England is Anglican (aka Episcopalian). The Queen, is the official head of the English church, but an ordinary member of the Church of Scotland and somehow converts to a new religion every time she crosses the border.

The West of Scotland is also notorious for the sectarian feud between Catholics and Protestants, typically made manifest in the Old Firm - Celtic and Rangers, Glasgow's most widely recognised football teams—Catholics for the most part allying themselves to Celtic and Protestants to Rangers—and the question "What team are you?" being used to ascertain your religious denomination. Note that this question is also used by those of a less than social disposition as an indicator of whether or not you're allowed to live another day, and is always rhetorical - the correct answer is whichever team the asker supports, and wrong answers or attempts to Take a Third Option often end in violence. A safe answer for those who are unsure is "Queen's Park"—since, despite being one of the country's worst teams, their home ground is the national stadium and should instill enough patriotism in the attacker to allow you to escape to safer ground, or at least change the subject. Although present in other parts of Scotland such as Edinburgh and Dundee, nowhere else is the conflict so aggravated. It's also (far more prominently and scarily) present in Northern and even the Republic of Ireland.

The Scottish Education system is also different, see British Education System.

Glasgow has its own subway system, albeit much smaller than the London Underground. It's nicknamed the Clockwork Orange for its colour. It's one big circle, with two lines running in opposite directions.

Finally, Scotland also has differing traditions for the holiday season. Christmas is traditionally less important (people working on Christmas Day is still quite common, and almost everyone is back at work by the 27th), with an increased emphasis on New Year's Eve (known as Hogmanay). Hogmanay is, more or less, a gigantic booze-up. Ceilidh music and the singing of Auld Lang Syne are also very common. Street parties are held - most famously in Edinburgh - and BBC Scotland has an evening of programmes dedicated to it. Both New Year's Day and January 2 are Bank Holidays in Scotland, basically to deal with the almighty hangovers from Hogmanay. Hogmany programming traditionally revolved around the late, great Rikki Fulton's Last Call monologue prior to the bells. Over time this has been replaced with Chewin' the Fat and Still Game specials and football-themed sketch show Only an Excuse. The BBC coverage is often mocked as consistently being downright awful for some unfathomable reason.

See also Scotireland, Violent Glaswegian, Everything's Louder with Bagpipes, Man in a Kilt, Brave Scot.

Comic Books

 * Tintin - The Black Island
 * Destro, weapons supplier of the evil Cobra organisation in G.I. Joe, is the scottish James Mc Cullen XXIV, and some battles have even happened in his family castle.
 * Wolfsbane from X-Men. Also Moira McTaggert and her son, reality warper Proteus, a classic villain. Muir Island, where McTaggert lives, is a notable location and the setting for many important stories.
 * Carl Barks's Scrooge McDuck. The ancestral McDuck lands were a part of the lowlands called "Dismal Downs", but by Scrooge's birth the family had long since decamped to Glasgow.

Fanfic

 * Aideen from Keepers of the Elements is from Scotland and in the Old Keepers' Chapters In the Spotlight, we see what life was like for her there.

Film

 * The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
 * Casino Royale 1967
 * Star Trek - Montgomery Scott, the proudly Scottish chief engineer of the USS Enterprise.
 * The World Is Not Enough (the funeral)
 * The Wicker Man- original version.
 * Made Of Honor
 * Local Hero
 * Gregory's Girl
 * Four Weddings and a Funeral
 * Whisky Galore
 * Trainspotting (not the shortbread-tin version).
 * Scooby Doo and the Loch Ness Monster. Oh, god... Kilts, bagpipes, haggis, Nessie, horrible horrible accents... it just doesn't end!
 * The Piano features Scottish characters but is set in New Zealand. Hence a lot of the accents suck massively.
 * In the Loop has the 'Double Scotch' duo of Malcolm Tucker and Jamie MacDonald. Some of the best examples of Scottish swearing in cinema.
 * Ironically, Bonnie Scotland only has a short bit in Scotland before taking off for India for the rest of the film.
 * Gutsy Smurf from The Smurfs.
 * Disney/Pixar's Brave takes place in the Medieval Scottish Highlands. They went so far as to make two research trips to Scotland, designed unique tartans for the fictional clans and integrated Celtic and Pictish design and patterns everywhere. The title of the movie also references the Brave Scot trope.

Literature

 * Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Kidnapped (not Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - that's set in London, even though Stevenson was living in Edinburgh at the time).
 * The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, by Muriel Spark.
 * A Scots Quair
 * The Heart Of Midlothian
 * Trainspotting
 * And basically everything else Irvine Welsh has done.
 * Lanark
 * The Rebus detective stories by Ian Rankin
 * 44 Scotland Street series by Alexander McCall Smith
 * The Bob Skinner detective novels by Quintin Jardine.
 * And don't forget Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott, although the accuracy of that may very well be questionable.
 * Nowadays, Scott is the person most frequently credited/blamed for inventing the whole notion of Bonnie Scotland. And not just because of his surname.
 * According to Word of God, Harry Potter's Hogwarts is located somewhere in the Scottish Highlands. Parts of the movies have been filmed there, particularly the third one in which much of the action takes place outdoors (in Glen Coe).
 * Specifically, somewhere in the vicinity of Dufftown, according to Hermione.
 * Just about every Christopher Brookmyre book.
 * In Lonely Werewolf Girl a Theme Park Version of the Scottish Highlands features as the base of the Werewolf royal family. The sequel Curse of the Wolfgirl has a more realistic version along with the city of Edinburgh.
 * In the Necroscope series all the standard "shortbread tin" stereotypes are invoked, then brutally eviscerated. Much like several main characters.
 * Outlander began in Scotland, and then moves to France and pre-revolution America.
 * The Railway Series: Donald and Douglas are from Scotland, which is reflected in their accent.
 * The Loch, by Steve Alten is an obvious case, but readers may not be prepared for how much it goes into detail. Everything from the geological conditions that formed Scotland to its religious traditions to its legal traditions to its spats with England come up.

Live Action TV
"Rory: You are so Scottish!"
 * Taggart: As almost every English actor's CV will typically contain an appearance in The Bill, every Scottish actor's will feature a bit-part in Taggart. Except David Tennant who has failed the audition several times.
 * Monarch of the Glen - falls into the box marked 'cheesy pish'.
 * Hamish Macbeth
 * River City
 * Doctor Finlay's Casebook
 * Take The High Road, later shortened to High Road.
 * Rebus
 * Rab C. Nesbitt (They did allow Tennant a part. As a pre-op transgender barmaid. With great legs!)
 * Still Game
 * Power Rangers RPM has Flynn McAllistair (the Blue Ranger), who is proud of his heritage, dressed up like William Wallace in a flashback, and wore a kilt to a wedding. The greatest battle of the series is Kiwi Actor vs. Scottish Accent.
 * The Thick of It - features many references to the Scottishness of its lead character Malcolm Tucker and his Bastard Understudy Jamie. Tucker is called 'Hamish MacDeath' and 'The Gorbals Goebbels' by opposition MP, Peter Mannion.
 * Star Trek had Lt. Cmdr. Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, Chief Engineer of the starship Enterprise, and arguably the most famous fictional Scotsman, as played by a Canadian. And not even a Scottish-Canadian (who, as noted above, are plentiful), but an Irish-Canadian. Nonetheless, despite the very fake accent, both character and actor are fondly regarded by actual Scots, largely because the character is a personification of all the positive stereotypical traits associated with Scotland (ingenuity, work ethic, boisterousness, loyalty, pride in both his work and his homeland, and ability to hold his liquor) and is portrayed with just the right combination of lightheartedness and gravitas.
 * Star Trek the Next Generation had an episode where the Planet of Hats people were supposed to be descend from Scots. Needless to say not a single one of the accents involved would be recognised as Scottish by anyone from Scotland.
 * Smallville would occasionally make a thing of the Luthor family's Scottish roots. That Luther is a German name didn't seem to occur to them. Justified because in a later season we find out that
 * In the Doctor Who episode "The Eleventh Hour", the Doctor demands to Amelia "You're Scottish. Go fry something!"
 * Upon hearing Amy's order that it's okay to leave everyone else to die, in order to safely come back to her and the baby;


 * Second Doctor companion Jamie was a bagpiper from the highlands who almost always wore a kilt.
 * The Goodies played every stereotype for laughs in "Scotland" and "Alternative Roots".
 * The Muppet Show: Angus McGonagle, the Argyle Gargoyle who garrrrrgles Gerrrrrrshwin! GORRRRRRGEOUSLY!
 * Stargate Atlantis who's resident Doctor Carson Beckett notably wears a Scottish flag as his mission patch. This is despite English characters such as Peter Grodin who wear the Union Flag. Make of that what you will.

Music

 * ACDC front man, Bon Scott, was from Kirriemuir, Scotland. Also, the Young brothers have Scottish descent.
 * Grave Digger's Tunes of War is a Concept Album based on Scottish wars.
 * They visited later the same subject matter in the songs "The Battle of Bannockburn" and "Highland Tears".
 * Recently they released another album based on Scotland, The Clans Will Rise Again.
 * Franz Ferdinand, being a Scottish band, get inspiration for a fair number of songs from the vibrant (and distinctly non-shortbread-tin) Glasgow nightlife. The most obvious Shout-Out was in "Do You Want To", in which they name-check the Glasgow art gallery Transmission.
 * Scotland has a large body of traditional and folk music, much of it dealing with Scottish life and history. The most prominent exponents of Scottish folk were The Corries, a duo comprised of Ronnie Browne and the late, great Roy Williamson, who helped popularise the folk revival of the '60s, and penned Flower of Scotland, the nation's unofficial anthem. Other artists include Silly Wizard, The Clutha and The Tannahill Weavers, among many others.
 * Highly successful celtic rock band Runrig hail from the Hebridean island of Skye. Much of their music deals with Scottish culture and tradition and makes use of the Gaelic language. They have covered several traditional songs, most famously Loch Lomond, which became something of an anthem, and the definitive rock adaptation of the song.
 * Numerous folk punk and celtic punk bands, in Scotland and elsewhere make use of music and lyrics inspired by folk music, including The Real Mc Kenzies from Canada, Flatfoot 56 from the United States, and the Nyah Fearties from Scotland itself.
 * The Exploited, one of the most famous anarcho-punk bands in the world, also credited with introducing the mohawk to the world at large.
 * A range of '80s Scottish Bands: The Cocteau Twins, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Primal Scream, and The Vaselines.
 * And a range of '90s Scottish Bands: Arab Strap, Belle and Sebastian, Mogwai, and Teenage Fanclub.
 * And a range of 2000s Scottish Bands: Snow Patrol, The Fratellis, Travis and the aforementioned Franz Ferdinand.
 * Shirley Manson, lead singer of Garbage is from Edinburgh, where she formed her first band, Angelfish.
 * Alestorm are from Perth.
 * Sheena Easton.
 * KT Tunstall.
 * We are legally required to mention The Proclaimers here.
 * Ditto; Bis, the punk trio famous for being the only Indie band to ever play Top of the Pops and writing The Powerpuff Girls theme song, and HUGE in Japan. Warning; may never leave your head.
 * Ian Anderson, lead singer of Jethro Tull.
 * The Bay City Rollers.
 * '70s rockers Nazareth.
 * Indie rock bands Frightened Rabbit (Selkirk), We Were Promised Jetpacks (Edinburgh) and the Twilight Sad (Kilsyth). All three bands have been making the rounds into the soundtracks of North American television and cinema and promote each other rather heavily.
 * Jimmy Barnes originally hails from Glasgow.

Poetry

 * Scotland has a rich poetic traditional, including a great body of work in the Scots language, most famously the work of Robert "Rabbie" Burns, a Scottish national hero who's popularity has lead to his usurpation of the epithet "The Bard" within Scotland and the Scottish expatriate community (the title traditionally being used to describe Shakespeare in the English-speaking world). Much of his work was written in the Scots dialect, albeit a variety more Anglicised than is traditional, and deals with Scottish history and culture, particularly the Wars of Independence and the Jacobite Wars, both of which allowed Burns to indulge in his then radical positions of Scottish nationalism and republicanism without betraying his subversive message to then-rampant censorship. He also wrote songs, or adapted poems to music, including such canon examples as Scots Wha Hae, Scotland the Brave and Auld Lang Syne, the latter having achieved popularity throughout the English-speaking world.

Professional Wrestling

 * Much like Scotty from Star Trek the Original Series the most famous Scottish wrestler - "Rowdy" Roddy Piper - is in fact Canadian.
 * Scotland has a number of independent wrestling groups - including the Scottish Wrestling Alliance (SWA) who famously got a pay-off from WWE when the latter launched NXT, a name which was already used by the SWA for a similar concept.
 * Notable Scottish wrestlers who are actually from Scotland include Drew McIntyre and The Highlanders (Robbie and Rory). "Superstar" Bill Dundee - of Memphis wrestling fame - was born in Scotland but raised in Australia.

Theatre

 * Brigadoon
 * "Nanty Puts Her Hair Up" from New Faces of 1952.
 * The Reduced Shakespeare Company's version of Macbeth, which manages to pack virtually every Scottish stereotype known to man into the roughly 1.5 minutes it takes them to do the play, complete with deliberately horrendous accents.
 * The Steamie a well-regarded play set in a public washhouse (or "steamie") in Glasgow in The Fifties.

Video Games

 * The Highland tribe levels in Lemmings 2 are set in a cartoony version of the Scottish Highlands, featuring redheaded Lemmings, thistle death traps, and Loch Ness Monsters and Scottish terriers as decorations and/or obstacles.
 * The Scotland track in SuperTuxKart, including the background theme.
 * The Rockstar North department of Rockstar Games in based in Edinburgh. Rockstar North is well known for developing all of the Grandtheft Auto games. Before they were bought by Rockstar and became Rockstar North they also made the Lemmings Games and the first Grandtheft Auto games as DMA Design Ltd.
 * Lilly Satou, one of the five heroines of the Visual Novel Katawa Shoujo and her sister Akira are Half Japanese, Half Scottish.

Western Animation

 * Danger Mouse had an episode set in Scotland that condensed the cows-and-bagpipes stereotype into a vista of rolling green hills with bagpipes peacefully grazing...
 * Much of the mythology in Gargoyles has Scottish roots and the accents are played with. Though, if Gargoyles was your only foray into Scotland, you might think that there was no such thing as grass in the region. Word of God states that two of the surviving clans are of Scottish decent, the first being the shows main cast and the second being the Loch Ness clan, which wasn't featured at all in the Loch Ness episode.
 * The Kim Possible villain Duff Killigan wears a kilt and tam'o'shanter, lives in a castle, is obsessed with golf, loves haggis and has a soundtrack of bagpipes playing whenever he appears onscreen. (So he's American, is he?)
 * The Simpsons: Groundskeeper Willie, also a bag of clichés. But he's right about thing: there's nae a animal alive that can outrun a greased Scotsman.

Other

 * George Macdonald Fraser, who wrote, among other things, his splendid history of the Border Clans, The Steel Bonnets and his memoir of his experiences in a Border regiment during World War II, Quartered Safe Out Here.
 * Newspapers provide us with The Sunday Post, which is Heather and Shortbread in Sunday newspaper form.