Best of Scotland (T)

Published on Friday 19 June 2009 21:51

TUNNOCK'S: Tunnock's Teacake is a biscuit-based, marshmallow-domed, chocolate-coated confection. There are two modes of ingestion: you pick and eat the chocolate off the dome before daintily chomping the gooey white innards, or – and real Scots would do no other – open wide and stow the whole in your gaping gob. Prior stripping off (of the foil) is advisable.

TANNAHILL, ROBERT: "Will you go lassie go / To the Braes of Balquhidder." So opens the best-known song of Paisley's weaver, songwriter and poet. He achieved success with a collection published in 1807. He was less successful in his love for Jessie Tennant – she married another. Prone to depression, in 1810 he drowned himself in a burn at 35.

TROSSACHS: It's one of the most famous places in Scotland. But where is it (or are they)? Properly it's the wee bristly glen between lochs Achray and Katrine, but the term commonly denotes a larger area. According to an 18th-century Callander minister, the Trossachs presented "an aspect of roughness and wildness, of tangled and inextricable boskiness, totally unexampled, it is supposed, in the world".

TELFORD, THOMAS: Two British poets have towns named after them, Milton and Telford. The latter's Eskdale is forgotten, and his fame rests on more material foundations as the greatest and most productive civil engineer ever. Born in Dumfriesshire in 1757, he built Highland roads (1,000 miles), bridges (120), the Caledonian Canal, and harbours and bridges all over Britain. His friend, poet Robert Southey, titled him the Colossus of Roads

TARTAN, GRANNY'S: A traditional, organic tartan of corned-beef appearance, sported on the leg. Medically designated erythema ab igne, and caused by exposure to heat. Less common since advent of central heating.