Letter: Historical facts

DR MICHAEL Kelly's concerns, as expressed in a recent article (Perspective, 19 May), with regard to how the Labour Party and supporters of Celtic have reacted to recent defeats, are of little interest to me.

I must nevertheless take issue with his interpretation of Scotland's history in this article. May I point out the following:

A Scottish army commanded by Robert the Bruce defeated an English army commanded by Edward II in Yorkshire at the battle of Byland in 1322 (an "away win"), which resulted in much of the north-east of England coming under Scottish domination until the English recognised Scotland as an independent nation in 1328.

Scotland did not win at Killiecrankie (it was the Jacobites), and Scotland most certainly did not go "down in the return leg at Dunkeld" (where the Jacobites were defeated by a troop of Lowland Presbyterian Protestant Scots, known to posterity as the "Cameronians").

At Culloden the army commanded by Bonnie Prince Charlie was a Jacobite army, not a Scottish one.

As the late historian Dr Angus Calder put it in an essay on 18th-century Scotland: "English-speaking, Presbyterian Scotland triumphed at Culloden."

The Duke of Cumberland's Hanoverian army included a number of Scottish regiments. As Stephen Fry suggested in an episode of QI, Culloden was more Rangers versus Celtic than Scotland versus England.

As for Rule Britannia being an English song, well, where does Dr Kelly get this from? The song refers to "Britons never will be slaves".

Rule Britannia was written in 1740 by a Scotsman, James Thomson.

Allan Strang

Halliburton Place

Galashiels, Borders