Cultural Cringe vs Cultural Pride: Examining Scottishness against Irishness

I recently traveled to Dublin, my first time stepping on Irish soil despite it being only a forty minute flight away from Edinburgh. The trip was short, consisting of two days worth of sightseeing, but it was enough to open my eyes to quite a few differences felt between it and my home country. After these tourist days, my conclusion was this: Irishness is in many ways a more whole and unified identity than Scottishness. Why? Because it is unequivocally, and unashamedly, singularly Irish. 

This was immediately noticeable as soon as I stepped off the plane and entered Dublin Airport. Every sign detailing my exit was first in Irish, and second in English. This did an excellent job at generating a real sense of Irishness from the very start of my journey. I couldn’t help but immediately think, if this were the case in Edinburgh Airport, that a sliver of Scottish Gaelic dared to tower over the English language, the outrage from Unionists would be immense, and the feeling from the general public would be… what’s the point?

I’ll tell you the point — cultural pride. Ireland certainly has always embraced its own. Scotland, on the other hand, suffers from a sense of cultural cringe, traceable even before the Act of Union in 1707. This is something I have always been aware of, as a supporter of Scottish independence from within a country that voted against its best interest back in 2014, but my trip to Ireland was a painful physical reminder of my own country’s shortcomings. 

When you go to Ireland, you truly feel the shared cultural pride and appreciation from its people. Dublin is a lively and colourful city, deeply historical and yet firmly situated within the present. I was impressed with its nightlife, though not the extortionate prices at Temple Bar. I managed to catch some live music at a pub in a more local area, recommended by a lovely tattoo artist whilst my friend was getting an Irish harp inked onto her arm. The live music was fantastic, a mixture of international hits and Irish folk songs. As I looked around the Irish pub, just a regular pub if you’re in Ireland I suppose, I was hit by a wave of jealousy. Every person in the pub sang with fervour, stomping and cheering along to the Irish songs I hardly knew. Even my friends sang along to the rebel songs, knowing almost every word. In that moment, everyone was aware of exactly what Irishness was, because everyone felt it. 

I am reminded of the most recent Burns Night I attended back in January of 2025 in my hometown. This was a most special occasion for the local Burns Club, as it was the first year that women were allowed to join the club and attend the celebratory night. This fact was most definitely felt. The majority of the speeches were spent talking about how the club was moving on from the past and embracing the modern. When the singular female speaker stood up to give a rousing speech after decades of rejection from the club (which her brother, father, and grandfather were all a part of), many of the men in the room looked on a little ashamedly. The chairmen were all pensioners, and the youngest men - most around their 30s or 40s - had been dragged along by their fathers. Including myself, I counted five women. 

Burns Night is a celebration in which we come together to read, recite, and sing the poetical works of Scotland’s national bard, Robert Burns. Burns’s work is deeply patriotic to the land and people of Scotland. He intertwines these aspects with depth of emotion in such a way that inspired later poets like Scott, Wordsworth, Byron, Keats, and many others. His poetry is inherently Scottish. Knowing this, I was struck when at the Burns Night, the hosts made two toasts “to the King” throughout the event. The British monarchy and Rabbie Burns, to me, hold no link worthy of noting during a night dedicated to the brilliance of the national bard. In fact, Burns himself was a working class lad from Ayrshire, who detested Westminster politics, the Hanoverian royal family, and the Scottish politicians who signed the Act of Union 1707. Bringing up the British monarchy is a slap in the face to everything the young poet embodied. Thankfully, my glass was empty and therefore could not have been drunk from, even if I had raised it to Charles. 

So why then does every celebration of Scottishness have to be interlinked to ideas of British unionism, where Irishness remains singular in its pride and appreciation? Of course, one glaring factor is Scotland’s proximity to England and Englishness. Scotland has been a member of the Union for over 300 years, where Ireland broke free from its shackles to form its own state in 1922. Scotland certainly had its fair share of warring centuries with England, granting us legendary heroes like William Wallace and Robert the Bruce, still memorialised today by Americans with 8% Scottish ancestry all over the world. But Scotland’s story culminated in a union with England, not a split. It became an active participant in the empire’s colonisation process, building a sense of shared Britishness by diluting one’s own Scottishness. Ireland, on the other hand, did its time as a colony, suffering for centuries at the hands of the British Empire, but building a resistance strong enough to overcome its subjugation and ultimately establish an independent state. Its people shared a common language, culture, and enemy. Englishness in Ireland was evil, and so everything Irish became an image of what England was not. Ireland hardly succumbed to notions of Anglocentrism; if the English language dominated communities, it was because it had been enforced by the oppressors through legislation and brute force, not because the Irish people thought it to be superior. 

Scottish Gaelic also faced many enforced efforts by the British government to wipe it out over the centuries. James VI began an attempt to ‘civilise’ the Gaelic-speaking Highlanders during his reign by promoting the English language in its place, notably through the Statutes of Iona, wherein Highland clan chiefs were forced to send their heirs to the Scottish Lowlands to gain an English-speaking, Protestant education. By 1616, no heir could inherit his chiefdom, lest he be proficient in speaking, reading, and writing in English. The aftermath of the failed Jacobite Uprising of 1746 was detrimental not just to the Gaelic language, but the entirety of the Highland clan system. Traditional Highland culture was brutally suppressed by the British Government; Highlanders were forbidden to carry weapons, tartanwear was banned under the Dress Act 1746, and only repealed decades later in 1782. Gaelic soon fell to the dominance of English, which overtook and infiltrated everyday life for Scots, largely due to its position as the language of economic commerce. Gaelic was forced out throughout time, and Scots ultimately assimilated to the English language. 

With assimilation came an association of incivility, backwardness, and underdevelopment towards the Gaelic language. This attitude is still prominent today; pushback against Gaelic language funding is still common amongst Scots, with many holding the opinion that there is little point in promoting an almost dead language. But the key word there is almost. The Irish have saved their own language from almost extinction because they recognised it as a symbol of national pride and character. Where the Irish language also faced stigmatisation, the Irish people did not internalise this attitude, but actively fought against anglocentrist language attitudes by funding, learning, and fighting to keep Irish alive. Many Scots, on the other hand, hang onto the idea that Gaelic is officially a relic of the past, something that cannot and should not return. Unfortunately for those who hold this attitude, just under 70,000 Scots in the nation reported that they can speak Gaelic. Around 130,000 can speak, read, write, or understand the ancient language. For many in the Western Isles, Gaelic is alive and well, a vital part of everyday Highland and Island life. It is on the roadsigns, taught in schools, sung in competitions, spoken by old villagers. Gaelic is still alive, despite every effort made to see its demise. 

Ireland is particularly good at understanding its history and not quite letting it go. Ireland refuses to let Irish die, because to do so would be to remove a fundamental part of its cultural identity, and Irish cultural identity is singular. It has fought against Britain for centuries to be so. Scottish cultural identity, on the other hand, is so muddled up in Britishness that it lets its history and language and culture slip from its fingertips far too easily. We will wear a kilt for the rugby, and sing Flower of Scotland, but we’ll scoff at the idea of funding an ancient language in schools or refurbishing an old road sign to add a bit of Gaelic at the bottom. Because Scotland is not singular and whole like Ireland, secure in its history with a full knowledge of right from wrong; it lets vital parts of its cultural makeup fade from obscurity over time and dwindle away without a fight. It lets things go, it allows itself to fall into second place over and over again. 

Still, the future remains bright for Scotland. After the removal of the UK from the EU in 2016, in which the entirety of Scotland voted to remain but was outvoted by England and Wales, a strong independence movement has emerged once more. Undeterred by the loss in the 2014 referendum, this movement offers a more progressive and open attitude to Scottishness and its potential, with young people making up the majority of independence supporters in the nation. 

This new movement can allow the nation to embrace its heritage and use this in its approach to the modern world. For the new generation, support for independence seems not to stem from a wish to return to Scotland’s independent past, it is not a step backwards. An independent Scotland instead offers a new future; a prospect that excites in the age of Westminster rule. In such a case, Scotland would be moving forward more freely, without Westminster’s hand holding it back by the scruff of the neck. 

This is where Ireland is at. Dublin is an exciting city; it ensures Irish culture and history does not remain static, but becomes an active and dynamic aspect of its modern living. Scars still remain on the city’s buildings, but these are markers which promote a new age of peace and inclusivity. It is a place in which history and modernity are blended together perfectly. Scotland’s sense of cultural cringe will one day, I hope, turn into the singular sense of pride that is felt in Ireland today. To do so, however, requires Scotland to become its own singular, whole entity. Only with the strong support of the new generation, following in Ireland’s footsteps, can this become Scotland’s new reality.