Hi, I'm Bruce. I make Scotland History Tours videos to tell you tales from Scotland's past and give you information about key dates in Scottish history. It's Scottish history for dummies and Scottish history with a smile. Not all videos are tales from Scotland's history, some of them are about men from Scotland's past or women from Scotland's past. I try to relate the stories to places to visit on a historical day out in Scotland Basically the people who made Scotland.
As one of Scotland history tour guides people ask: Help me plan a Scottish holiday, or help me plan a Scottish vacation of your from the US. So from April 2020 I've tried to give a bit of history, but some places of interest in Scotland as well.
My family are from the Crosbies and were married into Robert de Brus First Earl of Annandale. I’m directly related to Robert the Bruce and King David the First. I hereby claim the throne of Scotland and all its territories. Long live King Christopher the Stoned, Laird of the Blunts, The High Lord Protector of the Royal Herb! Any of my cousins on here? My Grandpa was from Glasgow and was an engineer at the docks. His Father was an engineer too, Lewis McGregor Crosbie.
See you tomorrow night in Hamilton, ON for your talk/show. I wanted to wear my kilt, but my wife thought it would be too over-the-top for the audience.
As a Scottish descended Nova Scotian (who only recently discovered your channel) I love that I still get to learn new things about our shared history. I had never heard the story of Norman McLeod.
Loving your strong accent my grandfather was born in scotland. He saved a woman who jumped off a bridge and the king gave him a gold coin that was made into a necklace we still have it today
Also a National Treasure, Joseph Lister. I work for a bank, formally his home (or father in law's home) 9 Charlotte Sq. Love your videos, have lived for 30 years, but did not know a lot of that.
Mr. Fummey, if I had the money I would be absolutely delighted to take one of your tours. Your videos are always both educational and amusing. One of the few good things the RU-vid algorithm has done is bring your videos to my attention. Thank you again for your efforts.
I would imagine, if one dug deep enough, you would find similar stories of the benefits born on the back of slavery on just about every continent, and in damn near every country. Anywhere someone made money off of slavery, which is a lot of people, same kind of things happened.
When you started talking about cannon and Scotland, I wondered when Carron would enter the discussion. Perfectly played. Factual and most entertaining.
American here, obviously I largely agree as I'm doing an entire video channel attempting to get Americans to look at our history less through the hero lens and be more accepting of the awkwardness of how we got here. I think this reflects what describe as the difference put another way. But I would add the caveat that I think the obsession with ancestry is more a "white" thing than an American thing. I'm white, I come from a family where both sides were very focused on letting me know what great person I was related to growing up, even as we were only a lower middle class family at that point. But the connection to the downtrodden you mentioned does tends to be the experience of other groups of Americans, particularly African Americans who are also very ancestry focused, but more in my experience, trying to find the broken connection through the slave trade. Personally, i think connecting yourself to your ancestry is often a crutch, and like great man theory generally can be dangerous if taken to seriously. Thank you for your videos, when my wife and I travelled to Scotland a few years ago your videos were our guidebook in many places.
In the fictional universe of the rpg Battletech, the Black Watch are considered g*ddamed heroes. They almost died to the last man trying to fulfill their duty. In their last stand 9 members of the Black Watch stood against 400 enemies. It took two nuclear warheads to kill them...and even then, the only thing left was the fist of the Highlander Battlemech belonging to their commander, giving the middle finger salute to the eneny. The tale still brings a manly tear to my eyes.
The only ancestry I'm sure of is from my grandmother on my Father's side. Four brothers with the LaRue surname came from France in the mid 1800s to become farmers in the midwest. My paternal grandfather's family could be English, Scottish or Welsh but that is only conjecture from my part due to looking into where the surname might have come from or be a derivative. I'm probably going to get a Ancestry test just to find out more.
You mentioned how we Americans often talk about highland ancestors. Nearly ALL my Scottish ancestors came from the Covenantor-heavy Southwest. No romantic, roguish Gaels in kilts. Just pragmatic, industrious lowlanders.
England had 2 universities and Scotland had 4 universities an educated class and most of these Scots worked in the British Empire and the East India Company 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧
I struggle with this. As a McClure, aka 'MacClure' we are/were associated with the Clan MacLeod. I'm proud of these roots, but I do not want to sound pretentious or step on toes. I love being in Scotland and In a week, my wife and I will be heading over for three weeks. (And you are going to be in Canada. Great timing Bruce...) On our first trip, my wife and I toured Dunvegan Castle. This was pre COVID so there were historical interpretive guides in the castle. My wife was wearing a wool MacLeod shawl. When we entered a room, you could see the guides physically stiffen. She was asked three time if she was 'permitted to wear that plaid'. As to poking fun at Fife and 'keeping it in the family', we have West Virginia and certain other areas that we poke fun at. '...if your family tree doesn't fork...' As to small government and distrust of the government, Pennsylvania has 500 school districts because of our pathological fear of non-local control.
James and his sons and descendants with exception of Charles the second were a waste of space and brought nothing but destruction and misery. I wish to God that Elizabeth the first had taken a lover and had a couple of children then we might not of had to deal with that lot. We might even avoided the Civil War which devastated so much of both the mainland and the island of Ireland.
How much time have you spent in the US? "You have a feeling?" "White Nationalists" is a buzz word the media likes to use for clicks. Seems like you are repeating what you are hearing on the news more than you actually know what you are talking about in that regard. You want your viewers to stay on point, that part of your video is just going to trigger a bunch of people because of how absurd it is. Maybe you are going for clicks.
I can add a few more elements to the possible journey and changing ownership of those cannons. Napoleon did lose his captured cannon not long after his pyrrhic victory at Borodino, and the Russians lost a portion of those they regained that year forty years later after at the Siege of Sevastopol. Some of the Napoleonic-era cannon can still be seen in Moscow, lined up around the walls of the Kremlin Armoury. There was another Kremlin building where old gun barrels were stacked up about four deep along its base, but I think that may have been redesigned and rebuilt since I was there. Almost a century after the end of the Crimean War, after the retreat from Dunkirk when the British Expeditionary Force had to abandon all its artillery, trucks and armoured vehicles, there was a push in the UK to help rebuild the army's losses by salvaging and melting down as much iron and aluminium as possible. Many Brits will be familiar with the sight -- still evident in many towns and cities today -- of bare garden walls and stone boundaries where iron railings had been sawn off and donated to the war effort. War memorials were not immune: some had their fencing cut down, and many towns also donated the cannon they had received after the Crimean War. The memorial in my home town has had a plaque added which says, "This memorial records the names of those from this borough who gave their lives in the Crimean War. It was originally surmounted by a gun taken at Sebastopol. During the war of 1939-1945 the gun was handed to the government to provide metal for armaments." Some of that metal, though likely just a small proportion of it originally from Russia, will have found its way back to Russia. In June 1941 the Nazis invaded Russia, the Soviets joined the Allies, and starting in the winter of 1941 the Atlantic allies sent guns, tanks, trucks and other armaments from Britain, Canada and the USA to support the war on the Eastern Front. Forty-one convoys took place over three years, on what was called the Murmansk Run, with about a fifth of the ships being lost either to vicious Arctic weather or to Nazi attack. Some of that cannon metal will have made it to Murmansk and then been driven or hauled over the frozen Lake Ladoga to help relieve the Siege of Leningrad, and some may even have found its way further south to Stalingrad or Kursk and helped to turn the tide of the entire war. It's a small world, when you get down to it.
I was born in shetland lived there untill 10 and moved to glasgow my family are still there and nothing fills me with more pride than hearing what these wonderful people did personally i dont think enough people know what sacrifice they made the courage the stones it takes day in day out!
Ha ha! Keich …… I haven’t heard that word since I was a little boy! What a great flashback! Parents would say it when the caught you spreading BS - “Yer foo a keich!” 😂😂😂😂😂😂
