(“Bannock” has been used, in New England, to apply to a “thin cake
baked on a griddle”.)
That this year marks the
seven-hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn presumably is the
reason why Scottish nationalists have chosen 2014 for the holding of their
hubristic and pointless referendum on independence. Here are a couple of facts that you
probably didn’t know about the circumstances of that engagement:
- During those feudal times, loyalty
was to one's overlord rather than to one's country; whether that overlord,
for instance, the King of England (to whom the Bruce and all the other candidates
for the crown of Scotland had sworn fealty in 1291), was of a different
nationality from one's own was irrelevant. Robert the Bruce and his
adherents were motivated not by patriotism but merely by his dynastic
ambition.
- During Bannockburn, it appears, not
only the Bruce (who had committed either murder or attempted murder inside
a church) but the
whole of Scotland was under excommunication by the Pope.
The above might prove enlightening to those Scottish patriots who
like to believe that Robert the Bruce's side had the moral high ground!
