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Infar cake - a Scottish wedding cake broken over the head of the bride as she enters here new home, deriving from an ancient Roman custom of confarratio, where the eating of a consecrated cake by the contracting parties constituted marriage. Scots law, unlike English, is based on old Roman law.

F. Marian McNeill, The Scots Kitchen (1929) quoted in Ian Crofton, A Dictionary of Scottish Phrase and Fable (2012)

#Marriage customs #Roman law #Scottish customs

This beautiful object is called a “quiche”. Scottish people drink whisky from them at “Hogmanay”, which is the Scotch word for “Happy new year” :)

#scottish customs #traditional #scotch #scotland

Scottish Folklore of Cursed “Dolls”

There is a rarely talked about (though seemingly uncommon) historical custom in Scotland that will likely sound a lot like the exaggerated “voodoo dolls” (which, despite the name, are not prominent in Haitian Vodou or Louisiana Voodoo) of media.

The Scottish version is a doll that is a form of sympathetic magic(a magic category invented by Scottish folklorist James George Frazer).

Sympathetic magic has two varieties; one of which requires similarities, and the other requires contact or “contagion.”

“The former principle may be called the Law of Similarity, the latter the Law of Contact or Contagion. From the first of these principles, namely the Law of Similarity, the magician infers that he can produce any effect he desires merely by imitating it: from the second he infers that whatever he does to a material object will affect equally the person with whom the object was once in contact, whether it formed part of his body or not.” “The Golden Bough” by James George Frazer(1878)

The dolls of this topic are a form of imitation type sympathetic magic. For these, the dolls were crafted with ill-intent in the likeness of the person you wanted to curse, then what was done to the doll was thought to harm who it was made to look like.

While they are called dolls, they are not really what you might expect a child to have. Instead, they are sculpted of clay but not cured in an oven.

“An image of the victim was made of clay, and because it had a certain resemblance to him (likeness denoting real connection), it was believed that whatever was done to the image would produce a similar effect on the person whom it represented. “ “The misty isle of Skye : Its scenery, It’s people, Its story” by Eneas Mackay, Stirling, (1927)

It could be stuck with pins and needles to cause aches and pains, or you could do far worse. For example, if you put the doll into a stream, as the clay broke up in the water, so was said to gradually happen to the targets health.

“When any one wished evil to another he made a clay image of the person to be injured, and placed it in a stream with the head of the image against the current. It was believed that, as the clay was dissolved by the water, the health of the person represented would decline. The spell, however, would be broken if the image was discovered and removed from the stream. In the counties of Sutherland and Ross the practice survived till within the last few years.” “Folklore of Scottish Lochs and Springs” by James M. Mackinlay (1893)

It is perhaps no surprise that this was not a type of magic talked fondly about, and is instead classified in books as an evil act of black magic.

#scottish folklore #scottish customs #scottish magic #scottish #scotland #folklore #cursed doll #cursed dolls #magic #black magic #Sympathetic magic #folk magic #Folkmagic

Dàir na Coille – The imbuement of the woods – New Years Day

Dàir na coille the imbuement of the woods part of Scottish Gaelic Folk customs and a little bit of magic for Hogmanay and New Years eve.

“Dàir na Coille celebrates the arrival of blessings, life-forces, and spirits, brought on the West Wind and nestled in the trees until each new blessing and new life, and new spirit emerges in due course in the months ahead. On New Year’s Day, the head of the household would go out and get a small twig from a fruit-bearing tree and bring it into the house saying “Fas is gnaths is toradh”, meaning ‘Growth, tradition, and abundance’, so that his family could share in the blessing of the new emerging life. As far as I know, this is all that remains of this custom. We are not told where the blessings and spirits come from exactly, or who sends them, however, we can interpret the symbolism that is still present in this simple custom.

The new spirits are brought in on the West Wind, which, apart from being wonderfully animistic, says something important. The wind is a vehicle for vitality; we affirm this fact with every breath we take, but the West, the direction of sunset, death, and the ancestors, is a direction of endings. So these newly arriving spirits come from the place unto which departing spirits go. The spirits are not just coming, the spirits are returning! Renewed!

Michael Newton suggests in his handbook of the Scottish Gaelic World that the individual trees imbued in Dair na Coille are a source of life, much as the Tree of Life is the ultimate source of life.”

#dair na coille #new year #scottish customs #scottish new year #scottish folkore #scottishfolklore #mythology #Scottish animism #animism #scottishpaganism #paganism

Shelia Livingstone, Scottish Customs

#quote #scottish customs #scotland

Stirling Castle, Scotland.

The south-west aspect of Stirling Castle in the Year 1778. Stirling Castle is situated above the old town of Stirling on Castle Hill, a steeply rising hill of volcanic origin. The castle played an important role in Scotland’s history due to its strategic location on the River Forth and was besieged or attacked at least sixteen times. Three battles took place in the immediate vicinity and a…

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#History of England.#Landscape #Scottish customs #Thomas Hearne #Topography

A Brief History of Tartans + Unique Official Tartans

Tartan (often mistakenly called “plaid”) refers to woven pattern with interlocking stripes, and there have been archeological finds of it that dates back to the 3-4th century BCE.

Seeing as certain color dyes were only found in certain areas, historically, you might have been able to tell where someone was from in Scotland by the color of their tartan, but it was a bit later in history that they became associated with clans.

“Many stem from the weaving industry formed by the Wilsons of Bannockburn, who scoured the Highlands for ‘old patterns’, as well as the pseudo clan histories put together by the Sobieski Stuart brothers during the 1830s and 1840s. These English brothers had taken on new identities in Scotland and falsified their claim to descent from a royal line, but wrote two fantastical – and inaccurate – histories that were later widely used as source material for the Scottish tartan industry.” historyextra.com

For example, the Jacobite pattern was designed in 1713, and became a silent — and legally safe — way to show support to the uprising. This caused the use of tartan to be banned in 1746 and would stay that way for 26 years.

As the years went on, the tartan became a symbol of Scottish pride, and there was pressure for every clan to have their own version.

Now, every clan has their own tartan, but it does not just stop at clans. There are several organizations and groups that have submitted their own patterns to the registry to make them official tartans.

Here are some unique tartans that you might not know:

Irn Bru