under the inspiring tutelage of the national bard, scotland has become one of the drunkenest nations in the world. among the lower classes of the scotch cities drunkenness is the preponderating vice. in the rural districts whiskey is the only beverage that finds any sort of favour. there is no occasion of life which does not provoke the average scotchman to inhibition. births, deaths, and marriages are all celebrated in drink. on burns day, scotland rushes to the bottle as one man. the same is true of new year’s day; and year in and year out everybody “tastes” and “tastes” and “tastes” from morn to dewy eve. the land simply seethes in whiskey, and though you take hold of the[173] wings of the morning you cannot get away from the odour of it. in twelve hours spent in edinburgh i saw more drinking than could be seen in an english town of the same population in a couple of days, and i know what drinking means.
whiskey to breakfast, whiskey to dinner, whiskey to supper; whiskey when you meet a friend, whiskey over all business meetings whatsoever; whiskey before you go into the kirk, whiskey when you come out; whiskey when you are about to take a journey, whiskey all along the road, whiskey at the journey’s end; whiskey when you are well, whiskey if you be sick, whiskey almost as soon as you are born, whiskey the last thing before you die—that is scotland. there is a cock-and-bull tale to the effect that all the finest clarets go to leith and are drunk in edinburgh. practically, there is no really good claret in all scotland, unless it be at the hotels which have been built for the reception of english and american tourists, and the scot to the manner born would not[174] give you a “thank you” for the best claret in the world. “go bring me a pint of wine and bring it in a silver tassy” was a mere piece of swagger on the part of the bard. wine is not drunk in scotland; the scotchman can get no “forrader” with it, and as for drinking it out of a silver tassy, there are not more than three silver tassies in the country. whiskey, and that of the crudest and most shuddering quality is undoubtedly the scotchman’s peculiar vanity. the amount that he can consume without turning a hair is quite appalling. i have seen a scotchman drink three bottles of glenlivet on a railway journey from king’s cross to edinburgh, and when he got out at edinburgh he strutted doucely to the refreshment bar and demanded further whiskey. in london, and particularly in fleet street, his feats in this connection are notorious. in the more central quarters of london there are a number of hostelries which are almost wholly devoted to scottish requirements in the way of ardent liquors. under some scotch name, such as[175] the scotch stores, the clachan, the highland laddie, and so forth, these places flourish and the proprietors of them wax fat. here, any morning in the week, you will find brither scots assembled, elbow on counter, indulging in the whiskey which delights their souls. all day there is plenty of company, plenty of doric, plenty of discussion on politics and the questions of the hour, but more than all, a steady flow of whiskey. and by eleven p.m. or thereabouts the company begins to exhibit a tendency to song. and at closing time it staggers forth singing scots wha hae and my ain kind dearie o in various pathetic keys. scots wha hae is a poor song to sing in the circumstances, and as for my ain kind dearie o, she probably fumes at home and is not in the least kind in her welcoming of her whiskeyful lord. it is certain that the number of persons in fleet street employed upon the press either in literary capacities or as advertisement canvassers or printers is very considerable, and among the lower grades of them, the drinking of whiskey[176] appears to be considered a part of their duty to themselves and to mankind at large. at the same time it is only fair to say that a drunken scotchman is not by any means a common spectacle, the reason being that the scot is so inured to the consumption of whiskey from his youth up, that he can take almost any quantity without becoming drunk about the legs. drink, however, he must and will have, and both at home and abroad he makes a point of getting as much of it as his means will allow. in scotland it is quite general for men and women alike to drink whiskey raw and to take the water afterwards. this is done at every meal, and if you call upon a scotch household at any hour of the day you will be at once offered a four-or five-finger dose of the national drink. to refuse it is to be set down for an evilly-disposed person. burns the almighty approved of whiskey drinking; with him it was the symbol of good-fellowship, and he is quoted to you continually as the justification of all excesses.
[177]
we are na drunk, we’re no’ that drunk
but just a drappie in our ee,
is the great retort used by scotchmen if one suggests that they have had enough or too much.
it is to the scot’s amazing capacity for the consumption of spirit that one may fairly attribute some of his minor defects. dourness, of which every scotchman possesses a fair share, and of which he is invariably more or less proud, has always struck me as being in a great measure the outcome of too much whiskey overnight. it is not till he is properly exhilarated with drink that a scot can unbend himself in the smallest degree. once primed, he does his best to prove himself an excellent and generous fellow by becoming as uproarious as the host of the tavern in which he is drinking will allow him to be. but next morning, when the whiskey is out of him, he is a very sad and sober man indeed. then it is that he passes for “dour.” you talk with him and get for answers grunts: he cannot smile; he plods heavily away at whatever[178] labour stands in front of him: he is glum, rude of tongue and dull of mind, and his brethren set it down for you to his “scots dourness.”
his gift of steady drinking also accounts, in my opinion, for his general mediocrity. whiskey may be a fine and healthy drink for persons who do not take enough of it; but to be braced up with it by day and to swim in it by night is calculated to have a detrimental effect even on the bright intellects that come out of scotland. i have not the smallest desire to suggest that there are not plenty of hard drinkers whose blood is more or less purely english, yet somehow there is no kind of man in the world who makes the drinking of furious spirit a cultus and a boast in the way that the scotchman does. to be fou’ or as he would put it, to have a drappie in his eye, is the scotchman’s notion of bigness and freedom and manly independence. he is a ranter and a roarer in his cups, and on the whole much more distressing to meet drunk than sober, which is saying a great deal.
