Proper noun

Singular Scotland

Plural -

Scotland

1. A country in northwest Europe to the north of England and forming part of the United Kingdom.

Derived terms

• Scotland Yard

Scotland (Gaelic: Alba) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the southwest. In addition to the mainland, Scotland consists of over 790 islands including the Northern Isles and the Hebrides.

Edinburgh, the country's capital and second largest city, is one of Europe's largest financial centres. Edinburgh was the hub of the Scottish Enlightenment of the 18th century, which transformed Scotland into one of the commercial, intellectual and industrial powerhouses of Europe. Glasgow, Scotland's largest city, was once one of the world's leading industrial cities and now lies at the centre of the Greater Glasgow conurbation. Scottish waters consist of a large sector of the North Atlantic and the North Sea, containing the largest oil reserves in the European Union. This has given Aberdeen, the third largest city in Scotland, the title of Europe's oil capital.

The Kingdom of Scotland was an independent sovereign state before 1 May 1707 when it entered into a political union with the Kingdom of England to create the united Kingdom of Great Britain. This union resulted from the Treaty of Union agreed in 1706 and enacted by the twin Acts of Union passed by the Parliaments of both countries, despite widespread protest across Scotland. Scotland's legal system continues to be separate from those of England, Wales, and Northern Ireland and Scotland still constitutes a distinct jurisdiction in public and in private law.

The continued existence of legal, educational and religious institutions distinct from those in the remainder of the UK have all contributed to the continuation of Scottish culture and national identity since the Union. Although Scotland is no longer a separate sovereign state, issues surrounding devolution and independence continue to be debated. After the creation of the devolved Scottish Parliament in 1999, the first ever pro-independence Scottish Government was elected in 2007 when the Scottish National Party formed a minority administration.

Scotland is a country forming the northernmost third of Great Britain. An independent kingdom until 1707, it is now a constituent part of United Kingdom with limited powers of self-government.

Sourced

• From the lone shieling of the misty island Mountains divide us, and the waste of seas – Yet still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland, And we in dreams behold the Hebrides! Fair these broad meads, these hoary woods are grand; But we are exiles from our fathers’ land.
  • "Canadian Boat Song", an anonymous poem first published in Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, September 1829, and ostensibly translated from the Gaelic. There has been much debate as to the poem's authorship. [1]

• From the time of the North Briton of the unprincipled Wilkes, a notion has been entertained that the moral spine in Scotland is more flexible than in England. The truth however is, that an elementary difference exists in the public feelings of the two nations quite as great as in the idioms of their respective dialects. The English are a justice-loving people, according to charter and statute; the Scotch are a wrong-resenting race, according to right and feeling: and the character of liberty among them takes its aspect from that peculiarity.
  • John Galt Ringan Gilhaize (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1823) vol. 3, p. 313.

• My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here; My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer.
  • Robert Burns, "My Heart's in the Highlands", line 1 (1790)

From Wikiquote under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Sun Feb 28 01:17:37 2010