During an early eighteenth-century war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, the generals of the two armies came together to negotiate a truce. ‘Aye, aye, Sandy,’ said the Turkish one, ‘we’re a gey lang way frae the back o’ Bennachie’ – for the two men had been brought up on neighbouring farms in Aberdeenshire. The tale may be apocryphal, but is quite likely true, and I like to think they indulged in reminiscences of their childhood, speaking the broad Aberdeenshire Doric.

Scots have a deep, if often sentimental, attachment to their homeland, often expressed in – sometimes mawkish – song. They celebrate St Andrew’s Night and Burns Night wherever they find themselves in the world. Descendants of Scottish emigrants bedeck themselves in tartan and, especially in Canada and the