Transblawg

I gather from CharonQC and Blawg Review that April 6 is Tartan Day in North America and is celebrated by Canadians and Americans of Scottish heritage. Craig Williams (also of Welsh ancestry) of May it Please the Court is going to feature this in his blawg review. At the time of writing this, it is only just April 6 in the USA, so we have to wait.

Some of those of us of Scottish descent in the UK actually believe that the idea of clan tartans was a Victorian invention. But obviously a well-advertised one.

Tartan Day was conceived in Canada in about 1986 and has been celebrated in the USA since 1998, so obviously after my time.

It is even said that Craig Williams will be wearing a 'tartan kilt'. Is that redundant? Possibly not, in the days of the Utilikilt (there is also the Instakilt Kilt Beach Towel, but that is tartan).

In Germany one gets married at a register office, and a church wedding is an extra.
In the UK, one gets married at a register office, or in a church, or in various other places - the paperwork can be done at any.

But the law varies between the three jurisdictions: England and Wales; Scotland; Northern Ireland. Scotland has traditionally offered a wide range. I did not realize that it is the only UK jurisdiction, and one of only six in the world, where a humanist wedding is legal.



Thus reports Fiona at Divorce Survivor.

See also Your big Day! - tips for planning your humanist wedding in Scotland.

I don't believe the kilt is obligatory.

The Court of Session (Outer House, which deals with cases at first instance) has recently published a decision in a matter between two German parties. The defender, who is domiciled in Scotland, asserted that only the German courts have jurisdiction over the case, but evidence from German law was produced to indicate that the parties could only have agreed this if they had both been Vollkaufleute.

There are one or two typos in the German, but the case is a good illustration of how courts call in expert witnesses and obtain translations in order to consider foreign law.

Thanks to Jonathan Mitchell.

It always surprises me how many Scots there are in Bavaria (see earlier entry).

You can certainly buy Stollen at Christmas in Lidl and Aldi in the UK (Upminster now has an Aldi), but on the whole their ranges are British, as is shown by their Burns Night offerings (which I missed, of course). The following partial screenshot is taken from Google's cache. It is no longer available at the Lidl UK site.

Click to enlarge, as usual (my thumbnails are rather small, but I haven't yet investigated how to change their size in Serendipity).



Gareth McLean discusses the kilt in the Guardian today.

He feels that although it isn't bad for twenty-five quid, it just doesn't feel like the real thing (£375-odd):

To be fair, you can't really tell with the kilt - at least, not from across the room. (The sporran, on the other hand, is cheap and nasty and no mistake.) It's made with five yards of material - as opposed to the more usual eight - and though that material is machine-washable polyviscose, and not the finest wool woven lovingly on looms in bleakly beautiful corners of the Highlands and then turned into kilts by skilled craftsmen and women whose families have been kiltmakers for centuries, it's certainly not as shoddy as I'd feared.

And yet, there's still something wrong with this bargain-basement version of Scottish national dress. Never mind that the shirt has an unpleasant echo of early Spandau Ballet, the kilt simply doesn't have the import it would if it cost what it should rather than what it can be made for in a cut-price factory somewhere.

(My heading is influenced by a statement by a German carers' association today, complaining about the low wages of its members: McPflege darf nicht um sich greifen. Is Mc a new Denglish prefix in German?)

Informationsquellen zum römischen Recht
Herausgegeben von Ernest Metzger, University of Glasgow

Roman Law Resources
Edited by Ernest Metzger, University of Glasgow

(Via Juristisches Internetprojekt Saarbrücken)

Billy Connolly on youtube (via Volker Weber)

I sometimes wonder if the Scots know how they are used in German advertising. (Note tartan paper on wall inside shop).

Judging from Google, not only Werner Siebers is baffled by a Telegraph report:

Die spinnen, die Engländer. Weil ein Mann Sex mit seinem Fahrrad hatte - wie auch immer das befriedigen kann - muss er sich jetzt vor Gericht verantworten. 1993 musste in England bereits ein Mann einsitzen, weil er sich mit Pflastersteinen - auch das übersteigt meine Phantasie - vergnügt hatte.

('Die Engländer' here means the British.) Even I find this odd. Let's forget about the 1993 Redditch case of a fairly naked man in contortions on the pavement and look at this Scottish case - and note that it is a case of Scottish criminal law. It seems odd to me - and others discussing it inter alia on snopes.com - not only that it was an offence although he was in his own room and the door was locked, but also that he should now be registered as a sex offender. The man admitted to a 'sexual breach of the peace'.

Collins Dictionary of Law (cheap paperback, ISBN 0007102941) is good on Scots matters:

breach of the peace in England, conduct causing harm or likely to cause harm or generally disturb the peace. The preservation of the peace is an ancient Crown prerogative. it is an especially important offence in relation to civil liberties, for if conduct is likely to occasion a breach of the peace that will justify arrest.
In Scots criminal law, disorderly conduct that is likely to occasion a public disturbance. It is a very widely construed crime and often causes concern in relation to civil liberties. It encompasses looking in at a lighted window ... statements made to another in the absence of witness in private ... and even an exuberant blow to the chest of a fellow footballer.

Consider also the case of the Englishman from Bournemouth jailed for hiking naked - but only once he reached Scotland.

Michael Herman in the Times reports that the Scottish postal worker who won £34 m in the Euro-Lottery is giving some to her husband, from whom she is separated prior to divorce. Under Scottish law, the date of separation marks the division of marital property, whereas under English law, it is the date of divorce.

Scott Cochrane, a family law partner at Brodies, said: “Scottish law takes the concept of a clean break on separation very seriously. Even if the Cunninghams did not formally divide their assets on separation, if they now decided to divorce the courts will use the time they separated as the key point and ignore what has happened since.
“The fact that Mr Cunningham, according to reports, has not lived with his wife for several years is a slam dunk: he would have no hope.”

(Whether you believe her maiden name is Kelly or Cunningham depends on what paper you read)

From the obituary of Lord Jauncey of Tullichettle, in the Independent:

One was the Glasgow fluoride case. The petitioner, who as Jauncey noted in his judgment was herself edentulous, complained about the adding of fluoride by the local authority to the water supply to improve dental health in the community. The hearing on evidence lasted for 201 days. Jauncey was able to dispose of the case in a comparatively short but effective judgment which was not taken to appeal.

The obituary omits the fact that Lord Jauncey suffered MRSA twice in hospital after his stroke in 2005, as the Times online (and no doubt others) reported.

A new police radio system called Airwave has been introduced in the UK, and in connection with this it was reported at the weekend that police are to be taught to use a set of expressions that are uniform throughout the country.

Mark Garner of Aberdeen University, David Matthews from Edinburgh and Edward Johnson of Cambridge University have analysed an hour of police radio talk from every police force in the UK. This was news to me, but it's been reported a number of times since at least December 2005.

Scotland on Sunday reported:

[They] found officers used 50 different words and phrases just to say "yes", including "aye", "yeah", "OK", "wilco", "will do", "right", "alright", "go ahead", "excellent", "thank you", and "affirmative".
Officers will be asked to restrict themselves to just three standard terms: "Received" for "I have understood you"; "Yes, yes" for "I agree", and "Will do" for "I shall carry out the task".
Johnson said: "Countless operational errors over the years have resulted from inappropriate communications provision, inappropriate procedures and poorly worded messages. Many lives have been sacrificed in the process.

I was worried myself about all the deaths resulting from English and Scottish police failing to communicate. But a talk by Edward Johnson, 'Talking Across Frontiers', explains it better:

It is doubtful that The Light Brigade would have charged at Balaclava in 1854 had Raglan’s command which prompted it been worded differently (Woodham-Smith 2000). The Tenerife air crash of 1977 may not have occurred had the air traffic control messages been clear (Hawkins 1987). The lives of an entire diving crew may not have been lost in the North Sea in 1983 (Godden 1983) had not the message ‘You can talk about overtime when you’ve made the clamp’ been mistakenly interpreted as an instruction to open a pressure lock.

The commenters at Scotland on Sunday took a narrow view of things, possibly as a result of inability to read. Others wanted English police to learn Scots. Jim A, more pertinently, wrote, 'Me, ma talkin's jist fine, it's the rest o the buggers, no me'.

Edward Johnson's paper linked above has lists of examples of radio talk and texting. It also discusses cross-border police communication (French/ English, German/Polish). In ‘One six a sierra sierra bravo golf one six two' 'there is conflict between the ‘NATO’ alphabet - alpha, bravo, charlie, etc., and the brand names of motor cars - Sierra, Golf, Alpha Romeo, Bravo.'

I had a book on learning Scots last year. It was the only language book I remember seeing that advised me not to try out my new knowledge in the country itself. There's some good stuff online too, here texts and audiofiles, and look inside a Scots dictionary here.

Lifechanges...Delayed... recently had an entry about udal law (Orkneyjar, January 15th).

Digging around, I was surprised to learn that, because of its history and how Orkney and Shetland came to be part of Scotland, Orkney has a claim to be governed under udal law instead of common law. The Shetland & Orkney Udal Law Group (SOUL) has a lot of information about the old Norse law system and the history of law in Shetland and Orkney (in the context of restoring udal law).

I guess its a sign of one danger of devolution: just as Scotland is gaining more power from London, but now Orkney and Shetland are seeking a greater degree of separation from Edinburgh. The case SOUL outlines looks convincing, but how it would work practically and what it would mean (particularly in regards to fishing and mineral rights) is far from clear.

I've read about Norse udal law on the Orkneys before now, and the reason I haven't blogged this yet is that I know so little. SOUL wants to restore udal law, but what the benefits of this are requires some understanding of Scottish land law, which is different from English law (I remember a rant by a Scottish lawyer saying equity is unnecessary). I don't know what would actually be gained by doing away with the feudal system, since holding land under the vestiges of a feudal system in England and Wales seems scarcely different in practice from owning it in Germany.

Anyway, I quote David Walker's Oxford Companion to Law (1980 - Walker is a Scottish lawyer):

Udal (or odal) law. The system of law which came to Orkney and Shetland with the Norsemen in the ninth century, and now co-exists there with feudalism of later Scottish origin. The odal is the hereditary estate held in absolute property and not of any superior, nor for any homage or service, but for a payment called skat, and a personal obligation to appear at the host or Thing. It comprises the homestead, the common lands, and land let to a stranger. Since the fifteenth century, Scottish ideas and feudal tenure have crept in and much land has been feudalized by charter from the Crown or through the Earl or Bishop of Orkney.

It appears you can study Allodial or odal law in English at Bergen University.

Meanwhile, in a comment to my last post on Burns Night, Ann informs of Orkney clapshot, a version of tatties and neeps toasted with cheese on top.