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SCOTLAND
Although Scotland forms a part of the United Kingdom, it has a distinct character of its own. In area it is more than half as big as England. Its population is, however, only one-eighth as great — about 5 200 000.
Scotland is a land of romance and it has had a most eventful history. The Picts and Celts lived there before the coming of the Romans to Britain. Those Northern tribes worried the Romans so much that the Great Wall was built to protect the Roman camps in the Northern part of England.
It was in the 11th century that the Normans began to settle in Scotland. Almost all of Scotland's history is associated with and reflected in many castles and forts that are to be seen all over the country. They are very picturesque, having retained their medieval features: stern, proud, impressive, perched high on a rock or at a hillside. Mary, Queen of Scots, the beautiful Mary Stuart was married in one of them, her son James (who was to become James I of England) was born in another.
And now some words about the Highlands. For centuries the Highlands were a strange land, where the king's law common to all the rest of the country, wasn't even known, where wild people spoke a language no one could understand. Long after the rest of Britain adopted modern ways they kept to the old life.
In 1603 King James VI of Scotland became King James I of England too, and from then onwards the countries were under the same monarch, though the Act of Union was not passed until 1707. This Act incorporated Scotland with England in the United Kingdom, but the Scots kept their own legal system, religion and administration, centred in Edinburgh.
Edinburgh – the capital of Scotland has always been admired as one of the most beautiful cities. Glasgow – its second city – always had a bad reputation. It was too often seen as a dirty, run-down urban area. But no longer. The buildings have been cleaned up, the streets are tidy and the people now take an obvious pride in their city. Glasgow was chosen to be the cultural capital of Europe 1890.
Not far from Glasgow there is one of the most famous of Scotland's many lakes (called «lochs»), Loch Lomond. Scottish numerous valleys are known as «glens». Scotland is a country with an intense and living national tradition of a kind only too rare in the modern world. It has its distinctive national dress, the kilt, worn only by men. It also has its own typical musical instruments (the pipes, sometimes called «the bagpipes»), its own national form of dancing, its own songs, language, traditions and education. Scotland has even its own national drink, a fact so widely known that one need only ask for «Scotch».