Celebrating Scottish Women

Ballad singing has long been one of the most powerful expressions of Scottish culture. For hundreds of years, women in Scotland have sung of heroines who are strong, arrogant, canny—the very opposite of the bourgeois stereotype of the good, maternal woman. In Weep Not for Me, Deborah Symonds explores the social world that gave rise to both the popular ballad heroine and her maternal counterpart. The setting is the Scottish countryside in the eighteenth century—a crucial period in Scotland’s history, for it witnessed the country’s union with England, the Enlightenment, and the flowering of letters. But there were also great economic changes as late-feudal Scotland hurried into capitalist agriculture and textile production. In the ballads, marriage is rare and lovers murder each other, haunted by premarital pregnancy, incest, and infanticide, while relatives argue over dowries.

The trophy was lifted for the first time by Hibernian in November 2018 and remains one of our proudest recent creations. MSPs, individuals and organisations who participate in and support this group. You can get involved with the Scottish Parliament by joining a Cross-party group, submitting a petition, lobbying or exploring our education resources.

• Fairlike events and public gatherings for the changing of the year are promoted by major cities.
• A talented tennis player in her youth, she now owns a charity, too.
• On the night of Henry’s death, Margaret had rushed to a neighbour’s house crying that he had been murdered.
• This ceremony plays upon Burns’s bawdy celebration of the common people and penchant for deflating the self-righteous and highborn.
• A third strain emphasizes Lowland Protestant political history since the Reformation, revolving around the national Presbyterian Church (the “Kirk”).

Second, a specific investigation of the cases of the women who received a death sentence provides an opportunity to glean details about wider responses to female criminality. Using these ballads, together with court records of women tried for infanticide, Symonds makes fascinating points about the shifting meaning of womanhood in the eighteenth century, the roles of politically astute lawyers in that shift, and the significance of ballad singing as a response. She also discusses the political implications of Walter Scott’s infanticide novel, The Heart of Mid-Lothian, for women and for the ballad heroine. While some historians have argued that women’s history has little to do with the watershed events of textbook history, Symonds convincingly shows https://goharelectronic.com/mail-order-brides-pricing-how-much-does-it-cost-to-find-and-buy-a-foreign-wife/ us that the democratic and economic revolutions of the late eighteenth century were just as momentous for women as for men, even if their effects on women were quite different. Browse 2,523 beautiful scottish women stock photos and images available, or start a new search to explore more stock photos and images. Across this period there were very few married women charged with the murder of their children. This is not to say that married women did not murder their children, but their absence in the court records was likely due to at this source https://countrywaybridalboutique.com/european-women-features/scottish-women-features/ the removal of concealment as a motive, due to contemporary beliefs that married women would have no need to conceal their pregnancy or the birth.

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Comparatively, of the 36 women executed for murder, there were only five cases where the victim was a stranger to them. Of the remaining cases, 23 women had been convicted of infanticide, or child murder, four had murdered their husbands and four had murdered other family members including siblings and in-laws. An in-depth exploration of these women, including their motivations for murder and their chosen methods of killing, highlights a fresh and valuable perspective of the domestic life of some Scottish women across this period. It provides a different angle from which to view the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century wife and mother and, crucially, reveals the varied responses to women who violated these roles through murder. https://rhrecycling.org/2022/12/30/the-deadly-consequences-of-hypersexualizing-asian-women/ To conclude, this chapter has demonstrated that there were a range of penal options available to the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Scottish courts when dealing with female criminals. The courts exercised a great degree of discretion when responding to the women brought before them as they did with male criminals. Across the period under investigation here, the death sentence accounted for only 4% of the punishments meted out to women.

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The development of Gaelic communities in the major cities, particularly Glasgow, around 1870–1914 stimulated new linguistic and literary awareness. Funerary practices normally involve a simple ceremony of blessings and remembrance by family members and friends in a chapel or funeral parlor, leading to interment or cremation. Until recently, women did not go to the gravesite, and in some parts of the western Highlands and Islands the postburial mean can still become an extended alcoholic ritual. Although mainstream church attendance is in decline, Scotland bears the impress of its Protestant history.

We believe that it is important to share a range of viewpoints on women’s rights and advancement from different perspectives. WPUK does not necessarily agree or endorse all the views that we share. WGS Children’s Rights Impact Assessment, also published in 2019, detailed how LGBT Youth Scotland school guidance, endorsed by a number of local authorities and the Scottish Government, infringed children’s human rights under the UNCRC. This resulted in the Scottish Government scrapping the Scottish Schools guidance and replacing it with guidance which does not directly contravene children’s human rights. As for the context – my dad told me of how working class families living in the old tenements of Glasgow would organize themselves into groups.

Those concerned solely with Scotland are now accountable to the Executive of the new Parliament, while most cross-border public bodies are accountable to both the Scottish and UK parliaments. Most have executive or advisory functions, often linked to the National Health Service. Those responsible for local spending are concerned with education, local enterprise, and housing.

Modern Scottish Women was accompanied by a lavishly-illustrated book based on new research, as well as a free permanent collection display of prints by Wilhlemina Barns-Graham, selected from a recent gift of her work by The Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Charitable Trust. In some cases where women had claimed that their infants had been born dead, a surgeon removed the lungs to conduct tests to see if they would float. It was believed that this would indicate if the child had taken a breath. She has become a familiar face in British paranormal and horror films. She returned to television in 2010 for a cameo as Anthea, the posh, eye-rolling assistant of Mycroft Holmes in Sherlock who was described by Caitlin Moran in The Times as “one of the deftest comedy cameos of the year”. Debbie Linden (22 February 1961 – 5 October 1997) was a British glamour model and actress best known for her role as old Mr Grace’s secretary in the sitcom Are You Being Served?

For Kilday’s analysis of the women who committed homicide and infanticide, see Chaps. In her analysis of 140 indictments for infanticide, Kilday found that in 63% of the cases blood was shed, namely through stabbing and/or battering to death. She is best known for portraying Door in the urban fantasy series Neverwhere, Kate in the film A Knight’s Tale, Cat MacKenzie in the drama series Lip Service and Lydia Rodarte-Quayle in the AMC crime drama series Breaking Bad. Playing supporting roles, notably to Steven Seagal in Belly of the Beast. Get exclusive access to the top art stories, interviews and exhibition reviews, published in print and online.

The women in this study lived and died in a period when hopes of marriage and landholding were replaced by the reality of wage labor and disintegrating households. Following the capital conviction of Jean Lindsay and Henrietta Faulds for theft in 1784, petitions sent from Glasgow stated that thousands of its inhabitants wished for the extension of mercy and begged for the assistance of the Lord Advocate in securing a pardon.77 Despite their efforts Jean was executed.