Scottish Clans
Dan Snow's History Hit
History Hit
4.7 • 13.7K Ratings
🗓️ 19 September 2022
⏱️ 27 minutes
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Summary
It is believed clans started to emerge in Scotland around 1100AD and were originally the descendants of kings – if not of demigods from Irish mythology. As well as kinship and a sense of identity and belonging, being part of a clan was an important part of survival throughout the centuries that would follow.
Scotland’s leading cultural historian, Professor Murray Pittock, joins Dan on the podcast to share the history of the clans from their Celtic origins through to the Clearances and the present day. They discuss the structure of clans, how the system collapsed and the paradox of how global clanship has become today.
This episode was produced by Hannah Ward, the audio editor was Dougal Patmore.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, |
| 0:00.5 | folks, Dan Snow here. |
| 0:01.6 | I am throwing a party to celebrate 10 years of Dan Snow's history hit. |
| 0:06.1 | I'd love for you to be there. |
| 0:07.5 | Join me for a very special live recording of the podcast in London, |
| 0:10.4 | in England on the 12th of September to celebrate the 10 years. |
| 0:14.1 | You can find out more about it and get tickets with the link in the show notes. |
| 0:17.6 | Look forward to seeing you there. |
| 0:24.3 | Hi, buddy. Welcome to Dan Snow's history. Today we're talking about the clan system, |
| 0:29.2 | the world famous semi-tribal groupings that we associate with the Highlands of Scotland. |
| 0:35.2 | The problem is, does the clan system really exist? |
| 0:38.1 | Did it ever exist? And this is where historians come and burst the old bubbles, folks. |
| 0:42.1 | It is an absolutely fascinating topic. Many people will know about the clans, particularly around |
| 0:46.9 | the 45, the Jacobite uprising that saw Charles Edward Stuart, Bonnie, Prince Charlie, land on the |
| 0:54.0 | West Coast of Scotland, raise an armed force, land on the West Coast, Scotland, |
| 0:55.1 | raise an armed force, largely from the clans, the Highlands, then marched south first to Edinburgh, |
| 0:59.8 | and then as far as Derby in the Midlands poor turning back and facing defeat on the field of |
| 1:03.7 | Collodon. And if you go to the battlefield of Collodden now, you see these long mass graves, |
| 1:08.6 | these lumps in the ground on which people have put headstones |
| 1:11.5 | saying Clan Fraser, Clan Macintosh. |
| 1:14.7 | And that's what helps to make Colloden one of the most remarkable and evocative battlefields |
| 1:19.6 | that I've ever visited. |
... |
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