Scotland with Sam

Scotland travel: cool stays / cold water swimming / SUP / hiking / history / wildlife / hidden gems 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

[Proudofus.uk @ProudofusUK]

Britain buried a man among its kings. 👑

To this day, nobody knows his name. ❓

Not his family. Not the army. Not even the officer who chose him. 🤫

It was meant to be that way. 🕊️

In 1916, an army chaplain stopped at a grave in a back garden in France. 🪦

Someone had pencilled on its cross: "An unknown British soldier." ✏️

For four years, he told no one what it made him think. Then he wrote to Westminster Abbey. ✉️

His coffin was made from an oak tree at Hampton Court. 🌳

Dover Castle gave him a nineteen-gun salute, usually kept for a field marshal. 💥

The King walked behind him on foot, as chief mourner. 🇬🇧

The guests of honour were around a hundred ordinary women. Each had lost her husband and every one of her sons. 💔

Today, his is the only grave in the Abbey nobody may walk on. 🌺

They buried him among the kings, because he had done good toward God and toward his house. 🙏

We will remember them. 🌺

Be part of us. ☝️🇬🇧
Be Proud Of Us. 🙏🇬🇧

[Scotland with Sam @Theweewhitedug]

@ghost_wales Take care. Hope you feel better soon.

[Proudofus.uk @ProudofusUK]

Britain's first poppies weren't made in Britain. 🇫🇷

In 1921, every one was shipped over from France. 🚢

Back home, thousands of men had come back from the trenches without an arm, a leg or an eye. Many couldn't find work. 💔

One wounded officer, Major George Howson, had an idea. Britain's poppies, made by Britain's wounded. 🌺

He wrote home: "I do not think it can be a great success. But it is worth trying." ✍️

In June 1922, five disabled men sat down at a bench on the Old Kent Road. 🪑

Within two months, they'd made a million. 🤯

By 1924, twenty-seven million. Enough for more than half the people in Britain. 🇬🇧

A century later, veterans there still make the royal wreaths laid at the Cenotaph. 🕊️

So now, when you put yours on, you can also remember where it came from. 🙏

We will remember them. 🌺

Be part of us. ☝️🇬🇧 Be Proud Of Us. 🙏🇬🇧

[Scotland with Sam @Theweewhitedug]

@urquhartriver @AgentP22 @theSNP Absolutely sickening.

[Scotland with Sam @Theweewhitedug]

@scotgov Hang your heads in shame. Absolutely sickening. Scummy bastards.

[Scotland with Sam @Theweewhitedug]

@BhriainGael Awww Riley’s a brilliant piper. So talented. He plays at Grenta Green. He’s only 18. Lovely lad.

[Proudofus.uk @ProudofusUK]

Halloween isn't American. 🎃

Not the name. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Not the costumes. 🎭

Not the lantern. 🕯️

Not even "trick or treat". 🚪

The word was so Scottish that Robert Burns had to add a footnote for the English explaining what it was. 📜

The first lanterns weren't pumpkins. 👀

The first time "trick or treat" appeared in print, it wasn't in America. 📰

Every year someone calls Halloween an American import. 🙄

They never tell you the knock on your door is OLDER than America itself. 🇺🇸

So this Halloween, skip the trick. 👻

Be the treat. 🍬

Watch the full story. 👇

Be part of us. ☝️🇬🇧

Be Proud Of Us. 🙏🇬🇧

[Scotland with Sam @Theweewhitedug]

@BhriainGael Hit so many dead ends with my Irish ancestry research. Really need to get my head around it all and use DNA matches to piece it together. So interesting. Hope you find what you’re looking for.

[Scotland with Sam @Theweewhitedug]

@punishablepress Studied Scottish history at uni in Scotland for 4 years. Time spent on Black Scottish history? 0 minutes, because it doesn’t bloody exist. Clue’s in the name “Scottish history”.

[Scotland with Sam @Theweewhitedug]

@BowesChay

[Proudofus.uk @ProudofusUK]

White slaves. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧

For three hundred years, pirates from Algiers sailed to Britain and Ireland, came ashore at night, and took people from their beds.

Baltimore, 1631. A hundred and seven people gone in one night. At most three ever came home.

Over a million Europeans ended up in chains in North Africa. Nobody bought them. They were stolen.

The kings of Europe paid ransom. For centuries.

In 1816, Britain stopped paying.

Lord Exmouth. Twenty British ships, six Dutch, against one of the strongest fortresses on earth. 27 August 1816. Nine hours. Fifty thousand cannonballs. 128 British sailors killed.

The next day the Dey signed. Every Christian slave freed. 1,083 people walked out of Algiers in one afternoon.

Nobody came for them... Until we did. ⚓🇬🇧💪

[Scotland with Sam @Theweewhitedug]

@EndWokeness What in the Milli Vanilli is this? Scotland - once at the very centre of the European Enlightenment, now a woke joke.

[Scotland with Sam @Theweewhitedug]

@SkyNews Are the “French people” in the room with us?

[Scotland with Sam @Theweewhitedug]

When the Oasis 25 documentary launches on Disney + and you can go all out for it and reminisce because you won the email code war and secured tickets for Oasis 27. #oasis25 #oasis27

[Scotland with Sam @Theweewhitedug]

@andyburnham Difference this will make to our lives.

[Proudofus.uk @ProudofusUK]

Two hundred years ago, banks weren't for people like us. 🏦

If you were an ordinary working family, your savings went under the mattress.

If you had any at all. 🛏️

One bad winter. One lost job.
That's all it took to end up begging the parish. ❄️

In a tiny village in Dumfriesshire, a minister watched it happen, year after year.

His name was Henry Duncan. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Hard-working families lost everything.
Not because they were lazy. Because they had nowhere safe to put a shilling. 🪙

So in 1810, he opened a bank.
In a little cottage in Ruthwell. For ordinary people. 🏡

You could put in as little as a shilling.
It paid you interest. The thing the rich had always had. 📈

It was run properly. Trustees. Meetings. Members got a vote.

It's seen as the first savings bank in the world run on proper business lines. 🗳️

Farm workers saved. Weavers saved. Servants saved.
For the first time, ordinary people had something put by. 🙌

The idea spread across Britain. Then the world.
The trustee savings banks. TSB. They grew from his idea. 🌍

He never took a penny for it. 🙏

They'll tell you banking belongs to the City of London.
Not that the world's first savings bank was opened by a country minister for the ordinary families of his parish. 🇬🇧

Like his bank, we're built a little at a time. By ordinary people.

Join us: https://t.co/rih7iKwnvf

Be Part Of Us. ☝️🇬🇧

Be Proud Of Us. 🙏🇬🇧

[Scotland with Sam @Theweewhitedug]

@andyburnham No one gives a 💩.

[Scotland with Sam @Theweewhitedug]

@ShippersUnbound @moanaparte @JoeMarkham5 I was born in Malta to Scottish parents. Now you’re telling me I’m Maltese not Scottish? 🙄

[Proudofus.uk @ProudofusUK]

They call the English a mongrel people... 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧

The science says something better. 🧪👨‍🔬

In 2015 scientists in Oxford tested 2,039 people. Only people whose 4 grandparents were all born within 50 miles of each other. So the map they drew wasn't Britain today. It was Britain in 1885. Before anyone moved.

17 groups across these islands. 🗺️ Cornwall. Wales in pieces. The north. Scotland in pieces. Orkney. And the English were one. One people from Kent to Yorkshire. One group, where everywhere else on the map was many.

So where did they come from?

In 2022 they went to the graves. ⚱️ 278 people who died here 1,500 years ago. They read what was in them. 3 streams.

The Britons who were already here before the Romans. The families who crossed the North Sea after the Romans left. Whole families. As many women as men. Not a wipe-out. They married in. And a third stream from across the Channel, over centuries.

3 streams. 1 river. 🌊 By the Middle Ages the mixing had settled. The map of 1885 still showed it, 900 years on. Same fields. Same church. Same names on the gravestones.

That's not a mongrel. A mongrel is a mix nobody meant. This is a recipe. 3 ingredients. 1,000 years to set. 🏺

And here's the part that matters. A lineage isn't a wall. It's a line. People who kept the same place and the same ways, then handed them on. The Normans joined it. The Huguenots joined it. Anyone can. The price is keeping it.

They teach you the English are a mixture. So is every people on earth. What they don't teach you is what it became. 1,500 years on the same ground. Not many can say that.

That's why Proud Of Us is here. To teach the next generation who we really are. No sponsors. No ads. No agenda. Just people like you.

If you can, stand with us. If you can't, send this to someone who's never been told.

They said mongrel. That doesn't change a thousand years of lineage. It just means nobody told them.

Let's teach our next Generation the truth.👇

👉https://t.co/rih7iKwnvf 👈

Be Part Of Us. ☝️🇬🇧 Be Proud Of Us. 🙏🇬🇧

[Scotland with Sam @Theweewhitedug]

@agentmary Yeah I have a Fraser cluster too and looks like McKenzie is also in the mix. Mine stayed in Scotland and I think ended up in Aberdeenshire. I know where they belong just not how yet. It’s fun working it all out though and dna is a game changer.

[Scotland with Sam @Theweewhitedug]

Ancestry family trees are a hoot. I’ve seen someone born 1740 who rowed Bonnie Prince Charlie off Skye - ha ha. Also someone related to Lord Lovat AND Flora MacDonald - takes all of 5 mins to prove none of it is correct. And here’s me using DNA triangulation to build my tree. 🤣