The William Wallace Monument

Moderators: John, Sharon, Fossil, Lucky Poet, crusty_bint, Jazza, dazza

Postby Sharon » Mon Jan 24, 2005 6:14 pm

Oh, i do hope so!!

well... ok, perhaps i dont HOPE they did... but I don't think this qualifies to be public art, more ... visual pollution!!

Who put this thing up anyway?
Beware of yawning dogs.
User avatar
Sharon
Site Admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 7495
Joined: Fri Mar 22, 2002 11:30 am
Location: Galloway

Postby crusty_bint » Mon Jan 24, 2005 6:18 pm

Vague recollection.... but it was created not long after the Braveheart film (what a load of pish!) and erected somewhere in or around Stirling Im sure, a few months later the head was lopped off and found in a polly bag somewhere ::): Please tell me Im not trippin soeone... did this happen?
here i go, it's coming for me through the trees
crusty_bint
-
-
 
Posts: 4425
Joined: Thu Jan 29, 2004 3:52 pm
Location: Glasgow

Postby Sharon » Mon Jan 24, 2005 6:26 pm

I never bought into this whole braveheart thing. It was an overly sentimental, romanticed, overblown piece of crap. Mad max in a skirt.

And the fact that people identify some notion of what it is to be Scottish in this? And to imagine that the film speaks for the nation... Its embarassing.
Beware of yawning dogs.
User avatar
Sharon
Site Admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 7495
Joined: Fri Mar 22, 2002 11:30 am
Location: Galloway

Postby montrose » Mon Jan 24, 2005 7:43 pm

the movie represents the sad fact that people are wiling to believe a piece of nonsense like that rather than read a book, or try to discover for themselves....... even worse they used it for an excuse to hate others.
good for you....
User avatar
montrose
Busy bunny
Busy bunny
 
Posts: 12
Joined: Sun Jan 09, 2005 4:20 pm
Location: sunkissed kirkie

Postby duncan » Mon Jan 24, 2005 8:30 pm

I much prefer the Wallace monument in Aberdeen, which is probably a somewhat more realistic depiction than Gibson's blue-faced shortarse:
http://www.stack.nl/~jwk/StAnd/img02015.jpg
User avatar
duncan
Third Stripe
Third Stripe
 
Posts: 1150
Joined: Tue Aug 27, 2002 9:54 am
Location: Glasgow

Postby crusty_bint » Mon Jan 24, 2005 9:09 pm

That is quite nice Duncan, although still a very romanticised portrayal of him. He was a big brute of a man of which theres no doubt and so a lot of artistic license is utilised un such monumental portrayals of national heroes.

The first one looks like those little plaster-cast things you made from red rubber moulds as a kid... its sooooooo vulgar!
here i go, it's coming for me through the trees
crusty_bint
-
-
 
Posts: 4425
Joined: Thu Jan 29, 2004 3:52 pm
Location: Glasgow

Braveheart

Postby Pgcc93 » Mon Jan 24, 2005 10:05 pm

I enjoyed the film as an action movie! nothing more.

There must be better films depicting historic periods in Scotland like The MASSACRE OF GLENCOE (1971) Starring James Robertson Justice and was apparently banned from broadcast for some reason or other.

Keep the Scots in their place sort of thing :?
User avatar
Pgcc93
Third Stripe
Third Stripe
 
Posts: 4104
Joined: Thu Jul 24, 2003 8:12 pm
Location: Hotel Du Vin

Re: The William Wallace Monument

Postby My Kitten » Sun Feb 15, 2009 4:33 pm

Anyone know why the Wallace's Well listed status was withdrawn in 1993 by Historic Scotland?

Are there any plans the help publicise this or is it only Mackintosh who gets the blurb?
User avatar
My Kitten
Third Stripe
Third Stripe
 
Posts: 6105
Joined: Sun Feb 15, 2004 10:10 am

Re: The William Wallace Monument

Postby bcuk10 » Thu Feb 19, 2009 2:13 am

Image

Feb 2009
User avatar
bcuk10
Third Stripe
Third Stripe
 
Posts: 402
Joined: Wed Oct 23, 2002 12:06 am
Location: NORTH GLASGOW

Re: The William Wallace Monument

Postby Aulyin » Wed Mar 04, 2009 4:02 pm

Is there a possibility of us getting the story of William Wallace right some time in the near future?

I never received any Scottish history when I was at school, and that seems to have been the norm during the 60's & 70's. When Braveheart came onto our screens I became interested in finding out the truth about the man -Wallace. I read Blin' Hary, as his was the story which historians followed (when it suited them) and then found out most of the dates (and many relationships) were wrong. In the same year as the film came out, the Lubeck Letter was re-discovered. This letter held the seal of William Wallace, son of Allan Wallace not Malcolm as formally told to us, and going by this "unimportant information" we found out that William came from Kyle Regis. This was news to me! Did it make any headlines? No. Would rekindling the "where was Wallace born" debate have helped the Scottish tourism industry in the south west? Yes.
People are always going to visit Lanarkshire but what about wee places in Ayrshire, like the site of Cumnock Castle and Castle William in New Cumnock (one of the candidates for The Plook on the Plinth Award), could they not do with a bit of the truth? What I'm saying is Wallace was definately here as well.

Put signs on plaques and build monuments etc but tell the people the truth. I've met folk from Switzerland and Finland who think that Wallace is a great Scottish fictional hero, how many Scots think the same?
Give us the truth, that's all we ask. We can handle it. He fought and died for your wee bit hill and glen.


Cheers.
Aulyin
Busy bunny
Busy bunny
 
Posts: 21
Joined: Mon Mar 02, 2009 12:20 pm

Re: The William Wallace Monument

Postby onyirtodd » Fri Mar 06, 2009 9:54 am

Aulyin wrote: Is there a possibility of us getting the story of William Wallace right some time in the near future?


Probably not. Nobody is interested in the truth when there's a much more marketable myth to peddle. People will always extract the bits which suit their beliefs regardless of 'evidence' to the contrary.

Aulyin wrote: I never received any Scottish history when I was at school, and that seems to have been the norm during the 60's & 70's. When Braveheart came onto our screens I became interested in finding out the truth about the man -Wallace. I read Blin' Hary, as his was the story which historians followed (when it suited them) and then found out most of the dates (and many relationships) were wrong. In the same year as the film came out, the Lubeck Letter was re-discovered. This letter held the seal of William Wallace, son of Allan Wallace not Malcolm as formally told to us, and going by this "unimportant information" we found out that William came from Kyle Regis. This was news to me! Did it make any headlines? No. Would rekindling the "where was Wallace born" debate have helped the Scottish tourism industry in the south west? Yes.
People are always going to visit Lanarkshire but what about wee places in Ayrshire, like the site of Cumnock Castle and Castle William in New Cumnock (one of the candidates for The Plook on the Plinth Award), could they not do with a bit of the truth? What I'm saying is Wallace was definately here as well.

Put signs on plaques and build monuments etc but tell the people the truth. I've met folk from Switzerland and Finland who think that Wallace is a great Scottish fictional hero, how many Scots think the same?
Give us the truth, that's all we ask. We can handle it. He fought and died for your wee bit hill and glen.


Cheers.


It seems more and more likely nobody will be being taught history of any sort soon.

"A secondary school is withdrawing History from its timetable this year because it is "unpopular".

St Mungo's in Falkirk also said it would not offer the subject to S3 Standard Grade pupils in 2009 because it had only one History teacher."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scot ... 926016.stm
238 to 127. All in all a good afternoon's work
User avatar
onyirtodd
Third Stripe
Third Stripe
 
Posts: 3176
Joined: Thu Jan 12, 2006 11:40 pm
Location: a car park near you

Re: The William Wallace Monument

Postby rabmania » Fri Mar 06, 2009 9:54 pm

It seems more and more likely nobody will be being taught history of any sort soon.

"A secondary school is withdrawing History from its timetable this year because it is "unpopular".

St Mungo's in Falkirk also said it would not offer the subject to S3 Standard Grade pupils in 2009 because it had only one History teacher."


Some head teachers have been trying to get History off the curriculum for a while. I've met them, lest I'm asked for evidence.
rabmania
Third Stripe
Third Stripe
 
Posts: 856
Joined: Sat Nov 29, 2008 8:36 pm

Re: The William Wallace Monument

Postby Lucky Poet » Sat Mar 07, 2009 12:45 am

The trouble with Wallace is that so little of his life is definitely known. Blind Harry's writings are reckoned to have largely been a reaction to a more pro-English foreign policy in James III's time, the man having become an icon by then. Since then he's been adopted as yer classic freedom fighter, e.g. by Garibaldi in Italy apparently. Even the supremely pro-Britain Scottish Victorians lauded the guy, reckoning that along with Bruce he'd made the Union possible as a partnership of equal nations, rather than straightforward conquest five centuries before. (I'm tempted to rail against the idiocy of modern Unionists for not learning more about what they claim to defend, but I won't.) There are so many gaps in our knowledge about Wallace that it's been easy for him to be surrounded by myth, and he's been remade through the centuries to suit various political purposes. And to suit a silly film (based on Blind Harry, apparently, and it wasn't a bad film until people started to take it seriously.)

Evidence? Michael Lynch, 'Wallace, William', in Michael Lynch (ed.) The Oxford Companion to Scottish History (Oxford, 2001), pp. 634-5
All the world seems in tune on a Spring afternoon, when we're poisoning pigeons in the park.
User avatar
Lucky Poet
-
-
 
Posts: 4161
Joined: Sat Jun 30, 2007 1:15 am
Location: Up a close

Re: The William Wallace Monument

Postby Aulyin » Mon Mar 09, 2009 3:44 pm

So, is this a good place to begin: "The Truth About William Wallace" using facts.

What are the FACTS concerning: Stirling, Lanark, Sanquhar, (New) Cumnock, Glasgow, Lubeck, London, etc.?
How much of Blin' Hary's story was fiction and how much was true?
I, for one, would like to know.

The Lubeck Letter seems to show that Wallaces father was Alan, and the Ragman Roll shows an Alan Wallace as a crown tenent of Kyle, so does this mean he was a tenent of Patrick Dunbar of Comenogh, Kyle Regis?

Cheers, Aulyin.
Aulyin
Busy bunny
Busy bunny
 
Posts: 21
Joined: Mon Mar 02, 2009 12:20 pm

Re: The William Wallace Monument

Postby Lucky Poet » Mon Mar 09, 2009 7:02 pm

I'll look into it, though I've not got many books that cover it. If anybody reading this has access to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, please don't look up his entry with a view to sending me a copy, cos that would be very wrong and bad.

I got annoyed enough at having been taught so little about Scottish history that I ended up going to Uni to study it a few years ago. Great fun it was too, very eye-opening. The strange thing is, during the 'year dot till 1707-ish' survey course that included the Wars of Independence there was very little about Wallace himself. Wallace and Andrew Murray's antics were mentioned of course, but as part of the wider story. I'm sure some of the foreign students felt let down that he didn't have at least a single lecture to himself :) I was fascinated by the way all the senior lecturers visibly flinched every time somebody mentioned Braveheart.

Initial readage suggests the Lübeck Letter's contents have been known for quite a while by the way, though that copy of it was found fairly recently.
All the world seems in tune on a Spring afternoon, when we're poisoning pigeons in the park.
User avatar
Lucky Poet
-
-
 
Posts: 4161
Joined: Sat Jun 30, 2007 1:15 am
Location: Up a close

PreviousNext

Return to Hidden Glasgow Projects

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 55 guests