My native language is gone forever. Relearning it is possible; decolonisation of the mind is possible. But I have been changed, first by the forgetting and the relearning.

1. An Uneasy Alliance With The French

2. This Music Has A Whiff Of Papal Decadence About It; Are You Quite Sure You Are A Member Of The Elect?

3. Our Dreams Died With The Boy At Culloden

4. Ellen Refuses To Enter Into A Loveless Marriage As Her Highland Spirit Must Roam Free Or Be Broken

Previously by Evan Fleischer: This Is and Isn't About the DC Punk Archive “Edinburgh is a mad god’s dream,” Hugh MacDiarmid’s eponymous poem states (MacDiarmid himself described by Burns Singer as having hair that “curled up … like the grey-brown smoke of a volcano”), a poem amongst many carved into the gray granite of Scotland's parliament, the entrance to the building that has as its…

In 1603, Elizabeth I died heirless and James VI of Scotland became James I of England (the Union of the Crowns). Then in 1707, in a meeting on Edinburgh's North Bridge (apocryphally now a Bella Italia restroom), with protesters thronging the Royal Mile, the Acts of Union were signed, uniting the Scottish and English Parliaments in Westminster, London. Oh, also, Wales and Northern Ireland are a thing. But honestly, we don't have the time for…