List of fictional Scots
This is a list of Scottish characters from fiction.
Disbanded by John Pettie was used to illustrate the 1893 edition of Waverley by Sir Walter Scott. The novel is set in the Jacobite uprising of 1745 and the picture shows a returning Highland warrior.[1]
Authors of romantic fiction have been influential in creating the popular image of Scots as kilted Highlanders, noted for their military prowess, bagpipes, rustic kailyard and doomed Jacobitism. Sir Walter Scott's Waverley novels were especially influential as they were widely read and highly praised in the 19th century. The author organised the pageantry for the visit of King George IV to Scotland which started the vogue for tartanry and Victorian Balmoralism which did much to create the modern Scottish national identity.[2][3]
Fictional Scottish characters
- Adam McAdam is "an arrogant and scheming little Scotsman" in Oliver Oliphant's Owd Bob.[4] The story, a children's classic, involves contests of skill and reputation between sheepdogs.
- Amy Pond is a companion of Doctor Who. The character was originally conceived as English but was changed to use the natural Inverness accent of the actress playing the part.[5]
- Bella Caledonia (Scotland as a woman) invokes Scots iconography, including plaid, thistles, and the Forth Railway Bridge. She is an artificial woman, Bella Baxter, in Alasdair Gray's 1992 novel Poor Things.[6]
- Jean Brodie, the titular character in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, exemplifies aspects of both Calvinist and Roman Catholic influence in Scotland.[7]
- The Broons are a large, tenement-dwelling, extended family in the DC Thomson cartoon strip of the same name. The publisher's similar strips about the young lad, Oor Wullie, are set in the same fictional town of Auchenshoogle.[8]
- Connor and Duncan MacLeod were immortal Highlanders in film and television.[9]
- Donald Farfrae successfully romances the Mayor of Casterbridge's lover and daughter. Simultaneously "sentimental and astute", he is one of the earliest exemplars of Kailyardism.[10]
- David Balfour is the central character of Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson. This was based upon the Appin Murder and so many of the other characters, such as Alan Breck Stewart, were real people. The sequel, Catriona, is also known as David Balfour: Being Memoirs of His Adventures at Home and Abroad.[11]
- Davy Jones is a villain in Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Initially asked to do a Dutch accent for the character, actor Bill Nighy instead decided to do a Scottish accent.[12]
- Desmond Hume is a character from the ABC television show Lost.[13] Henry Ian Cusick, the actor who portrays him, is of Peruvian and Scottish descent and was raised in Scotland, UK for part of his life.[14]
- Donald and Douglas are twin engines from the Caledonian Railway in The Railway Series by Rev. Wilbert Awdry[15]
- Dr. Finlay is the central character of stories by A.J.Cronin, set in the fictional village of Tannochbrae. Other characters included partner Dr Cameron, housekeeper Janet and rival Dr Snoddie.[16] The television productions have been seen as an example of modern Kailyardism.[17]
- Fat Bastard is a grotesquely fat Scotsman in the Austin Powers comedies.[18]
- Fingal is the hero of The Poems of Ossian by James Macpherson.[19] Notable features such as Fingal's Cave are named after him.[20]
- Groundskeeper Willie is a well-loved character in The Simpsons. He has flaming red hair and a powerful, muscular body.[21] A 2007 study conducted in the US concluded that Willie was the character that US residents "...most believe personifies the Scottish temperament."[22]
- Jack Parlabane is the journalist hero of the novels by Christopher Brookmyre such as Quite Ugly One Morning.[23][24]
- James Bond - following the success of Sean Connery in the role, author Ian Fleming gave Bond a mixed parentage - a Scottish father and Swiss mother. This background gave the character a colonial perspective, being an outsider in England.[25]
- Jamie Fraser is the Laird of Broch Tuarach in the Outlander stories.[26]
- Jamie McCrimmon is an early companion of Doctor Who. He was a piper and wore a kilt.[27]
- Mr. Mackay is the stern prison officer in Porridge which also featured McClaren as a black Scottish inmate and hard man.[28]
- Malcolm Tucker is the aggressive, profane and feared Government Director of communications, in the BBC Comedy The Thick of It. He was played by Peter Capaldi, who is a Glaswegian, but who actually based the character on the behaviour of Hollywood agents and producers such as Harvey Weinstein.[29]
- Minerva McGonagall is the head of Gryffindor house in the Harry Potter stories. She was named after the notorious Scottish poet William McGonagall.[30]
- Moira MacTaggert is the colleague and sometime fiancée of Professor X in the X-Men comic.[31]
- John Rebus is the protagonist of the Inspector Rebus stories by Ian Rankin.[32]
- Montgomery Scott is the chief engineer in Star Trek, famous for the alleged catchphrase, "Beam me up, Scotty".[33] The actor, James Doohan, was Canadian and auditioned with a variety of accents but suggested that Scottish would be best for the character, following the long tradition of Scottish nautical engineering. Producer Gene Roddenberry liked the accent and so it was settled.[34]
- Para Handy is the captain of a puffer on the Clyde in stories by Neil Munro, which have been filmed many times.[35] His crew included Dan Macphail, Dougie, Hurricane Jack, Sunny Jim and The Tar.[36]
- Private James Frazer is the miserly undertaker in Dad's Army[37] who comes from the bleak Isle of Barra in the Outer Hebrides.[38]
- Rab C. Nesbitt is a dissolute Glaswegian in the eponymous comedy.[39]
- Redgauntlet is a novel by Sir Walter Scott which contains numerous Scottish characters including the Laird of Redgauntlet, hero Darsie Latimer and musician Wandering Willie.[40]
- Richard Hannay is a stalwart of the British Empire in the stories by John Buchan, he was born in Edinburgh like his real-life inspiration, the spy and general Edmund Ironside.[41]
- Scrooge McDuck is the uncle of Disney's Donald Duck, a comic book, TV, and film character, he's a billionaire businessman, treasure hunter, and adventurer.[42] He was honoured by Glasgow council as a famous Glaswegian.[43] Believed to be a hybrid of real life Scottish-American Andrew Carnegie and fictional Englishman Ebenezer Scrooge. His arch-enemy is fellow Scot Flintheart Glomgold, a kilt-wearing corrupt businessman who often teams up with other villains to make himself richer.
- Shrek, although possessing a German name and being an ogre (thought to be a medieval stereotype of Hungarians), was portrayed as Scottish by Mike Myers in the Shrek film series.[44]
- Super Gran is a grandmother with super powers in books written by Forrest Wilson. In the television adaption, she was played by actress Gudrun Ure.[45]
- Jim Taggart is the title character of the successful television drama about a Glaswegian detective, played by Mark McManus. The title persisted even after the lead character was killed off following McManus' death.[46]
- Tam Lin is a knight in thrall to the Queen of Faerie in the ballad of that name.[47]
- Tam O'Shanter is the title character of the celebrated poem by Robert Burns - a drunken rustic.[48]
- Tavish Finnegan DeGroot aka The Demoman from Team Fortress 2, one of the 9 playable classes from the game, a demolitions expert originating from Ullapool, Scotland.
- Several Scots stock characters are present in Brigadoon, first staged on Broadway in 1947. They are variously warriors, drunkards, overly thrifty as a result of Calvinism, or capable of unusual insights stemming from a close relationship to the natural world.[49]
Real and apocryphal Scots who have been extensively fictionalised or mythologised
- Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Jacobite young Pretender who appears in novels such as Redgauntlet.
- The Loch Ness Monster was sighted in 1933. Its existence has not been proven but it has since appeared in numerous fictional forms.[50]
- Macbeth as in Shakespeare's play.
- Mary, Queen of Scots, commonly portrayed as a romantic and tragic heroine.[51]
- Rob Roy MacGregor as in Rob Roy.
- Sir Patrick Spens, heroic captain of a doomed voyage for the King of Scotland.[52]
- Thomas the Rhymer, a 13th-century prophet and poet who, in ballad, is led by the Queen of Faerie to Elfland.[53]
- William Wallace as in Braveheart.
See also
References
- Disbanded, McManus Gallery
- Walter H. Conser, Rodger Milton Payne (12 September 2010), Southern crossroads, ISBN 978-0813129280
- "Scotland and Sir Walter Scott", The Economist, Jul 29, 2010
- Mark Royden Winchell (1996), Cleanth Brooks and the rise of modern criticism, University of Virginia Press, p. 11, ISBN 978-0-8139-1647-7
- Rick Fulton (Mar 22, 2010), "It's great to be a Scots redhead in the Tardis", Daily Record, archived from the original on 2011-06-09
- Kirsten Stirling (2008). Bella Caledonia: woman, nation, text. Rodopi. p. 88. ISBN 978-90-420-2510-3.
- Gerard Carruthers (2009). Scottish literature. Edinburgh University Press. p. 128. ISBN 978-0-7486-3309-8.
- Andrew Nash (2007), Kailyard and Scottish literature, p. 225, ISBN 978-9042022034
- Shawn Shimpach (5 February 2010), Television in Transition: The Life and Afterlife of the Narrative Action Hero, ISBN 9781444320688
- Christopher Harvie (2004). Scotland and nationalism: Scottish society and politics, 1707 to the present. Routledge. p. 99. ISBN 978-0-415-32725-1.
- Robert Kiely (1964), Robert Louis Stevenson and the fiction of adventure, ISBN 9780674775954
- McKittrick, Chris (2012-05-15). "Bill Nighy on his 'Pirates' Accent: "I wanted something that didn't repeat anything anyone else had done"". Daily Actor. Retrieved 2022-09-29.
- Mark Dykeman (2010), Desmond Hume from Lost, archived from the original on 2014-02-02, retrieved 2014-01-19
- Wanda Leibowitz (2007), Ten Facts About Henry Ian Cusick, Aka Desmond Hume on TV's Lost, archived from the original on 2014-07-28, retrieved 2014-01-19
- Julia March; Rona Skene (2018), Thomas & Friends Character Encyclopedia, Dorling Kindersley, ISBN 9781465466624
- Robert Crawford (30 January 2009), Scotland's books: a history of Scottish literature, ISBN 9780199727674
- Andrew Nash (2007), Kailyard and Scottish literature, p. 234, ISBN 978-9042022034
- Neil Blain, David Hutchison (2008), The media in Scotland, ISBN 9780748627998
- G. Gregory Smith (February 2008), Scottish Literature, Character & Influence, ISBN 9781408649459
- Charles Frederick Partington (1836), The British Cyclopædia of Literature, History, Geography, Law, and Politics
- Cort Cass (2003), The Redhead Handbook, ISBN 9781587860119
- Groundskeeper Willie is the classic Scot for Americans, The Scotsman, 2007-09-19
- Ronald Carter, John McRae (2001), The Routledge history of literature in English: Britain and Ireland, ISBN 9780415243186
- Fiona MacGregor (12 February 2008), "The greatest work of fiction?", The Scotsman
- Vivian Halloran (2005), Ian Fleming & James Bond: the cultural politics of 007, ISBN 0253217431
- Diana Gabaldon (2015), The Outlandish Companion, vol. 1, Random House, p. 263, ISBN 9781473535916
- Berthold Schoene-Harwood (2007), The Edinburgh companion to contemporary Scottish literature, ISBN 9780748623969
- "TV Timewarp", The Journal, April 21, 2005
- Tom Cole (31 January 2012), "Peter Capaldi reveals true inspiration for Malcolm Tucker's character", Radio Times
- J.K. Rowling (July 2002), Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone Sparknotes, ISBN 9781586635183
- Frank Northen Magill (1983), Survey of modern fantasy literature, ISBN 9780893564506
- Ray Dexter; Nadine Carr (2015), Dirty Work, Spinderella, ISBN 9781326415211
- Stacey Endres, Robert Cushman (1992), Hollywood at your feet, p. 330, ISBN 9780938817086
- James Van Hise (1992), The Man Who Created Star Trek, p. 26, ISBN 9781556983184
- Neil Wilson, Alan Murphy (2004), "Essential Scottish Reads", Scotland, ISBN 9781741041569
- Alan Norman Bold (January 1989), Scotland: a literary guide, ISBN 9780415007313
- Jeffrey Richards (15 September 1997), Films and British national identity: from Dickens to Dad's army, ISBN 9780719047435
- Richard Webber (2001), The complete A-Z of Dad's Army, p. 228, ISBN 9780752846378
- John Corbett (1997), Language and Scottish literature, ISBN 9780748608263
- Maureen M. Martin (2009), "Redgauntlet, the Lowlands, and the Historicity of Scottish Nationhood", The mighty Scot, ISBN 9780791477304
- Douglas S. Mack (2006), Scottish fiction and the British Empire, ISBN 9780748618149
- In DuckTales episode 26: "The Curse of Castle McDuck", Scrooge, the nephews, and Webby visit Scrooge's ancestral home in Scotland, only to be embroiled in a mystery surrounding Castle McDuck. Available on volume 1 DVD set.
- Glasgow claims McDuck as its own, BBC, 1 October 2007
- Lucy Hewitt (24 December 2008). "Best fictional Scots character". The Scotsman.
- Hayley Dodwell, "Super Gran! The Childhood Show We All Loved?", 80's kids
- Adrienne Scullion (2003), "Scottish identity and representation in television drama", Group identities on French and British television, ISBN 9781571817938
- Graham Seal (2001), Encyclopedia of folk heroes, ISBN 9781576072165
- Hugh Walker (August 2008), Three Centuries of Scottish Literature, ISBN 9780554740966
- Colin McArthur (2003). Brigadoon, Braveheart and the Scots: distortions of Scotland in Hollywood cinema. I.B.Tauris Publishers. p. 107. ISBN 978-1-86064-927-1.
- Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock (2016), "Loch Ness Monster", The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters, Taylor & Francis, pp. 383–387, ISBN 9781317044260
- Ingibjörg Ágústsdóttir (2012), "Mary Queen of Scots as Feminine and National Icon: Depictions in Film and Fiction", Études écossaises (15): 75–93, doi:10.4000/etudesecossaises.603
- Francis James Child (1866), English and Scottish ballads, vol. 3
- Graham Seal (2001), Encyclopedia of folk heroes, ISBN 9781576072165
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