Nina Welsch

There’s an old joke about an army of Englishmen approaching the Scottish border. From the misty distance a voice goads that it will “take only one Scotsman to defeat a thousand Englishmen”. The general proceeds to send that number of soldiers across the border. Only one returns alive, crawling across the ground in agony: “It’s a trap,” he wheezes, “there’s two of them.” The punchline, as well as ribbing the English, pokes fun at the mythologised idea of the Scotsman as more beast than man, an ap…