Of rucks and ructions

I see the campaign for Scottish independence has spawned a new political acronym, “rUK”: now the collective term for England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, or the “rest of the UK”, as the Scots crisis defines it.

Presumably the term is pronounced the same as the rugby “ruck”, which may indeed be an apt comparison. In a post-Scottish UK, the rules would also a bit grey, with various people coming in from the side, and the immediate direction of the ball uncertain.

Perhaps, if the vote is yes, we can also expect rUKtions to ensue, although – as conventionally spelt – that word seems to be more popular this side of the Irish Sea than the other.

Where I grew up, there were always ructions breaking out, or threatened. The word was indispensable to both family and community life. Yet, curiously, most English dictionaries still don’t know where it comes from, describing it as of “origin unknown”, and noting only that it first appeared in print circa 1825.

I think I can fill them in on its history. In fact, Terry Dolan’s dictionary of Hiberno-English has beaten me to it, defining the word as an originally-Irish twist on “insurrection” and dating it from another constitutional crisis on these islands: the 1798 rebellion.

I was interested to read elsewhere in our pages yesterday (Chris Johns, Business This Week) that the rUKtions following a Scottish Yes vote might include higher taxes on whisky (as the Scots spell it).

This is because distilling is (a) a big money-spinner that (b) can’t become a tax exile. And although it would be a double irony if the spirit of Scottish independence were to depress Scotch sales, it wouldn’t be the first time such a thing has happened.

In the twilight years of British rule in Dublin, Irish whiskey was the unrivalled world leader. In fact, I’ve read that the spelling of whiskey with an E, which is also the American style, was a deliberate attempt to distance Ireland’s product from the then-inferior Scotch.

If so, this is a rare of example of an e-additive being used to make something attractive. In any case, over the next half century, the Irish distillers somehow managed to surrender market dominance to the Scots.

Much of this was self-inflicted by an industry failing to move with the times. But it was copper-fastened (distilling pun intended) by the indirect effects of Irish independence, including isolationism and the economic war. Even Dev’s neutrality hurt exports: all those US soldiers in the UK were a powerful marketing tool, bringing a taste for Scotch home with them.

Now, belatedly, whiskey-with-an-e is making a big comeback. Also in yesterday’s business pages was a report of soaring Jameson sales. And Irish whiskey has become ragingly fashionable again in the US, albeit in part due to its reduced status as a niche product.

I used to think, and still prefer to, that the Scotch spelling of whisky arose from that famously parsimonious nation’s aversion to the letter E, as in “excise”. But actually, it was their US emigrants, including Ulster Scots, who took the most famous stand against payment of taxes on the spirit. That too was an insurrection, and it also happened in the 1790s.

In a precedent the Scottish parliament might do well to remember, it was an indirect result of independence, in this case American. What happened was that, in 1791, the new central administration introduced a tax on whiskey to help pay off the war debt of reneging states.

But farmers west of the Appalachians, especially Pennsylvania, thought the measure unfairly targeted them. Moreover, as frontiersmen, they saw it as another example of taxation without representation, the very issue that sparked the war of independence.

So they refused to pay, and when officials came to collect, ructions ensued. Some officials were tarred and feathered. Some were shot. And there were at least a handful of fatalities before the “Whiskey Rebellion” petered out in 1794.

In the short-term it was a victory for the new government’s fiscal policies. In the longer term, many farmers still refused to pay. The rebellion’s biggest legacy may have been to extend the growth of organised democracy to the frontier. In the process, it helped bring Thomas Jefferson to the White House, where he promptly repealed the law.

Those ructions are still remembered in a folk song, The Copper Kettle . It has been sung by Bob Dylan, Joe Baez, and many others. And it doesn't explicitly mention the rebellion, but it includes the lines: "My daddy he made whiskey/My Grandaddy did too/We ain't paid no whiskey tax/Since 1792."

@FrankmcnallyIT

fmcnally@irishtimes.com