ABSTRACT
"No offence pal but I hate the f* *king English" is one of those immortal phrases which summarizes certain Scottish attitudes to the descendants of their conquerors of old. During fieldwork in the Western Isles, university students from England react with hurt puzzlement when their hosts cheer for the opposing side whenever the English football team is playing an international match. For many of the students have never been to Scotland before and, politically naive, are startled to discover that being Scottish is an oppositional national identity—the Scots are vehemently not English.
