Food is the other big source of memes. Every January 25, Scots celebrate the birthday of the poet Robert Burns, born in 1759, with a Burns Supper that includes a haggis, a recital of his 1786 poem "Address to a Haggis," and a lot of whisky. The deep-fried Mars bar, which reportedly started life in a chip shop in Stonehaven in the 1990s, is the modern equivalent. Scotland has a proud tradition of testing whether anything can be improved by adding batter.
Even the monster is a bit of patter. The most famous photo of the Loch Ness Monster, the 1934 "Surgeon's Photograph," was a toy submarine fitted with a sculpted head. A man involved in the hoax admitted it decades later, and it has not slowed down Nessie tourism one bit. Scotland knows when it's being had, and it has always found a way to make a joke out of it.
