Get to know Ayrshire, the Scottish coastal county internet hosting President Trump this weekend.
(SOUNDBITE OF BAND OF THE ROYAL TANK REGIMENT’S “SCOTLAND THE BRAVE”)
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
B.J. Leiderman writes our theme music. Ah, he isn’t Scottish. However Andrew Weir, he is Scottish – very, very Scottish.
ANDREW WEIR: (Studying) Is there for sincere poverty, that hangs his head, and all that. The coward slave, we go him by, we dare be poor for all that.
SIMON: He is additionally a person of many tam o’ shanters. He was a baby actor who performed the position of younger Hamish in “Braveheart.”
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “BRAVEHEART”)
WEIR: (As Hamish) Along with your father and brother gone, they’re going to kill us and burn the farm.
SIMON: As an grownup, he labored the whiskey commerce for greater than a decade. Now he sells cognac. To spherical off his Scottish Mc-bona fides (ph), Andy Weir can be one of many world’s foremost reciters of the Scottish poet Robert Burns.
WEIR: (Studying) For all that and all that. It is coming but, for all that, that man to man the world over shall brothers be for all that.
SIMON: Boy, I want I knew what he was saying. Burns and Weir each hail from Ayrshire, the coastal county close to Glasgow. That additionally occurs to be dwelling to Trump Turnberry golf course, one of many two resorts the president will go to throughout his journey to Scotland. He is received a variety of historic programs on which he may play.
WEIR: Sure, Turnberry, which I do know is sort of pertinent to present affairs, but in addition true, which held the Open Championship final 12 months, and Prestwick, which held the primary ever Open.
SIMON: However Weir says there’s extra to Ayrshire than golf.
WEIR: Ayrshire additionally has fairly a popularity for birthing individuals who have modified the world. I imply, folks like Alexander Fleming is from Ayrshire, who found penicillin. William Wallace spent a whole lot of time in Ayrshire. Robert the Bruce was an Ayrshire man.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “SUSPICIOUS MINDS”)
ELVIS PRESLEY: (Singing) We’re caught in a entice. I am unable to stroll out.
SIMON: So many well-known folks have stayed within the space, even when it was only a transient layover at Prestwick Airport.
WEIR: Curiously sufficient, it is the one place within the U.Ok. that Elvis Presley ever touched down.
SIMON: He wasn’t the king of rock ‘n’ roll, however President Eisenhower did have his personal fortress match for a king in Ayrshire.
WEIR: In 1945, on the finish of the Second World Conflict, the Nationwide Belief for Scotland truly gifted a set in Culzean Fort to President Eisenhower as a present for his consequential and unbelievable service to the world through the Second World Conflict. I feel he visited a number of instances, and I feel even as soon as as president. So he used to name it – or he would confer with it as his Scottish White Home.
(SOUNDBITE OF BAND OF THE ROYAL TANK REGIMENT’S “SCOTLAND THE BRAVE”)
SIMON: President Trump does have some deep ties to Scotland. His mom, Mary Anne MacLeod Trump, was born on the Isle of Lewis. And whereas the president is famously a nondrinker who will not unwind with a wee dram after a day on the hyperlinks, he may cool off with a can of Irn-Bru, a soda that is the unofficial nationwide drink of Scotland. I ponder in the event that they serve it at one of many 95 McDonald’s in Scotland.
(SOUNDBITE OF BAND OF THE ROYAL TANK REGIMENT’S “SCOTLAND THE BRAVE”)
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