Here’s what to know about Ayrshire, the historic Scotland county Trump is visiting : NPR

(Soundbite of Band of the Royal Tank Regiment “Scotland the Brave”)

Scott Simon, host:

BJ Leiderman writes our theme music. Ah, he is not Scottish. But Andrew Weir, he is Scottish – very, very Scottish.

Andrew Weir: (Reading) is there for honest poverty, which hangs the head and all that. The slave loose, we pass it, we dare to be poor for all this.

Simon: He is also a man of many tam o ‘shanters. He was a child actor who played the role of the young hamish in “Braveheart”.

(Soundbite of Film, “Braveheart”)

Weir: (as a hamish) with your father and your brother left, they will kill us and burn the farm.

Simon: As an adult, he worked the profession of whiskey for more than a decade. Now he sells Cognac. To complete its MC-Bona Fides (PH) Scottish, Andy Weir is also one of the main world recitters of the Scottish poet Robert Burns.

Weir: (reading) for all this and all that. It still comes, for all this, this man to man the world, the brothers will be for all this.

Simon: My boy, I would have liked to know what he was saying. Burns and Weir are both from Ayrshire, the coastal county near Glasgow. This also houses the Trump Turnberry golf course, one of the two stations that the president will visit during his trip to Scotland. He has a range of historic courses on which he could play.

Weir: Yes, Turnberry, what I know is quite relevant for current, but also true affairs, which held the championship opened last year, and Prestwick, who had the very first open.

Simon: But Weir says there are more in Ayrshire than in golf.

Weir: Ayrhire also has a great reputation for the birth of people who have changed the world. I mean, people like Alexander Fleming come from Ayrshire, who discovered penicillin. William Wallace spent a lot of time in Ayrshire. Robert Le Bruce was a man from the Ayrshire.

(Soundbit of Song, “Suspiy Minds”)

Elvis Presley: (singing) We are caught in a trap. I can’t go out.

Simon: So many famous people stayed in the region, even if it was just a brief stop at Prestwick airport.

Weir: interesting thing is the only place in the United Kingdom that Elvis Presley has ever attracted.

Simon: He was not the King of Rock ‘N’ Roll, but President Eisenhower had his own castle in shape for a king in the Ayrshire.

Weir: In 1945, at the end of the Second World War, the National Trust For Scotland actually offered a sequel to the Castle of Culzean to President Eisenhower as a gift for his consecutive and incredible service in the world during the Second World War. I think he has visited several times, and I even think once as president. He therefore called her – or he called her her Scottish White House.

(Soundbite of Band of the Royal Tank Regiment “Scotland the Brave”)

Simon: President Trump has deep ties with Scotland. His mother, Mary Anne Macleod Trump, was born on the island of Lewis. And while the president is famous for a non-Lien who did not relax with a little dram after a day on the links, he could cool off with an Irn-Bru box, a soda which is the unofficial national drink of Scotland. I wonder if they serve it in one of the 95 McDonald’s in Scotland.

(Soundbite of Band of the Royal Tank Regiment “Scotland the Brave”)

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