Scottish Gaelic
Scottish Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig ), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well as ...
( ), is a
Celtic language
The Celtic languages ( usually , but sometimes ) are a group of related languages descended from Proto-Celtic. They form a branch of the Indo-European language family. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edward ...
native to
Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...
. A member of the
Goidelic
The Goidelic or Gaelic languages ( ga, teangacha Gaelacha; gd, cànanan Goidhealach; gv, çhengaghyn Gaelgagh) form one of the two groups of Insular Celtic languages, the other being the Brittonic languages.
Goidelic languages historically ...
branch of the Celtic languages, Scottish Gaelic, like
Modern Irish
Irish (Standard Irish: ), also known as Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Insular Celtic branch of the Celtic language family, which is a part of the Indo-European language family. Irish is indigenous to the island of Ireland and was the ...
and
Manx, developed out of
Middle Irish
Middle Irish, sometimes called Middle Gaelic ( ga, An Mheán-Ghaeilge, gd, Meadhan-Ghàidhlig), is the Goidelic language which was spoken in Ireland, most of Scotland and the Isle of Man from AD; it is therefore a contemporary of late Old Engli ...
. Most of modern Scotland was once Gaelic-speaking, as evidenced especially by Gaelic-language placenames.
Origins to zenith
![Scots lang-en](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Scots_lang-en.svg)
The traditional view is that Gaelic was brought to Scotland, probably in the 4th-5th centuries, by settlers from Ireland who founded the Gaelic kingdom of
Dál Riata
Dál Riata or Dál Riada (also Dalriada) () was a Gaelic kingdom that encompassed the western seaboard of Scotland and north-eastern Ireland, on each side of the North Channel. At its height in the 6th and 7th centuries, it covered what is now ...
on Scotland's west coast in present-day
Argyll
Argyll (; archaically Argyle, in modern Gaelic, ), sometimes called Argyllshire, is a historic county and registration county of western Scotland.
Argyll is of ancient origin, and corresponds to most of the part of the ancient kingdom of ...
. This view is based mostly on early medieval writings such as the 7th century Irish ''
Senchus fer n-Alban
The ''Senchus fer n-Alban'' (''The History of the men of Scotland'') is an Old Irish medieval text believed to have been compiled in the 10th century. It provides genealogies for kings of Dál Riata and a census of the kingdoms which comprised Dá ...
'' or the 8th century Anglo-Saxon ''
Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum
The ''Ecclesiastical History of the English People'' ( la, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum), written by Bede in about AD 731, is a history of the Christian Churches in England, and of England generally; its main focus is on the conflict be ...
''. However, the lack of archaeological or place name evidence for a migration or invasion has caused this traditional view to fall out of favour. Today most archaeologists and historians believe that Gaelic in Dál Riata developed among the native population out of the common
Proto-Celtic language
Proto-Celtic, or Common Celtic, is the ancestral proto-language of all known Celtic languages, and a descendant of Proto-Indo-European. It is not attested in writing but has been partly Linguistic reconstruction, reconstructed through the compar ...
of the British Isles. Close sea communications with Ireland and the substantial land barrier of the Scottish Highlands to the east contributed to Proto-Celtic in Dál Riata developing into Gaelic rather than into
Pictish
Pictish is the extinct language, extinct Brittonic language spoken by the Picts, the people of eastern and northern Scotland from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. Virtually no direct attestations of Pictish remain, short of a limited num ...
or
Cumbric
Cumbric was a variety of the Common Brittonic language spoken during the Early Middle Ages in the ''Hen Ogledd'' or "Old North" in what is now the counties of Westmorland, Cumberland and northern Lancashire in Northern England and the souther ...
as it did east and south of the Highlands.
Gaelic in Scotland was mostly confined to until the 8th century, when it began expanding into
Pictish
Pictish is the extinct language, extinct Brittonic language spoken by the Picts, the people of eastern and northern Scotland from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. Virtually no direct attestations of Pictish remain, short of a limited num ...
areas north of the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde. This was spurred by the intermarriage of Gaelic and Pictish aristocratic families, the
political merger of the two kingdoms in the early 9th century, and the common threat of attack by Norse invaders. By 900,
Pictish
Pictish is the extinct language, extinct Brittonic language spoken by the Picts, the people of eastern and northern Scotland from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. Virtually no direct attestations of Pictish remain, short of a limited num ...
appears to have become extinct, completely replaced by Gaelic. An exception might be made for the
Northern Isles
The Northern Isles ( sco, Northren Isles; gd, Na h-Eileanan a Tuath; non, Norðreyjar; nrn, Nordøjar) are a pair of archipelagos off the north coast of mainland Scotland, comprising Orkney and Shetland. They are part of Scotland, as are th ...
, however, where Pictish was more likely supplanted by Norse rather than by Gaelic. During the reign of (900–943), outsiders began to refer to the region as the kingdom of Alba rather than as the kingdom of the Picts, but we do not know whether this was because a new kingdom was established or because "Alba" was simply a closer approximation of the Pictish name for the Picts. However, though the Pictish language did not disappear suddenly, a process of
Gaelicisation
Gaelicisation, or Gaelicization, is the act or process of making something Gaelic, or gaining characteristics of the ''Gaels'', a sub-branch of celticisation. The Gaels are an ethno-linguistic group, traditionally viewed as having spread from Irel ...
(which may have begun generations earlier) was clearly under way during the reigns of and his successors. By a certain point, probably during the 11th century, all the inhabitants of Alba had become fully Gaelicised Scots, and Pictish identity was forgotten.
By the 10th century, Gaelic had become the dominant language throughout northern and western Scotland, the Gaelo-Pictic
Kingdom of Alba
The Kingdom of Alba ( la, Scotia; sga, Alba) was the Kingdom of Scotland between the deaths of Donald II in 900 and of Alexander III in 1286. The latter's death led indirectly to an invasion of Scotland by Edward I of England in 1296 and the ...
. Its spread to southern Scotland was less even and less complete. Place name analysis suggests dense usage of Gaelic in
Galloway
Galloway ( ; sco, Gallowa; la, Gallovidia) is a region in southwestern Scotland comprising the historic counties of Wigtownshire and Kirkcudbrightshire. It is administered as part of the council area of Dumfries and Galloway.
A native or i ...
and adjoining areas to the north and west, as well as in
West Lothian
West Lothian ( sco, Wast Lowden; gd, Lodainn an Iar) is one of the 32 council areas of Scotland, and was one of its shires of Scotland, historic counties. The county was called Linlithgowshire until 1925. The historic county was bounded geogra ...
and parts of western
Midlothian
Midlothian (; gd, Meadhan Lodainn) is a historic county, registration county, lieutenancy area and one of 32 council areas of Scotland used for local government. Midlothian lies in the east-central Lowlands, bordering the City of Edinburgh, ...
. Less dense usage is suggested for north
Ayrshire
Ayrshire ( gd, Siorrachd Inbhir Àir, ) is a historic county and registration county in south-west Scotland, located on the shores of the Firth of Clyde. Its principal towns include Ayr, Kilmarnock and Irvine and it borders the counties of Re ...
,
Renfrewshire
Renfrewshire () ( sco, Renfrewshire; gd, Siorrachd Rinn Friù) is one of the 32 council areas of Scotland.
Located in the west central Lowlands, it is one of three council areas contained within the boundaries of the historic county of Renfr ...
, the
Clyde Valley
The River Clyde ( gd, Abhainn Chluaidh, , sco, Clyde Watter, or ) is a river that flows into the Firth of Clyde in Scotland. It is the ninth-longest river in the United Kingdom, and the third-longest in Scotland. It runs through the major cit ...
and eastern
Dumfriesshire
Dumfriesshire or the County of Dumfries or Shire of Dumfries (''Siorrachd Dhùn Phris'' in Gaelic) is a historic county and registration county in southern Scotland. The Dumfries lieutenancy area covers a similar area to the historic county.
I ...
. This latter region is roughly the area of the old
Kingdom of Strathclyde
Strathclyde (lit. "Strath of the River Clyde", and Strað-Clota in Old English), was a Brittonic successor state of the Roman Empire and one of the early medieval kingdoms of the Britons, located in the region the Welsh tribes referred to as Yr ...
, which was annexed by the Kingdom of Alba in the early 11th century, but its inhabitants may have continued to speak Cumbric as late as the 12th century. In south-eastern Scotland, there is no evidence that Gaelic was ever widely spoken: the area shifted from Cumbric to
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
during its long incorporation into the Anglo-Saxon
Kingdom of Northumbria
la, Regnum Northanhymbrorum
, conventional_long_name = Kingdom of Northumbria
, common_name = Northumbria
, status = State
, status_text = Unified Anglian kingdom (before 876)North: Anglian kingdom (af ...
. After the Lothians were conquered by
Malcolm II
Máel Coluim mac Cináeda ( gd, Maol Chaluim mac Choinnich, label=Modern Scottish Gaelic; anglicized Malcolm II; c. 954 – 25 November 1034) was King of Scots from 1005 until his death. He was a son of King Kenneth II; but the name of his moth ...
at the
Battle of Carham
The Battle of Carham (c. 1018) was fought between the Kingdom of Scotland and the Northumbrians at Carham on Tweed. Uhtred, son of Waltheof of Bamburgh (or his brother Eadwulf), fought the combined forces of Malcolm II of Scotland and Owen the ...
in 1018, the elites spoke Gaelic and continued to do so until about 1200. However commoners retained Old English.
With the incorporation of Strathclyde and the Lothians, Gaelic reached its social, cultural, political, and geographic zenith in Scotland. The language in Scotland had been developing independently of the language in Ireland at least as early as its crossing the ("Spine" or "ridge of Britain", its location is not known) into Pictland. The entire country was for the first time being referred to in Latin as ', and Gaelic was recognised as the '.
The Eclipse of Gaelic in Scotland
![Alexander III and Ollamh Rígh](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Alexander_III_and_Ollamh_R%C3%ADgh.JPG)
Many historians mark the reign of King Malcolm Canmore (
Malcolm III
Malcolm III ( mga, Máel Coluim mac Donnchada, label=Medieval Gaelic; gd, Maol Chaluim mac Dhonnchaidh; died 13 November 1093) was King of Scotland from 1058 to 1093. He was later nicknamed "Canmore" ("ceann mòr", Gaelic, literally "big head" ...
) as the beginning of Gaelic's eclipse in Scotland.
[Withers, p. 19] In either 1068 or 1070, the king married the exiled Princess Margaret of Wessex. This future
Saint Margaret of Scotland
Saint Margaret of Scotland ( gd, Naomh Maighréad; sco, Saunt Marget, ), also known as Margaret of Wessex, was an English princess and a Scottish queen. Margaret was sometimes called "The Pearl of Scotland". Born in the Kingdom of Hungary to th ...
was a member of the royal House of Wessex which had occupied the English throne from its founding until the Norman Conquest. Margaret was thoroughly Anglo-Saxon and is often credited (or blamed) for taking the first significant steps in anglicizing the Scottish court. She spoke no Gaelic, gave her children Anglo-Saxon rather than Gaelic names, and brought many English bishops, priests, and monastics to Scotland. Her family also served as a conduit for the entry of English nobles into Scotland.
When both Malcolm and Margaret died just days apart in 1093, the Gaelic aristocracy rejected their anglicized sons and instead backed Malcolm's brother
Donald
Donald is a masculine given name derived from the Gaelic name ''Dòmhnall''.. This comes from the Proto-Celtic *''Dumno-ualos'' ("world-ruler" or "world-wielder"). The final -''d'' in ''Donald'' is partly derived from a misinterpretation of the ...
as the next King of Scots. Known as Donald Bàn (“the Fair”), the new king had lived 17 years in Ireland as a young man and his power base as an adult was in the thoroughly Gaelic west of Scotland. Upon Donald's ascension to the throne, in the words of the ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'', "the Scots drove out all the English who had been with King Malcolm". Malcolm's sons fled to the English court, but in 1097 returned with an Anglo-Norman army backing them. Donald was overthrown, blinded, and imprisoned for the remaining two years of his life. Because of the strong English ties of Malcolm's sons Edgar, Alexander, and David – each of whom became king in turn – Donald Bàn is sometimes called the ‘last Celtic King of Scotland’. He was last Scottish monarch to be buried on
Iona
Iona (; gd, Ì Chaluim Chille (IPA: iːˈxaɫ̪ɯimˈçiʎə, sometimes simply ''Ì''; sco, Iona) is a small island in the Inner Hebrides, off the Ross of Mull on the western coast of Scotland. It is mainly known for Iona Abbey, though there ...
, the one-time center of the Scottish Gaelic Church and the traditional burial place of the Gaelic Kings of Dàl Riada and the Kingdom of Alba.
During the reigns of the sons of Malcolm Canmore (1097-1153), Anglo-Norman names and practices spread throughout Scotland south of the Forth-Clyde line and along the northeastern coastal plain as far north as Moray. Norman French became dominant among the new feudal aristocracy, especially in southern Scotland, and completely displaced Gaelic at court. The establishment of royal burghs throughout the same area, particularly under
David I David I may refer to:
* David I, Caucasian Albanian Catholicos c. 399
* David I of Armenia, Catholicos of Armenia (728–741)
* David I Kuropalates of Georgia (died 881)
* David I Anhoghin, king of Lori (ruled 989–1048)
* David I of Scotland (di ...
, attracted large numbers of foreigners speaking ‘Inglis’, the language of the merchant class. This was the beginning of Gaelic's status as a predominantly rural language in Scotland. The country experienced significant population growth in the 1100s and 1200s in the expanding burghs and their nearby agricultural districts. These economic developments helped spread English as well.
Gaelic still retained some of its old prestige in medieval Scotland. At the coronation of King Alexander III in 1249, a traditional ''
seanchaidh'' or story-teller recited the king's full genealogy in Gaelic all the way back to
Fergus Mòr, the mythical progenitor of the Scots in
Dál Riata
Dál Riata or Dál Riada (also Dalriada) () was a Gaelic kingdom that encompassed the western seaboard of Scotland and north-eastern Ireland, on each side of the North Channel. At its height in the 6th and 7th centuries, it covered what is now ...
, “in accordance with the custom which had grown up in the kingdom from antiquity right up to that time”. Clan chiefs in the northern and western parts of Scotland continued to support Gaelic bards who remained a central feature of court life there. The semi-independent
Lordship of the Isles
The Lord of the Isles or King of the Isles
( gd, Triath nan Eilean or ) is a title of Scottish nobility with historical roots that go back beyond the Kingdom of Scotland. It began with Somerled in the 12th century and thereafter the title ...
in the Hebrides and western coastal mainland remained thoroughly Gaelic since the language's recovery there in the 12th century, providing a political foundation for cultural prestige down to the end of the 15th century.
That being said, it seems clear that Gaelic had ceased to be the language of Scotland by 1400 at the latest. It disappeared from the central lowlands by c1350 and from the eastern coastal lowlands north of the
Mounth
The Mounth ( ) is the broad upland in northeast Scotland between the Highland Boundary and the River Dee, at the eastern end of the Grampians.
Name and etymology
The name ''Mounth'' is ultimately of Pictish origin. The name is derived from ...
not long afterwards. By the mid-1300s English in its Scottish form – what eventually came to be called
Scots—emerged as the official language of government and law. Scotland's emergent nationalism in the era following the conclusion of the
Wars of Scottish Independence
The Wars of Scottish Independence were a series of military campaigns fought between the Kingdom of Scotland and the Kingdom of England in the late 13th and early 14th centuries.
The First War (1296–1328) began with the English invasion of ...
was organized around and through Scots as well. For example, the nation's great patriotic literature including John Barbour's ''
The Brus
''The Brus'', also known as ''The Bruce'', is a long narrative poem, in Early Scots, of just under 14,000 octosyllabic lines composed by John Barbour which gives a historic and chivalric account of the actions of Robert the Bruce and Sir Jame ...
'' (1375) and Blind Harry's ''
The Wallace'' (bef. 1488) was written in Scots, not Gaelic. It was around this time that the very name of Gaelic began to change. Down through the 14th century, Gaelic was referred to in English as ''Scottis'', i.e. the language of the Scots. By the end of the 15th century, however, the Scottish dialect of Northern English had absorbed that designation. English/Scots speakers referred to Gaelic instead as ''Yrisch'' or ''Erse'', i.e. Irish. King
James IV
James IV (17 March 1473 – 9 September 1513) was King of Scotland from 11 June 1488 until his death at the Battle of Flodden in 1513. He inherited the throne at the age of fifteen on the death of his father, James III, at the Battle of Sauchi ...
(d. 1513) thought Gaelic important enough to learn and speak. However, he was the last Scottish monarch to do so.
Persecution, Retreat, and Dispersal
The historian Charles Withers argues that the geographic retreat of Gaelic in Scotland is the context for the establishment of the country's signature divide between the ‘Lowlands’ and the ‘Highlands’. Before the late 1300s, there is no evidence that anyone thought of Scotland as divided into two geographic parts. From the 1380s onward, however, the country was increasingly understood to be the union of two distinct spaces and peoples: one inhabiting the low-lying south and the eastern seaboard speaking English/Scots; another inhabiting the mountainous north and west as well as the islands speaking Gaelic. What Gaelic remained in the Lowlands in the sixteenth century had disappeared completely by the eighteenth. Gaelic vanished from Fife by 1600, eastern Caithness by 1650, and Galloway by 1700. At the same time the Scottish crown entered a determined period of state-building in which cultural, religious and linguistic unity was of the highest value. As Lowland Scots sought increasingly to ‘civilise’ their Highland brethren, Gaelic became an object of particular persecution. Combined with larger economic and social changes, Gaelic began a long and nearly terminal retreat.
The Scottish crown forced the forfeiture of all the lands held under the
Lordship of the Isles
The Lord of the Isles or King of the Isles
( gd, Triath nan Eilean or ) is a title of Scottish nobility with historical roots that go back beyond the Kingdom of Scotland. It began with Somerled in the 12th century and thereafter the title ...
in 1493 and thereby eliminated the core Gaelic region of mediæval Scotland as a political entity. Rather than solve the problems of endemic violence and resistance to Lowland rule, the destruction of the Lordship tended to exacerbate them. While Scottish kings had sought to fully integrate the west and the islands into the rest of Scotland since taking formal control of the area from the King of Norway in 1266, the policy culminated with
James VI
James is a common English language surname and given name:
*James (name), the typically masculine first name James
* James (surname), various people with the last name James
James or James City may also refer to:
People
* King James (disambiguat ...
. He began an on-again off-again policy of pacification and ‘civilisation’ of the Highlands upon taking effective personal rule of his kingdom in 1583. This especially meant establishing the clear rule of royal writ and the suppression of all independent-minded local clan leaders. As a precursor to the
Plantation of Ulster
The Plantation of Ulster ( gle, Plandáil Uladh; Ulster-Scots: ''Plantin o Ulstèr'') was the organised colonisation (''plantation'') of Ulstera province of Irelandby people from Great Britain during the reign of King James I. Most of the sett ...
, James and the Scottish Parliament even planted hundreds of Lowland Scots settlers from Fife on the
Isle of Lewis
The Isle of Lewis ( gd, Eilean Leòdhais) or simply Lewis ( gd, Leòdhas, ) is the northern part of Lewis and Harris, the largest island of the Western Isles or Outer Hebrides archipelago in Scotland. The two parts are frequently referred to as ...
in the late 1590s and again in the first decade of the 1600s.
Many point to the
Statutes of Iona as the beginning of official government persecution of Gaelic in Scotland. In 1609 James VI/I through his agent
Andrew Knox, Bishop of the Isles, successfully negotiated a series of texts with nine prominent Gaelic chiefs on the ancient island of Iona. The provisions sought to enlist the chiefs themselves in undermining the traditional Gaelic political order including an end to traditional Gaelic ‘guesting and feasting’, limitations on the size of chiefs’ retinues, and a ban on bands of travelling bards. From the point of view of the Gaelic language, the most notable statute was the one which compelled the chiefs to send their eldest child to schools in the Lowlands so as to ensure the next generation of Highland elites .
The historian Julian Goodare downplays the importance of the Statues of Iona in favour of seeing them as part of a much larger set of regulations which the crown sought to promulgate for the reorganisation of Gaelic society. He stresses the greater importance of a 1616 Act of the
Privy Council of Scotland
The Privy Council of Scotland ( — 1 May 1708) was a body that advised the Scottish monarch. In the range of its functions the council was often more important than the Estates in the running the country. Its registers include a wide range of ...
which declared that no heir of a Gaelic chief could inherit unless he could write, read and speak English.
Another 1616 act of the Privy Council commanded the establishment of at least one English language school in every parish in Scotland so that “the Irish language, which is one of the chief and principal causes of the continuance of barbarity and incivility among the inhabitants of the Isles and Highlands may be abolished and removed”. Withers claims that by the mid-1700s all Highland gentry were bilingual. While these policies had no effect on the Gaelic-speaking masses, they did aid the integration of the Gaelic elite into the British polity and English-speaking society.
Economic and educational developments seriously diminished Gaelic in Scotland over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries. English penetrated the Highlands and Isles particularly through commerce and sheep-ranching. Highland burghs such as
Inverness
Inverness (; from the gd, Inbhir Nis , meaning "Mouth of the River Ness"; sco, Innerness) is a city in the Scottish Highlands. It is the administrative centre for The Highland Council and is regarded as the capital of the Highlands. Histori ...
and
Fort William were outposts of English in the region, becoming only more so following the
Jacobite rising of 1745
The Jacobite rising of 1745, also known as the Forty-five Rebellion or simply the '45 ( gd, Bliadhna Theàrlaich, , ), was an attempt by Charles Edward Stuart to regain the Monarchy of Great Britain, British throne for his father, James Franci ...
. As English-speakers held all economic power outside the Highlands and most of it within the Gaidhealtachd, Gaelic monolingualism was fast becoming an economic hindrance. Men tended to learn English before women and children and Gaels tended to use English for economic transactions even if they weren't fluent in it. Particularly on the fringes of the Highlands, English words and accents began to ‘corrupt’ Gaelic speech in the 1700s and by 1800 residents of most ‘outer Gaidhealtachd’ parishes could understand and use English in everyday life even if Gaelic remained their native tongue.
Education policy was much more intentional in undermining Gaelic in Scotland. Before the late 1600s, schools for the middle class, not to mention poor crofters, did not exist in the Highlands and Isles. Gaelic culture was largely non-literate at the time and thus Gaels themselves were unable to provide a modern education to their children even if they had wanted to do so. Moreover, Lowland elites had long considered Gaelic to be among the chief impediments to Scottish national unity and to the spread of ‘civilization’ throughout the country, especially literacy and Protestantism. Thus Lowland Scots began establishing the first schools in Argyll in the late 1600s and in northern Scotland in the 1700s, all of them being strictly in the English language. The
Society in Scotland for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SSPCK) was the most important early organization to set up schools in the Gaidhealtachd. From the SSPCK's perspective, the primary purpose of education was cultural – to learn the Bible, to learn the catechism of the Church of Scotland and to learn English. Even though many pupils came to school with no ability to communicate in English, SSPCK schools were strictly English-only throughout the eighteenth century. Not only was Gaelic forbidden in school. After 1751 SSPCK schools even banned the use of Gaelic in the schoolyard. The Church of Scotland also established parochial schools in the Gaidhealtachd in the 1700s and likewise banned the use of Gaelic except in translating. Gaelic-speaking pupils were not taught their own language in school until the early 1800s, first by schools operated by the Gaelic Society and later in SSPCK and parochial schools. For the latter two organizations, however, Gaelic was only introduced to provide a better stepping stone to English. Gaelic Society school numbers peaked around 1825 but had basically disappeared by the 1860s. A report of the Secretary of State in 1871 sums up the prevailing view of the period: “The Gaelic language … decidedly stands in the way of the civilization of the natives making use of it”. In 1872 Scotland moved for the first time to a compulsory, state-directed and state-funded system of education covering the entire country. Even then no provision of any kind was made for Gaelic.
Economic dislocation of Gaels beginning in the early 1700s began to change the geography of Gaelic. As Gaelic migrants left the Highlands and Isles first for the major cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, later for the secondary cities of Aberdeen, Dundee, Greenock and Perth, they temporarily returned Gaelic to the Lowlands. In the late 1700s Gaelic chapels began to be founded in Lowland cities suggesting a critical mass of Gaelic-speakers had been reached by then. The first such Gaelic chapel was established in Edinburgh in 1769. By the late 1800s, Glasgow alone had ten Gaelic chapels and was clearly the urban centre of Lowland Gaelic. In this same period Gaelic became a global language. The first Gaelic-speaking migrants arrived in North America in 1770, settling originally on
Prince Edward Island
Prince Edward Island (PEI; ) is one of the thirteen Provinces and territories of Canada, provinces and territories of Canada. It is the smallest province in terms of land area and population, but the most densely populated. The island has seve ...
and later on mainland
Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia ( ; ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. Nova Scotia is Latin for "New Scotland".
Most of the population are native Eng ...
and the
Mohawk Valley
The Mohawk Valley region of the U.S. state of New York is the area surrounding the Mohawk River, sandwiched between the Adirondack Mountains and Catskill Mountains, northwest of the Capital District. As of the 2010 United States Census, th ...
of New York. After the American Revolution, most of the Gaels of New York moved to
Glengarry County, Ontario
Glengarry County, an area covering , is a former county in the province of Ontario, Canada. It is historically known for its settlement of Scottish Highlanders. Glengarry County now consists of the modern-day townships of North Glengarry and South ...
where they joined other Highland emigrants in their new settlement. The first Gaelic-speaking settlers directly from Scotland arrived on
Cape Breton
Cape Breton Island (french: link=no, île du Cap-Breton, formerly '; gd, Ceap Breatainn or '; mic, Unamaꞌki) is an island on the Atlantic coast of North America and part of the province of Nova Scotia, Canada.
The island accounts for 18. ...
in 1802. A huge wave of Gaelic immigration to Nova Scotia took place between 1815 and 1840, so large that by the mid-19th century Gaelic was the third most common language in Canada after English and French. It is estimated that there were 50,000 Gaelic speakers in Nova Scotia in 1901, more than one-sixth of all Gaelic-speakers in the world at the time. Gaels also emigrated to North Carolina in the 1700s and Gaelic was regularly spoken there until the American Civil War.
Despite the dispersal of Gaelic to North America (and to Australasia), the 17th through 19th centuries witnessed a tremendous erosion of Gaelic. The first reliable statistics on the prevalence of Gaelic in Scotland begin in the 1690s. At that time around 25-30% of the country spoke Gaelic. By the time the first Census of Scotland asked the population about its ability to speak Gaelic in 1881, that figure had been whittled down to merely 6%.
Modern era
Scottish Gaelic has a rich oral (') and
written
Writing is a medium of human communication which involves the representation of a language through a system of physically inscribed, mechanically transferred, or digitally represented symbols.
Writing systems do not themselves constitute h ...
tradition, having been the language of the
bard
In Celtic cultures, a bard is a professional story teller, verse-maker, music composer, oral historian and genealogist, employed by a patron (such as a monarch or chieftain) to commemorate one or more of the patron's ancestors and to praise t ...
ic culture of the Highland
clan
A clan is a group of people united by actual or perceived kinship
and descent. Even if lineage details are unknown, clans may claim descent from founding member or apical ancestor. Clans, in indigenous societies, tend to be endogamous, meaning ...
s for many years. The language preserves knowledge of and adherence to pre-feudal 'tribal' laws and customs (as represented, for example, by the expressions ' and '). These attitudes were still evident in the complaints and claims of the
Highland Land League
The first Highland Land League ( gd, Dionnasg an Fhearainn) emerged as a distinct political force in Scotland during the 1880s, with its power base in the country's Highlands and Islands. It was known also as the Highland Land Law Reform Associat ...
of the late 19th century, which elected MPs to the
Parliament of the United Kingdom
The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative suprema ...
.
However, the language suffered under centralisation efforts by the Scottish and later British states, especially after the
Battle of Culloden
The Battle of Culloden (; gd, Blàr Chùil Lodair) was the final confrontation of the Jacobite rising of 1745. On 16 April 1746, the Jacobite army of Charles Edward Stuart was decisively defeated by a British government force under Prince Wi ...
in 1746, during the
Highland Clearances
The Highland Clearances ( gd, Fuadaichean nan Gàidheal , the "eviction of the Gaels") were the evictions of a significant number of tenants in the Scottish Highlands and Islands, mostly in two phases from 1750 to 1860.
The first phase resulte ...
, and by the
exclusion of Scottish Gaelic from the educational system.
According to Yale University music professor Willie Ruff, the singing of psalms in Scottish Gaelic by Presbyterians of the
Scottish Hebrides
The Hebrides (; gd, Innse Gall, ; non, Suðreyjar, "southern isles") are an archipelago off the west coast of the Scottish mainland. The islands fall into two main groups, based on their proximity to the mainland: the Inner and Outer Hebride ...
evolved from "lining out" – where one person sings a solo before others follow – into the
call and response
Call and response is a form of interaction between a speaker and an audience in which the speaker's statements ("calls") are punctuated by responses from the listeners. This form is also used in music, where it falls under the general category of ...
of
gospel music
Gospel music is a traditional genre of Christian music, and a cornerstone of Christian media. The creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of gospel music varies according to culture and social context. Gospel music is com ...
of the southern USA. The veracity of this claim has, however, been disputed.
An Irish translation of the
Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...
dating from the
Elizabethan era
The Elizabethan era is the epoch in the Tudor period of the history of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603). Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history. The symbol of Britannia (a female personifi ...
was in use until the Bible was translated into Scottish Gaelic.
Author David Ross notes in his 2002 history of Scotland that a Scottish Gaelic version of the Bible was published in London in 1690 by the Rev. Robert Kirk, minister of Aberfoyle; however it was not widely circulated. The first well-known translation of the Bible into Scottish Gaelic was made in 1767 when Dr James Stuart of Killin and Dugald Buchanan of Rannoch produced a translation of the New Testament. Very few European languages have made the transition to a modern literary language without an early modern translation of the Bible. The lack of a well-known translation until the late 18th century may have contributed to the decline of Scottish Gaelic.
In the 21st century,
Scottish Gaelic literature
Scottish Gaelic literature refers to literature composed in the Scottish Gaelic language and in the Gàidhealtachd communities where it is and has been spoken. Scottish Gaelic is a member of the Goidelic branch of Celtic languages, along with Irish ...
has seen development within the area of prose fiction publication, as well as challenges due to the continuing decline of the language .
Defunct dialects
All surviving dialects are Highland and/or Hebridean dialects. Dialects of Lowland Gaelic have become defunct since the demise of
Galwegian Gaelic
Galwegian Gaelic (also known as Gallovidian Gaelic, Gallowegian Gaelic, or Galloway Gaelic) is an extinct dialect of Scottish Gaelic formerly spoken in southwest Scotland. It was spoken by the people of Galloway and Carrick until the early m ...
, originally spoken in
Galloway
Galloway ( ; sco, Gallowa; la, Gallovidia) is a region in southwestern Scotland comprising the historic counties of Wigtownshire and Kirkcudbrightshire. It is administered as part of the council area of Dumfries and Galloway.
A native or i ...
, which seems to have been the last
Lowland
Upland and lowland are conditional descriptions of a plain based on elevation above sea level. In studies of the ecology of freshwater rivers, habitats are classified as upland or lowland.
Definitions
Upland and lowland are portions of ...
dialect and which survived into the
Modern Period
The term modern period or modern era (sometimes also called modern history or modern times) is the period of history that succeeds the Middle Ages (which ended approximately 1500 AD). This terminology is a historical periodization that is applie ...
. By the 18th century Lowland Gaelic had been largely replaced by
Lowland Scots across much of Lowland Scotland. According to a reference in ''The Carrick Covenanters '' by James Crichton, the last place in the Lowlands where Scottish Gaelic was still spoken was the village of
Barr Barr may refer to:
Places
* Barr (placename element), element of place names meaning 'wooded hill', 'natural barrier'
* Barr, Ayrshire, a village in Scotland
* Barr Building (Washington, DC), listed on the US National Register of Historic Places ...
in
Carrick: only a few miles inland to the east of
Girvan
Girvan ( gd, Inbhir Gharbhain, "mouth of the River Girvan") is a burgh and harbour town in Carrick, South Ayrshire, Scotland. Girvan is situated on the east coast of the Firth of Clyde, with a population of about 6,450. It lies south of Ayr, ...
, but at one time very isolated. Crichton gives neither date nor details.
There is no evidence from place names of significant linguistic differences between, for example,
Argyll
Argyll (; archaically Argyle, in modern Gaelic, ), sometimes called Argyllshire, is a historic county and registration county of western Scotland.
Argyll is of ancient origin, and corresponds to most of the part of the ancient kingdom of ...
and
Galloway
Galloway ( ; sco, Gallowa; la, Gallovidia) is a region in southwestern Scotland comprising the historic counties of Wigtownshire and Kirkcudbrightshire. It is administered as part of the council area of Dumfries and Galloway.
A native or i ...
. Dialects on both sides of the
Straits of Moyle
The North Channel (known in Irish and Scottish Gaelic as , in Scots as the ) is the strait between north-eastern Northern Ireland and south-western Scotland. It begins north of the Isle of Man, where the Irish Sea ends, and runs north-west in ...
(the
North Channel North Channel may refer to:
*North Channel (Great Britain and Ireland)
The North Channel (known in Irish and Scottish Gaelic as , in Scots as the ) is the strait between north-eastern Northern Ireland and south-western Scotland. It begins no ...
) linking Scottish Gaelic with Irish are now extinct, though native speakers were still to be found on the
Mull of Kintyre
The Mull of Kintyre is the southwesternmost tip of the Kintyre Peninsula (formerly ''Cantyre'') in southwest Scotland. From here, the Antrim coast of Northern Ireland is visible on a calm and clear day, and a historic lighthouse, the second ...
,
Rathlin
Rathlin Island ( ga, Reachlainn, ; Local Irish dialect: ''Reachraidh'', ; Scots: ''Racherie'') is an island and civil parish off the coast of County Antrim (of which it is part) in Northern Ireland. It is Northern Ireland's northernmost point. ...
and in North East Ireland as late as the mid-20th century. Records of their speech show that Irish and Scottish Gaelic existed in a dialect chain with no clear language boundary.
What is known as Scottish Gaelic is essentially the Gaelic spoken in the Outer Hebrides and on Skye. Generally speaking, the Gaelic spoken across the Western Isles is similar enough to be classed as one major dialect group, although there is still regional variation. For example, the slender 'r' is pronounced in Lewis, where the Gaelic is thought to have been influenced by
Norse, and had a
pitch accent
A pitch-accent language, when spoken, has word accents in which one syllable in a word or morpheme is more prominent than the others, but the accentuated syllable is indicated by a contrasting pitch ( linguistic tone) rather than by loudness ( ...
system.
Gaelic in Eastern and Southern Scotland is now largely defunct, although the dialects which were spoken in the east tended to preserve a more archaic tone, which had been lost further west. For example, Gaelic speakers in East Sutherland preferred to say ' ("Where were you about last night?"), rather than the more common '. Such dialects, along with Manx and Irish, also retain the Classical Gaelic values of the stops, while most dialects underwent devoicing and
preaspiration In phonetics, preaspiration (sometimes spelled pre-aspiration) is a period of voicelessness or aspiration preceding the closure of a voiceless obstruent, basically equivalent to an -like sound preceding the obstruent. In other words, when an obstru ...
.
A certain number of these dialects, which are now defunct in Scotland, have been preserved, and indeed re-established, in the Nova Scotia Gaelic community. Those of particular note are the Morar and Lochaber dialects, the latter of which pronounces the broad or
velarised l () as
Scottish_Gaelic_language
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References
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Scottish Gaelic language
Celtic language histories>.
References
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Celtic language histories/a>
References
{{reflist, 30em
Scottish Gaelic language
Celtic language histories