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PART 1 - CHAPTER III - CHANGE FROM THE GAELIC TO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE



"Mark! how all things swerve
From their known course, or vanish like a dream :
Another language spreads from coast to coast:
Only perchance some melancholy Stream
And some indignant Hills old names preserve,
When laws , and creeds, and people all are lost!"
WORDSWORTH

Till near the end of the eleventh century the predominant people of Scotland, according to the high authority of Tytler, were a Celtic race; the laws were Celtic; the government Celtic; the usages and manners Celtic; the Church Celtic; the language Celtic. When the Scottish clergy assembled in a Council at St Andrews in 1074, under Malcolm Canmore and Margaret his Queen, who was an English princess, they could not understand the language of her majesty, who was the chief speaker; and the king, who, having been educated at the English court, understood both languages, had to act as interpreter. All the oldest names of places in this district, such as Balmurinach, Balindard, Balindean, Ardint, are Gaelic words; and the same is true of every part of the Lowlands, no less than of the Highlands of Scotland. But about the beginning of the thirteenth century the language of this parish and district was Saxon or English. Thus in the Abbey Chartulary we find, in documents of that period, such words as Swansmire, Aldan’s Well, Bridie’s Well, Langside, Scongate, which are English, as, of course, are all the still more recent names of places in the district. How did a change so remarkable come about?

The explanation seems to be that the new language was introduced by foreigners, chiefly from the south, who, about the beginning of the twelfth century, began to pour into the Lowlands of Scotland, and especially into Fife. These were mostly Saxons, but included also Normans and Flemings, who, for various causes, were induced to settle in this country. Many of the strangers were of the ranks of barons, who received grants of land from the crown, and bought their retainers with them. Some assert that the Celtic population were by these crowds of new settlers pushed northwards into the Highlands, where their language is still retained; but this may be doubted. It is more probable that the change of language was brought about by a process similar to, though more rapid than that which is in our own day introducing the English language into every district of the Highlands, and which is destined at no distant date to cause Gaelic to disappear. The town population were mostly of southern origin, and their language would gradually spread into the country districts, in which also many Saxons had settled.

This explanation, however, involves the theory that the ancient Pictish population of this district was a Celtic one, and that when the kingdom of the Scots, who were certainly Celts, was united with that of the Picts in the ninth century, the language and descent of the two peoples were so little different that they readily amalgamated. But some will have it that the Picts were a Gothic or Scandinavian race, akin to the Saxons who invaded England and the Lothians: that they settled in Scotland at a very early period, perhaps even before the Saxon invasion of the sister country: and that thus languages substantially identical grew up in both divisions of the island simultaneously. Our plan and limits will not permit us to discuss this vexed question, Who were the Picts? The subject has long been a battlefield for antiquaries; and, as Tytler remarks, as much ink has been shed by the contending partisans as there was blood by the Romans. “There are some topics (says Mr Hill Burton) which the temper and reason of the human race seem not to have been made strong enough to encounter, so invariably do these break down when the topics in question are started. Of such is the question, To which of the great classes of European languages did that of the people called Picts belong? The contest, like a duel with revolvers over a table, has been rendered more awful by the narrowness of the field of battle, since some time ago the world just possessed one word, or piece of a word, said to be Pictish, and now one of the most accomplished antiquarians of our day has just added another.” The opinion of this most competent judges is now, however, running strongly in favour of the Celtic character of the Picts, which theory, on the whole, does seem best to accord with the facts of the case.

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