Gáekwár. See GUICOWAR.
Gaelic Language and Literature.
Gaelic is the language of the Goidel or Gael. The term includes Irish and Manx as well as Scottish Gaelic, though popular usage frequently restricts its application to the last alone. The tribes who spoke this language were known to the Romans as Scoti; and native authors, especially when they wrote in Latin, sometimes made use of the word to designate the people. Their principal home was in Ireland, and accordingly with writers like Adamnan Scotia is 'Ireland,' and lingua Scotica, 'Gaelic.' About the beginning of the 6th century a fresh colony of these Scots settled in Argyllshire, and founded the sub-kingdom of Dalriada. They were followed some sixty years later by Columba's mission to Iona. The people prospered in their new home, and by the middle of the 9th century Kenneth MacAlpin, one of their race, became king of Pictland as well as of Dalriada. In after-years the names Scotia and lingua Scotica followed these successful colonists, and Scotland became the name of the kingdom founded by them. At a later period Scot and Scottis town were applied to the Teutonic tribes settled in Scotland and their speech, and then it became customary to speak of Gaelic as Irish, or corruptly Ersch and Erse. But to the people themselves such designations are unknown. With them Scotland has always been Alba, Albainn, as distinguished from Eirinn, 'Ireland,' and Sasunn (Saxon), 'England;' and a Scotsman, whether Celt or Teuton, is Albannach. They themselves are Gaidheil, 'Gael,' in contradistinction to Gaill, 'strangers,' a word applied of old as a general term to the Norwegian and Danish invaders, but now to the Lowland Scot; their territory is Gaidhealtachd, 'Gaedom,' as distinct from Galldaehd or 'Lowlands;' and their speech Gaidhlig, 'Gaelic,' in contrast to Beurla, formerly Belre, a word originally signifying 'language' simply, afterwards an 'unknown' or 'foreign tongue,' and now among Highlanders restricted to the foreign tongue best known to them—'English.' When it becomes necessary to differentiate, they speak of Gaidhlig Albannach, 'Scottish Gaelic;' Gaidhlig Eirinnach, 'Irish Gaelic;' and Gaidhlig Mhanannach, 'Manx Gaelic.'
What the language of the tribes occupying the north of Scotland, and collectively spoken of by the Romans as Picts, was, is not definitely ascertained. As in their blood, so in the speech of these people, there was probably a dash of pre-Celtic. That the language was largely a Celtic dialect is proved by such names as Caledonia, the root of which we have still in coill, in origin as in meaning the equivalent of holz; Clota, now Cluaidh, 'the Clyde,' a word equated by Whitley Stokes with cluere, 'to wash;' Orcades, 'isles of orc,' or, restoring initial p, 'isles of pore'—i.e. 'pigs' or 'whales'—a whale being still in Gaelic a 'sea-pig.' The idioms of Pictland in those days seem to have been, in so far as Celtic, more closely allied to the Brythonic than to the Goidelic dialects (see CELTS); but the Dalriads, powerfully backed by the Columban clergy, afterwards made Gaelic the ruling speech over the whole kingdom. It was the language of the court until Malcolm Canmore's day. The political and ecclesiastical ideas which Queen Margaret favoured were hostile to Gaelic, which from her time has been retiring steadily though slowly north and west. We get a glimpse now and again of its retreating footsteps. Gaelic was the vernacular of Buchan in the 12th century, probably much later. The ability to speak the language is one of the accomplishments credited to James IV. by the distinguished Spanish ambassador, Don Pedro Pueblo. It was spoken in Galloway in Queen Mary's reign, and the echoes of the old tongue lingered in the uplands of Galloway and Carrick down to the 18th century. It was the mother-tongue of George Buchanan, Scotland's greatest scholar, born at Killearn in Stirlingshire. Captain Burt mentions that until shortly before the Union, when the farmers of Fife sent their sons as apprentices to the Lothians, it was made a condition of indenture that the boys should be taught English. The sweeping measures taken to punish the Clans who took part in the rebellion of 1745; the introduction of sheep-farming into the north; the spread of education; facilities of communication by steam and rail; the extension of the suffrage—all have in their way been the means of introducing the use of the English tongue into even the remoter parts of the Highlands, though without largely contracting the Gaelic-speaking area. This venerable language is still spoken over the whole of Arran, Argyll, Inverness, Ross, and Sutherland; in considerable portions of Perth and Caithness; and in the upland corners of Dumbarton, Stirling, Aberdeen, and Banff. According to the census of 1891 the number of persons who spoke Gaelic only in Scotland was 43,738, while 210,677 spoke both Gaelic and English. Emigrants from the Highlands carried their mother-tongue to America and Australia. In the end of last century Gaelic took root in Carolina; but the use of it in the United States and in Australia is largely on the wane. The language is, however, preached to large and flourishing congregations throughout wide tracts of the Dominion of Canada. Through the exertions of Professor Blackie a Celtic chair was founded in 1882 in the university of Edinburgh; and by the deed of foundation the professor is bound to make 'provision for a practical class in the uses and graces of the Gaelic language, so long as that language shall be a recognised medium of religious instruction in the Highlands of Scotland.'
From the Dalriadic immigration until the Norwegian and Danish invasions, a period of 300 years, Ireland and Gaelic Scotland may be looked upon as one. The language and literature of both were the same. The Norwegian settlement caused a temporary dislocation. The Hebrides were placed under one government with the Isle of Man, and to this day a Manxman finds Gaelic more intelligible than Irish. During this period Scottish Gaelic, separated from the parent tongue, and subjected on the one side to Norse, on the other to Pictish influence, developed certain characteristics which are still traceable. But, when things settled down, the old ecclesiastical and literary relations between the Highlands and Ireland were resumed, and maintained until the Reformation. A common literature checked the tendency of the two dialects to diverge. Accordingly, the differences between Scottish and Irish Gaelic may be regarded as mere variations of dialect, which in the spoken tongues shade into each other. In point of language Ulster is as far removed from Munster as from
Islay. Again, an Islayman feels as much at home in Autrim as in Assynt, and his patois differs less from either than that of Liddesdale differs from Buchan. The printed books show greater variations, but these are more in appearance than in reality. Manx is written phonetically, and to a Gaelic reader the page looks strange at first sight. Irish is written as a rule in the old characters, and aspiration is marked by a dot over the letter affected. Gaelic, on the other hand, has adopted the Roman alphabet, and aspiration is indicated, except in the case of infected l, n, r, by the addition of the letter h. Irish writers make a liberal use of archaic and obsolete forms, while the aim of Highland authors is to bring the written language and the spoken tongue more into line. In both there has been great loss of inflexion in noun and verb; but on this down grade Scottish Gaelic has progressed even more rapidly than Irish. But in all essential features the two are one language, with a copious vocabulary, the native stores being largely supplemented from foreign sources, especially Latin and English, and with probably an infusion from a pre-Celtic non-Aryan speech. The distinctive Celtic law which places two words that are in close grammatical relation under one main accent, and treats them for the time being phonetically as one word, holds true in all the Celtic dialects, Brythonic and Goidelic alike. Under this law, initial aspiration, due to vocalic auslaut, follows the same rules in Irish and Scottish Gaelic; but while the nasal auslaut, technically termed eclipsis, proceeds in written Irish with all the regularity of the multiplication table, in spoken Gaelic this phonetic change appears only sporadically, and native grammarians have ignored it altogether.
Among the more noticeable differences between Irish and Scottish Gaelic are the following. In both the accent or stress is on the root-syllable of the word, but Scottish Gaelic exhibits a tendency to follow the English fashion of throwing the accent as far back as possible. Besides, in the case of complex substantives, such as diminutives, &c., which have usually a principal and subsidiary accent, while Irishmen place the main accent on the terminal syllable, Highlanders (and here Ulster joins them) keep the principal accent on the root-syllable. Irish cnócdán, 'a lillock,' from cnoc, 'a hill,' is in Scotland cnócdan; Irish dúilleóg, 'a leaflet,' from dúille, 'a leaf,' Gaelic dúilleag, &c. Scottish Gaelic, under Norse influence it may well be, takes in many cases the broad sound of a, where Irish adheres to the older o: cos, 'foot,' is in Scottish Gaelic cas; focal, 'vocalis,' facal. In the north Highlands the practice is carried further than in the south: póg, 'kiss,' is páq in Sutherland. Even so the open long e, sometimes also long i, is in the north Highlands diphthongised into ie, where south Argyll, like Ireland, is satisfied with the old sound: fiar for feur, 'grass;' uial for neul, 'cloud;' so fian for fion, 'vinum,' &c. With the exception of masculine o-stems, the nominative plural of nouns in Scottish Gaelic assumes a final n, while Irish abides by the old vocalic ending: Scottish Gaelic casan, 'feet,' Irish Gaelic cosu; Scottish Gaelic léintean, 'shirts,' Irish Gaelic léinte, &c. In the verb, Highlanders use the analytical form in some cases where Irishmen have preserved the synthetic. Because of the loss of inflexion, auxiliary verbs in Gaelic as in English have continually to be called in to form mood, tense, and voice. Except in the case of is, ta, bheil, all different roots forming the substantive verb, there is no separate form for the present tense in Gaelic. The b-future still survives in both dialects, but the characteristic consonant f has disappeared from
Scottish Gaelic, and has hardly left its ghost behind: the Irish cuirfidh is now simply cuiridh in the Highlands.
Gaelic literature in Scotland dates from St Columba. The great missionary was an ardent student and an accomplished scribe; and succeeding abbots of Iona followed in the footsteps of the illustrious founder of the monastery. Ecclesiastics wrote in those days for the most part in Latin. It was a period of great literary activity as well as of missionary enterprise. But of the many works produced at this time few survive. With all his passion for his native saga, the Norseman, in his heathen days, made short work of the books and bells of priests. During the Danish invasions, monks fled in large numbers to the Continent, sometimes taking their MSS. along with them. So we find that while little more than a dozen books written by Gaelic scholars before the 10th century are to be found in the British Isles, there are over 200 MSS. of this period preserved in Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, France, and Belgium. Many of these may have been written in Scotland; two certainly were. A copy of Adamnan's Life of Columba, written in Iona before 713 A.D., is now in the public library of Schaffhausen. The Book of Deer, a MS. of the 9th century, is in Cambridge. With the exception of some half-dozen MSS. in the university of Edinburgh, in the library of the Society of Antiquaries, and in private hands, all the MS. literature of the Gael preserved in this country has been, mainly through the influence and patriotism of Dr Skene, deposited for preservation and reference in the library of the Faculty of Advocates, Edinburgh. This collection consists of sixty-four separate parcels, many of them being several MSS. bound together for the convenience of the owner. A large number of them were written within the last 250 years; a few are 500 years old. Many are mere tattered scraps of paper, illegible through damp, decay, and neglect; several are beautiful vellums of exquisite workmanship, as fresh as in the day they were written. About half of the total number are the property of the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland. Thirty-two MSS., including nearly all the oldest parchments, are known to have once belonged to the M'Lachlans of Kilbride, in Nether Lorn, Argyllshire. This portion was long supposed to have formed a part of the lost library of Iona.
The greater number of the oldest of these MSS. are indistinguishable from the Irish MSS. of the same date. Since Norse days Scottish Gaelic has had a separate individuality, but of this the MSS. take little or no account. The centre of Gaelic learning and culture was in Ireland and Dalriada. Accordingly, we hear comparatively little of the Pict, his language, beliefs, and traditions. The men of the Isles fought and fell at Bannockburn and Flodden; but though Irish and Norse heroes are household words with Hebridean bards, Bruce and Wallace are unknown to them. In the middle and north Highlands the political sympathy with the central government was not perhaps much stronger than in the west, but the linguistic and literary connection with Ireland was much less close. Accordingly, we find in the MS. of the Dean of Lismore, written by a native of Glenlyon in Perthshire, between 1512 and 1530, and at a later period in the Fernaig MS., written by Duncan M'Rae in Kintail in the latter half of the 17th century, a wide departure from the traditions of Gaelic scholars. Highlandmen and their affairs obtain prominence; the language is not merely Scottish Gaelic, but frequently the provincial idiom of the scribe; the writing is in the current Scottish hand and character of the day; and the orthography is more or less phonetic, a method adopted partly perhaps in ignorance, partly from impatience, of the strict and highly artificial rules of the schools.
The MSS. in the Scottish collection frequently supply valuable variants, sometimes welcome additions, to the large Irish collections. The subject-matter of several is religious—lives of saints, such as Columba and St Margaret; passions and homilies, such as are found in the Leabhar Breac, or 'Speckled Book.' In MS. I. (Skene's catalogue) is the Passion of our Lord as revealed to Anselm, written down in 1467 by Dugald, son of the son of Paul the Scot, a treatise not to be found in the 'Speckled Book.' A few deal with philology and kindred matters. In MS. I., for example, is preserved a copy of the Books of Primers (Uraicecht nan Eigeis), as in the Book of Ballymote. Several MSS. contain translations of portions of the heroic history of Greece and Rome: the destruction of Troy, the labours of Hercules, the expedition of Jason; also the wars of Pompey and Cæsar. The genealogies, tales, mythical and legendary, of the peoples and races that inhabited Ireland, and of Lochlannaich or Scandinavians, are endless. The most imaginative pieces, such as the voyage of Macduin and the adventures of Conall, are in prose, with verse interspersed. Several historical documents and even calendars, such as that of Oengus the Culdee, are, on the other hand, thrown into the form of verse. Gaelic poetry is all lyric, the epic and the drama, as literary forms, being unknown to the people. The line as a rule is smooth and flowing, with an exceeding richness and variety of verse. In poetry as in prose the style is frequently inflated; and the language, whether of praise or blame, unmeasured, exaggerated. The literature shows that the Scottish Gael is witty rather than humorous, and that his perception of the beautiful in external nature is ever lively and true.
The most characteristic features of the Scottish collection are the almost total absence of annals, and the great richness of the medical section. Two folios relating to Irish events (1360-1402) bound up in MS. II., and the history of the Macdonalds of the Isles (MS. L.) are, apart from genealogies, pretty nearly all that deal with affairs within historic times. That records were written in Gaelic we know from various sources, though the memoranda in the Book of Deer and the Islay Charter of 1408 are almost all that survive. On the other hand, fully a third of the whole Scottish collection is medical or quasi-medical. These MSS. consist of treatises on anatomy, physiology, botany, and pharmacy. Several are translations with commentaries of portions of Aristotle's works, of Galen, Hippocrates, Bernardus Gordonus, Averroes, Isidore, &c.; but the strictly medical discussion frequently branches off now to metaphysics and theology, now to astrology and alchemy. The greater part of these scientific documents were at one time the property of the M'Bheaths or Beatoms or Bethunes, for many generations family physicians in Islay, Mull, and Skye. These medical books may not perhaps claim to be of great scientific value; but they are of high interest and importance as a most reliable piece of evidence regarding the state of learning and culture in the West Highlands during what we complacently call the dark ages.
The first book printed in a Gaelic dialect was John Knox's Liturgy, translated into Gaelic by Bishop Carsewell of Argyll, and published in Edinburgh in 1567. Up to the middle of the 18th century not more than twenty Gaelic books were printed, and these consisted mainly of successive editions of the Psalms, Shorter Catechism, and Confession of Faith. The number of separate publications now amounts to several hundreds. A very complete and accurate account of Gaelic books printed before 1832 is given in Reid's Bibliotheca Scoto-Celtica. Professor Blackie, in his Language and Literature of the Scottish Highlands (1876), has given admirable translations of the best efforts of modern Gaelic authors. These consist for the most part of a succession of lyric poets who have flourished during the last 300 years. Foremost among them are Mary MacLeod (nigh'n Alastair Ruaidh), who was born in Harris in 1569 or thereabouts, and attained, so tradition relates, to the great age of 105 years; John Macdonald (Iain Lom) of the Keppoch family, who witnessed the battle of Inverlochy in 1645, and survived Killiecrankie; Alexander Macdonald (Mac Mhaighstir Alastair), the celebrated Jacobite poet, born about 1700, received a university education, became schoolmaster in Ardnamurchan, and afterwards an officer in Prince Charles Stuart's army, published a Gaelic vocabulary in 1741, and a volume of poems in 1751; John MacCodrùn, a native of North Uist; Robert Mackay (Rob Donn, 1714-78), the Reay Contry bard; Dugald Buchannan of Rannoch (1716-68), religious poet and evangelist; Duncan Ban M'Intyre (1724-1812), the famous poet-game-keeper of Beinn-dòrain, fought at Falkirk in 1746, and in his old age was a member of the city guard of Edinburgh; William Ross (1762-90), schoolmaster in Gairloch; Allan MacDougall (Ailean Dall, 1750-1829); Ewan M'Lachlan of Aberdeen (1775-1822), scholar and poet; and William Livingstone (1808-1870), the Islay bard. Of quite recent Gaelic poets may be mentioned, among others, the veteran Evan M'Coll of Kingston, Canada; John Campbell of Ledaig; Mrs Mary Mackellar; and Neil Macleod. Of late years the most notable Gaelic works published have been The Beauties of Gaelic Poetry, edited by John Mackenzie; Caraid nan Gaidheal, being a selection of dialogues and articles contributed by Dr Norman Macleod the elder, the best of Gaelic prose writers, to several periodicals and books; J. F. Campbell's Tales of the West Highlands (4 vols. 1860-62), and the same author's Leabhar na Féinne or 'Ossianic Ballads' (1872); the Book of the Dean of Lismore, edited by Drs M'Lauchlan and Skene (1862); and Sheriff Nicolson's Gaelic Proverbs (1881). Scholarly clergymen of a past generation—the Stewarts of Killin, Luss, and Dingwall, and Dr Smith of Campbeltown—made an excellent translation of the Scriptures into Gaelic. The grammars of Stewart and Munro, and the dictionaries of Armstrong (1825) and the Highland Society (1828), though requiring to be rewritten in the light of modern science, are works of great merit. Among the most prominent of recent scholars in the field of Scottish Gaelic were Dr Thomas M'Lauchlan of Edinburgh, Dr Archibald Clerk of Kilmallie, and Dr Alexander Cameron of Brodie. See CELTS, PICTS, OSSIAN, IRELAND, DEER.