Scottish Gaelic: the Inside Story

There are six current Celtic languages--barely.

 

Or maybe not.

For one thing, SCOTTISH GAELIC is really a dialect of Irish.

After the 16th century, the experience of communities in the Scottish Highlands diverged from that of those in Ireland, mostly because those communities were incorporated into two different expanding alien states; England and Scotland. A new standard for writing the spoken Scottish dialect was gradually established, as more and more, links between communities in Ireland and the Highlands were mediated through English society and Scottish society, and through their respective languages. Irish and Scottish Highlanders began to think of themselves as different. The dialects they spoke began to be considered two different languages.

The Scottish Gaelic of the southwestern Highlands (Kintyre, Arran, Islay) is still (where it survives) similar to the Irish formerly spoken in east Ulster, and especially in north County Antrim. This reflects the fact that Ireland and the Highlands formed a spoken dialect continuum in which there were no sudden breaks, only gradual changes as one moved north or south. It is very easy for an Irish-speaker to learn Scottish Gaelic, and vice versa.

Scottish Gaelic is thus an example of an "Ausbau' language; a speech whose existence as a language is based not on its linguistic distance from nearby languages, but only on the fact that it has come to be considered a language--the written expression of a people. Dutch would be another example, or Luxemburgisch--speech communities that are a part of the Germanic speech continuum, but which developed for historical reasons written standards that serve to differentiate them from the surrounding Germanic dialects whose written expression is standard German.

The Highlands didn't experience the deep colonization that Ireland did, so Scottish-Gaelic speaking communities, in many cases, stayed whole into the 19th century and the Clearances. Most parts of the Highlands also became Protestant, and developed a very literate culture. This meant that many books were published in Scottish Gaelic right up to about 1900. (Almost nothing was published in Irish between, say, 1680 and 1900.) All over the Highlands, people became accustomed to following complex theological arguments in sermons every Sunday, and to reading them in books. Highlanders emigrated to Glasgow and other large towns, establishing a rich structure of "Gaelic' organizations there, and something of a Gaelic middle class, at least for a while, until the communities they left behind them in the Highlands failed.

(A woman from the south of Harris ( Outer Hebrides) discusses her upbringing and education.)

Already in the mid-19th century, it had become difficult to earn a living in many Highland communities that had survived the Clearances because landed estates dominated the economy. Land wasn't available to small farmers or peasants, and the only jobs available were 1) wealthy big farmer, 2) farm laborer, 3) shepherd or 4) 'stalker' (hunting guide). 

The culture valued learning and education, and since opportunities at home were so few, many young people left for Glasgow, England, Australia or Canada. The few remaining Highlanders on the mainland generally stopped raising their children in Gaelic after about 1890, and it's only in a handful of areas that Gaelic remains a spoken language at all there--(from south to north) Ardnamurchan, south Moideart (Acharacle etc.); Duirinish, Kintail and Applecross (all opposite Skye); parts of Gairloch and north towards Ullapool town; maybe Culkein in Assynt, and Melness/Tongue in Sutherland. Even there, it's generally only very old people who know the language.

The situation on the islands is a little different. As regards the Inner Hebrides, there's still quite a bit of Gaelic spoke in the west of Islay (Rhinns) by older people; a bit in Lismore; a good bit on Tiree, by older people mostly; a lot in Sleat and in the northeast of Skye. There are older Gaelic-speakers in most of the island communities not mentioned here. There's lots of Gaelic in all the Outer Hebrides, but it may only be in the middle half of South Uist, in parts of North Uist and in Barra that most children are still raised with Gaelic as their first language.

(Update 2024. Well,,,I wrote this originally ten years ago and it reflected the situation ten years before that.  Today, probably only on the small island of Grimsay (population 200) off North Uist is Gaelic still a common community language. It's now very weak in the Rhinns and Skye and Tiree. Small parts of South Uist are probably still the strongest, but even there, people under age 65 don't use it much. Some children are still raised in Gaelic, but assimilate as adolescents into international online/TV pop culture, and abandon it.

Further information is to be found online on Scotland's Census. Look under Language, Ethnic Group, Religion etc, then go to "1930 Parishes, then under Main Language. Also O Giollagain's research and publications.

World is going to hell and no doubt about it.)

(Below is an interview with a woman who works for Ceolas, the summer music school, in South Uist. She's from there.)

Scottish Gaelic has no written literature from before the sixteenth century--what existed is now generally considered 'Irish.' It does have an extraordinarily rich oral literature, elements of which were written down in the eighteenth century (Ossianic ballads generally) and nineteenth century (songs, tales, poetry, etc.). There are many great poets, though fiction has only recently begun to develop. 

And the songs....Incredible! Please go immediately to YouTube and listen to Ishbel MacAskill or Catherine Ann MacPhee or Julie Fowlis. Go to the Tobar a Dualchais site and listen to the old South Uist and Barra singers. Now!

Below is a very short tape and translation of a man from the island of Islay (Inner Hebrides) telling a story.

Here below is a link to a man from Islay telling a story. It's on the Tobar a Dualchais site, which is an incredible treasure house of Scottish Gaelic songs, stories and narratives.

http://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/en/fullrecord/5321/37 (Hit the "Play" button on the left.)

Below is a minister from the island of Lewis (Outer Hebrides) discussing a feud between the people of two neighboring areas. The dialect is very distinctive, and different from all the islands to the south, but has links with mainland dialects of the Ullapool and Assynt areas. (I actually can't find the link, so it's not accessible. Below this, though, is another man from Uig, Lewis, though not with as strong a Lewis dialect.)

An episode of the soap opera Machair, with subtitles.

Here is a link to a story from east Sutherland in the northern Highlands http://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/en/fullrecord/32523/26 (Hit the "Play" button on the left.)

In the 19650s and 1960s, it was discovered that families of itinerant Gaelic-speaking "tinkers" in the Easter Ross/Sutherland areas had incredible stores of  traditional stories, and also song. Here is one, from the old master storyteller, Alec Stewart.