GAELIC LANGUAGE 



51 



Islay. Again, an Islayman feels as much at home 

 in Antrim as in Assynt, and his patois differs less 

 from cither than tliat of Liddesdale differs from 

 liiichan. Tin- printed books show greater varia- 

 tions. Kiit these are more in appearance than in 

 realitx. Manx is written phonetically, and to a 

 Cut-lie reader the page looks strange at first sight. 

 Irish is written as a rule in the old characters, 

 ami aspiration is marked by a dot over the letter 

 aM'ected. Gaelic, on the other hand, has adopted 

 tin- Roman alphabet, and aspiration is indicated, 

 except in the case of infected /, 11, r, by the addi- 

 tion 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 

 tin-re has oeen great loss of inflexion in noun and 

 \erli; but on this down grade Scottish Gaelic has 

 progressed even more rapidly than Irish. Hut in 

 all essential features the two are one language, 

 witli a copious vocabulary, the native stores being 

 largely supplemented from foreign sources, especi- 

 ally Latin and English, and with probably an in- 

 fusion from a pre-Celtic non-Aryan speech. The 

 distinctive Celtic law which places two words that 

 are in close grammatical relation under one main 

 ai-rent, and treats them for the time being phoneti- 

 cally as one word, holds true in all the Celtic 

 dialects, Brythonic and Goidelic alike. Under 

 this law, initial aspiration, due to vocalic aiislaut, 

 follows the same rules in Irish and Scottish Gaelic ; 

 but while the nasal ausla-ut, technically termed 

 eclipsis, proceeds in written Irish with all the 

 regularity of the multiplication table, in spoken 

 Gaelic this phonetic change appears only sporadic- 

 ally, and native grammarians have ignored it alto- 

 gether. 



Among the more noticeable differences between 

 Irish and Scottish Gaelic are the following. In 

 both the accent or stress is on the root-syl- 

 lable of the word, but Scottish Gaelic exhibits a 

 tendency to follow the English fashion of throw- 

 ing 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 cndcdn, 'a 

 hillock,' from cnoc, 'a hill,' is in Scotland cnocun ; 

 Irish diiille6g, 'a leaflet,' from duille, 'a leaf,' 

 Gaelic duilleag, &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 



.\ focal, ' vocalis,' focal. In the north High- 

 lands the practice is carried further than in the 

 south : pda, ' kiss,' is pug in Sutherland. Even so 

 the open long e, sometimes also long i, is in the 

 north Highlands diphthongised into ia, where south 

 Argyll, like Ireland, is satisfied with the old 

 sound : jiar fovfeur, ' grass ; ' nial for neul, ' cloud ; ' 

 f-<i_/nt/t tor jinn, ' vinum,' &c. With the exception 

 of masculine o-stems, the nominative plural of 

 nouns in Scottish Gaelic assumes a final n, while 

 lii-^h abides by the old vocalic ending: Scottish 

 Gaelic casan, 'feet,' Irish Gaelic cosa ; Scottish 

 Gaelic feiiitrtm, 'shirts,' Irish Gaelic Ifinte, &c. 

 In the verb, Highlanders use the analytic form in 

 some cases where Irishmen have preserved the 

 synthetic. Because of the loss of inflexion, aux- 

 iliary verbs in Gaelic as in English have con- 

 tinually to be called in to form mood, tense, and 

 \oi.-e. 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 6-future still survives in both dialects, but the 

 characteristic consonant / has disappeared from 



Scottish Gaelic, and has hardly left ite ghost 

 behind : the Irish cuirfidh is now simply cuiridh 

 in the Highlands. 



Gaelic literature in Scotland dates from St 

 ( oluniba. The great missionary was an ardent 

 student and an accomplished scribe ; and succeed- 

 ing abbots of lona 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 lona 

 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 excep- 

 tion 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 patriot- 

 ism 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 lona. 



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 

 i hand and character of the day ; and the orthography 



