SCOTLAND (LANGUAGE) 



Saxon ami Kentish, and Anglian, including 

 Mercian and Northumbrian. In the Middle Kng- 

 Hh period these dc\clopod into tln> Southern. Mid- 

 land, and Northern English dialects respectively. 

 Lowland Scotcli forms |>art of the Northumbrian 

 or Northern English ilix i.-imi : modem standard 

 English U a blending of Midland and Southern. 

 Before the Norman Conc|iiest, and for some cen- 

 turies later, the old Northumbrian van spoken 

 probably with little or no variation from the 

 Humber to the Firth of Forth. Hut after the 

 division of the Northumbrian territory lietween 

 England and Scotland, and esjiecially after the 

 final establishment of tin- inde|>endence of Scot- 

 land in the iH'ginning of the 14th century, this 

 common speech began to l>e exposed to diverse 

 influences north and south of the Border. South 

 of the Tweed and Cheviots the Northumbrian sank 

 from the rank of a literary language used by poets, 

 preachers, and chroniclers, to that of a local dialect, 

 or group of ]>atois, overshadowed by the king's 

 English of London, and more and more depressed 

 under ii- influence. After 1400, or at least after 

 the 15th century, it disappears from the view of 

 the student. But north of the Tweed and Solway 

 the Northumbrian remained the language of a 

 conrt and a nation ; it spread west ward am I north- 

 ward over districts formerly occupied by British 

 and Gaelic (or it may be Pietish) populations, from 

 which it sustained modifications phonetic and 

 M ni. -tut.il ; it received literary cultiiie, and especi- 

 ally contracted alliances with French and Latin on 

 its own account ; so as to acquire by the close of 

 the 15th century distinctive and strongly-marked 

 features of its own not found in the cognate dialects 

 in the north of England. From the close of the 

 14th to the lieginning of the 17th century it was 

 the vehicle of an extensive and in many respects 

 brilliant literature, it was the medium of legis- 

 lation and justice, and fulfilled every function of 

 a national language. But a serious shock to its 

 independent development was given by the Refor- 

 mation, in consequence of the close relations 

 between the leaders of that movement and the 

 English Protestants, and the use of English Ixxiks, 

 especially of the English version of the Geneva 

 I'.ilile, printed at Edinburgh in 1576-79. Then 

 followed the accession of James VI. to the crown 

 of England, the transference of the seat of govern- 

 ment to l.oinlon, and the consequent disuse of the 



ttis toiing' by the court and bv the nobility, 

 who found it desirable to sjieak the king's English, 

 and gradually grew ashamed of their Scotch. 



r this, few works were written in the native 

 tongue, except such ax were intended for merely 

 local use. It became obsolete in public legal use 

 at the time of the Commonwealth, and though 

 retained a little longer in the local records of 

 remote burgh* and kirk-sessions, it disappeared 

 from the.c also by 1707. But though it thus 

 became ob*olet> in official and literary use, so 

 that Scotchmen thenceforth wrote in English 

 tinged more or lens with Scotticisms, or words, 

 phnwen, ami idioms derived from their native 

 pecch. it still continued, in several dialectal 

 varieties, to lie the vernacular of the people, anil 

 after a jx'riod of neglect it bloomed forth anew as 

 the vehicle of ballad and lyric poetry, in Lady 

 \Vnrdlaw, Allan Ramsay. Hiinis. and their numef- 

 OUs fellow-singer-.. Sir Waller Scott also led the 



way in it* aw in prow fiction as the characteristic 



characters, a pu 

 has continued to IK- effectively used down to the 



peerh of loral characters, n iiur|*-e for which it 



prusent day by manv |x>pular writers. These uses 

 are, however, only tlinlrrtnl : they must lx- classed 

 with tin- similar u-e of l.um-a-liire. Cumlx-Hand. 

 Ifcirwt. or Devouhire dialect, by English ! 

 ami novelist* as the appropriate language of the 



local muse, and of local dramatis persona ; with 

 this difference that Scottish, having MM a liteiaiy 

 language, has preserved a certain literary status 

 which is wanting to these English dialects. But 

 even this difference tends to disappear ; recent 

 writers of Scottish tales have sought to heighten 

 the local truthfulness of their delineations, by 

 giving as close a transcript as possible of the local 

 speech, regardless of the traditional conventional- 

 isms of the ' literary ' Scotch. 



The Teutonic tongue was probably introduced 

 into the country south of the Forth as early as into 

 any part of England. But few actual specimens of 

 the language in these early times have come down 

 to us ; the chief is the Kunic inscription still extant 

 on the Rnthwell Cross in I iiuiifriesshire in the old 

 Northumbrian of about 660; then there are the 

 local names, which, in so far as they are those of 

 the dwellings of men, or of the less conspicuous 

 natural features, are in eastern Lothian, Teviot- 

 dale, and lower Tweeddale, as truly Teutonic as in 

 Kent or Essex. Isolated vernacular words and 

 phrases in early Latin charters, and in the Latin 

 texts of the early laws, some of which go back to 

 the reign of David I., testify to the currency of the 

 language in the llth and 12th centuries. But 

 connected specimens are all of later date, and the 

 earliest of these are, moreover, known only in tran- 

 scripts much later than their own date. Thus the 

 eight lines of verse beginning : 



Quhrn Alymnder cure kyng we dede 



That Scotland led in luve and le, 



though referring to events which followed the year 

 1289, are preserved for us only by Wyntoun who 

 wrote after 1400. Rude snatches of song relating 

 to the siege of Berwick in 1296 are preserved by 

 Fabyan who wrote almut 1500. Even Harbour's 

 Brut, written about 1375, is, with the exception 

 of the passages incorporated by Wyntoun, pre- 

 served only in MSS. more than a ccnturv younger. 

 A charter of 1385 in the Red Book of Glen Tufty,' 

 and fragments of Scottish acts of 1.389 and 1398 are 

 among the earliest contemporary documents. But 

 after 1400 the remains become plentiful. 



The Scottish language as thus known to us has 

 been divided into three periods : Eurly Scottish, 

 during which the language did not differ appreci- 

 ably from the Northern Middle English, extending 

 from the earliest remains down to about 1475 ; 

 Middle Scottish, the national period of the lan- 

 guage, from that date to about 1650 ; Modern 

 Scutch, the dialectal period, from 1650 onwards. 

 The distinctive characters of these periods are fully 

 set forth in the Historical Introduction to a treatise 

 on the Dialect of the Southern Counties of Scotland 

 (1873), by the present writer. It will be observed 

 that the first is coterminous with the Middle 

 English Periixl of the English language, as recog- 

 nised by modern scholars, and that the second is 

 co-extensive with the Early Modern or Tudor and 

 Early Stuart Periixl of modern English. Itarlxmr 

 and Wyntoun represent the Early 1'eriixl : Dunbai, 

 Gavin Douglas, Lyndesay, MontglNMty, ami the 

 fine prose of Belfenden and the Comnlaynt of 

 Scotland, Archbishop Hamilton's Catechism, and 

 the writings of Ninian \Vinxet, Father Dalrvmple, 

 and other Roman Catholics Ix'long to the Middle 

 Period : the |xM?ts and novelists of the 18th and 

 19th centuries, the Modern Period. 



The living tongue now exists in numerous 

 dialects and sub-dialects, easily distinguished from 

 each other by differences of pronunciation and 

 vocabulary. The researches of Dr Murray, fol- 

 lowed by those of I)r Alexander J. Ellis, have 

 established three main dialects, classed as Southern 

 or Border Scotch (Teviotdale, Dumfriesshire, and 

 Selkirkshire); Central Scotch (Lothian and Fife, 

 Ayrshire and Clydesdale, Galloway, south-east 



