LEWIS. HISTORY OF THE WESTERN ISLES. 181 



less intricate, if less important, than those of our own, 

 might vary. The battle of Largs, fought in 1263, ter- 

 minated in the cession of all the Norwegian possessions 

 in Scotland to Alexander the Third, who thus acquired 

 by treaty that which his predecessors had hitherto been 

 unable to conquer or retain. 



It is perhaps to a subsequent period that we must 

 look for the introduction of the present language and 

 the disappearance of the Scandinavian, if indeed it be 

 at all capable of proof that the language of the aboriginal 

 settlers was not the same Celtic as that spoken by the 

 Irish and the Highlanders ; the present Gaelic dialect. 

 If this should be admitted, the difficulty of accounting 

 for the loss of the Scandinavian is removed ; since it 

 is easy to imagine that the temporary and' partial set- 

 tlement of the country by the Norwegians had failed 

 to produce a permanent or marked change in the language ; 

 and that the descendants of these conquerors, being 

 the minor portion of the population, conformed in course 

 of time, as the Normans did in England, to the pre- 

 vailing tongue. The existence of local names of northern 

 origin is compatible with this supposition. But I am 

 aware that this is delicate ground, and that formidable 

 antiquaries who imagine that they have traced the migra- 

 tions of the Scoto-Irish and the more recent establish- 

 ment of their dialect, to later periods, are in array against 

 this supposition. 



The history of the islands which follows the period 

 of their cession to Scotland is better known and more 

 popular ; since it contains the rise of the great chieftains 

 who so often resisted the authority and troubled the 

 repose of the Scottish monarchy, and whose descendants 

 are still the heads of clans not long deprived of their 

 independence. The Macdougal and the Macdonald 

 were the original chieftains who, by immediate descent 

 from the Thane of Argyll and the King of Man, divided 

 the whole of the isles between them, the northern 



