Mr. Can- on the Northumhian Dialect, &c. 36 1 



But ill Lothiane the Anglian tongue would be spoken by a con- 

 siderable population, either purely British, or British on the 

 mother's side. Whatever faults they might commit in speak- 

 ing, they would generally avoid those of the lowest and most 

 ignorant Angles, striving to imitate the speech of the leaders 

 and of men in good position : just as we see the Welsh, the 

 Irish, and the Highlanders of our own times successfully 

 avoiding the vulgarisms of the degraded English and Scotch, 

 among whom their poverty compells them to live. 



At a later period, when the Scottish kings established 

 their throne at Edinburgh, the Scoto-Celtic race, speaking 

 Gaelic, became diffused in numerous settlements among the 

 Anglian population of Lothiane. This is testified not only 

 by history, but by Gaelic names of places extensively dif- 

 fused, and proclaiming themselves to the most unobservant. 

 It is further proved by the physical character of the inhabit- 

 ants ; the frequency of very dark hair and eyes, and the osseous 

 structure visibly exhibiting Scoto-Celtic characteristics, which 

 combined with the Gothic have rendered the frame one of 

 signal strength and power. There prevails in this tract a 

 strongly marked, prominent, and shaggy eyebrow, never 

 seen in any purely Teutonic or Scandinavian country, and 

 indicating a strong influx of that Celtic race from the South 

 of Europe, which came into Caledonia from Ireland, but 

 retains the manifest impress of a primitive Aquitanian and 

 Spanish home. 



Now the Scoto-Celtic people would learn Anglian as a 

 foreign tongue. They would speak it as the Anglian chiefs, 

 not as the vulgar, for the Celtic taste in language is ever pure 

 and elevated. 



Not long after this period, and side by side with the early 

 English language and literature, arose the language and 

 literature of the Scottish court and nation. As the early 

 English tongue so did the early Scottish gain ground, and 

 eventually supersede the Norman-French, as the vehicle of 

 important records, laws, grants, and charters. Its early 

 poetic literature is nowise inferior to that of the larger king- 

 dom ; nor are the chronicles and other prose compositions of 

 Scotland, written in the tongue of Lothiane, less interesting, 

 less eloquent, or less full of promise than those which were 

 produced in the larger and more populous realm of England. 

 The two languages indeed differed not more than did the 

 ancient Greek of Attica from that of Peloponnesus. They 

 were sister tongues, mutually intelligible, yet varying con- 



