The Place-names of Scotland: A First Introduction (Lectures in Scottish History Book 3)

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Their primary purpose was to teach Gaels literacy in their own language, with emphasis on being able to read the Bible. The translation of the entire Bible was completed in Dialects of Lowland Gaelic have been defunct since the 18th century. Gaelic in the Eastern and Southern Scottish Highlands, although alive in the mid-twentieth century, is now largely defunct. Although modern Scottish Gaelic is dominated by the dialects of the Outer Hebrides and Isle of Skye, there remain some speakers of the Inner Hebridean dialects of Tiree and Islay, and even a few elderly native speakers from Highland areas including Wester Ross, northwest Sutherland, Lochaber, and Argyll.

Dialects on both sides of the Straits of Moyle the North Channel linking Scottish Gaelic with Irish are now extinct, though native speakers were still to be found on the Mull of Kintyre , in Rathlin and in North East Ireland as late as the midth century. Records of their speech show that Irish and Scottish Gaelic existed in a dialect chain with no clear language boundary.

The Endangered Languages Project lists Gaelic's status as "threatened", with "20, to 30, active users". The — figures are census data quoted by MacAulay. The total population figure comes from table KSSC. Note that the numbers of Gaelic speakers relate to the numbers aged 3 and over, and the percentages are calculated using those and the number of the total population aged 3 and over.

The Scottish Government's language minister and Bord na Gaidhlig took this as evidence that Gaelic's long decline has slowed. The main stronghold of the language continues to be the Outer Hebrides Na h-Eileanan Siar , where the overall proportion of speakers is Important pockets of the language also exist in the Highlands 5. Gaelic continues to decline in its traditional heartland. The drop in Stornoway , the largest parish in the Western Isles by population, was especially acute, from The islands in the Inner Hebrides with significant percentages of Gaelic speakers are Tiree Between the and censuses, the number of Gaelic speakers rose in nineteen of the country's 32 council areas.

During the same period, Gaelic medium education in Scotland has grown, with 3, pupils being educated in a Gaelic-immersion environment in , up from 2, pupils in Gaelic has long suffered from its lack of use in educational and administrative contexts and was long suppressed. Along with Irish and Welsh, Gaelic is designated under Part III of the Charter, which requires the UK Government to take a range of concrete measures in the fields of education, justice, public administration, broadcasting and culture.

It has not received the same degree of official recognition from the UK Government as Welsh. With the advent of devolution , however, Scottish matters have begun to receive greater attention, and it achieved a degree of official recognition when the Gaelic Language Scotland Act was enacted by the Scottish Parliament on 21 April The key provisions of the Act are: In the committee stages in the Scottish Parliament, there was much debate over whether Gaelic should be given 'equal validity' with English.

Due to executive concerns about resourcing implications if this wording was used, the Education Committee settled on the concept of 'equal respect'. It is not clear what the legal force of this wording is. The Act was passed by the Scottish Parliament unanimously, with support from all sectors of the Scottish political spectrum, on 21 April Under the provisions of the Act, it will ultimately fall to BnG to secure the status of the Gaelic language as an official language of Scotland.

However, given there are no longer any monolingual Gaelic speakers, [33] following an appeal in the court case of Taylor v Haughney , involving the status of Gaelic in judicial proceedings, the High Court ruled against a general right to use Gaelic in court proceedings. The Scottish Qualifications Authority offer two streams of Gaelic examination across all levels of the syllabus: Gaelic for learners equivalent to the modern foreign languages syllabus and Gaelic for native speakers equivalent to the English syllabus.

Syllabus details are available on An Comunn's website. These are not widely recognised as qualifications, but are required for those taking part in certain competitions at the annual mods. In October , a new agreement was made which allows Scottish Gaelic to be used formally between Scottish Government ministers and European Union officials. This does not give Scottish Gaelic official status in the EU, but gives it the right to be a means of formal communications in the EU's institutions.

The Scottish government will have to pay for the translation from Gaelic to other European languages. He said that "Allowing Gaelic speakers to communicate with European institutions in their mother tongue is a progressive step forward and one which should be welcomed".

Culture Minister Mike Russell said that "this is a significant step forward for the recognition of Gaelic both at home and abroad and I look forward to addressing the council in Gaelic very soon. Seeing Gaelic spoken in such a forum raises the profile of the language as we drive forward our commitment to creating a new generation of Gaelic speakers in Scotland.

The Scottish Gaelic used in Machine-readable British passports differs from Irish passports in places. Bilingual road signs, street names, business and advertisement signage in both Gaelic and English are gradually being introduced throughout Gaelic-speaking regions in the Highlands and Islands, including Argyll. Bilingual railway station signs are now more frequent than they used to be.

Fighting for independence

Practically all the stations in the Highland area use both English and Gaelic, and the spread of bilingual station signs is becoming ever more frequent in the Lowlands of Scotland, including areas where Gaelic has not been spoken for a long time. This has been welcomed by many supporters of the language as a means of raising its profile as well as securing its future as a 'living language' i. However, in some places, such as Caithness, the Highland Council's intention to introduce bilingual signage has incited controversy. The Ordnance Survey has acted in recent years to correct many of the mistakes that appear on maps.

They announced in that they intended to correct them and set up a committee to determine the correct forms of Gaelic place names for their maps. In the nineteenth century, Canadian Gaelic was the third-most widely spoken language in Canada [41] and Gaelic-speaking immigrant communities could be found throughout the country.

Gaelic poets in Canada produced a significant literary tradition. Nova Scotia is home to 1, Gaelic speakers as of , [44] of whom claim to have Gaelic as their "mother tongue. It also broadcasts across Europe on the Astra 2 satellites. There are also television programmes in the language on other BBC channels and on the independent commercial channels , usually subtitled in English. The Education Scotland Act , which completely ignored Gaelic, and led to generations of Gaels being forbidden to speak their native language in the classroom, is now recognised as having dealt a major blow to the language.

People still living can recall being beaten for speaking Gaelic in school. Gaelic-medium playgroups for young children began to appear in Scotland during the late s and early s. Parent enthusiasm may have been a factor in the "establishment of the first Gaelic medium primary school units in Glasgow and Inverness in ". The Columba Initiative , also known as colmcille formerly Iomairt Cholm Cille , is a body that seeks to promote links between speakers of Scottish Gaelic and Irish. In May , the Nova Scotia government announced the funding of an initiative to support the language and its culture within the province.

Several public schools in Northeastern Nova Scotia and Cape Breton offer Gaelic classes as part of the high-school curriculum. A number of Scottish and some Irish universities offer full-time degrees including a Gaelic language element, usually graduating as Celtic Studies. Many continue to complete degrees, or to follow up as distance learners. A number of other colleges offer a one-year certificate course, which is also available online pending accreditation. The isles of South Uist and Barra have a Catholic majority.

All these churches have Gaelic-speaking congregations throughout the Western Isles. The widespread use of English in worship has often been suggested as one of the historic reasons for the decline of Gaelic. The Church of Scotland is supportive today, [ vague ] but has a shortage of Gaelic-speaking ministers. The Free Church also recently announced plans to abolish Gaelic-language communion services, citing both a lack of ministers and a desire to have their congregations united at communion time.

From the sixth century to the present day, Scottish Gaelic has been used as the language of literature. Two prominent writers of the twentieth century are Anne Frater and Sorley Maclean. Gaelic has its own version of European-wide names which also have English forms, for example: Not all traditional Gaelic names have direct equivalents in English: Oighrig , which is normally rendered as Euphemia Effie or Henrietta Etta formerly also as Henny or even as Harriet , or, Diorbhal , which is "matched" with Dorothy , simply on the basis of a certain similarity in spelling.

Many of these traditional Gaelic-only names are now regarded as old-fashioned, and hence are rarely or never used. Some Scottish names are Anglicized forms of Gaelic names: Several colours give rise to common Scottish surnames: Although some vowels are strongly nasal, instances of distinctive nasality are rare. There are about nine diphthongs and a few triphthongs. Most consonants have both palatal and non-palatal counterparts, including a very rich system of liquids , nasals and trills i.

In medial and final position, the aspirated stops are preaspirated rather than aspirated. Scottish Gaelic is an Indo-European language with an inflecting morphology , verb—subject—object word order and two grammatical genders. They are also normally classed as either masculine or feminine. A small number of words that used to belong to the neuter class show some degree of gender confusion.

For example, in some dialects am muir "the sea" behaves as a masculine noun in the nominative case, but as a feminine noun in the genitive na mara. Nouns are marked for case in a number of ways, most commonly involving various combinations of lenition , palatalisation and suffixation. There are 12 irregular verbs. Word order is strictly verb—subject—object, including questions, negative questions and negatives. Only a restricted set of preverb particles may occur before the verb. The majority of the vocabulary of Scottish Gaelic is native Celtic. There are also many Brythonic influences on Scottish Gaelic.

Scottish Gaelic contains a number of apparently P-Celtic loanwords, but it is not always possible to disentangle P and Q Celtic words. Some speakers use an English word even if there is a Gaelic equivalent, applying the rules of Gaelic grammar. With verbs, for instance, they will simply add the verbal suffix -eadh , or, in Lewis , -igeadh , as in, " Tha mi a' watch eadh Lewis, "watch igeadh " an telly" I am watching the television , instead of " Tha mi a' coimhead air an telebhisean ". This phenomenon was described over years ago, by the minister who compiled the account covering the parish of Stornoway in the New Statistical Account of Scotland , and examples can be found dating to the eighteenth century.

Irish has also influenced Lowland Scots and English in Scotland, but it is not always easy to distinguish its influence from that of Scottish Gaelic. The modern Scottish Gaelic alphabet has 18 letters:. The letter h , now mostly used to indicate lenition historically sometimes inaccurately called aspiration of a consonant , was in general not used in the oldest orthography , as lenition was instead indicated with a dot over the lenited consonant.

The letters of the alphabet were traditionally named after trees, but this custom has fallen out of use. Certain 18th century sources used only an acute accent along the lines of Irish, such as in the writings of Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair —51 and the earliest editions —90 of Duncan Ban MacIntyre. The New Testament set the standard for Scottish Gaelic. The Scottish Examination Board recommendations for Scottish Gaelic, the Gaelic Orthographic Conventions, were adopted by most publishers and agencies, although they remain controversial among some academics, most notably Ronald Black.

The quality of consonants palatalised or non-palatalised is indicated in writing by the vowels surrounding them. So-called "slender" consonants are palatalised while "broad" consonants are neutral or velarised. The vowels e and i are classified as slender, and a , o , and u as broad. The spelling rule known as caol ri caol agus leathann ri leathann "slender to slender and broad to broad" requires that a word-medial consonant or consonant group followed by a written i or e be also preceded by an i or e ; and similarly if followed by a , o or u be also preceded by an a , o , or u.

This rule sometimes leads to the insertion of an orthographic vowel that does not influence the pronunciation of the vowel. Unstressed vowels omitted in speech can be omitted in informal writing. Gaelic orthographic rules are mostly regular; however, English sound-to-letter correspondences cannot be applied to written Gaelic.

Scots English orthographic rules have also been used at various times in Gaelic writing. Notable examples of Gaelic verse composed in this manner are the Book of the Dean of Lismore and the Fernaig manuscript. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For the Germanic language that diverged from Middle English, see Scots language. For the Gaelic language family, see Goidelic languages.

For the Gaelic language spoken in Ireland, see Irish language. History of Scottish Gaelic. Norse-Gaelic zone, use of either or both languages. Cumbric may have survived in this zone.

Introduction: The Study of Modern Scottish History

Old Irish and Classical Gaelic. Linguistic divide in the middle ages. This section needs expansion with: You can help by adding to it. Gaelic broadcasting in Scotland. Gaelic medium education in Scotland.

Gaelic-speaking congregations in the Church of Scotland. Differences between Scottish Gaelic and Irish. Books of genuine quality began to appear on the modern period, with new and exciting perspectives reflecting the advances in the subject outside Scotland. But perhaps the most stimulating, and a portent for the future, was Laurance J. Saunders's Scottish Democracy — The Social and Intellectual Background Saunders was not a member of a history department but held a chair of constitutional law at Edinburgh.

Nevertheless, he produced a text of innovative and perceptive research, written in clear and appealing prose, on one of the seminal periods of economic, social, and intellectual change in modern Scottish history. Here, indeed, it was implied, was a subject full of intellectual challenge and exciting cultural relevance. Finally, in the s and s, historians of modern Scotland achieved more in two decades than their predecessors had done in two centuries. The four-volume Edinburgh History of Scotland , written by Archie Duncan, Ranald Nicholson, Gordon Donaldson, and William Ferguson, gave twentieth-century Scots a professional account of their past from the earliest days to the s.

Hume Brown was now finally superseded. Campbell's Scotland since steered the nation's scholarship towards economic history, the key intellectual dynamic of the s and s. A few years later, T. Smout's A History of the Scottish People — extended the breadth of the subject into such social issues as demography, social class, culture, and the life experience of ordinary people.

Written in luminous prose, it became a best-seller, even attracting p. Smout's book opened the eyes and expanded the ambitions of an entire generation of undergraduate and graduate students. It became a catalytic force in the study of modern Scottish History. It was indeed an exciting period, not least for the current editors of this Handbook who lived through it.

Looking back, it is possible to detect that significant forces were at work. First, the Whig interpretation of history, which had cast such a pall over the study of serious Scottish history for generations, crumbled and eventually became extinct under the assaults of English scholars such as Herbert Butterfield and Lewis Namier. No longer was Scottish historiography imprisoned within a narrative of defective and inadequate development.

The results were truly historic. The ancient universities in Scotland grew exponentially in staff numbers, and the new universities of Strathclyde, Dundee, Heriot-Watt, and Stirling soon gained royal charters. All hired more historians than ever before even the more technically orientated Heriot-Watt for a time. A substantial number of these scholars had expertise in economic or social history.

Third, to fill the new posts, apart from a few Scots, historians mainly trained at English universities and at the cutting edge of the discipline were recruited in significant numbers to Scottish academic positions. The bulk of these again were economic and social historians. For them transfers of intellectual interest were reasonably straightforward: Moreover, the study of economic and social history was not fixated with Westminster and its doings.

As a result, Scottish history was not only liberated from the old constitutional rut but became embedded within the mainstream of generic European scholarship, where issues very relevant to Scotland—peasant life, rural transformation, emigration, urbanization, industrialization, and much else—were commonplace. The greatest impact of this scholarly invasion was experienced at Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Strathclyde. The list of the major figures involved was an illustrious one: Ward, to name but a few. Many of the current crop of modern Scottish historians in post benefited from the stimulating teaching and innovative research of this notable generation.

In areas of economy and society, at least, Scottish scholarship began rapidly to catch up with the subject elsewhere.

The birth of Scotland

At the same time, the context of Scottish politics was changing. At the start, much of this was satisfied by popular writers p. But academic historians soon made their presence felt in the print, radio, and television media. Many Scots developed a new hunger for understanding the connection between the Scottish past and the Scottish present. The result of this transformation was a veritable historiographical bonanza. Key works were published in the history of commerce, banking, industry, business, transport, industrial archaeology, and much more. Then the pendulum started to swing to social history in the s and s, with leading-edge research in demography, urbanization, poverty, social class, and much else.

Specialist groups were founded in economic history, labour history, history of education, Scottish Catholic history established long before the revival in the late s , and industrial archaeology. Modern Scottish history came to be situated in a comparative context with a series of Irish—Scottish conferences and their accompanying publications from and other related innovative work. Large-scale collaborative research projects also developed, often generously funded by external agencies, notably at Aberdeen in Irish—Scottish studies, Stirling and St Andrews in environmental history, St Andrews in the history of the Scottish Parliament, and Edinburgh in diaspora studies.

The subject seemed to have developed towards a new intellectual maturity. But what of its current weaknesses? In an article published in , T. Smout was unambiguous, and in response to that question, voiced concern that the gains in research may mean little to scholars outside Scotland; that still too many Scottish historians fail to attempt to relate their work to issues in the international historiographical agenda, so continuing the old accusations of introspection and parochialism; economic history, formerly the catalyst, now virtually disappeared into oblivion; and, he added, that in environmental history, gender studies, modern political history, and cultural history the interest in Scotland, though increasing, remained underdeveloped.

In addition, however, an even more important challenge is the failure thus far to trigger intensive debate, the clash of ideas, in key areas of study, without which the subject cannot renew itself. The Union of on its tercentenary in did cause some vigorous discussion and, from time to time, the Highland clearances do still stoke debate in the public prints, though usually along worn ruts and pretty predictable and routine lines of argument.

Part of the difficulty is that there lingers a lack of confidence among some historians of Scotland, a need to search for the way to establish their identity and the importance of p. This surely relates to the theme already discussed, the lack of serious scholarship until the second half of the twentieth century. Another convention, a much more pernicious one, also endures: This is above all encapsulated in the early modern period in the obsession with that lamentable figure, Mary, Queen of Scots, but the equally lamentable Bonnie Prince Charlie runs her a close second.

The number of books on Mary is vast. But it is surely the responsibility of professional scholars to try to direct attention away from Mary to the much more fascinating kingdom she ruled very briefly. Visitors to Linlithgow, for example, should be told of the really important and influential monarch in Linlithgow's story, James V, instead of receiving undue emphasis on the fact that Mary, who hardly ever chose to go to Linlithgow, happened to be born there. Any history can shade into myth, romance, fiction. But it is difficult to think of any other society where the two-year antics of a failed ruler—the only failure in a royal house whose kingship was devastatingly impressive for two centuries—have been allowed such a dominant place in early modern historical discussion.

If Mary, Queen of Scots exemplifies one way in which Scottish historians have spent proportionately too much time on a minor issue, at the expense of infinitely more important and interesting ones, another is the uncertainty about whether Scottish history is indeed a subject in its own right, or whether it will only be of interest if set in a wider context, British or international. Ranald Nicholson, mentioned earlier in this introduction, did indeed write a solid and impressive history of the later Middle Ages. But he was informed by his desire to show that Scotland shone as a notable example of concepts then fashionable among historians of other countries.

Scots language

It was unfortunate that already J. Elliott was mounting a convincing critique of the whole idea. The problem here was that such an approach came up against the problem that Scotland might not be so readily fitted in; in other words, Scotland had to be considered not as an example of something else, but in its own right. As has already been said, the study of pre Scottish History used to be seriously neglected, as the history of a backward and violent society.

What that really meant was that it did not have the precociously developed governmental and bureaucratic system of England, and therefore another fashionable concept, the overmighty nobility, was predictably portrayed even more overmighty and destructive than any other. Only when the premise was questioned—could a kingdom be civilized only if ruled like England? What this could mean, south of the border, could all too often be English history given the name of British.

In Simon Schama's much-praised television series, The History of Britain , Scotland before was discussed three times: Small wonder, therefore, that Scottish historians had tried to fight back by insisting on the importance of Scotland. The late and great Welsh historian Rees Davies determinedly sought to create a British framework for the four societies of the high medieval period. It is questionable whether that really worked. Surely it would have much to offer Scottish historians, so long at the mercy in this period of Anglocentric interpretations of the union of the crowns of and its consequences?

And in the flood of publications on early modern British history, Scottish historians found themselves welcome guests and cheerfully became engaged, even though gloomy mutterings about Anglocentricity remained. Contributors to this volume were asked to respond to the guidelines in the Oxford University Press Handbook series.

They are also intended to help shape p. The chapters, therefore, seek to give succinct accounts of their subjects and be accessible to readers without specialist knowledge but at the same time, unlike a general synthesis, a conventional reference book or a dictionary, they will try to press the limits of current knowledge and address questions that remain unanswered and the agenda for future research.

One of the objectives here is to make those controversies that do exist in interpreting the Scottish past more explicit and more amenable to debate, challenge, and disputation, which are the very lifeblood of any vigorous academic discipline. Within these broad parameters we had to make a number of choices as editors. As several of the chapters in the book will demonstrate, there are long-run social, religious, and intellectual forces that shaped the modern Scottish nation which cannot be fully understood without reaching back in time to the sixteenth century.

We have also sought to encourage the existing trend towards the internationalization of Scottish history by commissioning chapters on emigration, immigration, and empire. In addition, all authors have been advised, whenever appropriate, to make reference to the Scottish historical experience within a comparative framework of reference.

We have also been keen to tap into the expertise of other disciplines such as geography, political science, literature, and sociology. All of them have made signal contributions to an understanding of modern Scottish history in recent years.

T. M. Devine and Jenny Wormald

They can often add an important theoretical dimension, still sometimes absent from the strongly empiricist traditions of the subject. The selection of topics and contributors was especially challenging. There are certain key themes which, of course, had to be included, such as Reformation, the Union of , Industrialization, Enlightenment, the First World War, and the like. But we were also keen to encourage emerging fields.

So there are chapters on environment, myth, family, empire, criminality and violence, gender, contemporary society, and economy. We hope that these essays will encourage even more much-needed research into these important areas. It is one sign of the new energy of the discipline that there are now many more distinguished scholars at work than we could possibly have invited to take part in this project. In the end we used three criteria to decide on the selection of contributors: In fact, sixteen of the authors in the book are based in institutions in England, Ireland, Wales, Canada, and New Zealand.

This is itself an indication of the increasing international interest in Scottish history. Completion of a project on the scale of this Handbook would not have been possible without the help of many people. We are grateful in the first instance to our contributors for their exemplary patience and support during the two-year gestation of the volume, and for their courteous and speedy responses to our editorial suggestions and queries.

We also thank the large number of anonymous external reviewers whom we recruited to help comment on first drafts of chapters. Their contributions were invaluable and did much to enhance the overall quality of the final volume. Our editors at Oxford University Press could not have been more supportive. We thank in particular Christopher Wheeler, who first commissioned the Handbook , for his professional advice. Richard Mason was a meticulous copy-editor.

Last, but by no means whatsoever least, we are very pleased to record our immense gratitude to Margaret Begbie, the anchor of the entire project, who maintained regular contact with contributors, reminded them of various deadlines, and replied with characteristic efficiency and tact to their various questions and concerns.

Constructions of the Past in Scotland, c. The most recent study is Stuart Kelly, Scott-land: London, —24 , vol. Political Thought in Scotland, — Cambridge, , For an overview and summation see T. Devine, The Scottish Nation, — London, , — Politics and Culture, — London, Scots in Asia, c. Terry, Scottish Parliaments — Glasgow, The Later Middle Ages Edinburgh, Elliott, Imperial Spain, — London, , ch. It is an indication of the extent of the problem.

In the interests of space, only two will be cited here. England, Scotland, Ireland and British History c. Founding a Modern State, — London, Footnotes and, in the second work, a section on Further Reading, provide plenty more examples. He holds Honorary Professorships at the Universities of North Carolina and Guelph, and has won all three major prizes for Scottish historical research. Jenny Wormald was previously C. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice.

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