The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

386 THE HIGHLANDERS [excursus
accession to the Scots on the West Coast was the arrival, in
501, of the sons of Ere from Dalriada ; they founded the little
kingdom of Dalriada, practically Argyleshire and its Isles,
though the original Argyle extended from the Mull of Kintyre
to Lochbroom, as our earliest documents show. It means
" Coastland of the Gael "— Airer-Gaidheal. When the Norse
came about 800, they called the Minch Scotland Fjord, which
shows that the Gael practically held the West Coast entire, and
the Picts held the East Coast to Pettland Fjord, or Pictland
Fjord, now Pentland. The name Scot and Scotland came
to be applied to the Scottish kingdom in the tenth centur)^
b}' English writers— the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle calls Con-
stantine, who fought unsuccessfully at Brunanburg, in 938,
King of Scotland. The Irish, who were called by this
time Hibernienses, or Hiberni, by outsiders, dropped the name
Scot and called themselves Goedel, or, later, Gaoidheal, "Gael."
This is the name that the Highlanders still call themselves
by—Gaidheal. Unfortunately, the oldest Irish form dates only
from 1 100— Goedel, which would give a Gadelic form, ^Gaidelos^
but Scottish Gaelic points to *Gadilos or Gaidelos, and from
various considerations seems the correcter form, giving a root
gad, Eng. good, Gothic gadiliggs, relative ; German gatte,
husband. The idea is " name for
kinsman," as in the case of the native
Welshman—
Cymro, whence Cymric, *Com-brox, a
"
co-burger," where bj-ox or broges (plural) is from the root
i3
inrog, land ; Lat. margo, Eng. mark, viarch.
The next invasion of Scotland, which gave her a most
important accession of population in the Isles, the West Coast,
and in Sutherland and Caithness, was made by the Norse
about 795. Our historians seem little to understand either
its extent in time and place or the great change it wrought
in the ethnological character of the districts held by the Norse.
Of this we shall speak at its proper place in notes on Chapter V.
The Norman invasion extended even to Scotland, and Celtic
earls and barons, either through failure of heirs male or otherwise,
soon and in great numbers were succeeded by Normans and
Angles.
It will thus be seen that the Scottish people are ethnologically
very much mixed. The Caledonians, as Dr. Beddoe