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Appendices
Great Britain and as such has shown itself possest of
more than the proverbial nine lives.
All available evidence is opposed to any notion that
Scotland, in the highlands or in the lowlands, has ever
been peopled by other than Irish Gaels, since they first
gave the name to the country. Thus long after the period
when the Celt is supposed in the imagination of some
historians to have been prest back by an English or
Teuton population from the lowlands we find the Irish
language spoken all over the country as far as the south
and east, we find men with Irish names figuring plenti-
fully in legal documents, we find the survival of Irish
1
laws and customs and Irish officialdom both in the Church
and in the State, and we find Irish place-names outnum-
bering other place-names even to the English border.
THE IRISH TONGUE IN SCOTLAND. Irish remained the
literary language of Scotland till after the middle of the
eighteenth century. It remained the spoken language of
Scotland till the sixteenth century. "Most of us spoke
Irish a short time ago," says John Mair, or Major, who
wrote a history during the reign of James IV of Scotland,
who died in 1513. "Those who live on the borders of
England," says his contemporary, Hector Boece, "have
forsaken our own tongue (Irish) and learned English,
being driven thereto by wars and commerce. But the
Highlanders remain just as they were in the time of Malcolm
Canmore, in whose days we began to adopt English
manners." Sir Thomas Craig, writing in the reign of
James VI (1625), says: "I myself remember the time
when the inhabitants of the shires of Stirling and Dumbarton
spoke pure Gaelic." 1
Stirling and Dumbarton
are in what has come to be called the "lowlands" of Scot-
land.
iDe Unione RegTiorum Britanniae, Scott. Hist. Soc., trs. Terry, pp. 418-9.
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