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Appendices
Earl of Atholl and of "Camel," Earl of Argyle, also
spoke Irish. In 1618, John Taylor, the "Water Poet,"
visited Scotland, and afterwards recorded his impressions
in the Pennyles Pilgrimage. He says : "I did go through
a country called Glaneske. At night I came to a lodging
house in the Lard of Eggels Land (i. e., Edzell) where
I lay at an Irish house, the folkes not being able to speak
scarce any English." (P. 134, edition of 1630.) Later
he refers to the "Highlandmen, who for the most part
speak nothing but Irish." According to the Rev. James
Fraser, the minister of Wardlaw, Gaelic was held "in
esteem" at the court of Charles II. Comparing that
court with Malcolm Canmore's, he says: "Formerly
Latin and Irish was the language spoken at our Scots
court, now a nursery of all languages, arts and sciences
. . . . and yet the Irish still in esteem at court. Franciscus
Fraiser was master of the languages at the court; the
Scots who spoke only Irish called him Frishalach
Francach." 1
In the eighteenth century Irish was the language of
the people in the Ochil hills. Again about 1792 the
minister of Drom wrote as follows in the Old Statistical
Account: "Gaelic .... is said to have been the common
language not only here . . . but even through the whole
country of Fife not above two or three generations back."
About 1730, Edward Burt, wrote: "The Irish tongue
was, I may say, lately almost universal even in many parts
of the Lowlands, and I have heard it from several in
Edinburgh that before the Union it was the language of
the shire of Fife and as a proof they told me, after
that event (the Union) it become one condition of an
indenture when a youth of either sex was to be bound on
i Wardlaw MS., p. 38.
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