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Appendices
in English, yet referred to Gaelic as "Scote" or "Scottis." 1
We find the General Assembly of the Church of Scot-
land in 1570 referring to Gaelic as the Scottish language.
The Assembly was informed that a certain Donald
Munro, the commissioner of Ross, had but an imperfect
acquaintance with his own language. Accordingly the
Assembly commanded that assistance should be given him,
because he was not "prompt in the Scottish tongue."
Much later occasional reference is made to Gaelic as the
Scottish language. Thus James M acPherson, of pseudo-
Ossianic fame, writing in 1773 a dissertation to his poems,
Scotchman tolerably conversant in his own lan-
says : "A
guage, understands Irish composition."
Gavin Douglas was the first native Scottish writer to
refer to the Teutonic speech of Lothian and Northum-
berland as "Scottish." In 1513 in the prolog to his Aeneis
he wrote: "This buik I dedicate writing
in the lan-
guage of Scottis natioun." Before the close of the sixteenth
century this use of the word "Scottish" became
fairly general, owing, it would appear, to the national susceptibilities
of the English-speaking Scots, who not know-
ing the old language of Scotland sought to save their
faces by a little word jugglery. Dunbar even went so far
as to use the phrase, "oure Inglische." 2
Irish continued the classic and literary tongue in Scot-
land, the peasantry using a colloquial dialect, known to
speakers of English as Earse (Irish), a broad-Scots term
which is translated into proper English now as Scotch-
Gaelic. This provincial dialect was never written or
printed until Mr. MacFarlane, minister of Killinvir, in
Argyleshire, published in 1754
a Scotch-Gaelic transla-
tion of "Baxter's Call to the Unconverted." This printed
Cronykil, II, lia-3.
2 Goldyn Targe, line 259.
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