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On the Dialects of Scottish Gaelic. 3G.5
which in its human aspect, of whicli iilonc I would presume to
speak, contains the reconl of as grand a literature as the world has
ever seen, which has been translated by our best scholars and
ablest men, which is and always will remain our standard work in
Gaelic—if this book could in numberless instances, as I have tried
by an example or two to show, be improved in its diction and
idiom by borrowing from the speech of the people, it follows that
the study of the language as it has been preserved in the various
dialects is an absolute necessity to the student wlio desires to
master Scottish Gaelic.
Besides, be the ultimate law of the universe what it may,
Becoming, not Being, is the ultimate law of language. Sounds
are dropped, forms are, disused, words are discai-ded in all languages
—the loss being made up by new combinations of home growth,
and by foreign loans. In languages with a flourishing literature
the vanishing forms are stereotyped, and every new acquisition
registered. In the case of Gaelic wo have the loss, but not the
compensation. The language has never been fully utilised in the
published literature, and we have neither newspapers nor periodicals
through which one district can communicate to another its characteristic
words as well as its special views and needs. The common
word can, to say or sin^f, forms no part of the diction of South
Argyle. Gabh oran is the phrase used when you invite a friend to
sing a song. I once heard a countryman of my own, painfully helpless
in English, ask a Saxon brother very pressingly to take a
song. The admirable northern word ciis (overmuch) is not even
in Armstrong's Dictionary, nor another to fill its place. If you
take up Rob Donn's Poems, or Mackenzie's " Beauties," or, better
still, Campbell's Tales, though these works by no means exhaust
the resources of the dialects, you will be amazed to find the number
of beautiful and expressive words in common local use which
are not only strange to you, but which are not to be found in any-
Gaelic Dictionary. You will also unfortunately find the local
author frequently borrowing uncouth expressions from English,
in ignorance of the fact that admirable words to suit his pui-pose
are in free circulation across the nearest ferry or over the neighbouring
moor. Rob Donn, e g., gives bctghan and hunndaist and
prac to the south, if the south would only accept them ; but surely
he ought to accept in return searmonachadh and foirfeach and
mile, and leave such strainnsearan as preisgeadh and eilldeir, not
to sjjeak of susdan, in their native land.
Finally, in addition to the want of a rich standard literatux'e,
and of free literary intei'-communication in the Highlands, it is the