Gaelic and Geography
Language
map Gaelic and Scots
Today
Gaelic is associated with the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. But
from place name evidence we know that it was once spoken across
nearly all of Scotland, including the Lowlands. However, from the
twelfth century onwards, Scots expanded from the south – east to
become the language of the Lowlands.
Highland Lowland map
A
key difference between the Lowlands and the Highlands is soil/ land
quality. As this map from 1944 shows, most of the Highlands is not
suitable for arable farming.
Land type/use map OS 1944
Arable
farming requires more labour but can support higher population
densities.
Population density map OS 1944.
Although
Galloway/ south-west Scotland is part of the Lowlands it includes
part of the Southern Uplands. The Southern Uplands are a not suitable
for arable farming as the large area of yellow (rough grazing) on
this map shows.
Galloway
and Carrick (south Ayrshire) were still Gaelic speaking into the
sixteenth century, 200 or more years after Gaelic had died out in the
rest of the Lowlands.
Did
Gaelic survive longer in south-west Scotland because it was a
(relatively) remote and mountainous district like the Highlands? I
don't think so because, unlike the Highlands, Galloway also has
significant areas suitable for arable farming. These were also the
areas where most of the people lived.
The
evidence for this comes from 1684, that is before the Lowland
Clearances of the eighteenth century had affected Galloway. In 1684
Galloway was a 'rebellious province', where Presbyterian Covenanters
were engaged in a conflict with the government of Charles II. To help
the authorities identify the rebels, all the parish minsters in
Wigtownshire plus Minnigaff in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright had to
draw up a list of all the people in each parish over the age of 12.
This
was done on a farm by farm basis, so we know how many people were
living on each farm as well as the numbers of people living in the
burghs (towns) of Whithorn, Wigtown and Stranraer.
Wigtownshire,
the western part of Galloway, can be divided into three parts- the
Rhinns in the west, the Machars in the east and the Moors in the
north. The Moors are made up of four of Wigtownshire's 16 parishes-
from west to east Inch, New Luce, Kirkcowan and Penninghame.
What
I have done is go through the parish lists for these parishes and
used eighteenth century maps to locate the farms named. I then
divided them into 'upland' and 'lowland' farms and counted the
occupants.
Excluding
Minnigaff, the total number of people over the age of 12 in
Wigtownshire in 1684 was 8538. Of these, 818 lived on upland farms.
This was 9.6% of the 1684 population. [See below for breakdown of
figures]
Can
this roughly 10% / 90% upland/ lowland population divide in 1684 be
projected back into the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries? I believe
it can. Although after 1666, when Wigtownshire landowners began
taking advantage of an English ban on the import of Irish cattle to
sell cattle from Wigtownshire to England, the structure of
agriculture in Wigtownshire was still essentially medieval in 1684.
Nor were there any other social or economic changes which might have
altered the overall balance of population.
The
concentration of population in the arable lowlands means that they
were critical for the survival of Gaelic in Wigtownshire. Once Scots
rather than Gaelic became the everyday language of the arable
lowlands, any Gaelic speakers in the thinly populated uplands would
have become a minority.
How
quickly Gaelic gave way to Scots in the Wigtownshire uplands would
depend on how closely integrated the upland and lowland communities
were.
Douglas Galloway lands map
What
the map shows is that the Douglas lords of Galloway had land in the
arable lowlands and pastoral uplands. The map is based on a list of
former Douglas lordship lands compiled by the abbot of Dundrennan for
James II in 1456. The rental value of each farm is given, taken from
now lost Douglas rental rolls. The loss of Douglas lordship records
means we don't know exactly how their upland and lowlands estates
were managed, but they were managed to generate income from the rents
and from the livestock and grain they produced through the
integration of lowland and upland resources.
In
Wigtownshire, Glenluce abbey's lands took in the uplands of New Luce
parish and the lowlands of Old Luce parish. In this case it was the
Cistercians of Glenluce abbey who oversaw the integration of upland
and lowland zones.
Socially,
the upland and lowland areas were linked by ties of kinship and
marriage. Significantly, until Glenluce was split in to two parishes
in 1646, the parishes of Inch, Glenluce, Kirkcowan and Penninghame
all contained a mix of upland and lowland areas.
Likewise
in the Stewartry, until the new parish of Carsphairn was created in
1647 out of parts of Kells and Dalry parishes, there were no purely
upland parishes in eastern Galloway. Although Minnigaff, Kells and
Dalry are all quite mountainous parishes, their churches and main
settlements are all located close to the largest patches of good
quality land available -beside the Cree with Minnigaff and the Ken
for Dalry and Kells.
Galloway land quality
Scots
in arable lowlands
In
1684, 40% of the population of Wigtownshire lived in the Machars.
Within the Machars, 18% of the population lived in the two burghs of
Wigtown and Whithorn. After the fall of the House of Douglas in 1455,
Wigtown re-emerged as the main administrative centre for the county,
as it had been before Archibald the Grim bought Wigtownshire from the
Earl of Wigtown in 1372. Whithorn, with its links to St Ninian,
attracted pilgrims from England, Ireland,Spain and France as well as
other parts of Scotland.
At
Whithorn, the use of Scots is recorded in 1438. At Wigtown, the burgh
court records survive from 1513 and are in Scots. The Machars are
therefore likely to have been the first district in Wigtownshire
where Scots replaced Gaelic as the most commonly used language.
In
1684, 35% of the population of Wigtownshire lived in the Rhinns. This
figure includes Stranraer, which became a burgh of barony in 1596 and
a royal burgh in 1617. The late date for the foundation of Stranraer
may have held back the Gaelic to Scots transition in the Rhinns.
For
example in Kirkcolm parish in the Rhinns. Here in 1487 Robert Campbell of Corsewall complained that John Brown, vicar
of Kirkcolm “who has for divers years held the said vicarage, does
not understand and cannot speak intelligibly the language (ydioma) of
the place in which it is situate, to the detriment of souls…”
Source
British History Online
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-papal-registers/brit-ie/vol14/pp187-193
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-papal-registers/brit-ie/vol14/pp187-193
However,
before the development of Stranraer, the non-royal burgh of
Innermessan was the chief settlement in the Rhinns. From the records
of two lawyers, William Gardner and James Glover, we have some
knowledge of Innermessan circa 1600.
Through their good (and gratuitous) offices we meet John Kennedy, armourer, as well as John McWhirk and Martin McCullie, who were more peacefully occupied as shoe-maker and tailor respectively. Corn miller Michael Wallace would obviously be a key member of the community but the occupations of John Cunningham and Niven McGilbar are not known to us. However they were burgesses and so men of consequence since they could engage in a trade or have a shop. This elevated them above William Walker, Norman McNeillie, and John Rollane, who as mere indwellers could do neither.
There
is also evidence that Innermessan had a small port.
That
the evidence about the names and occupations of some of Innermessan's
inhabitants comes from the records of two lawyers helps to explain
why Scots rather than Gaelic became the language of Galloway's
burghs.
Professor
Hector McQueen, who will be one of the speakers at the Gaelic in
Galloway conference in September. In 2002 he wrote a very useful
paper “LAWS AND LANGUAGES: Some Historical Notes from Scotland”.
In it he discusses the shift from Latin and French to Scots in the
language of the Scottish legal system during the fourteenth century.
The
situation in Galloway is complicated by existence of the Douglas
lordship of Galloway 1369 to 1455. Hector McQueen has also written on
the traditional 'Laws of Galloway'. These were preserved by the
Douglas lords of Galloway, but were replaced by Scots law after 1455.
The last vestiges of traditional law in Galloway and Carrick were
finally abolished in 1490.
The
language of the Douglas administration in Galloway was Scots not
Gaelic nor Latin. Unfortunately we don't know very much about how the
Galloway burghs developed during the period of Douglas rule. However,
the fact that Kirkcudbright became a royal burgh in 1453 and Wigtown
in 1457 suggests that both had retained their pre-Douglas importance.
The
craft and trades people, merchants and shop-keepers of Immermessam
and the other Galloway burghs needed a legal framework to carry on
their businesses. They also needed customers. The great Douglas lords
and ladies did not need the services provided by Galloway's burghs,
nor could their wealth and power be bound by laws. However, after
king James II brought Douglas rule in Galloway to an end in 1455, old
Galloway families like McDowalls, McCullochs and McLellans competed
with the Agnew, Kennedy, Maxwell and Gordon families for power and
influence.
The
many tower houses which dot the landscape were the products of the
post-Douglas era. These many lesser lords patronised the merchants
and traders of the burghs, providing them with income which was drawn
in turn from the rents and produce of the land. At the same time the
Crown retained the many Douglas lands as a valuable source of income.
Orchardton tower house, built after 1455
No
one family was ever able to dominate Galloway as the Douglases had
done. The Crown and pre-Reformation church were the biggest
landowners in Galloway. The Diocese of Galloway/ Whithorn lost its
link to the Archbishops of York in 1359 and became part of the
Scottish church in 1430. It was linked to St Andrews in 1472 and then
Glasgow in 1492.
During
the later fifteenth century then, the process of integrating Galloway
with Scotland, which had begun in 1160 when king Fergus of Galloway
was forced into exile at Holyrood abbey, was finally completed.
Although
Gaelic was still the language of the Highlands and Islands of
Scotland, Scots was the language of Lowland Scotland, of its legal
system and of its Parliament. James IV, who was to die at the battle
of Flodden in 1513, was the last kings of Scots known to have spoken
Gaelic. [See previous post
http://greengalloway.blogspot.com/2018/04/gaelic-harp-players-galloway-and-gigha.html
]
Unlike
the Highlands and Islands, there is nothing in the historical record
to suggest that the transition from Gaelic to Scots in Galloway was
enforced or otherwise part of a deliberate policy of 'cultural
genocide'.
Rather
the transition was part of a series of regional cultural and
linguistic shifts which began in the seventh century when a Brittonic
speaking area came under the influence of Old English speakers and
the kingdom of Northumbria. After Northumbrian power was disrupted by
the Vikings in the ninth century, the region became part of the Irish
Sea territories of Dublin based Vikings in the tenth and eleventh
centuries.
Up
until this point, the focus of settlement and political control over
the region was on the most fertile areas along the coast and river
valleys.
This
changed with the arrival of a distinctive ethnic group first noted by
Irish chroniclers in the mid-ninth century – the Gall-Ghàidheil or
'Viking-Gaels'. They probably emerged first in Dál Riata- green area on map below.
before
moving south and east across the Firth of Clyde and then down towards
the Solway Firth. In the twelfth century they became identified with
and gave their name to the geographical area still called Galloway.
Here their Gaelic speech supplanted Brittonic, Old English and Norse
to become the language of first an independent kingdom and then a
semi-autonomous lordship.
As
discussed previously Galloway and its people ended up on the losing
side of a prolonged civil war which overlapped with the wars of
Scottish independence.
The
death of Edward Balliol in 1365 broke the last, tenuous, link
between Galloway and its native rulers. While the Douglas lordship of
Galloway established by Archibald the Grim conserved the region's
territorial integrity, the Douglas family were Scots speakers.
Significantly,
in the 1360s Galloway and its Gaelic kindreds remained a problem
province for David II, to the extent that he was willing to gift
Galloway to John of Gaunt as part of a peace treaty with England.
But by the 1450s, Galloway itself was no longer the problem for James
II. Rather his concern was the danger posed by the Douglas family.
Galloway was only part of their extensive land holdings.
In
the 1360s, something of the distinctive spirit of the Gall-Ghàidheil
survived among the McDowalls, McCullochs and McLellans. Their support
had been critical for Edward Balliol's ability to maintain a foothold
in Scotland. As 'heads of kin' (kenkynnol) the chief family members
had able to muster their armed followers to support Balliol as their
ancestors had done for Fergus, his sons, grandsons and great-grandson
Alan.
But
in 1473, the then head of kin of the McDowall family gave up the
position in exchange for a cash payment from the Scottish crown.
When Victorian antiquarian Peter McKerlie began compiling his five volume study 'Lands and their Owners in Galloway', he found that very few records of land ownership existed from before 1455. I will look at this in more depth in the next post.
For
the present, my speculation is that the heads of kin were involved in
the operation of Galloway's traditional system of laws and that this
would have been an oral system carried out in Gaelic. Galloway under
its Douglas lords was a regality.
As
the term indicates, regalities were held with quasi-royal powers,
like medieval English palatinates. From the fourteenth century
onwards, they were created by grants in liberam regalitatem,
which greatly extended normal baronial powers by adding jurisdiction
over the four pleas of the crown plus immunity from interference with
the regality or its inhabitants by royal officers.
No charter specifically granting the lordship of Galloway in regality exists. But David II’s charter to Archibald Douglas in 1369 stated he was to hold it not only in barony but also as Robert I’s brother Edward Bruce had possessed it (RMS, i, no. 329) – which was no doubt the equivalent of regality. Galloway, moreover, had special laws and liberties, which were recognised on Archibald’s behalf in 1384 (APS, i, 551).
Regalities map
The
end of Douglas rule in 1455 ended Galloway's status as a regality and
its 'special laws and liberties' were extinguished by the Scottish
parliament in 1490. Presumably, what ever traditional legal status
the heads of kin had retained under the Douglas lords of Galloway
also ended during this period (see above). The status of Gaelic as
the legal language of Galloway would also have been lost, replaced by
Scots law and the Scots language.
It
is still difficult to get a clear idea of how the shift from Gaelic
to Scots occurred in Galloway. Scots developed from the Old English
of Northumbria after Northumbrian territory in what is now south-east
was
taken over by the Gaelic speaking kingdom of Scotia. If Galloway had
still been part of the kingdom of Northumbria, it might have become
part of Scotia as well and never become a Gaelic speaking region.
Instead, first the Dublin Vikings and then the Gall-Ghàidheil
displaced the Northumbrians in what was to become Galloway.
Even
then, without Fergus of Galloway, the region could have been absorbed
into David I 's Scotland in the early twelfth century. Scots would
have then replaced Gaelic much earlier in Galloway, as it did in
Dumfriesshire, Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire and Ayrshire.
In
the later thirteenth century, if John Balliol had only become lord of
Galloway not king of Scots as well, another opportunity for Galloway
to gradually lose its Gaelic distinctiveness would have occurred.
In
the fourteenth century, if Edward Balliol had not tried to reclaim
his father's throne, David II could have completed his father and
uncle's work, settling loyal Scots speaking Bruce supporters in
Galloway and dminishing the influence of its Gaelic kindreds.
Finally,
without Archibald the Grim's intervention, the lordship of Galloway
would not have been re-established and its distinctive laws and
customs would not have been preserved for another 120 years.
Of
all these, probably the most significant for the survival of Gaelic
in Galloway was Fergus' creation of 'Galloway' as a political and
geographical entity in the early twelfth century. Once Galloway
existed as a coherent, geographically determined region with its mix
of coastal, lowland and upland zones, its people were able to develop
a distinctive economic and cultural identity within its borders, with
the loss of Carrick after 1186 being balanced by the earlier addition
of the district between the Urr and the Nith.
Before
Fergus' intervention there is no trace of a coherent
political/cultural entity in the area. There was a 'kingdom of the
Rhinns' linked to the Dublin Vikings which extended into the Machars
to include Whithorn, but it did not extend further east or north.
Earlier, apart from Whithorn, the region does not appear in records
of the kingdom of Northumbria. Even earlier, the relationship -if
any- between Galloway and the shadowy British kingdom of Rheged is
unclear.
The
Gall-Ghàidheil did more than give their name to Galloway, they
created and sustained Galloway over the course of 500 years, as
thousands of Gaelic place names still testify. In the Stewartry of
Kirkcudbright, there were still 650 farms with Gaelic names when the
Ordnance Survey mapped them in 1850.
Only
30% were in the upland parishes of Minnigaff, Kells, Carsphairn and
Dalry. There weren't just more farms in the lowlands. Since most were
arable farms, they needed more workers than the livestock farms of
the uplands. In medieval Galloway, most Gaelic speakers lived on the
arable farms of the lowlands.
In
the Stewartry most of the land (soil) with the capacity to support
arable farming was with ten miles of either the burgh of Dumfries or
the burgh of Kirkcudbright. In Wigtownshire, all of the Machars was
within ten miles of the burghs of Wigtown and Whithorn. Most of the
Rhinns were within ten miles of Innermessan before it was superseded
by Stranraer after 1600.
In
the Highlands, the majority of the population lived more than (much
more than) ten miles from a burgh. Apart from around Inverness and
the Moray Firth, there were only small patches of land suitable for
arable farming.
These
geographical factors suggest that the survival of Gaelic in Galloway
into the fifteenth century was remarkable and suggests that there
were other factors at work.
Gaelic 1400 and 1500 map
The
most likely change of circumstances affecting the survival of Gaelic
in Galloway was the break created by the end of Galloway as a
lordship and the loss of its legal status as a regality in 1455. The
political and cultural/ linguistic continuity between the kingdom
established by Fergus of Galloway and the lordship re-created by
Archibald the Grim was lost. Over the next 100 years Gaelic was
replaced by Scots first in the lowland districts and then even in the
uplands of Galloway.
Tragically,
because the culture and traditions of Gaelic Galloway were oral, as
the language was lost, so was 600 years of history.
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