Gaelic to Scots in Galloway draft
This is a first draft of my contribution to the Gaelic Galloway Conference 8 Septmber 2018 on the transition from Gaelic to Scots in Galloway. Over the next few weeks it will be revised to fit my 30 minute time slot and to take account of counter-arguments to my proposal that even before 1560 the south-west of Scotland was no longer solidly Gaelic speaking as Gaelic poet, scholar and teacher William Neill stated in 1983.
Researching
the Lowland Clearances / Galloway Levellers ten years ago I was
shocked to realise how completely the historic (12th
century to early 18th century) local landscape had been
erased between 1760 and 1800. In the Highlands, many of the ruins of
townships evicted during the Clearances remain as silent witnesses.
In the Galloway lowlands, nothing survives of the cottars' (rural
workers) crofts since the stones they were built of were used to
create enclosures around the land they had been driven from.
In
the Highlands, the fierce invective of Gaelic poets helped to keep
the memory of what had been lost through Clearance alive. In Galloway
only one ballad, composed in Scots, commemorates the Galloway
Levellers resistance to Clearance in 1724.
But
even this act of defiance masks a deeper tragedy. For more than half
a millennium, Gaelic was the language of Galloway until it was
displaced by Scots. Researching this change, I expected to discover
that some traces of Galloway's Gaelic heritage had survived in folk
memory, if only as myth and legend. I found that nothing had
survived. The loss of Gaelic led to an erasure of Galloway's cultural
heritage as complete as the erasure of Galloway's physical heritage.
In
Galloway, the past really is another country.
In 1972,
I had the opportunity to learn Gaelic at Castle Douglas High School.
The class was taught by William Neill who was a teacher at the school
as well as being a Gaelic poet and scholar. Mr Neill, as I still
think of him, had been born in Prestwick in 1922. As a teenager he
would visit the harbour at Ayr where he was fascinated to hear Gaelic
being spoken by fishermen from the Western Isles and set out to learn
their language.
Although I
failed to learn very much Gaelic from William Neill, I recall him
telling us that Gaelic was still spoken in Galloway in the time of
Mary, Queen of Scots. In article he wrote for the Galloway News in
1983 about Gaelic farm names
he said " Before 1560, the whole of the south-west was solidly Gaelic
speaking according to modern scholarship.” 1560 is a date
associated with the Reformation in Scotland suggesting that William
Neill saw the Reformation as bringing about the transition from
Gaelic to Scots in Galloway. This afternoon I will argue that the
Reformation marked the end of the transition from Gaelic to Scots in
Galloway not its beginning
The
Galloway News article shows Mr Neill standing in front of the sign
for Drumskelly, one of several farms with Gaelic names in
Crossmichael parish. Before 1560, the farms in Crossmichael parish
belonged to Lincluden collegiate church.
A rental
roll for Lincluden in 1557 lists the farms owned and their tenants.
Among the farms listed are Hillowton and Gerranton, both near Castle
Douglas. Michael Hillow was a tenant of Hillowtown and John and
Ninane Garrane were tenants in Gerranton. Chapmanton is also listed,
but there were no Chapmans living there. Along with Blackpark, these
are all Scots farm names which show that in Crossmichael parish at
least, the people had ceased to be solidly Gaelic speaking sometime
before 1560.
image
Lincluden rental roll
In
neighbouring Kelton parish a list of farms compiled in 1456 includes
two farms with Scots names- Carlingwark and Whitepark. However, the
same list shows that next to Whitepark but in Buittle parish were the
farms of Cuil and Corra, both Gaelic farm names. In 1324 king Robert
I granted Buittle to James Douglas and the charter describes the
boundaries of Buittle. Torrs in Kelton is mentioned but not Whitepark
nor Cuil and Corra which were then still part of a large farm now
called Breoch.
Image Cuil
corra map
Cuil and
Corra are still not included as separate farms in a Buittle rental
roll from 1375 so must have been formed and given their Gaelic names
sometime between then and 1456. Carlingwark and Whitepark will have
been given their Scots names in this same period. They were part of
the arable grange lands attached to Threave castle which constructed
for Archibald the Grim after he gained control of eastern Galloway in
1369 and bought western Galloway from Thomas Fleming, earl of Wigtown
for £500 in 1372.
Archibald,
like his father James Douglas, was a Bruce loyalist. His task was to
rein in the Gaelic kindreds of Galloway who had supported Edward
Balliol against Robert the Bruce's son king David II. Archibald's
success is shown on his seal where two 'wild men of Galloway' are
support his coat of arms.
Image
archibald seal
What did
Douglas rule mean for the leading Gaelic families of Galloway?
For Sir
John McCulloch of Mochrum parish it meant losing his lands to a Scot
from Midlothian. At Lincluden in September 1414, McCulloch resigned
his lands to Archibald, 4th earl of Douglas, lord of Galloway and
Annandale and son of Archibald the Grim.
In October
1414, Archibald directed Uhtred McDowall, sheriff of Wigtown to
transfer McCulloch's lands to William Hay of Locharwart, which is in
Midlothian. Hay had been appointed sheriff of Peebles by Archibald in
1407.
But in
1418, Hay complained to Archibald that he 'could nocht gett payt his
mailis ' due to the 'etting', which means the grazing of cattle or
horses on growing crops of grass or grain' of his lands which as a
result were 'skaithit', that is harmed. Archibald responded by
instructing Robert Crichton of Sanquhar and his 'fellow Mcgyewe' ,
who were his officers on the west side of the Cree to 'distress'
those responsible until they fully amended their fault. John
McCulloch is the person most likely to be responsible for the etting
and so would have been 'distressed' by Archibald's officers.
Evidence
that Gaelic survived the period of Douglas rule comes from two
sources. From 1487 there is a complaint that John Brown, the Scots
speaking vicar of Kirkcolm 'does not understand and cannot speak
intelligibly the language (that is Gaelic) of the place in which it
is situate, to the detriment of souls…'
The
second source is research by John Bannerman and others which
revealed the existence of at least three generation of clarsach
players in Wigtownshire between 1471 and 1513. The last of these was
Roland or Lachlann McBratney who played for king James IV and may
also have been employed by the prior of Whithorn. In one of the royal
treasurer's accounts of payments to Lachlann, he is described as an
Irish, that is Gaelic, harper. In another from 1503, he was paid 5
crowns for a journey to 'the isles'.
Image
whithorn kintyre gigha
Significantly,
another branch of his family were renowned harpists living on Gigha
and Bannerman speculates that Lachlann is likely to have visited
them. It has even been suggested that the Gigha branch of the family
originally came from Galloway via the Priory of Whithorn's lands in
south Kintyre. Unfortunately, although Gigha was part of a cultural
network which linked Gaelic Scotland and Ireland in the fifteenth
century, Galloway does not seem to have been included in the network.
One
explanation for this may be that by the later fifteenth century
Gaelic Galloway was becoming more Scottish.
A major
influence on the shift from Gaelic to Scots in Galloway were the
burghs of Dumfries, Kirkcudbright, Wigtown and Whithorn. In the far
west there was also Innermessan until it was supplanted by Stranraer
in the seventeenth century.
Part
of the burghs' importance are their locations. Kirkcudbright
lies at the southern end of a broad strip of good quality farm land
roughly 8 miles wide by 30 miles long, stretching from the Fleet to
the Nith at Dumfries and taking in the flood plains of the Dee and
the Urr. A narrower strip of good quality land runs along the coast
from Kirkcudbright to the Nith estuary and up to Dumfries.
In
1755, even before the towns of Gatehouse, Castle Douglas and
Dalbeattie had been established, 70% of the population of the
Stewartry lived in this lowland area which was predominantly an
arable farming district.
Map
image
In
1684 parish lists of all the inhabitants of Wigtownshire and
Minnigaff over the age of 12 were compiled. The lists give the number
of occupants of over 650 farms as well as the burghs and the village
of Minnigaff.
Even
for the overwhelmingly upland, highland even, parish of Minnigaff,
54% of the population lived in Minnigaff village and farms on the
fertile carse land beside the Cree.
In
Wigtownshire, only 10% of the population lived in farms on poorer
quality land, spread across the upper parts of Inch, New Luce,
Kirkcowan and Penninghame parishes.
40%
of the Wigtownshire population lived in the Machars parishes of
Mochrun, Glasserton, Kirkinner, Sorbie, Wigtown and Whithorn.
Although only 7% of the total Wigtownshire population lived in the
burghs of Wigtown and Whithorn, they formed 19% of the population of
the Machars.
Map
image
The
Wigtown Burgh Court books survive for the years 1513 to 1534. They
are written in Scots and have been analysed by linguist Joanna
Kopakzyk who concluded that the language used was typical of the
Scots written and spoken across Lowland Scotland in the sixteenth
century. She also noted that ‘the Burgh Court Book has no passages
written in Gaelic or translated into or from Gaelic. There is no
mention of interpreters needed for trials or for documents, therefore
one may infer that Scots was a well established means of
communication, at least at the administrative level in the burgh.’
book
image
If
Scots was already well established in Wigtown by 1513, how far did
that influence extend? In his recent book on place names in the the
Moors and Machars of Wigtownshire, John McQueen showed that farms
recorded in Penninghame parish as the Scots Meikle and Little Elrik
in 1506 were then recorded as the Gaelic Heilrikmore and Neilrikbeg
in 1507. He commented that this suggests that Gaelic as well as Scots
was probably spoken in the area at this time.
The
farms are 9 miles north west of Wigtown. If Gaelic was still spoken
in upper Penninghame in 1507, it must have been in retreat since
their Gaelic names were not used again and it is as Meikle and Little
Eldrig that the farms became known.
Eldrig
map
Significantly,
a circle with a radius of 9 miles centred on Wigtown takes in most of
the Machars as well as the more fertile parts of Penninghame and
Kirkcowan. When the burgh of Whithorn and is immediate area is
included, this means that by the beginning of the sixteenth century,
the Scots language was well established in the Machars.
On
the other hand, we know that the population of Kirkcolm parish in the
Rhinns was still Gaelic speaking in 1487. In 1684, the Rhinns,
excluding Inch parish, accounted for 29% of Wigtownshire's
population. Although the burgh of Innermessan was in Inch, it would
not have been as large in 1500 as Stranraer was in 1684, when
Stranraer already had a population greater than Whithorn's.
As
a small burgh, Innermessan's linguistic influence was limited and did
not extend very far into the Rhinns. However, an indication that the
market economy was expanding comes from 1495 when the village of
Ballinclach, now Glenluce, became a burgh of barony with a weekly
market.
Map
image innermessan glenluce
In
the Stewartry, the size and importance of Dumfries is likely to have
made Scots the dominant language west of the Urr for some time before
1500. Much closer in size to Wigtown than Dumfries, Kirkcudbright's
Scots footprint would have covered an area between the Fleet and the
Urr and stretched up to the edge of the Glenkens. As a consequence of
the combined influence of Dumfries and Kirkcudbright, in 1500 up to
70% of the population of the Stewartry were potentially Scots
speakers.
If
the balance between Gaelic and Scots use had begun to shift in favour
of Scots between 1455 and 1500, what happened over the next 60
years? Written evidence for the use of Scots increases since more
legal documents and letters survive. For example, in the protocol
book of Herbert Anderson, dated 23 May 1541 Alexander Gordon of
Ardis, now Airds, in the Glenkens made a declaration in Scots
concerning the disposal of the estate of the deceased Ninian
Glendinning of Parton.
Protcal
book image
Perhaps,
as a non-native family, the Gordons of the Glenkens had never been
Gaelic speakers, but the family of Thomas McDowall of Glenluce
certainly were. In 1556, Thomas represented his grandmother Janet
McDowall at the Baron Court of Glenluce where she was accused of
passing on her tenancy of Sinniness farm to another person without
permission. The case lasted several days and the record of the
proceedings shows it was conducted in Scots. While Janet McDowall
could have grown up in a Gaelic speaking household, her grandson was
a fluent Scots speaker able to hold his own in the baron court and
even managed to get the case transferred to Edinburgh. Yet as the
grandson of a tenant farmer, he was of low social status.
Sinniness
image
Could
Thomas McDowall have spoken Gaelic as well as Scots? Quite possibly
he did. However, the Scots language in Galloway was soon to get a
powerful ally- the Reformed Church.
Alexander
Gordon of Airds is reputed to have pioneered the Refomation Galloway
in the 1530s when he secretly read from an English translation of the
bible to his family and his tenants in Airds wood. However, this was
an essentially private affair, very different from the national
Reformation which began in 1560.
airds
of kells image
The
Reformation in Scotland was deeply influenced by Calvinism. Robert
Kingdon has described Calvinism as
a
serious attempt to control human behaviour in all its variety. It
meant that the church had a responsibility not only to present true
Christian doctrine but also to shape true Christian behaviour. And
this responsibility, Calvinists believed, could not be left to
individuals or to governments. It had to be assumed, to as great a
degree as possible, by the church… which became a remarkably
intrusive institution, penetrating every aspect of life.
In
other words, the new Calvinist faith was about much more than simply
requiring the faithful to attend church on Sunday. It also sought to
extend its influence into the home, to shape and influence family
life. Men, women and children were all expected to have an
understanding of the Christian faith and to be able to demonstrate
that understanding by reciting the key principles of the Reformed
religion.
Image
john knox
If
the expansion of Scots had pushed Gaelic from the public sphere into
the private sphere of home and family in remoter areas, then the
effect of the Reformation was the intrusion of Scots and bible
English into even these last refuges of the language. Since this
intrusion was driven by powerful religious beliefs, it had the
ability to overwhelm what was already a language in retreat.
What
happened next is very interesting. Across Galloway and the wider
south-west, the new religion put down very strong roots. So strong
were those roots that despite the best efforts of successive Stuart
kings backed up by periods of violent suppression in the seventeenth
century, the new religion endured. As a political, that is
anti-Jacobite, movement it was still influential in 1715 and was
drawn on by the Galloway Levellers in their uprising of 1724.
It
is possible that the ideological fervour of Calvinism allowed it to
become a substitute for the traditional culture and identity which
Galloway had lost. Gaelic had been an essential part of Galloway's
culture for centuries and had survived the political dissolution of
the lordship of Galloway. Over generations, Gaelic had become
embodied in the landscape. The Gaelic names of farms, rivers and
hills inextricably entangled the region's natural heritage with its
cultural heritage.
Neither
the Scots language nor a Scottish identity provided an adequate
replacement for what had been the overlapping identities of language,
land and people. At a critical point, when Gaelic Galloway was fading
away but before Scots Galloway was fully established, the Calvinists
were able to step in with their vision of a Godly Galloway.
Tragically,
the Reformers revolutionary aspirations make 1560 something of a Year
Zero. By the seventeenth century, the people of Galloway had become
more familiar with biblical history than their own. Even if some
parts of Galloway's traditional Gaelic lore had been preserved in
Scots, the indifference - even hostility- of the new faith to such
superstitious folk tales would have hindered their transmission.
Image
national covenant
The
complete erasure of Galloway's Gaelic history from popular
consciousness is starkly revealed by Andrew Symson's 'Large
Description of Galloway' which he began compiling in 1684. While the
Large Description is packed full of contemporary information about
seventeenth century Galloway, the 1000 years which separate St Ninian
from the murder of Thomas McLellan of Bombie by 'the Black Douglas'
in 1453 are a blank.
It
was left to William McKenzie to recover the past with his 'History of
Galloway' printed and published by John Nicholson in Kirkcudbright in
1841. By then, the process of agricultural improvement- the Lowland
Clearances- had swept away the medieval fermtouns, the cottars and
their crofts - even the fields of rig and furrow that had been
cultivated for centuries were obliterated.
Image
gerranton today
The
totality of the physical erasure of Galloway's past was brought home
to me when I began researching the Galloway Levellers and discovered
that no traces of the Galloway landscape that they knew have
survived. Researching the transition from Gaelic to Scots in Galloway
I have found a similar cultural erasure of Galloway's Gaelic past.
Of
course, just as specialists in data recovery can retrieve and restore
information apparently erased from a computer's hard drive, so the
expert knowledge of historians has recovered most of what Galloway's
people had forgotten of our past. But sadly, even tragically, little
of this knowledge has passed over into popular awareness.
However,
rather then end on a downbeat note I will attempt some optimism.
There is a campaign to make Galloway a national park. A key element
of the campaign focusses on the cultural heritage of the 'Kingdom of
Galloway'- which of course was a Gaelic speaking kingdom.
Image
nat park