Siol nan Gaidheal forum

Sori i "double post" makim bilong mipela. Rong bilong mipela. (something like that)

Soraidh aidh meid a dubal post dair. Ma mobail fon is cac. Meibidh dios is hu braid sgots siud bi ritin.

_________________
"The thistle rises and forever will" - MacDiarmid

NB - I am not the same person as the poster "Scottish republic".

http://www.dsl.ac.uk/SCOTSHIST/output4. ... rigins.htm


found this which shows what an extremely difficult subject this is to explore . so frustrating that so much information has been lost and destroyed over the centuries.




2 The origins and spread of Scots

The distinctive linguistic mix of Scots was created by the language contacts of the late OE and Pre-Scots (PreSc) periods, and we must therefore consider the historical background to the language at this time in some detail. Unfortunately, the early history of Scots is obscure, to the extent that we are not certain whether the language descends primarily from the Anglian of Lothian or from the Anglo-Danish of Yorkshire four or five hundred years later, or from a mixture, in unknown proportions, of the two.

Because of the depredations of the Vikings, little OE survives from any part of Northumbria. For the same reason, and also because of the carrying off of the national records by Edward I of England (to be lost in subsequent centuries), the destruction of the great monasteries in Border warfare, and the vandalism of the Reformation, the documentary history of Scotland is thin, in any language, for the crucial centuries in which Scots emerged. And indeed the documentary record may not have been so rich to begin with as further south. Our understanding of this period therefore relies heavily on place-names and on archaeology. Since the evidence of archaeology is still coming in, it plays a particularly influential role in shaping new perceptions.

2.1 The Angles




The Angles were a Germanic people from what is now Schleswig-Holstein (the southern part of the Jutland peninsula), on the fringes of the Roman Empire. Together with neighbouring tribes of Saxons and Jutes they first came to Roman Britain as auxiliary troops. (There is however no specific evidence of Anglo-Saxons amongst the Roman legions in what is now Scotland.) When the Romans withdrew from Britain at the beginning of the 5th century, the Romanised tribes retained some links with Roman institutions through the Christian church, but in terms of secular power Roman Britain broke up into territories ruled by warlords, and was exposed in the west and north to the threat of the unconquered tribes, which in Scotland meant the Picts and Scots north of the Antonine Wall (see Map 1).[6] The Anglo-Saxons were invited into this volatile situation as mercenaries. There is now a substantial body of archaeological evidence for the presence of individual Anglo-Saxon strong-arm men or small bands of adventurers in Scotland, both north and south of the Antonine Wall, from the 5th century onwards, as well as Anglo-Saxon craftsmen whose influence is seen in Pictish sculpture (Proudfoot and Aliaga-Kelly, 1996).[7] Within a century and a half, the Anglo-Saxons established themselves as conquerors over most of what was to become England, with the northernmost kingdom of the Angles, Bernicia, extending into southern Scotland.[8]

The kingdom of Bernicia was founded in 547 and expanded after a victory at Degsastan in 603 (identified as Dawston in Liddesdale or Addinston in Berwickshire). The kingdom of Northumbria was created shortly afterwards by the incorporation of Deira to the south. Edinburgh was perhaps captured from the Britons during the reign of Oswald (633-41), allowing the occupation and settlement of Lothian (in the narrow sense of the lands between the Forth and the Lammermuirs).[9]

It had until recently been accepted that the Angles established themselves in the south-east of Scotland at a relatively late date - the fourth or fifth generation from the original invaders of Britain (Lowe, 1999: 10). This chronology was based on the apparent absence of pagan place-names,[10] and on the absence of names of the singular -ing type, which in England were thought to represent the earliest layer of Anglo-Saxon names, and the probable absence also of the nominative plural -ingas (Nicolaisen, 1976: 71). However, the chronology of the earliest Anglo-Saxon names has been questioned, with -hām names emerging as the earliest, and it has been pointed out also that pagan names are generally lacking north of the Humber, apparently because of later Christian renaming, so it may not be necessary to suppose that the first settlements in what is now Scotland were substantially later than those in the rest of Bernicia (i.e. perhaps three generations after the first settlement in England) (see Cameron, 1996: 66ff., 119; Hough, 1997).[11]









Nicolaisen (1976; also in McNeill and MacQueen (eds.), 1996 - hereafter ASH) has shown how the spread of settlements can be mapped by the distribution of selected name types (Maps 2 and 3: cf. the bōtl and wīc types with the earlier hām, ingahām and ingtūn types). Amongst the earliest are those with ingahām, as in Lyneryngham ‘the settlement of the people by the Linn’ (now East Linton) (Lowe, 1999: 33). This name is one of a number showing the interaction of Anglian and Cumbric: linn is a Cumbric word meaning ‘pool’. A mixed Anglian-Cumbric culture at the leading edge of Anglian settlement is also indicated by some of the archaeological evidence. As Proudfoot and Aliaga-Kelly point out, "Anglian Northumbrian settlement may have developed through relationships with the British landowners or farmers, independent of fluctuations in power in Northumbria and its neighbours" (1995: 23). Apart from some areas such as East Lothian that were already relatively treeless in the late Roman period (Patterson, 1999), the land had not reached its carrying capacity, even within the technological limits of the period. At this time there were still internal frontiers of cultivation, and land could be obtained without necessarily displacing the resident population. Nevertheless, as we shall see (§4.2.2.1), there seems to be little influence of p-Celtic on Older Scots.

Under Oswy (or Oswiu) (642-71), the Cumbric kingdom of Rheged (which may or may not have extended into Galloway: see Map 1), was acquired by marriage around 645. Brooke's (1991) analysis of the Anglian names and archaeological evidence in Galloway shows that a succession of different powers - British, Roman, Anglian - were in control of the coastal defences and strategic inland passes. It is uncertain when the Angles took control of Galloway, but they may have held as much as half of the accessible land, and were present as free peasants as well as overlords. They were also well established in Cumberland, on the other side of the Solway Firth (Higham, 1985).

The relatively isolated names containing bo[ō]tl ‘a dwelling’ (Maybole) and wi[ī]c ‘farm’ (Prestwick and others) in the west (see Maps 2 and 3) "seem to point to some kind of Anglian overlordship or sporadic influence in the area at a fairly early date" (Nicolaisen, 1976: 79-80).

The northward expansion of Northumbria was halted by the Picts at the battle of Nechtansmere in 685 (possibly commemorated on the Pictish symbol stone at Aberlemno). The battle site is usually identified as Dunnichen Moss near Forfar. In an expansion to the west, Kyle was annexed from Strathclyde around 750.

What is now Scotland south of the Forth-Clyde isthmus remained part of Northumbria for about three hundred years until, with Northumbria weakened by the attacks of the Vikings (see below), it was ceded to the Scots. Exactly when the Scots acquired Lothian (in the broad sense of Scottish Northumbria from the Forth to the Tweed) is unclear - dates ranging from 973 (Lothian ceded by Edgar) to 1018 (Scottish victory at Carham) are given in different sources. However, Barrow considers that the supposed cession of Lothian simply accepted a fait accompli and that this territory had fallen under Scottish control already. Long before 973 "the Scots were exerting pressure upon, and indeed almost certainly appropriating for settlement, the territory north of Lammermuir" (1962: 12),[12] hence the large number of Gaelic place-names in Lothian. Nicolaisen contrasts baile 'hamlet' and achadh 'field' names - the absence of the latter in the south-east of Scotland suggests that the small numbers of Gaelic speakers in the east were "landowners rather than tillers of the soil" (1976: 128) (see Maps 4 and 5).[13]









The disruption of Bernicia by the incursions of Scots from the north and Danes from the south is illustrated by the fact that few of the large enclosed Anglian sites, such as Hoddom (near the site of the Ruthwell Cross) or St Abb's Head (Berwickshire) developed into the commercial towns of the medieval period: only Whithorn and Dunbar in southern Scotland "made the vital step from villa regia or monastery to medieval urban centre" (Lowe, 1999: 55).

In the west in the 10th century, there was a resurgence of Cumbric power, with Strathclyde acquiring territory as far south as the North Riding of Yorkshire.[14] In 945 Edmund of Wessex overran Strathclyde and conferred it on Malcolm I,[15] but the Britons regained their independence, until their royal line died out c1018, and the Cumbric kingdom came under Scottish rule.[16]

The squeezing of Northumbria between the Danes and the Scots eventually created the Border as we now know it. Barrow writes:

In a fashion which seems awkward and unhistorical, the border cut both Bernicia and Cumbria in half ... ... The Solway-Tweed line brought under Scottish rule two tracts of non-Scottish territory, British on the west, English on the east ... ... their acquisition compelled Scottish kings and their subjects to find some fresh formula in which to express their relationship. It was found in the feudal concept of the regnum Scottorum or regnum Scotie, the kingdom of the Scots or of Scotland. Unlike Scotia, Scotland properly so called, which stopped short at the Forth, the kingdom of Scotland reached south to Tweed and Solway, and incorporated until well into the twelfth century land still regarded, racially or geographically, as Anglia, England. (1962: 20)

Nevertheless, Anglian, in the form of its descendant Older Scots, eventually became the dominant language of the most fertile and densely inhabited parts of Scotland, superseding Gaelic (which had itself displaced p-Celtic languages). A number of factors, all of them connected with the feudal system, aided this spread of Anglian beyond the areas that it had already reached by the start of the feudal period (Lothian and the South-West, together with coastal Fife and Angus). Before we examine the expansion of Anglian, however, we must first turn to the Scandinavian incursions.

2.2 The Scandinavians

A very thorough treatment of the Scandinavians in Scotland is provided by Crawford (1987). There are several distinct areas of Scandinavian settlement in Scotland (see Map 6). The Scandinavians did not become the dominant power or population group anywhere in Lowland Scotland south of Caithness, but they were present in sufficient numbers to leave a large legacy of place-names.[17] ON may also have influenced the Anglian speech of Scotland, but if so this would be largely masked by the later influence of Anglo-Danish (see below).

2.2.1 The Northern and Western Isles

In the last decade of the 8th century, the Western Isles and Ireland began to be raided by Vikings from what is now Norway. Part of the Viking strategy was to establish pirate lairs around the coasts and archipelagos, including Orkney, followed later by defended settlements based on trading and extortion. The Scandinavian presence in the Western Isles does not concern us here, as the linguistic contact there was with Gaelic. In the Northern Isles, there were farming and fishing settlements by the mid-9th century, backed up by the power of the kings of Norway. From this base, Caithness was also wrested from the Picts, but attempts to take Moray were unsuccessful. By the 11th century, the earls of Orkney (whose jurisdiction included Shetland) were in a dual political relationship, owing allegiance to the king of Scotland for their lands in Caithness and to the king of Norway for the Northern Isles.

The place-names of the Northern Isles are almost entirely ON in character, with little trace of the earlier p-Celtic language. The language spoken throughout the Older Scots period was a dialect of Norwegian, known as Norn (q.v., and McArthur ed., 1992, 1996 s.v. Norn). From 1379, the Earldom of Orkney was in Scottish hands, and the extant documentary record of Scots in Orkney begins in 1433. In 1468/9, Orkney and Shetland were pledged to Scotland for a dowry that was never paid, and thereafter the Northern Isles were dominated by Lowland rulers, administrators and clergy, with Scots as the sociolinguistically 'high' language of the islands from the 16th century or earlier.[18] In Caithness, Norn was apparently not entirely replaced by Gaelic by the time Scots became important there, probably the 15th century (Waugh, 1986).

2.2.2 Lothian

Little can be said about the linguistic implications of the scattering of place-names in the East of Scotland, except that some pioneering individuals may have formed part of the linguistic and cultural mix in the pre-Norman period. Taylor (1995, 2004) suggests that these names may be linked to the pro-Scandinavian policy pursued by the 10th century kings of Alba (apparently as a buffer against Wessex):

Within this general context it would come as no surprise to find the Scottish kings of the tenth century encouraging limited Scandinavian settlement within their kingdom, especially within those areas in which the Scots themselves were only beginning to establish real and lasting control. The details of the expansion of Alba into both Lothian and Strathclyde is a process which is still not fully understood, but the tenth century would appear to be the period when there was a major shift in Lothian from Northumbrian and towards Scottish control. For at least part of the century the border between Scottish and Northumbrian spheres of influence was formed by the Lammermuir Hills, and it may well be significant that the remarkable cluster of bý-names in Humbie parish E[ast] Lo[thian] … sits immediately below these hills’ north-eastern edge, some sixteen km from the coast. The question is justified as to whether this cluster is perhaps evidence of Scandinavian settlement countenanced or even positively encouraged by the kings of Alba on the very south-east frontier of their expanding kingdom (2004).





Fellows-Jensen (1989-90) is inclined to treat the bý-names to the south of Clyde as part of the same pattern as Crawford's area 4 (see Map 6 here), [19] and Taylor agrees. The history of Strathclyde in this period is somewhat unclear, but "the overall picture is similar to that in Lothian: of increasing Scottish control … conditions would have been ideal for sporadic settlement of Scandinavians actively encouraged by the encroaching Scottish hegemony" (Taylor, 2004).

Most other Scandinavian names were probably given by Anglo-Danes moving northwards (see below). There is a brief period c1100 when men with Norse names like Thor, Cnut and Swein figure as witnesses to feudal charters in South-East Scotland (Murison, 1974). Such names appear also in occasional place-names in the South-East, but mostly with Old English or Gaelic generic elements, e.g. Dolphinston (containing the Scandinavian personal name Dólgfinnr), suggesting people of Scandinavian descent, though we cannot tell whether they were ON speakers (Nicolaisen, 1976: 114). The multicultural flavour of the time is summed up for us by one Liulf son of Elgi, a freeholder of Coldinghamshire in the late 12th century, who named his five sons Cospatric (Brittonic), Gamal (Scandinavian), Macbeth (Gaelic), Reginald (Anglo-Norman) and Eggard (Old English) (Barrow, 1980: 34).

2.2.3 The Danelaw

From c790 onwards, what is now England was also subject to Viking attack, mainly by Danes. They over-wintered for the first time, in Kent, in 850/1, and the escalating attacks culminated in the arrival of a micel here (great army) in 865. The Danes eventually conquered and settled the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the central part of the country, leaving only Wessex and the northern part of Northumbria (the former Bernicia) under Anglo-Saxon control. The boundary of the Danelaw with Wessex was settled in the 880's by a treaty between King Alfred and King Guthrum. In 902, the Norse were expelled from Dublin, and a period of Norse settlement, mainly in the west of England, followed.

The nature of the Danish population movement has been much debated and seems insoluble. Keynes helpfully summarises the competing models:

We might suppose, quite simply, that the conquest and initial settlement of parts of eastern and northern England was conducted by members of large Viking armies, followed immediately (in the late ninth century) by a veritable peasant migration from Denmark … on a scale sufficient to swamp the indigenous population and to produce a distinctively 'Danish' society. Alternatively, we might suppose that the settlements were conducted by the remnants of relatively small Viking armies, whose political dominance enabled them to exert an influence (not least on language, and so on place-names) out of all proportion to their actual number; and that it was the descendants of these old soldiers … who expanded from the areas of initial settlement … Again, we might suppose that the initial settlements were on a small scale, made by members of the Viking armies who not unnaturally established themselves in the most advantageous positions; and that … further settlements took place on a much larger scale behind this protective screen, amounting to a secondary migration from Scandinavia … Or we might suppose that the settlements in the late ninth century were conducted by the remnants of relatively large Viking armies, … that from the outset these settlers mixed and intermarried with the indigenous English population .. creating an 'Anglo-Danish' society … (1997: 68).

What is clear is that the Danes had indeed an enormous influence on place-names[20] and language (see §4.2.2.3). The mixed dialect of English that resulted is sometimes known as Anglo-Danish or Anglo-Scandinavian.









A 'Great Scandinavian Belt', where ON-derived words and forms are particularly numerous, can be observed in the dialects of Modern English, with its focal area having its southern edge at the Humber in the east, and Samuels (1985) presents evidence for the existence of a similar linguistic and place-name division in the ME period. A number of Scandinavian sound-changes of the period, including the one that arguably produces scho/she from OE hēo (see §7.3.2), occur only within the focal area of the Belt. Scandinavian place-names, however, are just as numerous south of the Humber in Lincolnshire (see Map 7)[21], so this focal area appears to reflect relatively late survival of ON rather than density of the initial settlement.[22]

2.2.4 Cumbria, including Galloway

We use the term Cumbria in a wide sense here, from Strathclyde to the furthest extent of Cumbrian territory in the North Riding of Yorkshire. There are few indications of how long the Cumbric language survived. By the beginning of the feudal period, Galloway was a mashlum of different language groups, so the naming of 'Galwegians' in some charters (up to 1179 x 90) is difficult to interpret in linguistic terms. Two references to Walenses (Welsh, i.e. British or Cumbrians) in charters of Malcolm IV (1153-65) are more clearly references to a language group (Barrow, ed., 1960: nos. 240, 258), and there is also a mention of Cumbrenses in a charter of David I (Barrow ed., 1999: No.15).[23]

There appears to have been a peaceful settlement of Scandinavians in Cumberland and Westmorland between about 920 and 945 (when Edmund of Wessex handed the Cumbric kingdom over to the Scots). Higham points out that the distribution of place-names extends far outside the areas of artefacts, so "unless we are dealing with a grossly distorted pattern of artefact recovery" (1985: 45), this suggests Scandinavian settlers without a Scandinavian aristocracy. Around the head of the Solway (including the concentration of bý-names in eastern Dumfriesshire, see Map 7[24]), the place-name evidence suggests that Scandinavian speakers were on poorer sites. This region of Scandinavian influence appears to extend northwards into Lanarkshire, on the evidence of beck 'stream' names (see ASH: 67).[25] Galwegians were often mentioned in charters concerning Ayr and Lanark (Sharp, 1927: 108).

A characteristic feature of the place-names of South-West Scotland and Cumberland is the 'inversion compound', in which the generic element comes first, as in Gaelic, e.g. Crossraguel. The majority of these names in South-West Scotland contain the element kirk (e.g. Kirkcudbright), which is particularly problematic to interpret: although ON in origin,[26] it supplanted OE-derived chirch, and became a productive element in PreSc (Nicolaisen, 1976: 108ff., and see below): some of the names first appear as late as the 15th century. The earlier of the names may be the work of a mixed Gaelic/Norse speaking population from Ireland or the Hebrides. However, place-name scholars agree that the patterning of the clearly ON place-names (see Map 7 and ASH: 67) links the Scandinavian settlers around the head of the Solway with the Danes across the Pennines in the North Riding of Yorkshire,[27] rather than the Norse, or Gaelic/Norse, who were however present elsewhere in Cumberland and Westmorland, and perhaps in Galloway.[28]

Samuels did not explore whether the Great Scandinavian Belt stopped at what is now the Border,[29] but this question is taken up by Kries (1999), who argues the case for seeing the dialect of the South-West not only as a continuation of the Belt, but as part of its most densely Scandinavian band or focal area. This part of Scotland would accordingly fall within the area where Anglo-Danish was created, although it was undoubtedly the later influx from Yorkshire that was crucial in dispersing this influence throughout urban Scotland.

2.3.1 The Anglo-Normans and their followers

There was intermittent Norman influence on the English court for half a century before the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. The exiled English princess Margaret (Saint Margaret), the wife of Malcolm III (Canmore), introduced continental influences into the Scottish church. Like the Angles, the Normans had already been seen in Scotland, as mercenaries. The first were probably those who fought on both sides with the future Malcolm III and Macbeth (Barrow, 1973: 279; 1981: 26).

When Malcolm III was killed (in 1093), his brother Donald Bán expelled the Normans and the southern English brought in under Malcolm and Margaret, but he was driven out by Malcolm's eldest son Duncan, trained as a knight by the Normans, who in turn held the throne for less than a year and was forced to dismiss his Anglo-Norman retainers. Edgar took the throne in 1097 with the help of William II (Rufus) of England.[30] The next king, Alexander I, built castles and created knight feus on royal estates. But it was with the reign of David I, beginning in 1124, that Normans were brought in in large numbers. David I, who had spent much of his early life at the English court, greatly accelerated the process of feudalisation, so that by the end of his reign (1153) most of Scotland south of the Forth, apart from Galloway and Carrick, had been allocated to tenants, almost all newcomers, holding by military service. North of the Forth there was settlement in Fife, Gowrie, Angus and the Mearns, and the Aberdeenshire districts of the Garioch and Formartine. The Earl of Moray rebelled in 1130 and after defeating him, David I annexed the whole province (at that time a very large territory) for the crown and set up foreign feudatories there.

Later described as "ane sair sanct to the croun" (see sanct B 2 (3)), David I continued the process begun by Saint Margaret of endowing Continental monastic orders in Scotland. As Sharp (1927: 123) points out, David I perhaps valued the Normans as much for their administrative as for their military talents, and it was from the ranks of churchmen, educated in schools run by churchmen, that administrators were drawn. As with secular migrants, the clerical migrants came from establishments in England as well as directly from the Continent. Crucially for the spread of Lowland Scots, David I also founded burghs (see below) in almost every part of his kingdom outside the Highlands (Barrow, 1981: 31-2).

The Clyde valley was systematically feudalised by Malcolm IV in the mid-12th century. A colony of Flemings was planted, hence the place-names Thankerton (after Tancard), Wiston (Wice), Lamington (Lambin), and Symington (Simon Loccard) (Barrow, 1973: 289). The penetration of Galloway was apparently difficult – there was "a violent anti-foreign reaction" that lasted from 1174 to 1185 (Barrow, 1981: 49).

The Anglo-Norman era lasted, Barrow tells us, from 1097 (the beginning of the reign of Edgar) to 1296 when war broke out between England and Scotland. For large parts of the Norman period, Scotland was a client kingdom of Norman England, and the kings of Scotland "kept the doors of their kingdom open for settlement, and in particular for settlement from England and northern France... ... Scotland became a land of opportunity for sons whose fathers had not yet died, for younger sons with no patrimony to inherit" (Barrow, 1980: 7; see also ASH: 417). Barrow quotes the well-known comments of the Barnwell chronicler to the effect that "the more recent Scottish kings [Malcolm IV and William the Lion] count themselves Frenchmen by race, manners and speech, and retain only Frenchmen in their household" and of Jordan Fantosme that William the Lion "held only foreigners dear, and would never love his own people" (ibid.: 84).

Nevertheless, the Anglo-Norman period in Scotland differed from England in that Scotland had fewer external connections and retained its native dynasty and much of its native ruling class (ibid.: 153). Existing earldoms came to be held under feudal tenure, and the native magnates had to adapt by obtaining more land with which to reward new followers, who might be incomers, and by forming marriage alliances with the new order (ibid.: 87). There was nothing to prevent them obtaining lands in England, which they sometimes did.

Below the great lords, there was a stratum of tenants holding land by knight-service (the originals of the later laird class), many of whom were also migrants. "Although many of these families may have had continental ancestry, as far as Scotland was concerned they would to all intents and purposes have been English. Their speech was doubtless English, their experience was limited to England, and they would have regarded themselves as English by race" (Barrow, 1980: 82).

2.3.2 Feudalisation and the spread of OE/PreSc

Anglo-Norman French never acquired the importance in Scotland that it had in England (Murison, 1974: 77-8; Barrow, 1999). With rare exceptions, it was Latin that was employed in administration (which took on a new, bureaucratic form under the feudal system). French was a familial language amongst the Normans, and was of use for wider communication (with England and France), but OE (which we can now begin to call PreSc) was the shared language of feudal overlords (secular and clerical), their vassals, and the freemen of the burghs. The anglicising forces of the feudal system were:

• the burghs;
• the monasteries (see ASH: 340-1), and the parochial organisation of the church (see ibid.: 348ff.);
• the local administration, by sheriffs, of feudalised territories (see ibid: 192-5).[31]

The numbers of people involved were small, but the social shift was radical, and eventually brought about a linguistic shift from Gaelic to Scots throughout the Lowlands, as the native population was assimilated into the new social system.[32]

The burghs, as foci of internal and external trade, were crucial in the spread of Lowland Scots, although the population even of the largest would have numbered hundreds rather than thousands (Barrow, 1981: 94). There was a great deal of internal migration as new burghs were created, and this would have increased the homogeneity of the dialect that spread as a result. The population of the early burghs would have included Lothian Angles, and a handful of Gaelic speakers, and in the west and south-west Cumbrians (conceivably still Cumbric speakers). "For the most part, however, they seem to have come into Scotland from Flanders, the Rhineland, northern France, and England especially eastern England" (Barrow, 1981: 92).

Right up to the 16th century, Flemish craftsmen were encouraged to immigrate, and they formed small enclaves, seen in such place-names as Flemington, of which there are four in Scotland, or settled in the burghs, where they played a prominent part in public life. Their linguistic influence is reflected in burghal terminology, e.g. guild, kirkmaister. They were allowed to have their own 'Fleming law' (s.v. Fleming n.).

The Atlas of Scottish History to 1707 (ASH) gives a series of maps (pp.196-8 and 212-4) showing the spread of burghs up to 1500. The second of these is reproduced here as Map 9. Taylor (1994) considers that the critical mass of Scots speakers in the St Andrews area was reached c1200: a man named Martin gave his name to Balemartin (coined in the mid-12th century), with the Gaelic generic baile, while his son Gillemuire, who was alive around 1200, gave his name to Gilmerton, with the OE generic tūn.[33] Nevertheless, Gaelic continued to be used in Fife in the first half of the 14th century, on the evidence of names and nicknames that occur in a Dunfermline document containing genealogies of neifs, indicating a Gaelic-speaking environment at least amongst the unfree peasantry. The outward spread of PreSc from the burghs into the countryside is examined for the North-East by Nicolaisen (1999), who finds evidence of Gaelic/English (i.e. PreSc) bilingualism from the early 13th century, and a dramatic increase in PreSc place-names (mostly additional to the existing Celtic nomenclature, but sometimes replacive) in the 14th century. Sharp (1927: 382ff) similarly found that whereas even the east coast of Angus was strongly Gaelic in 1219, by the end of the 14th century, the districts around Forfar were inhabited mainly by Scots ("English") speakers. Scots must have begun quite early to differentiate into Northern, Central and Southern dialects (see §§5.2.5, 8.4 and Map 10).

Withers' map of "Linguistic Changes" (ASH: 427, reproduced here as Map 11) attempts the difficult task of estimating the boundary between Gaelic and Scots ("English") c1400 and c1500, on the basis of place-name and charter evidence. Of course, this boundary would not have been a thin line, but a transition zone with a mixed and often bilingual population (cf. the maps for later periods, where more detailed information is available, ibid.: 428-9).

2.3.3 Anglo-Danish population movement

In a chapter with important implications for the history of Scots, Barrow (1980) looks at the origins of the adventurers who came with the Norman lords into Scotland. By the time of the Anglo-Norman settlement in Scotland, it was fashionable to have surnames, mostly from the village or manor where the family held most of its property, so the Anglo-Normans in Scotland are mostly traceable. It was formerly thought that the Honour of Huntingdon (English lands held by the kings of Scotland as vassals, mainly in the shires of Huntingdon, Cambridge, Bedford and Northampton) was the single main source, because of its connections with the Scottish crown, but Barrow concludes that Somerset and Yorkshire were equally important. The remote English west country is a surprising source, and this suggests that the kings of Scotland (and their larger lords) were extremely eclectic in their recruitment of vassals (ibid.: 100).

_________________
abair ach beagan agus abair gu math e

The Yorkshire input is very interesting indeed from a linguistic point of view, as the English spoken by such migrants would have been Anglo-Danish.[34] "Although we cannot calculate the numbers of dependants involved, we may feel sure from the evidence available that the movement was large-scale in relation to the existing population … … I would argue strongly for the probability that Anglo-Norman settlement greatly reinforced the Middle English [i.e. Anglian] elements in Scots speech and culture, and had a decisive effect upon the texture of Scottish society as a whole" (ibid.: 117). Barrow also writes that "It is essential to grasp that whereas, for our purposes, the Picts, Britons, Irish, Scandinavians, and French appeared on the scene only once, the Anglo-Saxons came twice" (ibid.: 5-6). Following Barrow, Aitken accepts, in the Introduction to The Concise Scots Dictionary, that:

This Scandinavianized Northern English - or Anglo-Danish - was certainly the principal, though probably not the only, language of the early Scottish burghs and its contribution to the formation of the language later known as Scots is probably even greater than that of the original Old English of south-eastern and southern Scotland. (p.ix)

Barrow's discoveries solve a number of puzzles: the relative lack of p-Celtic loanwords; the relative lack of Gaelic loanwords, given the absorption of Lothian into the Kingdom of the Scots; and the abundance of Scandinavian influence.

The lack of Scottish texts between early OE and the late 14th century, apart from occasional words in Latin documents, makes it difficult to trace the transition from OE to OSc in detail. When the written record of Scots really begins again, we find that it is heavily ON-influenced. An important early witness is 'The Scone Gloss' (Facsimiles of National Manuscripts of Scotland vol. II: no. 19), an interlinear gloss written before c1360 in a Latin lease. In this text, the present participle ending is already the ON-derived -and, not the native OE -ende; and we even find the ON-derived -and suffix of the ordinal numeral: the four and tuentiand fat 'the four and twentieth vat'.





These puzzles are explained if the language that spread through the Lowlands in the feudal period owed more to an incoming population of Anglo-Danes than to the Lothian Angles, by then under Scottish domination for perhaps two centuries. To resolve the issue would require answers to such questions as: was there a Celtic influence in Lothian that later disappeared? How much Scandinavian influence was there already on the Anglian of Lothian? Was this distinguishable from Scandinavian influence on the Danelaw? Was there an abrupt or a gradual transition from Old English to borrowed Old Norse forms? Was the dialect of the Anglians in Scotland identifiably different from the dialect that spread to the early burghs?

To some extent, this period of the language's history will always remain obscure. However, some light will perhaps be shed on these matters by ongoing work on place-names and on OSc dialectology. A detailed study of the language of the earliest records is also much needed, and work has begun on this in the Institute for Historical Dialectology, University of Edinburgh. At the moment, a few pointers exist (and cf. §6.1, Vowel 2).

The Scandinavian element in Scots, Kries (1999) demonstrates, is a mixture of West and East Norse (the ancestors of Norwegian and Danish respectively). Unfortunately, the distinction between dialects of ON is less conclusive than we might wish. At the time of the Scandinavian settlements, West and East Norse had only begun to diverge, and conservative forms still remained in West Norse that would later become peculiarities of East Norse. Scholars in this field tell us that the few criteria that can be relied upon suggest both Norwegian and Danish populations in Cumberland and Westmorland (Fellows-Jensen, 1985a, 1985b) and a generous admixture of Norwegians in the Danelaw (Thorson, 1936), confirmed also by the place-name evidence (Cameron, 1996: 77). Nevertheless, Kries is able to make a meaningful distinction between the two sources, with WScand loans being mainly rural in character (e.g. slak n.1, bow n.2, graip), and EScand both rural (e.g. intak n. 2, wikkir) and, as we would expect of vocabulary transmitted through the Anglo-Danish of the burghs, urban and commercial (e.g. osmond , keling and the interesting word kirset(h, whose citations cast light on the relative attractiveness of different burghs).





The accepted view of ON loanwords in Scots follows Aitken (1954):

the Old Norse loans found in Scots (again leaving aside Caithness and the Northern Isles) are almost all found likewise in the dialects of the North of England. This is in contrast to direct borrowing from other languages such as Middle Dutch and Anglo-Norman, where the loans into Scots are independent of the influence of these languages in England. (Macafee, 1997: 201)

It is therefore very significant that Kries finds that there are at least a few loans and senses in OSc not found in England, which does indeed suggest an independent input, e.g. bathstoff, bing in the sense 'a heap or pile', hink, buller v.2 (and also kirset(h, which is nevertheless associated with the burghs). A few items, as we might expect, are specific (within Scotland) to the South-West: hagard(e, nolt price (s.v. nowt n. 2 c); and cf. the following, recorded in the modern dialect (see SND): dyke in the sense 'hedge' (s.v. dyke n. 2), ure n.1, choop n.1 (see §7.3.2 on the scho form of the personal pronoun).

A situation of dialect contact in the 12th century is suggested by the forms of the place-name element kirk (q.v.). Within a century, the earlier native form chirche[35] gives way to the Scandinavianised form kirk. However, there are also transitional forms such as kirche and chirk, and these interdialect forms are very telling, as they point to an abrupt confrontation of the two forms at this point in time, rather than a gradual diffusion of the borrowed form into Lothian Anglian.[36] It would be a worthwhile study to examine the earliest names in the hope of establishing the nature and chronology of this transition. The effect of contact is also seen in the mistaken translation of scír-burna ('shire burn', if Brooke is correct) to Skyreburn, as if containing skire- (s.v. Skir(e)-Thursday n. (cf. s(c)hir(e adj.)) 'bright'. Unlike skire, shire has no ON cognate, and is therefore retained in the related name Shirmers (< scir-(ge)maere 'shire boundary') (Brooke, 1991: Appendix).[37]




It is tempting to speculate what Scots might have been like had it developed from the speech of the Lothian Angles without this Anglo-Danish reinforcement. Quite possibly it would not have survived, or would have lingered into modern times only in some isolated enclave, as an archaic form of English did in Ireland, in Forth and Bargy, after the 'Old English' colony was absorbed. Assuming that it did survive, and was not excessively isolated and archaic, it would necessarily have been most like the northern English dialect of the Northumbrian enclave seen in Map 12. This rump of Northumbria, in alliance with Wessex, held out against both the Danes and the Scots until England was unified in the mid-10th century. Its modern dialect often agrees with dialects south of the Scandinavian Belt in having words and forms of native origin, e.g. anvil rather than stithy, ladder rather than stee (Orton and Wright, 1974); hang rather than heng or hing, gosling rather than gesling, lie rather than lig v., ridge rather than rig (of a house) (Orton et al., 1978); churn rather than kirn or kern and birch rather than birk (Kolb, 1964). In many other cases, however, the ON item has diffused into the enclave and is found throughout northern English and Scots.[38] This diffusion would have taken place also in our speculative scenario, but unlike the sweeping effect of population movement, it would have been gradual and increasingly attenuated as it reached northward towards the limits of Anglian in Fife and Angus (if indeed, Anglian had survived north of the Forth).

In its lesser degree of ON influence, the modern descendant of Anglian would have been more like StE, but would have been distinguished from the latter by a much greater degree of Gaelic influence, and perhaps even a substantial p-Celtic element. It would not, of course, have been entirely lacking in ON influence even without diffusion from the Scandinavian Belt, and there might have been a marked dialectal difference between the more heavily Scandinavianised dialect of the South-West and the dialect of the South-East, but in any case these would merely be northward extensions of the corresponding dialects in England.

2.4 The later spread of Scots

The continuing geographical retreat of Gaelic, which for our purposes marks the advance of Lowland Scots monolingualism, has been researched in detail by Withers (1979, 1984). The stigmatising of Gaelic and its relegation to minority language status are discussed by Ó Baoill (1997; also Macafee and Ó Baoill, 1997). By the late 14th century, John of Fordun was making the distinction that was to become stereotypical, between "domesticated" Lowlanders and "wild" Highlanders, and he described the partition of the country between them:

The language and customs of the Scots vary with the diversity of their speech; for they use two languages, namely Scottish and Teutonic; those of the latter tongue possess the coastal and low-lying regions, whilst those of the Scottish tongue inhabit the mountains and outlying islands. (quoted in translation by Nicholson, 1978: 206)

Speitel and Mather (1968: 522ff.) offer a chronology of the spread of Scots into peripheral areas:

• 15th century: Caithness (modest influx from the 13th century on); Orkney and Shetland (ceded to Scotland in 1468; modest influx previously, particularly in Orkney);

• 16th century: presumed demise of Gaelic in the South-West;[39]

• 1603 onwards: Ulster - Co. Antrim, Co. Down, Co. Donegal, later spreading into Co. Londonderry. Montgomery and Gregg give the following concise account:

Lowlanders speaking Scots began to trickle over the channel in the second half of the sixteenth century (indeed it was (in part)[40] their presence in Ulster which first alarmed and provoked the Tudors to attempt early but largely unsuccessful plantations), but their first significant infusion occurred around the turn of the seventeenth century, in the very earliest years of the reign of James VI/I. Through private grants or other means, they arrived in east Ulster in numbers sizeable enough and were sufficiently successful in developing the land to exclude the counties of Antrim, Down and Monaghan from an official plantation … begun in 1610 …that initiated the recruitment of Scots and English to take up land in the province … … (London)Derry was included in the official plantation plans. Its settlement was the prerogative of the London companies, which had little luck in the enterprise. The Lowland Scots, because of their closer bases, were able to take over a good portion of the north-east corner of the county and penetrate loosely the rest of (London)Derry and Tyrone. It was also as part of the official plantation plans that Scots were brought over to Donegal from 1610 onwards … They were settled in the northern parts of the low-lying east Donegal region known as the Laggan. … … The plantation was only one phase of a wider process of Scottish migration that can be sketched only in outline, because much of the later to-ing (and fro-ing) between Lowland Scotland and Ulster was anonymous and untraceable. (1997: 572)

• 1650 onwards: Kintyre, Arran, Bute (the last possibly as early as the 15th century);

• 17th century onwards: inner Moray Firth, fishing villages on the east coast between the Moray Firth and Caithness;

• 18th and 19th centuries: forestry and whisky-based settlements along the Highland Line.

The influence of Gaelic on Scots is that of a substratum (cf. §4.2.2.1), and is therefore likely to be expressed in subtle ways, mainly through phonological, syntactic and semantic features carried over inadvertently by Gaelic speakers shifting to Scots, rather than in copious lexical loans. Some influences are pervasive in Scots (see §4.2.2.2), and Macafee and Ó Baoill (1997) also found some evidence that the dialects of Scots still in contact with Gaelic in the MSc period were more heavily influenced than Central Scots in these ways: for instance, the NE /f/ in words like fa 'who' and fulp 'whelp' was probably substituted by Gaelic speakers for the consonant /ʍ/, not found in Gaelic. It is conceivable that the NE change of /w/ to /v/ in /wr/, e.g. vrang 'wrong', and post-vocalically, e.g. gnaave 'gnaw', was induced by the lack of /w/ in Gaelic (Macafee, 1989). In the SW long-term contact with Ireland makes it difficult to separate Gaelic and Irish influences. In areas where Gaelic was not lost until the ModSc period, the replacement is usually a form of English (Highland English, q.v. in McArthur ed. 1992, 1996) with varying degrees of Gaelic influence, and a considerable body of loanwords from Scots. There must formerly have been what might be called Highland Scots, a second language variety represented for instance by an early 18th century broadsheet (purportedly a letter home from Maryland) discussed by Millar (1996), and in highly stereotyped form in literature (see §8.5).

2.5 Anglicisation

2.5.1 Anglo-Scots

It may be useful, before discussing anglicisation, to mention the existence, before 1500, of a mixed language, known as Anglo-Scots, found, for instance, in Colkelbie Sow, Lancelot of the Laik and James I's Kingis Quair. For the last of these, we can explain the odd language in terms of the personal history of the author, since James I spent the latter part of his youth in captivity in England. His language is not the kind of superficial mixture that arises through the scribal copying of texts. A ME feature integral to the language of the Quair is the use of final -e rather than final -is to give metrical flexibility (see §9.1.2.4).[41] The thoroughness of the mixture is also shown by the fact that there are rhymes in the Quair that are neither Scots nor ME, e.g. moon 'moan' : doon 'do' (ll.309-11) - Scots mane does not rhyme with do; nor does ME moan rhyme with the inflected infinitive done.

2.5.2 The changing relationship between Scots and English

Scots and English have never been isolated from each other, and have always formed a geographical continuum of dialects within which linguistic changes diffused and spread. At different periods their relationship was dominated by different processes:

1. In PreSc and ESc, we find a pattern that is normal, Joseph (1987) tells us, before the introduction of standardisation to a vernacular: changes flow freely within a group of language varieties. The main focus is nME, in a state of flux precipitated by language contact with ON, is the main focus;

2. the spread of StE (from about 1450 on) is at first irrelevant to Scots, which continues to diverge from its southern neighbour and to produce its own incipient standard in the early MSc period, while continuing to share in ongoing changes such as the Great Vowel Shift, and to borrow isolated features, especially in poetic diction (see §9.3.1);

3. in the transition to EModE (corresponding to late MSc), StE experiences a period of rapid elaboration, much of which is transmitted to Scots, including developments in the verb phrase and wh-/quh- relative pronouns. As Görlach (2002) describes it, Scots seems to lose any initiative in this period. Time and again, an innovation is shown to have appeared first in English. [42] This phenomenon might be termed 'pre-emptive innovation', on the analogy of 'pre-emptive domestication'. This is a term used in anthropology to capture the observation that when a species has once been domesticated, there is no need to domesticate it again unless there is some geographical barrier to its spread. For instance, genetic analysis shows that in Eurasia the economically important plant and animal species have generally only been domesticated once, and have diffused across the width of the continent, whereas in the Americas, with their north-south orientation cutting across different climate zones, species such as cotton have been domesticated independently north and south of the Equator (Diamond, 1998: 178ff.).

England and Lowland Scotland occupy an easily traversed space on the same small island. The greater size of the population of the south-east of England, and the wealth and stability of the English economy, are sufficient to explain the creative vitality of English at this time (though much of its elaboration had already, of course, been pre-empted by French, itself following Latin),[43] and the overwhelmingly northward flow of innovation even before Scotland embraced StE.[44]

The predominant contemporary perception that Scots and English were the same language (see Inglis B 1, Scottis A 1 (e) and B 1 (1), Southern B 2)[45] allowed English elements to be “infiltrated into Scots writings and, later, speech, without appearing too incongruous” (Aitken, 1979: 89). Aitken (1997) traces the gradual adoption of anglicised forms in Scots prose from the early 16th century, and examines the writings of a small group of individuals whom he calls 'Anglo-Scots', whose personal life histories made them familiar with spoken English, and whose writing reflected this in varying degrees even before the Reformation of 1560.

Many clergy were brought into contact with English through the enforced exiles that affected first one party then another in the religious struggles of the 16th and 17th centuries, a notable instance, of course, being John Knox. By the turn of the 17th century, some individuals were able to modify their written language (Bald, 1927; Aitken, 1997), and perhaps also therefore their speech, according to the addressee. If the '1 GENT' of Eastward Ho! is indeed James VI and I, as has sometimes been suggested, he is represented as bilingual:

Farewell, farewell, we will not know you for shaming of you. I ken the man weel; he's one of my thirty-pound knights. (George Chapman, Ben Jonson and John Marston, ed. R. W. van Fossen, Manchester University Press, 1979:IV: 1)

Scottish familiarity with spoken English is shown by 17th century spellings such as <no> 'know' (Scots knaw, ken); <tu, tow, towe> 'two' (Scots twa); <how> 'who' (Scots quha) (Aitken 1979). Such misspellings could only be arrived at by ear. English troops were garrisoned in Scotland during the 1650s, and this may also have been influential.

MacQueen (1957: 197) and Meurman-Solin (1993a, 1997; see §8.3) both conclude that anglicisation was a pragmatic process, with no implication that southern forms were felt to be more 'correct':

anglicization … appears to be primarily motivated by the practical needs dictated by contact situations between the two varieties. Individual writers seem to have been tempted to adopt practices of the wider linguistic community, whereas institutions … tend to be resistant to abrupt overall change. (Meurman-Solin, 1993a: 49)

Indeed, missing Scots forms were sometimes introduced into the printed versions of parliamentary minutes in the last years of the Scottish Parliament (MacQueen, 1957: Appendix 8), and a Londoner who visited Scotland in 1689 recorded that:

They are great Criticks in Pronunciation, and often upbraid us for not giving every word its due sound … neglecting the gh as if not written (Rev. Thomas Morer, quoted by MacQueen, 1957: 263-4).

The southern forms were nevertheless felt to be more modern: cf. the 1678 quotation s.v. the def. art. 11, which recalls Winȝet's well-known jibe about “curiositie of nouationis” (s.v. Scottis B 1 (1)).

The effect was what Joseph calls “involuntary language shift”, a gradual erosion of one language variety through mixing with another. The drift towards fashionable anglicisation, even against the writer's own inclination and better judgment, is illustrated for instance by the A text of David Hume of Godscroft's The History of the House of Douglas, of which the modern editor writes: "however conservative, and perhaps deliberately so, the language of A nevertheless shows how Scots had been penetrated by English forms and made uncertain in its usage" (Reid, 1996: I, xlix). Hume himself wrote of his linguistic preferences:

For the language, it is my Mother-tongue, that is, Scottish: and why not, to Scottish-men? Why should I contemne it? I never thought the difference so great, as that by seeking to speak English, I would hazard the imputation of affectation. ... For my own part, I like our own, & he that writes well in it, writes well enough to me. Yet I have yeelded somewhat to the tyrannie of custome, and the times, not seeking curiously for words, but taking them as they came to hand. I acknowledge also my fault (if it be a fault) that I ever accounted it a mean study, and of no great commendation to learn to write, or to speak English, and have loved better to bestow my pains and time on forreigne Languages, esteeming it but a Dialect of our own, and that (perhaps) more corrupt. (From the preface to the 1644 edition, ed. Reid, 1996: 452-3)

Ironically, whoever prepared this edition for the press anglicised the text very thoroughly.

The period of mixing set up a continuum between Scots and English.[46] As it affects speech, the process continues to spread and is still ongoing;

4. the next phase is anglicisation proper, with Standard English adopted as a process of voluntary language shift, which involved the replacement of entire genres by Standard English (Görlach, 1997). In Murison's pithy formulation:

Scots … lost spiritual status at the Reformation, social status at the Union of the Crowns, and political status with the Parliamentary Union. (1979: 9)

The lack of a Bible in the native language, which is considered to have been crucial in the maintenance of literacy and language use in other cases, such as Welsh, was one very important factor in the adoption of StE. The Geneva Bible of 1561 and an English Service Book were used in Scotland. In contrast to Latin, this was "spirituall foode to our soullis" in "our commoun toung" (1558, quoted by Robinson, 1983: 60).

The controversy surrounding the Protestant Reformation also gave an impetus to printing. Material produced in England was also widely read in Scotland. Although printing in Scotland was, of course, in Scots at first,[47] after the Reformation both Scotsmen and incomers printed works in both Scots and English (Bald, 1926; Watry, 1992). The Scotsmen had varying degrees of success in their attempts at English, but the effect of print was generally to homogenise the language of the text, whether in the direction of Scots or of English. After 1600, printed texts were considerably more anglicised than manuscripts overall (Meurman-Solin, 1997a: 15).

In retrospect, the choice between mither-tongue Scots and pitten-on English often seems to us to have been the decisive one for the future of the vernacular, and a few late MSc voices were evidently aware of this issue (see references above). At the time, however, the main debate and the most conscious choice for most writers of verse and literary prose was between Latin and the vernacular, and having chosen the vernacular, between a latinate and a 'plain' style.

Latin was often described as copious (q.v.). As functions were transferred to the vernacular, writers strove to achieve the same facund (q.v.) eloquence (q.v.), what Douglas called "fowth of langage" (see fouth (2)). In late 16th century and 17th century England, the means of elaborating the vernacular were explicitly discussed amongst three main factions: those in favour of extensive borrowing - their opponents objected to 'inkhorn terms', and in Scotland to minȝard (q.v.) terms; purists in favour of augmenting English from its own resources; and additionally in verse, archaisers following Spenser (see Barber, 1976: ch. 11). There were both adherents and opponents of the borrowing camp in Scotland, and Douglas in practice drew on archaisms (see e.g. gan p.t., to- prefix2 b, nocht-for-thy, himselvin, hirself (a), and references passim in Bawcutt, 1976). A number of the makars are eloquent in their praises of the latinate style of Chaucer and Lydgate (see aureat adj. 2, laureat adj. 2, ornat 2 adj., rethorik n. 2). The author of The Complaynte of Scotlande, however, is scathing of “exquisite termis quhilkis ar nocht daly vsit . . ., dreuyn or rather to say mair formaly reuyn fra lating” (16/15, quoted by Aitken, 1971: 178), although finding it necessary sometimes to employ latinate vocabulary (see Latin(e B 2 (c)). The watchword of the anti-latinate camp is plain (q.v. adj.1 7), with the terms hamely (q.v. adj. 4) and rude (s.v. rud(e adj.1 10) used in self-deprecation.

Douglas is notable for his aspiration to elaborate Scots - and Scots specifically. His approach is one of judicious eclecticism (see Latin(e B 2 (a)). But for the most part, MSc writers in the borrowing or latinate camp seem to have seen the elaboration of the vernacular as a joint enterprise with English writers. Perhaps more than we now realise they felt an ownership of the StE that resulted, and which they simply read aloud as if it were Scots (Robinson, 1983), and occasionally described as Scottis (Bald, 1928), and frequently as Scottis or Inglis (s.v. Scottis B 1 (3)).

By the middle of the 17th century, as Corbett points out, the use of NE Scots to represent provincial speech in Urquhart's translation of Rabelais is:

indicative of the way that educated Scots - even Scots who, like Urquhart, were educated at Aberdeen University - now perceived the way they spoke. In writing, it was reserved for contexts associated with provincialism and low comedy. (1999: 93-4)

- prefiguring one of its main literary roles thereafter.

In the 17th century, the Scottish nobility began, as a class, to acquire spoken English, and to intermarry with the English aristocracy. Following the Restoration of 1660:

every Scotsman of the nobility was likely to spend part of his time in southern England, at court or residing in the Home Counties, and nearly all other eminent Scots … visited London for shorter or longer periods. (Aitken, 1979: 91)

In the course of the 17th century:

The choice of word-forms and vocabulary in their private correspondence seems to suggest that their speech passed through a stage when there was rather inconsistent vacillation between native and imported southern options … to a variety which fairly consistently preferred southern English forms and words. (ibid.: 93)

(but see §8.3.3). As early as 1673, Mackenzie of Rosehaugh was writing, apropos of the question why the English undervalued the Scottish idiom:

that of our Gentry differs little from theirs; nor do our commons speak so rudely as those of Yorkshire: as to the words wherein the difference lies, ours are for the most part old French words … (quoted by MacQueen, 1957: 259)

though, writing in 1681, he also recommended the use of Scots ("firy, abrupt, sprightly and bold") for pleading at the bar (quoted by Ouston, 1987: 20). Pitcairne's play The Assembly, written in 1692 (though not published until 1722), represents the speech of the gentry as StE, apart from some of the older generation. StE speech was thus becoming widespread amongst educated Scots at the same time as it was becoming general at this social level in England.

By about 1760, it was distinctly quaint for a gentleman or lady to speak Scots in polite company, though some judges remained kenspeckle for their use of Scots in court, including Lord Auchinleck, the father of James Boswell (Bailey, 1987). However, in the absence of native StE-speaking role models, English speech was apparently achieved only after a period of false starts, in the form of spelling pronunciations, interdialectal forms and hypercorrections (see Macafee, 2004). By this time also, the 'Augustan' ideology was demanding that writing be stripped of every trace of impropriety, including any indication of a writer's Scottish origins - a hurdle that few non-English or American writers could clear even now, as MacQueen (1957: 233) points out;

5. the final stage is the involuntary language shift (as above) of the remaining speakers, mostly at the lower end of the social scale. At the time of writing, this stage has been reached over wide areas of Central Scotland (see Máté, 1996; Macafee, 2000). At this point we begin to speak of language death.

There is a tendency to see the history of English as a single-minded march towards StE. Even in Scots scholarship we find this - the trajectory of the written language from the late 16th century on is so unremittingly towards StE that it seems sometimes to be overlooked that this is a movement of the written language away from any entity that we could call Scots. To some extent, scholars are led into this peat-hag by a refusal to treat Scots and English as distinct entities (and it is not necessary to regard them as separate languages to apply a contact linguistics approach). But some egregious mistakes could easily be avoided by consulting the Scots dictionaries and the data of The Linguistic Atlas of Scotland (LAS). The history of the development of Scots from the late 16th century to the 18th is largely still to be written.

_________________
abair ach beagan agus abair gu math e

Albannaich choir, bu mhath leam deasbad a bhith againn, Briogaisean-Praise/Ptolemy ann neo as.

Regardless of whether Brassbreeks, Ptolemy or whatever he's called turns up again, I'd be happy to keep discussing this.

Stuth gu leor ri cagainn air, agus feumaidh mi a' feitheamh son compiutair.
But there's a lot to chew on there ad it must wait for the computer.

_________________
"The thistle rises and forever will" - MacDiarmid

NB - I am not the same person as the poster "Scottish republic".

copperknickers? ha ha cuiridh eadhon a bhith ag eisteachd ris drafh orm !!!

there is a lot to chew on , its just one of many articles and books i have read on the subject.

parts of it are nonsense, like the anglian place names in south western scotland ( prestwick maybole etc based on guesswork and as we have alraedy discussed more likely in many cases to be scndinavian )and also the statement that southern scotland ws part of northumbria for 300 years.total rubbish , northumbria didnt exist as an anglian kingdom for 300years and the main settlement was the lammermuir area.

generally what is being said , ts more thatthe scots dialect/language comes from anglo danish post 9th century when the scots kings encouraged scandinavian settlement rather than old english(anglian) .If i remember right the anglo danes were allowed to settle as far as peebles and no more.

any idea of rough population estimates of scotland around 10th century?

earliestestimate of scotlands population is around 800,000 in the year 1600 , and the point i am trying to make is that most of scotlands population would have lived north of the forth clyde till more modern industrial era , hence the majority being mainly gaidhlig speakers.

i am trying to find the reasoning behind why inglis was thought to be the language of the burghs when the evidence shows most merchants were european , inglis was a minoritised language in the 12th century so why wouldd this be the economic language?

gaidhlig seems to be the main language up till the reformation , but as the author says from 1600 onwards even scots starts to be minoritised infavour of standard english.

hell of a lot to think on , be good to hear your thoughts when you get a chance pal???

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abair ach beagan agus abair gu math e

One possibility - a lot of trade was with the Low Countries, Saxony/Friesland and Scandinavia, all of whom spoke Germanic languages. Flemish would have been a lot closer to Inglis back then than it is now.

Also modern India is a nice example of several languages co-existing. In India, Sanskrit is the holy/scholarly tongue, English the language of trade, Hindi the language of government (sort of), Tamil the language of the southern regions... etc. A lot of Indians and Pakistanis in Scotland are multilingual besides English. Pakistanis often speak Urdu, but they'll also speak Punjabi or Gujarti etc depending where they're from, and they'll use Arabic in the mosque. Hindus often speak Hindi, plus their local regional language (e.g. Tamil), maybe a language related to caste (Marathi) etc plus a little Sanskrit. (Or Pali, if they're Buddhist). Some of these languages are related, some not. Hindi is more closely related to English than to Tamil!

In Hong Kong, indigenous people sometimes speak Hakka, the local dialect, plus Cantonese the dominant dialect of the region, plus Mandarin, now the state language, plus English, which used to be the language of government and is still the language of trade.

I suspect in Scotland c. 1200, the situation was as follows -
* Latin, the religious and written language. Not generally spoken except in religious services.
* Norman French, the language of the aristocracy.
* Gaidhlig, the language of the peasantry, plus some aristocracy. (For various reasons, I suspect it actually had the widest cross-section of the population during this period.)
* Norse and Brythonic possibly hanging on somewhere. (The Breton influence probably merged into Brythonic by now)
* Flemish, trading language. Not favoured by peasants or nobles.
* Inglis, trading language, and language of burghs. Gained in prestige due to influence of neighbour, the English invasions, and also because of King David, who deliberately copied and used English models in some law making etc. If any peasants spoke Inglis, it would probably be in the far south east.

A lot of Anglo-Saxons came to Scotland in the wake of the Norman invasion of 1066.

Latin was the domain of the educated, but the other languages were related and had some common vocabulary. I suspect a lot of people probably spoke at least three languages, as is still common in many parts of the world. The fact that we hear of someone speaking or writing in one, doesn't mean that s/he was ignorant of the others.

Because we're so focussed on the one language these days we forget this.

_________________
"The thistle rises and forever will" - MacDiarmid

NB - I am not the same person as the poster "Scottish republic".

thanks once again s.r , interesting stuff. can you recommend any reading material on early scots , and scotlands languages and history around the 10th - 16th centuries???

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abair ach beagan agus abair gu math e

William Ferguson's The Identity of the Scottish Nation is worth reading.

_________________
"The thistle rises and forever will" - MacDiarmid

NB - I am not the same person as the poster "Scottish republic".

In amongst derivative pieces and pretentious works focussing on dull minutiae, there are some real gems in academic journals... sadly these are fairly hard to get hold of, and like most Scottish-themed academia tend to be incestuous, i.e. most of the readers tend to be the writers too.

Although out of date, if you have time on your hands, trawl through the Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness. They have been bound into volumes and can probably be viewed in reference sections of major libraries.

One work I do not recommend is Watson's (no, not *that* Watson) Gaelic Placenames of the Lothians. It's often way off the mark and gives Gaidhlig etymologies for modern names!

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"The thistle rises and forever will" - MacDiarmid

NB - I am not the same person as the poster "Scottish republic".

thanks for that pal , i will bear that book in mind.

see you in 6 months time when crappyknickers next posts

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abair ach beagan agus abair gu math e

The population was somewhere around 200,000 in the very Early Middle ages, rising to 500,000 in the High Middle Ages, and as you say to 800,000 to 1,000,000 by the 17th century.



Very doubtful. Northern Scotland's terrain is extremely inhospitable, the highest population density was always in the borders and lowlands. The areas around Inverclyde, the Forth, the Solway Firth, the borders around Jedburgh, and the coast from Fife to Aberdeen, were as today vastly more populous than the highlands and islands. Bear in mind that Cumbric was probably preserved in the Southwest in the Early Middle Ages, and parts of the islands were Norse speaking for much of the period. And then of course, you have the phenomenon of multilingualism, meaning that many of the Inglis and French speakers were in fact bi/trilingual native Gaelic speakers: then you can see that, although Gaelic was totally ubiquitous even in the lowland burghs, monolingual Gaelic speakers were an ever decreasing and largely peasant demographic from the late middle ages onwards.



Because, if you're a burgh-dweller dealing with European merchants, you're not going to have much luck speaking with Flemish people in Gaelic. Inglis however is a different matter. There was effectively a linguistic continuum from Angus to Angeln in the High Middle Ages, with Low German/Dutch dialects being still extremely similar to Anglic dialects. But the important thing here is, why were they speaking Scots, and not learned English dialects, and why was such a gap between Scots and English allowed to grow? Clearly there was a very strong preponderance of Scots even at this period, although it lived side by side with French and Gaelic and had a very small geographical sphere of influence.



As the author actually said, Scots speakers tended to defer to English spellings and pronounciations because it was easier, which meant that especially in English dominated mediums such as religion and printing, Scots tended to be phased out. This does NOT however say anything about the use of Scots among Scottish people in speech. It's interesting also how you are using the fact that Scots was losing prestige in the 17th century against us, yet you ignore the fact that Gaelic had zero prestige in the aristocracy and in the cities after the reformation. Gaelic was the most spoken language among Scottish people up until the end of the Middle ages, but it had ceased to be the primary important literary or prestige language long before then, and it hadn't been the primary written language since the dark ages. Gaelic was replaced by Latin and French very early on in the majority of written sources (even accounting for the vast body of lost Gaelic texts), and then directly by Scots, and now English.

Scots was not 'minoritised' in Scotland until it actually became a minority language: after 1600, Scots was the majority spoken language in Scotland arguably up until the 20th Century, and from 1500 to 1700, it was the number 1 prestige spoken and written language of anyone who was anyone, from the court to the parliament to the literati, except in very specific mediums.

telt ye sr

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So I am led to believe , although I have to point out that the population hasn’t increased in some steady line till the modern era. The numbers have spiked and dropped due to various incidents historically






No not very doubtfull if you have a wee think about it.

Much of Scotland , not just the north west , is extremely inhospitable terrain. This inhospitable terrain has historically protected us and led to many military historians referring to Scotland as the Afghanistan of Europe. Even now , nearly two thirds of our country is only suitable for rough grazing rather than intensive arable farming.
To say though that the highest population was always in the borders and lowlands ( assume you mean the central belt here) is not backed up with any evidence or support.
The evidence from various sources and historians that we have show that while the main concentrations of settlement up till 1700 roughly was around Aberdeen and moray , coastlands of the forth and tay , the Solway plain , the merse and the lower clyde. Having said all that , it is widely recognised that the population was much much more widely dispersed across the country , than what we have now due to the industrialisation of the 18th and 19th centuries favouring the central belt and massively altering the national demographic profile.

The highest concentration of population in the early medieval period was around the north east. Early estimates show of roughly 200 000 people in what is now modern Scotland , 100 000 of them were in pictland alone, with around 10 000 in dal riada .

Ptolemy , who did the famous map of early Scotland showing the north coast facing east , names around 18 tribes in the roman period , the majority living north of the forth clyde.

From early on , beginning in recorded history , southern Scotland was a buffer zone and a continual war zone. It was annexed by the picts and scots during and slightly after the roman period , both times being recovered by the Britons.
This war zone continued throughout history , attacked from the north and west and south and east by picts irish scots , angles and danes and later the devastation wrought by the wars of independence. Many of the Britons of the south fled Scotland to go to north wales under constant attack from the scots/ picts , and the angles to the south east. This is recorded in the welsh histories in the 9th century , and much of the void was filled by incoming gaelic speaking picts scots.

The centre of power was always in the north until the time of king david in the 12th century. Some parts of the highlands were indeed as empty as today , many other parts were not but this is meaningless as the gaidhlig language wasn’t confined to the north west and the islands as it was to later become. I agree with the rest of your paragraph.






Aye I understand the first part of your paragraph. Remember though by 1700 , only 1 in 8 Scottish people were burgh dwellers , the majority of burghs even at this late stage 600 years or so after the founding of them , were little more than villages. Once again the majority of people were rural with gaidhlig only retreating from many areas in recent history.
Only 5.3 per cent of our population lived in towns of more than 10 000 people.

We were speaking inglis through cultural osmosis , and the policy of the elite by this time. It is still by all accounts a minority language in Scotland even at its supposed height by 1600 , and the gap between inglis and English was allowed to grow for obvious political reasons. As southern Scotland became more like England culturally , the more the angliscised scots wanted to show themselves as something other then scots being assimilated by England.
Ie ; naming inglis scots in some 15th century propoganda move and later lowland scots adopting much of the old celtic dress and emblems in the irony of the 18th century , when many so called Scottish historians were emphatically denouncing and rejecting Scotland gaelic past , were much of the modern southern Scotland was saxon mythology comes from.








Very few if any contemporary writers or documentation even mention scots , many as I have pointed out previously , simply call it English of a dialect of English.

Can you give us evidence of the use of inglis among the Scottish people historically? Even the article I quoted shys away from that as it has historically been regarded as a minority dialect/ language in Scotland?!
Yet you continue without proof to say it was spoken by the majority.
Certainly it is not regarded so among historians / linguists.

I have continually said that gaidhlig was minoritised among the elite from around 1400 onwards , although we have some evidence that it was the language of administration for a while after. On or slightly after the reformation seems to be the point were it becomes spoken by a minority , and retreats to the highlands / islands and the south west.
Your final 2 sentences are incorrect. It was the language of administration up till the 15th century , and French was rarely used in Scotland in written sources in comparable to England , why would it be? Latin became the main language of the church from the 12 th century onwards , as the Scottish church went from the celtic church of the culdees to roman catholiscism.

Your final paragraph is nonsense and we both know you cannot prove what you have wrote. It couldn’t be regarded as the main language when today , as historically it isn’t regarded as a separate language to English and yet again please supply some evidence.

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I think Albannach is winning the argument here.

Mr Ptolemy, no more tired and floppy schoolboy history of the Andrew Marr variety please!

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"The thistle rises and forever will" - MacDiarmid

NB - I am not the same person as the poster "Scottish republic".

DELETE

I'm pleased to hear you think so, although I wasn't aware you had been enlisted as the official judge. Still, nice to see you're administering your role with the unbiased and shrewd acuity that I have come to expect(!) Or didn't you notice that he agreed with about half of what I wrote?

Its a shame Àdhamh MacLeòid isn't popping his head in here, I remember he was a very level headed and intelligent gent, I'm beginning to feel a little cornered.

I know this has been dragging on now for in excess of 2 years, but this is a pretty dead forum section so you can't blame me for having other activities in my life which take precedence. The reason I wait so long is because I actually do quite a lot of background reading in order to acquaint myself with the facts needed to do justice to the debate. I have made considerable concessions as well over the past couple of pages and have elicited the same from yous, so I think I am on the point of convincing you of the original premise of this discussion (if you can believe it):

Scots is pivotal to Scottish national identity in practical terms, because in recent history it has been more spoken than Gaelic, and more people are going to speak it if we ever become independent. We can't have a situation where Gaelic is forced on people whose ancestors haven't spoken it for 500 years, or we'll have a situation like Ireland where people hate Irish because it is shoved down their throats when they have no real connection to it.

And we can't get away from the fact that Gaelic, as beautiful a language as it is, is simply not the sole national language of Scotland, because Scots was for a portion of Scottish history the primary spoken language (and it is certainly a language in its own right).



More accurately it was moving gradually inland from the West Coast. Power over Caledonia was shared in the Dark Ages between the Picts in the Highlands, the Northumbrians in the SouthEast, the Britons in the SouthWest, the Vikings in the North and the Hebrides, and the Gaels in the West Coast. At first, the Gaels failed to penetrate much further than Stirling, ruling from the Firth of Clyde, as they were constantly defeated by the Picts. Then, the Picts were greatly weakened by the Northumbrians and then the Vikings, allowing the Gaels to push towards the centre, and eventually, to merge with the Picts. The Kingdom of Alba never entirely pushed the Northumbrians out (at least, not before the Anglic language was fully entrenched and began spreading all across the lowlands), they took a pretty long time pushing the Britons out, and they never succeeded in getting rid of the Viking influence. In fact, the main reason for Gaelic's survival to the present day is that the Western Isles were Norse-Gaelic rather than properly Scottish, so they were regarded as a separate sphere of influence to the mainland, as taken advantage of by the Lordship of the isles, hence the survival of such a strong resistance to mainstream Scottish culture when even Orkney and Shetland succumbed.

So put simply, there was no single 'centre of power' until the consolidation of the Kingdom of Alba in the 10th and 11th centuries, before that there were the regional centres of power, and the central belt, which was the clashing point of the 5 peoples (the Britons, Gaels, Picts, Northumbrians, and Vikings).



Point taken.



Except that the tradition of calling Gaelic Erse (Irish) was to continue for over a hundred years after that. Its other name of course being Scottis, hence why Inglis was called Inglis: Scottis was already taken. There is a pretty strong tradition of Inglis in Scotland being regarded as separate from English: remember, Middle Scots had been diverging quite starkly from Middle English during the High and Late Middle ages, so calling it Scots was partly just a recognition that it was now 400 years distant from being simply a continuum of Old English. Though it was also a political statement.

But I think the Declaration of Arbroath, among other sources, serves as a suitable guard against any of this being taken to mean that any Scots thought of Lowland Scotland as being some kind of extension of England.



Of course, because they didn't have a separate name for it until the late 15th Century. The same reason applies to Gaelic being called Erse: that was just the name of the language, its of absolutely zero relevance to a modern linguist. Scots didn't just suddenly come into being when people started calling it Scottis, it was always there. By your logic, English has been the same language since about 300 AD, since that was when the Angles first started calling their language 'Aengleasc'.



http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=0ldo ... ge&f=false

(Pg 559)

That is a pretty clear indication that from at least 1600 onwards, Gaelic was absent from most of the Lowlands, excepting presumably Galloway and a couple of other enclaves.



I don't think anyone can deny that Gaelic ceased to be the majority language of Scotland at some point between 1550 and 1700. Whether you think it was replaced by Scots or English depends on how you define Scots: linguists vary between outright dismissing the existence of Scots, and taking the stance that Scots continues to this day to be spoken by many people.

Personally, I don't think there is anyone who naturally speaks in full Scots in everyday conversation, though its possible for many, if they really try, to construct a realistic poem or paragraph that is largely incomprehensible to an English speaker. I don't really care whether you regard Scots as a language or a dialect, but even if you regard it as the latter, you must surely agree that it was the majority speech of Scots from 1700 until 1900, although today it has been so corrupted by English that we must say most Scots now speak the Koine dialect Scottish English.



Scots is regarded officially by the European and Scottish government authorities as a separate language to English. It is also regarded by many professional linguists as one [cf. A.J. Aitken in The Oxford Companion to the English Language, Oxford University Press 1992. p.894].

At the end of the day, nobody can tell whether Scots is a language or not, short of a survey of Germanic language experts, because there is no official difference between languages and dialects. The definition of 'language' is by its nature a political one, so that even two nearly identical languages such as Hindi and Urdu, are regarded as separate languages, meanwhile vastly differing dialects with next to no mutual intelligibility, such as Wu and Mandarin, are treated as the same language.

The only thing we can be certain of, is that the fact that Scots was known for many centuries as Inglis, is totally irrelevant to the question, unless you also concede that Gaidhlig should be regarded as a dialect of Irish rather than its own language, since there is (correct me if I'm wrong) no major distinction between Irish and Gaidhlig in those languages.

"Copperknickers"]





Power wasn’t gradually moving inland from the west coast during the age of light , why do you think that copper knickers? Genuinly interested I assume this is because you think power rested at dunadd with the gaels.? It did not. The picts , from around the end of the 3rd century ad when they took the power of the north from the Caledonians , till the fall of their kingdom with the attacks of the norse in the 8th century, held the power of what is now modern Scotland. Other power bases in what is now modern Scotland , like dunadd , alt clut and later the anglian settlements in the far south east at times were defeated by and paid tribute to the picts , although they didn’t have it all their own way all the time.

The dark ages is yet again more English historical expression to define an age of barbarism , not just in what became Germanic England but many parts of Europe. Europeans travelled from all over to gaeldom to seek light and learning in the so called dark ages , albeit mainly Ireland but also west Scotland too. Famous anglian kings like aldfrith of Northumbria encouraged gaidhlig monks to come to Northumbria to christianise the angles and was also a fluent gaelic speaker , and we have records of many of his poems written in gaelic today.

Once again there is very little evidence of the anlges in Scotland at this period , may Williamson states in her research that only 6 place names in modern Scotland can be traced to the anglo saxon period with any certainty. Inglis itself as a language does not come from the language of the angles , but the later hybrid anglo danish language of the Viking Northumbria’s. Nothing of the anglo saxon period , no story , songs literally nothing of the angles survives in Scotland today.

I disagree with the majority of your version of Scottish history in your first paragraph , The picts massively weakened the Northumbria’s as a result of dunnichen and stopped them spreading north. This is widely acknowledged by even most pro English historians , and after dunnichen Northumbria ceased to be the major power among the saxon kingdoms.

I have noticed before you trying to insinuate that inglis or anglian replaced cambric as a language in southern Scotland and this is a fallacy . Even in the south east professor Watson reasons in most places that the language change went from cambric to gaidhlig to English. Once again nothing survives of pure anglian in any part of Scotland .

The centre of power was originally dunked ( dun chaillean ) hill fort of the Caledonians , and later alba became , as skene wrote , a gaidhlig knigdom centred on scone. It was the canmore dynasty that began to move scotlands court south.
Scotland , or more properly alba , was generally known as the gaidhlig lingdom from roughly early to mid 9th century till the mid 12th century , whence began the first norman settlements. Historian after historian acknowledge this. The lingua franca was gaidhlig .






Then surely you must concede the majority of what I have been arguing these few years with you. I admit it is difficult with the lack of firm records , we rely on other countries in the main for much of our knowledge of ancient Scotland , The gaidhlig became , for a while , scotlands main language in practically the whole country except the far northern isles and pockets of the far south east before receding from about 1400 onwards to where it is today.
Sometime between the reformation and maybe as late as 1700 roughly , it then became a minoritised language.
From 1400 roughly onwards inglis was spoken in pockets of the south east , then later burghs elsewhere , which were little more than villages for the most part in a sea of rural gaidhlig speakers , till eventually we have what we have today.







Copperknickers this is nonsense, we have been over this already. Inlgis was a foreign language to most scots , and there were very few ethnic English in ancient Scotland , possibly 6 settlements of them in the far south east. The area comes under the control of the gaelic kings from 960 onwards , when the border is settled as a result of carham in 1018. The earliest English we know of in Scotland is the anglo danish language of Northumbria , nothing else survives.

So inglis starts as the same language being spoken in northern England , and finishes today as English , the same language spoken in the rest of the uk. For a very small period , roughly between 1400 and 1600 , it BEGINS to diverge from the other sassunach dialects as documented , then begins to be absorbed into standard English from the 1600 onwards. You are essentially arguing about a language foreign to most scots , where for a 2 century time period it was spoken over parts of lowland Scotland , before being absorbed again by its mother language.
Gaelic , the language of the ORIGINAL scots , which has essentially been spoken in our land for nearly 2000 years and is a miracle it still lives today.
The original scots called it a foreign language , just as the modern scots call it a foreign language , English. For a small part of history Scottish rulers , normanised anglified Scottish rulers , called it scots , a name already taken , in a pr stunt in their internecine wars against their own people.

I was talking of a much later period. Lowland Scotland in the 18th century , as they adopted the highland emblems the Scottish governments and rulers had taught them to hate previously , from 1400 onwards.







Why do you do this??? You make my point yet again. Essentially , you agree then that gaidhlig is scotlands native language ( from the founding of the kingdom of alba obviously) And that calling the dialect of a foreign language “scots “was nothing more than a pr stunt to spread the language of our ancient enemy.

Once again may I correct you. The English language didn’t exist in 300 ad. The first Germanic people didn’t arrive in numbers around the mid 5th century and they certainly didn’t speak a homogenous language. The angles don’t get anywhere near Scotland till the late 6th century with the fall of dun guaire ( modern bam borough ) and once again please provide evidence of the pure non danish language spoken by the angles in Scotland because nothing survives Scotland and very little if any in Northumbria.






Is it??????

First of all your expert , and I have only briefly skimmed it , begins by saying the earliest writing we have is barbours the bruce , written in inglis as it was known at this period in the late 14th century , backing up much of what I have said.
Any examples of inglis from before 1370???
Any examples of literature written in inglis from the anglo saxon period????
Even the welsh have literature , written in the 7th century outside Edinburgh in the cambric dialect from Scotland , but we have nothing from these masses of inglis speakers that where have supposed to have lived in southern Scotland before 1370???
No evidence because there were no masses of English speakers in Scotland prior to the 14th century.

Read page 552 colm o baoill basically agreeing with much of what I have written. You havent read much of this have you???
Did you read the part about the society for the propogation of christian knowledge in the 18th century , teaching not scots , but English , to gaidhlig speakers to root out their irish language. I thought you said previously in an earlier post scots was being taught to everyone in Scotland at this stage or something along those lines and yet a book you offer for my perusal backs up much ofmy arguments while destroying much of yours?????
I am sorry copper knickers , but I have read page 559 and I cant see any clear evidence of lowland Scotland lacking gaidhlig speakers. Perhaps you could enlighten me , and thanks for pointing this book out as some good stuff in it , im afraid which only reinforces my position.






Both gaidhlig and scots appear to become statusless after the union of the crowns in 1603 as I understand it and james promise to englands court to angliscise Scotland. Whatever inglis was by definition by 1603 , most linguists agree it begins to decline BACK TOWARDS English from this point.
There is no standardised scots nor is it taught in school , and whatever small amount of inglis is still in our standard English colloquialisms , Scottish people certainly don’t speak a language called scots.




Thats not what i was asking yet again was it?

[/quote]


Final point , if you want to see inglis being spoken and revived , the startin point surely has to be pullin your head out the sand with all this historical denial . Then , understanding its current situation today and the fact that it has been a statusless dialect , language , since 1603 , and been increasingly watered down by English till today we are merely arguing over what few anachronistic words still exist in our increasingly americanised English that we manly speak.

You started at a point of denial in the beginning of this thread over what gaidhlig was , dismissing it as merely a token minority language of the isles and highlands to the position of acceptance today.
While I believe you are still in denial about inglis , I take some small comfort in the fact I have shared information with a fellow scot about our language and have helped you learn among the many others who have contributed to this thread.
Time we claimed our language , culture and more importantly country back from the foreign power that has tried to absorb us these last 3 centuries.

Yes to independence.

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