The Auldest Tung

CalePolitics

So from Picts, Norse and Danes and before final conclusions it is back to the Calefresians themselves. With it posited at least by me that by 850 AD their language was not only in place but had by then been in continuous use for four hundred years and with user numbers estimated by then to be perhaps 350 in the East Neuk, 6,500 in Angus with 1,000 of them in Dundee, 2,000 in and around Aberdeen and 9,500 in Banff and Buchan, so 18-19,000 all told north of the Forth, rising to 21-22,000 by 1000 AD, there remains perhaps only to try to analyse their politics.

They, indeed, the internal politics of Caledonia as a whole or of more accurately the Caledonia that would be shorn of Norse-controlled areas, Calepolitics, might best be summed up not so much as mutual toleration per se but mutual advantage . The evidence is that there seems to have been at no stage much in the way of tensions between, firstly, Calefrisia on the one hand and on the other Pictland to 850 AD, then, secondly, with Alba as between that date and 950 AD synthesis, at least at the regal level took place, and finally as post 950 AD the result progressively morphed into Scotland.

The first King of Alba is generally recognised to be Caustantin II, who came to the throne around 900 AD and unlike Causantin I died in his bed, having, as already mentioned, abdicated in old-age and retired to monastery life. The first king of Scotland could, depending on predilection, be any of a number of candidates post-1018 AD. And much of what happened for the century in between after the Norse had been contained and the Danes seen off, and, indeed, would for the century afterwards, took place along the southern border and the western seaboard, leaving its eastern equivalent to itself, which seems to have suited everyone. For Calefrisia there was cultural and thus linguistic independence. For everyone including Calefrisia there was economic gain, not least because, in addition to less hazardous coastal trade, north and south, the conduits across the North Sea, a long-term, Calefrisian specialism to this day, would seemingly remain open, indeed be augmented.

Specifically, whilst the new country of Denmark would be temporarily seen off militarily by the Saxons, notionally in England but effectively for all Britain, and it was also excluded from Ireland by the Norse, it and to a degree that which lay beyond remained a market, for which Calefrisia was ideally placed, not least politically. Anglo-Saxon-Danish relations must have been raw for some time after, perhaps only restored by the Danish invasion of England in 1013 and then obviously by force not mutual advantage. 

Moreover, it seems axiomatic as New-Frisia emerged from its Old- antecedent, regardless of having moved geographically 200 miles northwards, and between 885 AD and 920 AD also freed itself from mixed Norse and Danish incursion then its market would have re-emerged and opened too, Old Frisian able and literally talking to New. Furthermore where Old Frisia had in part been there were the emergent Low Countries, the entry-point to yet another new country, France.

And this was as culturally the Pictish language too morphed, and I use that phrase deliberately. It is too often said that Gaelic, perhaps in as few as the four generations from 800 to 900 AD, inundated Pictish as effectively the North Sea had the western coasts of Frisia and Jutland. An examination of the differences between the vocabulary and grammatical structures of Scots and Irish Gaelic seems to belie that assertion. It seems far more likely that, whilst Gaelic dominated, the two largely merged with the lack of written Pictish perhaps more a result of conflict and swings in ascendency between the Celtic and Roman churches, even burning of manuscripts than lack of literacy. But again this is matter for another place and time. The bottom line is that no matter what the evidence of whether Gaelic swept or crept eastwards, even touching the North Sea in places, albeit comparatively few, it seems as evident that it did so in a way that might be seen as respecting even tip-toeing around the Calefrisian/CaleAnglic presence. Topographically it seems the case in a number of locations but perhaps no more so than Angus and specifically Glenisla on the road to Dun Nechtain. To the south-east of Kirkton is Clintlaw, to its north Craigielaw, to its east another Clintlaw but also Tullymurdoch, with Balduff Hill to the south and to the north-west the Highland Line and Glen Shee; in other words mutual touch and coexistence, past, present and future. Moreover, the Calfrisian presence might even have some Pictish areas from Gaelic overwriting. I make the observation that Pictish place names to this day more often than not seem to have survived close to suggested Calefrisian presence as if, as already suggested, the two enjoyed a degree of agreed interdependence.