The Auldest Tung

The Other Story

Nevertheless, today’s received wisdom requires proper examination. Until this point, 1018 AD or thereabouts, the situation of Calefrisian had, needs must, been both linguistically obscure, in that nothing is proven or, indeed, provable, but also has had clarity because the external, historical events that have paralleled its usage are to a large extent known and, I hope, have been shown to have been incapable of much impact. The language has remained largely outwith the “mainstream”, by which is meant the Anglo-Saxon mainstream.

But now, whilst Scots political history remains relatively benign, there are cultural changes particularly from the second century of the second millennium that are said in the conventional explanation of Scots not simply to change its direction but in comparatively short time to have overwritten it. It is a story, which begins by implication in 1113 AD. It was the year David I came to the throne. He was the ninth king of the Dunkeld dynasty that in 1034 is said to have replaced the previous Alpine one. In fact the whole thing is something of a construct and the real difference before and after is that Dunkeld adopted primogeniture, or more precisely the first-born son inheriting, dropping Celtic and therefore, if somewhat notionally, Alpine tanistry, i.e. selection by next in command. And it might be said the the construct goes further. David himself was hardly a Scot. After their third iteration the Dunkelds had adopted a policy of marrying out. Malcolm III had as his first wife Ingibiorg Finnsdottir, the Norwegian-born ex. wife of the Earl Orkney and had three, half-Norse sons with her, Duncan, Edgar and Alexander, kings from 1093 AD to 1124 AD, none of whom produced any acceptable, surviving issue. Then he married Margaret of Wessex, with whom he had a further eight children. David was one them so he was half-Saxon, probably a bit Scandinavian of some sort from the Alpines and maybe a quarter or so actually native Gael-Pictish, or is it Pictish-Gael. Moreover, aged about 9, so on the death of his father and under threat from the first of his half-brothers he was forced to flee Scotland to the English court. Theoretically it was four years but probably more, since inter alia he married the Norman, so Franco-Norse great-niece of William the Conqueror, Maud, Countess of Huntingdon, and received considerable grants of land in England before, on the death of the third of his elder half-brothers, finally at the age of thirty-eight, so by then groomed and set in London's ways, returning north.

And once installed David is said to have introduced the system of the burgh, based on existing settlements but involving certain additional rights, essentially a kind of “free-port”. The first three were Berwick-upon-Tweed, Roxburgh and Aberdeen but the idea was extended during his lifetime to Peebles in The Borders, Edinburgh and Haddington on the east coast south of the Forth, Kinghorn, Linlithgow and Stirling on the Forth itself, Lanark and Rutherglen in the West, Perth and Montrose at the two ends of Angus, and in Moray probably with Elgin and Forres. There were some fifteen in all, all designated Royal, for which and for those that followed it has since even been claimed that:

“No institution would do more to reshape the long-term economic and ethnic shape of Scotland than the burgh. These planned towns were or became English in culture and language”

because:

"the towns and burghs of the Scottish realm are known to be inhabited by English"

and it is also said that:

"the failure of these towns to go native would in the long term undermine the position of the Gaelic language and give birth to the idea of the Scottish Lowlands."

So it appears what is being maintained is that because "burghs" had populations that were said to be majority English, then the language that came to dominate was English also, that because of them the Lowlands became a political entity, and presumably force, and that that led to the death of the Gaelic language. They are quite some claims. They might even appear at first sight to have plausibility. There would after all in the end be some two hundred and forty "burghs" in total. And Gaelic has reatreated to an 80,000 speaker rump. Yet the reality is that they are subject to such limitations, such geographical, chronological, even linguistic and numerical boundaries, as to make any such claims seem not just marginal but nigh on impossible.