THE RACES OF THE SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS. [To THE EDITOR OP
THE " SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—Perhaps you will allow me to supplement Mr. Foster Palmer's letter in your issue of June 25th? I think the best possible index to a race is the personal name, excepting, of course, in the case of the American negroes who are in the habit of adopting any name to which they may take a fancy. Carlyle said a long time ago that the Scottish Highlanders were " a Norse breed," and this is not very far from the truth. As a keen student of this interesting subject for many years, I conclude that the Norsemen were the aboriginals of the Western borders of the Scottish Highlands, and certainly of the isles, which nearly all bear a Norse name. The names of the people are also mostly Norse or pointing to Norse origin. For instance, MacAulay means the son of Olaf; MacQueen, the son of Sven; MacNeil, the son of Njal (Neilsen); Maclachlan, the son of the Norseman; Macdougall, the son of the Dane, &c. It may be considered, therefore, as axiomatic that those who carried down all these names—personal and territorial—must have been more or less of Norse origin. It may surprise many of your readers to hear that most of the Gaelic names are to be found in the Lowlands, as, for example, Aird, Bain, Begg, Douglas, Glass, Holly, Haig, Horne, &c., and a whole host of others. When the Gaels or Scots from Ulster conquered Caledonia in the early centuries, giving the whole country their own Latin name, Scotia (later Scotland), they completely subdued the Picts and all the other tribes in the lower parts of that country. Eventually Gaelic became the universaLlan- gunge of the whole nation from the Border to the Shetland. Isles (so I am told by a present-day Edinburgh professor), penetrating with its culture and refinement to the outer reaches of the Hebrides, where it is still spoken exclusively even now. I regret to say, however, that the old language is gradually dying out everywhere. The big, fair men of the Highlands are undoubtedly a cross between the real (fair- haired) Celts and the Norse, whilst the shorter, dark men referred to are really pre-Celtic, or they may possibly belong to the Caledonian Picts, who were also dark, and is a type commonly met with in Lowland Scotland of to-day. The Celts (dark and fair) and the Norse combined, or amalgamated, are known ethnologically nowadays as the Celto-Norse race, and a very formidable compound race it is. This has been amply proved throughout the late centuries, to say nothing of its great achievements in the late war. And Mr. Lloyd George belongs to it; he is not a pure Celt.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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