THE RACES OF THE SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS. (To THE EDITOR or
THE 1' SPECTATOR."] your issue of September 3rd your correspondent Mr.
Dpnald wrap& pa A subject which arouses interest, and at times somewhat heated discussion, among those who pay attention to the history of the North and West of Scotland. As happens in most controversies, there are extreme views on both sides. No one who is acquainted with the lands in question and their story will accept the dictum of Carlyle which your correspondent attacks so vehemently, to the effect that the Scottish Highlanders and islesmen are a Norse breed. In challenging this dictum, your correspondent goes to the opposite extreme. His assertion is, or seems to be, that the people now inhabiting the lands in question are of purely Celtic origin. He holds that the Norse invaders have left no trace behind them in the Scottish Highlands beyond a few names of bays and promontories along their coastline. Where does the real line of truth lie between this Scylla and Charybdis? Mr. Donald admits that the Northmen bore rule over large districts of Northern and Western Scotland for something like four centuries, that is for about double the time that separates the present day from the union of the Scottish and English kingdoms. Is it within the bounds of probability that so long a period of rule should have left no trace behind it? Of course, it is well known that, except in Orkney and Shetland and the eastern half of Caithness, the Gaelic tongue preserved its sway through most of these centuries, and In part down to our own day. From this, however, it by no means follows that those who spoke that tonguewere in no way affected by those who ruled over them for so long. The truth of the matter is that while the chiefs and many of their kinsmen were at first purely Scandinavian, they intermarried largely with the race that they found in possession of the districts around! which this discussion centres. The early Viking. raiders did not carry their women with them, and when settle- ment rather than raiding became their object they brought com- paratively few wives from their native homes, especially to places so far away as the West Highlands and the isles. As is usual in such cases, the children learned to speak the language of their mothers. Thus in the lapse of a generation or two all but a certain small number of words of Norwegian origin had fallen out of use in the more distant settlements. In Shetland, Orkney, and part of Caithness the speakers of Gaelic were fewer than in the West, and more easily exterminated or expelled,while also more easily the invaders brought mothers for their children from their native land. Thus it is that in the districts just mentioned native Gaelic has been unknown for a thousand years, while at a greater distance that language with little substantial change came into universal use.
The point in question is well illustrated by what occurred in not improbably the very latest Norse settlement in the Highlands. About the middle of the twelfth century Sweyn Asliefsen, celebrated in Saga literature as " the last of the Vikings," settled his brother with a considerable retinue on lands which he had wrested from previous possessors. This brother with his followers formed a plan which held well together so long as the clan system lasted, and the history of which is well known locally. The newcomers inter- married with the daughters of the land to such an extent that Gaelic became the language of the clan for centuries until English began to displace it, aided, no doubt, by the strong admixture of Scandinavian words which the Gaelic of the district notoriously contained. Nevertheless, throughout its long history the particular clan thus referred to evinced well-marked features, alike physical, mental, and moral, of the Scandinavian origin of its founders. Current local sayings bear out this statement even to-day. This is but one example of what had been taking place in the isles and considerable regions of the Highlands for a couple of hundred years before the days of Sweyn. Thus, though it be but half a truth, there is a certain firm foundation for that saying of Carlyle's from
which your correspondent dissents so strongly. Whatever the character of the leading members of a Highland clan became, whether for good or evil, must over a large extent of territory be ascribed as much to their Norse paternity as
to their Celtio maternity. The leaders of the men who, according to Mr. Donald, resisted the dominion of the King of Scots were largely, at all events, and probably mainly, of partly Norwegian descent. It is worse than useless to contend that the races of the Scottish Highlands are either purely Norse or purely Celtic. Each of these stocks contributed much to the common product, and if that product is to be boasted of at all each has a right to boast of it.
Two companion truths are written on a much larger page of history than that which concerns itself with the North and West of Scotland. One is that language by itself is never a trustworthy guide in ethnological study. The other is that the intermingling of races differing, yet not too greatly differing, in language, in character, and in outlook leads extremely often to the happiest result. The Northmen who seized the lands beside the Seine and gave their country its leaders and its name needed scarcely a couple of generations for laying aside their native tongue so entirely that, except in one or two outlying districts, it had ceased to be under. stood. Their circumstances were the same as those of iheir compatriots who found a new home further to the north. Their children probably of the first generation, and certainly of the second, learned the speech of their mothers, so that when their descendants came to England their ordinary appellation was that of Frenchmen. Yet no one has ever doubted that they had a right to call themselves Normans or that their Scandinavian origin was of prime effect in fashioning them. It needs much less learning than that of Macaulay's schoolboy to be aware how great the influence of these Normans was in moulding the destinies not of England only, but of Europe. What this mixed race of Normans became to many a land and many a people, their Scottish kinsmen also were on the smaller stage whereon their part
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