The Decline of Gaelic is a guest blogpost from Michael Newton. It was originally published in his bilingual book Bho Chluaidh gu Calasraid: From the Clyde to Callander (1st edition was 1990, 2nd edition 2010), and is reproduced here with permission.
It is clear that Gaelic was spoken throughout most of the Lennox and Menteith until the Jacobite Rising of 1745. Gaelic religious texts were sent by a charity to the parishes of Luss and Buchanan in the year 1705. The parish of the Port of Menteith asked for a Gaelic-speaking minister in the year 1726, and we have an account written by a minister demonstrating how plentiful Gaelic was in this period: Gaelic was the language of the parishes of Callander, Aberfoyle, Luss and Tarbert; most of the people of the parishes of Port of Menteith and Buchanan, and of the north end of Drymen, spoke Gaelic.
Many of the Lowlanders held the Highlanders in disdain on account of the Jacobite Rising of 1745, regardless of what side they took. The Gaels were subject to outside influences coming from all kinds of sources – the church, schooling, the government and industry – and they had little choice but to accept the practices of the English-speaking world, including language itself. The church was the only organisation that offered any support for Gaelic.
When a new minister was needed in the parish of Buchanan in the year 1759, the people of the parish asked to be given a Gaelic-speaking minister. Duncan MacFarlane, who was from Arrochar, was the minister in the parish of Drymen between 1743 and 1791, and the sermons that he (and his son, who was the minister between 1792 and 1823) wrote in Gaelic still survive in the University of Glasgow.
There are summary reports written by ministers about the year 1790 for the Old Statistical Account which describe the dwindling away of Gaelic: on the west shore of Loch Lomond, it was rarely found south of Luss; many people in the parish of Drymen spoke it, and there were a few who did not speak any English; everyone in the parish of Aberfoyle spoke it, although they were becoming familiar with English; only the poor in the parish of Callander spoke Gaelic.
The Rev. MacFarlane wrote in the year 1763 that the English language held the position of superiority and that it was extinguishing Gaelic in the parish of Drymen, but the account written by the Rev. Graham in the parish of Aberfoyle in the year 1798 went even further: he asserted that the English tongue was so dominant and the attitudes of English-speakers so hostile to Gaelic that there would not be a trace of the language or the culture in a generation’s time.
There were some people in these areas who, despite the difficulties, did their utmost to keep the language alive. The Reverend Stuart of Luss was involved with a group who were editing a Gaelic dictionary, although it was never completed. He contributed to the collection of Gaelic poetry gathered by the Reverend MacLagan, some of which appears in this book. He prepared a new edition of the New Testament which was printed in the year 1796, and he was assisted by the poet John Walker.
The Reverend Patrick Graham of the parish of Aberfoyle was engaged in the Ossianic debate, attempting to defend the honour of the Gaels. Donald MacGregor was a schoolmaster near Rossdhu who collected traditional lore from the old folk at the beginning of the eighteenth century. He seems to have been able to collect this material from the last Gaelic-speaking generation there.
When Dorothy and William Wordsworth went travelling in the year 1803, she wrote that there were very few people left in the Trossachs – they had already been cleared out. They met up with a MacFarlane close to Callander who only spoke a little bit of English, and his children, living only twenty miles away from Callander, spoke nothing but Gaelic.
Alexander Campbell went travelling in the year 1802 and he observed that although Callander was Lowland in appearance, that it was largely Gaelic in terms of language and culture. He considered Strathyre to be completely Gaelic in every sense of the word. When he returned to the Highlands again in the year 1815, he encountered a boy who was fluent in Menteith Gaelic.
Gaelic was not used in the church of Luss after the death of the Reverend Stuart in the year 1821, and this gave a decided advantage to the English language in the parish. The situation around Callander in the year 1845 does not appear to be so bleak, however: Gaelic was taught in two schools and spoken in the church. It can be seen in this book that there were still Menteith poets composing in Gaelic, such as Alasdair Buchanan and the poet who wrote the song ‘Welcome to Loch Venachar’.
John Dewar went in search of stories under the patronage of John Francis Campbell in the 1860s, and he got more stories than he expected in the parish of Arrochar. John Francis Campbell had no need for him after that year, and it is very fortunate indeed that the Duke of Argyll was willing to be his patron while he travelled throughout Argyll and Perthshire. He was struck with illness in the year 1871 and died the next year, but during those ten years he recorded one of the most valuable existing collections of Gaelic folk-lore.
The Gaels attending the Free Church in the Vale of Leven asked for missionaries to be sent to them in the year 1850. The congregation grew in size and a church was built for them in the year 1859. There was also a Vale of Leven Highlanders Society which met in Balloch.
But at the same time, Gaelic was dying out around the Lake of Menteith: it was written at the end of the nineteenth century that only the old people remembered it. When Stephen Kane, who was raised in Stirling, was sent to Aberfoyle as a postman about the year 1898, however, he fell in love with this language that he had never heard before and learned it fluently from the people of the district.
People were aware, and some of them regretful, that the native language was disappearing. Seumas MacDiarmid made every attempt to record oral traditions. When Duncan Stewart, who was a native of Callander, died in the year 1908, the townsfolk said that “no social function was ever considered complete to which Mr. Stewart did not contribute one or more Gaelic songs”.
The people of Strathyre attempted to have a Gaelic-speaker employed in the school in the year 1909, although their attempts were not altogether successful – it must be remembered that the majority of people in Scotland were highly prejudiced against Gaelic at that time.
Professor William Watson recorded an enormous amount of traditional lore from Parlane MacFarlane who was a native of Brig o’ Turk. “I know every stone and trench and hillock between Callander and Inversnaid,” said Parlane to the professor as they sat on Loch Venachar-side. Little by little, people like him have evaporated away in the twentieth century, although we are fortunate that scholars were able to record samples of the old tongue when they were researching Gaelic dialects in the year 1950. Gaels from Inversnaid, Brig o’ Turk, and Arrochar, among other places, were recorded. I myself have met a few people with smatterings of Gaelic at the end of the twentieth century, such as John Fisher, who was raised in Ardleish.
It is a terrible tragedy that Gaelic has been lost, and a great deal of heritage along with it. It is also a matter of great regret that so few of the native inhabitants remain in the area. Be that as it may, this literature and tradition deserves to find a new lease of life among those alive in the present.