Celtic Languages

Irish (Gaeilge) is the native Celtic language of Ireland. Whereas the British Celts of Britain came under the rule of Rome, the Gaels of Ireland did not. The only ancient evidence for their language is in the form of placenames and tribal names in Classical geographical texts. Their own record begins with short inscriptions in the so-called ogham alphabet, found on standing stones dating apparently from the 3rd to 5th centuries ad. Irish is the earliest and best attested of the medieval Celtic literatures. Writing came with Christianity, and a literature emerged in which traditional oral material was committed to vellum, and Christian literary expression made the leap from Latin to the vernacular.

Irish absorbed linguistic input from Norse and Norman invaders (9th and 12th century respectively). More far-reaching were the linguistic effects of the 16th-17th century reconquest of Ireland in the time of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, and James I, which involved large-scale plantations of English speakers and the creation of an anglophone Protestant overclass. This transformed Irish into a predominantly peasant, Catholic language, strongest in the poorest parts of the country—an identity reinforced by famine and emigration, which bore most heavily on the Irish-speaking parts of the country.

The rise of nationalism in the later 19th century gave Irish new status as a symbol of nationhood, and it was enshrined as the “first national language” in the Irish constitution after independence. While the traditional Gaelic-speaking areas (Gaeltachtaí) of Munster, Connemara, and Donegal have been slowly shrinking under economic and social pressures, Irish continues to be learned and studied, and possesses a powerful cultural significance and literary value.

Gaelic (Gàidhlig) seems to have been taken to the West Highlands of Scotland by colonists from Ireland as part of a movement that also gave rise to Irish colonial activity in Cornwall, Wales, the Isle of Man, and south-western Scotland in the late Roman period (4th-6th centuries ad). The language of these Gaelic speakers (known as Scotti by their neighbours the Picts, Britons, and Angles) predominated throughout Scotland north of the Forth-Clyde line by the 9th century, and, when their kings asserted their power in southern Scotland, Gaelic became briefly the prestige language of the whole of Scotland (11th century). The Normanization of the Scottish court (12th century) put Gaelic into decline, and by the late Middle Ages it could be regarded as the language of the Highlands. Highland support for the Jacobite cause led to anti-Gaelic measures in the 18th century, and emigration emptied the Highlands in the 19th century.

As a result of this retreat, Gaelic is today the native language of the indigenous population of the Western Isles and north-western seaboard of the Scottish Highlands, and of a scatter of Gaelic communities in the cities and overseas (for example in Nova Scotia). The total number of speakers had declined by the time of the 1991 census to around 80,000. Ten years later the census figures showed a worrying 11 per cent drop in speakers, to 58,650. However, this decline is most likely to be caused by the deaths of older speakers. The language is officially supported (though not legally entrenched), and Gaelic-medium and bilingual schooling is provided by the education system, with the aim of creating a secure place for Gaelic within a stable bilingual system.

During the early centuries, Scottish Gaelic and Irish shared the same literary tradition, and the shared inheritance remained important until modern times. The first printed book to appear in Gaelic Scotland was the Book of Common Order (1567), and religion drove early publishing until the mid-18th century, when the first anthology of Scottish Gaelic verse was printed. Modern publishing in Scottish Gaelic is small by comparison with Wales and Ireland, but contains some distinguished writing, especially in poetry.

Manx Gaelic (Gailck) was spoken as a traditional native language in the agricultural and fishing communities of the Isle of Man down to the times of modern recording, and has been kept alive in recent decades by enthusiasts. The needs of religious instruction gave rise to a Manx Bible, Prayer Book, Catechism, and so on, in the 18th century. This stabilized the orthography and led to the publication of a certain amount of traditional material, translation literature and fresh literary creation.

Manx appears to share some features with Irish, but more with Scottish Gaelic. The geographical position of the Isle of Man, in the Irish Sea, helps to explain this in general, but the details are obscure. The reasons for the affiliations of Manx are probably to be sought in or before the 14th century, in a period when Scottish, Irish, and Norse-Hebridean elements were involved in the history of the island.