Scotland's Irish Origins

Scotland's Irish Origins Volume 54 Number 4, July/August 2001

by Dean R. Snow

Tracking the migration of Gaelic speakers who crossed the Irish Sea 1,700 years ago and became the Scots

Ireland in the Early Christian period (A.D. 400-1177) was made up of at least 120 chiefdoms, usually described in surviving documents as petty kingdoms, typically having about 700 warriors. One of these petty kingdoms was Dál Riata, which occupied a corner of County Antrim, the island's northeasternmost part. Around A.D. 400, people from Dál Riata began to settle across the Irish Sea along the Scottish coast in County Argyll. Other Irish migrants were also establishing footholds along the coast farther south, as far as Wales and even Cornwall, but the migrants from Dál Riata were especially noteworthy because they were known to the Romans as "Scotti" and they would eventually give their Gaelic language and their name to all of what is now known as Scotland.

So far as we know, the only people already living in Scotland in A.D. 400 were the Picts, who were first mentioned by Roman writers in A.D. 297. This was in connection with an attack along Hadrian's Wall, in which the Picts had the help of Irish (Scotti) allies, so connections across the Irish Sea must have already been strong. Roman sources predictably describe their Pictish adversaries as barbarians and mention their use of blue paint, which some historians later interpreted perhaps too literally (Mel Gibson and his friends show up in the film Braveheart slathered with gallons of it). More likely the Picts were heavily tattooed.

The Picts lived mainly in eastern Scotland, north of modern Edinburgh. We know their homeland both from the distributions of Pictish place-names (which typically begin with "Pett" or "Pit") and the distribution of Pictish symbol stones, which were Pictish equivalents of a medieval coat of arms, each typically bearing the crest of a petty king and that of his father. The rugged west coast was only lightly occupied by Picts or some other Celtic-speaking people. Settlers from Dál Riata apparently established themselves along the west coast without much opposition. By A.D. 490 the population of Scotti was large enough that the head of the little kingdom moved the family seat across from Ireland. The Scotti alternately cooperated with and fought against the Picts for the next few centuries until the two were unified into a single kingdom under Cináed (Kenneth) mac Ailp'n in A.D. 844. After that the Pictish language disappeared, along with the symbol stones and other archaeological traits that had distinguished them from the Scotti.

What the Scottish case and others like it tells us is that migrations by relatively small dominant societies are much more common in human history than many archaeologists have been willing to admit (much less assume), particularly in North America. Typically, the signatures of it have been explained away too easily as evolutionary change in place. There are so many good examples of change associated with the migration of whole societies or dominant subsets of them, that any major change over time that can be observed archaeologically is likely to have involved migration in one of its many forms, however minor. We should be assuming population movement as a first principle rather than denying it.

Take your Pict

From A.D. 400 to 1000 , northern Great Britain saw the withdrawal of Roman forces, arrival of the Scotti from northeastern Ireland, disappearance of the Picts, formation of a united kingdom of Scotland, and colonization by the Norse.

A.D. 400. Settlers from the Irish petty kingdom of Dál Riata were beginning to establishing themselves in what would later be called Scotland. Picts were well established north of other Celtic speakers except perhaps on the west coast and in the Hebrides.

A.D. 500. Departure of Roman legions in A.D. 407 left Britain to Picts, other Celtic speakers, and growing numbers of Irish settlers. Enough Scotti were in place by A.D. 490 to allow them to move the seat of Dál Riata from across the Irish Sea.

A.D. 600. Colum Cille left Ireland and established a monastery on Iona in 563. From this time on expansion of the Irish Scotti was assisted in part by the spread of Christianity.

A.D. 700. As the Scottish presence in Britain grew, so did that of the Angles and Saxons, many the descendants of Roman mercenaries. Angle settlements expanded south and east of Scottish territory.

A.D. 800. As both Angle and Scottish communities grew, small Norse settlements began to appear in the islands of Orkney and the Outer Hebrides.

A.D. 900. Competition from the Norse and Angles probably contributed to the unification of Scots and Picts into a single kingdom in 844. Pictish language and culture disappeared. Norse raids forced the abandonment of Iona by 878.

A.D. 1000. By 1,000 years ago the Picts were a memory and the united kingdom of Scotland was caught between Germanic Norse and Angle settlers.

Dean R. Snow, a professor of anthropology at the Pennsylvania State University, has studied Iroquoian archaeology since 1969. His work in Northern Ireland and Scotland was supported by the British Council.

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© 2001 by the Archaeological Institute of America

archive.archaeology.org/0107/abstracts/scotland.html

What's the difference between Irish Gaelic and Scottish Gaelic?

What's the difference between Irish Gaelic and Scottish Gaelic?

Not much, as it turns out:

Scottish Gaelic is basically just an older, more conservative form of Irish Gaelic. 

The Scots or Scotti were originally a Celtic tribe living in northern Ireland. Between the 6th and 10th centuries A.D., some of them migrated to northern Britain then called Caledonia, now called Scotland. They took their north Irish Gaelic dialect along with them and it later evolved into Scots Gaelic. 

Scotland was not uninhabited when they came there. The Scots found other Celts already living there in the southwest (Strathclyde) who spoke a language very similar to Welsh called "Cumbrian." 

They also found a pre-Celtic people called "Picts" or "Caledoni" living in the Highlands. Unfortunately, their language is unknown to us and survives only in 14 inscriptions - some in ogham writing and some in Roman letters - which linguists have been unable to translate. 

Nevertheless, the Scots gradually merged with the Strathclyde Celts and Picts into a single Scottish nation. Their Gaelic language eventually replaced both the Cumbrian and Pictish languages but it's not exactly known how. 

Since the language of a colony always tends to be more conservative than what it is in the mother country, Gaelic didn't change as much in Scotland as it did in Ireland. So, ironically, Scots Gaelic is actually a little closer to the Gaelic spoken by such Old Irish heroes as Brendan the Navigator, John Erugena (or Duns Scotus) and Brian Boru than modern Irish Gaelic is. 

Linguists are divided as to whether Irish and Scots Gaelic are separate languages like Norwegian and Swedish or just strongly differentiated dialects of the same language like High German and Low German. 

Nevertheless, despite some differences, the two Gaelics still seem to be largely mutually intelligible between their speakers. One Irish scholar I talked to at a book fair once said that he could still understand 95% of Scottish Gaelic whenever he read it. 

There is still a third, little known type of Gaelic called Manx (as in Manx cats) which was once spoken on the Isle of Man between northern England and Ireland. Manx was a tad bit closer to Scottish Gaelic than Irish Gaelic and simpler than both. It's speakers were mostly Roman Catholic in religion. It died out not too long ago. The last speaker of Manx died in either 1957, 1962 or 1965 depending upon whose accounts you go by.