This is the fifth of a series of ten 'cameo' articles that appeared in The Scottish Field magazine beginning in December 1990 issue. These articles were intended to be provocative. Tranter has dealt with this subject in much greater depth in novel, David the Prince. I'll add my two-cents' worth after the master storyteller has made his point. Rory Mor.
IF David had not been sent as a hostage to the English court for years to keep King Henry, the Conqueror's son, and his own brother-in-law happy during the weak reigns of Malcolm Canmore's and Margaret's sons Edmund, Edgar and Alexander, then some of our land's most famous families would never have existed, at least in Scotland. We would never have had Bruces, Frasers, Lindsays, Sinclairs, Menzies, Hamiltons, Grahams and the rest, and we would never have had a House of Stewart to reign over us.
This, because David, a fine young man and the best of his odd family gained great favour with King Henry, and in fact, married the greatest heiress in England -- Matilda, Countess of Huntingdon -- who owned lands and manors in eleven counties. He was popular, too, with the Norman lords successors of the Conqueror's invading knights, and now largely dominant in England as landowners, the new aristocracy.
So, when eventually David's last elder brother died, childless and he succeeded all but unexpectedly to the Scots throne -- he was the youngest of six brothers -- he brought north with him, as well as his queen's enormous fortune a great many of his young Norman friends, the younger sons of the new feudal nobility and these he used to put to rights mismanaged Scotland, for his brothers had made but feeble monarchs.
One of these immigrants, who was descended from the Stewards of Dol in Normandy, he made High Steward of Scotland. One of his successors, Walter, High Steward married Robert Bruce's daughter, and eventually their son came to the throne as Robert the Second, the start of the Stewart royal line.
Robert Bruce himself was the son of the seventh Lord of Annandale originally from Brux in Normandy, and the Celtic Countess of Carrick. The Comyns, from Comine also in France, were rivals for the throne, when it fell vacant without obvious heirs, and we know what happened to the Red Comyn at Dumfries.
The Lindsays whose chief is now the premier earl of Scotland, were Normans, too, and settled in East Lothian before spreading out all over the land. Sir David de Lindsay, Regent for Alexander the Third, lies buried only two hundred yards from my house. And so on.
David's wealth -- or at least, Matilda's -- the continuing rents of vast properties in England, was put to excellent use. For he devised the parish system for Scotland, partly to reduce the local power and influence of the nobles and to enhance that of the Church -- for he had all the enthusiasm his mother, Queen Margaret, had for religion and parishes required priests, incumbents, hundreds of them. And new priests required training So seminaries had to be set up. And being a practical and a pious one, David decided to outdo even his late mother, and build his seminaries on a grand scale with his wife's monies -- abbeys, in fact.
And so we have the tremendous shrines of Melrose, Kelso, Jedburgh, Dryburgh, Dundrennan and so on, most of them ruined by English invasions or by the Reformers' hammers, but still our pride and great tourist attractions.
If David had never been sent as hostage to England, they would never have been built. If, if . . .
The Normans also brought the feudal system to Scotland and as they extended it throughout the fertile areas north and south, Gaelic retreated to the hills of Galloway and Ayrshire where it died out in the 17th century and to the Highlands where it persisted well into the 19th century and still lingers on in the Islands. Beyond the Highland line Gaelic was supreme until the Risings of 1715 and 1745 opened the region to military occupation but the clan leaders all spoke and wrote English long before that. English had become the official language of the entire United Kingdom, and when the average Highlander ultimately abandoned his Gaelic, he replaced it with Highland English. His ancestors had never spoken Scots.
Scots was the language of the Lowlands and became distinct from Northern English in the 15th century and was the official language of Scotland until the Union of the Parliaments in 1707 although it gradually became more anglicized from the middle of the 16th onward. Today it survives as a series of dialects and in a modified literary form called Lallans which came into use by the Scottish Renaissance Movement in the 1940s. The term 'Lallans' has also come to be a synonym for Scots. Dialectical Scots (as opposed to Lallans) is sometimes referred to as 'braid Scots' which is also extended to mean 'plain speaking' in general regardless of its form.
The Concise Scots Dictionary edited by Mairi Robinson (Aberdeen University Press: 1985) defines five distinct district dialects -- Insular (Shetland and Orkney), Northern (Caithness to Angus), Central (Perthshire to Galloway, Southern (The Borders) and Ulster (Northern Ireland). But variations are recognized within these districts such as the distinction between the Scots of Aberdeenshire and that of Kincardineshire or between that of Lothian and Clydeside. Of course, Glasgow has a language all of its own (the Patter) as does Aberdeen (the Doric). How these two dialects got their respective names I havenžt been able to determine but textbooks are available to teach one their intricacies.
Murison points out that Scots has a vocabulary that is much more extensive than might be supposed if all words recorded over the last six centuries are counted whether obsolete or not. He estimates that The Scottish National Dictionary and The Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue amounts to over 50,000 words between them. Because Scots and English both derived from Anglo-Saxon, they share a large vocabulary even though they may be pronounced and spelled differently as in the case of the following italicized words -- man, wife, daughter, cat, dog, horse, fire, house, wood, food, drink, bread, come, go, say, think, do, in, out, down, red, white, green, good, etc. [TEST 1: how many of the italicized words can you translate from the English to the Scots equivalents? Answers are listed at the end of this article.I expect that true Scots will score 100%!]
Some words that have survived in Scots have disappeared from standard English -- beild (shelter), blate (shy), dwine (decay), gloaming (twilight), greet (weep), sweir (unwilling), and speir (ask). TEST 2: what is the past tense of greet?
But there are two other major sources for Scots words -- Gaelic and Norse. Murison tells us that Gaelic came into direct contact with Anglo-Saxon in the 10th century and ever since Gaelic words have trickled into Scots. The earliest were topological terms such as these Anglicized versions of Gaelic words -- bog, cairn, craig, loch, glen and strath. Others crept in later such as caber (a roof beam used as a projectile in Highland games), airt (compass point), partan (crab), sonsie (jolly), clarsach (harp), tocher (dowry), slogan (war cry). After the Rising of the '45, words such as filibeg (little kilt), sporran (purse), skean dhu (small knife), claymore (broad sword), usquebae (whisky), gillie (servant), pibroch (classical pipe tune), and ceilidh (impromptu entertainment during a visit). Only the italicized words have the true Gaelic spelling.
Norse was even more influential on the evolution of Scots, and for that matter Northern English. Murison tells us that Norse has close affinities with as well as differences from Anglo-Saxon; the following Scots words all come from the Norse rather than Anglo- Saxon -- bairn (child), kirk (church), kist (chest), breeks (breeches), whilk (which), blae (blue), brae (brow of a hill), frae (from), gate (road such as in Canongate and Trongate), kilt (from the Norse 'to tuck up'), lug (ear), and neive (fist).
Of course, the French of the Normans and the later Parisians and French provincials who came as royal brides or servants to royalty also had and influence; such words as ashet (meat plate), douce (sweet, pleasant), houlet (owl), jigot (leg of mutton), tassie (cup), succar (sugar), caddie (messenger), and crune (to sing) to mention a few.
There is much more to be said on the subject but those who are interested in learning more can find sources for study in the Scots Language section of this website.
Test 2: grat is preferred but gret and grutten are also used. How did you do? .