Culloden

2. Culloden

4. Nemo me impune lacesset

5. Drawings from Culloden The Pencuik artist (anon.)

8. After Culloden • Highland villages were attacked and the victorious army under Cumberland (King George II’s younger son) committed ‘war-crimes’. • The Hanoverians responded with severity by dismantling Gaelic society and passing measures to break its will. • Jacobite leaders either fled into exile or were punished or executed by the government, their estates forfeited and run by new managers.

9. Bonny Prince Charlie (right)

10. Flora MacDonald Who helped Bonny Prince Charlie escape from Scotland

11. The Aftermath of Culloden. • In 1746 came the Disarming Act which forbade Highland civilians from bearing arms or wearing the symbol of the warrior-Gael, the plaid. • The defeat at Culloden has been invoked continuously in Gaelic poetry ever since as a symbol of the oppression and injustice that Gaels have endured from the English-speaking world. (Mo Run Geal Og).

12. The Jacobite Cause: what it stood for • Jacobites did not accept the new monarchy that took the place of James the II. The new monarchy in England represented the new ideology of the United Kingdom (the Act of Union with Scotland 1707). • The Jacobites did not accept the Act and wanted Scotland to be independent.

13. A Gaelic History of Scotland • The Jacobite hopes were later further smashed with the death of Charles Edward Stewart (Bonny Prince Charlie) in Rome in 1788. • The post-Culloden period marks a watershed in the history of Gaelic Scotland because of the finality of control that the new instruments of Anglicization had achieved.

14. The Aftermath of Culloden • It could be said that many communities of the Gàidhealtachd lost their sense of involvement in the physical and political world in exchange for a belief in a personal spiritual struggle (Compare North American natives= the Ghost Dance). • Once Gaeldom no longer seemed to pose a threat, it was pilfered for elements to add local colour to the British Empire.

15. The Clansmen in the British Army • ‘No great mischief if they fall’ Major James Wolfe. • 42nd Foot (Black Watch) 1756 • 77th Foot 1757 • 78th Foot 1757 – The Fraser Highlanders(Plains of Abraham 1759)

16. Clansmen in the British Army 78th foot. Battle of Sillery, Quebec, 1760.

19. Canadianized Clansman

20. The Clearances • This Anglicization had the effect of destroying the old link between the clan-chieftain and his people. The Gaelic-speaking tenantry could now be removed at will by the landlords, who saw that people could not produce the profits that the new economic system required. • This led to large-scale clearances where people were forcilbly evicted from their homes (the first was in Glengarry 1785). • 1792 was the Bliadhna nan Caorach (Year of the Sheep).

23. The Clearances • Highland landlords had greater powers over their tenants than any in contemporary Europe. • A number of factors combined (including the Potato Famine-which was also known in Scotland- of 1846-7) made Clearance a recurring catastrophe of the nineteenth century. • In the Gaelic poetry of the time, the recurring image is that of the Lowland shepherd who arrives in the Highlands with his flocks of sheep which displace the Highlanders for the profit of the landlords.

24. A Gaelic History of Scotland • After the ‘rebels’ had been crushed at Culloden, the Highlanders no longer posed a threat to the Anglo-British state. • Especially after the popularity of MacPherson’s Ossian in the 1760s, the Highlander came to be identified as a ‘noble-savage’. • The popular portrayal of the ‘lost world’ of the Celts reinforced its disconnection from the reality of industrialisation and empire.

25. A Gaelic History of Scotland • The ever-deepening social and cultural crisis in the Highlands led to a retreat into religion as an internal community. • The Church of Scotland saw a disruption of its unity in 1843, and the formation of the Free Church. This was evangelical inspiration, and rejecting the world. In Gaelic terms it also rejected secular culture, music, song and dance.

26. A Gaelic History of Scotland • Catholicism had been identified with the Jacobite cause. • Many Catholic communities in the Highlands and Islands left Scotland in the 19th century for Canada and the USA. By 1878, almost all the Gaelic Catholics were in the county of Inverness and the diocese of Argyll and the Isles.

27. Emigration of the Gaelic clans

28. Gaeldom in Retreat • In a period when Gaelic was already in decline, An Comunn Gaidhealach (The Highland Society) was established in 1891 with the express aim of encouraging the Gaelic language and tradition. • It has been the patron of an annual competition called the Mod, modelled on the Welsh Eisteddfod.

29. The Kilt, and the Tartan • In 1815 an expatriate club, the Highland Society of London, had written to each of the clan chiefs asking them to send a sample of their clan tartan to be deposited and registered. • To many this was baffling, since they didn’t know that such a thing existed.

30. The Kilt, and the Tartan • After George IV visited the Highlands in 1822, tartan became all the rage. • Two men claiming to be Bonny Prince Charlie’s sons arrived in Scotland with a bogus list of clan tartans, which became the origin of many of today’s so-called clan ‘setts’.

31. The Kilt • The kilt had been banned after 1746, and Highlanders were forced to wear trousers. This law was repealed in the 19th century. • Before 1727 the big kilt had been a large plaid, a piece of rough checked-weave material usually about five feet across and fifteen feet long, more like tweed than modern tartan.

32. The Kilt • Palide is the Gaelic word for blanket, and it was used as day wear and for sleeping under. • To put it on a clansman laid the plaid on the ground over his belt and then lay down himself. • He then wrapped the bottom section around his waist and secured it by buckling his belt at the back. • The rest covered the upper body like a loose coat and it was usually pinned at the shoulder. (feile mor)

33. The tartan • The word was used hundreds of years ago, and first recorded in 1538. “heland tartane’. And by the 16th century it appears that yarn was being dyed and woven into colourful checked patterns. Many of these colours came from Highland plants.

34. Gaeldom in Retreat • Rather a lack of native institutions led to a certain decline, although the British military became the principle patron of piping in both the Lowlands and the Highlands. (Highland Games). • Such Highland Games, often far from the realities of the Gaelic world, led to the introduction of ideas and styles once foreign to Gaelic music. (changing the tempo).

35. Gaelic today • The neglect of Gaelic in the education system after 1872 resulted in the language surviving as an oral rather than a literary medium. • After all, the purpose of school had been to promote English literacy. • Adult Gaelic reading ability was mostly associated with Bible reading, homeworship and Metrical Psalms.

36. Gaelic today • In the 1981 Census, the usually resident population of Scotland totalled just over 5 million, of these a mere 82,620 were able to read, write or speak Gaelic. • Interestingly, only 20,000 lived in areas where 75% of the population spoke Gaelic. These were chiefly in the Western Isles, the Isle of Skye, Tiree, Islay.

37. Gaelic today • There are still speakers of the language in the western coastal areas of the Highlands. • Nearly 42% of Gaelic speakers were migrant Gael in the principal urban areas of the Lowlands (Lowland Strathclyde Region). • In Glasgow in 1982, there were some 15,000 (migrant) Gaelic speakers.

38. Gaelic today • It is often in these urban areas (around Glasgow) that there is a growing proportion of Gaelic speakers. • In fact, most Gaelic-speakers in Scotland are to be found in areas which are not predominantly G-speaking, nor have been historically. • This leads to a range of problems.

39. Gaelic today • The census of 2001 showed a total of 58,652 speakers of Gaelic in Scotland. • This represented a continued sharp decline from 65,000 in 1991 and 88,000 in 1971. • In the mid-1700s, the figure exceeded half a million, and until c1400, half the population of Scotland spoke Gaelic (Gàidhlig).

40. Gaelic today • Native Gaelic speakers in Canada in 2001 numbered 2155, with the largest number in Ontario (mostly of Cape-Breton origin). • At the time of confederation, Gaelic (with 200,000 speakers) was the third most spoken European language in Canada.

41. GAELIC TODAY

42. Gaelic today • The results of the 2001 Census showed c59,000 speakers. • Another challenge facing those who wish to promote the language is that more than half the Gaelic-speaking population in 2001 was over the age of 40. • Most initiatives on behalf of Gaelic have been launched at the local community level and not on a larger national Scotland-wide scale, reflecting the split in Scottish thinking about where Gaelic fits into the national identity.

43. Gaelic today • There have been for a long time psychological barriers to the restoration of Gaelic (or even maintenance). • ‘Gaelic is not relevant to modern life’ • ‘it is a foreign and alien apparition on the Scottish scene’.

44. Gaelic today • One important new coordinating body on the scene in Scotland is the National Gaelic Parents Association/Comunn nam Parant Naiseanta (1994). • This body monitors progress in extending Gaelic-medium education. It has so far served as an effective link between schools and community regarding extended usage of Gaelic.

45. Gaelic education • Gaelic medium education has made great strides since its (re)establishment in Scotland in the 1980s, particularly at the primary and pre-school levels. • There are now over fifty schools around Scotland which offer Gaelic-medium education.

46. Gaelic education • These are either all-Gaelic establishments or in bilingual streams in English-medium institutions. • The most important new body in this area is Comhaire nan Sgoiltean Araich- the Gaelic Pre-school Council.

47. Comhaire nan Sgoiltean • Within its first ten years CNSA has established over 140 Gaelic pre-school groups around Scotland, which represents over 2400 children. • The number of schools offering Gaelic as a subject has tripled since the early 1980s.

48. Gaelic education • It is not always realised that for a very long period Gaelic was used as the medium of instruction in local religiously administered schools in Gaelic-speaking areas of Scotland until c 1872.

49. Gaelic education • Only about one-third of children in Gaelic-speaking areas are presently attending Gaelic-medium schools (all in the NW traditionally Gaelic area- Gaidhealtachd, with only one elsewhere in Scotland, in Glasgow.

50. Sgoil Ghàidhlig Ghlaschu • 80% of the children come from homes in the Glasgow • Area where English is the first language.