LL-L "Scots" 2002.03.29 (02) [E]
Lowlands-L
sassisch at yahoo.com
Fri Mar 29 16:58:30 UTC 2002
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L O W L A N D S - L * 29.MAR.2002 (02) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian L=Limburgish
LS=Low Saxon (Low German) S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic Z=Zeelandic (Zeeuws)
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From: Simon Hoare <simon.hoare at MAIL.BE>
Subject: LL-L "Scots" 2002.03.28 (10) [E]
Hi Sylvain,
People are people. There is no Irish, English or Scottish "race" or any
other. What we are referring to is surely just language and culture.
The Gaelic speakers who moved into Scotland are associated with the word
"Scot". This is the reason for Scotland being called "Scot"land. Note
the Germanic suffix however. Scotland is a Germanic word.
We are, we should not forget, only discussing this in English. In other
languages, the names are going to be different and the rules of the game
are probably different as well.
We call the Scottish Anglo-Saxon linguistic descendant "Scots" in
English. The Scottish Gaelic language is called Gaelic. But, since both
languages are part of Scottish or Scots culture, no one identifying
themselves as a Scot is declaring their linguistic identity.
In spite of popular misconceptions, even the Irish linguistically
speaking are vastly non-Celtic these days.
Hollywood ascribes Scotland a Gaelic culture because, to a large extent,
most of the Scottish who emigrated to the USA were culturally Gaelic.
Doesn't Wallace (as in William) mean "Welsh" anyway and wasn't he a
Lallans speaker? And also, what is the Gaelic word for
Lallans/Doric/Scots?
Simon Hoare
> From: Sylvain Lavoie <elisabeth-sylvain at sympatico.ca>
> Subject: Scots
>
> Hi Colin
>
> Please accept these two questions.
> Do you believe the Scots were gaelic speakers ?
> Do you think they arrived in Britain from the Rhine Lowlands ?
>
> Sylvain Lavoie
> (I will be away for the next four days)
----------
From: "Colin Wilson" <lcwilson at starmail.com>
Subject: LL-L
Sylvain Lavoie wrote:
>Hi Colin
>
>Please accept these two questions.
>Do you believe the Scots were gaelic speakers ?
>Do you think they arrived in Britain from the Rhine Lowlands ?
My thanks to R. F. Hahn for his informative posting about the background
to this subject. For my part, I'm quite prepared to answer Sylvain
Lavoie's questions as they stand. The answer to both depends on the
interpretation we place on the name "the Scots".
If we interpret "the Scots" in the sense in which it has been used for
many hundreds of years (meaning "the people of Scotland"), then the past
tense in the first question is inappropriate. Even today, some of us
speak
Gaelic. The answer to the second question is, no, most of us were born
here; although our ancestors came from a variety of places, and some did
indeed come from the Rhine Lowlands.
On the other hand, if we interpret "the Scots" in the sense in which it
was many hundreds of years ago (i.e the people whom the Romans called
the
"Scoti") then of course the answers are "yes" and "no".
Colin Wilson.
----------
From: fr.andreas at juno.com
Subject: LL-L "Scots" 2002.03.28 (10) [E]
My Dear Sylvain,
Not all the Highland Clans are Gaelic or even Celtic. The Clan
(Mac)
Donald and the Clan Gunn are both of Norse extraction. Clan Menzies is
of
Norman extraction. My own clan, Clan Lamont (despite the French looking
name) is of the oldest Gaelic extraction, but the name of our founder
was
Norse "Lagomadr," "Law-man." The issue is rather more complicated than
one might at first expect! Clan Buchanan, to make matters complete, is
of
Pictish extraction... that is, of P-Celtic rather than the Gaelic
C-Celtic type.
Even the Irish who went to Scotland weren't "ethnically pure." They
were Belgae, Milesians, Iberians and so on. They came from the Continent
to the island, displacing an earlier culture that came from someplace
else. Humans are native to one place on earth, the Great Rift Valley in
Africa. We've been immigrants ever since.
What Ron wrote about the Lowland Scots, who were Saxons, is true.
They have been there as long as the Gaels. If anyone at all was
dispossessed of anything, it was the Picts, who were cousins to the
Welsh, the Cornish and to the Bretons. And they are all Scots, now, One
Nation intermarried and inextricably combined. This also includes the
Normans who came at the invitation of King David and the Flemish who
came
to establish mills and to trade with the poor inhabitants of a poor
country. The land of my father's fathers has been enriched by the work
of
all of these.
Let me tell you a bit about Southern Appalachia to show you how
many
peoples combine to make a larger and better unity. My father's fathers
came from Arran, an island off the coast of Holy Loch in Argyll. But
there were already people here when we arrived.
Who was here first? Well, it wasn't the Cherokee. It was a culture
called Woodlands. Before them were the Missisippian and Dallas cultures.
The Woodlands people were conquered by the Cherokee in the 15th and 16th
centuries and assimilated. The Cherokee, an Iroquoian people, learned
how
to live here from them. Then came the Scots, the English and the Ulster
Scots, or Scots-Irish. We married the Cherokee and settled down to live
here. There were some fights, but they were ended when we realized what
Nancy Ward said was true. We were all her children, that is, we were all
related either by blood or by marriage or adoption. And the adoption
went
both ways.
Some Palatine Germans came, too, and some French Protestants. And
there were also some people who are called Melungeon. We don't know
where
they came from! And we are all one people, greater together than we were
singly. Our language, or dialect or creole, whatever it is, came from
predominately Scottish and Irish English dialects, but our culture is
the
best of what everyone brought to this place as it pertains to life in
this place. It is different from life elsewhere in the United States,
but
together with the rest of the country we are better off than we would be
without our neighbors.
Scots is a great language with a great literature, and one of
Scotland's original languages. It was evolved from Old Northumbrian
before Scotland was ever a single country. And there is a variety of
Scots that is spoken in the Western Highlands as well. Some of my
family's records are in that tongue, some in Gaelic and some in Latin.
All were and are regarded as part of our culture. And all made a nation
that is greater than the sum of its parts. Just like here.
Sincerely,
+Fr Andreas Richard Turner.
----------
From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Scots
By the way, what's this thing about "the Rhine Lowlands"? It may apply
to what are now called "the Low Countries" - Belgium, Luxemburg and the
Netherlands, roughly situated in the Rhine delta. However, the
"Lowlands" as we define them here go way beyond that, including all of
Northern Germany and to a degree (i.e., historically and contacts-wise)
also Southern Denmark and Northern Poland - thus most of the continental
coastal stretches of the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. The Germanic
components of the linguistic and cultural heritage of the British Isles
were originally derived not only from the Rhile Delta (Frisian and some
Low Franconian) but also from what is now Germany's state of
Schleswig-Holstein (Saxon and Anglish) and Denmark's Southern Jutland
(Jutish, though this "Jutish" may actually have denoted another language
and ethnicity).
Simon asked above:
> And also, what is the Gaelic word for Lallans/Doric/Scots?
As far as I know, it is _Beurla Ghallda_ or _Beurla Leathann_. _Beurla_
nowadays refers to English, other derivations being _beurlachd_
'anglicism', _Beurla Bhunaiteach_ 'Basic English' and _Beurla Albannach_
'Scottish English'. Originally it appears to have been a general term
for Germanic speech. _Beurla Ghallda_ for Scots literally means
"alien/strange Beurla" (_gallda_ 'strange'), and _Beurla Leathann_
literally means "broad English" (probably based on the name "broad
Scots"). _Beurla_ appears to have once denoted 'language' generally in
Irish, derived from Old Irish _bélre_, based on _bél_ 'mouth' with the
ancient nominal derivative suffix _-re_, and later lr > rl metathesis
applied. Compare also Manx _Baarlagh_ 'English'.
Happy Easter, and Happy Passover!
Reinhard/Ron
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