Various - Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 723

It is not a very creditable fact that after centuries of national consolidation, there should be communities within the British Islands who use different vernacular tongues and are ignorant of English. In other words, there are large numbers of persons who cannot in ordinary circumstances be directly communicated with. They can neither send nor intelligibly receive letters through the post-office. Summoned as witnesses on civil or criminal trials, they are in the position of foreigners, and stand in need of interpreters. Cut off from English books and newspapers, a correct knowledge of history, of science and art, and of passing events is scarcely possible. They necessarily vegetate amidst vague legends and superstitions. Theirs is a life of stagnation and impoverishment, in the spot where they were born; for anything like voluntary emigration to improve circumstances is only exceptional. And all this has been complacently tolerated, if not pampered, for hundreds of years by a nation full of enterprise, and which, with no injustice, aspires to be in the front rank of general civilisation.

We are quite aware that much the same thing can be said of most of the continental nations. All are a little behind in this respect. The ancient Breton language survives in France, as does the Basque in Spain. Switzerland, Germany, and Russia are respectively a jumble of spoken tongues. In Holland and Belgium, we have the Dutch, French, Flemish, and Walloon. To accommodate the inhabitants of Brussels, the names of the streets are stuck up in two languages. These continental diversities do not greatly surprise us. In frequent wars, revolutions, conquests, annexations, along with want of means, and a host of inveterate prejudices to be encountered, we have an explanation of the strange mixture of languages and dialects which still prevails in continental Europe.

The case is somewhat different in the United Kingdom, where everything but old prejudices would seem to favour a uniform native language which all can use and understand. Yet, as we have said, there exist communities who are still less or more ignorant of English. Centuries have rolled on, and notwithstanding all appliances, groups of people are yet found speaking a language which was common a thousand years ago, but now occupies an obscure and fragmentary position. We do not say that matters have not been advancing towards uniformity. Little by little, outlying communities have been satisfactorily Anglicised, not by anything like legal compulsion, but by what might be termed a natural process of assimilation. We may speak of two important cases. In the Shetland and Orkney Islands the Norwegian language existed until within the last two centuries. It is now totally gone, and the vernacular is a pure English; vastly to the advantage of the natives, who besides being open to common civilising influences, are prepared for pushing their fortunes in any part of the British dominions; some of them indeed making no mean figure in current literature. The other case is that of Galloway, a district embracing two counties in the south-west of Scotland, where the Gaelic prevailed longest in any part of the Lowlands. 'The wild Scots of Galloway' was once a well-known phrase. It has passed away along with the Gaelic speech. The Gallowegians – abounding in men of genius – are now a lively and prosperous English-speaking and English-writing people. For them the change has been a very happy one.

With a knowledge of these two instances of social improvement, there is the more reason to regret the protracted existence of non-English speaking races. No one will say that any good has come of the continued prevalence of Erse, the old Irish tongue; nor of Manx in the Isle of Man; nor of Welsh, though that, as regards literature, is considerably ahead of any branch of the once universal Celtic tongue. Considering what spirit is demonstrated in the way of books, newspapers, and otherwise, Welsh rises to a comparatively prominent position; but there always remains the unpleasant reflection, that interesting as the Welsh tongue may be, it distinctly mars national unity, and must be a drawback on those adhering to it alone, and reared in ignorance of English. To this cause is doubtless attributable the lingering of many whimsical superstitions in the Principality.

Should any one desire to see what mischiefs are effected by adherence to a language long since out of date, he should visit some parts of the Highlands and the Western Islands of Scotland, where, by a well-meant but mistaken policy, Gaelic is still perseveringly maintained. Some years since, it was our fortune to pay a visit to Barra, one of the Outer Hebrides; and the feeling which rose in our mind was that what we beheld was a specimen of Scotland as it existed in the sixth century, when St Columba spread a knowledge of Christianity in the western Caledonian regions. We seemed to step back twelve hundred years. It was a marvellous kind of look into antiquity. In their language, in their rude dwellings of stone and turf, in their religious forms, and in their dress, the people belonged to a far-back age. Their existence was an anachronism. And the curious thing was to find this condition of affairs within four-and-twenty hours of Glasgow, with its enterprise and prodigiously busy population. We have seen the Micmacs living in a way little better than dogs in the wilds of Nova Scotia, but one is not greatly astonished to see Indians dwelling in a state of primitive wretchedness. The sentiment of wonder is raised on finding natives within the British Islands still living as their ancestors did at a time coeval with Vortigern and the Saxon Heptarchy. There they are, for anything we can see, unimprovable. Speaking Gaelic and nothing else, they, in their dismal isolation, are left behind in all ordinary means of advancement. Who has not heard of the institutions plausibly and benevolently set on foot to enlighten the aborigines of the Highlands and Islands? Well, here, after all that is done, things are much as they were in the era of St Columba – people living almost like savages, without the ability to hold intercourse with strangers, or the power to improve their circumstances, in consequence of knowing no other tongue than Gaelic. That language is their bane. It keeps them poor, it keeps them ignorant. So far as they are concerned, the art of printing might as well never have been invented. The intelligence communicated by books and newspapers is for them wholly unavailing. Practically, they are living hundreds of years before the ingenious discoveries of Gutenberg and Coster. To think that with all the costly apparatus of national education, such should be going on within the compass of the British Islands!

It is no use to mince a matter so grave in its results. The upholding of Gaelic as a vernacular tongue is, in our opinion, an error to be lamented and abandoned. In saying so, we are reminded that an effort has been made by an eminently enthusiastic Professor to gather funds for the purpose of endowing a Celtic Chair in the University of Edinburgh. To that effort, which is likely to prove successful, we make no special objection. Let Celtic, like any other ancient language, by all means be cultivated among the higher aims of philology. Students who like to pursue learned inquiries of this kind may do so. But it is a wholly different thing to maintain a system of elementary teaching in schools which tends to perpetuate Gaelic as a spoken tongue to the exclusion of English. Apart from social intercommunication, there may be a difficulty in substituting English for Gaelic. Teaching to read English alone in Gaelic-speaking districts is said to be of little use. The pupils learn to pronounce the words without attaching any meaning to them. Impressed with this awkward consequence, the Society for the support of Gaelic schools, which has been in existence upwards of seventy years, suggests that the best way to promote a knowledge of and taste for English is to begin by teaching pupils to read Gaelic. 'The people,' it is represented, 'having once got a taste for learning, are not satisfied with their children being able to read Gaelic; a number of them pay the teacher for instructing them also in reading English and writing at extra hours.' There may be some truth in this view of the matter; but unfortunately we are confronted with the greater truth, that considerable numbers in the Highlands and Islands still speak Gaelic, and are ignorant of English to any useful purpose.