Britain’s Last Frontier

by Alistair Moffat

  The second incursion of English occurred much later. After 1100, David I, his brothers and successors introduced Norman, Flemish, English and other adventurers who quickly established themselves in Scotland. But, crucially, he and his new people founded towns. In order to create markets to stimulate the economy and generate customs revenue, the likes of Roxburgh, Berwick, Lanark and others were given charters. And business boomed. Roxburgh and Berwick were by far the busiest burghs, expanding quickly on the back of a vigorous trade in the wool of Border sheep. And business was conducted in English. As trading networks proliferated, it spread across Scotland with them. It was the language of commerce while Old Welsh and Gaelic were spoken in country districts by the farmers who produced the animals, the wool, the hides and all the other agricultural products brought into the markets of the new burghs. It was the beginning of an old divide between town and country and, in many areas of Scotland, it was a divide deepened by the use of different languages.

  Much later, the coexistence and interaction between the two languages of modern Scotland was recorded – and a facet of the linguistic divide put very succinctly. In 1698, a pious purpose produced what amounted to a record of the geography of Gaelic at the end of the 17th century. The More Particular List of the Highland Parishes was compiled to make the distribution of bibles in Irish Gaelic (there was no translation into Scots Gaelic available until 1767) more efficient. It is very informative. Again and again the compilers came across the common phenomenon of many native Gaelic speakers who were able to ‘buy and sell in English, [but] who do not understand a sermon in that language’.

  These assiduous researches were augmented in 1706 by the beginnings of a fascinating case study in language shift. The ministers of the parishes of the county of Caithness produced a series of accounts of the gradual replacement of Gaelic with English. ‘There are seven parishes in Caithness where the Irish [Gaelic] language is used, viz. Thurso, Hallkirk, Reay, Latheron, Farr, Wick, Durness. But the people of Wick understand English also.’

  Although there were anomalies on either side, there existed a clear linguistic frontier. It ran in a line from Wick to Thurso on the Pentland Firth. To the east, most people spoke English and to the west most used Gaelic. Increasing trade and the growth of the fishing industry in the towns and larger villages began to encourage rapid change. By the 1720s, the previously bilingual parish of Wick had become monoglot English and, in the 1730s, the number of parishes in Caithness where Gaelic was widely spoken had shrunk to only four.

  There were other forces at work. For centuries, the two dominant families of the far north-east had been feuding. On the English-speaking side of the linguistic frontier, the Sinclair Earls of Caithness had pursued an aggressively expansionist policy that affected all areas of life. In the parish of Watten, right on the cultural divide, they imposed a monoglot English speaker as the new minister, the Rev. John Dunbar, in 1659. After a large group of Gaelic speakers, at least 90 men, objected, the elders and heritors (most of them linked to the Sinclairs) simply expelled them from the congregation.

  To the west of the frontier, the MacKays of Strathnaver had been active in cattle raiding in the 1650s and the events at Watten very likely reflected heightened tensions between the two speech communities. In any event, local politics polarised the Gaelic–English divide and in Caithness at least there was an emphatic Highland Line by the early 18th century. But, by 1797, English was crossing it, making deep inroads. Here is an extract from The First Statistical Account for Hallkirk Parish, an area immediately to the west of the divide: ‘Some speak only the Erse [Gaelic], but do not speak or understand the English; some understand the English, but do not speak it; some speak the English but do not speak or understand the Erse; some understand the Erse, but do not speak it; but the greatest number speak and understand both these languages equally well. This is their state with regard to language; but of late years, the English is making great progress at the expense of the Erse.’

  All along the length of the Highland Line Gaelic was retreating into the mountains and the glens. In Comrie in Perthshire, The First Statistical Account of 1794 offered more detail: ‘The common language of the people is Gaelic. All the natives understand it; but many, especially the old, do not understand the English well. All the young people can speak English; but in order to acquire it, they must go to service in the Low Country.’

  By ‘the Low Country’, the minister meant the Lowlands of Scotland. In an account of the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 published in 1802, clergyman John Home observed incomprehension in Perthshire: ‘The same shire, the same parish . . . contains parts of both, so that a Highlander and Lowlander (each of them standing at the door of the cottage where he was born) hear their neighbours speak a language which they do not understand.’

  Gaelic only became a literary language in the 19th and 20th centuries. Even now, in the 21st, some older native speakers cannot write it. Beautiful, lyrical, naturally alliterative, mouth-filling, Gaelic’s stories lived for centuries in the memories of its bards and seannachies, the tellers of tales. Until the modern era, very little was written down so it is much more difficult to switch perspective and discover a Gaelic perception of the Lowlands and Lowlanders. Nevertheless, in a fascinating essay, the scholar, John MacInnes, marshals much of the scant evidence and looks outwards from the Highlands at his fellow Scots in the south and east. His first sentences are unequivocal:

  It would not be difficult to assemble a body of evidence to show that the Gaels of Scotland regarded the people of the Lowlands with something less than love. And it would be just as easy to show that the Lowlanders were perfectly capable of returning the compliment.

  The great bard, Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair wrote memorably in 1751 of miorun mor nan Gall, ‘the great malice of the Lowlanders’. As much as anything, he was reacting to a series of attacks on the Gaelic language that had begun in earnest in the early 17th century. These had acquired a political edge after the Jacobite Rebellions of 1715 and 1745–46 and, indeed, Alasdair himself had been an officer in one of the MacDonald regiments at Culloden. In 1716, the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge was equally unequivocal: ‘Nothing can be more effectual for reducing these countries [the Highlands] to order, and making them useful to the Commonwealth than teaching them their duty to God, their King and Country and rooting out their Irish language, and this has been the case of the Society so far as they could, for all the Scholars are taught in English.’

  So much for the battle lines, both cultural and military. But the picture was more nuanced. Edmund Burt was an engineer and building contractor who worked for General Wade on the great road-building schemes for the Highlands in 1724–28. He wrote a series of essays published as Letters From a Gentleman in the North of Scotland and these were read and quoted by both Sir Walter Scott and the historian, Thomas Babington Macaulay. Burt’s observations of the people he met were perceptive:

  They have an adherence to one another as Highlanders, in opposition to the people of the Low Country, whom they despise as inferior to them in Courage, and believe they have a right to plunder them whenever it is within their Power. This last arises from a Tradition, that the Lowlands, in old Times were the possession of their Ancestors.

  Burt came across these attitudes amongst ‘the middling and ordinary Highlanders, who are very tenacious of old Customs and opinions’.

  Amongst Gaelic bards and seannachies, courage and the heroic were, of course, constant themes. In battle, it was swordplay and the fury of the charge that mattered and marked out a Highland warrior. When Domhnall Cam mac Dubhghaill, a great swordsman of the Clan Macaulay, heard that guns had become the dominant weapon in warfare, he mourned the passing of the heroic age: ‘Tha latha a ghaisgich seachad.’ – ‘The day of the hero has passed.’ And similar sentiments were expressed 150 years later when Iain Ruadh Stiubhart reflected on events at Culloden:

  Lasair-theine nan Gall,

  Frasadh pheilear m’ar cea
nn,

  Mhill sud eireachdas lann ’s bu bheud e.

  The bombardment of the Lowlanders,

  The showering of shot around our heads,

  That destroyed the brilliance of swordplay – more is the pity.

  Aonghus mac Alasdair Ruaidh of Glencoe was contemptuous about his enemies, Lowlanders with guns. They could kill warriors at a distance without the need for the courage for hand-to-hand fighting. Aonghus was outraged:

  Bhith ’gan leagail le luaidhe

  Is gun tilgeadh buachaillean bho i.

  Being felled with lead,

  When even cowherds can throw it.

  In the exchange of sword blows, that was where courage could be seen, either among the Lowlanders or:

  Bodaich Machair a’ bhuachair

  No siol uasal nan Garbhchrioch.

  The peasants of the Plain of Cow-dung

  Or the noble seed of the Rough Bounds.

  Such contempt for Lowlanders even crossed the Atlantic. At the end of the 18th century, the Kintail bard, Iain mac Mhurchaidh, wrote of the non-Gaels he saw in North Carolina in precisely the same terms used to describe the peasants and farmers of the Low Country of Scotland:

  Gur beag orm fein na daione seo tha ann

  Le an cotaichean dubha, ad mhor air an ceann

  Le am briogseanan goirid air an sgoltadh gu an bann

  Chan fhaicear an t’osan, is e a’ bhochdainn an tha ann.

  Little do I care for the folk who live here,

  With their black coats and great hats on their heads

  With the short breeches split to the band

  The kilt hose, alas, is not seen.

  In Edmund Burt’s letters, there is a sense of paradox. While Highlanders felt occasional contempt for Lowlanders – something enthusiastically reciprocated – there were also unmistakeable impulses to unity. Just as the Welsh saw England as Lloegr, the lost lands that might one day be regained, so the Gaels believed that all of Scotland might once again be theirs and that Gaelic-speaking kings would reign once more. And, like the Welsh, their poetry and prophesy had a messianic streak. In the oral tradition, the legend of the Sleeping Warrior was powerful and, for the Gaels of the 17th and 18th centuries, this took on a surprising twist.

  Thomas the Rhymer became immensely famous as a prophet. In reality, Thomas of Ercildoune, Earlston in the Scottish Borders, began to utter visions of the future at the outset of the Wars of Independence at the end of the 13th century. To Gaelic speakers, he became a heroic figure, his origins grew mythic and he became known as Tomas Reumhair or Thomas the Wanderer (or Rhymer). Associated with horses and the awakening of warriors, the prophecies prompted poetry:

  When Thomas comes with his horses,

  The day of plunder will be on the Clyde,

  Nine thousand good men will be drowned,

  And a young king will attain the crown.

  Eventually Thomas himself became a messianic figure – a redeemer for the Gaels – and the army at Culloden called themselves Clann nan Reumhair, ‘the Rhymer’s children’.

  8

  The Furrowed Field

  OLD GRANNIE WAS A marvel – admired the length and breadth of rural Scotland but nowhere more so than in the north-east Lowlands where she founded a dynasty. Having given birth 25 times in her long life, she had her photograph taken two days before she died, on 1 July 1859. Tragically, she was struck by lightning while sheltering under a tree. At the request of His Royal Highness Prince Albert, the Prince Consort, a copy was made and sent to Balmoral where it went on display – in the royal collection of cattle photographs.

  Old Grannie was the Prima Cow, the no. 1 in the Herd Book, the mother of the world-famous Aberdeen Angus breed, perhaps the most notable creation of the farmers who worked the fertile fields in the shadow of the Grampians. The breed began its illustrious history when Hugh Watson of Keillor in the county of Angus began to cross different types so that he could produce a big, black beef bullock with no horns. These were first known as Angus Doddies or Humlies and their lack of horns made them much easier to handle and less likely to injure each other, especially when bulls were covering their cows.

  Watson’s favourite bull was Old Jock, Primus Bull and no. 1 in the Herd Book. He was sired by Grey-Breasted Jock who, despite his seniority, was lodged at no. 2 in the Herd Book. Both covered Old Grannie and she had seven calves by them. A canny publicist for his undoubted breeding skills, Hugh Watson often showed his prize cattle and, over a long career, won more than 500 rosettes and trophies at agricultural shows from Perth up to Moray. His hornless, or polled, black cattle consequently became tremendously favoured by farmers and many modern bulls can trace descent through the Herd Books from Old Grannie, Grey-Breasted Jock and Old Jock.

  It was William McCombie of Tillyfour, near Alford in Aberdeenshire, who took cattle rearing a stage further and created the Aberdeen Angus breed as it is now known. His career began as the age of droving was waning and, by his death in 1880, Scotch beef cattle were regularly transported by rail to southern markets. And not just any Scotch beef but the much admired Aberdeen Angus.

  What McCombie realised was that trains changed breeding. Animals did not any longer have to be suitable for the rigours of droving, long journeys of 200 or 300 miles over sometimes difficult terrain. If they could be transported to market, then they could be bigger, carry more weight and fetch high prices. And crucially, they lost no condition on a short rail journey and were delivered in their glossy prime.

  To breed larger beasts McCombie crossed his own Aberdeenshire polled stock with the progeny of Old Grannie, Old Jock and other show-class beasts produced by Hugh Watson and other Angus cattle farmers. And then he set about marketing the new breed, which was quickly branded as Aberdeen Angus – without a hyphen.

  Knowing that Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had fallen in love with Scotland and Deeside in particular, McCombie executed a brilliant publicity coup. In 1867, he entered his prime bullock, Black Prince, for the Birmingham and Smithfield shows, which he duly won. Then he arranged for the bullock to be taken to Windsor Castle where Black Prince was paraded around the Middle Ward in the presence of an appreciative monarch and her consort. Perhaps a photograph was taken to sit alongside Old Grannie’s portrait. Perhaps he behaved and did not leave a memento. At Christmas of that year, McCombie had the bullock slaughtered and sent generous cuts of beef to the palace.

  When Queen Victoria visited McCombie’s farm at Tillyfour, not far from Balmoral, in the summer of 1869, the royal seal of approval was complete. Aberdeen Angus beef became the acme of fashion and no self-respecting restaurant or upper-class dinner table could fail to serve it. Always striving to improve his breeding lines, the enterprising McCombie bought an outstanding yearling heifer which he promptly named The Queen Mother. No royal comment is recorded. But perhaps his most astute acquisition was Hanton, a bull that was a grandson of Old Jock. He, in turn, sired one of the most prolific bulls in Aberdeen Angus breeding history. Black Prince of Tillyfour’s bloodlines can be found in almost every bull, cow and bullock in the breed – anywhere.

  In 1873, four bulls from the prestigious Ballindalloch herd were transported to the USA. Originally bred from Tillyfour stock, they introduced the Aberdeen Angus bloodlines to an appreciative market, one reared on good beef. The imported bulls were crossed with Texas longhorns (but their progeny remained polled) and farmers found that their offspring were hardy and able to winter out on the unfenced range. Between 1878 and 1883, more than 1,200 Aberdeen Angus bulls and cows were shipped across the Atlantic and, in the grassy vastness of the Midwest, they thrived. But their name shrank. Now they are called Black Angus and burgers made from their excellent beef are sold by all the major chains.

  The Aberdeen Angus breed and its international success may be seen as the high point of early modern farming in the north-east of Scotland. If its name has endured, the fame and sheer pungency of another product of the same landscape has faded somewhat. As they worked long and
back-breaking hours at repetitive tasks in the fields and steadings, farm labourers often sang. And some of them composed. The bothy ballads are their legacy. A rich, rough-and-ready canon of simple songs about farm life and work, they were made up by men from the bothies. These were outbuildings where unmarried men lived communally. Usually very basic, even primitive, the bothies were nevertheless a fertile ground for the making of music – and of history. For once, the ballads supply a version of events seen from the base of the social pyramid and not the routine perspective from the apex.

  Some of the most fondly remembered are reminders that the men and women who toiled in all weathers and seasons to produce food occasionally lifted their heads and looked at the glories of the countryside around them. The Gadie Burn runs through the centre of ancient history, through the battlefield of Mons Graupius, but the fieldworkers who composed and sang of it were more interested in celebrating its beauties:

  O gin I war whaur the Gadie rins,

  Whaur the Gadie rins, whaur the Gadie rins,

  O gin I war whaur the Gadie rins,

  At the fit o’ Bennachie.

  I’ve roamed by Tweed, I’ve roamed by Tay,

  By Border Nith and Highland Spey,