History of Great Kilt

[gilmore]

Another point to consider: the later divisions and distinctions, often accompanied by animosity, between highlanders and lowlanders did NOT yet exist in the 12th-13th centuries. The common folk of both regions still by-and-large shared the same Gaelic culture and lauguage at that time, and Scottish kings (including the mostly-Norman Bruce and subsequent Stewarts) spoke Gaelic....

I don't think so. A large part of the Lowlands had by then been settled by the Northumbrians, who spoke an Anglo-Saxon dialect that evolved in to modern Lallans/Scots. And at any rate the Gaelic speakers were not unified but divided into several kingdoms and cultures.

"Scotland by the 12th century contained what Goidelic "Scots" kingdom of Dál Riata, Galloway, the Brythonic Kingdom of Strathclyde, the Anglo Saxon kingdom of Bernicia and the Pictish Kingdom..."

"In the Early Middle Ages, Scotland had several ethnic or cultural groups labeled as such in contemporary sources, namely the Picts, the Gaels (Scots), the Britons, with the Angles settling in the far southeast of the country in smaller numbers. Culturally, these peoples are grouped according to language. Much of Scotland until the 13th century spoke Celtic languages and these included, at least initially, the Britons, as well as the Gaels and the Picts. Germanic peoples included the Angles of Northumbria, who settled in southeastern Scotland, and later the Norse arriving from Norway in the north and west.

With the arrival of the Gaels, use of the Gaelic language spread throughout nearly the whole of Scotland by the 9th century, reaching a peak in the eleventh century.

After the division of Northumbria between Scotland and England by King Edgar (or after the later Battle of Carham; it is uncertain) the Scottish kingdom encompassed a great number of English folk. (Contemporary populations cannot be estimated so we cannot tell which population thenceforth formed the majority.) Southeast of the Firth of Forth then in Lothian and the Borders (OE: Loðene), a northern variety of Middle English, also known as Early Scots, was spoken.

Caithness and the Northern Isles were Norn-speaking. From 1200 to 1500 the Early Scots language spread across the lowland parts of Scotland between Galloway and the Highland line..."