The Scots Gaelic Myth

[Ivor]

Please correct me if I am wrong but is the Gaelic spoken in Scotland not different from that in Ireland? Many place names, even districts, seem to have more in common with Welsh than Gaelic. Carrick, for instance, and the likes of “Aber” as in Aberdeen, Abernethy, Aberlour etc. . William Wallace seems to have had some Welsh ancestry. Certainly names such as those beginning with “Dun” seem Gaelic and others beginning with “Pit” such as Pitenweem, Pitlochry, even Pittsburgh are seemingly derived from Pictish sources. And then we have place names such as Athelstaneford in Scotland which obviously derives from the English king, Athelstane so all we can deduce is that the Britain we know today is a melting pot of the original nationalities. The one external factor is, perhaps, the Norman invaders who, while they managed to rise to the top, have left little in the way of place names or language.