The Scots Gaelic Myth

[Allan Thomson]

Quite right, my point is, there is Gaelic place-name evidence over most of Scotland. The only places where Gaelic was never spoken was the extreme South-East and North-East. Robert the Bruce spoke Gaelic, believe it or not because he was born in Carrick, a place in South-West Scotland that spoke Gaelic.

To deny Gaelic for most of Scotland is to deny Scotland itself. I never denied the Germanic influence on Scotland, nor the Norman influence, nor the Norse influence. Surnames on both side of my family and my knowledge of Scottish history suggest I'm genetically a Norse-Gael, Anglo-Norman, Scoto-Norman, Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Irish, Brythonic adult from Glasgow, the place of the green hollow, whatever that means.

Scotland is a nation that has its roots in the Celts and in Gaelic.

Point made.

So you're happy to ignore the far older roots of the Brythonnic speaking people as if their foundations count for nothing? This is what I would brand as Gaelic extremism - reinventing history and ignoring the much older roots of a none gaelic culture in Scotland in favour of stamping a manufactured homologous Gaelic culture in the place of the true culture of that area as a means to provide some feeling that the people on one side of the border are somehow massively different from those to the South when in fact it's more of a gradual evolution.

Perhaps this is the real reason why the Lowlands were more anglicised -gaelic was just a culture foisted upon them by invaders from Ireland so absorbing the later incoming cultures came just as easily?...

Like I said a fair few of those Gaelic placenames you've claimed in the Lowlands could just as easily been P Celt or Saxon. It just depends on the mindset of the person who observes them.

Regarding Carrick but I've already discussed why Norse Gaelic was prsent there. It was part of the Kingdom of Galloway which had connections with the Kingdom of Mann & the Isles... So the Gaelic may well have come from a more Westerly direction forming a little enclave rather than implying there was a spread of Gaelic across all of Southern Scotland.

And Galloway was Pictish first before it was Gaelic.