Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Celtic Magazine, 1888, Vol. 13: A Monthly Periodical, Devoted to the Literature, History, Antiquities, Folk-Lore, Traditions, and the Social and Material Interests of the Celt at Home and Abroad
For Ireland and Scotland had practically a common language and literature till the time of the Reformation, and even after the Reformation the ebb of the Irish in?uence was felt in our earliest printed works and in the orthography adopted. The first Gaelic book printed in Scotland was Bishop Carswell's Gaelic Prayer Book and it, as o'donovan, than whom no better judge could be found, says, is pure Irish and agrees with the Irish manuscripts of the same period in orthography, syntax, and idiom. At that time the literary language for the two countries was identical; but we must not think that the popular dialects were in any such harmony with one another. We have every indica tion that the popular Gaelic of Scotland was travelling with greater rapidity down the grooves of change than the literary dialect of the time, which itself was changing from middle Irish to modern Irish. Once the Reformation broke the chain of connection, the Scotch Gaelic proceeded on its course of change unchecked by literary in?uences, and it is certain that during the last three hundred years our Gaelic has undergone greater changes than during any similar period of time previously. Little or nothing has been borrowed in the popular literature or in the popular language from Ireland since the Reformation. The common literary stock of hero tale and ballad belongs to the pre-reformation time. The Gaels, in our opinion, came from Ireland originally; in how many immigrations is unknown but the last and almost the onlyone known was that Christian colony which Fergus, son of Erc, . Led into Scotland in the end of the fifth century. Culture, literature, and Christianity followed in their wake with Columba and his monks. The Irish bards carried the tales and poems of the mother country among a kindred people, and doubtless received in turn whatever Albanie genius was able to add to the common stock of Gaelic literature. This went on for nigh ten centuries, and Scotland was a second home not merely for the Irish priest and Culdee but also for the Irish poet and harper. Even in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, says Dr. Sullivan, in his article on Celtic Literature for the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Irish poets and musicians included Scotland in their circuit, and took refuge, and sought their fortune there. We shall mention one instance as it happens to be instructive in another way, that of Muireadhach o'daly, better known on account of his long stay in Scotland as Muireadhach Albanach, or Muireach the Scotsman. This Muireach Albanach is believed to have been the ancestor of the Mac Vurrichs, hereditary bards to Clanranald, the direct descendant of whom figures in the Ossianic controversy.
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