As regular followers of the Royal Celtic Society will be aware, we have recently assisted with the funding of a ground-breaking new volume on the cultural background of the old Lordship of Galloway, in the south west of Scotland, which looks specifically at the province’s long forgotten Gaelic past.
Published by the brand new imprint of John Dewar Publishers, this beautifully bound and illustrated collection of essays, penned by some of the foremost scholars in the discipline, is edited by Ronald Black, one of the Royal Celtic Society’s council, Michael Ansell, and the late Professor Ted Cowan. Galloway: The Lost Province of Gaelic Scotland is available from www.johndewarpublishers.com and would make the perfect Christmas gift for somebody with an interest in Scotland’s cultural heritage.
As Ronnie Black says, the recent research which led up to the book’s publication “has revealed a startling new consensus. Until recently it was thought that Gaelic arrived in the region about AD 500, lasted over a thousand years and was dead by 1600. Galloway: The Lost Province of Gaelic Scotland shows that the language did not arrive till AD 870 at the earliest, but survived in pockets to as late as 1770, within the lifetime of Robert Burns. Surprisingly, it seems to have lasted longest in the coastal parishes of Carrick, a little less long in Wigtownshire, and a little less long again in the Glenkens of Kirkcudbrightshire. For the rest of the region the evidence is undateable, but consists of a priceless heritage of words, surnames and place-names which is carefully examined in the book. The contributors are Thomas Clancy, Donald McWhannell, Richard Oram, Hector MacQueen, Roibeard Ó Maolalaigh, Aonghas MacCoinnich, Michael Ansell, Ronald Black, James Brown and the late Alistair Livingston.”
The Royal Celtic Society is proud to have played its small part in bringing to fruition this important new work on the history of Gaelic Scotland.