Gaelic, one of the Celtic dialects, is of the group known as the Goidelic, comprising Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx. Scottish Gaelic and Manx developed through the migrations of Irish speakers in the late 4th cent. to the Isle of Man and western Scotland. Scottish Gaelic had its origins in the settlement of Dalriada in Argyll and Bute in the early 6th cent., but the language is not likely to have differed much from Irish Gaelic until the 10th cent. From the original settlement of Dalriada the Gaels spread rapidly northwards and eastwards through Scotland cutting through native Pictish resistance. Following the establishment of the Gaelic church on Iona by Columba in the 6th cent., the Gaels acquired the means of spreading both their authority and their language. In the 9th cent., Gaels and Picts were finally united under a Gaelic king, probably of mixed parentage. In the 11th cent., after a period of internal strife, Malcolm Canmore, son of Duncan, came to the throne with the aid of English forces and began to introduce Anglo-Norman customs and language into the court of Scotland. His descendants followed this policy and over the next few centuries the Gaelic language was gradually replaced by English in state and church administration, with the Gaeltachd (Gaelic-speaking area) beginning to shrink.

We can accurately chart the decline of Gaelic only from the late 19th cent. to the present. For 1755 it has been estimated that just under a quarter of Scotland's population were Gaelic speakers—i.e. some 290,000. The 1881 census noted that those who were ‘habitually’ speakers of Gaelic numbered 232,000 out of a total population of 3,735,000—in high contrast to the 1971 census when Gaelic-only speakers numbered no more than 477 out of 5,228,000. Bilingual speakers were first counted in 1891 when they represented 5.2 per cent of the population, which by 1981 had declined to only 1.6 per cent. There was a greater survival rate of Gaelic in North America, especially in Nova Scotia, where it was estimated that there were in 1880 some 80,000 Gaelic speakers out of 100,000 on Cape Breton Island, though these figures have since diminished sharply.

It is not easy to trace the development of the language from the Irish, as the literature of Scotland was consistently written in a standard Early Modern Irish from the 12th to the 17th cent. The 16th-cent. Book of the Dean of Lismore is the most important exception. Scottish Gaelic literature made its appearance in the 17th cent., but not until 1767 was the New Testament translated into Gaelic by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Support for and promotion of the Gaelic language began in the 19th cent., and in 1882 it became possible to study Gaelic as part of a university degree course. Today children can be educated in Gaelic at the primary level and it can be studied at secondary level. The government has allocated funds for Gaelic education and, along with An Comunn Gaidhealach (the Highland Association, founded 1891), has promoted the use of Gaelic in many areas, such as publishing, broadcasting, and in technological spheres. Since these efforts to save the language have been in place, the number of speakers has increased and the trend seems likely to continue.

Sandra M. Dunkin