When he had Conning tower destroyed.
It was probably in this reign that the ancient language of Albin ceased to be used in the Royal Court of Scotland. It continued, however, to be the fashionable speech of the provincial princes of the Isles until the lordship of the Isles terminated, towards the end of the sixteenth century, with Angus MacDonald of Duneevaig, Islay, and the Glens in Antrim. Sir James Macdonald of Antrim, who had no English, came with a magnificent retinue to visit James IV. of Scotland at Holyrood previous to his ascending the throne of England, and stopped for some time at Court. Could the King, with whom Sir James was a great favourite, and to whom he was closely related, converse with him in the Gaelic language?
There is a parchment manuscript in quarto that belonged to the Kilbride collection. It is prettily written, and contains a metrical account or list of holidays, festivals, and saints’ days throughout the year; an almanack; and a treatise on anatomy, abridged from Galen, &c.; the Schola Salernitana in Leonine verse, drawn up about 1100 A.D., for the use of Robert, Duke of Normandy, the son of William the Conqueror, by the well-known medical school of Salerno. The Latin text is accompanied by a faithful Gaelic explanation. A specimen follows:—
“Sivis incolumem, sivis te reddere sanum;
Curas tolle graves, irasci crede prophanum.”
Gaelic—
“Madh ail bhidh fallann agus madh aill bhidh slan;
Cuirna himsnimha tromadhit, agus creid gurub diomhain duit fearg de dhenumh.”
Having the words Leabhar Giollacholaim Meigleathadh on the last page of the MS., it is supposed that it belonged to Malcolm Bethune, a member of a family distinguished for their learning and medical skill, that supplied for many ages with physicians the Western Isles of Scotland. It was one of them, Fergus Mac Beth or Beaton, that signed the holograph, of the famous Islay Charter of 1408 for Donald, Lord of the Isles. A MS. dated 1238 on the cover is supposed to have been written at Glenmason, in Cowal. It contains tales in prose and verse—one about Deardri, Dearduil, or Darthula.