4. The accentual or rhythmic tone difference, observed in the conversation of natives of different places.
In Arran and Perthshire, and to some extent in Caithness and Sutherland, the people in speaking cut off the terminal syllables of many words. In the North Highlands they speak with a slow, sometimes swinging emphasis; in the South Highlands they are more hurried in their utterance. Any Highlander, speaking distinctly, will be readily understood, North and South.
Gaelic appears to possess wonderful vitality. While English has stamped out Gaelic among the Celts of Galloway and Ayrshire, Gaelic has stamped out the Norse language in the Western Isles, where the people are largely of pre-Celtic and Norse origin. It is remarkable that although of the same family of languages, Gaelic and English, like oil and water, cannot readily commingle.
Other subjects associated with early Gaelic literature are the Druids and the Féinne. That dim, indefinite, prehistoric period of our annals which terminated in the contact of heathenism with the living forces of Christianity may be termed pre-Celtic. In the dawn of the historical period a mysterious class of men called Druids, and a mysterious body of heroes called the Féinne or Fianna, emerge into view, just as we mark the vanishing or absorption of the pre-Celtic peoples. Whatever they were, a certain class of Magi existed once in these islands. But their sudden disappearance in history, like that of the Féinne, has induced many to question whether such an order of men ever lived. But it is historically certain that a class of men, answering to the description, met and tried to oppose Columba from Iona when he visited King Brudeus at Inverness. They have been called Druids, but that term should be regarded in a general or conventional sense. They were without doubt the priests of learning and religion among the ancient Scots. In possession of some knowledge, meagre as it probably was, they were invested with mystic importance by the ignorant and superstitious. With the introduction and enlightenment of Christianity it would be seen that this exclusive order and priestly caste found their supremacy undermined. Their teaching, whatever it was, appears to have had a beneficial influence on the formation of the national character. They do not seem to have indulged in any enervating services or gross idolatry in the kind of worship which was maintained among the people. We see the moral significance of their influence more fully when we contrast the ancient Gaels with the ancient Greeks. With all their fine ethical and æsthetic perceptions, we find that the latter throughout their whole history were never a very moral people. Just as their bodily senses were enslaved by their keen sense of the beautiful in form, colour, &c., so were their moral energies by many vices. The sensual and luxurious life of the Romans also soon sapped the foundations of the empire, and made it a prey to the less civilised nations around. But from the earliest times down to the present we find among the people once influenced by the Druids a very high moral tone. Guilty as they might be of plundering other races with whom they openly waged warfare, strict honesty among themselves as neighbours was inculcated and observed. The internecine quarrels and the mutual plundering of the later periods arose from the dissensions purposely sown by the Scottish kings. To weaken the clans and the bond of union existing between them unrighteous charters were granted to certain lands in favour of pretenders that could present no valid claim. Hence the majority of the clan feuds which frequently drenched the Highland hills and glens with blood.
One particular result of the early teaching has been the national respect for woman. It is one of the finest moral traits in the character of the Gael. At this day it is among the Gael of the Outer Hebrides and of the more recognised Celtic districts of Ireland, such as Munster and Connaught, that the Registrar General finds the smallest percentage of illegitimacy. The high-toned morality which the poems of Ossian exhibit in this respect has been used as an argument against their authenticity. And yet it should be no argument at all for one who can trace out and analyse the early sources whence developed the moral elements of the national character.
The Celt has been generally very religious. The religion of the Gael of Scotland, like that of the Kymry of Wales, whether in ancient or in modern Christian times, has always flourished in an atmosphere of deep severity. The rigid ethics of the early religion, combined with a hard life at a distance from enervating centres of civilisation, help to explain this. This sternness of doctrine also, no doubt, prepared the modern Gael to accept with such absolute entirety, and with such earnest heartiness, the Calvinistic system of Christian truth which many regard as severe and harsh. The higher results of the literary and moral culture of the Druidic religion we have embodied in the relics of Ossianic poetry. The order of Druids, with their ideals of philosophy and religion, have vanished; but their power for good remains embedded in the foundation of the national name, with its educating influences and its inspiring associations. In this power lay the moral strength of our early ancestors. Christianity, in its early Celtic and Reformed stages, developed into higher and purer issues this national virtue; and the character of the people is exponent of the results of the process. Other tribes and communities have had Christianity among them too, but with different results. This line of thought suggests an explanation of why, as has been already remarked, the Irish Gael appears to be somewhat unlike the Scottish Gael.
A glance may now be appropriately bestowed upon that other somewhat mysterious body—those heroes called the Féinne.
Chief among the early Gaelic inhabitants was the renowned order of heroes known as the Féinne, the Fianna, or the followers of Fingal, or Finn, the leader. They are supposed to have lived in the second and third centuries of our era, and to have been the Caledonians who checked the progress of the legions of Rome. Very little reliable help can be found regarding this question in the extant annals of the Gael. In general it may be held that this race of Finn came from the shores of the Baltic to North Britain, and that they were not unrelated to the ancient Norse. Recently a new theory has been adopted by some, like Mr Campbell of Islay, whose views are entitled to much respect. They argue that the existence of the Féinne is only a myth—part and parcel of an old world system, not unconnected with the classical and oriental—a system of which we have the same with variations in the Militia of Ireland, and in the Knights of the Round Table of the ancient British. It is held that Fingal and King Arthur are the same personages; that Graine, the faithless wife of Fingal is the same as the faithless Guinevere, the spouse of Arthur; and that the unhallowed love of Diarmad and Graine has a suggestive similitude in that of Sir Launcelot and Guinevere. On the other hand, it is argued that the similarity of these relations, however systematic in appearance, may still be adequately explained by the fact that human nature is much the same in all lands and amongst all races; that this symbolic theory does not seem to be supported by the well-grounded conviction of the people in whose traditions the memory of the heroes of the Féinne has been handed down to us; that it is not at all probable that the names of merely fictitious heroes would live in the topography of a hundred hills, like the name of Finn; that it does not find support in the more philosophic theory regarding the heroes of ancient peoples—that all the mythological characters are only exaggerations of real ones; that human nature is never satisfied with the barely mythic and unreal, and that the patriotic and other affections never derive sustenance from false and unbelievable characters.
Can a vague statement of this character not satisfy the inquiring student? To the patriotic Celtic inquirer, next in importance to the evangelisation of the Highlands by Columba, stands the great question of the Féinne, who have so indelibly impressed their individualities on the Gaelic imagination of Scotland. To the more inquiring spirits of recent times these brilliant heroes have appeared very strange and mysterious indeed. They have had a Melchisedec kind of existence in our traditional history; no one has been able to suggest whence they came, or whither they have gone. The names of their leaders have become woven with fable, song, and story; with the hills and glens of Albin and Erin; with the warlike struggles which the various conflicting races have fought on our Ero-Albinic shores. So vague and romantic however, has their history been, that a few clear-sighted writers, conversant with comparative mythology, have come almost to the conclusion that the Féinne were, as we have already seen, a mere Gaelic expression of a world-wide mythus, whose various component elements can be found from Japan to the Hebrides. The popular tales and the bardic ballads have been regarded as the debris that may be still collected on the shores of the ages.