[ [18] A more detailed statement of the differences between Scotch and Irish Gaelic will be found in the additional Notes.
[ [19] Professor Max Müller has the following excellent remarks in his recent lectures on the Science of Language, p. 49. “The real and natural life of language is in its dialects; and in spite of the tyranny exercised by the classical or literary idioms, the day is still very far off which is to see the dialects entirely eradicated. . . .
“It is a mistake to imagine that dialects are everywhere corruptions of the literary language. . . . Dialects have always been the feeders rather than the channels of a literary language; anyhow, they are parallel streams which existed long before one of them was raised to that temporary eminence which is the result of literary cultivation.” The whole of the lecture in which this passage occurs is well worthy of perusal, in regard to the proper view and position of the spoken dialects in the study of language.
Schleicher takes the same view in his masterly work, “Die Deutsche Sprache.” He says, in relation to the German language, what is equally true of the Gaelic:
“Die mundarten sind die natürlichen nach den Gesetzen der Sprachgeschichtlichen Veränderungen gewordenen Formen im Gegensatze zu der mehr oder minder gemachten and schulmeisterisch geregelten and zugestutzten Sprache der Schrift. Schon hieraus folgt der hohe Werth derselben für die wissenschaftliche Erforschung unserer Sprache; hier ist eine reiche Füllevon Worten und Formen, die, an sich gut und echt, von der Schriftsprache verschmäht wurden; hier finden wir manches, was wir zur Erklärung der älteren Sprachdenkmale, ja zur Erkenntniss der jetzigen Schriftsprache verwerthen können, abgesehen von dem Sprachgeschichtlichen, dem lautphysiologischen Interesse, welches die überaus reiche Mannigfaltigkeit unserer Mundarten bietet.
“Wer einer Mundart kundig ist, der hat beim Studium des altdeutschen einen grossen Vorsprung vor demjenigen voraus der nur in der Schriftsprache heimisch ist.
“Nichts ist thörichter, nichts verräth mehr den Mangel wahrer Bildung als das Verrachten unserer Mundarten.”—P. 110.
[ [20] In the Island of Colonsay there is a cairn called Carn cul ri Erin. In Bleau’s Atlas, the map of the Island of Mull marks, on the high mountain which separates the north from the south of the island, two cairns, called Carn cul ri Erin and Carn cul ri Allabyn. These seem to mark some ancient boundary; but as they are exactly in a line with Iona,—which seems to have lain so nearly on the boundary as to be claimed by both races, and also with the line which separates the ancient parishes of Killintach and Killcholumkill in Morvern, and Killintach is said, in an old document, to be in Garwmorvaren, a district which extended as far north as Loch Hourn, while Killcholumkill is said to be in Kinelbadon, which belonged to the ancient kingdom of Lorn,—there seems much reason to conclude that this may have been the line of the boundary between the Dalriad Scots from Erin and the Cruithne of Alban.
[ [21] There were thirty kings of the Cruithne over Eri and Alba, viz., of the Cruithne of Alba and of the Cruithne of Eri, i.e., of Dalaraidhe. They were from Ollamhan to Fiachna mac Baedain, who fettered the hostages of Eri and Alba.
Book of Lecan, as quoted in Irish Nennius, lxxii.