So there was no Gaelic left in Caithness? Maybe not. Maybe though, the person I met who I suspected had been holding out on me -as was their right- was in fact one of two people I had heard still spoke a smattering of it. They were -for reasons that are not within my right to discuss- not willing to enter into a dialogue about it and so I had to let it go. However my inquisitive side begged and pleaded with me to be disrespectful and turn on the CIA interrogation lamp to get the Gaelic out of them. I'm very glad I didn't.
But what I did know, was that there was at least one fluent speaker of Golspie Gaelic still with us, and it was Hayley and I's intention to track them down. No matter the miles between Golspie in East Sutherland and Berriedale, almost at the South-western corner of Caithness and the relatively sparse contact between the two places, the Gaelic would not have been particularly different. A cursory look at the 'Survey of Scottish Gaelic Dialects' published by the Dublin Institute shows this to be correct.
Arriving in Golspie randomly though, we would have to rely on sheer luck to get a hold of anyone. Our first two contacts turned out to be busy or unable to converse in Gaelic, but our third was a gem. Once again, Nancy Dorian had come through with the goods. She had sent me over from Maine a signed first edition copy of her book 'East Sutherland Gaelic' as reward for bringing my children up with Gaelic. A heroine, if ever there was one. I had spent the two weeks leading up to the trip reading it and learning the International Phonetic Alphabet by the seat of my pants to try and make myself understood to 'Northerners' by mastering some of the typical variations in speech!
And so we were received by Donald MacDonald. Here we have me trying to alter my Argyllisms to make myself understood and Hayley doing a grand job with the camera. Notice I hadn't quite realised the linguistic continuun from Lewis to Caithness with the word 'dè?' (what?) Throughout the northern quarter of Scotland, this is pronounced just like the English word 'day'.
It was great to meet Donald and his lovely wife and to come away with such a gem of cultural heritage.
The only question though? Who is taking up the mantle to learn Golspie Gaelic and prevent it's fossilization? Will it be just a relic of our culturally rich past, or a living badge of our identity as Scots and other people who love Scotland?
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