Hecky's Bell and the Gaelic of Golspie

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?

Gaelic in Caithness

The Western half of Caithness was in many ways just an extension of Sutherland. The fact that there was a county border was culturally meaningless. The elder Scottish tongue was spoken until relatively recently as the first language of indigenous inhabitants and the evidence of this is remarkably easy to find online, or in print.

Not only that, but in looking for evidence of Gaelic in the area I myself had something of an advantage: I had oral tradition about Gaelic which had been passed to me with great vigour and pride by my grandmother. "All of our people had Gaelic Adam, but in those days, it was infradig to be heard speaking it in 'polite company'. My father's parents never spoke it to him and so he could only give a greeting or a toast... madainn mhath, oidhche mhath or slàinte mhath. But we should speak it still, it's terrible what happened to the Gaelic". When checking with the indefatigable and most accomodating Nancy Dorian -of East Sutherland Gaelic fame- I found that my grandmother's pronounciation of oidhche was absolutely bang-on. Inter-generational transmission alive and well. OK fine, so it was only one word....

But so it was, that when I discovered the lengths that some fools were willing to go to to obscure the Gaelic language's legacy, my daughter and myself set out up to Caithness and Sutherland to find out what we could from the old folk there.... and also whether there was any truth to the myth of the remaining native speakers.

I had heard an old man from North-west Sutherland talk about hearing the strange way the Caithness folk from his youth spoke Gaelic and I had heard the School of Scottish Studies' recording of James Sutherland, the Braemore crofter and my cousin's tale of Jasper Sutherland speaking only in Gaelic to his dog, from the 1950s. David Clement had regaled me with his fruitless wild goose chase for a reputed living speaker in the 70s and I had heard a rumour about a small family of isolated speakers in Canisbay -which some people believe is a part of Norway. I had heard tell of fishermen in Latheronwheel with Gaelic right up to the 1980s not to mention the rumour about the Gaelic-speaking Gunn sisters, alive in Dunbeath, in the late 90s, or even early this century.

It was 2010 and I had to find out if there was anything left. Purely, entirely and unadulteratedly for my own satisfaction and the cultural enrichment of my very soul. Allright, fine, it wasn't. I wanted to get one over on the small gaggle of anti-Gaelic muppets of course. There was that small detail to consider and it had to be dealt with.

Unfortunately -despite some close encounters with good candidates, we found neither the Gunn sisters, nor Gaelic speakers of Caithness birth, but we did get some sterling information and enough tea, cakes and drams to redefine hospitality for all time.

And just for the record? We didn't meet a single Caithnessian who was anti-Gaelic, not a one!

Here is a sound clip taken by my daughter Eilidh Ní Bhroin from our visit to a crofthouse that had changed little since the Gaelic was spoken within its walls and the great character who lives there and remembers the language only too well.

My warmest thanks to John Angus Miller for inviting us into his house on an incredibly windy day in spring, in a beautiful part of the world where my ancestors once scraped a living from sea and soil, *gu tric nan casarmachd, as they might have said themselves!

*often in their bare feet


Àdhamh Ó Broin

What Culture Vulture is all about

Our mission is to aid global cultural preservation in the face of the commercialist white-washing that is sweeping the planet by attempting to assist in halting the fossilisation of Scotland's incredibly rich cultural pastiche.   

We will seek out what still lives of our country's indigenous heritage in the hearts and minds of Scotland's people. We will knock on doors, traipse moors and drive miles with little but what we find to keep us going. We will do it in Gàidhlig, Lallan Scots and English. But we wont do it without help. Scotland's character, languages, and oral history are slipping out of being because of neglect -we need everyone who cares to get on board.

Where should we go? To whom should we speak? Where can we find Scotland still alive, behind the tat and the tourist shops, the faceless corporate brands and the integrity-less celebrity?

If you know of a place we should see, someone we should visit, or a something that may just cease to exist in the not-so-distant future, we want you to get in touch here and tell us all about it.

Even better, we'd love it if you went out there yourself and took a video or a soundclip of something precious and posted it up at the page (please ask permission of the people involved!).

But MOST IMPORTANTLY! Don't just record it! Re-internalise it, learn it, absorb it and pass it on to your children or there will cease to be a Scotland which is recognisable by virtue of its own character!

International Culture Vulturing warmly welcomed! Let's SHARE! :)