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anachronistically applied to the past, creating the false impression of long-term Gaelic
supremacy. A period of the past must be judged in its own terms, and yet it is a
commonplace of Gaelic tradition that Nial, the famous ancestor of the O’Neills of
Ulster, was made that way by the success of his descendants, rather than the other way
around. This is natural enough, yet as historians we must look beyond such pseudo-history,
for it involves politically expedient rationalization, typically anachronistic and
simplistic. The most flagrant use of Gaelic dynastic propaganda in Ireland was among the
Eoghanacht, but in Scotland it became central to the mystery surrounding the supposed
disappearance of the Picts after the ninth century.
The Pictish language died a natural death, as
did its sister dialect of Strathclyde British. These dialects of P—Celtic were both
isolated and nonliterate. The Picts, like the Gauls and the British of Roman times,
preferred to write formal Latin, which was seen correctly as a cousin of Celtic, and
considered more suitable for writing than any vernacular whether Celtic or Latin. When
written Celtic did come, it was with Irish clerics writing Gaelic. It is unknown how long
the P-Celtic dialects continued to be spoken, but vernacular Scottish Gaelic shows the
influence of Pictish not only on its vocabulary but on its syntax as well. This difference
distinguishes it from the classical (written) Gaelic of medieval Irish and Scottish
literature. It is interesting to note that Gaelic itself later underwent the same process
of linguistic leveling. For instance, the Gaelic dialect of Atholl (Perthshire) first
became clipped, dropping its inflexional endings (in which form it continued into the
twentieth century), and then was replaced altogether by English, though again this dialect
of English shows marked Gaelic influence. In any case, while Gaelic scholars have always
seen through the folksy anachronisms of Gaelic dynastic propaganda in Ireland, such quaint
and simplistic stories have often passed as history for those studying the mixed cultural
inheritance of Scotland, which includes sources in Old (classical) Irish, vernacular
Scottish Gaeic, the Northumbrian dialect of Old English (ancestor of the Scots dialect of
Robert Burns), Old Norse, Pictish, Old Welsh, and Latin. Regarding Old Norse, comparisons
might prove helpful: The MacLeods are direct descendants of the powerful Norse kings of
Dublin, Man and the Isles, and have held their vast lands continuously in right of that
descent. There has been no interruption of their power or control, yet their Norse
language was eclipsed by Gaelic almost as quickly as Pictish was, though like Pictish it
has left its mark on vernacular Scottish Gaelic.
The idea that the union of Picts and Scots
under Kenneth MacAlpin in 843 was somehow a Dalriadic takeover itself overlooks the fact
that Kenneth, though clearly of Pictish matrilineage, was only of obscure Dalriadic
patrilineage, putting the weight of his royalty on the Pictish side. He may have murdered
his rival , significantly of a Pictish patrilineage, but even this was a common
occurrence. Such dynastic feuding certainly did not carry any |
