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From:
Subject: Re: [DNA] Galloway-NW Irish
Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2006 15:18:37 EDT
In a message dated 10/2/2006 2:25:05 A.M. Central Standard Time,
writes:
I actually have some sympathy with the line of thinking based on
considerably less research into historical accounts. In particular
regards just what language Western Scotland spoke prior to 500AD:
probably Q-Celtic is my guess, but the evidence for any conclusion in
this regard is extremely thin.
John, Ewen Campbell has some other statements that support your ideas. He
seems to be saying that western Scotland was always Q-Celtic speaking, in
contrast to the Brittonic-speaking areas in eastern Scotland. Elsewhere in his
article he raises questions about the common assertion that the Epidii of
Argyll in Ptolemy's map prove the existence of P-Celtic speakers western Scotland.
"Thus there is no evidence in the archaeo-
logical record for any population movement
from Ireland to Scotland, other than travel by
occasional individuals. In Anglo-Saxon Eng-
land we have an archaeologically invisible native
British population, and debate centres on the
extent to which they adopted the cultural pack-
age of Anglo-Saxons. In Argyll in contrast, it is
the Goidelic invaders who are archaeologically
invisible."
"Linguistic evidence
Linguistic evidence thus seems to provide the
securest evidence for invasion by Gaels, and
as we have seen, seems to have influenced his-
torians and archaeologists to accept the theory
even though they themselves have little evi-
dence to support it. The presence of Gaelic
speakers in early medieval Argyll is undoubted.
Adomnan, writing in Argyll in the late 7th cen-
tury, inhabits an entirely Gaelic world: all the
placenames and personal names referred to in
Argyll are Gaelic; the people of Argyll are ‘the
Scotti in Britain’, and he comments that Columba
needed translators when he travelled to Pictish
areas (Sharpe 1995: 32). In addition, the mod-
ern placenames of Argyll are all of Goidelic
origin, in contrast to eastern Scotland where
there is a substantial Brittonic substratum, even
if many were adopted by later Gaelic speakers
(Nicholaisen 1976; Taylor 1994). Yet Pictish was
replaced by Gaelic as the language of eastern
Scotland only a few hundred years after
Adomnan, so we would expect to see some
Brittonic substratum in the placenames of Argyll.
The traditional explanation is that original
Brittonic speakers were totally displaced
by Gaelic speaking settlers, removing all evidence
of Brittonic settlement and landscape
names. Such a complete obliteration without
substantial population movement, which, as
we have seen, is archaeologically invisible,
would be almost unparalleled in onomastic
history. "
"What is the evidence for this, other than the
historical accounts of an invasion from Ireland?
The only evidence for the language spoken in
Argyll before the early medieval period is
Ptolemy’s Geography written in the early 2nd
century. This locates the tribe of the Epidii, and
a peninsula called Epidion Akron, on the west
coast of Scotland, in an area generally equated
with Kintyre (Rivet & Smith 1979: 360-61).
Epidii is P-Celtic, and therefore by implication
this area was inhabited by Brittonic speakers.
Apart from the dangers of relying on a single
word to support a hypothesis of an entire lan-
guage, there are good reasons for questioning
this evidence. Ptolemy’s source for his Scot-
tish names was probably from the Scottish
Central Lowlands, and may have transmitted
the Brittonic form of a Goidelic tribal name, or
even the external name given to the tribe by
Brittonic speakers. Before the rapid divergence
of Goidelic and Brittonic in the centuries around
the collapse of the Roman Empire there may
have been a much less homogenous pattern of
language than we assume for the later periods.
In support of this it is interesting that the
P-Celtic tribal name Menapii appears in Ptolemy’s
list of tribes in Ireland itself, and that several
peoples of northern Ireland were known
as Cruithin, Goidelic for ‘British’, but these peo-
ples are accepted as being Goidelic speakers,
and no ‘British invasion’ of Ireland is now pos-
tulated on the basis of this evidence (Toner
2000: 73). The only reason the name Epidii is used
as evidence for invasion is that it appeared to
support the historical evidence, which we have
seen is unreliable. The traditional view seems
inherently unlikely, based as it is on the evi-
dence of a single word, and a simpler model is
proposed below. While no-one disputes that
a divergence between Goidelic and Brittonic took place, and
that Goidelic retains the most archaic features "
John
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