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