Transcript From Clans to Gaelic Rap

The Kings of Alba
Scotland’s First Kingdom
The Kings of Alba
• Kenneth Mac Alpin ( -858)
• His descendants after 900AD: powersharing of the descendants.
• The kingship was explicitly Gaelic.
• End of the family’s monopoly in 1034.
Mael Coluim (Malcolm) mac Cineada
(1005-34).
The Kings of Alba
• New breed of kings.
• Duncan I (killed by Macbeth in battle r.
1040-1057). (Both descended from
Kenneth M Alpin through their mothers).
• MacDuff (the last descendant of Kenneth
to rule).
The Kings of Alba
• They did not rule the whole of Scotland.
• The west and SW were infrequently under
their rule.
• The earlier Celtic royal residences on
hilltops gave way to large churches or a
string of local courts across the country.
Malcolm III
Mael Coluim mac Donchada
(1057-93)
Malcolm and David
Malcolm III and Margaret
The Canmore Dynasty
(the ten kings)
• After Macbeth’s reign came Malcolm III
who probably used Edinburgh Castle as
one of his strongholds.
• (11th century).
• It was during this dynasty after David I that
the Celtic method of appointing a new king
gave way to the now familiar method of
‘primogeniture’ (first-born).
The Canmore Dynasty
• Many changes came to Scotland during
this dynasty strongly influenced by the
Anglo-Norman system of rule (landholding
and allegiance, Normans in Britain after
1066).
• Growth of the Roman church, supplanting
of the Celtic-style monasteries.
• Centralization of administration.
The Canmore Dynasty (12th-13th
century)
• Taxation and trading on the basis of the
‘burgh’ system.
• Especially in the 13th century the influence
of England on the Scottish state.
Uncertainity about the status of the
Scottish monarchy.
The Canmore Dynasty
• Many Scottish nobles owned land in both
Scotland and England which meant that
legally they owed allegiance both to the
Scottish and English crowns.
David I (1124-53)
• David I- his reign led to the dynamic
Scottish monarchy of the 12-13 centuries.
• During his time
• : rapid reform of church
• Economic development driven by burgess
colonists
David I
David I
• Son of Mael Coluim mac Donnchada.
• He received a Norman-style education in
England.
• He ruled initially as ‘prince of the
Cumbrian region’.
• He introduced English and Continental
techniques of government.
• King of Scotland 1124.
David I
• South of the Forth after 1124 feudal
lordships for friends and dependants.
• Reform of the church, brought in European
monastic orders :Austinians and the
Cistercians.
• New elite of government.
• He was opposed by the Gaelic nobility.
David I
• String of royal castles and burghs from
Aberdeen to Inverness.
• 1136 unprecedented degree of power.
Stability of his kingdom.
• Tried to integrate parts of northern
England into his kingdom (Northumbria).
• First native coinage.
Language during the time of David
I
• It is during the time of David and his
predecessor that Gaelic reaches its status
as the language of most of Scotland
(excluding the northern islands of Shetland
and Orkney).
Spread of Gaelic
• The spread of Gaelic culture eastwards
• The use of Gaelic by the Columban
Church (Iona) and their missonaries.
• The use of Gaelic in the courts of the first
Scottish kings in eastern Scotland
(Pictland) (from c850- ).
languages
• After c500AD various forms of
Germanic/English arrived in Scotland and
developed.
• Dumfriesshire, Galloway.
• It was the towns that eventually promoted
English. The ‘burghs’.
• Under David I’s rule, we see the promotion
of English language and custom in the
Lowlands.
Wars of Independence
1286-c1353
Wars of Independence
• The attempted subjugation of Scotland by
its neighbour to the south.
• Amicable relationship between the two for
much of the 13th century.
• But Edward I intervened at the death of
Alexander III.
• Edward’s son and Margaret, Alexander’s
grand-daughter.
Wars of Independence
• William Wallace, battle of Falkirk, 1298, his
death 1305
• Robert Bruce- new king (having killed
John Comyn). Descendant of David I
• Edward I (dies 1307)
• Battle of Bannockburn 1314 (Bruce
accepted as king)
• Robert Bruce’s reign 1306-29
Robert Bruce and Isabella of Mar
Wars of Independence
• The recognition of Scotland’s
independence.
The Lordship of the Isles
http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/hist
ory/articles/lords_of_the_isles/
Lordship of the Isles
Power-Lordship of the Isles
• When the centre of Gaelic power moved
from Dal Riata in the west to Pictland in
the 9th century, a new political entity took
shape in the west.
• By then there was an important
Scandinavian presence there.
• The first so-called ‘king of the Isles’ (Ri
Innse Gall or Triath nan Eilean) was
Godfrey son of Harald (d.989).
Power-Lordship of the Isles
• In the ensuing century there was
competition for the lordship from Norway,
Scotland, earls of Orkney, kings of Dublin,
and some Irish local kings.
• Authority was divided between Scotland
and Norway.
• Finally, in 1266, Norway ceded their part to
Scotland (treaty of Perth).
Power-Lordship of the Isles
• During the Wars of Independence, the
MacDoughalls oppossed Robert the
Bruce.
• By the 14th century, the Isles had become
the centre of Gaelic culture in Scotland
with close links with Ireland.
• The Council of the Isles (justice and
administration). Control of the seaways.
Power-Lordship of the Isles
• The Lords of the Isles (Righ Inse Gall) and
the chiefs encouraged their younger men
to become mercenaries. They were known
as Gall-Oglaigh (Gallowglasses), and
fought for the waring Irish kings of the
period. They were described:
• These sort of men be those that do not
lightly abandon the field, but bide the brunt
to the death.
Power-Lordship of the Isles
• The Gallowglasses became much soughtafter in Europe, and were greatly feared.
• Many were given lands in Ireland.
MacDonalds, MacDonnells, MacSweens.
• A warrior society.
Gallowglasses
Power-Lordship of the Isles
• By the 15th century, there was greater and
greater conflict with the Crown of
Scotland.
• By the beginning of the following century,
the break-up of the Lordship.
• The power-vacuum is largely taken up by
the various powerful clans.
The end of the Lordship of the Isles
• An attempt in 1462 by the Lord of the isles
(John of Islay) to topple the ‘king’ of
Scotland James III (Stewart family) with
the help of the English king (Edward IV)
failed, and John lost his lands, and within
three generations, the old Lordship had
crumbled.
• This led the whole west of Scotland to
become a patchwork of clan territories.
After the Lordship of the Isles
• One important achievement of the old
principality was the ‘Great Music’ (An Ceol
Mor). I.e. the pipers.
• The canon of the pipers went to 300
pieces.
• The piping college of the MacCrimmonds
was in existence well before the first
reference in 1580.
The Scottish Clans
From the beginnings to Culloden..
The Clans
• The clan was the most obvious
manifestation of the centrality of kinship to
the organisation of society in Gaelic
Scotland.
• This was a key legacy of the medieval
Scottish kingdom from its Gaelic
prototype.
The word clann
• The word mainly used before clan was
cenel, other words were cinneadh, siol and
sliochd.
• Clan was used from c11th century.
• Surnames began at the very highest levels
as a means of identifying members of a
ruling lineage..
The origins of the Clans
• Clan is from clann, the Gaelic word for
children. Clansmen and women saw
themselves as descended from common
name-fathers, often distant ancestors who
in some meaningful sense were the first of
that name.
• So, Clan Donald (Clann Domhnaill) were
originally the children of Donald.
The origins of the Clans
• The Clan Campbell , the most powerful
grouping in the SW of Scotland insisted
they were descended from the Irish mythic
hero Diarmaid the Boar.
• (In fact, the Campbells more likely
descended from the Old Brittonic speaking
peoples of the SW of Scotland, related to
the Britons in the south.)
The origins of the Clans
• Even before the fall of the Lordship of the
Isles, the extreme rivalry between the
clans was coming to a head.
• A famous event was the ‘battle of the
clans’ in 1396. This event between the
Clan Cameron and Clan Chattan was
fought without protective armour between
thirty men on either side.
The origins of the Clans
• The lawlessness of some of the clans can
be seen in the person of the ‘Wolf of
Badenoch’. In 1390, he burned down the
town and cathedral of Moray because the
bishop had criticized him.
• He belonged to the family of the Stewarts.
• His family had been one of the AngloNormans who settled in Scotland.
The Time of the Forays
(Plunder)-the clans and the
time of the Stewarts
The period between the break-up of
the Lordship of the Isles and the
Jacobite rebellions (1715, 1745) is
often called in Gaelic Linn na Creach
(the Time of Plunder).
Linn na Creach
• Yet, the Lowlands and the king of Scotland were
not oblivious to such untamed behaviour.
• The Stewarts had now long occupied the throne
of Scotland, beginning in the 1400s.
• The first Stewart to be king of both Scotland and
England-James VI (James I of England) needed
he could control the whole of his Scottish
kingdom if he were to be taken seriously.
James VI (1566-1625)
• Attempts were made to found towns in the
Gaelic areas of the west of Scotland.
• During the same period the Statutes of
Iona were introduced to try and eradicate
the Gaelic culture and the society which
had built it.
• The clan bards were made illegal. The
sons of the chiefs were to receive an
English education.
Education Act 1616
• The Gaelic language was blamed as one of the
chief and principal causes of the continuance of
barbarity and incivility amongst the Isles and
Highlands. It was to be abolished and removed.
• One clan the MacGregors were deprived of their
name. The chief Alasdair MacGregor was
executed for refusing to change his name. The
power of names in clan culture.
Rob Roy MacGregor
• He became a leader in what was to be one
of the first Jacobite rebellions (1689). This
was in protest at the expulsion of James II
and the enthronment of William of Orange.
• The battle of Killiecrankie.
• Rob Roy was finally obliged to take
another name, and he chose Campbell.
Rob Roy MacGregor
• When the clans rose again in 1715 and 1719
Rob Roy marched with them. He was badly
wounded in the defeat at the Battle of Glen
Shield.
• He finally surrended in an amnesty and died in
1734.
• He was an educated man, who wrote in both
English and Gaelic.
• Sir Walter Scott wrote a novel in 1818 called
Rob Roy.
The Jacobite Cause
Change in the Air
The Jacobite Cause
• The Jacobite ‘rebellions’.
• Why?
• The long dynasty of the Stewarts (nine
monarchs) was seen as the legitimate line
of succession in Scotland.
• Merging of the Crowns 1603.
• Resistance to the Act of Union 1707
• The Creation of the United Kingdom.
The Jacobite Cause
James VI of Scotland
(James I of Eng)
Grandson of James IV
And Margaret Tudor
Charles I
James VII of Scot
(James II of Eng)
Charles II (of Scotland
And England)
James VIII
(not crowned)
(the old pretender)
Charles
‘Bonny Prince Charlie”
Bonnie Prince Charlie
(Charles Edward Stewart)
1720-88
The Jacobite Risings
• There were several, leading to the rightly
famous rising of 1745.
• But, in 1715, the earl of Mar gathered
twenty-six clan chiefs to Braemar and
raised the banner for the exiled James.
• It was not supported by all the clans, the it
ended in a stalemate.
The Jacobite Rising of 1745
• No other event in Scottish history has
inspired so much heated debate as this
Rising. It has been analyzed as an internal
dynastic struggle, an an international
power play and as an internal Civil War.
• The feelings of the contemporary Gaels is
reflected in a large corpus of song and
story. That poetry is overwhelmingly
Jacobite. (map)
A Gaelic History of Scotland
• That Gaelic poetry of the time displays the
deep values of traditional Gaelic society in
Scotland:
• Loyalty to the rightful ruler.
• The signs that presaged a Gaelic
resurgence.
• The right to reject tyranny.
• The yearning for religious tolerance.
Highland gentleman
mid 18th century
A Gaelic History of Scotland
• The conflict was not a rebellion of Gaelic
Catholics against Protestant Lowlanders
and English.
• Many Presbyterians fought on the Jacobite
side, as did many Episcopalians.
• The real sense of the rebellion was to
restore the ‘proper’ king to the throne, but
also to restore Scotland’s independence.
Analysis of the battle
• The command structure of the Jacobite
Army was not well organized.
• The Prince was commander in chief, but
strategic decisions were taken by Colonel
Sullivan.
• There was poor co-ordination at a tactical
level.
Culloden
• The battle of Culloden was not in the ordinary
sense a battle between the Scots and the
English.
• There were Scots in the Loyalist Army (under
Cumberland). Four of his 16 infantry units were
Scottish.
• This having been said, it is fair to say that King
George’s soldiers were there to protect the new
United Kingdom, whilst the Jacobite army was
there to restore Scottish Independence.
A Gaelic History of Scotland
• This Anglicization had the effect of destroying
the old link between the clan and his people.
The Gaelic-speaking tenantry could now be
removed at will by the landlords, who saw that
people could not produce the profits that the
new economic system required.
• This led to large-scale clearances where people
were forcilbly evicted from their homes (the first
was in Glengarry 1785).
The Clearances
• Highland landlords had greater powers over
their tenants than any in contemporary Europe.
• A number of factors combined (including the
Potato Famine of 1846-7) made Clearance a
recurring catastrophe of the nineteenth century.
• In the Gaelic poetry of the time, the recurring
image is that of the Lowland shepherd who
arrives in the Highlands with his flocks of sheep
which displace the Highlanders for the profit of
the landlords.
A Gaelic History of Scotland
• After the ‘rebels’ had been crushed at Culloden,
the Highlanders no longer posed a threat to the
Anglo-British state.
• Especially after the popularity of MacPherson’s
Ossian in the 1760s, the Highlander came to be
identified as a ‘noble-savage’.
• The popular potrayal of the ‘lost world’ of the
Celts reinforced its disconnection from the reality
of industrialisation and empire.
A Gaelic History of Scotland
• The ever-deepening social and cultural
crisis in the Highlands led to a retreat into
religion as an internal community.
• The Church of Scotland saw a disruption
of its unity in 1843, and the formation of
the Free Church. This was evangelical
inspiration, and rejecting the the world. In
Galeic terms it also rejected secular
culture, music, song and dance.
A Gaelic History of Scotland
• Catholicism had been identified with the
Jacobite cause. (incorrectly)
• Many Catholic communities in the
Highlands and Islands left Scotland in the
19th century for Canada and the USA. By
1878, almost all the Gaelic Catholics were
in the county of Inverness and the diocese
of Argyll and the Isles.
Crofter’s cottage c1760
Clan Society
• Kinship was the organizing principle of
Highland clans, although in reality not
everyone in a given clan was related.
• The clan was a political institution which
claimed an ideology of kinship, but which
is also based on an historical reality.
• The people who operated as members of
a clan accepted tha authority of a common
leader:
Clan Society
• One writer commenting on the clan system
at the time of the battle of Culloden (1746)
said:
• A Highland clan is a set of people all
bearing the same surname and believing
themselves to be related to one another
and to be descended from a common
stock.
Clan Society
In each clan there are several subordinate
tribes who own their dependence on their
immediate chief, but all agree in owning
allegiance to the supreme chief of the clan
or kindred and look on it as their duty to
support him in all his adventures.’
Clan Society
• Despite the ideology of kinship, people
who were of different origins could find
themselves dependent upon a particular
chieftain, living on his estate, and
effectively becoming members of his clan.
• They often took his surname as their own.
Clan Society
• There are a number of terms in Gaelic for
referring to lineages and kin. (clann, siol,
sliocht)
• The term clann itself appears in family
names by c1100 in Scotland (The Book of
Deer), but most of the known clans are
names after founding ancestors who can
be dated to the era 1150 to 1350.
Clan Society
• For example, the MacDougalls, called Clann
Dughaill in Gaelic are named after a Dughall
who lived in the later twelfth century.
• The children of a ruler and their children would
found new lineages , called Sliochdan. They
might take on a new name like the Clan Ranald,
a branch of the Clan Donald descended from
Raghnall, the second son of the Lord of the
Isles.
Clan Society: chieftains
• Clann chieftains often inherited many of
the attributes of the earlier local kings
(righe) of earlier Gaelic society.
• One commonly expressed belief (by the
bards) was that the chieftain had a special
relationship with the territory. This can be
seen in the laments in which nature
mourns the death of a chielftain.
Clan Society: chieftains
• As late as the mid 1700s, when Prince
Charles Edward Stewart was anticipated
to return to Scotland, he was pictured in
the Gaelic poetry of the time as restoring
the bounty of the land.
• When the same Bonnie Prince Charlie
died in 1788, William Ross sang:
Clan Society
• Tha gach beinn, gach
cnoc ‘s gach sliabh
• Air am faca sinn thu
‘triall
• Nis air chall an
dreach ‘s am fiabh
• O nach tig thu
‘chaoibh nan cian.
• Every mountain, hill
and moor-side
• On which we saw you
travelling
• Has now lost its
comeliness
• Since you will never
return.
Clan Society: warrior/clansmen
• Amongst the specialized, high-ranking
professions in Gaelic society was that of
the warrior.
• An 18th century writer said that ‘they were
well trained in managing the sword, in
wrestling, swimming, jumping, dancing,
shooting with bows and arrows, and were
stout seamen’.
Clan Society: warrior/clansmen
• Before about 1600, most of the fighting
men were taken from the higher ranks of
society. The buannachan were a kind of
permanent fighting force, together with the
Leine-chneas or bodyguard.
• After that date many more fighters were
taken from the tuath (common people),
with the growth in that period after c1600
of warfare.
Clan Society: warrior/clansmen
• Despite the strict assignment of rank,
people were not segregated from each
other, because of being inferior in status.
• Rather everyone celebrated their ties of
kinship and inter-dependence with the
noble leaders of society, and these ties
created a sense of self-esteem amongst
Highland people as a whole (Gaels).
The Aftermath of Culloden
• It could be said that many communities of the
Gàidhealtachd lost their sense of involvement in
the physical and political world in exchange for a
belief in a personal spiritual struggle (Compare
North American natives= the Ghost Dance).
• Once Gaeldom no longer seemed to pose a
threat, it was pilfered for elements to add local
colour to the British Empire.
Gaeldom in Retreat
• In a period when Gaelic was already in
decline, An Comunn Gaidhealach (The
Highland Society) was established in 1891
with the express aim of encouraging the
Gaelic language and tradition.
• It has been the patron of an annual
competition called the Mod, modelled on
the Welsh Eisteddfod.
Gaeldom in Retreat
• Such institutions, laudable though they
may be, tended to impose new styles of
performance typical of the late Victorian
era.
• The same kinds of innovation and
‘improvement’ effected the traditions of
bagpipe playing.
• Contrary to popular belief, the bagpipes
were never prohibited after Culloden.
Gaeldom in Retreat
• Rather a lack of native institutions led to a
certain decline, although the British military
became the principle patron of piping in both the
Lowlands and the Highlands. (Highland Games).
• Such Highland Games, often far from the
realities of the Gaelic world, led to the
introduction of ideas and styles once foreign to
Gaelic music. (changing the tempo).
Scottish identity
• In the context of the Scottish revival in the
twentieth century, major writers such as
Somhairle MacLean (Gaelic), Hugh
MacDiarmid (Lallans), William Auld
(Esperanto) emerged who brought
Scottish writing back to the foreground.
Scottish identity
• It is interesting to see how some aspects
of the Gaelic history of Scotland have
been integrated into a more generalised
Scottish identity.
• The kilt can be seen frequently in
Glasgow, and learning Gaelic is more
found in the Lowlands than the Highlands.
The pipes and the tartan now belong to all
Scots whatever their origin.