. The earth and its inhabitants .. . d to our own time. A few Scandinavian colonies on the mainland have retained their distinctcharacter. As an instance we may mention the village of Ness on Lewis, the * Jameson, History of the Culdees. t Forbes Leslie, Early Races of Scotland. X Mercey, Revue des Deux-Mondes, September, 1838. § Hugb Miller, Footprints of the Creator. II • Historical Description of Zetland. 358 THE BRITISH ISLES. inhabitants of which are distinguished for their enterprise, presenting a singularcontrast to the sluggishness of their Gaelic neighbours. The descendants ofthese ho
. The earth and its inhabitants .. . d to our own time. A few Scandinavian colonies on the mainland have retained their distinctcharacter. As an instance we may mention the village of Ness on Lewis, the * Jameson, History of the Culdees. t Forbes Leslie, Early Races of Scotland. X Mercey, Revue des Deux-Mondes, September, 1838. § Hugb Miller, Footprints of the Creator. II • Historical Description of Zetland. 358 THE BRITISH ISLES. inhabitants of which are distinguished for their enterprise, presenting a singularcontrast to the sluggishness of their Gaelic neighbours. The descendants ofthese hostile races have, like oil and water, long refused to mingle. Itwould nevertheless be next to impossible to define the boundaries between thevarious races throughout the country. Language certainly would prove no safeguide, for many of the Gaels have given up their language and speak of 3,500,000 Scotchmen only 250,000 are able to express themselves Fig. 178.—Linguistic Map of Scotland. A ccordin? to E G Proportion of GaeliR-fPeaking Inhabitants mn3 ^ ^ 25 to 50 50 to So Over 90 per cent. per cent. per cent. in Gaelic, and of these only 49,000 are ignorant of English.* As to the Scandi-navians, not one amongst their descendants now speaks Old Norse. The greaternumber of them speak English, but many, too, have adopted Gaelic. In most of theislands the names of places are Danish, although Gaelic has for centuries been thespoken language. Even in St. Kilda, remote as is its situation, an interminglingof Gaels and Northmen has been The use of Celtic was discon- * E. G. Ravenstein, On the Celtic Languages in the British Sands, Out of the World, or Life in St. Kilda. NORTHERN SCOTLAND. 359 tinued at the court of Scotland about the middle of the eleventh century, and isdoomed to disappear. Far poorer in its literature and less cultivated than Welsh,its domain diminishes with every decade, for English is now almost universallyspoken in
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