‘Unreliable Barbarians’: How Language Contributed to Cultural Conflict in Late Medieval Scotland By Alice Goodwin Gaelic society and culture in late medieval Scotland were comprised of a complex system of lordships, languages, and identities, built over hundreds of years and assigned various ethnic labels before Gaelic. The changes that are observed in the associations of Gaelic culture and society with barbarity and political unreliability are external judgements brought about by attempts to distinguish the English, and later the Lowlanders, from the Gaels. Accusations of political unreliability are largely rooted in the familial rivalries which occurred in the Lordship of the Isles during the later medieval period, with violent in-fighting and frequent shifts in power fuelling observers to class Gaelic society as politically unreliable. Concepts of barbarity were continually evolving throughout the Middle Ages, and yet the accusation of Gaelic barbarity occurred at every point of its linguistic evolution, showing the continued need for neighbours to the south to differentiate themselves from the Gaelic society in the north. This was exemplified in the Highland/Lowland distinction which was prominent by the end of the fourteenth century, allowing the newly emerged ‘Scots’ of the Lowlands to associate themselves with the civilisation of the English by creating a geographical and societal divide. In doing so it is clear that associations of barbarity and political unreliability assigned to Gaelic culture and society provide insights about those perpetuating the judgment, rather than showing a reflection of Gaelic society itself, displaying the wish of the ‘accusers’, whether English or Lowlanders, to distance themselves from what they judged to be undesirable traits possessed by Gaels. The late medieval period is typically characterised as beginning with the Anglo-Norman invasion and ending in the early sixteenth century with the Nine Years War, although this is a significantly Anglicised picture of the period which also includes significant change for Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. Throughout the early medieval period, and before the formation of a ‘Kingdom of the Scots’, there were numerous ethnic groups living in the north of Britain, each establishing dominance at different points, including the Picts, the Gaels of Dál Riata, Angles, Britons, and the Vikings. Following the conquest of the eleventh century and the Anglicisation of parts of southern Scotland, Gaelic society and culture was spotlighted as a barbaric corner in what was becoming a progressively civilised island, at least in the eyes of the English. The Scottish Gaelic identity
at this point was emerging as distinct from that of Ireland, with the languages growing apart and a new separate consciousness as the Gaels of Scotland developing, along with unmistakable differences in art and appearance. It remained the case in the later medieval period that Scotland contained an array of languages and ethnicities, including variations on Celtic, Scandinavian, and English language, and yet a seeming dichotomy emerged between Gaelic culture and society and that of the developing Scottish nation in the south of the country. Perhaps because the two most prominent cultures were those of the Gaels and the new Scots south of the Forth, they were pitted against each other, at least in the eyes of the Lowlanders. For at this time the notion of the nation was appearing, and it may be the case that the Scots were attempting to assert their culture and society as the dominant and most civilised – and, as such, the proper culture of Scotland. Associations between Gaelic society and barbarism were not new to the later Middle Ages, as the term had been used to describe inhabitants of northern Britain for centuries, although the use of the word had significantly changed since late Antiquity when Roman authors were commenting on the Picts or the ‘wild Scots.’ Previously meaning pagan, or a nonreligious person, Romans were able to assign the label of barbarian to groups and in doing so assert their superiority and justify intervention on behalf of the Church. However, as Christianity spread and there were fewer pagan groups, the use of ‘barbarian’ changed, now coming to mean peoples living in a way deemed to be sub-Christian, even if they believed in the Christian God. Adapting the meaning of the word allowed for societies to express their superiority over others, as it is only through the self-identification of one culture as civilised that the image of the barbarian is created. Accounts of those living in the north of Scotland are seemingly consistent throughout history, with Solinus in the third century describing the Scots as ‘rough and warlike with barbaric customs,’ and both the Scots and Picts characterised as ‘savage tribes’ by Ammianus Marcellinus in 360. External perceptions of northern British society, including those of the Picts, the Scots, and the Gaels can be seen to change little throughout the centuries preceding the period in question, and associations with barbarism and political unreliability were already well-established by the end of the twelfth century. The consistency of writings on the Scots and
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