An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) | Page 6

of Harlaw was not shed in any
racial struggle, but in the cause of the real English conquest of Scotland,
the conquest of civilization and of speech.
Our argument derives considerable support from the references to the
Highlands of Scotland which we find in mediæval literature. Racial
distinctions were not always understood in the Middle Ages; but
readers of Giraldus Cambrensis are familiar with the strong racial
feeling that existed between the English and the Welsh, and between
the English and the Irish. If the Lowlanders of Scotland felt towards the
Highlanders as Mr. Hill Burton asserts that they did feel, we should

expect to find references to the difference between Celts and Saxons.
But, on the contrary, we meet with statement after statement to the
effect that the Highlanders are only Scotsmen who have maintained the
ancient Scottish language and literature, while the Lowlanders have
adopted English customs and a foreign tongue. The words "Scots" and
"Scotland" are never used to designate the Highlanders as distinct from
other inhabitants of Scotland, yet the phrase "Lingua Scotica" means,
up to the end of the fifteenth century, the Gaelic tongue.[13] In the
beginning of the sixteenth century John Major speaks of "the wild
Scots and Islanders" as using Irish, while the civilized Scots speak
English; and Gavin Douglas professed to write in Scots (_i.e._ the
Lowland tongue). In the course of the century this became the regular
usage. Acts of the Scottish Parliament, directed against Highland
marauders, class them with the border thieves. There is no hint in the
Register of the Privy Council or in the Exchequer Rolls, of any racial
feeling, and the independence of the Celtic chiefs has been
considerably exaggerated. James IV and James V both visited the Isles,
and the chief town of Skye takes its name from the visit of the latter. In
the beginning of the sixteenth century, it was safe for Hector Boece, the
Principal of the newly founded university of Aberdeen, to go in
company of the Rector to make a voyage to the Hebrides, and, in the
account they have left us of their experiences, we can discover no hint
that there existed between Highlanders and Lowlanders much the same
difference as separated the English from the Welsh. Neither in
Barbour's Bruce nor in Blind Harry's Wallace is there any such
consciousness of difference, although Barbour lived in Aberdeen in the
days before Harlaw. John of Fordun, a fellow-townsman and a
contemporary of Barbour, was an ardent admirer of St. Margaret and of
David I, and of the Anglo-Norman institutions they introduced, while
he possessed an invincible objection to the kilt. We should therefore
expect to find in him some consciousness of the racial difference. He
writes of the Highlanders with some ill-will, describing them as a
"savage and untamed people, rude and independent, given to rapine, ...
hostile to the English language and people, and, owing to diversity of
speech, even to their own nation[14]." But it is his custom to write thus
of the opponents of the Anglo-Norman civil and ecclesiastical
institutions, and he brings all Scotland under the same condemnation

when he tells us how David "did his utmost to draw on that rough and
boorish people towards quiet and chastened manners".[15] The
reference to "their own nation" shows, too, that Fordun did not
understand that the Highlanders were a different people; and when he
called them hostile to the English, he was evidently unaware that their
custom was "out of hatred to the Saxons nearest them" to league with
the English. John Major, writing in the reign of James IV (1489-1513),
mentions the differences between Highlander and Lowlander. The wild
Scots speak Irish; the civilized Scots use English. "But", he adds, "most
of us spoke Irish a short time ago."[16] His contemporary, Hector
Boece, who made the Tour to the Hebrides, says: "Those of us who live
on the borders of England have forsaken our own tongue and learned
English, being driven thereto by wars and commerce. But the
Highlanders remain just as they were in the time of Malcolm Canmore,
in whose days we began to adopt English manners."[17] When Bishop
Elphinstone applied, in 1493, for Papal permission to found a
university in Old Aberdeen, in proximity to the barbarian Highlanders,
he made no suggestion of any racial difference between the
English-speaking population of Aberdeen and their Gaelic-speaking
neighbours.[18] Late in the sixteenth century, John Lesley, the defender
of Queen Mary, who had been bishop of Ross, and came of a northern
family, wrote in a strain similar to that of Major and Boece. "Foreign
nations look on the Gaelic-speaking Scots as wild barbarians because
they maintain the customs and the language of their ancestors; but we
call them Highlanders."[19]
Even in connexion with the battle of Harlaw,