Page:An Etymological Dictionary of the Norn Language in Shetland Part I.pdf/98

XC displaced by Lowland Scottish, has left behind it many and deep traces in the present dialect of the Islands, there remain now only very slight traces of the original Celtic.

Certainly there is a not quite insignificant Gaelic element in the Orkney and Shetland speech; but this must, for the most part, be supposed to come in, later, through Lowland Scottish, which in its vocabulary has been strongly influenced by Gaelic. The original Celtic element in the Islands was, as the place-names show, predominantly Cymric (Pictish); but of Cymric there is almost nothing left in the speech itself.

That Norn was able to gain so strong a foothold and to maintain itself so long in Orkney and Shetland is due, in great part, to the fact that the stretch of country on the mainland of Scotland, lying opposite to Orkney, that is Caithness, was also peopled by Northmen, and that Norn was the prevailing speech in the eastern parts of Caithness. Celtic (first Pictish, afterwards Gaelic) was certainly the language generally spoken in the interior parts of the country, but the Orkney-Norn had a strong support in the Caithness-Norn, which latter formed a kind of bulwark that checked the advance of the Celtic language towards the north, and prevented it from displacing Norn in Orkney and Shetland. Later, both Celtic and Norn, in Caithness, were displaced by Lowland Scottish.

In the Hebrides, Norn was the language generally spoken both in the viking-age itself and for a long time after that, even if Celtic was hardly ever quite displaced there. But the coast regions of Scotland, lying right opposite to the Hebrides, had already a greatly preponderant Celtic-speaking population, and there was thus no bulwark that could defend the Norn of the Hebrides against the steadily continued pressure of the Celtic of West Scotland, which at last overwhelmed it.

The Hebrides, also, lay much farther away from Norway than Orkney and Shetland, and were separated from Norway at an earlier date than these latter Island-groups, that is, immediately after King Håkon Håkonsson’s ill-starred expedition to the West of Scotland. For the reasons given, the Norn of the Hebrides was soon overcome by Gaelic, which is still the language generally spoken in those Islands, but is certainly intermixed with a great many remnants of Norn.