Topic: Language

I have traced my father’s Johnston line back to the Scottish borders in the mid-1700s. I understand that they spoke not Gaelic but a form of broad Lowland Scots called Lallans. Apparently it was also spoken in the Northern Isles and in the north of Ireland. Both Robbie Burns and RL Stevenson wrote about it:

They took nae pains their speech to balance,
Or rules to gie;
But spak their thoughts in plain, braid lallans,
Like you or me.
—Robert Burns in Epistle To William Simson

“What tongue does your auld bookie speak?”
He’ll spier; an’ I, his mou to steik :
“No bein’ fit to write in Greek,
I wrote in Lallan,
Dear to my heart as the peat reek,
Auld as Tantallon.
—Robert Louis Stevenson in “The Maker to Posterity”

One reason could be because while Highland Scots are of Celtic (Gaelic) descent, Lowland Scots are descended from people of Germanic stock. Investigating further, I discovered that in the late 18th century, the Gaelic language was heavily suppressed during the infamous Highland Clearances following the turbulent Jacobite uprisings.

There is a fascinating entry about Lallans in the Dictionaries of the Scots language at https://www.dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/lallan giving lots of exam ples.