But if this silent and gradual immigration of the Teutonic people thus took place into the southern and eastern districts of the country north of the Forth and Clyde, and either absorbed its Celtic inhabitants or gradually drove them back into the more mountainous regions, the latter were exposed to a more direct assault from another people of Teutonic race on the north and west, which, however, did not produce the same permanent effect upon the population. This was that strange and sudden appearance in the northern and western seas of a piratical horde of sea-robbers, which issued from the Scandinavian countries lying to the north of Germany. The first to make their appearance were the Danes, and though they repeatedly ravaged the Western Isles and destroyed the Christian monasteries, they effected permanent settlements only in Ireland, and in the northern provinces of England forming the ancient kingdom of Northumbria. They were followed by the Norwegians, who appear to have been more attracted by the islands surrounding Scotland, and thus came more immediately in contact with the Gaelic population of Scotland. They entirely occupied the islands of Orkney and Shetland, which they colonised; and took possession of the Western Isles, without, however, driving out or absorbing the previous inhabitants of Gaelic race.

By the Gaelic people these northern ravagers were termed either Geinnte or Gentiles as being pagans, or Gall or Strangers as being foreigners, and the two races of the Danes and Norwegians were distinguished by the terms Dubhgeinnte or Dubhgall, that is, black pagans or black strangers, and Finngeinnte or Finngall,^[20] white pagans or white strangers, and the Western Islands were termed Innsigall, or the Islands of the Strangers, while the Norwegians themselves called them the Sudreys or Southern Islands, to distinguish them from the Nordereys or Northern Islands, that is, the Orkney and Shetland Islands.^[21]

That the Norwegians did not so thoroughly colonise the Western Isles and absorb its Gaelic population, as was the case with the Orkney and Shetland Islands, may have arisen from their finding in the former a more dense population, and also that they appear to have used the Sudreys more as a kind of stepping-stone to other settlements, or as temporary strongholds, rather than as places for lasting settlements, and thus their Norwegian population was generally of a more transient and fluctuating character;^[22] but this was mainly true of the earlier period of their occupation only, and a more important ground of difference arose from the Gaelic population of the Western Isles more nearly assimilating themselves to the character of the Norwegian sea-robbers. They seem to have submitted easily to their rule, and to have adopted their habits, so that when one of the great Norwegian Vikings, Ketill Flatnose, succeeded in establishing a petty kingdom in the Isles in opposition to the rapidly increasing power of Harald Harfager, the first monarch who acquired the dominion of all Norway, we find the Isles said by the Sagas to be in the possession of Scotch and Irish Vikings, and Ketill appears in the Irish Annals under the name of Caittil Finn as the leader of a people called the Gallgaidheal, a name applied to those Gaidheal who became subject to the Norwegians, and conformed to their mode of life. Harald, however, eventually conquered both the Orkney Islands and the Sudreys or Western Isles. The former came under the rule of a line of Norwegian Jarls, who, by the marriage of one of them with the daughter of ‘Dungadr, Jarl of Katenes,’ that is, of Duncan, the Celtic Mormaer of Caithness, added that province to their dominions; and the Norwegian population seem to have as completely colonised the eastern and level part of Caithness as they did the Orkney Islands.

Harald appears to have governed the Western Isles by Norwegian Jarls, but his hold upon them was slight, and apparently ceased with his death, and they became merely the haunt of stray Vikings until the middle of the following century, when their possession was contested between the Danes of Dublin and Limerick, who had got a firm hold of the Island of Man, and the Norwegian Jarls of Orkney. One of the principal leaders of the Danes of Dublin, Anlaf Cuaran, had become connected with the Scottish King Constantine, and appears to have exercised some authority over the islands; but at the great battle of Brunanburgh, in which he and his father-in-law Constantine were engaged, we find the death of Geleachan, King of the Isles, recorded, as well as that of Cellach, a prince or Mormaer of Scotland,^[23] names which undoubtedly show a Gaelic form. Soon after we find Maccus or Magnus, son of Aralt, a leader of the Danes of Limerick, called King of Many Islands, and a struggle took place between his brother and successor Godfred, son of Aralt, called King of Innsigall, and Sigurd, Norwegian Jarl of Orkney, for the possession of the western Isles, when the former was slain by the Gaelic people of Dalriada or Argyll, and the Isles were acquired by the Orkney Jarl, who soon after added to his territories the western and northern districts of Scotland. His territories are said in the Sagas to have consisted, besides Orkney and the Sudreys, of Katanes, Sudrland, Myrhaevi or Moray, and Dali or the glens of Argyll, on the west, and we find a Jarl Gilli apparently ruling the Isles, whose principal seat was the island of Coll, and whose name has a Gaelic form.^[24] He pays scatt or tribute to Sigurd, and obtained his sister in marriage. Under Sigurd’s son Thorfinn, the most powerful of the Orkney Jarls, after the defeat and death of King Duncan in 1040, the whole of the northern districts of Scotland, as far as the river Tay, fell under the power of the Norwegians, who likewise possessed the Sudreys or Western Isles and the Gaelic district of Galloway, while Macbeth, the Mormaer of Moray, ruled as king over the dominions left to him, and the other districts south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde adhered to the family of Duncan; but on the death of Thorfinn, we are told that the additional territories acquired by him fell back to their native lords. Malcolm, the son and heir of Duncan, succeeded in defeating and killing the usurper Macbeth, and his successor Lulach, also of the family of the Mormaers of Moray, and establishing himself as king over the same territories which had been possessed by his father. The Western Isles pass for a time under the power of an Irish king of Leinster, which shows how powerful the Gaelic element in their populations still was, and on his death fell under the authority of the Crown. At this time the Isle of Man was in the possession of the Danish kings of Dublin, but a powerful Norwegian Viking who had joined the expedition of Harald, king of Norway, in 1066, with his followers, and fought at the battle of Stamford Bridge, succeeded after that defeat in driving the Danes out of Man and extending his power over the Western Isles, where he founded a new dynasty of Norwegian kings of the Isles. He is termed in the Chronicle of Man Godred Crovan, and, in the Irish Annals, Goffraig Meranach, king of the Galls of Dublin and the Isles, where his death,^[25] which, according to the Chronicle of Man, took place in the island of Isla, is recorded in 1095. The Isles had, however, two years before been invaded by Magnus, king of Norway, and brought under his dominion, and were eventually formally ceded to him by King Eadgar in the beginning of his reign, who thus, for a time, terminated their nominal connection with the Scottish kingdom. After the death of King Magnus, we find the leading men of the Isles applying to the king of Ireland to send them some person of worth of the royal family to act as their king till Olave, the son of Godred, should grow up, and Donald, son of Tadg, was sent, who is said in the Annals of Innisfallen to have acquired the kingdom of Innsigall by force,^[26] but was driven out when the king of Norway sent a Norwegian named Ingemund. But on his attempting to have himself appointed king, he was attacked and slain by the chief men of the Isles, and Olave, the son of Godred Crovan, was established as king over all the Isles, and ruled them for forty years. The Norwegians at this time still possessed the western seaboard of Scotland north of the Firth of Clyde, and the district of Galloway. According to the Red Book of Clanranald, ‘All the islands from Manann, or the Isle of Man, to Arca, or the Orkneys, and all the bordering country from Dun Bretan, or Dumbarton, to Cata, or Caithness, in the north, were in the possession of the Lochlannach or Norwegians, and such of the Gaedhal of those lands as remained were protecting themselves in the woods and mountains.’^[27]

This is probably a true picture of the relative position of the Norwegian and the Gaelic population at this time, and is no doubt equally applicable to the district of Galloway; but, during the rule of Olave over the Isles, a simultaneous effort seems to have been made by the Gaelic inhabitants of both districts to free this mainland border country from the presence of the Norwegians. The leader of the native Gaelic population of Argyll was Somerled, and of that of Galloway was Fergus. The former bears certainly a Norwegian name, but the names of father and grandfather have been preserved. He was son of Gillebride, son of Gille-adomnan, and these names are of too purely a Gaelic form to indicate anything but a Gaelic descent, and they are said in the Book of Clanranald to have taken refuge from the Norwegians in Ireland, and to have had a hereditary right to the mainland territories possessed by the latter. The name of the father of Fergus of Galloway has not been preserved, but his own name is a purely Gaelic form, and his personal qualities probably raised him to the leadership of the Gaelic population. Macvurich describes Gillebride, the father of Somerled, as being present at a conference held by the Macmahons and Maguires in Fermanagh, and obtaining help from them to regain his inheritance in Scotland. He went over to Scotland with his son Somerled and a band of followers, and when in the mountains and woods of Ardgour and Morvern, they were surprised by a large force of Norwegians, who were, however, eventually defeated by Somerled and his party; and, adds Macvurich, ‘he did not halt in the pursuit until he drove them northward across the river Sheil, and he did not cease from that work until he cleared the western side of Alban from such of the Norwegians as had acquired the dominion of the islands, with the exception of the island called Innsigall, and he gained victory over his enemies in every field of battle.’^[28] We have no record of what took place in Galloway, except that the result appears to have been the same, for we find the people of Galloway joining the army of King David at the Battle of the Standard under their Celtic leaders, and Fergus fully established in his reign as Lord of Galloway. The Norwegians, however, were not allowed even to retain quiet possession of the Isles, and Somerled, who now appears as Regulus of Argyll, succeeded in eventually wresting the Southern Isles from them. Macvurich tells us that after he had cleared the mainland of the Norwegians ‘he spent some time in war, and another time in peace,’ and during one of these intervals peace appears to have been concluded between the leaders of the Gaelic population and the Norwegian king Olave, for the latter married Afreca, daughter of Fergus, the Celtic lord of Galloway, by whom he had a son, Godred, and gave one of his own daughters to Somerled, the Celtic Regulus of Argyll, in marriage, who had by her four sons, Dubhgal, Reginald, Angus, and Olave.^[29] During the reign of Olave he is said by the Chronicle of Man to have ‘lived upon such terms of union with all the kings of Ireland and Scotland that no one dared to disturb the kingdom of the Isles as long as he was alive;’ but after his death the two populations came again into conflict, which resulted in the Gaelic population of Galloway maintaining their independence, and those of Argyll adding a large portion of the Islands to the dominions of their leader. Olave was slain in the island of Man by the sons of his brother Harold, who had formed a conspiracy against him in the year 1152, upon which, we are told in the Chronicle of Man, the conspirators divided the land among themselves, and a few days afterwards, having collected a fleet, they sailed over to Galloway, intending to conquer it for themselves. The Galloway men, however, formed themselves in a body and assailed them with great impetuosity; whereupon they speedily fled in great confusion, and either slew or expelled from it all the men of Galloway who were resident within the island.’^[30] In the following year Godred, the son of Olave, arrived with some ships from Norway, and was elected by the chiefs of the Isles as their king; but he was no sooner secure in his kingdom than he became tyrannical to his chief men, some of whom he dispossessed, and others he degraded from their dignities. One of the most powerful of these, Thorfinn, son of Otter, went to Somerled and asked to have his son Dubhgal, whose mother was King Olave’s daughter, that he might set him on the throne of the Isles, and taking him through the Isles he forced the chiefs to acknowledge him for their sovereign, and to give hostages for their allegiance. Another of these chiefs called Paul fled privately to Godred, who seems to have been in Man, and told him what had taken place, when he immediately collected his followers, got his ships ready, and sailed to meet the enemy. Somerled, too, collected a fleet of eighty vessels, and a sea-battle was fought between Godred and Somerled, during the night of the Epiphany, with great slaughter on both sides, and next morning they came to a compromise, and divided the sovereignty of the Isles, ‘so that from that period they have formed two distinct monarchies till the present time.’^[31]

Somerled was slain, as we know, at Renfrew in the year 1164, and on his death his eldest son Dubhgal appears to have succeeded him in his mainland territories, while his possessions in the Isles fell to his second son Reginald with the Norwegian title of king. Godred died in the Isle of Man in the year 1187, and was succeeded by his eldest son Reginald. There thus came to be two Reginalds reigning over the Isles at the same time, the Norwegian Reginald the son of Godred, and the Celtic Reginald the son of Somerled. Both bore the title of King of the Isles, and thus they are often confounded. There is preserved in the Book of Fermoy a curious poem which throws some light on the state of the Isles at this time.^[32] It consists mainly of a panegyric on the Norwegian Reginald, but appears to allude likewise to the other Reginald. When the Isles were divided, those which lie south of the Point of Ardnamurchan appear to have fallen to the share of Somerled, and his son Reginald seems to have had his chief seat in the island of Isla. The Isles retained by the Norwegians consisted of Skye, the Long Island, and the islands of Tyree and Coll. The latter island of Coll, which we find was the chief seat of the Jarls who had ruled the Isles under the king of Norway prior to the establishment of the Norwegian kingdom of the Isles, appears to have remained as the chief seat of the Norwegian Reginald, for he is addressed in the poem as king of Coll. The islands of Arran and Bute in the Firth of Clyde appear to have been shared between the two Reginalds, the Norwegian retaining Arran, which forms a prominent feature in the poem under the poetic name of Eamain Abhlach or Eamania of the apple-trees,^[33] and Bute passing over to the Celtic Reginald.

It is unnecessary for our present purpose to follow the history of the Western Isles further. Suffice it to say that Argyll came under the power of the Crown in 1222, when Alexander the Second firmly established his authority over this extensive western region. In 1196 William the Lion had brought the great northern district of Caithness under subjection, and severed the southern half of it, which he placed under a Scotch lord, and in the same reign of Alexander the Second, the restricted earldom of Caithness passed into the possession of a branch of the Celtic family of the Earl of Angus, and he died in the island of Kerreray while endeavouring to wrest the Isles from Norway. In the following reign the whole kingdom of the Isles passed into the possession of the Scottish monarch, the last Norwegian king of Man having died in 1265, and the Isles being formally ceded to Alexander the Third in 1266; and thus the power of the Norwegians entirely disappeared from the mainland of Scotland and from the Western Isles, the islands of Orkney and Shetland alone remaining as a dependency of the kingdom of Norway.

During the entire duration of this Norwegian kingdom of the Isles, we see the frequent appearance of a subordinate body termed the Princes or Chiefs of the Isles,^[34] whose recognition of the authority of the king was necessary to his assumption of that position. We see them electing a king and occasionally deposing a king; and that this body consisted of persons partly of Norwegian and partly of Gaelic descent is evident, from their sometimes deferring to the authority of the king of Norway, and at other times appealing to Ireland for aid. When the Norwegian influence was paramount, they would accept the control of the Norwegian monarch. When the Gaelic influence predominated, they seem invariably to have fallen back upon the kindred Gael of Ireland, and come under their influence. The inferior population of the Isles throughout was probably Gaelic, who formed the actual occupiers of the soil under superior lords, some of Norwegian and some of native descent.

When the partition of the kingdom of the Isles took place between Olave and Somerled, the Southern Isles, which thus passed under the rule of a native lord, would naturally attract to them the Gaelic population, both chiefs and people, while the chiefs of Norwegian descent would as naturally withdraw to the Northern Isles, which remained under Norwegian rule; and thus the Norwegian population would become more restricted to these islands, while that of the Southern Isles would become more purely Gaelic; accordingly we find the Norwegian place-names in Skye and the Long Island are more numerous and more thoroughly spread over the Isles than in the islands south of the Point of Ardnamurchan, a result we might also naturally expect from the Norwegian occupation of the former having lasted a century longer than that of the latter. We should also expect to find that after the partition of the Isles the Northern Islands would become comparatively deserted by the lower class of the population, the actual occupiers of the soil; and the condition of these islands at this time may be gathered from the Chronicle of Man, where it tells us that the Norwegian king Reginald ‘gave his brother Olave the island which is called Leodhus or Lewis, which though larger than any of the other isles is mountainous, rocky, and almost entirely inaccessible. It is of course thinly peopled, and the inhabitants live mostly by hunting and fishing. To this island Olave retired, and lived in the way of poverty. Seeing the island could not support him and his followers, he went confidentially to his brother Reginald, who was at that time resident in the Islands, and thus accosted him: Brother, my lord and sovereign, thou art conscious that the kingdom of the Isles is my birthright, but as the Almighty hath appointed thee to rule over them, I neither envy nor begrudge thee this royal dignity. Let me now only entreat thee to appoint me some portion of land in the Islands, where I may live creditably with my people; for the island of Leodhus, which thou hast given me, is insufficient for my maintenance.’^[35] Apparently Reginald saw no way of satisfying his demand, and found an easier solution in making him prisoner and sending him to King William the Lion, who imprisoned him during the rest of his reign.

We likewise see from the Chronicle of Man that there was frequent intermarriage between the two races who occupied the islands, and this would not only lead to the introduction of personal names of Norwegian form into families of pure Gaelic descent in the male line, but must to a great extent have altered the physical type of the Gaelic race in the islands; but there is no reason to suppose that, after the entire defeat of the Norwegians in the reign of Alexander the Third, and the cession of the kingdom of the Isles to him, there remained in them many families of pure Norwegian descent, and from the population of Scotland, as we find it in his reign, the Norwegian element, never probably a very permanent and essential ingredient, must now have entirely disappeared.

When the ‘Communitas’ or Estates of Scotland met at Scone on the 5th of February 1283, to regulate the succession to the crown, we find that the great holders of the land in Scotland consisted at this time, first, of thirteen of the great hereditary earldoms, one of which was held by a family of Anglic descent, and four by Norman barons who had succeeded by inheritance in the female line to the ancient Celtic earls; and, secondly, of twenty-four barons, of whom eighteen at least represented the Norman baronage of the kingdom, while the Celtic element is represented only by three families descended from Somerled, the great Celtic Lord of Argyll;^[36] and when Edward the First placed the whole of Scotland under four justiciaries in 13051305, we find the country south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde still divided into the two great districts of Lothian and Galloway, but the lands beyond the Scottish Sea, that is, north of these firths, are now for the first time differently grouped, one division consisting of the country between the river of Forth and the mountains, and the other of the lands beyond the mountains, or that part of the country to which the Gaelic population was now restricted.^[37]

The account given by Fordun of the distribution of the population in his day entirely corresponds with this. He says—‘The manners and customs of the Scots vary with the diversity of their speech, for two languages are spoken amongst them, the Scottish and the Teutonic, the latter of which is the language of those who occupy the seaboard and plains, while the race of Scottish speech inhabits the highlands and outlying islands. The people of the coast are of domestic and civilised habits, trusty, patient, and urbane, decent in their attire, affable and peaceful, devout in divine worship, yet always prone to resist a wrong at the hands of their enemies. The highlanders and people of the islands, on the other hand, are a savage and untamed nation, rude and independent, given to rapine, ease-loving, of a docile and warm disposition, comely in person but unsightly in dress, hostile to the English people and language, and, owing to diversity of speech, even to their own nation, and exceedingly cruel. They are, however, faithful and obedient to their king and country, and easily made to submit to law if properly governed.’^[38]

This description is no doubt to some extent coloured by the predilections of one who himself belonged to the low-country population, but it is not greatly unlike the prejudiced view taken of the characteristics of the Celtic population by late historians, and the struggle between the prejudices of the old historian against the Highland population and his reluctant admission of their better qualities is apparent enough.

We thus find a Gaelic-speaking people in the Highlands and a Teutonic-speaking people in the Lowlands. The language of the former is at an earlier period termed Albanic, and afterwards Scotch, the language of the latter is by the native writers prior to the sixteenth century usually termed Inglis; but in the sixteenth the progress of a literature in the latter tongue led to those who used it calling it Scotch, while they applied to the Celtic dialect, formerly called Scotch, the epithet of Irish corrupted into Erse. The Celtic part of the population has never given any other name to their language than Gaelic, and term the language of the Lowlanders Beurla Sassannach, or the Saxon tongue.

It is the social history and position of this portion of the population with which we have now to do.