Gaelic the language of Macbeth.

 

I used to read copies of the West Highlands free press. If often cited instances of English prejudice towards Gaelic speakers. One example was a joke about two people that posed this question: How do you know when two people are having a conversation in Gaelic? Answer: One of them is covered in spit.

To me, this didn't sound like an English joke at all, because many English people are not likely to have heard a Gaelic accent at all. The newspaper also cited a case where an English-speaking registrar had refused to register a child with a Gaelic name.

Most Scots people are not familiar with the Gaelic language which is mostly spoken on the West Coast of Scotland. Gaelic speakers are also likely to be bilingual even if they live in the Western Isles. I've only known one person who spoke Gaelic and she could hold a conversation with a native Irish Gaelic speaker. This lady was from Skye and she told me that as a child they used to listen to Irish radio broadcasts in the native Gaelic Irish language and she could understand it.

In the 18th century, the Red Coat English soldiers, referred to the Scottish Gaelic speakers, as the people of the Irish tongue. Middle Gaelic, would have been the language of Macbeth or to give him his full name, Mac Bethad Mac Findlaech. It is likely that Macbeth also spoke French and Latin. It is said that he made a pilgrimage to Rome in 1050.

In Shakespeare's play 'Macbeth', Scotland is at war with Norway. At the time of Macbeth, the Scots were at war with one another, because it was a fragmented country. Much of the Western Isles and Outer Hebrides, was under the control of the Vikings until the Treaty of Perth in 1266.