[MR] [SCA-Laurels] Re: Scots and Iraq

[Heather Rose Jones]

At 10:22 AM -0500 1/21/05, t_neill t_neill wrote:
>This quote makes me wonder about what their doco shows:
>
>"The programmes - accompanied by a book - also claim the mythical 
>land of Atlantis existed in what we now know as the North Sea, and 
>that many Scots spoke Old Welsh before Gaelic."
>
>Atlantis?  Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. I 
>wonder what their evidence is.
>
>And are they saying very few Scots have Viking blood?  Because the 
>area was owned by Norway for a long time, and there certainly were 
>vikings and scandinavians living there for centuries.

I'm not sure where the Vikings come into it, but the "spoke Old Welsh 
before Gaelic" bit is referring to the Brythonic language of the 
north of Britain, more commonly known as Cumbric.  It probably 
survived in Strathclyde as late as the 10th century.  While there's a 
certain amount of debate as to the relative coverage in earlier 
centuries between Brythonic, Goidelic, and non-Celtic languages in 
Scotland (including the debate about whether the Goidelic family was 
a relative late-comer, in connection with the Dal Riata settlements, 
or a significantly earlier arrival), at the very least, the vast 
majority of what is now "lowlands" Scotland was Brythonic-speaking.

(Quick, stop me before I go into full professor mode!)

Tangwystyl
-- 
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Heather Rose Jones
heather.jones at earthlink.net
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