Читать книгу Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 740, March 2, 1878 - Various - Страница 3

Table of Contents

SECOND ARTICLE.

A few months ago, in an article entitled ‘The Gaelic Nuisance,’ we endeavoured to point out the impolicy of fostering Gaelic as the vernacular tongue in the Highlands and Islands. Our observations were variously received. Many approved of the article; by some it was apparently misunderstood. On this latter account, we return to the subject, in the hope of removing such misapprehensions as may happen to exist. This time, at anyrate, we shall take care to be perfectly explicit as to our meaning.

In the article referred to, we offered no objection to the use of Gaelic, provided the young were brought up with a knowledge of English. That was distinctly our contention, and we believe that such is the opinion of all who think seriously on this important question. We therefore repeat in terms on which nothing but perversity can put a wrong construction, that the fostering of Gaelic to the exclusion of English—for it practically comes to that—is a grave error; it is a cruelty which merits exposure and reprobation. Why it is a cruelty is very clear. As previously stated, the use of Gaelic as the only known vernacular, keeps large numbers of poor people ignorant, it usually fixes them to their place of birth, and accordingly excludes them from earning their bread in the general competition of the world. It is very easy for enthusiasts living at a respectful distance to write in glowing terms about the antiquity of Gaelic, about the wonderful beauty of Gaelic poetry, about the philological value of Gaelic phraseology, about the satisfaction of being able to speak Gaelic as well as English. These are not the points in dispute. Let people, if they will, and if they can afford the expense, learn to speak and read Gaelic supplementary to English, just as many of us learn to speak and read French or German. The more languages that can be acquired the better. About that there is no contention. What we deem to be a scandal and a cruelty is the practice of rearing, or allowing to grow up, groups of children with a knowledge of no other language than Gaelic; the consequence being that they are for the most part condemned to life-long poverty and ignorance. And that is what is done through the mistaken policy of it may be well-meaning sentimentalists and philanthropists, who are seemingly unaware of the misery they are helping to perpetuate. The English language, like the laws and constitution of the country, is a common heritage, in which every child has a claim to be instructed, so that all may be qualified to perform such duties as fall to their lot. Is it not, then, shocking to find groups of old and young scattered about the Highlands and Islands who cannot speak a word of English, and who cannot so much as sign their names? We might almost say they have no more knowledge of newspapers, or of English literature generally, than the lower animals, amidst which in dreary solitudes they hopelessly pass their existence.

The Highlanders have scarcely had justice done to them. They possess characteristics of a noble race. Faithful, honest, and steady in civil life. Valorous as soldiers. Peaceful and law-abiding in a very extraordinary degree. Those among them who by some good fortune quit their native glens and mix with the Lowland population, speedily learn English, and are able to converse as fluently in that language as in their native Gaelic. In fact, wherever they are brought in contact with English-speaking neighbours, they manifest no mental deficiency. In many instances they have attained to eminence. Only where they are habitually neglected, and left in untoward circumstances to vegetate in primitive ignorance, do they shew anything like laziness, and an indifference to improvement. From all we happen to know of the Highlanders, they only need to be put in the way of being cultivated by education and contact with the outer world.

In hinting at educational deficiencies we tread on tender ground. There is an Educational Act applicable to the whole of Scotland, whether the mainland or islands. No spot is exempted from the operation of a school-board. Although the Act was passed in 1872, it appears from one cause or other that there are districts where no schooling is available, and children are suffered to run about wild. In an article in the Scotsman newspaper of January 5, 1878, a correspondent writing on the wretched condition of the Highland ‘crofters,’ or occupants of small patches of land, refers to the educational deficiencies in the parish of Barvas, on the west coast of Lewis. Here is what he says: ‘At present, the children know not a syllable of English; the women and thirty per cent. of the men are as ignorant; and twenty per cent. of the people married cannot sign their marriage papers. One thing certain is that the people are themselves totally unprepared for the good that the Act is expected to do them; and that it will be only by means of vigilant compulsory officers that its full operation will be secured. In the meantime the schools in the parish have not been opened; and ragged boys and girls hang about on the moor all day long herding cattle, or idle near the wayside in companies of threes and fours, holding fast by tethers, at the ends of which small melancholy lambs are grazing.’ What a picture of primitive rural life! Education practically non-existent. The compulsory provisions of the School Act in a state of abeyance!

The island of St Kilda, to which we called attention, exhibits a small population with no means of learning English, and who for religious instruction in Gaelic are wholly dependent on the Rev. John M’Kay, a minister appointed by the Free Church. This worthy individual, who is a bachelor of advanced age, and whom, by mistake, we spoke of as being married, can speak and read English; but with the exception of the imported wife of one of the natives, he is the only individual on the island who can do so, and acts as a general interpreter on the occasion of visits from strangers. There is no school in the island, nor is there any attempt to teach English. Is this a condition of things which commends itself to philanthropists?

In a handsomely printed and illustrated work, St Kilda Past and Present, by George Seton, Advocate (Blackwood and Sons), 1878, there is an effective reference to the want of education in the island of St Kilda. ‘Probably,’ says this observant writer, ‘the most beneficial influence that could be brought to bear upon the St Kildans would be of an educational kind. Through the instrumentality of the Harris school-board or otherwise, an energetic effort ought to be made to introduce a systematic course of instruction in English, with the view of the inhabitants enjoying the vast benefits which would inevitably ensue. At present, they are not only cut off from regular communication with the mainland, but in consequence of their ignorance of the language of the United Kingdom, they are debarred from the means of enlarging their minds, and subverting their prejudices, by the perusal of English literature. A recent number of Chambers’s Journal—to which every English-speaking section of the globe owes such deep obligations—contains an admirable article, from the pen of the veteran senior editor, on the subject of “The Gaelic Nuisance,” to which I venture to call the attention of all who are interested in the future welfare of the inhabitants of St Kilda. The writer points to Galloway on the one hand, and to the Orkney and Shetland Islands on the other, as illustrative examples of the blessings which have flowed from the substitution of English for Gaelic and Norse respectively; and in the course of his remarks he makes special allusion to St Kilda.’

Thanking Mr Seton for this acknowledgment of the correctness of our views, we pass on to a note lately received from a sheriff-substitute in a Highland county. He says: ‘Allow me to thank you for your article in the last part of Chambers’s entitled “The Gaelic Nuisance.” I have resided here for several years, and am convinced that the civilisation of the Highlands is impossible so long as Gaelic continues to be the language of the common people. I hope your article will open the eyes of common-sense people to the necessity of abolishing Gaelic as a spoken language, by the substitution of English.’

A gentleman connected by heritage with one of the outer Hebrides, sends us a note, in which, after commenting on the grotesque objections that had been made to our article, he observes: ‘We all understand now—though a few may deceive themselves and others—that man is not made for language, but language for man. We Highlanders are determined to adopt the current language, just as we have adopted the current coin of the realm.’ This is plain speaking; and we hope that the writer, using the power which his position gives him, will in his own locality see that the children are taught to read and understand English; such, in our opinion, whatever others may think, being only a simple act of justice.

In our former article we alluded to the case of Wales, in which large numbers are as unhappily excluded from a knowledge of the English language as are many of the Gaelic-speaking population of the Highlands. We are glad to see that this deficiency is beginning to attract attention, for reasons similar to those we employ. Recently at a large meeting in connection with the Welsh Church in Chester, presided over by the Bishop of Chester, as reported in The Times, Jan. 10, the Dean of Bangor, in speaking of Wales, remarked: ‘Wales was in a certain extent backward. In the power of influencing those outside their own country, they were behind England, Scotland, and Ireland, simply because their language excluded them from making their thoughts and views known to those of different nationality.... He ventured to hope that the day was rapidly approaching when every Welshman would be able to use the English language.’ Such a public acknowledgment as this is eminently satisfactory. It shews moral courage in combating popular prejudice. We should like to see Highland proprietors quite as openly avowing that it was time every Gaelic-speaking child ‘was able to use the English language.’

The most conclusive evidence that could be advanced respecting the serious disadvantage of maintaining Gaelic as an exclusively common language is that offered by Mr Simon S. Laurie, the accomplished Professor of Education in the University of Edinburgh, who lately delivered an Address on the subject of Education in the Highlands. According to a newspaper report of his address, he said in reference to the Highlanders: ‘One thing needful was to secure for them freedom of locomotion; so that when the pressure on one district became too great, the people might move to another. Without a knowledge of the English language, the country of the Highlander was bound round him as with a brazen wall. He need not try to get out of it, because his native language put him at such a disadvantage with other men that he had no chance against them.... There was no doubt that the teaching of Gaelic should be subordinate to the teaching of English. If they trained a boy in a Highland school to read, write, and speak Gaelic, what were they to do with him? How would we like to be in that position ourselves? Fancy a boy at the age of fifteen or sixteen able only to point out in Gaelic to a stranger the way he should take; would they not find that he had been miseducated—in fact cut off from being a member of the British Empire altogether? At the same time, while he held that, he was of opinion that they could not teach English to the Highlanders well except through the Gaelic. The Highland children learned very quickly—more quickly than the Lowland children—they could soon read with perfect fluency such a book as M’Culloch’s Course of Reading, and yet not understand a single word; shewing that they would not learn English well except through Gaelic. The aim of the whole teaching should be to make the pupils thoroughly acquainted with English.’

With such a concurrence of evidence, and with the knowledge that there is a School Act of six years’ standing, why, it will be asked, are children in the Highlands and Islands still left to remain untaught in the elements of education? That is a question that could perhaps best be answered by the Education Board for Scotland. We can only conjecture that the educational deficiency in various quarters is due to the difficulty, for pecuniary reasons, in establishing and maintaining schools on a proper footing consistently with the obligations of the statute. Mr Laurie mentions that the school-rates press with a severity which in some places is perfectly paralysing. ‘In Shetland, for example, the School Boards were brought to a stand-still. They could not face a rate of four shillings a pound; the same proprietors having to pay not less than four shillings a pound for poor-rate and other burdens besides.’ This agrees with what we have privately heard of Shetland, where the rates of one kind or other very nearly swallow up the whole rental drawn by proprietors. Mr Laurie states emphatically as to this difficulty of school-rates, that ‘unless the government paid what was necessary above fifteen-pence per pound, the Highlands and Islands would not have the full benefit of the Act of 1872.’

Evidently, the School Boards, notwithstanding their comprehensive and compulsory powers, are unable to plant and sustain schools in all quarters where required. The difficulty, it is observed, is financial. Let us instance the island of St Kilda. Its inhabitants are said to be seventy-six in number, while the annual rent exigible by the proprietor is somewhere about a hundred pounds, payable in kind. How can the School Board of Harris, with which the island is connected parochially, be expected to build a school and sustain a schoolmaster for the benefit of so small a population, in which there are perhaps only a very few children of school age? To build a school of the ordinary authorised type would cost at least six hundred pounds. And the payment of a teacher with other expenses would amount to one hundred pounds a year. The organisation of a school on this footing would go far beyond what is desirable or what could be asked for from either the state or the ratepayers.

A consideration of the financial difficulty leads to the conviction that something very much less costly than the present school organisation must in many parts of the Highlands be attempted, if the children are to get any education at all. Mr Laurie very properly remarks that children ‘would not well learn English except through the Gaelic;’ meaning by this, we suppose, that the teacher would require through the agency of Gaelic to explain the meaning of English words. That surely would not be difficult to accomplish; nor would it be unreasonable to establish schools on a much more modest footing than those latterly sanctioned by School Boards. The Scotch were long accustomed to see a very humble class of schools in secluded rural districts. Often, these schools consisted of cottages of not more than two apartments, one of which constituted the dwelling of the teacher. These cottage schools were conducted at an exceedingly small expense, yet they answered their purpose. Neither dignified nor imposing, they were useful. They imparted to the few children in their respective neighbourhoods a knowledge of letters. We are inclined to think that a modification of this kind would solve some existing difficulties as concerns the establishing of schools among the sparse population of the Highlands and Islands. In short, it would be well to legalise a minor or sub-class of schools, to be conducted at a small cost, designed to effect a particular purpose, namely, that of communicating a knowledge of the English language to large numbers of poor children who are at present growing up in ignorance of any spoken tongue but their native Gaelic, and who, in many cases, as is seen, have no education whatever.

We hope the nature of our pleading is no longer misunderstood. It is, that all Gaelic-speaking children may in some shape or other be taught to read and understand the language common to the United Kingdom. There may be some statutory obstacles in the way. There should be none in the light of humanity and common-sense. Perhaps we may return to the subject. Considering that the welfare of successive generations of helpless beings is concerned, the subject is too momentous to be lightly treated, or to be swept aside by casual gusts of delirious opposition.

W. C.