Eillan A' Phrionnsa: The Gaelic Community of Prince Edward Island

Event

2006-11-10

01:35:26

This is a lecture by Dr. Michael Linkletter titled “Eillan A' Phrionnsa: The Gaelic Community of Prince Edward Island”, where he discusses Scottish Gaelic communities, early settlers, the Gaelic language, 1855 census, importance of poetry, Gaelic newspapers, discrimination and Gaelic influence on English citizens of PEI. The lecture also covers various other topics to do with the early Scottish Gaelic communities of PEI.

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Held by Benevolent Irish Society

An overview of what the lecturer will cover - the establishment of the Scottish Gaelic community of Prince Edward Island. Also, the Gaelic Community in its Heyday and its decline. He will cover the various pieces of evidence that he gathered from manuscripts, the archives, the newspaper from the 19th century, and some more modern audio recordings. The earliest Gaelic-speaking Scottish community established in PEI can be traced to 1764. Some of the early settlers fought in the Battle of Plains of Abraham.
After the defeat of Quebeckers, some Scottish soldiers were offered properties in the maritimes thus they became the earliest settlers of the Maritimes.
The earliest group settlement came as early as the 1770s. Captain Steward’s settlement came in 1770 onboard the Annabella with about 80 people. They came from the Argyle area of Scotland. The next settlement was the Montgomery settlement in 1770 further east in Covehead and Stanhope. They were mostly from the Perth area of Scotland. The two major settlements from Scotland were the Glenaladale settlement in 1770-1772, and the Selkirk settlement in 1803 which carried on for a few years. Chain migration was a trend in the Scottish community. The earlier immigrants attracted the later Scottish people to immigrate from the same area of Scotland. Nova Scotia was considered “The New Scotland” by many people with the Hector in Pictou, but the Scottish immigration to Canada actually started in Prince Edward Island. Some of the Glenaladale settlers who were Catholic moved to Nova Scotia’s mainland and Cape Breton. One of the first Scottish settlers in Cape Breton was Michael MacDonald from Glenaladale. Most of these PEI Scottish settlers were Gaelic speakers.
In 1855 a census was done showing that PEI had a population of 76,000 people and half of the population were Scottish and at least ⅓ of the population were Scottish Gaelic speakers. It is still the largest ethnic group in PEI today. The speaker describes a demographic map of PEI with reference to a book by Clark, “Three Centuries on the Island''. The map is broken out by ethnic group: green(Irish), blue(Scots), red(English), and white(Acadians). The book also said that out of the 119 place names on PEI, 74 are from Scotland.
Poetry is one of the most important aspects of Scottish Gaelic society. Some poetry is preserved in MacTalla, which is an all Gaelic newspaper published in Sydney, Cape Breton. The speaker reads a poem from the MacTalla newspaper which was translated to English in a book called “The Emigrant Experience” by Sister Margaret MacDonell. John Maclean is a famous poet who moved to Nova Scotia near Antigonish from Scotland in 1819. He was famous for writing a poem called a Song to America / Gloomy Forest. It expressed the hardships of his immigration experience due to the climate differences and the different animals and mosquito insects in Nova Scotia. He had to warm up his ax blade before he split wood because of the cold.
Sister Margaret McDonnell made translations of Gaelic poems of PEI and republished them in her book. The speaker reads a poem from her book in Gaelic about the positive aspects of the move to Canada. Some Scottish poems and songs written in the colony went back to Scotland and people were encouraged or discouraged by the tone of these works. Gloomy Forests, for example, dismayed John MacLean’s friends and family in Scotland and resulted in them offering help to bring him back to Scotland. His patron even offered to support him by building him a house.
MacTalla means echo. Gaels of the island referred to PEI as the Island of the Prince. Gaeltacht refers to a Gaelic-speaking community or it refers to the Gaelic-speaking part of Scotland. John MacKinnon was the editor of MacTalla. His great grandfather went to Cape Breton from PEI, and his three brothers stayed on PEI. John MacKinnon made a visit to PEI, and he published his tour in the MacTalla newspaper in 1897. This had been translated and republished in the Island Magazine a few years ago. The passage shows a Gaelic community that is quite strong but also declining. It shows MacKinnon’s remarks on people’s attitudes towards the Gaelic. There were a few in the Parish who did understand Gaelic and weren’t fond of it. There were Gaels in PEI and Cape Breton who didn’t speak Gaelic anymore and they tried to hide that they knew Gaelic. Therefore, the Gaelic couldn’t be passed on to their children. Another thing MacKinnon did for MacTalla was that he published the names of the people who paid for subscriptions, which shamed those who didn’t pay for a subscription. Although MacTalla was a widespread newspaper in New Zealand, the US, and Africa, there was the problem that many people didn’t pay for it. Sometimes, only one or two people in a town purchased the newspaper and the rest of the people gathered at their house to listen to them read it. This is in keeping with the Scottish oral tradition.
MacTalla was the longest-running Gaelic newspaper of its time in “The New World” from 1892 to 1904. The lack of subscriptions was the reason the newspaper stopped publishing. Most of the newspapers contained original pieces and also some reprints from other Gaelic news, which was a common practice. John MacKinnon translated many books from English to Gaelic. The speaker talks about a person named Steve Campbell from PEI who was a subscriber to the MacTalla and contributed much material from PEI. He then discusses many other subscribers. Ads in MacTalla were all in Gaelic in contrast to modern Gaelic newspapers that contain English ads. The speaker shows an example of an ad in MacTalla where PEI was called EPI(Irish equivalent of Prince Edward Island). Another interesting ad in MacTalla was placed by the John McLeod Company. Numerous researches of the PEI archives suggested that John McLeod was a tailor on Queen Street in 19th-century Charlottetown. The ad persuaded people about the benefits of being well-dressed and informed them of the company’s location and that they had large stocks of clothing, as well as offering service in Gaelic and that the cutters were as good as can be found. Probably one of the greatest indication of the Scottish Gaelic community is Alexander Sinclair who was native to Nova Scotia. He is the grandson of John Maclean who composed the poem The Gloomy Forest. Alexander Sinclair is interesting to PEI because John Maclean was a minister in Belfast, PEI from 1888 to 1906 for 18 years. He retired in 1906, returning to a small community called Hopewell near Antigonish on the mainland. When he was in Hopewell, he commuted on the train to give lectures on Celtic Studies, Gaelic literature, Island history, and the Celtic Civilization in universities such as St. Francis Xavier. In spring terms, he took the train to Halifax to give lectures at Dalhousie University during his retirement. In his life, he was largely interested in Gaelic poetry, genealogy, and Island history. He was raised in a Gaelic environment in his grandfather’s household, so Gaelic was his mother tongue. He published 20 Gaelic books in his life and 13 of them were published on PEI. He wrote about many subjects and especially Island history, genealogy, and Gaelic poetry. A list of Gaelic publications was compiled by Derek Thompson who is a renowned Gaelic scholar. He said that by the second half of the 19th century in the New World, 9 Gaelic books were published in Charlottetown. In Antigonish, 8 were published. In Sydney and Pictou, 5 each. In Toronto: 4. In Halifax: 3. In North Carolina, Kingston, and Ottawa, 1 each. So Charlottetown was at the top of the list of Gaelic publications. Alexander MacLean Sinclair was a minister and teacher in his community. He also collected poetry, songs, geological information, and oral history from the places he traveled to, including PEI. Glenbarr, Antigonish is where MacLean spent his final years, and where Alexander Sinclair was raised. On his tombstone, it says 1787-1848 and in Gaelic about trusting and loving the Lord, about his wife, and keeping the Gaelic language alive. Alexander MacLean Sinclair’s wife was Isabella Black. The speaker talks about a picture of the Sinclairs and some family relations. Alexander’s mother was Christine MacLean and father was John Sinclair. Perhaps one of the reasons why John Sinclair and Christine separated was that John didn’t speak Gaelic. However, they didn’t divorce because divorce was not customary at that time even though Christine moved back home to MacLean household. Therefore, Alexander MacLean Sinclair grew up in a household that was deep in Gaelic tradition. Although his grandfather died when he was 8, his grandmother, mother, uncle and aunt were all Gaelic native speakers. The Gaelic poetry he read in his youth became a part of his publications afterwards. 200-300 years old manuscripts were brought over from Scotland by John MacLean including poetry not found anywhere else in Scotland in the manuscripts.
Discussing the Sinclairs’ pictures and a passage about the extract from a poem in Gaelic written by a P.E.I. islander who was a fan of the Sinclairs. MacLean Sinclair had a reputation for changing the manuscript versions of poems to make them tidy, rhyme up, obey the rules of poetry, and also not to offend anyone. He attached notes when publishing acknowledging his changes.
The decline of Gaelic in PEI was caused by several factors. The assimilation into the English speaking community dominant in PEI caused the decline of the Gaelic Community. The government, infrastructures, business, and education of PEI were all British based. Therefore, English was the language of those things, so the Gaelic speakers were pressured to fit into the society by learning English. The assimilation was promoted by the geography of the island. The island was shaped long and narrow, so the communities are fairly close. In Scotland, the terrain is very rugged so people did not travel between communities. Thus the nearness of the community facilitates the spread of French and English. Also, migration was a significant factor. The so-called Maritime Diaspora refers to the migration of many Maritime people to the Boston State between 1881 and 1901. For some reasons, this migration affected the Scottish and Irish the most, contributing to 15% of the decline of the Scottish and Irish population in PEI. In the 1900s, there were Scottish Gaelic communities transferred to the Boston areas. There was a Gaelic book published in Quincy, Massachusetts about Gaelic poetry from Cape Breton and PEI. The person who published that was the son of Eoin Harmont who was an elder in the MacDonald Church. A number of people in the Free Church of Scotland (MacDonaldites) went down to Boston, set up churches and supplied Gaelic speaking ministers there. The speaker himself has seen publications about churches in Boston and found out that they were established by Scottish descendants from Gaeltacht PEI.
Discrimination also caused the Gaelic language decline. Gaelic was attached to poverty and illiteracy. John MacKinnon and other people noticed a strong stigma attached to the Gaelic language when visiting PEI. This stigma was also present with other Celtic languages like Welsh. The largest Gaelic group in PEI was from a Scottish region called “Skye”. As referred in a book called “The Master’s Wife” by Sir Andrew MacPhail, it is a bad word to call somebody a (Gaelic word related to “Sky”), which demonstrates discrimination. This forced people to want to adopt English. Gaelic became a secret language that parents would use to speak about the kids without them knowing because the kids didn’t understand it anymore. Gaelic was discouraged in school. Students would have to wear a shingle/sign around their neck if they were caught speaking Gaelic as a form of shaming. The only way to take it off was to catch another classmate speaking Gaelic.
SIDE A ENDS
MacLean Sinclair was the first to collect Gaelic recordings. John Shaw was hired by UPEI collecting Gaelic materials in Atlantic provinces. Michael Kennedy recently went through those materials again and made edits. Professor Kenneth Nelson at St. Francis Xavier University Celtic Studies collected Gaelic materials from Gaelic speakers in the 1980s. One of the pieces he collected is about the Celtic New Year’s Eve tradition. Gaels went door to door and requested to go in for a snack and perhaps a drink. They would often bring stinky sheep’s heads. The speaker reads the piece in Gaelic. Satire in Gaelic poetry is a part of the tradition.
playing an audio
The emergence of semi-speakers of Gaelic is another sign of its decline. The speaker memorized passages in Gaelic but could not converse in Gaelic.
The speaker speaks of Gaelic influences in the English community of P.E.I. There are influenced words like club foot and rope. Part of the Island’s accent has roots in the Gaelic language such as the changes in vowels. PEI also received influences from Gaelic folklore, i.e. mussel mud digging, and cloth milling songs. The book “A Master’s Wife” by Sir Andrew MacPhail discussed this as well.
He observes that the stories in the folklore concerning supernatural events survive better than the others. There are Gaelic supernatural events and terminologies. They were explained in a book called “Witchcraft & Second Sight in the Highlands & Islands of Scotland '' by J.J. Campbell in the late 1800s. In conclusion, the Gaelic community was established in the 1770s and it became a flourishing community by the late 1800s with numerous newspapers and books. But it was showing its decline in the 1900s. Demographics, geography, and discrimination drove the assimilation, mass migration, and the decline of the language. By the 1990s, only a few native Gaelic speakers were left on PEI. Some of their names are Donald Nicholson(who died a couple of years ago), and Percy MacPherson(who also died recently). Another important aspect of the Gaelic culture remaining on PEI is the music, especially the fiddle tradition.
Some of the last gaelic speakers were semi-gaelic
lecture ends, questions , comments remarks
SIDE B ENDS