J. F. Campbell Collection > Celtic gleanings, or, Notices of the history and literature of the Scottish Gael

92 LECTURE III.
countries ; for there was such a dialect among
the Celts, as there is now among the writers
of English, in hoth this country and America.
That dialect has indeed a closer resemblance
to the spoken Gaelic of Ireland than that of
Scotland ; but this proves nothing beyond the
fact, that the scholarship of the Scottish Celt
was then acquired in the Irish school. It is
curious, that John Carsewell, Superintendent of
the Isles in 1567, writes his translation of
Knox's Prayer-Book in the so-called Irish dia-
lect ; while there is no room to believe that he
ever was in Ireland. Indeed, all Scottish Gaelic
books are written in this dialect, down to the
middle of last century, — books of whose Scottish
origin there cannot be a doubt. On some of
the MSS. in the Edinburgh Advocates' Library
we have such notices as the following, written
in the handwritting of the author or transcriber,
" Is mise Eoin o Albain" (" I am John from
Scotland)" " Is mise Domhnall na foghlumach
Maigbeathadh" (" I am Donald Bethune the
scholar)" — one of the famous Bethunes of Mull ;
on another, as previously quoted, " Is mise
Ferghus o Albain" (" I am Fergus from Scot-
land) ;" aU giving evidence that, while the dia-
lect in use in these MSS. is what is called
usually the Irish, the writers themselves were