"...The Minutes of the Committee and of the General Meetings of the SSPCK are of the greatest interest - religious, political, social, and economic - for the history of the Highlands and Islands between the Union of 1707 and the accession of King George III in 1760. They show what the majority of the Highlanders were rebelling against in 1715 and again in 1745 - a calculated, well-financed attempt, backed by constant political pressure, to destroy their language and their religion. The Minutes of the SPCK were only placed in the National Register House in Edinburgh in 1933. Since then no Scottish Historical society has ventured to publish them; presumably they are still politically too embarrassing..."

                                                                                   John Lorne Campbell "Canna"

 

 

 

Education and Anglicisation:

The Policy of the SSPCK toward the education of

The Highlander, 1709-1825

 

CHARLES W.J. WITHERS

 

 

The eighteenth century witnessed major changes in Scottish life and manners, in her agriculture, her culture and in her society. Nowhere were these changes more keenly felt than in the Scottish Highlands and Islands. These remote and barren uplands to the North and West, together with the Western Isles had been recognised as a distinct part of Scotland since the late fourteenth century, separated as they were from the remainder of the country by social and linguistic differences. The widespread use of the Gaelic language in the Highlands was, in the eyes of those in authority in the Lowlands, a major hindrance to the political unification of Scotland, and since the early 1600s, if not before, attempts had been made to crush the independence of the Highlander and wipe out his language. In the eighteenth century, the people and the language of the Highlands came under renewed attack. While the broad outlines of the changes affecting the Highland way of life are well enough known, the actual means by which the Gaelic Highlands were drawn into the outside world are less well documented. In particular, the part that education and the expansion of schooling played in the ‘improvement’ and Anglicisation of the Highlands has received comparatively scant attention. This paper examines the role played by one institution in the transformation of Gaelic culture and in the shift from Gaelic to English within the Highlands in the eighteenth century.

            It is perhaps true to say that few important subjects in Scottish History have been so little understood as eighteenth-century education. As one Historian has observed, ‘Wide generalisations have been made on narrow grounds and judgements have swung violently from extremes of praise to equally uncritical condemnation’ (Ferguson 1978:198). In the case of the Gaelic-speaking Highlands, the history of education in the eighteenth century is largely the history of the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge (hereafter simply SSPCK), for it was that institution, founded in Edinburgh in 1709, that was most concerned with the education and civilisation of the inhabitants of those parts of Scotland. Parochial schools had been set up from 1696, but had relatively little effect outside the Lowland parishes. It should be recognised from the beginning that, whatever the school, ‘education’ then was not as we now know it. The SSPCK was strictly Presbyterian in its outlook and taught only the Presbyterian religion, reading, writing, church music and arithmetic: more important, English was the only language permitted, both as the medium of instruction and in the conversation of the scholars. Educational provision in the Highlands was used as a key weapon in the Anglicisation and civilisation of Gaeldom.

            Ferguson has considered the SSPCK an important auxiliary in the fight against illiteracy-which, in some senses, it was (Ferguson 1978:199). Others have gone so far in their praise of the Society as to state that, ‘Without its devoted work throughout the centuries, the plight of the inhabitants of the Highlands and Islands would indeed have been a desperate one. Thanks to these efforts, the moral fibre of the people in these areas was stiffened and their field of opportunity immeasurably widened’ (Andrew and Cairns 1957:11-12). In contrast, other scholars have seen the actions of the SSPCK as constituting a serious hindrance to the welfare of the Highlander and have argued that the SSPCK did ‘incalculable harm to the intelligent education of the Highlanders’ (Campbell 1950:60). Still others have referred only to the SSPCK’s ‘great contribution to the transformation of the Highlands’ (Smout 1969:426).

            In the light of these differing opinions, it is perhaps surprising that relatively little attention has been focused on an examination of SSPCK educational policy towards the Highlands: the actual means by which that institution sought to educate Gaelic-speaking Highlanders. Previous assessments of the SSPCK in this period have only briefly mentioned the policy of that Society towards the Highlands (Mason 1954:Withrington 1962). There is not space here for an exhaustive listing of all meetings and debates upon the Highlands within SSPCK records, just as there is not space for a detailed educational history of the eighteenth-century Highlands. But in examining SSPCK policy towards the education of the Gaelic-speaking Highlander, some light is thrown upon exactly how one institution operated in its plans to spread the English language throughout the Gaelic areas. The relationship of the SSPCK to other educational bodies and the history of education in the Highlands at other periods is dealt with elsewhere (Withers forthcoming).

            Education in the Highlands before 1709 was largely directed by several synods of the Church of Scotland. Regional variations had long existed throughout the Highlands in the extent to which any education was available (Watt 1981), and even though the 1696 Act of the General Assembly had directed that schools be established in every Scottish parish, both the schools and schoolmasters were in short supply in the Highlands by the earlier eighteenth century (MacKinnon 1938). Indeed, if the early claims of the SSPCK are to be taken literally, the majority of Highlanders must have gone without any sort of education at all. The Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge was formed with the express aim of ‘propagating Christian Knowledge especially in the Highlands and Islands . . . where Error, Idolatry, Superstition, and Ignorance do mostly abound’ (S.R.O. GD 95/1/1:7).

            The SSPCK was derived in part from the Society for Reformation of Manners, itself founded in Edinburgh in 1696 (N.L.S. MS 1954:1). This particular society took some interest in educational matters, but not until 1705 was any formal proposal put forward to establish a society for propagating Christian knowledge in Scotland. The proposals were discussed by members of the Society for Reformation of Manners and several others much involved at that time with the problems of education in the Highlands (Durkacz 1978). Given the attitudes of the time, the widely-held belief that Gaelic was a barbaric language, and the fact that education in the Highlands had, since the Statutes of Iona in 1609, been geared toward the diffusion of English (Campbell 1950:49), it is hardly surprising that the language question was never discussed. We should not expect it to have been. The strategy of the SSPCK is clear-civilisation through Anglicisation: the tactics employed towards that end merit close examination.

            The first indication of an operating policy in terms of language appears in a directive to Alexander Buchan, the schoolmaster on St Kilda, in 1710 He was directed to ‘Be diligent not only to teach them to read English but also to write and lay it on such as profite by you to do all they can for the edification of others and teach them their duty to their superiors’ (S.R.O. GD 95/1/1:64). Later directives indicate an increasing concern on the part of the Society to teach only in English. In a note of 1713 to William Mackay, schoolmaster in Durness, the SSPCK directed that those poor people and children of Durness parish who did not understand English be allowed catechism in Irish, but that Mackay ‘must only teach his scholars to read English books’ (S.R.O. GD 95/1/1:183). Mackay’s response was that as ‘many of his scholars have nothing but Irish, he must examine, sing, and pray with them in that language, unless the Society give other orders’ (S.R.O. GD 95/1/1:198). The SSPCK in return ordered that Mackay be allowed to continue this practice, but only until such time as his scholars could understand English. Mackay was further directed to ‘teach them to read only English Books, and do his endeavours as soon as he can make them understand that language’ (S.R.O. GD 95/1/1:199). No encouragement whatever was to be given ‘to the teaching of Irish books in the Societies Schools, or to the Printing of them for their use’ (S.R.O. GD 95/1/1:199). In the Beginning, then, the policy of the SSPCK was that Gaelic books were proscribed, but that the Gaelic language itself could be used only as a spiritual medium until such time as English was learnt and understood. This policy hardened very quickly however.

            The attitude of the SSPCK toward the education of the Highlands is apparent in a statement of 7th June 1716.

 

Nothing can be more effectual for reducing these countries to order, and making them usefull to the Commonwealth than teaching them their duty to God, their King and Countrey and rooting out their

Irish language, and this has been the case of the Society so far as they could, ffor all the Schollars

 are taught in English, (S.R.O. GD 95/1/1:294).

 

This leaves little room for doubt concerning the tenor of SSPCK policy at that period, although it should be noted that the phrase ‘ffor all the Schollars are taught in English’, was probably not always the case, for, as the above evidence on Durness suggests, Gaelic was through necessity sometimes employed by schoolmasters in their dual role as catechists, despite the concern of the parent Society to root it out. From 1716 onwards, the minutes of the SSPCK continually refer to the need for more schools in the Highlands, ‘for teaching the principles of our Holy Religion in the English language and by time wearing out the Irish’ (S.R.O. GD 95/1/1:294). From that date, the Gaelic language was denied an effective place in the education of a population whose only language it was. Of course, one must allow for some difference between the intent of the SSPCK and the actual effect of their policy. The main text used was the Bible, but there were not always enough Bibles for all, and SSPCK schools were always hampered though a shortage of schoolmasters-‘men of piety, prudence and gravity, who can understand and can speak, read and write both in the English and Irish languages’ (S.R.O. GD 95/2/1:196-7). School buildings were often in poor repair, and potential scholars had long distances to walk to attend school even when they could be spared from labour at the harvest. In Gairloch in 1716, only ten boys attended the SSPCK school in the entire summer although more appeared after harvest (S.R.O. GD 95/1/1:130). Nearly all SSPCK schools were attended more by males than females, education for girls being considered wasteful. As one observer noted in 1764, ‘Wherever there is access to a School, the Boys are carefully put to it; but the Parents consider Learning of any kind as of little Moment to the Girls, on which Account, great Numbers of them never go to any School’ (B.M. King’s MS 105).

            As early as 1719, however, it was becoming apparent to a number of members of the SSPCK that the chosen method of teaching only English in English had produced a rote-learning amongst the Gaelic-speaking population who read English without understanding what they read (S.R.O. GD 95/2/3:208). Perhaps surprisingly, in view of the evident desire of the SSPCK to extirpate Gaelic from the Highlands, this rote-learning without comprehension was merely termed ‘an inconvenience to be provided against’, and SSPCK schoolmasters were urged to ensure that their pupils actually understood what English they learnt. Further resolutions were passed in February and March 1720 in which the SSPCK again directed all their schoolmasters to ‘cause their charges to understand English’, and that they ‘do not teach Latine or Irishe’ (S.R.O. GD 95/2/2:346). The problems involved in actually ensuring that Highland pupils whose native language was Gaelic in fact understood what was largely a foreign language seem not to have concerned the officers of the SSPCK. Neither does the denial of Gaelic’s place in the education of the Highland population appear to have worried that Society. But then, we should not expect it to have. Quite the reverse was true. In 1720, the SSPCK reaffirmed that ‘the Societies design was not to discourage any proper means of Instruction in the principles of Christianity but to forward the same, and yet not to continue the Irish Language but to wear it out, and Learn the people the English tongue’ (S.R.O. GD 95/1/2:104). There is evidence, however, to suggest that their adopted methods were not at once attended by success. By 1721, increasing dissatisfaction with the educational policy of the SSPCK was manifest in a Representation anent teaching Irish sent to the Society from a number of schoolmasters and parish ministers in the Highlands. This exposed several contradictions in SSPCK policy and, in particular, noted that

                        …through a defect in the present method of teaching in some of the Societies Schools in their Highland bounds,

                                these good ends are much frustrate, for in places where nothing of the English Language is understood, the

                                children are taught to read only in English which they understand not. . . and thus they return home able indeed

                                to read the Bible but understand not even the plainest historical part of what they read, and after residing in the

                                Countrey where they hear nothing but Irish, in a Little time they entirely forget what with much Labour and Long

                                time they acquired, which as it proves a great discouragement to the parents to send them to school, So the

                                principal design of the Society in propagating Christian Knowledge is thereby obstructed. (S.R.O. GD 95/1/2:170).

                               

The Representation proposed that scholars be taught to translate the Bible and other scriptural works into Gaelic after being able to read English: ‘When they once come to read English, to put into their hands the translations of the Shorter Catechism and psalm book which they have in vulgar Irish . . . that they may Collate and compare these translations, which method . . . is the only way to make them capable to understand what they read’ . (S.R.O. GD 95/1/2:170).

            It should be noted at once that this proposal to adopt what may be called the ‘comparative method’ as SSPCK policy in the Highlands was not made in the interests of the Gaelic-speaking population. Whilst those persons who put forward these proposals considered that the use of the comparative method would ensure greater comprehension of what English was taught, they were also convinced that this method would guarantee the more rapid disappearance of Gaelic. They stated clearly the means by which these proposals, if adopted, would further the removal of Gaelic and thus conform with SSPCK aims.

 

                        …The Excerciseing of the boys at school to a ready Converting of English into Irish and teaching the Principles of

 Religion into both Languages, as it will instruct themselves, so it will make them capable to instruct their Ignorant

parents at home, who are themselves fond of knowledge and are sensible that their Ignorance of the English

language is their great Loss, by being thereby excluded from all Commerce, Conversation and Correspondence

with the rest of the nation, and by the having of it, quo mise to themselves access to employments Stations or

offices that might afford them advantage, and the parents having once understood English, the Babes from the

knees would receive the same as their mother tongue, which would be the only finishing stroak to the Irish language. (S.R.O. GD 95/1/2:170-1).

 

At the meeting in June 1721 at which this Representation was received, the General Committee of the Society was not fully complete and discussion of the proposals was set aside for a later date. In fact, there was no formal discussion on the matter until 1st November 1722, and then only to record that ‘The Committee finding that the teaching of Highland Children to read English is but Lost Labour unless at the same time they may be made to understand what they read, they shewed that they had sub-Committed it to some of their numbers to consider this case’ (S.R.O. GD 95/1/2:221).

            Faced with such important proposals, the deliberations of this sub-committee dragged on into 1723, In April of that year, the sub-committee sent out letters on the subject of teaching English to SSPCK schoolmasters (S.R.O. GD 95/2/3:188-9).

Four points were contained in these letters: the schoolmaster was to use Gaelic in translation as a means of instruction only after the pupils could read the Catechism in English; all the scholars were exhorted to speak English and any who could speak that language were barred from speaking their native Gaelic except when translating it into English; censors were elected to record those who flouted this rule; those able to speak English and converse in it with some ease were to be sent to schools in the Lowlands. Whatever reservations there may have been over the implementation of the comparative method were soon dispelled, and later that year, Overtures for teaching the Societies Schollars to understand and Speak the English Language (S.R.O. GD 95/10/79), were put forward by the General Committee of the SSPCK in response to the proposals contained in the Representation of 1721. These Overtures constitute an important shift in SSPCK educational policy toward the education of the Highlander.

            The SSPCK conceded that teaching Gaelic-speaking pupils to learn English was ‘to no purpose, when they do not understand that tongue’ (S.R.O. GD 95/10/79). To increase actual understanding of the English language, the Society resolved that as soon as the scholars began to read the Catechism

 

                        The Schoolmasters Shall teach them to understand their lessons by turning or translating and causing

 the Scholars themselves to turn to translate from the English into Irish (S.R.O. GD 95/10/79).

 

At least as important in terms of the evolution of SSPCK policy is the accompanying directive that

 

                        . . .The schoolmasters shall speak to and converse with their Schollars always in English, and that after

 the Schollars are once through the Catechism, they be not allowed to discourse or converse with

another in the Irish but only in the English language, and that the masters appoint private or Clandestine

 Censors to debate such as transgress (S.R.O. GD 95/10/79).

 

Of interest is the fact that this directive of 1723 can have done very little itself to ensure comprehension of what English was read, but of crucial importance is the fact that the translation of English into Gaelic-thus guaranteeing an understanding of at least some English words-was not based upon actual knowledge of English, but only upon an ability to read and not necessarily understand that language. Rote-learning without comprehension-commonplace in SSPCK schools in the Highlands-had become the basis for the employment of an educational method whereby Gaelic was used to translate English words and phrases. The fact that such translation was permitted, based not upon the actual understanding of English, but only upon ability to read that language, almost certainly meant that numbers of Gaelic-speakers began to compare or translate what English they were taught with Gaelic, and thus, through the native language, arrive at some understanding of English. The effects of this change in policy, which was to last until 1766, did not occur in isolation. Contact with the Lowlands, especially for those in schools near the borders of the Highlanders, in temporary migration, and in regular trade with the English-speaking South, familiarised many with English. But SSPCK schools did hasten the move towards English, both before and after 1723. John Flow, schoolmaster in the Aberdeenshire parish of Glenmuick Tullich and Glengairn, reported to the SSPCK in August 1713, how, after only a year’s schooling, all his pupils were ‘able tolerably to speak English read and write’ (S.R.O. GD 95/1/1:191).

All 182 scholars attending the three SSPCK schools in Comrie parish in January 1723 could speak English, and in Kilmorack parish, Inverness-shire, some eighty-eight persons ‘have Learn’d to read and speak English at the Society’s School therein’, according to Thomas Chisholm, minister there in the late 1720s (S.R.O. GD 95/1/2:197-8; GD 95/1/3:132).

            At the same time as this new method was being adopted, the SSPCK was rethinking its attitude on Gaelic texts. Although, in a list of instructions to their schoolmasters dated 4th June 1724, the General Committee of the Society had reiterated that using Gaelic texts, and speaking and reading Gaelic alone were banned, the resolution not to print Gaelic texts began to waver by 1725. In June 1725 the Society proposed ‘to get a good English and Irish vocables composed, for a help to the more Speedy teaching the Schollars the most usual and familiar English words’ (S.R.O. GD 1/2/344). The presbytery of Lorn was the first to comply with a request for assistance with this vocabulary, and gave notice to that effect in 1726 (S.R.O. GD 95/1/2:359). Not until 1739, However, was the vocabulary ready. Its author was Alexander MacDonald, an SSPCK schoolmaster whose later life was to run counter to the established order of which the SSPCK was part (Chapman 1978:56). MacDonald’s Leabhar a Theagasg Ainminnin. No A Nuadh fhocloir Gaoidheilg & Beurla, etc. A Galick and English Vocabulary with an Appendix of the Terms of Divinity in the said language, etc. was printed in Edinburgh in 1741. The SSPCK was in do doubt as to the purpose of the vocabulary. It was ‘intended as a means to Introduce the use of the English Language more Universally into the Highlands and Islands’ (S.R.O. GD 95/1/4:105). As MacDonald wrote in his preface,

 

                        The instruction of the Youth on the English Language, is thought necessary to promote the Charitable

Purpose of this Society, and to make these, who can speak only Gaelic, more useful Members in the

Commonwealth; and it is certain, that if this were to be carried on, by teaching from Books entirely

English, without any Mixture of the Mother-Tongue, it would not be so speedily got done. (MacDonald 1741:V)

 

            In 1738, the SSPCK erected ‘Spinning Schools’ in the Highlands, in which ‘Husbandry, Housewifery, Trades and Manufacture’ were taught almost entirely to women and girls. No statement appears to have been made concerning the use of Gaelic in these schools, but it is very unlikely that Gaelic was looked upon with any more favour than in the other schools. In 1751 (after the collapse of the fourth Highland rising in half a century) the SSPCK again urged the appointment of censors to record those using the Highland language in their schools:

 

                        . . . hereafter the Scholars attending the Charity Schools after they have in some measure learned to speak

English, be discharged either in the Schoolhouse, or when playing about the Doors thereof to speak Earse,

on pain of being Chastised, And that the School Masters, Appoint Censures to note down and report to

the Schoolmaster such as transgress this rule. (S.R.O. GD 95/1/4:466).

 

This further proscription of Gaelic must have seriously undermined the status of the language, and, given the atmosphere of repression, perhaps pushed many Gaelic-speakers towards the more frequent employment of English, if only a few halting words and phrases. As was the case with the earlier directive of 1723, the wording of such declarations leaves little doubt as to the ideal situation sought by the SSPCK in the Highlands, but it was almost certainly a scheme difficult to enforce in practice. Several statements of 1753 refer to the ‘disadvantages arising from allowing the Schollars taught at the Societys Schools to Speak the Irish Language, Especially after they have been for some time at School’ (S.R.O. GD 95/1/4:504)., which may suggest that the SSPCK directives against Gaelic were not always wholly effective in practice. In the face of the continued use of Gaelic and as a result of their continued determination to extent English throughout the Highlands, the SSPCK became further involved, particularly in the 1750s, with the production of printed books in Gaelic. As had been the case with the 1741 vocabulary, this involvement was based upon the comparative method of teaching. The SSPCK considered that the printing of a New Testament with one page in Gaelic and the facing page in English ‘would tend much towards the advancement of Knowledge, and of the English Language in the Highlands’ (S.R.O. GD 95/1/4:553). The involvement of the SSPCK with this text should not, however, be seen as a charitable one, but rather as the continuation and refinement of a policy which aimed at removing Gaelic altogether from the Highlands.

            Yet by 1766, it was clear to the members of the SSPCK that the policy of forbidding Gaelic reading, and teaching only through the comparative method, had not been wholly successful. In March of that year, the General Committee recommended that

 

                           The Societys regulations enjoining their Schoolmasters not to teach their Scholars to read Earse should be altered . . .

                                    Because according to the present practice the teaching of Children to read English only has been found not to have

                                    the desired effects; for when they leave the School, they can neither speak nor read English with understanding.

                                                                                                                                                                                (S.R.O. GD 95/1/5:105).

 

The adoption of the comparative method from 1723 had, in fact, been much hindered as a means by which to extend English for the simple reason that it was not accompanied by Gaelic reading. Even although English was taught through a method which, in part, entailed the use of Gaelic as an aid in comprehension, there is a certain amount of evidence to suggest that little understanding of English was arrived at within the confines of the school. Undoubtedly some English was learnt and spoken as a result of the work of SSPCK schools in the period up to 1766 as the evidence of John Flow and Thomas Chisholm testifies, but English had not been as widely spread nor was it as widely understood by the majority of the pupils as the SSPCK had hoped.

            Despite this continued lack of comprehension and in view of the importance of the questions raised, members of the SSPCK were careful, almost suspicious, in their review of the recommendations of their General Committee. These proposals sat on the table until mid-1766. At the meeting of 5th June 1766, the proposal made in March of that year was unanimously agreed upon:

 

                        In time coming School masters in those places of the Highlands where the Earse language is generally spoken,

                                Be enjoyned to teach their Scholars to read both Earse and English . . . as being . . . the most effectual method

to make them read, speak and understand the English language.

                                                                                                (S.R.O. GD 95/1/5:106).

 

Almost certainly, the decision to allow Gaelic reading was based upon the continuation of the comparative method, albeit somewhat modified, and on the fact that Gaelic was, after 1766, used to translate what English was learnt and read. Gaelic as a medium of instruction was still proscribed as was conversation in Gaelic in and around the school, but its use in translation after 1766 must have ensured greater comprehension of the English language than had earlier been the case. This was certainly the view of the directors of the SSPCK who, in 1781, wrote that the adoption of the new rule in combination with the part-Gaelic part-English New Testament had been influential ‘not only in opening the minds of the people to knowledge, but in giving a greater desire to learn the English language than they had ever before discovered’ (Mackay 1906:238). Fourteen years later, they again complimented themselves on the role of SSPCK schools as agents of Anglicisation in recording how ‘thousands of the natives of the remote Highlands have by means of their schools attained to such knowledge of the English language as qualified them for intercourse with the inhabitants of other parts of the British Empire’ (S.R.O. GD 95/11/3:29).

Lachlan Shaw, in his History of Moray, wrote how, as a result of SSPCK schools, ‘Christian knowledge is increased, heathenish customs are abandoned, the number of papists is diminished, disaffection to the Government is lessened’, as well as the English language being more widely diffused (Shaw 1775:381). The expansion of education was not the only cause of the Anglicisation of Highland Scotland in this period, but it was the major contributory factor. As one anonymous observer wrote of Dunoon parish in 1792, ‘The language of the parish is changed much, from the coming in of low-country tenants, from the constant intercourse our people have with their neighbours, but above all, from our schools, particularly those established by the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge’ (SA II:389).

                Some idea of where in the Highlands the English language spread is given by the distribution maps in the Appendix (Figs. 1-5. Fig. 6, and the list of parish names, may be used to identify the parishes). Figure 2, showing which parishes in the Highlands and Islands had SSPCK schools in 1755, also shows the relatively low proportion of the population attending SSPCK schools. But repeat this picture over a number of years (and consider the fact that English was also being introduced throughout the Highlands in a variety of other ways), and the important place of the SSPCK schools in developing and accelerating the Anglicisation of the Gaelic parishes cannot be doubted.

            By 1825, emphasis in Highland education lay with the Gaelic Schools Societys, established in 1812, and not with the SSPCK. Few SSPCK schools were surviving by 1825 (Fig. 5) It is interesting to note, however, that in 1812 the SSPCK considered that ‘the teaching of Gaelic has been much neglected’ (S.R.O. GD 95/1/8:63). Not until 1825 did the SSPCK decide to change its long-held beliefs, and agree to use Gaelic as an educational language. Even then, the decision to instruct in Gaelic reading first, prior to instruction in English, was a calculated ploy. The SSPCK argued that it would hold out an English education as ‘a premium’ to those who had become proficient in their native Gaelic (S.R.O. GD 95/1/8:122). Gaelic had gone full circle from being barred, to being used first, in the education process. But the end in view was still the same; only the means had changed.

            In conclusion, it is possible to argue that changes in SSPCK policy toward the education of the Highlander from 1709 to 1723, in 1766, and again in 1825, were admissions of failure on the part of that Society. Certainly, there is evidence to suggest that the intended aim of extending English throughout the Highlands was not always realised in practice without some adjustment being made to the original plans of that institution. But the fact that tactical refinements in policy were made on a number of occasions indicates also what a deeply-felt concern there was to anglicise the Highlands, within an institution whose underlying rationale and long-term strategy was to deny and educational heritage for Gaelic, and to extirpate the language from Scotland. Of course, as has been elsewhere noted, ‘the task of teaching English, a language foreign to many parts of the North, must have been extremely difficult. . . . ‘It was a slow and tedious method of imparting knowledge of a foreign tongue, and it is to be wondered how the masters ever succeeded’ (Mason 1954:2). Yet succeed they did, and over a large part of the Highlands (Fig. 1-5). Such English as was learnt through SSPCK schools in the Highlands in this period was itself part and parcel of the increasing currency of that language, as Highland Scotland in varying degrees became assimilated to Lowland, anglicised Scotland; but the evidence examined above does suggest that SSPCK educational policy in the Highlands was a potent agent of Anglicisation. The date 1766 should not be seen as marking the only ipo9rtant shift in that policy, for, as has been shown, the SSPCK continually altered the means by which it sought to remove Gaelic from the Highlands. The hoped-for spread of English may not have been easily achieved, and would have varied from place to place and year to year, but overall, the continual refinement of policy, evident from the very beginning of the SSCPK, does show the close and important relationships between education and Anglicisation in the eighteenth century.

 

APPENDIX

 

            The distribution maps, Figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, give information about the schools of the SSPCK in the parishes of the Highlands and Islands at specific dates mentioned in the text. Figure 6 with its accompanying list, identifies the parishes shown in Figures 1-5

 

 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

 

I am grateful to Dr John MacInnes and to Mr Eric Cregeen for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper. I should like to acknowledge the receipt of a British Academy Small Research Grant in the Humanities which made possible much of the research in this paper. I am grateful also to the staff of the Scottish Record Office and the National Library of Scotland for their courtesy and assistance.

NOTES

 

1         David McColm, an Edinburgh minister, had written to the SSPCK and the Church authorities in 1735 intimating a desire to produce such a vocabulary, but despite a reference of 1737 to the SSPCK’s intending to distribute the work ‘where Irish is spoke’, McColm’s work seems never to have been published (S.R.O. GD 95/1/4:59)

 

REFERENCES

Manuscripts

B.M.

      KING’S MS 105   British Museum Library, London. John Walker’s 1764 Report on the Hebrides

N.L.S.

        M.S.  1954             National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh. Society for the Reformation of Manners,

                                       1699-1745.

S.R.O.

                                       Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh.

                                       Minutes of the General Meetings of the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian

       Knowledge

       GD 95/1/1               1709-1718

       GD 95/1/2               1718-1727

       GD 95/1/3               1727-1736

       GD 95/1/4               1736-1760

       GD 95/1/5               1760-1795

       GD 95/1/8               1723-1737

                                       Minutes of the Committee Meetings of the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian

       Knowledge

       GD 95/2/1               1709-1714

       GD 95/2/2               1714-1720

       GD 95/2/3               1720-1727

       GD 95/10/79           Overtures for teaching the Societies Schollars to Understand and Speak the English

                                        Language. 1723.

       GD 95/11/3              Account of the State of the Society. 1795.

 

 

Printed Books

 

ANDREWS. I. G. & CAIRNS. A.G.

1957                                      A Brief Survey of the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge.

Edinburgh.

CAMPBELL. J.L.

1950                                      Gaelic in Scottish Education and Life. Edinburgh.

CHAPMAN. M.

1978                                      The Gaelic Vision in Scottish Culture. London.

 

DURKACZ. V.

1978                                      ‘The Source of the Language Problem in Scottish Education,  1688-1709’, Scottish

Historical Review LV11: 28-39

FERGUSON. W.

1978                                      Scotland 1689 to the Present. Edinburgh.

 

MACDONALD. A.

1741                                      Leabhar a Theagasc Ainminnin. No A Nuadh fhocloir-Gaoidheilg & Beurla.

Edinburgh.

MACKAY. W.

1906                                      ‘The Teaching of Gaelic in Schools’. The Celtic Monthly X1V:236-238

 

MCKINNON. D.

1938                                       ‘Education in Argyll and the Isles, 1638-1709’, Records of the Scottish Church

History Society  VI:46-54.

 

MASON. D.

1954                                         ‘Scottish Charity Schools of the Eighteenth Century’, Scottish Historical Review

XXX111:1-13.         

 

SA

1791-1799                           The Statistical Account of Scotland, edited by Sir John Sinclair. 21 vols. Edinburgh.

 

SHAW. L.

1775                                         History of the Province of Moray. Edinburgh.

 

SMOUT. T.C.

1969                                         A History of the Scottish People 1560-1830. Glasgow.

 

WATT. D.E.R.

1981                                         ‘Education in the Highlands in the Middle Ages’, in The Middle Ages in the

Highlands, ed. L. Maclean. Inverness. Pp. 79-90.

 

WITHRINGTON. D. J.

1962                                          ‘The S.P.C.K. and the Highland Schools in the Mid-Eighteenth Century’, Scottish

Historical Review XLI:98-99.

 

WITHERS. C.W.J.

[forthcoming]                   Gaelic in Scotland 1698 to 1981:  the Geographical History of a Language.

                                            Edinburgh.