Gaels of Scotland

Not to be confused with Gàidhealtachd.

The Scots Gaels, or Scottish Gaels (Scottish Gaelic: Albannaich), also called Highlanders, or within Scotland simply Gaels (Scottish Gaelic: Na Gàidheil), are an ethnolinguistic group found mostly in the diaspora region of the former British Empire - predominantly Canada, Australia, New Zealand - and to a lesser extent in the rest of Scotland, and, again, to a much lesser degree, in the land of their origins, the Highlands of Scotland (Scottish Gaelic: A' Gàidhealtachd).

Within Scotland the term Gaelic most often refers to the Scots Gaelic language, however it can also refer to the broader linguistic Goidelic group of Gaels - analogous with Hispanic (or Iberian) - that comprises the inhabitants of both the nations of Ireland and Scotland. In Ireland the term is pronounced slightly differently, and much less regularly referred to at all.

The Scots Gaels derive from the overkingdom of Dál Riata that itself has various explanations of it's origins, including a foundation myth of an invasion from the island of Ireland, and a more recent archaeological and linguistic analysis that points to a pre-existing maritime province united by the sea and isolated from the rest of Scotland by the mountainous ridge called the Druim Alban. The archaeological evidence transfers into Ireland whilst the linguistic evidence transfers into Scotland, absent any evidence of conflict either in that exchange or in the erasing of pre-existing culture within that exchange. The cultural exchange includes passage of the M222 genotype within Scotland

The ethnolinguistic group expanded with the creation of the Kingdom of Alba, subsuming within it the previously Brittonic speaking Picts. This is where the Scots Gaelic national demonym for themselves, Albannaich, ultimately derives from and the Kingdom was roughly coterminus with the current English language translation of the Gàidhealtachd - the Highlands. It is only within the context of Scotland's ethnolinguistic history that Scots Gaels refer to themselves as Gaels.

A similar pattern of expansion into the Brittonic Kingdom of Strathclyde and the Kingdom of Galloway occurred - although the latter had previously been subsumed into the Norse-Gael Irish Sea and Scottish Sea regions created at the same time the Vikings cut off the islands of Argyll and the Hebrides from the Kingdom of Alba. Galwegian Gaelic survived until 1760, whilst Strathclyde's transition is less well documented despite linguistic certainty that it became a Gaelic language region.

The assimilation of Strathclyde into what then become known as the Kingdom of Scotland - Scots (deriving from Scoti) being a demonym for Dál Riata - marks the highpoint of the Scots Gaels in Scotland, as the adjacent Anglo-Saxon dominated region of the previously Brittonic Lothian gradually exported an Anglo-Saxon language that became known as the Scots language into Scotland when it too accepted the superiority of the Scots Gael Kingship.

The expansion of the Scots Gael Kingship ended as such with the beginnings of the Scoto-Norman Royal House period that gradually - and with no deep personal connection with the origins of the Kingship in Dál Riata or the Kingdom of Alba - lost Scots Gaelic as it's tongue. However, the Kingship eventually succeeded to unite the Kingdom of Scotland with the Kingdom of England.

The Highland - Lowland divide that henceforth took root meant survival of the Scots Gaelic language and a reemergence of Gaelic identity - where previously it was broadly Scottish - as Scotland's Kingship took the Anglo-Saxon derived Scots language as it's tongue. Mary Queen of Scots was the last monarch who ruled with the historically given title of Scots that linked the monarchy with the ethnolinguistic group, albeit her grandfather James IV was the last known Gaelic language monarch.

With the culturally devastating Highland Clearances the spread of the Scots Gael diaspora into the region of the former British Empire has meant that Scots Gaelic is currently a transatlantic language (see Canadian Gaelic) whilst the diaspora itself is of a much wider area. In the early 21st century, the descendants of the Highland diaspora far outnumber the population in Scotland. The Highlands themselves now have a population density of about 9 persons per square kilometre in comparison with an EU average of 116 per square kilometre, which is on a par with the northern parts of Finland and Sweden.