In Praise of the Garrulous Read online

  In many cases, destruction was not so sudden, but rather a slow strangulation. Gaelic has been losing ground for almost a millennium. In the late sixteenth century, there was a dramatic change for the worse. James V was the last Scottish monarch to speak the language, and his grandson James VI started the political campaign to extirpate the language now called Erse and considered something foreign (Irish and therefore also Catholic). Gaelic was a literate language that also had strong oral traditions, but printing in the language arrived relatively late in the mid-eighteenth century. The political upheavals of that century destroyed the ancient linguistic social traditions and sparked off a flowering of poetic works in a language closer to the spoken one. On the other hand the manuscript tradition suffered: I read that the historical records kept by generations of the MacMhuirich chroniclers were being used by a descendant turned cobbler to stuff the soles of the shoes he made. Of course, not everything can be recorded. The problem is not the attrition, but the lack of regeneration.

  In peasant society, multilingualism and learning were a treasured resource, even though human life was held cheap. MacDougall of Kilmun, a member of the MacDonald garrison in Kintyre when it fell to the Campbells in 1647, is reputed to have saved himself from the ensuing massacre of all the other prisoners-of-war by shouting in five languages, “Is there anyone here at all who will save a good scholar?”5 Perhaps the best literary representation of the clash between a modern centralised monoglot state and a multilingual preindustrial society is Brian Friel’s Translations, a play about a troop of British sappers working in Ireland and their impact on a rural area. There is inevitably a lack of understanding on both sides, but the greatest inability to understand is on the part of the centralised state, because it does not have to understand; indeed it must evade understanding at all costs. An understanding of the society it wishes to homogenise would undermine its entire imperial project. On the other hand, the society that is impacted wants to learn, as it immediately understands that even its partial survival depends on it. Friel manages to represent all this on stage with wit and precision. It reminds me of a comment by the great Dreyfusard intellectual, Bernard Lazare, on how racism is always the same whilst its victims’ reactions are always entirely different, “Out in society, in the street, at the theatre and in the restaurant, there is the fear of hearing the word that has become an insult, and feeling it thrown in one’s face; the jolt when confronted with a mocking or venomous look, in which one can read the affront and fear its utterance. And day after day all this grazes the skin, wearing down Jewish nerves, tearing at their hearts if they are sensitive, increasing their disdain if they are intellectuals and increasing their desire for violence and vendetta if they are hot-tempered.”6 Friel’s Irish peasants also react in a wide variety of ways to the inevitability of change: hostile pragmatism, hopefulness, disdain to counter disdain, adaptation, violence. The British soldier who identifies with the Irish becomes the inevitable victim and the cause of further suffering for the people; in this game the perpetrators have fewer choices. Classical and modern empires are not so much interested in destroying people as in destroying cultures, although they did and still do a fair bit of the former. Medieval and territorial empires of the Modern Era appear to have thrived on a maintenance of linguistic diversity, and I will attempt to look at this in greater detail in my chapter on lingua francas (Chapter Seven).

  Those intellectuals who are typically bien pensant would never be so politically incorrect as to dismiss “peasant” languages as barbaric or crude – they prefer to think of them as provincial, restricted, uneconomic and incapable of adapting to the modern world. I will deal with these assertions individually further on, but for the moment I want to concentrate on the problems of cultural hegemony created by the dominant-minority relationship.

  You would expect racists, nationalists, religious bigots (where there is a linguistic dimension to a religious divide) and right-wing thinkers in general to be intolerant of linguistic minorities; what is surprising is that a great number of left-wing intellectuals also despise minority cultures. Marx is perhaps as good an example as any. The founding father of “scientific socialism” wrote, “There is no country in Europe that does not possess, in some remote corner, at least one remnant people, left over from an earlier population, forced back and subjugated by the nation which later became the repository of historical development.”7 Marx goes on to list some examples of this “national refuse”, condemned to a reactionary role in history: the Gaels of Scotland, the Bretons of France and the Basques of Spain (an interesting assertion now we know the Basques put up the strongest resistance to Franco and the Bretons distinguished themselves against Nazi occupation, while so much of France did not).8 Minorities mess up the political map of Europe, and intellectuals often consider these untidy realities irrational.

  Now we have supposedly moved into a multi-cultural era, this monolithic concept of the nation-state should be a thing of the past. It would appear that the “man-in-thestreet” is ahead of writers, politicians and journalists on this point, and has little trouble with a layered national identity that allows for multiple allegiances with realities inwith and outwith national boundaries. While non-Welshspeaking Welsh intellectuals will often complain that the Welsh language challenges their sense of national identity, there is little evidence that the majority of their compatriots are so uncharitable. At the time of the 1991 census, 18.7% of the Welsh population was Welsh-speaking, but a survey in 1995 showed that 88% of the whole population felt pride in Welsh and 83% thought public bodies should be bilingual. Moreover, 68% of non-speakers agreed with the aim of enabling “the language to become self-sustaining and secure as a medium of communication in Wales”. In 1996 a nation-wide Scottish survey showed that 86% supported the view that “the Gaelic language and way of life should be maintained” (a remarkable 56% strongly agreed and a further 30% slightly agreed, while only 5% disagreed).9 However, a 1998 survey carried out in the Western Isles, Skye and Lochalsh “support[ed] the view that there is a minority group (around 10% of the population) that are much less likely to see the Gaelic language, art and culture as playing a key role in the areas of social and economic development. These individuals appear to be heavily represented in the upper reaches of the professional, business and public sector hierarchies, areas where many decisions affecting the evolving role of the language will be taken”.10 In other words, the powerful, who are predominantly monoglots, are hostile to bilingualism. It is difficult for them to admit that something they do not have is of any worth, such is the intoxicating hubris of power. But publicly their arguments are, of course, couched in the restrained and evasive language of compassionate pragmatism (“we fully understand your justified demands, but unfortunately due to a lack of resources …”).

  Recently, however, there was one notable exception: Tessa Jowell speaking to a group of highly respectable (perhaps too respectable) Gaelic-language professionals, blithely announced that Gaels could not expect much because, unlike the Welsh, they had failed to protest with sufficient vociferousness. The Welsh television channel, S4C, was, according to her, part of a settlement with the then Conservative government at the time of a “sharp and even violent increase” in Welsh nationalism, which has been lacking in Scotland. This was tantamount to inviting her listeners to prepare their Molotov cocktails or, at the very least, go on hunger strike. As an exponent of non-violent action, I know that power very rarely concedes anything on the basis of justified and rational argument, but for a minister of state to admit this to her public reveals her belief that political cynicism is now a universally shared credo. Although no one can deny the crassness and indeed incongruity of a government minister putting such an argument to an interest group, it is perhaps uncharitable to criticise her for candour so untypical of New Labour, and she did introduce this part of her speech by saying, “This’ll irritate you, I suspect.”11 And her statement is quite correct: the rights of minority languages have to be fought for,
and even the smallest crumbs are only obtained after considerable personal sacrifices.

  In the sixties, a Welsh sub-postmistress lost her license and livelihood for replacing the POST OFFICE sign above her shop with another saying SWYDDFA POST, and a fellowcountryman of hers had his furniture and moveables seized by bailiffs on several occasions because he refused to pay his rates until he received the bill in Welsh. It is better for these movements to arise from the courage and bloody-mindedness of the grass roots, but it should never spill over into intolerance of the majority: for as we have seen, the majority of the majority is often well-disposed towards the minority and, although obviously less passionate about the question, they too have a role to play in the defence of minority cultures. The torch should not be lit, but equally the minority should not feel that it cannot signal its existence to the majority. In 1996, there was a bizarre debate in the pages of Stornoway’s local press over whether a new industrial estate should or should not have a Gaelic name. Some councillors felt that this could discourage inward investment. To be fair to the Labour administration in Scotland, this absurd timidity has now gone and the Gaelic Language Act (2005) has given Gaelic official status but, on the other hand, the financial resources that Gaelic taxpayers need and deserve have not been forthcoming. A linguistic minority that does not say or indeed shout, “I am here”, is a linguistic minority that is fated to disappear.

  One of the accusations against minority languages is that they are provincial and irretrievably cut off from the metropolitan centre, as though there was no communication between the two worlds. The sociolinguist Joshua Fishman has argued, “It is in the very nature of mainstream life to be unknowingly provincial and self-centred (while ascribing such traits only to others, who are outside the mainstream).”12 Most speakers of minority languages are now also speakers of the dominant language. They therefore enjoy just as much access to the wider global community as the monoglot speakers of their dominant language, but they also have an added dimension. There is a confusion between the provincial and the periphery. In a sense everywhere is potentially part of the periphery – that is everywhere that remains true to its roots, everywhere that is not globalised. Periphery is distant from power, and again that distance cannot simply be measured in miles. But the periphery is not necessarily provincial; indeed provincialism is today as pronounced in the centre as it is the periphery, for provincialism is another concept that is not bound by physical distances. Provincialism, if it has any meaning at all, signifies an inability to look beyond one’s own restricted cultural boundaries. It is the inability to conceive of other ways of doing things, and the ability to despise the products of those different perceptions and methods. Provincialism is the antithesis of art.

  Because people confuse the periphery with provincialism, they fail to appreciate the artistic achievement of the periphery. Of the Italian writer Ignazio Silone who famously defined himself as “a Christian without a Church and a socialist without a party”, Albert Camus wrote, “Look to Silone. He belongs utterly to his land, and yet is so completely European”. The land that Silone belonged to was the desperately poor, malarial region around Matera in southern Italy where, like Scotland, land was owned by large estates. He was one of many European intellectuals in the interwar years who managed the difficult trick of being rooted in their ancestral past and adopting a sincerely internationalist outlook at the same time (something which is now much harder to do). Sorley MacLean is another example: in Hallaig he imagines the bygone Gaelic community continuing to live in some parallel dimension of time, and yet his communism and internationalism also pervade his poetry. Silone, one of the founders of the Italian Communist Party, expresses the sense of his peasant roots in a dialogue between grandmother and grandson:

  “Poor child,” says the grandmother; “how have you managed to survive such exertions with your delicate health?”

  “You see, grandmother,” he replies, “I am one of those who has weak flesh and strong bones. A draught between two doors is enough to endanger my life, but a shipwreck has no effect on me at all.”

  “And you know why?” she asks him. “During the worst adversities you had to endure, you never gave up because in the resistance that came from your bones you were joined by your ancestors – generations of diggers, vine-dressers, ploughmen and labourers, all hardened by bad weather and hard work.”

  The most common form of provincialism in these days of easy travel is not geographical provincialism but temporal provincialism: the inability to see beyond one’s own time and its fashionable truths. For this reason, the periphery tends to be less provincial; it is more aware of itself as a historical entity, and that sense of continuity for which it has so long been berated becomes its strength, its ability not to be blown with every passing idea or vogue. New ideas are good, but only if they are tempered through comparison with ideas of the past and ideas of elsewhere. And not if they are held up as deified truths in a society that is terrified of dissent. The periphery with its linguistic and cultural particularities, however threatened, can judge innovation from a position where there still remains a modicum of otium, the untranslatable Latin word that denotes the inactivity necessary for collecting ideas and assessing one’s reality (interestingly negotium, the Latin for “business” or “trade” and the root for our word “negotiate”, comes from nec otium, “not otium”, which suggests that the Romans saw this reflective activity as the primary activity and the opposite of making money, and making money is the only activity to which any value is attributed in the West today). The slower pace of the periphery and its greater garrulousness allows it to develop different ideas and different perspectives.

  However, we should remember that this does not mean that the periphery is never provincial. When I mentioned the plight of Quechua speakers to an employee of a Gaelic organisation, I was horrified to hear him say that he was only concerned with Gaelic’s survival, and the survival of other endangered languages was for him a matter of complete indifference. When I pointed out that it would be impossible to seek the support of non-Gaelic speakers if we lacked the same empathy we demand of others, the logic of this argument appeared entirely lost on him. Yet the Highlands and its cruel history have many stories that are relevant to the world today, in which clearances of culturally diverse groups continue relentlessly. The Quechuan Indians are being driven off their lands, as are the people of Chiapas and many other areas (I mention these examples because they so closely parallel the story of the Highlands, but of course even more tragic and very different events occur elsewhere – you only have to think of Darfur). Factors and policemen burn down miserable dwellings to make way for extensive agriculture and the displaced people drift, usually on foot, towards the burgeoning favelas and shanty towns outside some Third-World metropolis. To mourn the Highland Clearances is pointless self-indulgence if not accompanied by anger at these new clearances. Although I find the revisionist attempts to exonerate landlords like the Duke of Sutherland distasteful, I find equally distasteful the ritual bemoaning of our ancestors’ fate while failing to understand the message of the story that should speak to us powerfully across two intervening centuries. I also hear people say the clearances have no relevance in the modern world, and perhaps their argument has some weight if we approach the question from a provincial viewpoint, but if we study the clearances in their wider context, then they have never been more relevant. Perhaps the saddest example of our failure to learn from the past came when our government encouraged Turkey to build a dam to flood the Kurdish-speaking area in its south-east. Undoubtedly clearance by water is even more effective than clearance by sheep.

  Nor should we forget that some of the centre’s advantages are perennial, because it offers dissenters the anonymity that permits original thought. The periphery may be happily distant from national government, but the local elite is always uncomfortably pervasive and often distinguished by extreme provincialism and indeed small-mindedness. In effect, the periphery is perhap
s best seen as the nation’s cultural seedbed: it generates the artists and intellectuals who then have to escape the conformism of the local power group, at least for a time. The point is perhaps best made, albeit unwittingly, by a Scottish intellectual who is known for his disapproval of assistance for Gaelic. Writing in Scotland on Sunday some years ago,13 William McIlvanney refers to the strengths of the English poetry produced by the Gaelic writer Ian Chrichton Smith, which in his opinion carries through something of the Gaelic flavour of Smith’s background. This is supposed to show how English is a perfectly reasonable literary space for us all to participate in. Few would argue with his claim, but they might with his conclusion that everyone should simply move over to English. He appears to overlook the fact that, if Gaelic is allowed to die, it will no longer be possible for future Ian Chrichton Smiths to engage in such cross-fertilisation between languages, because Scotland will be an entirely monolingual society, at least as far as its “indigenous” languages are concerned. His argument is even stranger, because he is a highly accomplished author and inspired storyteller who writes much of his dialogue in Scots, about whose fate he is understandably concerned. Indeed he is a good example of what I am talking about. The mining community of Kilmarnock, into which McIlvanney was born in 1936, was at the time just as peripheral as the Gaelicspeaking communities to the north, because, as I have said, the periphery is a social distance not primarily a geographical one. He too brings to English his unique linguistic history. This leads to another important point: where is Kilmarnock now, in this post-industrial age? Is the West becoming all centre and no periphery, such is the degree of its homogenisation?