Origins of scotland_and_nova_scotia_08242014_jga

Scotland
• Scotland includes the northern portion of the Island of Great
Britain, which is divided from England by the Cheviot Hills, the
River Tweed, and certain smaller streams. The chief physical
feature of the country is its mountainous character, and only
about a quarter of the total acreage is cultivated.
• Scotland was known by the Romans as Caledonia, and the
Caledonians came to be called Picts.
• The name of Scotland came into use in the 11th century, when
the race of Scots, originally an Irish colony which settled in
the western Highlands,* attained to supreme power in the
country.
*This story is disputed. See Cells 30-31
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Post Roman Scotland
• When the Romans left Britain, there were 4 groups within the
borders of what is now Scotland. In the east were the Picts,
with kingdoms between the river Forth and Shetland. In the
west were the Gaelic speaking people of Dál Riata with their
royal fortress at Dunadd in Argyll, with close links with the
island of Ireland, from whom comes the name Scots.[8] In the
south was the British Kingdom of Strathclyde, descendants of
the peoples of the Roman influenced kingdoms of "The Old
North.” [9] Finally, there were the English or "Angles",
Germanic invaders who had overrun much of southern Britain
and held the Kingdom of Bernicia, in the south-east.[10]
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Scottish Catholics
• In 563 the expatriate Irish monk Columba settled on the
island of Iona with 12 companions, and started a monastery.
• In the 6th century three Irish brother-chieftains crossed over
from Ireland and founded the little Kingdom of Dalriada,
which developed into the Kingdom of Scotland. They were
already Christians, and with them came Irish missionaries,
who spread the Faith throughout the western Highlands.*
• A thousand years later, Catholicism and the Catholic Mass
were outlawed when the Scottish Reformation broke with the
Pope and named the Presbyterian Church as the Church of
Scotland in 1560.
*This story is disputed. See Cells 30-31

Origin of Dalriada
• There are several stories about the origins of Dalriada. Fergus
mac Erc is reputed to have come from northern Ireland to the
west coast of Scotland to establish the kingdom of Dalriada.
Or did the three brothers go north together to settle Scotland,
as history claims, or did Fergus join Angus and Lorne already
settled in this area?
• Dalriada was originally the name for the land in Northern
Ireland founded by Cairbre Riadia who settled in this area,
and later, the name was applied to the Scottish area where
Angus, Lorne and Fergus settled. Angus was the seafaring
brother, having Jura and Islay as his lands.

Dál Riata (also Dalriada or Dalriata)
was a Gaelic overkingdom on the
western coast of Scotland
(then Pict-land) and part of Ulster.
In the late 6th and early 7th century
it encompassed roughly what is now
Argyll and Bute and Lochaber in
Scotland and also County Antrim
in Northern Ireland.[1]
Morar
Lochaber

Map of Dál Riata at
its height (in green),
c. 580–600.
Pictish regions are
marked in yellow.
Morar

Post Roman Scotland
• Scotland was largely converted to Christianity by Irish-Scots
missions associated with figures such as St. Columba, from
the 5th to the 7th centuries. These missions tended to
found monastic institutions and collegiate churches that
served large areas.[13] Partly as a result of these factors, some
scholars have identified a distinctive form of Celtic
Christianity, in which abbots were more significant
than bishops, attitudes to clerical celibacy were more relaxed
and there was some significant differences in practice with
Roman Christianity, although most of these issues had been
resolved by the mid-7th century.[14][15]

The Kingdom of Alba
• Conversion to Christianity may have speeded a long term
process of gaelicisation of the Pictish kingdoms, which
adopted Gaelic language and customs. Historians debate
whether it was a Pictish takeover of Dál Riata, or the other
way around. This culminated in the rise of Kenneth MacAlpin
in 840, which brought to power the House of Alpin.[16]
• In AD 867 the Vikings seized the southern half of
Northumbria, forming the Kingdom of York. They then
conquered much of England except for a reduced kingdom of
Wessex,[17] leaving the new combined Pictish and Gaelic
kingdom almost encircled.[19]

The Kingdom of Alba
• When he died as king of the combined kingdom in 900,
Donald II was the first man to be called King of Alba.[20] The
term Scotia was increasingly used to describe the kingdom
between North of the Forth and Clyde and eventually the
entire area controlled by its kings was referred to as
Scotland.[21]

Were the Scots Irish?
By Ewan Campbell
• The author (Ewan Campbell) says the claimed migrations of
the Irish into Argyll are elite origin myths with no support in
archaeology. He asks how the Iron Age populations of Argyll
established and changed their personal and group identity?
• Historical accounts of the origin of the Scottish kingdom state
that the Scots founded the early kingdom of Dál Riata in
western Scotland after migrating there from Antrim, in
northeastern Ireland. They displaced a native Pictish or
British people from the area of modern Argyll.

Were the Scots Irish?
By Ewan Campbell
• In the mid-9th century, these Scots of Dál Riata took over the
Pictish kingdom of eastern Scotland to form the united
kingdom of Alba, later to become known as Scotland. The
peoples of Ireland were known as Scotti, a derogatory term
meaning something like 'pirates'. The name was used by early
medieval writers in Latin for all speakers of Gaelic, whether in
Ireland or Scotland.

The name derives from the
deposed Stuart monarch,
James II of England and VII
of Scotland.
The Jacobites
• Jacobitism refers to the political movement in Great Britain
and Ireland to restore the Stuart King James II of England to
the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland (Jacobus is
the Latin form of James). The Jacobites
believed that parliamentary interference
with monarchical succession was illegal.
• Catholics also hoped the Stuarts would
end recusancy.*
• In Scotland, the Jacobite
cause became entangled in the last
throes of the warrior clan system.
*in recusancy: the state of those who refused to
attend Anglican services and were punished for it.

Jacobite Rebellion
• The Jacobite rising of 1745, "The 'Forty-Five,” was the attempt
by Charles Edward Stuart to regain the Scottish throne for the
exiled House of Stuart. Stuart, commonly known as "Bonnie
Prince Charlie,“ sailed to Scotland and raised the Jacobite
standard at Glenfinnan in the Scottish Highlands.
• The Jacobites had an initial victory near Edinburgh. They then
marched to Carlisle, in England. Britain recalled divisions from
the Continent, and the Jacobite army retreated north to
Inverness where the last battle on Scottish soil took place on
a nearby moor at Culloden. The Battle of Culloden was the
final defeat of the Jacobite cause, and Charles Edward Stuart
fled with a price on his head.

The Battle of Culloden, the last battle on Scottish soil

Scottish Catholics
• The failed Jacobite risings in 1715 and 1745 further damaged
the Catholic cause in Scotland.
• But a few thousand indigenous Scottish Catholics remained,
mainly in a small strip from the north-east coast to the
Western Isles. Significant strongholds included Moidart,
Morar, South Uist and Barra.
• The two most Catholic parts of Scotland are: (1) the southern-
most islands of the Western Isles, especially Barra and South
Uist, populated by Gaelic-speaking Scots of long-standing;
and (2) the eastern suburbs of Glasgow, populated mostly by
the descendants of Irish immigrants.13

The Sands at Morar (Scotland)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMiIo3JtQ-A
Video of Loch Morar
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=LoabQ8i1MRA&NR=1
Video of Loch Morar
This is where the Clan
MacDonald Gillis families
are from

Glenaladale

Morar

The End of Clan Rule
• The Jacobite Risings brought British government efforts to
curb the clans, culminating after the 1746 Battle of
Culloden with brutal repression. The Act of Proscription of
1746 required all swords to be surrendered to the
government and prohibited the wearing of tartans or kilts.
• The Heritable Jurisdictions Act removed the virtually
sovereign power the chiefs held over their clans.
• The enforcement of the prohibitions related to a clan's
support of the government during the rebellion, but overall
led to the destruction of the traditional clan system and of
the social structures of small agricultural townships.

Highland Clearances
• What became known as the Clearances were considered by
the landlords as necessary "improvements". They are thought
to have been begun by Admiral John Ross of Balnagowan
Castle in Scotland in 1762.
• MacLeod of MacLeod (i.e. the chief of MacLeod) began
experimental work on Skye in 1732. Chiefs engaged Lowland,
or sometimes English, factors with expertise in more
profitable sheep farming, and they "encouraged,” sometimes
forcibly, the population to move off suitable land.

Highland Clearances
• Another wave of mass emigration came in 1792, known as the
"Year of the Sheep" to Scottish Highlanders. They were moved
to farms in coastal areas where farming could not sustain the
communities who were expected to take up fishing.
• Others were put directly onto emigration ships to Nova Scotia
(Antigonish and Pictou counties and later Cape Breton) There
may have been a religious element in these forced removals
since many Highlanders were Roman Catholic. This is
reflected by the majority representation of Catholics in areas
and towns of Nova Scotia such as Antigonish and Cape
Breton.

A romanticized early Victorian
depiction of a member of Clan
MacAlister leaving Scotland for
Canada, by R. R. McIan.
The Emigrants Statue commemorates
the flight of Highlanders during the
clearances, but is also a testament
to their accomplishments in the places
they settled. Located at the foot of the
Highland Mountains in Helmsdale,
Scotland.

Scottish Highlands
• Emigration was a universal phenomenon in the mid-to-late
18th century (1750 – 1800). It was said to be a madness, an
epidemic that gripped the minds of ordinary people.
• The lives of the Highlanders had been badly dislocated by the
destruction of the clan system after the suppression of the
Jacobite rebellion of 1745, and by the increasing
rationalization* of agricultural production.
* industrialization, commercialization

Scottish Highlands Emigration
• There were two prospects for potential emigrants from the
Scottish Highlands: the Low Country of Scotland, or America.
• Peasants and cotters (poor country daily wage farmers)
couldn’t afford the latter, so they removed to the Low Country
to work in manufacturing.
• Small tenants, though living wretchedly, had stock (cattle) to
sell to earn the passage and first settlement in America, plus
they didn’t like the Low Country, and disdained the culture of
the low country Scots.

Sir Archibald Grant (in Aberdeen)
• 1764 – “I have been convinced, that America will at a periode,
I don’t presume to say when, be the grand seat of empire and
all its concomitants.”
• Every country, “and especially [the Scottish] highlands, have
people [who are] ambitious, avaricious, or some how uneasy
or whimsical”; most often they “ramble [off] to the army, or
somewhere abroad” – and where better could they go than to
Britain’s own new colonies?
• In the north he would recommend “something on either or
both sides of the Bay of Fundy, especially on or new St. Johns
River, and opposite to Hallifax or the Istmus [of Chignecto].”

John MacDonald of Glenaladale
• Captain John MacDonald (1742-1810) was born in
Glenaladale, Scotland, about half the distance from the
southwest end of the Loch Shiel to the northeast end where
sits the Glen Finnan monument to Bonnie Prince Charlie.
• Prince Charlie spent the night with the MacDonalds before
raising the fateful flag the next day at Glenfinnan.
• John, who led his entire clan to Canada 27 years later was a
young boy at the time, who grew to be a devout Catholic.
• Glenfinnan is 27 kilometers from Morar (16.67 miles).

John MacDonald of Glenaladale
• The voyage of the Alexander resulted in the transplantation to
Tracadie Bay, on the north shore of St. John (now called Prince
Edward Island), of over 200 Scotch Highlanders, both Catholic
and Protestant in 1772.*
• The expedition was unusually well supplied – one of the best
equipped at the time – partly because the church invested
heavily in providing for the indigent Catholics, and partly
because the rest of the passengers recruited by Glenaladale
were relatively prosperous.
• They arrived in St. John (PEI) in good season, opened up small
farms in the virgin larch forests inland of Tracadie Bay, but
had a sense of foreboding in their new forested wilderness.
* The Hector sailed in 1773 (Pictou)

Nova Scotia in 1774
• Nova Scotia is a 270-mile-long promontory lying parallel to
the mainland across the Bay of Fundy and attached to the
mainland at the north by a 17-mile-wide isthmus (the Isthmus
of Chignecto).
• Nova Scotia is extended in two directions by closely adjacent
islands: Cape Breton, which reaches 110 miles east into the
Atlantic, and St. John (now Prince Edward) Island, a narrow
crescent that nestles close to Nova Scotia’s northern shore in
the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
• Comprising in all a land area of 22,500 square miles (over 14
million acres), Nova Scotia and the adjacent islands had a total
population of less than 18,000 in early 1774.

Isthmus of Chignecto
• The Isthmus of Chignecto was one of the principal
battlegrounds on which the French and the English fought for
the possession of a continent. It was there that the two
armies took their stand with the Missaguash River in
between. To the south of the river the English built Fort
Lawrence, to the north the French built Fort Beausejour. In
1755, an English army crossed the river, defeated the French,
and took the fort as its own.
• In 1758, the English took Louisbourg; in 1759, Quebec; in
1760, Montreal. With the taking of Montreal, the question as
to who was to have possession of North America was settled.

• Fort Beausejour (Fort Cumberland the English called it), lies
on the western end of a 16 mile neck of land which attaches
Nova Scotia to the continent. If it were not for this isthmus,
Nova Scotia would be but an island in the Atlantic Ocean.
• Fort Cumberland was a military base for the English, one of
four forts to be found in Nova Scotia at war's end along with
Halifax, Fort Edward, and Fort Anne.
• In Cape Breton, there was no military presence at all, given
that the great stone French fortress at Louisbourg, as the war
was closing, had been reduced to rubble by British sappers.

5/20/2013 jgillis767@aol.com 39

Antigonish
Sydney Mines
Tracadie Bay
Pictou
Louisbourg

Nova Scotia
Coat of Arms

Tracadie
• The Black Loyalists who moved to Chedabucto from Port
Mouton got fed up with being landless. In 1787, their
representative, Thomas Brownspriggs, presented a petition to
the government signed by seventy-four people requesting
land. By September of that year, 74 Black Loyalist families
were granted 3000 acres in Tracadie, around the mouth of
Tracadie Harbor, in what was then called Sydney County and is
now Guysborough and Antigonish Counties.

Antigonish County
• The County of Sydney was created in 1784.
• In 1836 Sydney County was diminished in size when Guysborough
County was established out of what had been part of it.
• In 1863 the name of the County of Sydney was changed to
Antigonish County.
• The word Antigonish is of Mi'kmaq origin, possibly derived from
Nalegitkoonecht meaning “where branches are torn off.” It is said
that there were bears in the area that broke down branches to get
beech nuts.
• The town of Antigonish is home to Saint Francis
Xavier University. Antigonish County is also home
to Pomquet Village, a small Acadian village dating
back to 1774.

Bibliography
• Bernard Bailyn. The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British
North America: The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600 – 1675 (New
York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012).
• Bernard Bailyn with Barbara DeWolfe. Voyagers to the West:
A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the
Revolution (New York, NY: Random House, Vintage Books,
1986).
• Bernard Bailyn. The Peopling of British North America: An
Introduction (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986).
• Google and Wikipedia references are typed into the Notes
section of each applicable Power Point Cell.

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