- The Celtic Languages Today -
extinction, of Gaelic in those parts of the Highlands and Islands where the language
was well maintained and, indeed, in many cases flourished a century ago.
The collapse of the language is most evident in north-eastern and central Scotland.
In two representative north-eastern parishes, Loth (Sutherland) and Fearn (Ross and
Cromarty), for example, the proportion of Gaelic speakers declined from 51 per cent
and 63 per cent respectively in 1891 to 3 per cent and 4 per cent respectively in 1981.3
A similar decline is evidenced for the 'Highland District' of Perthshire, i.e. the north
and west of the county, in central Scotland. Meanwhile, a similar if less catastrophic
decline had taken place on much of the west coast of the mainland, even in the far
north where the proportion of Gaelic speakers in the sparsely populated parishes of
Tongue, Durness, Eddrachillis and Assynt in north-western Sutherland, declined
from 85 per cent on average in 1891 to 34 per cent on average in 1981.
Further south, one mainland parish, Applecross (in the county of Ross and
Cromarty), had a majority of Gaelic speakers (54 per cent) in 1971, but by 1981 this
had declined to little more than a third (36 per cent). In the four other mainland
parishes (from north to south, Gairloch, Lochcarron, Glenshiel and Ardnamurchan),
where the proportion of Gaelic speakers ranged from 43 per cent to 45 per cent in 1971
(no other mainland parish then exceeded 40 per cent), the proportion had dropped in
1981 to 35 per cent, 22 per cent, 37 per cent and 38.5 per cent respectively.
Census statistics for Irish exist for the Republic of Ireland (but not for Northern
Ireland) but they cannot be taken at their face value. The numbers of those claiming
to speak Irish rose from 540,802 (= 19.3 per cent of the population) in 1926, i.e. in
the first census after southern Ireland achieved its independence, to 1,018,413 (= 31.6
per cent) in 1981.4 This would suggest that the number of speakers of the native
language was rather more than twice that of speakers of Welsh and that the pro-
portion of the total population speaking the language was also considerably higher
than in Wales. This is very obviously not the case: whereas there are still extensive
areas of Wales where the native language is widely spoken on a normal everyday
basis, this is not so in Ireland (see below). The overwhelming majority (i.e. some
95 per cent at least) of those recorded as Irish speakers have acquired a degree (in
many cases a high degree) of competence in Irish as a second language through the
educational system, and informed sources by no means hostile to the Irish language
now put the number of native speakers as low as 50,000 (some estimates would
put it substantially lower). It appears, therefore, that native speakers of Irish are
probably fewer than those of Scottish Gaelic. It is by no means improbable that the
native speakers of both languages taken together number little more than 100,000, if
that.
Even in the Gaeltacht, the officially Irish-speaking areas, the language is in a
gravely weakened condition. Comparing the data provided by the two most recent
censuses for which figures are available, Mairtfn 6 Murchu comments (1985: 29):
In 1971 the total population of the Gaeltacht areas was 65,982, of whom 54,940
were returned as Irish speakers, or 83.3% of the total. By 1981 the population
of the Gaeltacht areas was exactly 75,000. This represents an increase of more
than 9,000 over the 1971 figure, due in part to boundary changes effected in
1974, but the proportion of Irish speakers at 58,026 had by 1981 declined to
77.4 % of the total. Apart from that, it is necessary to distinguish between the