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...SCOT--SEG..
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Scotland. See Alba. Scotland was never part of the Roman province of Britain, although the Romans, having conquered the Celts of the south, tried several times to exert their military domination in the north. During the spring or summer of A.D. 79, the Roman governor Agricola turned north. His campaigns lasted six years, during which the tribes of the north made a fierce resistance under Calgacos (the name means "swordsman"). But try as he would, Agricola could not conquer the northern tribes, the major one of which was the Caledonii. By A.D. 105, the Romans gave up any pretence of establishing their rule and, following a visit by the emperor Hadrian in 122, built a wall stretching for 117 kilometers, dividing the north from the Roman-occupied south. It was called Hadrian's Wall and can still be seen today. In 138 a new emperor, Antoninus Pius, made a determined attempt to extend his rule north, and the governor, Lollius Urbicus, pushed as far as the Forth-Clyde isthmus and constructed another wall, the Antonine , Wall, stretching only 60 kilometres in length. In 180, however, the Celts swept across the Antonine Wall and pushed the Romans back to Hadrian's Wall, which remained a border for a while. At this time the Celts of what was to become Scotland spoke a Brythonic or P-Celtic language. They had a custom of using war paint, much like the American Indians or many other peoples in recent times. Because of this the Roman soldiers, stationed on Hadrian's Wall, called them "the painted ones." The term "Pict" was first recorded in a Latin poem of A.D. 297 ,and it was simply a nickname given to these northern Celtic warriors. Pictii is the past participle of the Latin pingere, "to paint." The Picts were not a new element among the Celtic tribes of Scotland. They were from many tribes, such as the Caledonii and Maecatae. They called themselves Preteni, which in Gaelic, because of the famous substitute of the "q" for "p," became Cruithin. Professor Kenneth Jackson has pointed out that when the Picts emerged into recorded record they were already Gaelic-speaking. Yet their king-lists show names that are unquestionably Brythonic or British Celtic in form. This, of course, is not surprising. However, in recent times, a new myth about the Picts has sprung up in which it is claimed that they were not Celtic. Gaelic was introduced, or reintroduced if you accept the argument that it was the earliest form of Celtic spoken and that the first Celts in Britain spoke the Goidelic form, in the fourth century A.D. with the establishment of the kingdom of Dal Riada on the western seaboard. By the sixth century three main kingdoms had emerged in Scotland: Dal Riada, the kingdoms of the northern and southern Picts in the Northeast, and the kingdom of Strath-Cl6ta (Strathclyde). In A.D.730 Aonghus Mac Feargus, king of the Picts, was recognised as High King of all three kingdoms. The next century, Coinneach Mac Alpin became king of both Picts and Scots and united the two kingdoms. It was obvious thar at this time Gaelic was spoken throughout the north of Scotland. In A.D. 945, the former independent kingdom of Cumbria, conquered by Edmund of England, became a province of Scotland. Lastly, in A.D. 1018, following the battle of Carham, the small kingdom of the Angles, around the mouth of the Tweed, became part of Scotland, or Alba, as it then was known. This was the greatest territorial expansion of the kingdom. However, in A.D. 1157 Maol Callum a' chinn mhoir, High King of Alba, gave up Cumbria. In the next century, the monarchy, followed by the southern gentry and traders, began to Anglicise themselves, and the Gaelic language was on the defensive. The next centuries saw England ever trying to advance her domination over Scotland and a continual defensive war by the Scots against incursions from England. In 1603 the Anglicised James VI of Scotland was invited to become monarch of England on the death of Elizabeth I. He became James I of England. James made several attempts to unite his two kingdoms, one of which was rejected by the English Parliament in 1607. Exactly one hundred years later, in 1707, at a time when it became economically advantageous for England to do so, the union was carried out. It was achieved by bribes, both of finance and of position and title. "We're bought and sold for English gold," lamented the poet Robbie Burns. In the years following the union, in which both England and Scotland were supposed to disappear and anew state of co-equal partners called Great Britain was supposed to emerge, the Scots, realising how they had been duped, made several efforts to sever the union. The first patliamentary effort was made in 1714, while insurrections and attempted insurrections occurred throughout the eighteenth century. The last major one was in 1820. The constitutional position of Scotland is curious indeed. The English broke the Treaty of Union, the written constitution of Great Britain, almost as soon as the ink was dry. "Have we not bought the Scots and the right to tax them?" demanded the Speaker of the House of Commons in 1714. "We have catch'd the Scots and will hold them fast." The latest clear breaking of the Treaty of Union was by Margaret Thatcher in her imposition of her notorious Poll Tax (called Community Charge by her Government) in Scotland a year before its imposition in England. Yet the British Parliament still pretends the Treaty of Union runs in Scotland, and allowing Scotland its own judicial system . But the Westminster Parliament breaks the terms of the treaty with apparent impunity. The legal position of to date is rather unsure as Scotland gained a devolved goverment yet still within the state of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, therfore the situation is no longer clear. for more recent information surf the web. Scots. In early medieval Latin, the term Scottus was applied to the Irish. This created confusion when, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the kingdom of Alba began to be referred to as "Scotland." The confusion is demonstrated by the story of the Wiirzburg Schottenkloster, which was an Irish Benedictine foundation until 1497 .By that time the linguistic change had been made and the terms "Scottus," "Scotia," and "Scot" applied to Alba. Scottish clerics demanded that the pope expel the Irish from Wiirzburg on the grounds that it was, by name, a Scottish foundation. The pope did so and Wiirzburg became a Scottish monastery until as late as 1803. However, Johannes Scottus Eriugena, SeduliusScottus, Marianus Scottus, and Clemens Scottus were all Irish and not from Scotland.
Scottish Gaelic. The language of Alba. It began to diverge from Old
Irish before the ninth century. The first written differences between
Old Irish and Scottish Gaelic (Gaidhlig) occurs in the ninth century
Book of Deer, now in Cambridge. Scottish Gaelic achieved its
greatest territorial expansion around 1018 when Alba annexed most
of the tiny kingdom of the Angles established at the mouth of the
Tweed. According to Dr. John Watson, "in consequence of this the
whole of Scotland became for a time Gaelic in speech." The language did not begin to recede from the "Lowlands" until the fourteenth century .The last native speakers of Galloway did not die
out until the late eighteenth century. Today under 2 percent of the
people of Scotland speak Gaelic as a first language, mostly in 'the western islands. but many thousands of Gaelic speakers are to be found elsewhere. The 1971 Canadian census gave
18,420 "mother tongue" speakers of Scottish Gaelic. The language
survived in the Cape Breton Island of Nova Scotia after settlement
during the notorious "Highland Clearances." The language has
been considered one of Europe's most persecuted tongues. Scuab Uasafach. [I] "Terrible Broom." The name of the battalion of the Fianna commanded by Oscar. It swept the enemy from the , battlefield, never giving an inch of ground. Its banner was a broom. Seanchaidhe. [I] Seanchai in modern Irish. A storyteller and historian. The word has now been adopted into English in such varying forms as seannachie, seannachy, and sennchie. Seang. [I] Daughter of the king of Scythia and wife to Milesius. She died, and he left Scythia for Egypt, where he remarried Scota. See Scota. Searbhan. [I] "The surly." A one-eyed Fomorii who guarded a magic tree, squatting at its foot all day and sleeping in its branches all night. So terrible was his appearance that none of the Fianna would go near him. During the pursuit of Diarmuid and Griinne, Diarmuid made friends with him so that the couple was able to hide in the tree, safe from the pursuing Fianna. All went well until, Griinne grew restless and wanted to eat the magic berries from the tree. Searbhan refused to allow her to do this and Diarmuid slew him. Sechnasach. [I] Son of Fingen Mac Aedha, whose wife was Mor of Munster. She fled before his birth under the influence of voices prophesying evil. Segais, Well of. (I) See Nuts of Knowledge.
Segda Saerlabraid. [I] Son of the king and queen of Tir Tairnigiri,
"sinless people," according to medieval scribes, who never slept
together except at his conception. This Christian embellishment
forgets that the rulers of Tir Tairnigiri were Manannan Mac Lir and
his wife Fand.
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