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97-484: In Scots , dule or duill , also dole , dowle ; dwle , dul , dull , duyl , duile , doile , doill , dewle , deull , and duel . In Middle English , dule , duyl , dulle , deul , dewle and variants of doole , dole , and dool . All these words mean sorrow, grief, or mental distress, and derive from Old French dol , doel , from Vulgar Latin dolus ("pain, grief"). Doomsdales, variously written as 'Dimmisdaill' or 'Dymisdale' were

194-411: A European ash ( Fraxinus excelsior ), served the role of the baronial dule tree. An example is said to survive at Douglas Castle, located around 1 km north-east of the village of Douglas, South Lanarkshire aka Castle Dangerous of Sir Walter Scott's novel of that name. Smith records in 1895 that the stump of the dule tree at Newark Castle was carefully preserved. Hangman's Elm , or simply

291-905: A 1996 trial before the Census, by the General Register Office for Scotland (GRO), suggested that there were around 1.5 million speakers of Scots, with 30% of Scots responding "Yes" to the question "Can you speak the Scots language?", but only 17% responding "Aye" to the question "Can you speak Scots?". It was also found that older, working-class people were more likely to answer in the affirmative. The University of Aberdeen Scots Leid Quorum performed its own research in 1995, cautiously suggesting that there were 2.7 million speakers, though with clarification as to why these figures required context. The GRO questions, as freely acknowledged by those who set them, were not as detailed and systematic as those of

388-625: A Scots language listing. The Ferret, a UK -based fact-checking service, wrote an exploratory article in December 2022 to address misconceptions about the Scots language to improve public awareness of its endangered status. In Scotland, Scots is spoken in the Scottish Lowlands , the Northern Isles , Caithness , Arran and Campbeltown . In Ulster , the northern province in Ireland , its area

485-528: A beautiful lady fairy is also associated with this dule tree. Newark Castle near the River Doon in South Ayrshire (old Carrick) had a dule-tree near its grand stair. It was an ash measuring about 15 feet circumference and it had five principal branches. Evelix Farmhouse regality Court-House and gallows tree in the parish of Dornoch . According to the farmer at Evelix the gallows tree stood until recently in

582-462: A collection of children's nursery rhymes and poems in Scots. The book contains a five-page glossary of contemporary Scots words and their pronunciations. Alexander Gray 's translations into Scots constitute the greater part of his work, and are the main basis for his reputation. In 1983, William Laughton Lorimer 's translation of the New Testament from the original Greek was published. Scots

679-433: A continuum ranging from traditional broad Scots to Scottish Standard English . Many speakers are diglossic and may be able to code-switch along the continuum depending on the situation. Where on this continuum English-influenced Scots becomes Scots-influenced English is difficult to determine. Because standard English now generally has the role of a Dachsprache ('roofing language'), disputes often arise as to whether

776-583: A cutting taken from the old one, a plane tree or sycamore maple , now stands on the original site. John or Johnny Faa , King of the Gypsies is said to have been hanged from the Cassillis Dule Tree, together with some of his supporters. On the Water of Minnoch is a deep pool known as the 'murder hole' in which a family from Rowantree dumped their victims; they were caught, confessed and were the last to be hanged on

873-542: A dule tree up there by the Gallows Slock for nothing. Girvan was the site of the "Hairy Tree." According to legend, the Hairy Tree was planted by Sawney Bean 's eldest daughter in the town's Dalrymple Street. The daughter was implicated with the rest of the family in their incestuous and cannibalistic activities and was hanged by locals from the bough of the tree she herself planted. According to local legend, one can hear

970-572: A dule tree was involved. Law Mount is a common name for small earth mounds, frequently in prominent positions, such as the example near Lambroughton , Stewarton in North Ayrshire. Public hangings took place on these 'laws' or 'moot hills', some of which are or were wooded. Gallows-Knowe in Kilmarnock , East Ayrshire was the site of the gallows for the baronial court of the Boyds of Dean Castle . Gallow Law

1067-415: A language from a dialect , scholars and other interested parties often disagree about the linguistic, historical and social status of Scots, particularly its relationship to English . Although a number of paradigms for distinguishing between languages and dialects exist, they often render contradictory results. Broad Scots is at one end of a bipolar linguistic continuum , with Scottish Standard English at

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1164-535: A more phonological manner rather than following the pan-dialect conventions of modern literary Scots, especially for the northern and insular dialects of Scots. Leith Hall Leith Hall is a country house in Kennethmont , Aberdeenshire , Scotland. It was built in 1650, on the site of the medieval Peill Castle, and was the home of the Leith-Hay family for nearly three centuries. Since 1945 it has been run by

1261-529: A niche in a wall nearby. The Victoria Bridge, Crathie and Braemar in Aberdeenshire has an old Scots pine tree that stands on the south side of the road leading to Mar Lodge, and to the west of the bridge. This was traditionally the gallows tree for the barony. Tushielaw Tower gallows tree, parish of Ettrick in the Scottish borders. The tree was an ash tree in the ruins of Tushielaw Tower on which Adam Scott,

1358-567: A recent neologism merging Ulster and Lallans. Scots is a contraction of Scottis , the Older Scots and northern version of late Old English : Scottisc (modern English "Scottish"), which replaced the earlier i-mutated version Scyttisc . Before the end of the fifteenth century, English speech in Scotland was known as "English" (written Ynglis or Inglis at the time), whereas "Scottish" ( Scottis ) referred to Gaelic . By

1455-612: A representative sample of Scotland's adult population) claim to speak Scots to varying degrees. The 2011 UK census was the first to ask residents of Scotland about Scots. A campaign called Aye Can was set up to help individuals answer the question. The specific wording used was "Which of these can you do? Tick all that apply" with options for "Understand", "Speak", "Read" and "Write" in three columns: English, Scottish Gaelic and Scots. Of approximately 5.1 million respondents, about 1.2 million (24%) could speak, read and write Scots, 3.2 million (62%) had no skills in Scots and

1552-501: A suitable medium of education or culture". Students reverted to Scots outside the classroom, but the reversion was not complete. What occurred, and has been occurring ever since, is a process of language attrition , whereby successive generations have adopted more and more features from Standard English. This process has accelerated rapidly since widespread access to mass media in English and increased population mobility became available after

1649-434: A sycamore ( Acer pseudoplatanus ), was used as a natural gibbet and a means for publicly carrying out feudal justice. The strong timber, not prone to snapping, made this a favoured species for this purpose. Leith Hall dates from about 1650 and the tree was possibly planted shortly after this. A rather gaunt and heavily branched tree, the trunk measures 116 cm in diameter. At Cessnock Castle near Galston, East Ayrshire

1746-525: Is a dule tree, a gnarled specimen of Castanea sativa - sweet chestnut . An old beech tree is still known as a 'gallows tree' and grows in an exposed position near Monikie in Angus. The dule tree at Cassillis Castle in South Ayrshire was blown down in a great storm during the winter of 1939-40 and when the rings on its trunk were counted, it was found to be about 200 years old. A new dule tree, grown from

1843-525: Is a hill overlooking Newmilns in East Ayrshire. Sir Walter Scott 's Waverley novel Guy Mannering features a "Justice Tree" at the Castle of Ellangowan. The corpses of murderers were gibbeted and eventually buried at crossroads so that their spirits would be "bound" there. The living took pains to prevent the dead from wandering the land as lost souls – or even as animated corpses, for the belief in revenants

1940-616: Is hanged on the dule-tree of Balwearie Castle in Fife. "The Dule Tree" was published in 2004 by Finavon Print in association with the Elphinstone Institute, to mark the end of Sheena Blackhall 's residency as Creative Writer in Scots at the University of Aberdeen. The Black Douglas (1899) by S. R. Crockett (1859–1914) has the line and let that wight remember that the Douglas does not keep

2037-552: Is in Scots, for example. Scott introduced vernacular dialogue to his novels. Other well-known authors like Robert Louis Stevenson , William Alexander, George MacDonald , J. M. Barrie and other members of the Kailyard school like Ian Maclaren also wrote in Scots or used it in dialogue. In the Victorian era popular Scottish newspapers regularly included articles and commentary in the vernacular, often of unprecedented proportions. In

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2134-745: Is lykest to our language..." ( For though several have written of (the subject) in English, which is the language most similar to ours... ). However, with the increasing influence and availability of books printed in England, most writing in Scotland came to be done in the English fashion. In his first speech to the English Parliament in March 1603, King James VI and I declared, "Hath not God first united these two Kingdomes both in Language, Religion, and similitude of maners?" . Following James VI's move to London,

2231-399: Is noted for its gardens, set in stages with each sheltered by a wall or hedge and each with its own special character. The gardens contain flowering trees and shrubs, roses, fruit, vegetables and ornamental grasses. A little stream winds its way through the gravel paths and stone crevices and at the top of the garden, near the 18th century curved stables, is the circular "Moon Gate" leading to

2328-508: Is said to have never produced another leaf after the execution. In the 1830s, a gallows-tree still stood in the Edinburgh grass-market, surrounded by the actual scaffold with a ladder leaning against the structure for the ascent. Auchendrane castle also (Auchindraine) in South Ayrshire sits on the banks of the River Doon and had a famous dule tree, long ago blown down in furious gale. This tree

2425-523: Is sometimes used in contemporary fiction, such as the Edinburgh dialect of Scots in Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh (later made into a motion picture of the same name ). But'n'Ben A-Go-Go by Matthew Fitt is a cyberpunk novel written entirely in what Wir Ain Leed ("Our Own Language") calls "General Scots". Like all cyberpunk work, it contains imaginative neologisms . The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

2522-467: Is that it was cut down and sold to a cabinet maker in Maybole who made a chest of drawers out of it. It is marked on Andrew Armstrongs 1775 map of Ayrshire. Hunterston castle near West Kilbride had a dule known as the 'hanging tree' or 'resting tree'. It was an ash and stood near to the gardens on the line of the old road between Fairlie and West Kilbride. An oak tree was planted to replace it. A legend of

2619-550: Is used to describe the Scots language after 1700. A seminal study of Scots was undertaken by JAH Murray and published as Dialect of the Southern Counties of Scotland . Murray's results were given further publicity by being included in Alexander John Ellis 's book On Early English Pronunciation, Part V alongside results from Orkney and Shetland, as well as the whole of England. Murray and Ellis differed slightly on

2716-529: Is usually defined through the works of Robert John Gregg to include the counties of Down , Antrim , Londonderry and Donegal (especially in East Donegal and Inishowen ). More recently, the Fintona -born linguist Warren Maguire has argued that some of the criteria that Gregg used as distinctive of Ulster-Scots are common in south-west Tyrone and were found in other sites across Northern Ireland investigated by

2813-470: The National Trust of Scotland (NTS). Leith Hall is set in a 286-acre (1.16 km ) estate with scenic gardens. The north wing of the house was constructed in 1650, on the site of the earlier Peill Castle, by James Leith of New Leslie (see Castle Croft ). The east wing was added in 1756, and the south wing was built in 1797 by General Alexander Leith Hay . The west wing, containing the entrance front,

2910-470: The English Dialect Dictionary , edited by Joseph Wright . Wright had great difficulty in recruiting volunteers from Scotland, as many refused to cooperate with a venture that regarded Scots as a dialect of English, and he obtained enough help only through the assistance from a Professor Shearer in Scotland. Wright himself rejected the argument that Scots was a separate language, saying that this

3007-501: The Linguistic Survey of Scotland . Dialects of Scots include Insular Scots , Northern Scots , Central Scots , Southern Scots and Ulster Scots . It has been difficult to determine the number of speakers of Scots via census, because many respondents might interpret the question "Do you speak Scots?" in different ways. Campaigners for Scots pressed for this question to be included in the 2001 UK National Census . The results from

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3104-494: The Low Countries . Scots also includes loan words in the legal and administrative fields resulting from contact with Middle Irish , and reflected in early medieval legal documents. Contemporary Scottish Gaelic loans are mainly for geographical and cultural features, such as cèilidh , loch , whisky , glen and clan . Cumbric and Pictish , the medieval Brittonic languages of Northern England and Scotland, are

3201-706: The Protestant Church of Scotland adopted the 1611 Authorized King James Version of the Bible; subsequently, the Acts of Union 1707 led to Scotland joining England to form the Kingdom of Great Britain , having a single Parliament of Great Britain based in London. After the Union and the shift of political power to England, the use of Scots was discouraged by many in authority and education, as

3298-461: The Second World War . It has recently taken on the nature of wholesale language shift , sometimes also termed language change , convergence or merger . By the end of the twentieth century, Scots was at an advanced stage of language death over much of Lowland Scotland . Residual features of Scots are often regarded as slang. A 2010 Scottish Government study of "public attitudes towards

3395-579: The University of Aberdeen , and only included reared speakers (people raised speaking Scots), not those who had learned the language. Part of the difference resulted from the central question posed by surveys: "Do you speak Scots?". In the Aberdeen University study, the question was augmented with the further clause "... or a dialect of Scots such as Border etc.", which resulted in greater recognition from respondents. The GRO concluded that there simply

3492-612: The prestige dialect of most of eastern Scotland. By the sixteenth century, Middle Scots had established orthographic and literary norms largely independent of those developing in England. From 1610 to the 1690s during the Plantation of Ulster , some 200,000 Scots-speaking Lowlanders settled as colonists in Ulster in Ireland. In the core areas of Scots settlement, Scots outnumbered English settlers by five or six to one. The name Modern Scots

3589-544: The " Buchan Claik ". The old-fashioned Scotch , an English loan, occurs occasionally, especially in Ulster. The term Lallans , a variant of the Modern Scots word lawlands [ˈlo̜ːlən(d)z, ˈlɑːlənz] , is also used, though this is more often taken to mean the Lallans literary form . Scots in Ireland is known in official circles as Ulster-Scots ( Ulstèr-Scotch in revivalist Ulster-Scots) or "Ullans",

3686-671: The "hanging tree", is an English elm located in New York City, over 300 years old. Traitors are said to have been hanged at this location during the American Revolutionary War. Later, the Marquis de Lafayette is said to have witnessed the 'festive' hanging of 20 highwaymen here in 1824. In 1685 two Covenanters, Thomas Gordon and Alexander McCubbin , were hanged on an oak tree near Kirkpatrick Irongray in Dumfries and Galloway. The tree

3783-499: The 'Gallows Tree', the 'Justice Tree' and the 'Tree'. It is said that King Malcolm Canmore legislated in 1057 that every barony was to have a tree for hanging convicted men and a pit of water for the execution of convicted women. These baronies belonged to the same order as earls, and these earls and barons together formed the order of the three estaits of the Scots Parliament known as the baronage of Scotland. The barons sat in

3880-502: The 'King of the Thieves', was hanged on the orders of James V. Lynstock near Abernethy, Perth and Kinross . An ancient fir still stood in the 20th-century when it was thought to be over 300 years old. At a height of 12 feet from the ground it had a strong projecting bough, and it is said that it was from it that the noose cord or wuddie was hung. There were marks of graves at the foot of the tree, tradition says of two brothers, as stated by

3977-714: The 1960s. In The Ghosts in My Life and A Strange and Seeing Time, Byrd describes the paranormal occurrences she and her husband experienced while living here. The gardens and grounds are open to the public all year round. After several years' closure the Hall was re-opened by the NTS in 2013. Leith Hall was featured on the paranormal investigation show "Most Haunted" during their third series. The episode aired on Tuesday 28 October 2003 on Living TV. The house contains fine china, family portraits and tapestries and some interesting clocks. The hall

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4074-542: The Crowns in 1603, the Standard English of England came to have an increasing influence on the spelling of Scots through the increasing influence and availability of books printed in England. After the Acts of Union in 1707 the emerging Scottish form of Standard English replaced Scots for most formal writing in Scotland. The eighteenth-century Scots revival saw the introduction of a new literary language descended from

4171-449: The Kingdom of Great Britain, there is ample evidence that Scots was widely held to be an independent sister language forming a pluricentric diasystem with English. German linguist Heinz Kloss considered Modern Scots a Halbsprache ('half language') in terms of an abstand and ausbau languages framework, although today in Scotland most people's speech is somewhere on

4268-697: The Middle English of Northumbria due to twelfth- and thirteenth-century immigration of Scandinavian-influenced Middle English–speakers from the North and Midlands of England . Later influences on the development of Scots came from the Romance languages via ecclesiastical and legal Latin , Norman French , and later Parisian French , due to the Auld Alliance . Additionally, there were Dutch and Middle Low German influences due to trade with and immigration from

4365-560: The Philosopher's Stane , a Scots translation of the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone , was published by Matthew Fitt . The vowel system of Modern Scots: Vowel length is usually conditioned by the Scottish vowel length rule . The orthography of Early Scots had become more or less standardised by the middle to late sixteenth century. After the Union of

4462-547: The Scots Parliament until 1587, when they were relieved from attendance, which was burdensome and costly. The right of pit and gallows was removed in 1747 by the Heritable Jurisdictions (Scotland) Act 1746 , lesser powers continued to the twentieth century. Dule trees were also used by Highland chieftains, who would hang their enemies or any deserter, murderer, etc. from them. Highland clan chiefs also therefore had

4559-480: The Scots language was also featured. It was found that 1,508,540 people reported that they could speak Scots, with 2,444,659 reporting that they could speak, read, write or understand Scots, approximately 45% of Scotland's 2022 population. The Scottish Government set its first Scots Language Policy in 2015, in which it pledged to support its preservation and encourage respect, recognition and use of Scots. The Scottish Parliament website also offers some information on

4656-467: The Scots language" found that 64% of respondents (around 1,000 individuals in a representative sample of Scotland's adult population) "don't really think of Scots as a language", also finding "the most frequent speakers are least likely to agree that it is not a language (58%) and those never speaking Scots most likely to do so (72%)". Before the Treaty of Union 1707 , when Scotland and England joined to form

4753-573: The Scottish Executive recognises and respects Scots (in all its forms) as a distinct language, and does not consider the use of Scots to be an indication of poor competence in English. Evidence for its existence as a separate language lies in the extensive body of Scots literature, its independent – if somewhat fluid – orthographic conventions , and in its former use as the language of the original Parliament of Scotland . Because Scotland retained distinct political, legal, and religious systems after

4850-622: The Standard English cognate . This Written Scots drew not only on the vernacular, but also on the King James Bible , and was heavily influenced by the norms and conventions of Augustan English poetry . Consequently, this written Scots looked very similar to contemporary Standard English, suggesting a somewhat modified version of that, rather than a distinct speech form with a phonological system which had been developing independently for many centuries. This modern literary dialect, "Scots of

4947-497: The Union, many Scots terms passed into Scottish English. During the 2010s, increased interest was expressed in the language. The status of the language was raised in Scottish schools, with Scots being included in the new national school curriculum . Previously in Scotland's schools there had been little education taking place through the medium of Scots, although it may have been covered superficially in English lessons, which could entail reading some Scots literature and observing

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5044-680: The activities of those such as Thomas Sheridan , who in 1761 gave a series of lectures on English elocution . Charging a guinea at a time (about £200 in today's money ), they were attended by over 300 men, and he was made a freeman of the City of Edinburgh . Following this, some of the city's intellectuals formed the Select Society for Promoting the Reading and Speaking of the English Language in Scotland. These eighteenth-century activities would lead to

5141-519: The beginning of the fifteenth century, the English language used in Scotland had arguably become a distinct language, albeit one lacking a name which clearly distinguished it from all the other English variants and dialects spoken in Britain. From 1495, the term Scottis was increasingly used to refer to the Lowland vernacular and Erse , meaning "Irish", was used as a name for Gaelic. For example, towards

5238-521: The book" or Standard Scots, once again gave Scots an orthography of its own, lacking neither "authority nor author". This literary language used throughout Lowland Scotland and Ulster, embodied by writers such as Allan Ramsay, Robert Fergusson, Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, Charles Murray , David Herbison , James Orr, James Hogg and William Laidlaw among others, is well described in the 1921 Manual of Modern Scots . Other authors developed dialect writing, preferring to represent their own speech in

5335-557: The border between English and Scots dialects. Scots was studied alongside English and Scots Gaelic in the Linguistic Survey of Scotland at the University of Edinburgh , which began in 1949 and began to publish results in the 1970s. Also beginning in the 1970s, the Atlas Linguarum Europae studied the Scots language used at 15 sites in Scotland, each with its own dialect. From the mid-sixteenth century, written Scots

5432-403: The creation of Scottish Standard English . Scots remained the vernacular of many rural communities and the growing number of urban working-class Scots. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the use of Scots as a literary language was revived by several prominent Scotsmen such as Robert Burns . Such writers established a new cross-dialect literary norm. Scots terms were included in

5529-644: The dule tree. The author Joseph Train records however that at the last shire-mote ever held in Carrick by the Earl of Cassillis, the MacKillups of Craingenreach were hanged on the dule tree of Cassillis circa 1746, having murdered a neighbour and thrown his remains into "the common murder hole of the Bailiery at Craigenreach". Kilkerran House in South Ayrshire has a dule tree in its grounds. The ancient sycamore that stands in

5626-694: The early twentieth century, a renaissance in the use of Scots occurred, its most vocal figure being Hugh MacDiarmid whose benchmark poem " A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle " (1926) did much to demonstrate the power of Scots as a modern idiom. Other contemporaries were Douglas Young , John Buchan , Sydney Goodsir Smith , Robert Garioch , Edith Anne Robertson and Robert McLellan . The revival extended to verse and other literature. In 1955, three Ayrshire men – Sandy MacMillan, an English teacher at Ayr Academy ; Thomas Limond, noted town chamberlain of Ayr ; and A. L. "Ross" Taylor, rector of Cumnock Academy – collaborated to write Bairnsangs ("Child Songs"),

5723-411: The end of the fifteenth century, William Dunbar was using Erse to refer to Gaelic and, in the early sixteenth century, Gavin Douglas was using Scottis as a name for the Lowland vernacular. The Gaelic of Scotland is now usually called Scottish Gaelic . Northumbrian Old English had been established in what is now southeastern Scotland as far as the River Forth by the seventh century, as

5820-401: The fifteenth century, much literature based on the Royal Court in Edinburgh and the University of St Andrews was produced by writers such as Robert Henryson , William Dunbar , Gavin Douglas and David Lyndsay . The Complaynt of Scotland was an early printed work in Scots. The Eneados is a Middle Scots translation of Virgil 's Aeneid , completed by Gavin Douglas in 1513. After

5917-552: The fragile shell and prevent the much-weakened trunk from total collapse. Vigorous new growth is now establishing a new, smaller crown. Near the village of Logierait in Perthshire is the hollow ash tree of the Boat of Logierait, which, 63 feet in height and 40 in girth at 3 feet from the ground, is said to have been ` the dool tree of the district, on which caitiffs and robbers were formerly executed, and their bodies left hanging till they dropped and lay around unburied. ' An example may still exist at Bargany in South Ayrshire where

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6014-424: The hill and the hole where the post was placed still exists. A tree on the site was sometimes used. Unusually a hangman's house once stood near the spot. Place names are usually a fairly reliable source of information about past events and activities, as with names such as Gallowayford at Kennox House in North Ayrshire near Chapeltoun . It is known that a gallows was situated here; however, it cannot be proved that

6111-411: The introduction to Scotland of the feudal system in the 12th century, pre-feudal Celtic tenures were transformed into holding from the Crown, and a number of these were held directly or in chief of the Crown and were held in liberam baroniam (in free barony), with high justice (i.e., with pit and gallows). In Scotland, trees were often used as gallows. These dule trees were also known as the 'Grief Tree',

6208-425: The laird of Gilnockie, for a meeting in either Scotland or in England. Johnnie Armstrong commanded powerful forces and from the Scots border to Newcastle of England most estates were obliged to pay tribute to him. When Johnnie came into the King's presence, there was no trial, just a hanging of Johnnie and his men in the trees of Caerlanrig churchyard. The trees are said to have withered and died 'for shame' and that

6305-442: The language in Scots. In September 2024, experts of the Council of Europe called on the UK Government to "boost support for regional and minority languages", including the Scots Language. The serious use of the Scots language for news, encyclopaediae, documentaries, etc., remains rare. It is reportedly reserved for niches where it is deemed acceptable, e.g. comedy, Burns Night or traditions' representations. Since 2016,

6402-509: The language used in different situations. Such an approach would be inappropriate for a Census." Thus, although it was acknowledged that the "inclusion of such a Census question would undoubtedly raise the profile of Scots", no question about Scots was, in the end, included in the 2001 Census. The Scottish Government's Pupils in Scotland Census 2008 found that 306 pupils spoke Scots as their main home language. A Scottish Government study in 2010 found that 85% of around 1000 respondents (being

6499-416: The local dialect is known as Ulster Scots ), it is sometimes called: Lowland Scots , to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic , the Celtic language that was historically restricted to most of the Scottish Highlands , the Hebrides , and Galloway after the sixteenth century; or Broad Scots , to distinguish it from Scottish Standard English . Modern Scots is a sister language of Modern English , as

6596-571: The local dialect. Much of the material used was often Standard English disguised as Scots, which caused upset among proponents of Standard English and proponents of Scots alike. One example of the educational establishment's approach to Scots is, "Write a poem in Scots. (It is important not to be worried about spelling in this – write as you hear the sounds in your head.)", whereas guidelines for English require teaching pupils to be "writing fluently and legibly with accurate spelling and punctuation". A course in Scots language and culture delivered through

6693-415: The medium of Standard English and produced by the Open University (OU) in Scotland, the Open University's School of Languages and Applied Linguistics as well as Education Scotland became available online for the first time in December 2019. In the 2011 Scottish census , a question on Scots language ability was featured In the 2022 census conducted by the Scottish Government , a question in relation to

6790-420: The newspaper The National has regularly published articles in the language. The 2010s also saw an increasing number of English books translated in Scots and becoming widely available, particularly those in popular children's fiction series such as The Gruffalo , Harry Potter , Diary of a Wimpy Kid , and several by Roald Dahl and David Walliams . In 2021, the music streaming service Spotify created

6887-401: The old court Scots, but with an orthography that had abandoned some of the more distinctive old Scots spellings and adopted many standard English spellings. Despite the updated spelling, however, the rhymes make it clear that a Scots pronunciation was intended. These writings also introduced what came to be known as the apologetic apostrophe , generally occurring where a consonant exists in

6984-442: The old turnpike road, once the main thoroughfare to Aberdeen. There are also two nature trails, each about one and a half to two miles (3 km) long. The gardens also contain two ponds and a birdwatching site. In the context of ghostlore , one notable ghost associated with this castle is believed to be that of Laird John Leith III. He was shot in the head after reacting angrily to a fellow diner who accused him of adulterating

7081-451: The other. Scots is sometimes regarded as a variety of English, though it has its own distinct dialects; other scholars treat Scots as a distinct Germanic language, in the way that Norwegian is closely linked to but distinct from Danish . Native speakers sometimes refer to their vernacular as braid Scots (or "broad Scots" in English) or use a dialect name such as the " Doric " or

7178-558: The past (e.g. Corby or the former mining areas of Kent ). In the 2022 census conducted by the Scottish Government , it was found that 1,508,540 people reported that they could speak Scots, with 2,444,659 reporting that they could speak, read, write or understand Scots, approximately 45% of Scotland's 2022 population. Among the earliest Scots literature is John Barbour's Brus (fourteenth century), Wyntoun 's Cronykil and Blind Harry 's The Wallace (fifteenth century). From

7275-451: The power of 'life or death' over their clansmen in times gone by. The high ground on which these trees grew often became known as "gallows hills". It is not clear whether the moot hills (justice hills) were also the site of the gallows. Some of the place names suggest that they could have been, and many were certainly in a prominent position for the display of a corpse to warn others of the consequences of wrongdoing. Medieval song (sung in

7372-457: The region was part of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria . By the tenth century, Middle Irish was the language of the Scottish court , and the common use of Old English remained largely confined to this area until the thirteenth century. The succeeding variety of Northern Early Middle English spoken in southeastern Scotland is also known as Early Scots . It began to further diverge from

7469-413: The remainder had some degree of skill, such as understanding Scots (0.27 million, 5.2%) or being able to speak it but not read or write it (0.18 million, 3.5%). There were also small numbers of Scots speakers recorded in England and Wales on the 2011 Census, with the largest numbers being either in bordering areas (e.g. Carlisle ) or in areas that had recruited large numbers of Scottish workers in

7566-619: The reverend, Grant, and therefore the tree is sometimes called the "tree of the brothers." The Gallowshill across the main road from Rossdhu House, home of the chiefs of the Clan Colquhoun , marks the site of their "dule-tree." Tom Nan Croiche (Hill of the Gallows) lies above the village of Dalmally in Glenorchy, Argyll and Bute. A tree still marks the spot and it is recorded that the condemned men sometimes had to carry their own gibbet or gallows up

7663-478: The round) Paterson is taken by the idea that dule-trees were places where a clan met to bewail any misfortune that befell the community. He cites an example where the friends and adherents of David, first Earl of Cassilis , met at the Cassilis dule-tree to lament, for several days, his loss at the disastrous Battle of Flodden in 1513. Lawson also gives these details and states that the retainers used to assemble under

7760-616: The route to the Gallows Hill. Examples are recorded from Inverness and the Scottish Borders. A predecessor of such trees was the Roman furca , a device for punishing or hanging slaves. The binomial expression 'furca and fossa' refers to high justice , which included the capital penalty. The furca refers to the gallows for hanging men; the fossa ('pit') was a ditch for the drowning of women. Together, they were 'pit and gallows'. With

7857-422: The same has happened to any trees planted since. Johnnie is said to have shouted to James, "I have asked grace at a graceless face." This peremptory execution weakened rather than strengthened James's authority in the borders. These trees were often close to the residence of the lord or clan chief and one of the best known dule trees stands within the grounds of Leith Hall , near Huntly, Aberdeenshire . This tree,

7954-515: The seventeenth century, anglicisation increased. At the time, many of the oral ballads from the borders and the North East were written down. Writers of the period were Robert Sempill , Robert Sempill the younger , Francis Sempill , Lady Wardlaw and Lady Grizel Baillie . In the eighteenth century, writers such as Allan Ramsay , Robert Burns , James Orr , Robert Fergusson and Walter Scott continued to use Scots – Burns's " Auld Lang Syne "

8051-424: The shadow of Blairquhan Castle , near Straiton , South Ayrshire is thought to be a dule tree, planted early in the 16th century during the reign of King James V of Scotland. The moss-covered trunk has a girth of 5.6 metres (18 feet 4 inches), and is completely hollow, with only a very thin outer shell of sound wood supporting the tree. The once spreading crown was heavily pruned in 1997 in an effort to preserve

8148-614: The sound of a swinging corpse while standing beneath its boughs. The 1844 edition of the Ayrshire Wreath contains the story of the Dule Tree of Cassillis and its last victims. Scots language Scots is a language variety descended from Early Middle English in the West Germanic language family . Most commonly spoken in the Scottish Lowlands , the Northern Isles of Scotland , and northern Ulster in Ireland (where

8245-461: The suspected source of a small number of Scots words, such as lum (derived from Cumbric) meaning "chimney". From the thirteenth century, the Early Scots language spread further into Scotland via the burghs , which were proto-urban institutions first established by King David I . In fourteenth-century Scotland, the growth in prestige of Early Scots and the complementary decline of French made Scots

8342-448: The tree to make lamentation upon the death of their chief, implying it was an old custom and not a 'one off.' James V upon becoming king decided to restore order throughout the kingdom and its borders. With an army of 12,000 men he required all earls, lords, barons, freeholders, and gentlemen to meet at Edinburgh with a month's supplies, and then to proceed to Teviotdale and Annandale . James offered safe conduct to Johnnie Armstrong ,

8439-807: The twentieth-century biographer of James Boswell (1740–1795), described James's view of the use of Scots by his father Alexander Boswell (1706–1782) in the eighteenth century while serving as a judge of the Supreme Courts of Scotland : He scorned modern literature, spoke broad Scots from the bench, and even in writing took no pains to avoid the Scotticisms which most of his colleagues were coming to regard as vulgar. However, others did scorn Scots, such as Scottish Enlightenment intellectuals David Hume and Adam Smith , who went to great lengths to get rid of every Scotticism from their writings. Following such examples, many well-off Scots took to learning English through

8536-422: The two diverged from the same medieval form of English. Scots is recognised as an indigenous language of Scotland by the Scottish government, a regional or minority language of Europe, and a vulnerable language by UNESCO . In a Scottish census from 2022, over 1.5 million people in Scotland reported being able to speak Scots. Given that there are no universally accepted criteria for distinguishing

8633-585: The varieties of Scots are dialects of Scottish English or constitute a separate language in their own right. The UK government now accepts Scots as a regional language and has recognised it as such under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages . Notwithstanding the UK government's and the Scottish Executive's obligations under part II of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages,

8730-477: Was a "quite modern mistake". During the first half of the twentieth century, knowledge of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literary norms waned, and as of 2006 , there is no institutionalised standard literary form. By the 1940s, the Scottish Education Department 's language policy was that Scots had no value: "it is not the language of 'educated' people anywhere, and could not be described as

8827-549: Was added in 1868 to complete the courtyard. In 1745, Andrew Hay of Rannes hid at Leith Hall after the Battle of Culloden where he fought for Bonnie Prince Charlie , later escaping to France. During the First World War it became a temporary Red Cross hospital and housed over 500 patients. In 1945 the house and grounds were presented to the NTS. The writer Elizabeth Byrd rented 14 rooms with her second husband, Barrie Gaunt in

8924-428: Was an ash and stood in front of the castle; described as being one of the finest trees in the district. The last Mure of Auchendrane was arrested for non-payment of a small debt and the bailiff, out of compassion, offered to settle the debt in exchange for the dule tree. The Laird of Auchendrane replied that he would rather rot to death in the worst dungeon than sell the dule tree of Auchendrane. Another version of its fate

9021-652: Was increasingly influenced by the developing Standard English of Southern England due to developments in royal and political interactions with England. When William Flower , an English herald , spoke with Mary of Guise and her councillors in 1560, they first used the "Scottyshe toung" . As he found this hard to understand, they switched into her native French. King James VI , who in 1603 became James I of England , observed in his work Some Reulis and Cautelis to Be Observit and Eschewit in Scottis Poesie that "For albeit sindrie hes written of it in English, quhilk

9118-415: Was not enough linguistic self-awareness amongst the Scottish populace, with people still thinking of themselves as speaking badly pronounced, grammatically inferior English rather than Scots, for an accurate census to be taken. The GRO research concluded that "[a] more precise estimate of genuine Scots language ability would require a more in-depth interview survey and may involve asking various questions about

9215-432: Was the notion of "Scottishness" itself. Many leading Scots of the period, such as David Hume , defined themselves as Northern British rather than Scottish. They attempted to rid themselves of their Scots in a bid to establish standard English as the official language of the newly formed union. Nevertheless, Scots was still spoken across a wide range of domains until the end of the eighteenth century. Frederick Pottle ,

9312-491: Was translated into Scots by Rab Wilson and published in 2004. Alexander Hutchison has translated the poetry of Catullus into Scots, and in the 1980s, Liz Lochhead produced a Scots translation of Tartuffe by Molière . J. K. Annand translated poetry and fiction from German and Medieval Latin into Scots. The strip cartoons Oor Wullie and The Broons in the Sunday Post use some Scots. In 2018, Harry Potter and

9409-470: Was widespread in mediæval Europe. Weir of Hermiston , an unfinished novel by Robert Louis Stevenson , makes reference to a dule-tree. "The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral", a ghost story by M.R. James , tells what became of the wood of a dule tree in the fictional town of Barchester, the tree having been known as 'the Hanging Oak'. A Scottish ballad, "The Wronged Mason," tells of one Lambert Lamkin who

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