[7] On the
whole, the evidence of the place-names corroborates our view that the
changes were changes in civilization, and not in racial distribution.
We now proceed to indicate the method by which these changes were
effected, apart from any displacement of race. Our explanation finds a
parallel in the process which has changed the face of the Scottish
Highlands within the last hundred and fifty years, and which produced
very important results within the "sixty years" to which Sir Walter
Scott referred in the second title of _Waverley_.[8] There has been no
racial displacement; but the English language and English civilization
have gradually been superseding the ancient tongue and the ancient
customs of the Scottish Highlands. The difference between Skye and Fife
is that the influences which have been at work in the former for a
century and a half have been in operation in the latter for more than
eight hundred years.
What then were the influences which, between 1066 and 1300, produced in
the Scottish Lowlands some of the results that, between 1746 and 1800,
were achieved in the Scottish Highlands? That they included an infusion
of English blood we have no wish to deny. Anglo-Saxons, in considerable
numbers, penetrated northwards, and by the end of the thirteenth
century the Lowlanders were a much less pure race than, except in the
Lothians, they had been in the days of Malcolm Canmore.
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