Such measures,
and the introduction of sheep-farming, had, within sixty years, changed
the whole face of the Highlands.
Another century has been added to Sir Walter's _Sixty Years Since_, and
it may be argued that all the resources of modern civilisation have
failed to accomplish, in that period, what the descendants of Malcolm
Canmore effected in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This is true
as far as language is concerned, but only with regard to language. The
Highlanders have not forgotten the Gaelic tongue as the Lowlanders had
forgotten it by the outbreak of the War of Independence.[100] Various
facts account for this. One of the features of recent days is an
antiquarian revival, which has tended to preserve for Highland children
the great intellectual advantage of a bi-lingual education. The very
severance of the bond between chieftain and clan has helped to
perpetuate the ancient language, for the people no longer adopt the
speech of their chief, as, in earlier days, the Celt of Moray or of Fife
adopted the tongue spoken by his Anglo-Norman lord, or learned by the
great men of his own race at the court of David or of William the Lion.
The Bible has been translated into Gaelic, and Gaelic has become the
language of Highland religion. In the Lowlands of the twelfth century,
the whole influence of the Church was directed to the extermination of
the Culdee religion, associated with the Celtic language and with Celtic
civilization.
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