The Gall.

I feel like we’ve talked about this before, also Wales and Pays de Galles. Did it start off about the Galicia I had never heard of?

ETA: Tangentially and distractedly a few times, seems to be the answer.
The post I was thinking of is https://languagehat.com/habsburg-languages/ where I was the only person to mention the gall
https://languagehat.com/old-dutch-in-an-irish-ms/ wanders round various Celtic demonyms
https://languagehat.com/clontarf-in-a-multilingual-world/ mentions Cogadh Gáedhel re Gallaibh

finn-gaill means Norseman, dub-gaill means Dane
finn “light” and dub “black” referring to their respective hair colours.

New things have been found out since 1911, of course!

But the current similarity between Gael and Gall – the words, anyway – is partly accidental, if earlier forms of Gael were more on the model of Gáedel/Goidel.

“Gaedheal” was deprecated in favour of “Gael” in the Caighdeáin Oifigiúil —Litriú na Gaeilge 13. II. (e)— published for the civil service in 1945. This reflected the fact that the -dh- was now silent in most dialects.

It never occurred to me that Goídel might be a Brythonic loan, though in retrospect the word does have an unIrish look about it. GPC agrees that this is likely too, I see.

Still less did I connect it with gŵydd “wild”, but then I am very woke. (Less yet with gŵydd “goose” …)

Tony Naden once tried to convince me that Kusaal Mɔɔg “Mossi kingdom” (with the corresponding words for the people and their language) represents the same etymon as mɔɔg “bush, back-country”, on the grounds that this began as a sort of pejorative ethnic group name, but he was certainly wrong. The tones are different (as serious a problem as the vowels being different in SAE) and it makes no sense in terms of local traditional power structures and ethnic-group-naming practices.

I wonder if being a Brythonic loanword accounts for the odd final /g/ of the Old Irish name of the language itself, Goídelg? I’ve wondered about that.

In British politics, both “Tory” and “Whig” appear to have originally emerged in the 17th century as pejorative exonyms

I recall not long ago some Tory commentator (or MP, perhaps) whining about how the evil pinko media were always referring to “Conservatives” as “Tories”, which he seemed to imagine was intended as a slur.

This wiki article claims (I don’t know how reliably) that the Irish combined the two similar words as “Gall Gaeil” (= goidelic foreigners) to refer to the descendants of unions between incoming Norsemen and local Goidelic ladies, who were supposedly a group of some importance in the West of Scotland (and subsequently in Ireland) once upon a time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallowglass

Gall Gaeil is literally and idiomatically translated Norse Gaels. Not all gallowglass were Norse Gaels or vice versa.

Gallowglass is from gall óglach, “foreign warrior”. óglach relates to óg “youth” as in Tír na nÓg “land of youth”. Óglaigh na hÉireann “warriors of Ireland” is the Irish name of both the legal Irish Defence Forces and the illegal IRA. Thus Irish-language non-IRA sources use the English initials to refer to the latter.

On meaning e), the Hebrides are still sometimes Innse Gall, the islands of the (presumably Norse) foreigners, so I think that’s where that one is coming from, rather than any overlap with Gaels.

The full verse of the eDil quote is:

Ó Ghothfruigh ó hÁmhlaibh Fhinn,
a ghallmhaoir ó thuinn go tuinn,
fleasga donna a ndiaidh an Ghoill,
do chloinn Bhriain is Cholla is Chuinn.

Descendant of Gofraidh, descendant of Amhlaibh Fionn,
his Gall stewards from sea to sea;
following the Gall are stout youths;
of the progeny of Brian and Colla and Conn.

where the first two names are Norse – Amhlaibh, which mostly turns up as the end of MacAulay these days, is the Gaelic form of Olaf.

The war between the Gael and the Gall

This reminded me of a similar name in a completely different context: as I recall, the story goes – I think I’ve probably read it in Hellenisteukontos? [oh, here it is] – that some Byzantine historian (presumably in the 14th or 15th century) supposedly referred to the Hundred Years’ War as a war between the Celts and the Gauls.

Never found a citation for that outside Hellenisteukontos (and I don’t even recall if he said which historian that was [he didn’t, as it turns out]), but I always found it to be one of those stories that should have been invented even if they weren’t true.

I have nothing to add. I just marvel at the wide erudition and illuminating anecdote that arrives so quickly at the Hattery.

Asking for a friend: has the Hattery ever considered Amlóði / Amleth / Amhlaoibh /usw via Saxo Grammaticus etc? [I know absolutely nothing about this, but it seems interesting. I think I should be told…]

Here’s WP s.v. Tories (British political party):

As a political term, Tory was an insult (derived from the Middle Irish word tóraidhe, modern Irish tóraí ‘outlaw, robber’, from the Irish word tóir ‘pursuit’ since outlaws were “pursued men”) that entered English politics during the Exclusion Bill crisis of 1678–1681. Whig (from whiggamore ‘cattle driver’ was initially a Scottish insult for the Covenanter faction in Scotland who opposed the Engagers (a faction who supported Charles I during the Second English Civil War) and supported the Whiggamore Raid that took place in September 1648. While the Whigs were those who supported the exclusion of James, the Duke of York from the succession to thrones of Scotland and England and Ireland (the Petitioners), the Tories were those who opposed the Exclusion Bill (the Abhorrers).

In 1757, David Hume wrote:

The court party reproached their antagonists with their affinity to the fanatical conventiclers in Scotland, who were known by the name of Whigs: The country party found a resemblance between the courtiers and the popish banditti in Ireland, to whom the appellation of Tory was affixed. And after this manner, these foolish terms of reproach came into public and general use; and even at present seem not nearer their end than when they were first invented.

[…]

[…] a northern Dissenter called Oliver Heywood recorded in October [1681]: “Ms. [i.e. Mistress] H. of Chesterfield told me a gentleman was at their house and had a red Ribband in his hat, she askt him what it meant, he said it signifyed that he was a Tory, whats that sd she, he ans. an Irish Rebel, — oh dreadful that any in England dare espouse that interest. I hear further since that this is the distinction they make instead of Cavalier and Roundhead, now they are called Torys and Wiggs”.

And s.v. Tories (British political party):

The term Whig began as a short form of whiggamore, a term originally used by people in the north of England to refer to cattle drivers from western Scotland who came to Leith to buy corn (the Scottish cattle drivers would call out “Chuig” or “Chuig an bothar”—meaning “away” or “to the road”—this sounded to the English like “Whig”, and they came to use the word “Whig” or “Whiggamore” derisively to refer to these people). During the English Civil Wars, when Charles I reigned, the term “Whig” was picked up and used by the English to refer derisively to a radical faction of the Scottish Covenanters who called themselves the Kirk Party (see the Whiggamore Raid). It was later applied to Scottish Presbyterian rebels who were against the king’s Episcopalian order in Scotland.

So both names are of Goedelic origin.

Jack, I think the nasal mh in Amhlaoibh reflects the unwritten nasal in Olaf, cf. OE Anlaf.

thanks to John Cowan re Horvendile, E\”arendil & Cie, and Hamlet’s playing the dunce.

https://languagehat.com/multiocular-o/

Descendant of Gofraidh, descendant of Amhlaibh Fionn,
his Gall stewards from sea to sea;
following the Gall are stout youths;
of the progeny of Brian and Colla and Conn.

It’s been argued (convincingly, at least to me) that the Norse settlement of the Western Isles and the Scottish west coast was an Irish settlement with a Norse superstrate. When the political and economic ties to Norway withered away, so did the norseness of the leading families, and what emerged was Gaelic Scotland.

Yes. Except that in Scotland the Gaelic settlers came in in the same wave as the Norse. What was left of the existing Pictish and/or Brythonic population also ended up as Gaelic speakers.

Judging from DNA evidence, Orkney and Shetland weren’t that different, but the ties with Norway were stronger and lasted longer, and the ties with Ireland presumably weaker. Faroes and Iceland too, but without much preexisting population.

Something unusual certainly went on in Lewis, which is (off the top of my head) the only part of the western highlands with a significant number of inland Norse placenames, -bhat for loch names, in particular, rather than Norse names for things which could be named from the sea. I don’t know whether the rest of the outer isles had a different experience, or just have too little inland for the difference to show!

But Gaelic Dal Riata – Argyll and Antrim and the inner isles – would seem to predate the Norse wanderings?

Jen: But Gaelic Dal Riata – Argyll and Antrim and the inner isles – would seem to predate the Norse wanderings?

Yes, probably. I don’t have the chronology too clear. A better claim may be that the Norse hijacked an Irish expansion.

Something unusual certainly went on in Lewis, which is (off the top of my head) the only part of the western highlands with a significant number of inland Norse placenames, -bhat for loch names, in particular, rather than Norse names for things which could be named from the sea.

I think it’s interesting that the Norse presence was strong enough to leave Norse placenames but not the language itself. But I don’t know what it means.

I do have more to say about this – not necessarily intelligent things – but I have covid and I’m sleepy, and if the conversation runs away from me overnight you’ll just have to let me jump back 🙂

Yes, get well soon!