I haven’t read Davies, so I’m treading on thin ice here, but I think it unlikely that any Scottish government would have encouraged large-scale English immigration into Scotland – even of refugees or skilled farmers

The Normans seem a likelier vector for the introduction of English to Scotland, since they were few in number, skilled fighters, and hated by the northern English – a combination that would have made them welcome in Scotland

A Scottish/Norman alliance with English as “lingua franca” would have been very likely in these circumstances

But Jim, thanks for the reference to Davies – I will look it up some time.

Agreed, the Reformation helped consolidate the use of Old Scots, but according to what I have read, OLd Scots was already virtually universal in the Lowlands before the Reformation. Gaelic stayed dominant in the Highlands until at least the C18.

I suspect that Scottish historians feel a certain embarrassment about the subject. Scottish national identity has been constructed, ever since the 14th century, largely in terms of opposition to England, so it may be difficult to face the possibility that immigration from England was a major factor in building the ‘nation’.

This doesn’t invalidate the military technology argument; I would imagine they are complementary. Medieval military technology required a lot of agricultural productivity to support it, after all.

Finally, it’s hard to talk about the triumph of modern English over old Scots without mentioning the role of the Reformation and the Church of Scotland’s decision to adopt a standard English Bible rather than commissioning a Scots translation. I suspect that was perhaps the deciding factor in the end.

French was the language of government and diplomacy,

English of trade and commerce,

Italian of art, music and literature,

Latin of the church,

While German was the language of the peasantry and soldiery

I’m working on the idea that the frankish-military / romance-commoner / latin-priesthood three way split continued throughout European history, and that when the (still-military) aristocracy became educated in the early modern age it represented, among other things, the rise of the military/secular principle above the old priestly principle. Most of the early modern writers (Rabelais, Montaigne, Cervantes) had a lot to say about military strategy and discipline (and many were veterans), and political absolutism seens to have been preceded by Maurice of Nassau’s military rationalization (later on, Gustavus Adolphus).

The secular, military aristocracy in medieval Christianity was really borderline Christian. The idea was that they would continue to sin but be forgiven because they gave support to the churchmen who were the only real Christians.

The word gentil/gentle/gentile means either “noble” or “heathen” (but NOT “gentle” in our sense). Don Quixote: “morir como gentil, y no christiano”: “to die as a heathen, and not a Christian” — i.e. to die unconfessed.

In Shapin’s “Social History of Truth” early science is shown to have grounded itself on aristocratic codes of truth-telling which are ultimately military in origin — “my word is my bond”, etc.

We’re forgetting the enormous prestige of the Roman Empire, even as it collapsed

These illiterate German chieftans were desperate to be seen as the heirs of Rome, not as its destroyers. So we can expect that they would have deliberately favored latin/gallic cultural forms over those of their ancestors

Intermarriage with old noble Roman families was also an objective: very soon these “Franks” were calling themselves “Romans” and claiming descent from Alexander, Caesar and Augustus…

So I think the French gauls could have had such sounds themselves far before the Franks came.

From http://www.alsintl.com/languages/french1.htm:

“The invasion of Gaul in the 400’s AD by Germanic tribes (including the so-called “Franks”) fleeing nomadic attackers from central Asia resulted in a loss of military control by Rome and led to the establishment in of a new, Frankish ruling class whose mother tongue was, of course, not Latin. Their adaptation to the speaking of popular Latin by the indigenous population tended to impose, by authoritative example, a pronunciation that retained a marked Germanic flavor – notably in the vowel sounds that can still be heard in the French of the present day (the modern French “u” and “eu”, for instance, remain very close to the modern German “ü” and “ö”– sounds unknown to any other modern language descended from Latin).”

Incidentally, the name for the 1200 AD dialect which eventually became “French” is “francien”. It is distinguished from frankish and from various other important dialects such as picard or norman French.

I remember reading a book on this subject that argued the opposite: that the kings of Scotland welcomed Norman (not Saxon) adventurers from England as immigrants because they brought with them technological and military skills which the Scots of the time didn’t possess: crossbows and siege engines, superior stonemasonry and armour, mastery of heavy cavalry

Naturally, many native Scottish nobles disliked this policy, and eventually rebelled against their king. He, with the aid of his new Norman subjects, suppressed the dissidents and awarded their lands to the newcomers.

The result of this was a Celtic-Norman aristocracy that was the military equal of that of England, which enabled the Scots (unlike the Welsh and Irish) to resist English expansion over the succeeding centuries.

If by the time that this happened (about 100 years after the Conquest), the Normans were speaking English as their primary language, it would account to a great degree for the early establishment of English in Scotland.