Gaelic (Gaeltacht / Gàidhealtachd)

This post explores the languages that our ancestors spoke in addition to English. It stems from a February conversation when my son Ethan asked if our Irish ancestors spoke Irish in the US.  I did not know the answer to his question so I reached out to my other relatives for their collective memory on this topic and I also did some internet research. Spoiler alert: answer is yes. 

Essentially all the ancestors on my dad's side of the family trace back to Ireland and Scotland. The languages spoken there in 1800 are shown in the opening image. The figure comes from a really interesting study that shows the evolution of languages in the UK/Ireland from 400 to 2000 CE.  The languages we are concerned about are Irish Gaelic (Irish) and Scottish Gaelic.  These are both Celtic languages (Figure 1) and differ considerably from English which is a Germanic language. 

Figure 1. Language tree for the Celtic languages showing the origins of Irish and Scottish Gaelic.

If like me you are curious about the differences between Irish and Scottish Gaelic then this discussion might help:

"Both languages take their origin from the language of the Gaels. The Gaels are a people who settled in Ireland from mainland Europe. After settling in Ireland they later moved to Scotland and the Isle of Man.... The languages of the Gaels changed as they moved east from Ireland in the 6^th and 7^th century.... There are some disputes as to whether or not Irish and Scottish Gaelic are different languages or if they are simply different dialects of the same language. The distinction between a language and a dialect is typically drawn at the point when speakers can no longer understand each other. The general consensus however is that Irish Gaelic and Scottish Gaelic have enough differences to be considered a different language."

 One other interesting piece of trivia about the two language has to do with the accent marks.  Whereas French uses both acute and grave accents, Irish uses only acute accents and Scottish Gaelic uses only grave accents. Thus, in Irish cow is bó and in Scottish Gaelic cow is bò. 

With this context in mind we return to our Irish ancestors.  My Uncle Brian recalled a direct piece of evidence that Irish was spoken in the US:  "I distinctly recall my Mother [Anne Treacy Fenlon] saying that Clara [Fenlon] and Marcella [Fenlon Dirnhofer] didn't realize how sick their mother (Lizzie Kilcoyne Fenlon) was until they realized she was speaking in Gaelic. She died shorty thereafter"  on 24 Mar 1948.  

Brian and Uncle John confirmed that the Fenlon, Treacy, and Hayes ancestors seemed to only speak English.  According to Wikipedia and Uncle Tim, this makes perfect sense based upon which regions of Ireland that these ancestors immigrated from. As shown in Figure 2, the Fenlon, Treacy, and Hayes ancestors were from Eastern or Central Ireland and those regions had a very low percentage of Irish speakers, whereas Lizzie's parents Patrick Kilcoyne and Barbara Coyne came from counties in Western Ireland that had a high percentage of Gaeltacht. 

Figure 2. Ghaeltacht regions of Ireland in 1926 and the hometowns of our five Irish immigrant ancestors.

Lizzie is shown in Figure 3. She was born and died in Marcellus. The working hypothesis is that her immigrant parents Patrick and Barbara (who met in Marcellus) spoke some Gaelic at home,  enough that their children learned it. With respect to Lizzie reverting to speaking Irish when she was gravely ill, my Aunt Janet was not surprised by this as she noted to me, "I have experienced occasions where friends of mine have reverted to their native language almost involuntarily, a neighbor of mine who fell and was in a nursing home for rehab and spoke Dutch to me when I went to visit, and a friend in graduate school (originally from Switzerland) who started speaking only French one night when we were studying at a late hour."

Figure 2. Elizabeth Frances (Kilcoyne) Fenlon (1878-1948) c. 1940 at the Falls Road homestead. 

Turning now to our Scottish ancestors who came to the US via Canada.  Aunt Janet emailed to tell me, "I am fairly certain that Janet MacDonell knew and spoke Scottish Gaelic growing up in Glengarry County, Ontario.  Gaelic was spoken in that county."  Again, internet research confirms this as shown in Figure 4 which is adapted from Gaelic in Canada: New Evidence from an Old Census by Jonathan Dembling.

Figure 4. Scottish Gaelic speaking areas of Canada according to the 1901 census. One of the hot spots was Glengarry County, Ontario where Jennie MacDonell Treacy was born and raised. She is shown here with her parents, Hugh and Mary MacDonell. 

Thanks for reading about our family history.  Please send me questions or ideas for future blog posts. 

(Ed Fenlon, 23 Nov 2020)