The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

190 THE HIGHLANDERS [part ii
CHAPTER II.
I. The Gallgael.
When the Norse Sagas and Irish Annals first throw their
steady though faint hght upon the history of the
•
,•• ,
i
north oi Scotland, we can distinctly trace, in the
The Gallgael. ,r,-, i
restless warfare at that period excited by the incessant incur-
sions of the northern pirates, the frequent appearance of a
people termed by the Irish annalists the Gallgael,
or Gaelic
pirates. The northern pirates were at that time known to
the Irish writers by the name of Fingall and Dugall, the
former being applied to the Norwegians, the latter to the
Danes. The word Gall, originally signifying a stranger, came
to be applied to every pirate, and we find a strong distinction
invariably implied between the white and the black Galls,
and those to whom they added the name of Gael, or Gaelic
Galls. The latter people are first mentioned in the Irish
Annals in the year 855, when we find them assisting the Irish
against the Norwegians ; and in the following year they again
appear under their leader, Caittil fin, or the white, at war with
the Norwegian pirate kings of Dublin. In 1034, Tighernac
mentions the death of Suibne, the son of Kenneth, king of the
Gallgael ; and
in 1 1 54 we find mention made of an expedition
the
"
Gallgael of .-^rran, Kintyre, Man, and the
to Ireland by
Cantair Alban." This last passage proves that the Gallgael
were the inhabitants of the Isles and of Argyll, the expression
Cantair Alban being equivalent to the Oirir Alban or Oirir
Gael of other writers, and to the Ergadia of the Scottish
historians ; and as Arefrodi, the oldest Norse writer which we
possess, mentions the occupation of the Western Isles, on the
departure of Harold Harfagr, by Vikingr Skotar, a term which
is an exact translation of the appellation Gallgael, it seems
clear that the Gallgael must have possessed the Isles as well