Language of My Mother’s Kin

I have never spoken the language

Of my mother’s kin, never had the poetic

Verse roll of my tongue, as the lyrical

Language of the bard was

Taken

Exterminated

Suppressed

Condemned

After the Jacobite’s Cath-Catha failed

To overthrow the English crown.

There was no Ossian to

Lament the stolen voice as

Battle weary men had no choice

But to join the lines of emigration

To travel far and to continue

Their heritage, culture and tradition.

The voice of the Gaels would

Not be tolerated by landowners

Of the Lowlands, whole stole lands

And benefitted by grazing sheep,

As the children of Highland warriors would weep

While taking memories of the land that

Their forefathers could no longer keep.

With families evicted

Communities separated

The language was eradicated, prohibited,

Outlawed by the Statutes of Iona

By Bishop Knox who attacked the

Gaelic culture of St Columba’s Church,

And that the language to educate and celebrate

Would not be the Gaelic, but English.

And this has stayed firm for 500 years.

 

Eradication has been in fruition

Since the battle was lost at Culloden.

 

I have never spoken the language of my mother’s kin.