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The Palgrave Handbook
of Minority Languages and
Communities
Edited by
Gabrielle Hogan-Brun
Bernadette O’Rourke
The Palgrave Handbook of Minority Languages and
Communities
“This Handbook is, quite simply, a tour de force. Offering far greater breadth, depth
and analytical heft than ever before, the handbook extends the fields of minority
language studies and multilingualism conceptually, disciplinarily, geographically, and
pragmatically. It is sure to be a key reference for years to come.”
—Stephen May, University of Auckland, New Zealand
“This truly informative and expert Handbook offers detailed accounts of the history
and contemporary context of minority language communities on every continent.
The overall effect is a stunning testament to the resilience of minority language policy
actors and community identities in the face of migration, mobility and globalizing
forces in every corner of our world.”
—Nancy H. Hornberger, University of Pennsylvania, USA
“This is an outstanding collection of perspectives, analyses and views of the dynamic

role of minority languages in the public life of communities all across the world. The
Handbook makes a signal contribution to practical understanding and intervention
in legal, educational and policy fields. Expertly edited to produce coherence of focus
and consistency of treatment, the Handbook as a whole and its individual chapters
provide excellent coverage of a diverse range of settings across the world. It is clear
from reading the volume that our ‘science’ of multilingual studies has been premised
on too few cases, too few histories, and too narrow a range of experience. The
Handbook is a consolidated resource that rewards regular reading and deep study.”
—Joseph Lo Bianco, University of Melbourne, Australia
Editors
The Palgrave
Handbook of Minority
Languages and
Communities
Editors
Gabrielle Hogan-Brun Bernadette O’Rourke
School of Education Department of Languages and Intercultural
University of Bristol Studies
Bristol, UK Heriot-Watt University
Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
ISBN 978-1-137-54065-2 ISBN 978-1-137-54066-9 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54066-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018953783
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Macmillan Publishers Ltd., part of
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the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the
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now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does
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The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are
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This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Limited
The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom
Acknowledgements
This Handbook could not have been written without the efforts and dedica-
tion of a considerable number of people. First and foremost, our thanks go to
each of the contributors. From our initial invitation to the production of their
final chapter, their responses have been marked by courtesy, timeliness, and
commitment. With their deep knowledge of international law, policy studies,
sociology, anthropology, education, and sociolinguistics, they have contrib-
uted to a rich volume in this diffuse field of study. The reviewers of each
chapter are the unsung heroes. Here at least we are able to publicly thank
them for their detailed comments on the initial drafts. We would also like to
acknowledge the speakers of minority languages and the challenges they face
around the planet. The themes explored in this Handbook reflect their lived
realities.
The Handbook has grown from the book series Palgrave Studies in Minority
Languages and Communities. Many thanks go to the people at Palgrave
Macmillan for their long-standing support: Cathy Scott, Beth Farrow, Judith
Allan, Chloe Fitzsimmons, Libby Forrest, Olivia Middleton, Rebecca
Brennan, Esme Chapman, and Jill Lake who took on the series well over a
decade ago.
Finally, we are indebted to Bill Dale and Terry Jones for their careful proof-
reading of parts of the script and to John Hogan for his generous support
throughout.
v
Contents
1 Introduction: Minority Languages and Communities in a

Changing World 1
Gabrielle Hogan-Brun and Bernadette O’Rourke
Part I Minority Language Rights, Protection, Governance 19
2 Minority Language Rights and Standards: Definitions and

Applications at the Supranational Level 21
Fernand de Varennes and Elżbieta Kuzborska
3 Minority Language Rights in the Russian Federation: The End

of a Long Tradition? 73
Bill Bowring
4 Minority Language Governance and Regulation101

Colin H. Williams and John Walsh
Part II Recognition, Self-Determination, Autonomy 131
5 The Recognition of Ethnic and Language Diversity in Nation-

States and Consociations133
Christian Giordano
vii
viii Contents
6 Linguistic Recognition in Deeply Divided Societies:

Antagonism or Reconciliation?159
Philip McDermott and Máiréad Nic Craith
7 National Cultural Autonomy and Linguistic Rights in Central

and Eastern Europe181
Federica Prina, David J. Smith, and Judit Molnar Sansum
8 Sign Language Communities207

Maartje De Meulder, Verena Krausneker, Graham Turner, and John
Bosco Conama
Part III Migration, Settlement, Mobility 233
9 Changing Perspectives on Language Maintenance and Shift in

Transnational Settings: From Settlement to Mobility235
Anne Pauwels
10 Arctic Languages in Canada in the Age of Globalization257

Donna Patrick
Part IV Economics, Markets, Commodification 285
11 Minority Languages and Markets287

Sari Pietikäinen, Helen Kelly-Holmes, and Maria Rieder
12 Language Economics and Issues of Planning for Minority

Languages in Africa311
Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu
13 Language Minorities in a Globalized Economy: The Case of

Professional Translation in Canada333
Matthieu LeBlanc
Contents ix
Part V Education, Literacy, Access 355
14 Indigenous Children’s Language Practices in Australia357

Samantha Disbray and Gillian Wigglesworth
15 Minorities, Languages, Education, and Assimilation in

Southeast Asia383
Peter Sercombe
16 Literacy in My Language? Principles, Practices, Prospects405

Clinton Robinson
Part VI Media, Public Usage, Visibility 431
17 Minority Language Media: Issues of Power, Finance and

Organization433
Tom Moring
18 Minority Languages and Social Media451

Daniel Cunliffe
19 Linguistic Landscapes and Minority Languages481

Durk Gorter, Heiko F. Marten, and Luk Van Mensel
Part VII Endangerment, Ecosystems, Resilience 507
20 Resilience for Minority Languages509

David Bradley
21 Minority Contact Languages, Small Islands, and Linguistic

Ecology531
Joshua Nash
x Contents
22 The Yiddish Conundrum: A Cautionary Tale for Language

Revivalism553
Dovid Katz
Index589
Notes on Contributors
Bill Bowring is Professor at Birkbeck College, London, where he has been teaching
International Law and Human Rights since 2006. He is also a practising barrister. He
has represented applicants at the European Court of Human Rights since 1992,
against Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union. He has more than 100
publications including two monographs, the most recent of which is Law, Rights and
Ideology in Russia: Landmarks in the Destiny of a Great Power (2013).
David Bradley is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at La Trobe University, Australia,
and President of the UNESCO Comité International Permanent des Linguistes. His
articles have appeared widely on sociolinguistics and historical linguistics within the
Tibeto-Burman group, notably two dictionaries, three books of texts, and a forth-
coming grammar of Lisu. His new book Language Endangerment summarizes many
years of theoretical and practical research on language endangerment and language
reclamation.
John Bosco Conama is Director of the Centre for Deaf Studies at Trinity College in
Dublin, Ireland. His doctorate focused on equality issues affecting Deaf communi-
ties. His research interests focus on how equality and social policy issues affect Irish
and international Deaf communities. He teaches Deaf studies-related modules. He is
also on the World Federation of the Deaf ’s Expert Group on Sign Language and Deaf
Studies.
Daniel Cunliffe is Reader in the Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Science at
the University of South Wales. He is a member of the Welsh Government’s Welsh-
Language Technology Board. Since 2001, his research has applied insights and meth-
ods from fields such as computer-mediated communication, human-computer
interaction, and user experience design to the study of minority language use in
information and communications technology.
xi
xii Notes on Contributors
Maartje De Meulder is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the research group on multilin-

gualism of the University of Namur, Belgium. Her research interests are in sign lan-
guage planning and policy and multilingualism. Her articles have appeared in
Language Policy, Human Rights Quarterly, and Language Problems and Language
Planning, and she has co-edited a volume on Innovations in Deaf Studies. Her most
recent research has focused on ‘new signers’ and the vitality of sign languages.
Fernand de Varennes is United Nations Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues,
Extraordinary Professor at the Faculty of Law at the University of Pretoria, and Cheng
Yu Tung Visiting Professor at the University of Hong Kong. Renowned as one of the
world’s leading experts on the human and language rights of minorities, de Varennes
has some 200 publications in 30 languages on these issues, as well as on the preven-
tion of ethnic conflicts and the rights of Indigenous peoples.
Samantha Disbray is a Research Fellow at the Australian National University,
Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Languages in Canberra. She has extensively
researched Australian Indigenous languages, child language development, and
Indigenous languages in education, including the Northern Territory Bilingual
Education Program.
Christian Giordano is Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology, University of
Fribourg, Switzerland, Doctor Honoris Causa University of Timisoara (Romania),
and Ilia University Tbilisi (Georgia). Guest professorships include the University of
Bucharest, Murcia, Bydgoszcz, University Sains Malaysia at Penang, Kuala Lumpur,
University of Malaya, Asia-Europe Institute. Research cooperation has been with the
School of Slavonic and East European Studies and University College London. His
main fields of expertise include political anthropology, ethnocultural diversity, net-
work analysis, and informality.
Durk Gorter is Ikerbasque Research Professor at the University of the Basque
Country, UPV/EHU in Donostia-San Sebastian. He is leader of the Donostia
Research Group on Education and Multilingualism (DREAM) and editor of
Language, Culture and Curriculum. His research focuses on multilingual education,
linguistic landscapes, and comparative studies of European minority languages.
Gabrielle Hogan-Brun is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Bristol, the
UK. Her main research interests are language policy and practices in multilingual
settings and the economics of multilingualism. Among her publications are Minority
Languages in Europe: Frameworks – Status – Prospects (ed. with S. Wolff, 2003) and
Linguanomics: What is the Market Potential of Multilingualism? (2017). A Salzburg
Global Fellow, she has worked with various European organizations on aspects of
language policy. She is Founding Editor of the book series Palgrave Studies in Minority
Languages and Communities.
Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu is Professor of Linguistics at Howard University,
Washington, DC. He is Co-Editor of Current Issues in Language Planning; author of
The Language Planning Situation in South Africa (2004); author of Language Policy
Notes on Contributors xiii
and Economics: The Language Question in Africa (Palgrave, 2016); and author of
numerous articles on language planning and policy, multilingualism, code switching,
World Englishes, and African linguistics. His articles have appeared in Chicago
Linguistic Society, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, Multilingua,
World Englishes, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, Language
Problems and Language Planning, and Applied Linguistics.
Dovid Katz is Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies,
Faculty of Creative Industries, at Vilnius Gediminas Technical University (VGTU),
Vilnius, Lithuania. His articles have appeared extensively in the fields of Yiddish
linguistics and literature, Lithuanian Jewish culture, and East European Holocaust
studies (and current debates). He is editor of DefendingHistory.com and is preparing
his Yiddish Cultural Dictionary.
Helen Kelly-Holmes is Professor of Applied Languages in the School of Modern
Languages and Applied Linguistics and also Director of the Centre for Applied
Language Studies at the University of Limerick, Ireland. Her research concerns socio-
linguistics, and she focuses on the interrelationship between media and language and
on the economic aspects of multilingualism with a particular interest in minority
languages and the global political economy of English. Kelly-Holmes is Co-Editor of
Language Policy and of Palgrave’s Language and Globalization series. Kelly-Holmes is
also Adjunct Professor in Discourse Studies at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland.
Verena Krausneker is a Sociolinguist at the University of Vienna, Austria, where she
has been a lecturer and researcher since 2002. Her main research focus is on language
policies and sign language rights, especially in Deaf education. From 2001 to 2007
she served as board member of the Austrian Deaf Association. From 2009 to 2015
she served the World Federation of the Deaf as an expert. Her latest research project
produced an overview of bimodal bilingual education in Europe: www.univie.ac.at/
map-designbilingual.
Elżbieta Kuzborska is a Human Rights Expert on minorities. She was senior
minorities fellow at the Office of UN High Commission for Human Rights in
Geneva in 2014 and has collaborated as a legal advisor and trainer on human and
minority rights issues with various NGOs, including the European Foundation of
Human Rights. She has also been a Law Lecturer at the University of Białystok in
Vilnius, the sole foreign university in Lithuania teaching in Polish. She is a board
member of the Association of Polish Academics in Lithuania, as well as a member of
the Association of Polish Lawyers in Lithuania.
Matthieu LeBlanc is Full Professor in the Department of Translation and Modern
Languages and Associate Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the
Université de Moncton in New Brunswick, Canada. A former professional translator,
he holds a PhD in sociolinguistics. His research focuses on the translator’s status and
translation practices in an increasingly automated working environment, as well as
on language policies and the role of translation in bilingual settings.
xiv Notes on Contributors
Heiko F. Marten is Director of the DAAD Information Centre for the Baltic States
in Riga. He holds a PhD from FU Berlin and has worked as Lecturer and Researcher
in German Studies and Applied Linguistics at Tallinn University, Rēzekne Academy
of Technologies, and University of Latvia. His research fields include language policy,
linguistic landscapes, multilingualism in the Baltic states, and motivation and prac-
tices in language learning.
Philip McDermott is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Ulster University, Northern
Ireland. His research focuses on cultural and linguistic diversity and its implications
for policy. McDermott has received research funding from sources such as the British
Academy, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and the Department for
International Development. From 2015 to 2016, he held a prestigious Charlemont
Scholarship from the Royal Irish Academy. He has conducted work relating to cul-
tural diversity and minorities for external bodies such as the European Commission
and the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural heritage in Washington, DC.
Tom Moring (Dr Pol. Sc.) is Professor Emeritus in Communication and Journalism
at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He has worked as a journalist, radio director,
and Chair of the Board of a Swedish newspaper publisher in Finland. Moring has also
served as part-time Professor at the Sámi University of Applied Sciences and as an
expert for the OSCE and the Council of Europe. His articles have appeared widely
on linguistic minorities and the media.
Joshua Nash is Associate Professor at Aarhus University, Denmark. His research
intersects ethnography, the anthropology of religion, architecture, pilgrimage studies,
and language documentation. He has conducted linguistic fieldwork on Pitcairn
Island and Norfolk Island, South Pacific, Kangaroo Island, South Australia, and New
Zealand; environmental and ethnographic fieldwork in Vrindavan, India; and archi-
tectural research in outback Australia. He is concerned with philosophical and onto-
logical foundations of language and place.
Máiréad Nic Craith is Professor of European Culture and Heritage and Director of
Research, School of Social Sciences (SoSS), in Heriot-Watt University (Edinburgh,
Malaysia, Dubai). Language, power, and cultural policy have been a sustained focus
of interest throughout Máiréad’s academic career and she has acted as a consultant for
the UN on heritage and human rights. A member of the Royal Irish Academy, she has
held visiting positions in several universities in Ireland, the UK, Germany, and the
US. Her current research focuses on an Irish-language memoir from the west of
Ireland.
Bernadette O’Rourke is Professor of Sociolinguistics in the Department of
Languages and Intercultural Studies in Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. She is
Chair of the European Co-operation in Science and Technology (COST) Action
IS1306 entitled New Speakers in a Multilingual Europe: Opportunities and
Challenges (2013–2018). Her research focuses on the dynamics of multilingual
Notes on Contributors xv
societies, language policy, and minority language communities. She holds a Fellowship
at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. She is conducting an
ethnographic case study of grass-roots revitalization efforts in Galicia as part of its
interdisciplinary research programme on Sustaining Minoritized Languages in
Europe (SMiLE). She is editor of the Small Languages and Small Language Communities
section of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language.
Donna Patrick is Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at
Carleton University. Her research in linguistic anthropology focuses on Indigenous
and minority language politics, rights, and practices and has included work on lan-
guage endangerment, language socialization, language education policy and practice,
critical literacies, and social semiotics. Her Arctic-focused research includes, most
recently, work that involves participatory action research with Inuit in Ottawa and
Montreal; this explores Inuit identities, life histories, literacies, and the construction
of place in transnational contexts through objects, food, stories, and community
radio.
Anne Pauwels is Professor of Sociolinguistics at SOAS, University of London. Her
research areas of interest include transnational multilingualism, language policy in
higher education, and language and gender. Her publications cover these fields with
the most recent book being Language Maintenance and Shift (2016).
Sari Pietikäinen is Professor of Discourse Studies at the Department of Language
and Communication, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Her research focuses on dis-
course, identity and social inequalities, multilingualism in transforming peripheries,
and language in expanding Arctic economies of tourism, nature resource extraction,
and sports. Her recent co-authored publications include Critical Sociolinguistic
Research Methods: Studying Language Issues that Matter (2018) and Sociolinguistics
from the Periphery: Small Languages in New Circumstances (2016). She is the Principal
Investigator of an Academy of Finland (SA) research project called Cold Rush:
Language and Identity in Expanding Arctic Economies (2016–2020).
Federica Prina is a Research Associate at the Department of Central and East
European Studies (CEES), University of Glasgow, Scotland, and former researcher at
the European Centre for Minority Issues in Flensburg. Her work focuses on national
cultural autonomy in the Russian Federation and cultural and linguistic rights of
national minorities. She cooperates with various human rights organizations.
Maria Rieder is Lecturer in Sociolinguistics at the University of Limerick, Ireland.
Her research focuses on social and economic inequality, minority communities and
languages, language in the media, social movements, and intercultural communication,
with a specific focus on the role of language in the production of power and social
conflict. Her articles have appeared in books and journals, and she is preparing man-
uscripts on the Irish Traveller Cant, Economic Inequality in the Press, and the Irish
Water Charges Movement.
xvi Notes on Contributors
Clinton Robinson is an Independent Consultant in education and development,

undertaking strategy development, programme evaluations, and research across Asia
and Africa and at a global level. He previously spent six years with UNESCO and ten
years in Africa in NGO work. With a focus on the role of education in local and
national development, he has a particular interest in sociocultural dimensions, as well
as in basic education, language in education, literacy, and adult learning.
Judit Molnar Sansum is Research Associate at the University of Glasgow, Scotland.
Her work focuses on national cultural autonomy in Hungary, Romania, and Serbia.
She has also researched processes of immigrant integration and was involved in vari-
ous projects on borderland studies (University of Miskolc, Queen’s University Belfast,
and University of Washington).
Peter Sercombe is Senior Lecturer at Newcastle University, the UK. He has taught
mainly in Brunei, Malaysia, Turkey, and the UK. An applied linguist, his research
interests include cultural maintenance and adaptation, multilingualism, and the soci-
olinguistics of language use and language change, with particular reference to minor-
ity groups.
David J. Smith is Professor and Alec Nove Chair in Russian and East European
Studies at the University of Glasgow, Scotland. His main research interests are ethnic
politics and the governance of diversity in Central and Eastern Europe, in both con-
temporary and historical perspectives. He is Co-Editor of Europe-Asia Studies.
Graham Turner is Director of the Centre for Translation and Interpreting Studies
in Scotland at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland. He has worked as an
academic on applied and social aspects of sign linguistics since 1988.
Luk Van Mensel is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Namur, Belgium,
and a visiting lecturer at the University of Leuven, Belgium. His articles on a variety
of subjects in SLA and sociolinguistics, including the economic aspects of multilin-
gualism, language education policy, multilingualism in the family, and linguistic
landscapes, have been published.
John Walsh is Senior Lecturer in Irish at the School of Languages, Literature and
Cultures, National University of Ireland, Galway. He teaches sociolinguistics at
undergraduate and postgraduate levels and is the Co-Director of MSc in
Multilingualism. Previously he has served as Vice Dean for Research in the College
of Arts, Social Sciences and Celtic Studies (2012–2015) and as Head of the
Discipline of Irish (2014–2015). His articles have appeared extensively on the soci-
olinguistics of the Irish language, language policy, language ideology, minority lan-
guage media, and language and socioeconomic development. From 2013 to 2017,
he was a leading member of the European Co-operation in Science and Technology
(COST) Action—‘New Speakers in a Multilingual Europe: Challenges and
Opportunities’ (IS1306).
Notes on Contributors xvii
Gillian Wigglesworth is Professor of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics at the

University of Melbourne and chief investigator in the Centre of Excellence for the
Dynamics of Languages. Her research focuses on the languages Indigenous children
living in remote communities are learning as their first language and how these inter-
act with English once they attend school.
Colin H. Williams is Honorary Professor, Cardiff University, Wales, a Senior
Research Associate of the Von Hűgel Institute, and Visiting Fellow, St Edmund’s
College, Cambridge University. He is also an Honorary Professor of Celtic Studies at
the University of Aberdeen and the University of the Highlands and Islands, the
UK. His prime research interests focus on multilingual jurisdictions and minority
rights, official language strategies and policy, while he has secondary interests in the
field of peace and reconstruction in post-conflict societies.
List of Figures
Fig. 2.1 Number of armed conflicts by type of conflict, 1946–2016.

(Dupuy, K., Gates, S., Nygård, H., Rudolfsen, I., Siri, A., Strand,
H. and Urdal, H. (2017). Trends in Armed Conflict, 1946–2016.
Conflict Trends, 2. Available at: https://www.prio.org/utility/
DownloadFile.ashx?id=1373&type=publicationfile [Accessed 2
Apr. 2018]) 58
Fig. 10.1 Map of the four Inuit land-claim regions in Canada. (Source: Inuit
Tapiriit Kanatami) 262
Fig. 14.1 Places named in the chapter. Map created by Brenda Thornley 360
Fig. 15.1 Southeast Asian nations (except for East Timor). (DMaps: Map of
Southeast Asia. http://d-maps.com/carte.php?num_car=5268
&lang=en Accessed 18 June 2018) 385
Fig. 18.1 Schematic Language Choice Model for Frisian and Dutch on social
media. (Jongbloed-Faber [2015], translation provided by Lysbeth
Jongbloed-Faber)462
Fig. 18.2 Point density maps of geo-tagged tweets in English and Welsh by
users who tweet in Welsh. (Unpublished analysis by G. Higgs,
University of South Wales, on data provided by K. Scannell, Saint
Louis University, 2014) 472
Fig. 18.3 Irish language Twitter conversations, among top 500 tweeters
(Scannell 2013) 472
Fig. 18.4 Welsh language Twitter conversations, among top 500 tweeters
(Scannell 2013) 473
Fig. 22.1 150 years in the life of Yiddish 576
Fig. 22.2 The two kinds of contemporary Yiddish 577
xix
List of Tables
Table 9.1 Stages of reversing language shift 241

Table 15.1 Patterns of language use in Sukang Primary School 396
xxi
1
Introduction: Minority Languages
and Communities in a Changing World
Gabrielle Hogan-Brun and Bernadette O’Rourke
According to recent accounts ‘one half of our planet’s population speaks one
or more of the 23 “top” languages, the other half speak the remaining 7,074’.1
In other words, most of the world’s languages are to some degree threatened.
Under the effect of globalization, the pressure of dominant languages on
minority languages is relentless, partly because many users of smaller lan-
guages can see more opportunities if they switch to a dominant one. Such
homogenizing trends are also at play in countries, where cross-border migrants
are expected to become proficient in their host language. However, from the
Arctic to Latin America, through Europe to New Zealand, there is also con-
siderable resilience among minority language speakers, who wish to reclaim
their own language in spite of prevailing global pressures.
Given these conflicting and overlapping forces, the time is ripe to assemble
the latest research from a wide range of different relevant disciplines, in order to
explain and understand the challenges to both minority policy actors and com-
munity identities in the face of migration, mobility, and globalizing influences.
It is an immense privilege to have been able to assemble in this Handbook’s
perspectives by renowned scholars in international law, social anthropology,
G. Hogan-Brun (*)
School of Education, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
e-mail: g.hogan-brun@bristol.ac.uk
B. O’Rourke
Department of Languages and Intercultural Studies, Heriot-Watt University,
Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
e-mail: B.M.A.O’Rourke@hw.ac.uk
© The Author(s) 2019 1

G. Hogan-Brun, B. O’Rourke (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Minority Languages and
Communities, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54066-9_1
2 G. Hogan-Brun and B. O’Rourke
history, linguistics, education, and economics. Among the topics covered are
the politics of recognition and autonomy, the role of economic and linguistic
markets, the potential of social media and new speakers, language revitaliza-
tion and shift, and the continuing debate over the use of minority languages
in education. These chapters offer a compelling treatment of the complexity
of issues in the legal, educational, and policy fields that affect minority lan-
guage communities around the world today.
One of the problems facing those interested in this field of study is that a
plethora of definitions is used to shape approaches to minority language
speakers and their rights, as applied in instruments and standards at regional
and international levels. Such differences are rooted in diverging attitudes
towards minority language speakers. Varying concepts of justice and law have
resulted from changing power dynamics. Unpeeling such different under-
standings on what constitutes a minority, by whom, where, and under what
circumstances is the red thread that runs throughout this collection.
For the most part, the concept of ‘minority language communities’ is used to
describe numerically inferior groups of people who speak a language different
from that of the majority in a given country, who are in a non-dominant posi-
tion, and, to some extent, who seek to preserve their distinct linguistic identity.
The term is based chiefly on factual criteria, which means a minority language
community in a particular country (e.g. speakers of German in Hungary or
Denmark) may constitute a majority in a kin state (i.e. Austria or Germany).
This collection is divided into seven parts, as follows: Minority language
rights, protection, governance (Part I); recognition, self-determination, auton-
omy (Part II); migration, settlement, mobility (Part III); economics, markets,
commodification (Part IV); education, literacy, access (Part V); media, public
usage, visibility (Part VI); endangerment, ecosystems, resilience (Part VII).
The Handbook’s 22 chapters that are summarized below present richly detailed
accounts on the history and the current state of particular minority language
contexts across the world. Our hope is that these chapters shine a critical light
on broad areas of concern surrounding minority language communities today.
art I: Minority Language Rights, Protection,

P
Governance
The first set of chapters (2, 3, and 4) considers different definitions and appli-
cations of minority language rights and standards. Language is central to
human nature and is an expression of identity. As such, issues surrounding
language are particularly important to linguistic minority communities who
Introduction: Minority Languages and Communities in a Changing… 3
seek to maintain their identity. Securing rights for the minority can require
legislation and standards to be put in place in contexts where the minorities
are subjected to marginalization, exclusion, and discrimination. Fernand de
Varennes and Elżbieta Kuzborska set the scene by focussing our attention on
the various (and at times almost contradictory) understandings of minority-
related concepts involved in different supra-national regimes. The fundamen-
tal questions in their chapter are as follows: What are the minorities intended
to be, the holders of language rights or the beneficiaries of state obligations?
And what is the extent and nature of such rights? The authors show how the
use of terms is fraught with uncertainties, disagreements, and contradictions
from the perspective of international law. Examples include ‘national minori-
ties’ versus ‘minorities’, ‘protection of linguistic-cultural diversity’ versus ‘pro-
tection of the human rights of minorities’, and designations such as ‘indigenous’
versus ‘autochtonous’ minorities. They unravel some of the disparate positions
that underpin these notions ranging from divergent points of view as to what
constitutes a minority, to the substance and objectives being addressed in
international and regional instruments by the protection of minorities or
minority rights. Taking a long look at ‘minority rights’ at the supra-national
level, the authors also consider some of the challenges in the future.
An example of such challenges is Russia. With its unusual federal, ethnic,
and linguistic mixture this country has a history of compliance and conflict
with international minority language rights standards. In his chapter Bill
Bowring explores minority language legislation, rights, and practices within
the Federation’s unique multilingual structure. He sketches developments
in the Russian Empire and the USSR, traces the consequences of the col-
lapse of the USSR and the ‘parade of sovereignties’ of 1990–1992, and then
introduces the Constitution of 1993 and its radical provisions. Paying par-
ticular attention to the situation of the Volga Tatars in Tatarstan, he supplies
a precise comparative analysis of the policy towards minority languages and
communities in the state. He discusses the similarities and differences amongst
the subjects of Russia’s constitutionally asymmetric Federation and explores
the extent to which the situation in Tatarstan is different from that in the fel-
low republics. He goes on to show how there has been a significant shift away
under President Putin from special status for ‘national’, ethnic languages in
the context of the Federation. The chapter concludes with the dramatic events
of the past few years and considers how matters stand at the time of writing,
asking: Will these recent developments in language policy mean the end of
diversity in Russia?
Another complex language scenario is in Ireland. An uneven framework
exists there that offers Irish mostly limited or symbolic protection. Whilst
overtly, the pre-eminence of Irish is anchored constitutionally and is reflected

in aspects of public discourse, covertly national policy promotes the domi-
nance of English. Irish is practically treated as a minority concern. Colin
H. Williams and John Walsh look into the manner in which minority lan-
guage governance and regulation have been developed over the past genera-
tion from the perspective of international law, with particular focus on
minority rights and the growth of the regulatory state. They argue that the
government demonstrates limited practical engagement with current Irish
policy, whose legislative and regulatory framework reflects a mixture of both
the historical approach to Irish as the ‘national language’ and more contem-
porary ideological stances. Against this background they examine the role and
general contribution of ombudsmen, commissioners, and regulators and offer
a case study example of the potential impact of the International Association
of Language Commissioners (IALC). Drawing out the implications of the
IALC and Irish for minority language vitality, they suggest that even where
supportive infrastructure for language promotion, protection, and regulation
may be in place, their adequacy is demonstrated in the manner of their imple-
mentation within the relevant jurisdiction and their full incorporation into
the machinery of government.
art II: Recognition, Self-determination,

P
Autonomy
The second group of chapters (5, 6, 7, and 8) moves away from a legal minor-
ity rights and protection perspective to focus on the recognition of language
rights and the idea of (cultural) autonomy. These have become key elements
in a much broader set of legal and policy tools to enable minority language
speakers to be recognized and treated as equal members of societies. The chap-
ters highlight the many different ways in which the right of self-determination
can manifest itself in polities, ranging from antagonism to basic non-
discrimination provisions and complex federal and autonomy regimes as in
the case of devolution in Spain and the United Kingdom. In his contribution
on the politics of recognition in polities, Christian Giordano distinguishes
between nation-states (as models of culturally homogenized countries such as
in France or Germany) and language plural ‘consociations’2 (as practised in
Switzerland, Canada, Belgium, or Malaysia). In differentiating between clas-
sic and liberal polity types, he proposes that a liberal-oriented political agenda
cannot necessarily be exported to plural societies nor can that of plural societ-
ies necessarily be transported to other societies. Moreover, he points out that
practically all these diverse types of governance of multiculturality have a wide

range of problems, especially regarding their recognition of ethno-cultural
and linguistic diversity in a globalized world. As he sees it, this is because rec-
ognition of linguistic plurality is still rather problematic even though it is a
matter of fact in most polities. In his view this challenges the soundness of
universalistic models of interpretation. This explains his call for a differenti-
ated politics of recognition in lieu of paradigms that see cultural conformity as
a conduit to solidarity among citizens and multilingualism (often a feature of
minority groups) as a threat to national social cohesion.
There is a widening perception amongst international organizations and
states that their application of language rights is crucial for the fostering of
peace, stability, and security. Language rights might then be even more salient
for those societies that are deeply fractured along ethnic lines but which are
transitioning from a period of conflict to peace. Even after conflict, language
can continue to be a symbolic marker of competing groups with differing
political aspirations. Máiréad Nic Craith and Philip McDermott explore how
language rights in deeply divided places have been integrated into formalized
peace agreements, treaties, and/or new constitutions. They evaluate the routes
of recognition in deeply divided societies along the spectrum from antago-
nism to reconciliation for minority languages, with emphasis on the effect on
the utility of language rights as a peace-building tool. Their chapter presents a
critical analysis of both the transformative and the disruptive potential of the
politics of language with reference to their homeland Ireland and in regions
such as Guatemala, Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and the Ukraine.
Beginning with the theoretical notion of recognition and how these debates
are particularly relevant to post-conflict places, they move on to consider how
language rights are applied or ignored at different levels in such wide-ranging
political settings. They consider in their chapter the various schools of thought
which champion the notion that recognizing linguistic minorities is crucial in
the mitigation of conflict versus those which are more sceptical, who view
such processes as responsible for further politicizing ethnic identities in
already fragile circumstances.
In Eastern Europe, especially in new states born out of the ashes of the
multicultural empires, changes to restrictive attitudes as regards minorities
were sought during the rising tide of linguistic nationalism to manage linguis-
tic and cultural affairs at the national level. It was here where the concept of
national cultural autonomy (NCA) was developed in the nineteenth century
by Austro-Marxists.3 Based on the notion of the ‘personality principle’, the
idea was that communities can be autonomous (and sovereign) within a multi-
ethnic state, regardless of whether they have, or identify with, a particular
territory. David Smith, Federica Prina, and Judit Molnar Samsun discuss in
their chapter how this notion was rediscovered in the 1990s and incorporated
into the law and practice of ethnic communities in four countries (Hungary,
Estonia, Serbia, and Russia). They also go into how aspects of NCA were
applied in Belgium and Canada and in arrangements for the accommodation
of indigenous peoples. Using a comparative approach, they reflect upon the
potential contribution of the NCA principle today in advancing the linguistic
rights of national minorities. They propose that this approach may serve as a
platform to articulate concerns of relevance to national minorities, encom-
passing minority participation and multilingual education, thereby also pre-
serving linguistic pluralism.
National and international policies for the recognition of the Deaf com-
munity’s right to self-ownership and support of their sign languages have
undergone a protracted evolution. Since the European Parliament’s resolve in
19884 that member states should grant their indigenous sign languages equiv-
alent status to that of the national spoken languages, countries have gradually
begun to offer some degree of official acknowledgement. In their chapter,
Maartje De Meulder, Verena Krausneker, Graham Turner, and John Bosco
Conama catch up with recent developments and critically discuss how the
twenty-first century has brought a unique dynamic for Sign Language
Communities (SLCs) in response to threats and opportunities resulting from
changes in both external and internal language environments. They scrutinize
those changes, as well as policy and planning aimed at sign languages, and
explain how linguistic rights of deaf signers heavily depend on interpreting
services and why this is problematic. The current ideological climate means
that linguistic human rights, educational linguistic rights, self-determination,
and the right to physical integrity are at the top of the SLCs’ agenda. While
many aspects that affect SLCs are similar to those faced by other linguistic
minorities, some issues are more specific, since SLCs are also seen as people
with disabilities. In particular, both the SLCs’ long history of dealing with
attempts at medical normalization and the current genetic discourse that
questions the signers’ right to exist raise concerns about the long-term vitality
of various sign languages.
Part III: Migration, Settlement, Mobility

The next chapters (9 and 10) deal with the effect of globalization and ensu-
ing social mobility as contemporary phenomena on language use, mainte-
nance, and shift. They examine the complex, multidimensional nature of
globalization as it pertains to minority language communities in different

parts of the world. As Anne Pauwels explains in her contribution, there is
a growing sense that the ‘transition’—from migration and settlement to
frequent mobility—forces researchers to rethink the classical approaches to
language maintenance (LM) and language shift (LS) in the context of
immigrant language communities, on the one hand, and indigenous lan-
guage minorities, on the other hand.5 She begins with a review of the his-
tory of research on LM and LS in transnational (or migrant) contexts,
covering its emergence, development, and expansion during the twentieth
century. She then goes on to present the theories used to understand these
processes and introduces the main approaches used to investigate and
account for differences in the language practices of various ethnolinguistic
groups. She considers how globalization has significantly altered what con-
stitutes ‘migration’ today. Rather than seeing it primarily as a process
resulting in ‘permanent’ (re)settlement elsewhere, she discusses how migra-
tion results in ongoing mobility, using examples of diasporic settings of
communities moving from Europe to the ‘Anglophone’ world and of non-
European groups moving to Western Europe (post-1960). Her chapter
outlines how in turn these changes in social mobility affect language prac-
tices in diaspora settings today and impact on our understanding of what
constitutes LM. In her conclusion she points to the challenges of this
change for future work on LM and LS since classical approaches are less
suited to deal with today’s greater fluidity of the linguistic scenarios, espe-
cially in urban settings.
As Donna Patrick’s reminds us in her contribution, a complex set of fac-
tors is driving language change and decline in the far North. Her research
in Canada’s Inuit homelands has over the years explored local, regional,
national, and global influences on the languages used (among them
Inuktitut and Inuvialuktun) and the challenges faced by speakers with
regard to linguistic, cultural, and environmental sustainability. The effects
of colonization, industrialization, and environmental degradation have
accelerated this trend over the course of the twentieth century and are now
compounded by global warming and the rapid rise of communication net-
works, scientific technologies, and extractive resource industries. All these
developments are affecting the future of Arctic peoples and their languages.
She shows how despite these challenges the Inuit communities are con-
tinuing to maintain and shape their languages as active agents through
everyday interactions with their land and through channels that have
opened up with globalization.
Part IV: Economics, Markets, Commodification

The role of minority languages in economics currently receives growing atten-
tion in the research literature and is treated in the next set of chapters (11, 12,
and 13). As is evident in Wales and Catalonia, the health of a minority lan-
guage is prone to improve when speakers become productive in the economic
domain. If the revenue generated through ‘peripheral’ entrepreneurship flows
back to the community, this can be empowering and aid regional economic
development. Both Welsh and Catalan have the vitality and status to be
included as languages within educational systems and to be deployed as a
resource. Elsewhere however, for example, in parts of Africa, even the official
recognition of selected indigenous languages does not necessarily translate
into greater prestige, status, and usage for those languages.6
Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu sees such failure as lying in the planners’ lack
of focus on the link between an education carried out through the medium of
an indigenous language and the economic returns for the target populations.
Examining the perennial question of the role in education of Africa’s indige-
nous languages, he argues that policies designed to promote indigenous lan-
guages in different social spheres must also demonstrate the demand for these
languages. He proposes that to succeed, such policies must corroborate a lan-
guage’s usefulness, not only in terms of it as a means of communication but
also with explicit reference to the material benefits that speakers can expect.7
Drawing on theoretical developments in language economics8 and critical
theory,9 he posits that the demand for indigenous languages can be estab-
lished in the light of Bourdieu’s notions of social fields, capital, and markets,
whose properties afford linguistic products with a certain ‘value’.10 This view
sees language not solely as a means of communication but also as symbolic
capital that can be gained and lost, which may be transformed to economic
capital with impact on language vitality.11
The economic potential of minority languages has also been linked with
processes of commodification, where language (skills) are seen as a resource
that can be bought and sold.12 While global developments variously affect the
role and position of many minority languages, many users find new opportu-
nities through localizing forces that form part of the massively growing lan-
guage industries. Sari Pietikäinen, Helen Kelly-Holmes, and Maria Rieder
explore how selected minority languages figure in economic development and
point to ways in which they can be invested with values of expertise, distinc-
tion, and authenticity. Drawing on their studies of minority and indigenous
language practices and discourses in peripheral, multilingual Irish and Sámi
sites, the authors discuss the changing and expanding role of minority lan-
guages in the key economic domains of advertising and marketing, tourism,
media, and in job markets. They also reflect on the conditions and conse-
quences of economic processes as indices of the exchange value of minority
languages in changing markets.
The effects of the globalized economy on the industrialization of transla-
tion are the focus of Matthieu LeBlanc. In his chapter he cautions against the
risks of rapid rationalization and the utilitarian instrumentalism it engenders
for linguistic minority communities. In particular, he explores the work of
professional translators in minority language communities in Canada. A for-
mer translator himself, the author is more concerned here with cultures of
production in the public domain than with cultures of reception. After
reviewing some of the theoretical literature, he dissects the impact of transla-
tion on the shaping and dissemination of minority languages. He draws atten-
tion to the changing practices in professional (non-literary) translation as a
result of increased technological automation and industrialization. Offering a
case study of the transformations that have marked the government of
Canada’s Translation Bureau since the mid-1990s, he shows how these changes
put minority languages everywhere under pressure in terms of both access to
translation resources and pressures on translators through shrinking dead-
lines, which has implications for the quality and legibility of texts. His chapter
illustrates how translation is intrinsically linked with language ideologies, lan-
guage policies, power relations, language rights, and identity and why transla-
tion activities figure as key tools in the (re-)construction and development of
minority languages.
Part V: Education, Literacy, Access

Chapters 14, 15, and 16 cover educational policy and practice for indigenous
and immigrant minorities. Across the world, speakers of minority languages
often have to make difficult choices between investing in language for social
mobility on the one hand and preserving the cultural heritage of their com-
munity on the other hand. Often, language choices in education result in
response to market-driven values. Such decisions about languages in educa-
tion mean that children can grow up without knowing their own mother
tongue and end up disenfranchised. In fact, an estimated 40% of people have
no access to education in a language they understand.13 Being taught in a
language that is not their own leaves many with a cognitive gap that they can-
not bridge. Yet ample research evidence14 shows that this deficit will be
reduced if pupils are taught in their mother tongue during the course of pri-
mary school or even beyond it. But the supply of teachers and materials is one
of the many challenges to mother tongue-medium education in the context of
small languages.
Refreshingly, around the world, there are numerous local initiatives that
serve as examples of good practice. Particularly successful are community-
based education programmes such as those emerging in the Philippines,
Mexico, parts of Africa, and in Australia where indigenous speakers are trained
to teach in the community languages. In their chapter on the language prac-
tices of indigenous Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children,
Samantha Disbray and Gillian Wigglesworth review the considerable variety
of studies on young Australian Aboriginals’ early language learning environ-
ments and processes. These are mainly youngsters from remote settings where
English is taught at school, but it is neither their first language, nor the lan-
guage of the community in which the children live. The authors also examine
more recent investigations that show how pupils acquire some remaining tra-
ditional languages through child-directed speech styles and practices. In this
complex linguistic environment, the development of new and emerging con-
tact languages (both mixed languages and creoles) is found to influence the
ways in which children and young people alter and innovate their language
ecologies.
The focus then shifts to language, education, and nation-building in
Southeast Asia’s mainland and maritime areas. Peter Sercombe examines the
deployment in states of language policies as instruments of controlling and
assimilating indigenous populations. He uses a social justice perspective15 in
tracing the key factors that affect the cultural, economic, and political mar-
ginalization of native minority groups. Presenting a case study of that of the
Najib in Malaysia, he points out that mostly these indigenous people tend to
be few in number and are frequently materially poor. They inhabit interior
areas that are removed from centres of power. In terms of social organization,
they are generally distinctive from politically major groups. Similar to many
other native populations, they are egalitarian, with an accompanying a nimistic
belief system, rather than being socially hierarchical and subscribing to a
major religion. During the course of regional independence efforts, the socio-
economic position of these minorities has tended to decline. This chapter
explores the manner in which this is happening, with specific reference to
current language education policy and practices.
We then turn to issues of literacy in minority languages and their relation-
ship to current and future social and economic development. Clinton Robinson
explores in his chapter the purposes and rationale of minority language literacy
in relation to national and global forces in language use with a focus on lan-
guage endangerment, preservation, and shift. He discusses approaches to lit-
eracy provision in local minority or non-dominant languages, drawing on
practice in Cameroon, Papua New Guinea, and Senegal. He examines similari-
ties and differences in the three countries and compares policy and practice
with respect to multilingualism, policy formulation, and programme structure.
In his assessment of the prospects for literacy provision in local languages he
sets out questions for multilingual policies and practices in the context of inter-
national education frameworks and with reference to issues of inequality, mar-
ginalization, and opportunity. He stresses the need to address policy
considerations, community engagement, the nature of the learning process,
and the fact that languages are simultaneously both instruments of communi-
cation and symbols of identity. The principal argument here is that literacy in
non-dominant languages increases educational opportunity and cultural affir-
mation for those in minority communities and strengthens their equitable
place in society.
Part VI: Media, Public Usage, Visibility

Given the threat to many of the world’s languages, new technologies includ-
ing digitization, electronic mapping, and social media can play an important
part in supporting the future of many minority language communities. This
role in their vitality of the media is explored in Chapters 17, 18, and 19. In
the context of globalization, questions concerning the effect that the media
might have on minority languages and their users have become more urgent.
In his contribution, Tom Moring explores the impact of policies, power rela-
tions, and citizenship in a changing media environment and takes issue with
existing financing and organization of media services for, of, and on minority
language communities. Covering a range of existing international and national
policies for minority media, he examines the effect of their implementation
on users. He also discusses the complexities of lived citizenship in the context
of an environment with changing, individualized media habits and the role of
e-technologies for LM and revitalization.
Concentrating on web-based communication technologies, Daniel Cunliffe
provides insights into current understandings of the relationship between
social media and minority LM and revitalization. He examines the extent to
which social media provide permissive environments for minority language
use. He also discusses the factors that influence the language behaviours of
minority language speakers on social media and the potential impact of online
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general ridicule for the failure of her imprecation. Before the merry-
meeting, however, was over, the sound of the “deaddrum,” beat by
the approaching rioters, fell upon their ears, and Porteous, as if
struck all at once with the certainty of death, exclaimed, “D——n the
wife! she is right yet!” Some of his friends suggested that it might be
the firedrum; but he would not give ear to such consolations, and
fairly abandoned all hope of life. Before another hour had passed, he
was in eternity.
Nicol Brown, a butcher, executed in 1753 for the murder of his
wife, was not the least remarkable tenant of the Tolbooth during the
last century. A singular story is told of this wretched man. One
evening, long before his death, as he was drinking with some other
butchers in a tavern somewhere about the Grassmarket, a dispute
arose about how long it might be allowable to keep flesh before it was
eaten. From less to more, the argument proceeded to bets; and
Brown offered to eat a pound of the oldest and “worst” flesh that
could be produced, under the penalty of a guinea. A regular bet was
taken, and a deputation of the company went away to fetch the stuff
which should put Nicol’s stomach to the test. It so happened that a
criminal—generally affirmed to have been the celebrated Nicol
Muschat—had been recently hung in chains at the Gallowlee, and it
entered into the heads of these monsters that they would apply in
that quarter for the required flesh. They accordingly provided
themselves with a ladder and other necessary articles, and, though it
was now near midnight, had the courage to go down that still and
solitary road which led towards the gallows, and violate the terrible
remains of the dead, by cutting a large collop from the culprit’s hip.
This they brought away, and presented to Brown, who was not a little
shocked to find himself so tasked. Nevertheless, getting the dreadful
“pound of flesh” roasted after the manner of a beefsteak, and
adopting a very strong and drunken resolution, he set himself down
to his horrid mess, which, it is said, he actually succeeded in
devouring. This story, not being very effectually concealed, was
recollected when he afterwards came to the same end with Nicol
Muschat. He lived in the Fleshmarket Close, as appears from the
evidence on his trial. He made away with his wife by burning her,
and said that she had caught fire by accident. But, as the door was
found locked by the neighbours who came on hearing her cries, and
he was notorious for abusing her, besides the circumstance of his not
appearing to have attempted to extinguish the flames, he was found
guilty and executed. He was also hung in chains at the Gallowlee,
where Muschat had hung thirty years before. He did not, however,
hang long. A few mornings after having been put up, it was found
that he had been taken away during the night. This was supposed to
have been done by the butchers of the Edinburgh market, who
considered that a general disgrace was thrown upon their fraternity
by his ignominious exhibition there. They were said to have thrown
his body into the Quarry Holes.
Chapter II.
The case of Katherine Nairne, in 1766, excited, in no small degree,
the attention of the Scottish public. This lady was allied, both by
blood and marriage, to some highly respectable families. Her crime
was the double one of poisoning her husband, and having an intrigue
with his brother, who was her associate in the murder. She was
brought from the north country into Leith harbour in an open boat,
and as fame had preceded her, thousands of people flocked to the
shore to see her. She has been described to us as standing erect in the
boat, dressed in a riding-habit, and having a switch in her hand, with
which she amused herself. Her whole bearing betrayed so much
levity, or was so different from what had been expected, that the mob
raised a general howl of indignation, and were on the point of
stoning her to death, when she was with some difficulty rescued from
their hands by the public authorities. In this case the Old Tolbooth
found itself, as usual, incapable of retaining a culprit of condition.
Sentence had been delayed by the judges, on account of her
pregnancy. The midwife employed at her accouchement (who, by-
the-by, continued to practise in Edinburgh so lately as the year 1805)
had the address to achieve a jail-delivery also. For three or four days
previous to that concerted for the escape, she pretended to be
afflicted with a prodigious toothache; went out and in with her head
enveloped in shawls and flannels; and groaned as it she had been
about to give up the ghost. At length, when all the janitory officials
were become so habituated to her appearance, as not to heed her
“exits and her entrances” very much, Katherine Nairne one evening
came down in her stead, with her head wrapped all round with the
shawls, uttering the usual groans, and holding down her face upon
her hands, as with agony, in the precise way customary with the
midwife. The inner door-keeper, not quite unconscious, it is
supposed, of the trick, gave her a hearty thump upon the back as she
passed out, calling her at the same time a howling old Jezebel and
wishing she would never come back to annoy his ears, and those of
the other inmates, in such an intolerable way. There are two reports
of the proceedings of Katherine Nairne after leaving the prison. One
bears that she immediately left the town in a coach, to which she was
handed by a friend stationed on purpose. The coachman, it is said,
had orders from her relations, in the event of a pursuit, to drive into
the sea and drown her—a fate which, however dreadful, was
considered preferable to the ignominy of a public execution. The
other story runs, that she went up the Lawnmarket to the Castlehill,
where lived a respectable advocate, from whom, as he was her
cousin, she expected to receive protection. Being ignorant of the
town, she mistook the proper house, and, what was certainly
remarkable, applied at that of the crown agent, who was assuredly
the last man in the world that could have done her any service. As
good luck would have it, she was not recognised by the servant, who
civilly directed her to her cousin’s house, where it is said she
remained concealed many weeks. In addition to these reports, we
may mention that we have seen an attic pointed out in St Mary’s
Wynd, as the place where Katherine Nairne found concealment
between the period of her leaving the jail and that of her going
abroad. Her future life, it has been reported, was virtuous and
fortunate. She was married to a French gentleman, was the mother of
a large and respectable family, and died at a good old age.
Meanwhile, Patrick Ogilvie, her associate in the dark crime which
threw a shade over her younger years, suffered in the Grassmarket.
This gentleman, who had been a lieutenant in the —— regiment, was
so much beloved by his fellow-soldiers, who happened to be
stationed at that time in Edinburgh Castle, that the public authorities
judged it necessary to shut them up in that fortress till the execution
was over, lest they might have attempted, what they had been heard
to threaten, a rescue.
The Old Tolbooth was the scene of the suicide of Mungo Campbell,
while under sentence of death for shooting the Earl of Eglintoune. In
the country where this memorable event took place, it is somewhat
remarkable that the fate of the murderer was more generally
lamented than that of the murdered person. Campbell, as we have
heard, though what was called “a graceless man,” and therefore not
much esteemed by the Auld Light people, who there abound, was
rather popular in his profession of exciseman, on account of his
rough, honourable spirit, and his lenity in the matter of smuggling.
Lord Eglintoune, on the contrary, was not liked, on account of the
inconvenience which he occasioned to many of his tenants by
newfangled improvements, and his introduction into the country of a
generally abhorred article, denominated rye-grass, which, for some
reason we are not farmer enough to explain, was fully as unpopular a
measure as the bringing in of Prelacy had been a century before.
Lord Eglintoune was in the habit of taking strange crotchets about
his farms—crotchets quite at variance with the old-established
prejudices of his tenantry. He sometimes tried to rouse the old stupid
farmers of Kyle from their negligence and supineness, by removing
them to other farms, or causing two to exchange their possessions, in
order, as he jocularly alleged, to prevent their furniture from getting
mouldy, by long standing in particular damp corners. Though his
lordship’s projects were all undertaken in the spirit of improvement,
and though these emigrations were doubtless salutary in a place
where the people were then involved in much sloth and nastiness,
still they were premature, and carried on with rather a harsh spirit.
They therefore excited feelings in the country people not at all
favourable to his character. These, joined to the natural eagerness of
the common people to exult over the fall of tyranny, and the
puritanical spirit of the district, which disposed them to regard his
lordship’s peccadilloes as downright libertinism, altogether
conspired against him, and tended to throw the glory and the pity of
the occasion upon his lordship’s slayer. Even Mungo’s poaching was
excused, as a more amiable failing than the excessive love of
preserving game, which had always been the unpopular mania of the
Eglintoune family. Mungo Campbell was a man respectably
connected, the son of a provost of Ayr; had been a dragoon in his
youth, was eccentric in his manner, a bachelor, and was considered
at Newmills, where he resided, as an austere and unsocial, but
honourable, and not immoral man. There can be no doubt that he
rose on his elbows and fired at his lordship, who had additionally
provoked him by bursting into a laugh at his awkward fall. The Old
Tolbooth was supposed by many, at the time, to have had her usual
failing in Mungo’s case. The Argyll interest was said to have been
employed in his favour, and the body, which was found suspended
over the door, instead of being his, was thought to be that of a dead
soldier from the castle, substituted in his place. His relations,
however, who are very respectable people in Ayrshire, all
acknowledge that he died by his own hand; and this was the general
idea of the mob of Edinburgh, who, getting the body into their hands,
trailed it down the street to the King’s Park, and inspired by different
sentiments from those of the Ayrshire people, were not satisfied till
they got it up to the top of Salisbury Crags, from which they
precipitated it down the “Cat Nick.” Aged people in Ayrshire still
remember the unwonted brilliancy of the aurora borealis on the
midnight of Lord Eglintoune’s death. Strange and awful whispers
then went through the country, in correspondence, as it were, with
the streamers in the sky, which were considered by the superstitious
as expressions on the face of heaven of satisfied wrath in the event.
One of the most remarkable criminals ever confined in the Old
Tolbooth was the celebrated William Brodie. As may be generally
known, this was a man of respectable connexions, and who had
moved in good society all his life, unsuspected of any criminal
pursuits. It is said that a habit of frequenting cock-pits was the first
symptom he exhibited of a defalcation from virtue. His ingenuity as a
joiner gave him a fatal facility in the burglarious pursuits to which he
afterwards addicted himself. It was then customary for the
shopkeepers of Edinburgh to hang their keys upon a nail at the back
of their doors, or at least to take no pains in concealing them during
the day. Brodie used to take impressions of them in putty or clay, a
piece of which he would carry in the palm of his hand. He kept a
blacksmith in his pay, of the name of Smith, who forged exact copies
of the keys he wanted, and with these it was his custom to open the
shops of his fellow-tradesmen during the night. He thus found
opportunities of securely stealing whatsoever he wished to possess.
He carried on his malpractices for many years. Upon one shop in
particular he made many severe exactions. This was the shop of a
company of jewellers, in the North Bridge Street, namely, that at the
south-east corner, where it joins the High Street. The unfortunate
tradesmen from time to time missed many articles, and paid off one
or two faithful shopmen, under the impression of their being guilty
of the theft. They were at length ruined. Brodie remained
unsuspected, till having committed a daring robbery upon the
Excise-office in Chessel’s Court, Canongate, some circumstances
transpired, which induced him to disappear from Edinburgh.
Suspicion then becoming strong, he was pursued to Holland, and
taken at Amsterdam, standing upright in a press or cupboard. At his
trial, Henry Erskine, his counsel, spoke very eloquently in his behalf,
representing in particular, to the jury, how strange and improbable a
circumstance it was, that a man whom they had themselves known
from infancy as a person of good repute, should have been guilty of
such practices as those with which he was charged. He was, however,
found guilty, and sentenced to death, along with his accomplice
Smith. At the trial he had appeared in a fine full-dress suit of black
clothes, the greater part of which was of silk, and his deportment
throughout the whole affair was completely that of a gentleman. He
continued during the period which intervened between his sentence
and execution to dress himself well and to keep up his spirits. A
gentleman of our acquaintance, calling upon him in the condemned
room, was astonished to find him singing the song from the Beggar’s
Opera, “’Tis woman seduces all mankind.” Having contrived to cut
out the figure of a draught-board on the stone floor of his dungeon,
he amused himself by playing with any one who would join him, and,
in default of such, with his right hand against his left. This diagram
remained in the room where it was so strangely out of place, till the
destruction of the jail. His dress and deportment at the gallows were
equally gay with those which he assumed at his trial. As the Earl of
Morton was the first man executed by the “Maiden,” so was Brodie
the first who proved the excellence of an improvement he had
formerly made on the apparatus of the gibbet. This was the
substitution of what was called the “drop,” for the ancient practice of
the double ladder. He inspected the thing with a professional air, and
seemed to view the result of his ingenuity with a smile of satisfaction.
When placed on that terrible and insecure pedestal, and while the
rope was adjusted round his neck by the executioner, his courage did
not forsake him. On the contrary, even there, he exhibited a sort of
joyful levity, which, though not exactly composure, seemed to the
spectators as more indicative of indifference; he shuffled about,
looked gaily around, and finally went out of the world with his hand
stuck carelessly into the open front of his vest.
The Tolbooth, in its old days, as its infirmities increased, showed
itself now and then incapable of retaining prisoners of very ordinary
rank. Within the recollection of many people yet alive, a youth
named Reid, the son of an innkeeper in the Grassmarket, while
under sentence of death for some felonious act, had the address to
make his escape. Every means was resorted to for recovering him, by
search throughout the town, vigilance at all the ports, and the offer of
a reward for his apprehension, yet he contrived fairly to cheat the
gallows. The whole story of his escape is exceedingly curious. He took
refuge in the great cylindrical mausoleum of Sir George Mackenzie,
in the Greyfriars churchyard of Edinburgh. This place, besides its
discomfort, was supposed to be haunted by the ghost of the
persecutor—a circumstance of which Reid, an Edinburgh boy, must
have been well aware. But he braved all these horrors for the sake of
his life. He had been brought up in the Hospital of George Heriot, in
the immediate neighbourhood of the churchyard, and had many
boyish acquaintances still residing in that munificent establishment.
Some of these he contrived to inform of his situation, enjoining them
to be secret, and beseeching them to assist him in his distress. The
Herioters of those days had a very clannish spirit, insomuch, that to
have neglected the interests or safety of any individual of the
community, however unworthy he might be of their friendship,
would have been looked upon by them as a sin of the deepest dye.
Reid’s confidants, therefore, considered themselves bound to assist
him by all means in their power against that general foe, the public.
They kept his secret most faithfully, spared from their own meals as
much food as supported him, and ran the risk of severe punishment,
as well as of seeing ghosts, by visiting him every night in his horrible
abode. They were his only confidants, his very parents, who lived not
far off, being ignorant of his place of concealment. About six weeks
after his escape from jail, when the hue and cry had in a great
measure subsided, he ventured to leave the tomb, and it was
afterwards known that he escaped abroad.
The subsequent history of the Old Tolbooth contains little that is
very remarkable. It has passed away with many other venerable
relics of the olden time, and we now look in vain for the many
antique associations which crowded round the spot it once occupied.
THE LOVER’S LAST VISIT.
By Professor Wilson.
The window of the lonely cottage of Hilltop was beaming far above
the highest birchwood, seeming to travellers at a distance in the long
valley below, who knew it not, to be a star in the sky. A bright fire
was in the kitchen of that small tenement; the floor was washed,
swept and sanded, and not a footstep had marked its perfect
neatness; a small table was covered, near the ingle, with a snow-
white cloth, on which was placed a frugal evening meal; and in happy
but pensive mood sat there all alone the woodcutter’s only daughter,
a comely and gentle creature, if not beautiful—such a one as diffuses
pleasure round her hay-field, and serenity over the seat in which she
sits attentively on the Sabbath, listening to the word of God, or
joining with mellow voice in His praise and worship. On this night
she expected a visit from her lover, that they might fix their
marriage-day; and her parents, satisfied and happy that their child
was about to be wedded to a respectable shepherd, had gone to pay a
visit to their nearest neighbour in the glen.
A feeble and hesitating knock was at the door, not like the glad and
joyful touch of a lover’s hand; and cautiously opening it, Mary
Robinson beheld a female figure wrapped up in a cloak, with her face
concealed in a black bonnet. The stranger, whoever she might be,
seemed wearied and worn out, and her feet bore witness to a long
day’s travel across the marshy mountains. Although she could
scarcely help considering her an unwelcome visitor at such an hour,
yet Mary had too much disposition—too much humanity,—not to
request her to step forward into the hut; for it seemed as if the
wearied woman had lost her way, and had come towards the shining
window to be put right upon her journey to the low country.
The stranger took off her bonnet on reaching the fire; and Mary
Robinson beheld the face of one whom, in youth, she had tenderly
loved; although for some years past, the distance at which they lived
from each other had kept them from meeting, and only a letter or
two, written in their simple way, had given them a few notices of
each other’s existence. And now Mary had opportunity, in the first
speechless gaze of recognition, to mark the altered face of her friend,
—and her heart was touched with an ignorant compassion. “For
mercy’s sake! sit down Sarah, and tell me what evil has befallen you;
for you are as white as a ghost. Fear not to confide anything to my
bosom: we have herded sheep together on the lonesome braes;—we
have stripped the bark together in the more lonesome woods;—we
have played, laughed, sung, danced together;—we have talked
merrily and gaily, but innocently enough surely, of sweethearts
together; and, Sarah, graver thoughts, too, have we shared, for when
your poor brother died away like a frosted flower, I wept as if I had
been his sister; nor can I ever be so happy in this world as to forget
him. Tell me, my friend, why are you here? and why is your sweet
face so ghastly?”
The heart of this unexpected visitor died within her at these kind
and affectionate inquiries; for she had come on an errand that was
likely to dash the joy from that happy countenance. Her heart
upbraided her with the meanness of the purpose for which she had
paid this visit; but that was only a passing thought; for was she,
innocent and free from sin, to submit, not only to desertion, but to
disgrace, and not trust herself and her wrongs, and her hopes of
redress, to her whom she loved as a sister, and whose generous
nature, she well knew, not even love, the changer of so many things,
could change utterly, though, indeed, it might render it colder than
of old to the anguish of a female friend?
“Oh! Mary, I must speak—yet must my words make you grieve, far
less for me than for yourself. Wretch that I am, I bring evil tidings
into the dwelling of my dearest friend! These ribbons, they are worn
for his sake—they become well, as he thinks, the auburn of your
bonny hair;—that blue gown is worn to-night because he likes it;—
but, Mary, will you curse me to my face, when I declare before the
God that made us, that that man is pledged unto me by all that is
sacred between mortal creatures; and that I have here in my bosom
written promises and oaths of love from him, who, I was this
morning told, is in a few days to be thy husband? Turn me out of the
hut now, if you choose, and let me, if you choose, die of hunger and
fatigue in the woods where we have so often walked together; for
such death would be mercy to me, in comparison with your marriage
with him who is mine for ever, if there be a God who heeds the oaths
of the creatures He has made.”
Mary Robinson had led a happy life, but a life of quiet thoughts,
tranquil hopes, and meek desires. Tenderly and truly did she love the
man to whom she was now betrothed; but it was because she had
thought him gentle, manly, upright, sincere, and one that feared
God. His character was unimpeached—to her his behaviour had
always been fond, affectionate, and respectful; that he was a fine-
looking man, and could show himself among the best of the country
round at church, and market, and fair-day, she saw and felt with
pleasure and with pride. But in the heart of this poor, humble,
contented, and pious girl, love was not a violent passion, but an
affection sweet and profound. She looked forward to her marriage
with a joyful sedateness, knowing that she would have to toil for her
family, if blest with children; but happy in the thought of keeping her
husband’s house clean, of preparing his frugal meals, and welcoming
him when wearied at night to her faithful, and affectionate, and
grateful bosom.
At first, perhaps, a slight flush of anger towards Sarah tinged her
cheek; then followed in quick succession, or all blended together in
one sickening pang, fear, disappointment, the sense of wrong, and
the cruel pain of disesteeming and despising one on whom her heart
had rested with all its best and purest affections. But though there
was a keen struggle between many feelings in her heart, her
resolution was formed during that very conflict, and she said within
herself, “If it be even so, neither will I be so unjust as to deprive poor
Sarah of the man who ought to marry her, nor will I be so mean and
low-spirited, poor as I am, and dear as he has been unto me, as to
become his wife.”
While these thoughts were calmly passing in the soul of this
magnanimous girl, all her former affection for Sarah revived; and, as
she sighed for herself, she wept aloud for her friend. “Be quiet, be
quiet, Sarah, and sob not so as if your heart were breaking. It need
not be thus with you. Oh, sob not so sair! You surely have not walked
in this one day from the heart of the parish of Montrath?”—“I have
indeed done so, and I am as weak as the wreathed snaw. God knows,
little matter if I should die away; for, after all, I fear he will never
think of me for his wife, and you, Mary, will lose a husband with
whom you would have been happy, I feel, after all, that I must appear
a mean wretch in your eyes.”
There was silence between them; and Mary Robinson, looking at
the clock, saw that it wanted only about a quarter of an hour from the
time of tryst. “Give me the oaths and promises you mentioned, out of
your bosom, Sarah, that I may show them to Gabriel when he comes.
And once more I promise, by all the sunny and all the snowy days we
have sat together in the same plaid on the hillside, or in the lonesome
charcoal plots and nests o’ green in the woods, that if my Gabriel—
did I say my Gabriel?—has forsaken you and deceived me thus, never
shall his lips touch mine again—never shall he put ring on my finger
—never shall this head lie in his bosom—no, never, never;
notwithstanding all the happy, too happy, hours and days I have
been with him, near or at a distance—on the corn-rig—among the
meadow hay, in the singing-school—at harvest-home—in this room,
and in God’s own house. So help me God, but I will keep this vow!”
Poor Sarah told, in a few hurried words, the story of her love and
desertion—how Gabriel, whose business as a shepherd often took
him into Montrath parish, had wooed her, and fixed everything
about their marriage, nearly a year ago. But that he had become
causelessly jealous of a young man whom she scarcely knew; had
accused her of want of virtue, and for many months had never once
come to see her. “This morning, for the first time, I heard for a
certainty, from one who knew Gabriel well and all his concerns, that
the banns had been proclaimed in the church between him and you;
and that in a day or two you were to be married. And though I felt
drowning, I determined to make a struggle for my life—for oh! Mary,
Mary, my heart is not like your heart; it wants your wisdom, your
meekness, your piety; and if I am to lose Gabriel, will I destroy my
miserable life, and face the wrath of God sitting in judgment upon
sinners.”
At this burst of passion Sarah hid her face with her hands, as if
sensible that she had committed blasphemy. Mary, seeing her
wearied, hungry, thirsty, and feverish, spoke to her in the most
soothing manner, led her into the little parlour called the spence,
then removed into it the table, with the oaten cakes, butter, and milk;
and telling her to take some refreshment, and then lie down in the
bed, but on no account to leave the room till called for, gave her a
sisterly kiss, and left her. In a few minutes the outer door opened,
and Gabriel entered.
The lover said, “How is my sweet Mary?” with a beaming
countenance; and gently drawing her to his bosom, he kissed her
cheek. Mary did not—could not—wished not—at once to release
herself from his enfolding arms. Gabriel had always treated her as
the woman who was to be his wife; and though, at this time, her
heart knew its own bitterness, yet she repelled not endearments that
were so lately delightful, and suffered him to take her almost in his
arms to their accustomed seat. He held her hand in his, and began to
speak in his usual kind and affectionate language. Kind and
affectionate it was, for though he ought not to have done so, he loved
her, as he thought, better than his life. Her heart could not, in one
small short hour, forget a whole year of bliss. She could not yet fling
away with her own hand what, only a few minutes ago, seemed to her
the hope of paradise. Her soul sickened within her, and she wished
that she were dead, or never had been born.
“O Gabriel! Gabriel! well indeed have I loved you; nor will I say,
after all that has passed between us, that you are not deserving, after
all, of a better love than mine. Vain were it to deny my love, either to
you or to my own soul. But look me in the face—be not wrathful—
think not to hide the truth either from yourself or me, for that now is
impossible—but tell me solemnly, as you shall answer to God at the
judgment-day, if you know any reason why I must not be your
wedded wife.” She kept her mild moist eyes fixed upon him; but he
hung down his head and uttered not a word, for he was guilty before
her, before his own soul, and before God.
“Gabriel, never could we have been happy; for you often, often told
me, that all the secrets of your heart were known unto me, yet never
did you tell me this. How could you desert the poor innocent creature
that loved you; and how could you use me so, who loved you perhaps
as well as she, but whose heart God will teach, not to forget you, for
that may I never do, but to think on you with that friendship and
affection which innocently I can bestow upon you, when you are
Sarah’s husband. For, Gabriel, I have this night sworn, not in anger
or passion—no, no—but in sorrow and pity for another’s wrongs—in
sorrow also, deny it will I not, for my own—to look on you from this
hour, as on one whose life is to be led apart from my life, and whose
love must never more meet with my love. Speak not unto me—look
not on me with beseeching eyes. Duty and religion forbid us ever to
be man and wife. But you know there is one, besides me, whom you
loved before you loved me, and, therefore, it may be better too; and
that she loves you, and is faithful, as if God had made you one, I say
without fear—I who have known her since she was a child, although,
fatally for the peace of us both, we have long lived apart. Sarah is in
the house; I will bring her unto you in tears, but not tears of
penitence, for she is as innocent of that sin as I am, who now speak.”
Mary went into the little parlour, and led Sarah forward in her
hand. Despairing as she had been, yet when she had heard from poor
Mary’s voice speaking so fervently, that Gabriel had come, and that
her friend was interceding in her behalf, the poor girl had arranged
her hair in a small looking-glass—tied it up with a ribbon which
Gabriel had given her, and put into the breast of her gown a little gilt
brooch, that contained locks of their blended hair. Pale but beautiful
—for Sarah Pringle was the fairest girl in all the country—she
advanced with a flush on that paleness of reviving hope, injured
pride, and love that was ready to forgive all and forget all, so that
once again she could be restored to the place in his heart that she had
lost. “What have I ever done, Gabriel, that you should fling me from
you? May my soul never live by the atonement of my Saviour, if I am
not innocent of that sin, yea, of all distant thought of that sin, with
which you, even you, have in your hard-heartedness charged me.
Look me in the face, Gabriel, and think of all I have been unto you,
and if you say that before God, and in your own soul, you believe me
guilty, then will I go away out into the dark night, and, long before
morning, my troubles will be at an end.”
Truth was not only in her fervent and simple words, but in the tone
of her voice, the colour of her face, and the light of her eyes. Gabriel
had long shut up his heart against her. At first, he had doubted her
virtue, and that doubt gradually weakened his affection. At last he
tried to believe her guilty, or to forget her altogether, when his heart
turned to Mary Robinson, and he thought of making her his wife. His
injustice—his wickedness—his baseness—which he had so long
concealed, in some measure, from himself, by a dim feeling of wrong
done him, and afterwards by the pleasure of a new love, now
appeared to him as they were, and without disguise. Mary took
Sarah’s hand and placed it within that of her contrite lover; for had
the tumult of conflicting passions allowed him to know his own soul,
such at that moment he surely was, saying with a voice as composed
as the eyes with which she looked upon them, “I restore you to each
other; and I already feel the comfort of being able to do my duty. I
will be bride’s-maid. And I now implore the blessing of God upon
your marriage. Gabriel, your betrothed will sleep this night in my
bosom. We will think of you, better, perhaps, than you deserve. It is
not for me to tell you what you have to repent of. Let us all three pray
for each other this night, and evermore, when we are on our knees
before our Maker. The old people will soon be at home. Goodnight,
Gabriel.” He kissed Sarah; and, giving Mary a look of shame,
humility, and reverence, he went home to meditation and
repentance.
It was now midsummer; and before the harvest had been gathered
in throughout the higher valleys, or the sheep brought from the
mountain-fold, Gabriel and Sarah were man and wife. Time passed
on, and a blooming family cheered their board and fireside. Nor did
Mary Robinson, the Flower of the Forest (for so the woodcutter’s
daughter was often called), pass her life in single blessedness. She,
too, became a wife and mother; and the two families, who lived at
last on adjacent farms, were remarkable for mutual affection
throughout all the parish, and more than one intermarriage took
place between them, at a time when the worthy parents had almost
forgotten the trying incident of their youth.
MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS AND CHATELAR;
OR, TWILIGHT MUSINGS IN HOLYROOD.
There are no mysteries into which we are so fond of prying as the

mysteries of the heart. The hero of the best novel in the world, if he
could not condescend to fall in love, might march through his three
volumes and excite no more sensation than his grandmother; and a
newspaper without a breach of promise of marriage is a thing not to
be endured.
It is not my intention to affect any singular exception from this
natural propensity, and I am ready to confess that the next best thing
to being in love oneself, is to speculate on the hopes, and fears, and
fates of others. How truly interesting are the little schemes and
subterfuges, the romancing and story-telling of our dove-eyed and
gentle-hearted playfellows! I have listened to a lame excuse for a
stolen ride in a tilbury, or a duet in the woods, with wonderful
sensibility; and have witnessed the ceremony of cross-questioning
with as much trepidation as I could have felt had I been the culprit
myself. It is not, however, to be maintained that the love adventures
of the present age can, in any way, compete with the enchantment of
days agone; when tender souls were won by tough exploits, and
Cupid’s dart was a twenty-foot lance, ordained only to reach the
lady’s heart through the ribs of the rival. This was the golden age of
love, albeit I am not one to lament it, thinking, as I do, that it is far
more sensible to aid and abet my neighbour in toasting the beauty of
his mistress, than to caper about with him in the lists, for
contradiction’s sake, to the imminent danger and discomfort of us
both. After this came the middle or dark ages of love, when it had
ceased to be a glory, but had lost nothing of its fervour as a passion.
If there is here less of romance than in the tilting days, there is
considerably more of interest, because there is more of mystery. In
the one, the test of true love was to make boast, in the other it was to
keep secret. Accordingly, for an immense space of time, we have
nothing but such fragments of adventures as could be gathered by
eavesdroppers, who leave us to put head and tail to them as best
suits our fancy; and the loves of Queen Elizabeth, who lived, as it
were, only yesterday, are less known than the loves of queen
Genevra, who perhaps never lived at all.
These amatory reflections occurred to me some little time ago,
during a twilight reverie in the long, gloomy banqueting-room of
Holyrood. It was the very land of love and mystery, for there was
scarcely one of the grim visages which glared upon the walls, but had
obtained his share of celebrity in lady’s bower, as well as in tented
field; and of scarcely one of whom any certain and defined
adventures have been handed down. I continued speculating through
this line of kings, blessing the mark and confounding the painter,
who has given us so little of their history in their faces, till I grew
quite warm upon the subject, and found myself uniting and
reasoning upon the few facts of which we are in possession, till I
fancied I could penetrate through two or three centuries at least, and
had a pretty shrewd idea as to who and who had been together.
Scotland has, I think, in spite of its sober, money-making
character, always excited a more romantic curiosity than England.
This, perhaps, is more owing to its peculiar misfortunes than to any
particular difference of disposition. English heroes have been as
brave, and no doubt as loving, but they do not walk under such a
halo of pity; and whilst we pry with eagerness into the secrets of the
gallant Jameses, we suffer those of their English contemporaries to
be “interred with their bones.” I have always felt this strongly, and at
the time of which I speak, I felt it stronger than ever. I was treading
upon the very boards which had bounded to their manly steps, and
was surrounded by the very walls which possessed the secret
whisperings of their hearts. From that identical window, perhaps,
had the first James gazed upon the moon, which I saw rising, and
fancied that he almost held commune with the eyes of his English
beauty. There, perhaps, had the royal poet entwined her name with
the choicest hopes of his bosom, and woven a tale of happiness which
concealed but too securely the assassin and the dagger behind it.
There, too, might the courteous and courageous victims of Flodden
Field and Solway Moss have planned the loves which characterised
their lives, and the wars which concluded them, almost at the same
moment. And there might the hapless Mary have first listened to the
poisonous passion of a Darnley, or a Bothwell, and afterwards shed
the tears of bitterness and self-reproach.
I paced this sad-looking room of rejoicing quite unconscious of the
hours that were passing; for I was alone, and in a train of thought
which nothing but a hearty shake could have interrupted. Mary, and
all her beauty, and talents, and acquirements, continued floating
before me. Her world of lovers and admirers, who, for the most part,
were sleeping in a bloody bed, seemed rising one by one to my view,
and I wandered with them through their hopes, and their fears, and
their sorrows, even to the scaffold, as though I had been the ghost of
one of them myself, and were possessed of secrets of which there is
no living record.
Many of these ill-fated hearts have, by their nobility, or their
exploits, or by the caprice of historians, received full meed of
applause and pity; many, no doubt, have sunk into oblivion; and
some, in addition to their misfortunes, have left their memories to
combat with the censure which has been thought due to their
presumption;—of these last I have always considered the unfortunate
Chatelar to have been the most hardly used, and in the course of my
musings I endeavoured to puzzle out something satisfactory to
myself upon his dark and distorted history.
The birth of Chatelar, if not noble, was in no common degree
honourable, for he was great-nephew to the celebrated Bayard, le
Chevalier sans peur et sans tache. It is said that he likewise bore a
strong resemblance to him in person, possessing a handsome face
and graceful figure; and equally in manly and elegant acquirements,
being an expert soldier and an accomplished courtier. In addition to
this, says Brantome, who knew him personally, he possessed a most
elegant mind, and spoke and wrote, both in prose and poetry, as well
as any man in France.
Dangerous indeed are these advantages; and Chatelar’s first
meeting with Mary was under circumstances calculated to render
them doubly dangerous. Alone, as she conceived herself, cast off
from the dearest ties of her heart, the land which she had learnt to
consider her native land fading fast from her eyes, and the billows
bearing her to the banishment of one with which, as it contained
none that she loved, she could feel no sympathy;—in this scene of
wailing and tears, the first tones of the poet were stealing upon her
ear with the spirit of kindred feelings and kindred pursuits. We are to
consider that Mary at this time had obtained but little experience,
and was probably not overstocked with prudence, having scarcely
attained the age of nineteen years. Not only, are we told, did she
listen with complacency and pleasure to Chatelar’s warm and
romantic praises of her beauty, but employed her poetic talent in
approving and replying to them; putting herself upon a level with her
gifted companion, a course which was morally certain to convert his
veneration into feelings more nearly allied to his nature. Had he not
been blamed for his presumption, it is probable that he would have
been condemned for his stoicism; and his luckless passion is by no
means a singular proof that where hearts are cast in kindred moulds,
it is difficult to recognise extrinsic disparities. Chatelar saw the
woman, and forgot the queen; Mary felt the satisfaction, and was
blind to the consequences.
It is much to be lamented by the lovers of truth, that none of the
poetical pieces which are said to have passed between Mary and
Chatelar have been handed down to us. One song would have been a
more valuable document in the elucidation of their history than all
the annals we possess, and would have taught us at once the degree
of encouragement and intimacy which was permitted. Whatever it
was, it was such as to rivet the chains which had been so readily and
unadvisedly put on; and from the period of their first meeting, we
may consider him the most enthusiastic of her lovers.
How long he continued the admiration and the favourite of
Holyrood does not, I believe, appear. It could not, however, be any
considerable time ere he was compelled to return with his friend and
patron, Damville, to France, with full reason to lament his voyage to
Scotland, and with, probably, a firm determination to revisit it
whenever opportunity should permit. This opportunity his evil stars
were not long in bringing about. The projected war of faith between
Damville’s party and the Huguenots afforded him a fair pretext for
soliciting a dispensation of his services. Of the first he was a servant,
of the last he was a disciple. It was therefore contrary to his honour
and inclinations to fight against either of them, and, accordingly, in
about fifteen months, we find him again at Holyrood.
Mary, it may reasonably be inferred, from her extreme love of
France, and unwillingness to leave it, was not very speedily to be
reconciled to her change of scene and society; a face, therefore, from
the adopted land of her affections, and a tongue capable of gratifying
them with the minutest accounts of the beloved objects it contained,
must, at this time, have been acquisitions of no small interest.
Chatelar, too, had already worked a welcome on his own account.
Few of my readers need be reminded how insensibly and certainly
the tongue which speaks of that which is dear to our hearts is stored
up with it in the same treasury. The tale and the teller of it,—the leaf
and the wave it falls upon,—arrive at the same time at the same
destination. Histories, for the most part, insinuate that Mary’s
carriage towards Chatelar was merely that of kindness and courtesy;
but this, I think, is an inference not warranted by the various facts
which they have been unable to repress, and not even the silence of
the inveterate John Knox upon this head can convince me that
Chatelar had not reason to believe himself beloved.
Let us then imagine, if we can, what was likely to be the
intoxication produced in the brain as well as the bosom of a man of
an enthusiastic temperament by a free and daily intercourse, during
three months, with the fascinations of a creature like Mary. What
tales could that old misshapen boudoir—famous only, in common
estimation, for the murder of Rizzio and the boot of Darnley—tell of
smiles and tears over the fortunes of dear and distant companions of
childhood, as narrated by the voice of one to whom, perhaps, they
were equally dear! What tales could it tell of mingling music, and
mingling poetry, and mingling looks, and vain regrets, and fearful
anticipations! Here had the day been passed in listening to the
praises of each other, from lips in which praise was a talent and a
profession; and here had the twilight stolen upon them when none
were by, and none could know how deeply the truth of those praises
was acknowledged. Let us imagine all this, and, likewise, how
Chatelar was likely to be wrought upon by the utter hopelessness of
his case.
Had the object of his passion been upon anything like a level with
him,—had there been the most remote possibility of a chance of its

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The Palgrave Handbook of Minority

Languages and Communities Gabrielle

The Palgrave Handbook Of Minority Entrepreneurship

Supplementary Schools and Ethnic Minority Communities

New Speakers of Minority Languages: Linguistic

The Palgrave handbook of critical theory Thompson

The Palgrave Handbook of Animals and Literature Susan

Minority Languages from Western Europe and Russia

The Palgrave Handbook of Prison and the Family Marie

Climate Change and Agriculture in Zimbabwe:

“This is an outstanding collection of perspectives, analyses and views of the dynamic

ISBN 978-1-137-54065-2 ISBN 978-1-137-54066-9 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018953783

Cover illustration: © Christopher Corr / Ikon Images / Alamy Stock Photo

1 Introduction: Minority Languages and Communities in a

Part I Minority Language Rights, Protection, Governance 19

2 Minority Language Rights and Standards: Definitions and

3 Minority Language Rights in the Russian Federation: The End

4 Minority Language Governance and Regulation101

Part II Recognition, Self-Determination, Autonomy 131

5 The Recognition of Ethnic and Language Diversity in Nation-­

6 Linguistic Recognition in Deeply Divided Societies:

7 National Cultural Autonomy and Linguistic Rights in Central

8 Sign Language Communities207

Part III Migration, Settlement, Mobility 233

9 Changing Perspectives on Language Maintenance and Shift in

10 Arctic Languages in Canada in the Age of Globalization257

Part IV Economics, Markets, Commodification 285

11 Minority Languages and Markets287

12 Language Economics and Issues of Planning for Minority

13 Language Minorities in a Globalized Economy: The Case of

Part V Education, Literacy, Access 355

14 Indigenous Children’s Language Practices in Australia357

15 Minorities, Languages, Education, and Assimilation in

16 Literacy in My Language? Principles, Practices, Prospects405

Part VI Media, Public Usage, Visibility 431

17 Minority Language Media: Issues of Power, Finance and

18 Minority Languages and Social Media451

19 Linguistic Landscapes and Minority Languages481

Part VII Endangerment, Ecosystems, Resilience 507

20 Resilience for Minority Languages509

21 Minority Contact Languages, Small Islands, and Linguistic

22 The Yiddish Conundrum: A Cautionary Tale for Language

Maartje De Meulder is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the research group on multilin-

Clinton Robinson is an Independent Consultant in education and development,

Gillian Wigglesworth is Professor of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics at the

Fig. 2.1 Number of armed conflicts by type of conflict, 1946–2016.

Table 9.1 Stages of reversing language shift 241

© The Author(s) 2019 1

 art I: Minority Language Rights, Protection,

overtly, the pre-eminence of Irish is anchored constitutionally and is reflected

 art II: Recognition, Self-determination,

practically all these diverse types of governance of multiculturality have a wide

Part III: Migration, Settlement, Mobility

globalization as it pertains to minority language communities in different

Part IV: Economics, Markets, Commodification

Part V: Education, Literacy, Access

Part VI: Media, Public Usage, Visibility

There are no mysteries into which we are so fond of prying as the

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1 Introduction: Minority Languages and Communities in a

Part I Minority Language Rights, Protection, Governance 19

2 Minority Language Rights and Standards: Definitions and

3 Minority Language Rights in the Russian Federation: The End

4 Minority Language Governance and Regulation101

Part II Recognition, Self-Determination, Autonomy 131

5 The Recognition of Ethnic and Language Diversity in Nation-

6 Linguistic Recognition in Deeply Divided Societies:

7 National Cultural Autonomy and Linguistic Rights in Central

8 Sign Language Communities207

Part III Migration, Settlement, Mobility 233

9 Changing Perspectives on Language Maintenance and Shift in

10 Arctic Languages in Canada in the Age of Globalization257

Part IV Economics, Markets, Commodification 285

11 Minority Languages and Markets287

12 Language Economics and Issues of Planning for Minority

13 Language Minorities in a Globalized Economy: The Case of

Part V Education, Literacy, Access 355

14 Indigenous Children’s Language Practices in Australia357

15 Minorities, Languages, Education, and Assimilation in

16 Literacy in My Language? Principles, Practices, Prospects405

Part VI Media, Public Usage, Visibility 431

17 Minority Language Media: Issues of Power, Finance and

18 Minority Languages and Social Media451

19 Linguistic Landscapes and Minority Languages481

Part VII Endangerment, Ecosystems, Resilience 507

20 Resilience for Minority Languages509

21 Minority Contact Languages, Small Islands, and Linguistic

22 The Yiddish Conundrum: A Cautionary Tale for Language

Table 9.1 Stages of reversing language shift 241

art I: Minority Language Rights, Protection,

art II: Recognition, Self-determination,

Part III: Migration, Settlement, Mobility

Part IV: Economics, Markets, Commodification

Part V: Education, Literacy, Access

Part VI: Media, Public Usage, Visibility