race were not allowed on Viking ships, and were probably less amenable
and less charming to boot. But the Pictish women thus seized had their
revenge. The darker race prevailed, and, the supply of fathers of
pure Norse blood being renewed only at intervals, the children of
such unions soon came to be mainly of Celtic strain, and their mothers
doubtless taught them to speak the Gaelic, which had then for at least
a century superseded the Pictish tongue. The result was a mixed race
of Gall-gaels or Gaelic strangers, far more Celtic than Norse, who
soon spoke chiefly Gaelic, save in north-east Ness. Their Gaelic, too,
like the English of Shetland at the present time, would not only be
full of old Norse words, especially for things relating to the sea,
but be spoken with a slight foreign accent. How numerous those foreign
words still are in Sutherland Gaelic, the late Mr. George Henderson
has ably and elaborately proved in his scholarly book on "Norse
Influence on Celtic Scotland." We find traces of Norse words and the
Norse accent and inflexions also on the Moray seaboard, on which
the Norse gained a hold. The same would be true of the people on the
western lands and islands of the Hebrides.

As time went on, the Gaelic strain predominated more and more,
especially on the mainland of Scotland, over the Gall, or foreign,
strain, which was not maintained. Mr. A.W. Johnston, in his "_Orkney
and Shetland Folk--850 to 1350_,"[14] has worked out the quarterings
of the Norse jarls, of whom only the first three were pure Norsemen,
and he has thus shown conclusively how very Celtic they had become
long before their male line failed. The same process was at work,
probably to a greater extent, among those of lower rank, who could
not find or import Norse wives, if they would, as the jarls frequently
did.