restricts his remark to the district which had formed part of the
kingdom of Northumbria.[26]

We should, of course, expect to find that the gradually widening breach
in manners and language between Highlanders and Lowlanders produced some
dislike for the Highland robbers and their Irish tongue, and we do
occasionally, though rarely, meet some indication of this. There are not
many references to the Highlanders in Scottish literature earlier than
the sixteenth century. "Blind Harry" (Book VI, ll. 132-140) represents
an English soldier as using, in addressing Wallace, first a mixture of
French and Lowland Scots, and then a mixture of Lowland Scots and
Gaelic:

"Dewgar, gud day, bone Senzhour, and gud morn!

* * * * *

Sen ye ar Scottis, zeit salust sall ye be;
Gud deyn, dawch Lard, bach lowch, banzoch a de".

In "The Book of the Howlat", written in the latter half of the fifteenth
century, by a certain Richard Holland, who was an adherent of the House
of Douglas, there is a similar imitation of Scottish Gaelic, with the
same phrase "Banachadee" (the blessing of God). This seemingly innocent
phrase seems to have some ironical signification, for we find in the
_Auchinleck Chronicle_ (anno 1452) that it was used by some Highlanders
as a term of abuse towards the Bishop of Argyll. Another example occurs
in a coarse "Answer to ane Helandmanis Invective", by Alexander
Montgomerie, the court poet of James VI. The Lowland literature of the
sixteenth century contains a considerable amount of abuse of the