Scottish history is about to come under the spotlight once again on the big screen. We've had Outlander on small screens - or some have... the UK govt apparently thought it would aid the Yes movement in Scotland's IndyRef so 'persuaded' television companies to drop it - but since Rob Roy and Braveheart our past hasn't been a 'blockbuster' with a Scottish flavour.
Outlaw King is coming our way and early signs are promising in terms of drama, cinematic finesse and decent historical accuracy. Unlike Outlander though, the history won't be accurate in terms of what language the Bruce speaks. Bruce's mother tongue was Gaelic. His father was a French-Norman. At the time, around 1300 AD, most of the Scottish mainland was Gaelic speaking and it was the language of king and court.
The design for this t-shirt is not one of Robert the Bruce himself but of a recent predecessor, Alexander III who ruled Scotland from 1241 to 1286. The graphic sees the 'Ollamh Rìgh' or 'Royal Poet' reciting Alexander's genealogy at his coronation on Moot Hill, Scone. The name 'Moot' meaning roughly the same as 'mòd' or 'assembly'. The death of Alexander in a riding accident in Fife, threw Scotland into political chaos that finally ended, for the time being, with Bruce's victory at Bannockburn some 28 years later.
Alba and the British Isles at the time were a mixture of languages and it was not unusual for royalty to speak two or more. Gaelic was known as 'Scottish' at the time. French and Latin were common and the Anglo-Saxon tongue that we now know as 'Scots' was known as Inglis. The Ollamh Rìgh graphic is a reminder though that Scottish/ Gaelic was once at the heart of the Scottish government as it was when Bruce led his army to victory with the war-cry 'Albannaich!'.
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