Gaelic

Gaelic's oldest form, Primitive Irish, is first attested in Ogham stone inscriptions from about the fourth century; from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century a shared literary standard called Classical Gaelic served writers in Ireland and Scotland.

Gaelic reached western Scotland with the kingdom of Dal Riata in the sixth century, and the Picts had adopted it by the eleventh century. In Scotland Gaelic retreated to the Highlands and Islands, where the Statutes of Iona of 1609 forced clan chiefs' heirs into English-speaking schools.

In Ireland English conquest and the Treaty of Limerick of 1691 marginalized the language. The Scottish Gaelic New Testament appeared in 1767 and the full Bible in 1801, even as English schooling and emigration steadily shrank the Gaelic-speaking world.