Note 834 — Chapter X · LEARNING AND LANGUAGE.

Irish Charters in the Book of Kells; Irish Arch. Misc., vol. i. p. 141. Dr. J. Stuart, in a note to his valuable preface to the Book of Deer, p. cxxxix., says—‘It may be doubted whether sufficient evidence has been adduced for holding that all the persons called Scolocs or Scologs in our early records were of the same character, or were in all cases, as has been assumed, scholastics, or the lowest members of the clerical order; but, on the contrary, were in some cases simply the husbandmen or tenants of the land.’ The author concurs in this opinion. The word Scoloc or Scolog unquestionably comes from Scol or Sgol, a school; but the word Sgolog has come to signify in Irish simply a husbandman or farmer, and appears at one time to have been given to a class of cottars in the northern isles. Buchanan, in his Travels in the Western Hebrides from 1782 to 1790, p. 6, says that there is ‘an unfortunate and numerous class of men known under the name of Scallags. The Scallag, whether male or female, is a poor being, who, for mere subsistence, becomes a feudal slave to another, whether a sub-tenant, a tacksman, or a laird. The Scallag builds his own hut with sods and boughs of trees. Five days in the week he works for his master; the sixth is allowed to himself for the cultivation of some scrap of land on the edge of some moss or moor, on which he raises a little kail or colworts, barley and potatoes.’