Note 48 — Chapter II · INTERCOURSE BETWEEN THE GAILL AND THE GAEDHIL DURING THE VIKING PERIOD.
Reading edition
There was also a mixed Norse and Gaelic population in Galloway (the word is a corruption of Gall-Gaedhil, Welsh Galwydel) as well as in the Hebrides (Ir. Innse Gall., i.e., the “Islands of the Foreigners or Norsemen”) and other parts of Scotland. There is a reference to these Gaill-Gaedhil in the Four Masters (A.D. 1154): “The Cinél Eoghain and Muirchertach, son of Niall, sent persons over the sea to hire the fleets of the Gaill-Gaedhil of Aran, Cantire and the Isle of Man and the borders of Scotland in general, over which Mac Sgelling was in command…” (For other references see Marstrander, op. cit., p. 9.)
By Gaddgethlar the Norsemen understood “the place… where Scotland and England meet” (cf. Orkneyinga Saga, ch. 28). It is also interesting to note that in Norse sources the inhabitants of Galloway are called Vikinga-Skotar, a direct translation of Gaill-Gaedhil.
O’Flaherty (Ogygia, p. 360) thought that the Gaill-Gaedhil mentioned in the Annals of the mid-ninth century came to Ireland from Scotland, but the ancient Three Fragments of Annals, which contain the fullest accounts of the Gaill-Gaedhil (pp. 138-141) speak of them as Scuit (i.e., an Irish form of the Latin Scoti, a word which is always used with reference to the Irish before the tenth century). Moreover, the impression received from reading the Fragments of Annals is that the Annalist had in his mind the Norse-Gaelic population of Ireland, not of Scotland.