[exhibeKed]

I don't have the book here to refer to, but my recollection from reviews is that the hero or narrator comes to Scotland to revisit the land of his ancestors and finds Gaelic-speaking crofters still living in whatever part of the Highlands his people came from. Nowadays you are more likely to find English dropouts from Yorkshire or the Home Counties (i.e. Greater London area) trying to live The Good Life (shorthand used in the UK for trying to live in an ecologically sound way, taken from the title of a popular BBC TV comedy series of yesteryear about a middle-class couple trying to be self-sufficient in suburbia).

Gaelic is not yet dead, but it's on a life-support machine, with an infinitesimally small percentage of Scots speaking it, tho' successive political r?gimes in Edinburgh have thrown a lot of money at it in a bid to ingratiate themselves with the Gaelic lobby. Even in its heartland of the Western Isles, you can happily get by without it.

In Ireland, I don't think Gaelic is too widely spoken either, but it hangs on in the fringes like Donegal and Galway, and I think I'm right in saying that it's still taught in school as a compulsory subject and that teachers and civil servants have to pass a Gaelic exam. to get a job (let me have both barrels if I'm wrong).

Harry