[Calum Mac Neill]

You can make no valid comment about my education as you are almost totally ignorant of it. As for the view that historians being 'totally objective' and free of bias, I refer you for a start to the opinions of E H Carr and Will and Ariel Durant on the issue.

Lack of textual evidence does not invalidate evidence. Harold Wilson was a Prime Minister of Great Britain. I don't have to support such statements with textual evidence. Neither do I have to support the previous existence of the Statutes of Iona or Clearances with textual evidence. They are a rather key moments in Scottish history. You do not have to acknowledgement as fact. A third party can judge your issue with textual references.

You choose your facts to demonstrate your Anglophone behaviour trend, I'll choose mine. During the period 1700-2000, The Anglophone Scot hegemony, despite Blind Harry et al, voted for Union with England. The religious Anglophone Scot hegemony printed the Bible in the English language in preference to Lowland 'Scots'. The fact that Anglophones can have a civil war does not stop them holding essentially the same culture.

I do not have to 'concede' that history is complex as I have never believed or stated otherwise. Nor would I regard any statement such as 'Lowland Scots was the ruin of Scotland' as being any more simplistic than stating that the Beatles were a phenomenon: these are statements full of meaning to be unpacked.

Human beings are complex entities and so is human society. This does not mean that I can't see when a crowd are planning to hang someone. The fact that a minority of people in the crowd discourage others from their aim does not confuse the overall direction of movement nor, importantly, disguise the end result. The competing forces within the crowd is not 'inconsistency' in my view of the event, it is part of the complexity of the event. Identifying trends in history is similarly possible.

The words 'after the 1745 Jacobite uprising' is roughly equatable in meaning with 'post-Culloden' as Culloden is 1746. Cite who you like, a statement by a modern historian does not equate in meaning with 'historical evidence'. Another fact for you to ignore - the immediate wave of government retribution after Culloden was only carried out in the Highlands and Anglophone Jacobite communities in the Lowlands went unpunished.

Yes, the construction of roads and forts into the Highlands in the 18th century was carried out at Anglophone instigation with military aims - to subdue Highlanders and obstruct the Jacobite cause by enforcing the laws against Gaels carrying arms.

Historians' viewpoints are not fact. If you equate or conflate the two, that is not something I feel inclined to contend with. I am perfectly able to continue accusing the Anglophone community of cultural bias, including their historians if they display this in their historical narratives. Just because something is written in a book by an academic does not by itself mean that what is written is true.

You are mistaken if you believe it impossible that William Wallace and Robert the Bruce spoke Scottish. Wallace was certainly a polyglot and lived at time when Gaelic and English co-existed in the areas of Scotland where he was born and educated. He was taunted as being 'king of Kyle', a strongly Gaelic-speaking area of the Lowlands in Wallace's day. As for the Bruce, it is generally accepted that he had a dual ancestry both Norman and Gaelic. Gaelic tradition supports this and the slogan at Bannockburn was apparently a Gaelic one.

My argument is not a fantasy, it is a viewpoint, and has been arrived at through the acquisition of knowledge. Just because you ignore my facts does not turn them into fantasy nor undo my case. I am giving my opinion of Lowland 'Scots' language and all that goes with it, an opinion created through learning history. You are completely failing to present a serious challenge to it. I have successfully demonstrated how numerous facts support my viewpoint, time and again. Even if some don't, they do not constitute a strong enough counter-trend. For all you have said, it remains quite clear to me which trend is strongest in Anglophone culture in Scotland. Like Queen's English, it is not a good language for a Scot to have as a mother tongue, quite the opposite, it is a cultural compromise facilitating Anglicisation and ultimately anti-Scottish. Scots have been internally colonised. To be a Scot is not to be Welsh, not Pict and definitely not Anglic. Time for Anglophone Scots to quit their less-than-fully-Scottish linguistic condition and embrace the Gaelic culture that their linguistic forebears, the 'Inglis' and their linguistic progeny, took such pains to wipe off the face of the earth.