Article/blog post written and published by Linden Alexander Pentecost, published on the 22nd of December 2025. I have published many other things recently including other blog posts on this website. This article/blog post was published in the UK, and only on this UK-based website. The author is also from the UK. No AI was used. Photo also by Linden Alexander Pentecost. This publication is unrelated to and separate from all of my other publications, including others which discuss the Gaelic dialect, ancient history and mythology of Tiree, even if I have repeated a couple of word examples, albeit discussed differently. The photo in this article showing a Tiree beach at sunset has also never been published before, although other, different photos I have taken on Tiree are published in some of my other publications. There is also text above the photo. The photo is located after the first part of the article focused on the dialect, and before the equally important second part. These parts are not specifically distinguished in the text, which is a flowing text. This blog post/article contains 1995 words.
I went to Tiree a couple of years ago, a few weeks after returning from the Isle of Barra. I have published my research on the island’s language, archaeology and ancient mythical history in other publications, but there is of course always more to do. The western part of Tiree has one of my favourite Gaelic dialects. The Gaelic in Western Tiree has a beautiful music and rhythm. It does not, to my knowledge, contain pitch accents, but it does contain glottalisation, glottal stops and a weak, but musical stød-like accent, and it differs in this, and in other ways, from other Northern Argyll dialects of Gaelic, and from the dialects of the Outer Hebrides a little to the northwest, even if Tiree Gaelic and Barra Gaelic share some similarities. When I have ample time to go back there, I hope to do some proper recordings, and to then display these on this website, alongside as many words and sample sentences as I can find. This also depends of course on how many informants I find, and how much time they have, as I doubt I can spend too long on Tiree.
These words and sentences will be written in Tiree Gaelic orthography, an orthography I have used to represent the Gaelic of this island. I will also use this orthography in this article. Like my orthographies for other Gaelic dialects, it is not intended to replace the standard system, but rather to be used alongside it, and this dialectal orthography can change and vary depending on how precise one wants to be, exactly.
There are also a fair number of things I would like to discuss here about the dialect, which I have not before. For one, Tiree is not located that far from Mull, so it’s perhaps not surprising that some specific similarities are shared with certain dialects of Mull Gaelic. One such similarity is the appearance of a light schwa vowel in initial consonant clusters, for example Tiree Gaelic dᵊlù (1), instead of standard Gaelic dlùth, both meaning “close” or “near”. Another example is Tiree Gaelic dᵊleasanas - “duty” (1), compare standard Gaelic: dleasdanas.
Tiree Gaelic, occasionally has the sound [ɸ] in instances of pre-aspiration. This occurs in different dialects to different degrees, and the occurrence of [ɸ] tends to depend on the following vowel, although this is not always the case. An example from Tiree is the word cuɸba (1) meaning “cup”, standard Gaelic: cupan. As I have mentioned elsewhere, the Tiree Gaelic form of standard Gaelic famhair - “giant”, is unusual. The Tiree Gaelic form of famhair may be written as: foʼɲai̯ʴ (1). Tiree also has legends of giants and giant beings which I have discussed elsewhere. Note that this word replaces the medial sound represented by -mh- with [ɲ]. The word also contains glottalisation, written as ʼ, and we can also see in this word that the final slender r becomes an almost-semivowel, followed by a very weak alveolar approximate, written as ʴ. This sound can be described as very “slight” r-sound with the quality of a vowel. Another thing I noticed recently was the appearance of a [ʒ]-like sound in the Tiree Gaelic form of standard Gaelic saothair - "work". In Tiree Gaelic, this word might be written as sɤ̈̀ɤ̈ʒʴ (1). Note that this word also contains a weak alveolar approximate, ʴ, vowel harmony and the [ʒ]-like sound before the ʴ. This may be in some way related to the Barra slender r, although this is a different sound (I discuss this elsewhere, including on this website but not in this article). I have mentioned, albeit it in a different way, a couple of the Tiree Gaelic words in this paragraph, in another publication.
Another curious thing I noticed recently about Tiree Gaelic was that the s in ris - "to him" is not pronounced as a "sh" sound but as a non-alveolar "s" with a palatal quality.
Note that often in Tiree Gaelic there is not even a slight -r- sound in such positions, and often there is only the vowel i̯.
As I have mentioned before, and as is common in much of Argyll, the final orthographic slender -dh and -gh are often pronounced as though a slender ch. I make this change visible in the spelling, here I will give some new examples, e.g. dᶻeich - “after” (1), standard Gaelic: déidh, and Tiree Gaelic condraich - “ebb-tide” (1), standard Gaelic: contraigh. The slender d is generally, but not always, represented as a palatal "dz" sound in Tiree, with the z written smaller because it is slightly less prominent than the d. Another example of this I will give here is drochaidᶻ (1) - "bridge", standard Gaelic: drochaid.
Photo below: a beautiful sunset on Tiree. The sea is calm in the photo below, taken in June 2023, but long ago, was Tiree the site of a giant earthquake and flood, along with other parts of the Western Isles? May this never happen again - if so.
In terms of Tiree's folklore and ancient history, I learned very recently a fascinating piece of a folklore. I have previously done research and written extensively about Tiree's Sea levels, and how this corresponds to ancient sites, language traits and mythological influences. Essentially it has been my assumption that the earlier pre-Gaelic inhabitants, known in Gaelic as the goill, would have occupied what are now the more mountainous and rocky areas of Tiree. Later on, when the land rose after post-glacial rebound, these other cultures referred to as goill or "Danes" may have continued to have occupied this landscape, but primarily isolated on the original mountain areas which also above water in the Mesolithic. If continuity is present, which I think it is (I have written about this and many other examples of it elsewhere), then these Mesolithic people did I think become some of the Iron Age broch and dun dwellers in certain areas. This is why for example there is a dun called Dùn nan Gall on Tiree, indicating perhaps that whilst the Gaels and earlier Bronze Age and Neolithic cultures occupied much of Tiree, these "others", goill, were still present on parts of the island. I have also recounted much more about this and this coastline's mythology and ancient history elsewhere, but I will mention here again that I found some possibly Mesolithic flint shards, and a giant-sized possible grave, beneath a broch not far from Dùn nan Gall on Tiree.
Now, the new information I found does change this slightly, because there is folkloric evidence of an idea that a part of the island of Tiree actually sank or was flooded in the distant past. I will give an exact quote shortly. Now, at first, I thought that this might contradict with my own theories and work on this, because of course the sea level in Tiree has in fact fallen for the most part, due to post-glacial rebound, with the original Mesolithic landscape having been smaller than the current island. This is why there are raised beaches on Tiree. However, the idea of a prehistoric flood on Tiree would make sense and be in line with my own theories, if this flood took place before the Mesolithic. This would imply that there was once a larger island or landmass, occupied by, perhaps these Danes or goill (I do not mean "Danes" in the sense of modern Danish people or Norse people, but use this to refer to a prehistoric, likely pre-Indo-European speaking people connected to Denmark, Scotland and elsewhere) - perhaps these people once occupied a much larger area, and the evidence we see of them in the Mesolithic period, and the Mesolithic landscape, only represents a fraction of their original landscape of Tiree.
The legend in question is mentioned briefly in the book, The Gaelic Otherworld by John Gregorson Cambell, edited by Ronald Black. The part pertaining to Tiree occurs around the top of page 398, and Tiree is only briefly mentioned in relation to the larger subject of the legendary island of Rocabarra, which I have discussed in other publications, and will discuss more on in the future. And I quote from the book: "It (Rocabarra) was sunk by an earthquake at the time a great part of Tiree sank...". No explanation is given on when this event might have taken place, but this does connect to other traditions around the Hebrides and Northern Isles I have published on elsewhere. If this earthquake was ancient, and pre-Mesolithic, I feel that this could make sense, although to my knowledge there is not yet any identified evidence of this event, although such evidence could of course have been misidentified.
In terms of the idea of a pre-Mesolithic landscape in Tiree, the book Scotland's first settlers, by C.R. Wickham-Jones gives information regarding a tanged flint point found on Tiree. Whilst these may pertain to Mesolithic connections with Scandinavia, they are also more generally associated with the Upper Paleolithic. This is in any case indicative that the ancient people of Tiree may have had links to a Paleolithic population, possibly in-situ in Tiree - if the tanged point is indeed pre-Mesolithic, or even from before the last glacial maximum - but this is speculative.
In terms of how this might relate to the idea of a large part of Tiree flooding, this flood, could, for example, be what separates the Upper Paleolithic landscape from the Mesolithic landscape, taking into account the possibility that the island, or rather, a much larger original Tiree island, may have been ice free for longer than expected. So in a sense the Mesolithic people on Tiree would not have appeared from nowhere, but could have been the remnants of an even older population.
We do often assume that the history of Scotland can only go back as far as the Ice Age. But I have to admit, I am in love with the possibility that this might not have been the case in all parts of Scotland, and that some of the cultures, even some elements of the Gaelic language and folklore, could go back so far in situ. It's a fascinating and wonderful possibility. And I have a feeling that more on this will be revealed in the future, through more research.
God bless the ancestors of Tiree and the people of Tiree
References:
Tiree Gaelic words, marked with (1) are written on a form of Tiree Gaelic spelling, which is to varying degrees based upon the phonology as these words are described in the Survey of the Gaelic Dialects of Scotland, edited by Cathair Ó Dochartaigh.
Two other books are also mentioned in this article/blog post, both of these citations and the quote are in the text.
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