A little verse from Unst, half in Norn, half in Scottish, which is said to date from the last century, sheds, by its contents, a certain light on the position of the dialect at that time. It is about a Shetland lad who has been in Scotland (Caithness) — a thing very rare in those days — and has come home again, with increased linguistic acquirements, of which the parents are not a little proud. The verse is put in the mouth of the father, or mother:
Də vārə gūə ti̇̄,
when sonə mɩn guid[1] to Kadanes:
häᶇ käᶇ ca’ rossa mare
häᶇ„ käᶇ„ ca’„ bɩg bere
häᶇ„ käᶇ„ ca’„ eld fire
häᶇ„ käᶇ„ ca’„ klȯvan·di taings — —
“It was in a good hour, that my son went to Caithness: He can call rossa, mare; big, bere; eld, fire; klȯvan·di, taings” — — These quite common Scottish words were evidently not, even at that time, in use in Shetland, at any rate in Unst.
In “A view of the ancient and present state of the Zetland Islands”, Edinburgh 1809, the Shetland author, Arthur Edmondston, makes the following observation in regard to the disappearance of the Norn as a spoken language in Shetland: “The old Norse has long been wearing out, and the change appears to have begun in the southern extremity and to have been gradually extended to the northern parts of the country. The island of Unst was its last abode, and not more than thirty years ago several individuals there could speak it fluently. It was preserved too, for a considerable length of time, in Foula[2]; but at present there is scarcely a single person who can repeat even a few words of it”.
In regard to this last statement, one may remark that as late as 1894, there were people in Foula who could repeat sentences in Norn, as I myself had an opportunity of hearing; this must also have been the case in 1809. That the more northerly isles retained the Norn considerably longer than most of the more southerly parts of Shetland, as, for example, Dunrossness, is undoubtedly the case, to judge by the circumstance that the North Isles, Unst, Yell and Fetlar, are the parts of the country where, to this very day, one finds preserved the larger proportion of the old word-stock, and where also by far the greater number of fragments of connected Norn have been recorded. On the other hand, it is very doubtful whether the old dialect held its own longer in Unst than it did in the lonely island of Foula, or whether it held out even as long. It is quite certain that, at the present time, the Norn element has been pushed more into the background in the Foula dialect, spoken by not more than two hundred and fifty persons, while Unst has a population of
