“GAELIG’—NAZI STYLE

Evening Star, Issue 23496, 9 February 1940, Page 9

“GAELIG’—NAZI STYLE

NOT UNDERSTOOD The first German propaganda broadcast in (alleged) Gaelic was put on the air recently. I listened in with Captain A. R. Campbell, of the Glasgow Highlanders’ Institute, who assured me, says a writer in Scotland, that the weird noises. we heard were probably made by “ a German scholar who halflearned Gaelic from the book and had no knowledge of pronunciation except possibly from contact with Irish speakers.” Mr Hector M'Dougall, leading authority on the Gaelic tongue, assured me that no Scot. “ or even Irishman for that matter, could have been able to make head or tail of it.” Mind you, before the show started at all, I could not help wondering why they chose to broadcast to Scotland on the one night of the week when hundreds of Presbyterians will not allow their radio sets to be turned on. “ For ua who speak Gaelic, this is going to be the most interesting development of the war,” Captain Campbell said to me as we sat down beside his set. He rubbed his hands together impatiently while the last few minutes of a stream of abuse were being screamed over the air in French. Then came the annoucement, “Now for it” remarked Captain Campbell excitedly. A voice suddenly began to gabble a weird _ gibberish from the loudspeaker. Captain Campbell’s face fell. “ That’s no’ Gaelic,” ho growled. Unearthly noises continued to roll from the amplifier. To an uninitiated Englishman like me they might have been the high priest’s incantation at some unholy black magic rites, or possibly even—Gaelic. “ Well, he’s no Scotsman,” Captain Campbell said in a hurt tone. “ And that’s certainly no’ Scots Gaelic he’s speaking.” After a while he began to pick out a phrase here and' there. “ Now he’s on about Catholics. . . can’t make out whether they’ve got a raw deal or the other way round. “ The Black and Tans! . . But I don’t know what he thinks about them. . . . The poor men of the country. . . Oh! Now he’s on about the campaign in Poland. He seems to be trying to say that Britain was completely muddled.” When it was all over we rang up Mr Hector M'Dougall, “ I couldn’t make out what he was talking about,” Mr M'Dougall told us. “ I could only catch a sentence here and there.”