Geolinguistics and haematology : the case of Britain

Links & Letters 5, 1998 167-179 Abstract The spatial stratification of human and cultural facts on the one hand and of biological facts on the other have indeed attracted scholars' attention for a rather long time. With the discovery of the human blood groups in Würzburg, near Bamberg, Germany, early this century these interdisciplinary attempts gained new momentum. Is there a connection between blood group and membership in a tribe or race and between blood group and language, even between dialectal differences within individual languages? The latter aspect is being addressed in this article mainly with regard to England. Key words: Blood Groups, Geographic Haematology, Dialectal Differences within English. One of the results of geographic haematology, i.e. of the regional diffusion of blood groups, was the discovery of the peripheral haematologic position of certain populations based on the knowledge that blood group genes in rural populations tend to remain stable over a very long period of time. By far the highest proportion of blood group 0 is found today at the periphery of Europe, in Mediterranean islands, namely on Crete, Tinos, the Lipary Isles, on Sardinia, Corsica, in the Basque territory, in a number of Alpine valleys, in the Celtic fringe (i.e. in Brittany, Wales, Ireland and Scotland) and in Iceland.1 The great scholarly break-through, however, occurred when the genetic code was deciphered by the American scholar James Dewey Watson and the British scholar Francis Harry Crick in 1953. With the famous «double helix» of deoxyribonucleic acid, abbreviated DNA, confined to the chromosomes of higher organisms, and which store genetic information, it became possible to describe and catalogue all the genes in a human body. 1. The earlier view linked the original colonists of Iceland with the British Isles and thus ‘Celtic’ influence was postulated. On Iceland cf. now Bernard (1983). (*) Shortened version of a paper delivered at the University of Uppsala, Sweden, on November 7, 1996. Geolinguistics and haematology: the case of Britain* Wolfgang Viereck University of Bamberg English Linguistics and Medieval English Literature September 1997 168 Links & Letters 5, 1998 Wolfgang Viereck One branch of modern genetics is occupied with the genetic analysis of entire populations. It is interesting to note the attention geneticists give to linguistic facts. With regard to the parallelism between linguistic evolution and genetic evolution Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi and Piazza note: What explanation can one offer for this important correlation? The major explanation is the history of populations. The correlation is certainly not due to the effect of genes on languages; if anything, it is likely that there is a reverse influence in that linguistic barriers may strengthen the genetic isolation between groups speaking different languages. This effect of linguistic isolation on genetic isolation is observable at a level of linguistic difference much lower than that of language phyla, for example, between speakers of different branches of the Indo-European family (or even between languages of the Romance or Germanic branches) (1993: 101). While geneticists closely collaborate with linguists with regard to the origin of languages (Joseph Greenberg, Merritt Ruhlen and Luigi Cavalli-Sforza must be mentioned here), and while they have concentrated so far on language families and —to a lesser extent— on individual languages within language families, they have hardly touched on the field of dialectal differences within individual languages. I will try to show that this, too, is a fascinating area. With regard to Britain, blood group frequencies of a considerable number of blood donors are available. What do these statistics show? As was mentioned before, a very high frequency of blood group 0 is found in certain parts of Wales, almost the whole of Scotland and in a large part of Ireland. With regard to Wales, the people with the high frequency of blood group 0 inhabit the more inhospitable areas such as the Black Mountains of what prior to the administrative reform was called Brecknockshire. This leads one to believe that 0 preceded the A wave of invaders. Mourant and Watkin conclude: […] there appear to us reasonable grounds for the belief that, prior to the advent of Celtic-speaking immigrants, the British Isles were inhabited by a people whose domain had at one time extended over a considerable part of Europe and North Africa but who under ever increasing pressure from the east had been driven from their homelands. Some, no doubt, found refuge in the more isolated mountain regions, but the remainder were gradually driven westwards and finally came to occupy a limited area near the Atlantic seaboard of Europe (1952: 31). One wonders, therefore, whether a large part of Britain's very early population did not arrive by the western sea routes and whether Celtic speech was acquired from later invaders […] (Watkin 1966: 383).2 2. Bernard supports this and notes: «Les ancêtres des populations périphériques ne sont pas davantage les Celtes venus d'Europe Centrale …» (1983: 121). Geolinguistics and haematology: The case of Britain Links & Letters 5, 1998 169 Celtic gradually replaced the language of the earlier inhabitants of Britain after the Celts had settled there which, as is commonly believed, took place between the 8th and the 5th century B.C. In the British Isles there is a definite fall in A (said to be the younger Germanic blood group) and rise in ‘Celtic’ 0 frequency from south to north and east to west thus reflecting historical migration movements. As far as blood group B is concerned, the donor records show with 19.41 per cent a frequency uniquely high for Britain in the extreme north-east of Scotland (in the north-east corner of Caithness and down the east coast to the Moray Firth). Brown (1965) claims that there is an association between people with a high B frequency and the presence of megalithic chambered tombs. The higher B frequency that we generally find in Scotland, Wales and Ireland (vis-a-vis England)3 seems, therefore, to imply a relationship with very ancient stocks possibly dating back to neolithic times (see also Mourant/ Watkin 1952 and Watkin 1966). Further north a higher A frequency, i.e. almost identical AB0 frequencies, point to a strong Scandinavian component in the population of the Orkney and the Shetland Islands. In a number of contributions Gunnel Melchers of Stockholm University found a still strong Scandinavian linguistic heritage in this part of the British Isles (see, e.g., Melchers 1991). On Map 1 I restricted myself to blood groups A and 0. Variations of B and AB are slight and are, at least in England, with 10-12 per cent on a low level at that. The B and AB lines do not indicate a frontier along which two different populations meet but establish the existence of a gradual change of one population. As regards 0 and A, the northernmost line on the map (Line I) marks a sharp transition. Another line localizing a marked variation for both 0 and A would seem to be Line X on Map 1 separating England and Wales, but Kope´c in her book The distribution of the blood groups in the United Kingdom (London 1970) from which the data and the basic map are taken notes that «this area must at some future time be re-examined on the basis of more extensive data» (1970: 92). The map further differentiates a number of regions in which one blood group dominates the other variably but significantly from the statistical point of view. As blood groups carry genetic traits, the question now is whether there are correlations between the structure of the blood groups of the population and dialectal patternings within English. On Maps 2-10 I present some linguistic evidence published by a number of authors who worked out the patterning of traditional dialects independ3. I do not wish to present too many figures. However, in order to illustrate the great differences in the distribution of the blood groups in the Celtic fringe suffice it to say that 0 occurs there between 48 and 51 per cent, A between 30 and 37 per cent, while B is generally attested there only with 13 and 14 per cent (cf. Kope´c 1970: 89-91). 170 Links & Letters 5, 1998 Wolfgang Viereck ently in different regions of England. The evidence is taken from different linguistic levels: from phonetics/phonology, from morphology and from lexis. Of these three planes morphology is the least variable and lexis the most fluctuating one. The most stable level of language is that of phonetics/phonology where phonological or phonemic differentiations are, of course, more important than mere phonetic ones. Some researchers rely on a single feature or very few indicative (phonological) features —a procedure called qualitative—, while others count quite a number of mainly lexical features and arrive at different degrees of prominence in their resultant analyses. A good example of such a quantitative procedure is that presented by Fischer (1976, cf. Map 8). The emerging patterning has, of course, more weight when substantiated by the results obtained with data from different linguistic levels. As the maps show this is the case whenever different linguistic planes were analysed. Most of the maps also provide pertinent linguistic examples. For more examples the reader is referred to the cited literature. Map 1. The distribution of the blood groups A and 0 in Britain (after Kope´c 1970). Geolinguistics and haematology: The case of Britain Links & Letters 5, 1998 171 The northern detail map (Map 2) is taken from Glauser (1974), as adapted in Glauser (1991), who investigated almost exclusively lexical aspects of the Scottish-English linguistic border. He found a heavy bundling of isoglosses there and grouped them from the point of view whether the words separated by them belonged to the standard vocabulary or not. This classification lead to three types of isoglosses, namely Dialect word(s)/Standard word (see, e.g., poke /bag, howk /root, cuddy /saw-horse), Standard word/Dialect word(s) as, e.g., gander /steg, pluck /ploat, hips /choops testify and Dialect word(s)/Dialect word(s) of the type foggage /fog ‘aftermath’, hunt-a-gowk / April gowk ‘April-fool’ or duffy /netty ‘earth-closet’. Of these the type Dialect word(s)/Dialect word(s) produced the widest network, covering the whole of Northumberland, North Cumberland and Eskdale, Liddesdale. The rather close correlation with Line I on Map 1 is quite evident. The same is true of Line III. The bundling of some historically very important isoglosses is shown on Map 3 taken from Wakelin (1983). The boundary begins roughly at the mouth of the Humber and passes along the Ouse and Wharfe valleys and out of Lancashire via the Lune and Ribble valleys. This division corresponds to the ancient boundary between the AngloMap 2. Glauser 1991: 2. 172 Links & Letters 5, 1998 Wolfgang Viereck Saxon kingdoms of Northumbria and Mercia (cf. also Viereck 1975: Maps 3 and 5 with more examples). Further correspondences between blood group differentiation and linguistic differentiation are revealed not only in the three relic areas Lincolnshire (Maps 4 and 5), East Anglia (Maps 6 and 7) and the Southwest of Map 3. Wakelin 1983: 3. Map 4. Viereck 1986a: 247. Geolinguistics and haematology: The case of Britain Links & Letters 5, 1998 173 England (Maps 8 and 9) but also, with Line VI, in an area most decisive, according to Wakelin (1983), in dividing ‘northern’ and ‘southern’ traditional dialects in England (Map 10). Other lines on Map 1 are less marked linguistically but even they differentiate quite a few dialectal items. As regards Line II, it separated in the Map 5. Viereck 1986a: 252. Map 6. Viereck 1986a: 249. 174 Links & Letters 5, 1998 Wolfgang Viereck Map 7. Viereck 1986b: 738. Map 8. Fischer 1976: 292. Geolinguistics and haematology: The case of Britain Links & Letters 5, 1998 175 Map 9. Viereck 1986a: 248. Map 10. Glauser 1991: 6.