Abstract

The examination of a letter written by first Roman Catholic bishop of Prince Edward Island, the Scottish Highlander Angus Bernard MacEachern, written in 1832 to a former parishoner Angus Walker in which the bishop engages in clever code switching from English to Scottish Gaelic and back in order to deliver a message which could only be understood, if intercepted, by another bilingual Scottish Gaelic/English speaker. The paper reveals the historical setting of the 1832 letter and goes on to examine closely the passages of Scottish Gaelic: their meaning in terms of social commentary, their non-standard orthography which provide clues to mainland Scottish dialect variants evidenced by the same, and the descriptions of parishoners encrypted in the author's first language.