The Gaelic language has been in retreat for centuries; there are probably more Polish Masses in Scotland today than Gaelic. Yet The Tablet’s Scotland correspondent, who recently started to learn the language, reports that Gaelic still receives passionate support, much of it through the Church

This starts far from the subject at hand, and long ago. On a damp morning in the later 1960s, I was walking to school with my friend Stuart. Several of the cars that sloshed past us sported raggedy strips of black and yellow dangling from their petrol filler caps, as if there were an animal trapped inside. Most also carried the explanatory sticker “I’ve got a tiger in my tank”, which was the tagline of an Esso advertising campaign and the 1960s equivalent of a viral meme. Anyone who felt even remotely energetic had a tiger in his or her tank.

Stuart and I grew up in a town garrisoned by the American navy’s Polaris force. Many of the crew, expecting freeways and ignorant of single-track roads, had their cars shipped across: huge, finned things that crumpled and rotted in the damp, salty air. On that school morning one hissed past us, tiger tail in place. But wait, the familiar slogan had turned alien, a seemingly random or anagrammatic jumble of letters. All we could read were five letters: “TANCA”. We looked at one another, puzzled, and walked slowly on. “I know”, said Stuart eventually. “American car, so it must be Vietnamese. Obvious, really.”