SOURCE: Barry, Wendy E. “The Settler of P.E.I.: The Celtic Influence in Anne.” In The Annotated Anne of Green Gables, by L. M. Montgomery, edited by Wendy E. Barry, Margaret Anne Doody, and Mary E. Doody Jones, pp. 418-21. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

[In the following essay, Barry explores the Celtic history of Prince Edward Island, the setting of Anne of Green Gables, and the ways this history is woven into the text.]

Anne's beloved Prince Edward Island was once called “Abegweit,” or “land cradled on the waves,” by the Micmac people who lived there. They told stories of how after creating the universe and the Micmac people the Great Spirit had a large amount of dark red clay left over. The Great Spirit then fashioned that clay into a crescent shape that became the most beautiful jewel in the universe. Then, as in most of North America, the arrival of European explorers and settlers had an adverse affect on the native population. Many First Canadians, including a large percentage of the Micmacs, died of exposure to new diseases such as influenza, smallpox, and measles. Alcoholism became a problem among these people as among many other First Canadian peoples. Moreover, the Micmacs were a migratory hunting and fishing people who moved back and forth between the mainland and the island seasonally. The settlement of P.E.I. by a more agriculturally oriented population, and the fencing and partitioning of land that followed, made maintaining the Micmac culture and way of life extremely difficult. Despite the many changes that have occurred since the days when the Micmacs were the only people on the island, and though their numbers have greatly decreased—today they comprise less than 1 percent of its present population—they have remained on P.E.I.

The first European to “discover” the island was French explorer Jacques Cartier in 1534. In 1603 Samuel de Champlain named it Île St. Jean. Then in 1719 a permanent settlement of some 100 French settlers was established near Porte La Joye, but during the next fifty years dominion over the island changed several times. Under the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, the British took control of the island in 1745. Then in 1758 it reverted to the French until in 1763 the Treaty of Paris made British control permanent. From 1763 to 1768 thousands of “Acadians,” or French settlers, were deported or fled, bringing the population of P.E.I. down from 5,000 to 300. Many of these Acadians eventually ended up in Louisiana, where they became known as “Cajuns” and where their descendants live today. Those that remained on P.E.I. could do so only by hiding in the woods. Although many Acadians eventually returned to P.E.I., Marilla's disparaging comments about “French boys” are indicative of the minority status of the French population.

In February 1799, Île St. Jean officially became Prince Edward Island, named for the son of George III, later the Duke of Kent. This designation was a compromise between the governor's suggestion of “New Ireland” and the British government's countersuggestions of “New Guernsey” and “Anglesey.”

According to one historian, “A small German settlement apparently existed briefly on the Island in the Acadian period, but it was not until the Loyalists arrived following the American Revolution that P.E.I. had a permanent German population” (Baldwin, 164). Baldwin also mentions that Lebanese Christians fleeing persecution from the Turks settled on P.E.I. beginning in the 1880s, many of whom became “pack peddlers.” Marilla, who is never too discriminating in her prejudices, might well refer to all immigrants from the Mediterranean as Italians (p. 289).

The majority of the settlers who came to P.E.I. once it was under British dominion were not English but Scottish. Many factors contributed to the Scots' departure from their homeland. In the late eighteenth century, systematic efforts known as the Highland Clearances to rid Scotland of Highlanders resulted in mass emigration. The 1745 Jacobite uprising had resulted in defeat at Culloden for the Scottish and eventually led to repression, starvation, and disease. Peasants suffering malnutrition, cholera, and dysentery were expelled from their land to make room for the more profitable sheep farming. Crops failed for several years in a row, and the clan system of the Highlanders was falling apart. They emigrated by the thousands to the New World, which seemed to promise opportunity. Wealthy patrons sometimes subsidized this emigration, as when in 1803 the fifth earl of Selkirk, Thomas Douglas, brought 800 Scottish peasants to P.E.I. to settle. Many other Scots were summarily shipped off by their lairds, or clan chieftains. Many others came to join friends and family already settled on P.E.I. By 1798, 50 percent of the island's population was Scottish. In Anne's Avonlea, a Scottish outpost, Scottish names and ancestry prevail.

In 1764-1765 a British surveyor divided the island into sixty-seven lots, or townships, of twenty thousand acres each. Then in 1767 these lots were raffled off to absentee British landlords, creating conflict that lasted for more than a century. In 1875 the government passed a law by which it bought out the proprietors, until by 1895 most of the former tenants owned their land. This long period of strife had enduring repercussions: “Islanders and thus Island politicians remain surprisingly prickly when it comes to issues of land ownership and land use. Provincial legislation still restricts the amount of land any one individual or company can own, and controls sales to non-residents” (MacDonald, 35).

Prince Edward Island came to be known as the “Cradle of Confederation” because of events that took place there in 1864. That September, national leaders met in Charlottetown to discuss prospects for a united Canada. The twenty-three delegates reached agreement on the desirability of unification and even drafted a basic outline for a constitution. As a result, in 1867 the Dominion of Canada was formed. The islanders were not very interested, however; not until 1873 did Prince Edward Island join the Confederation, and even then largely due to economic pressures.

In the first half of the nineteenth century the steady stream of Scottish immigrants had been joined by Irish men and women leaving an equally troubled and oppressed homeland. By 1861 more than a third of Charlottetown's residents were of Irish ancestry. The ethnicity of P.E.I. was predominantly Celtic. In the second half of the century the Highland Scots' original tongue, Gaelic, was still spoken by many residents of P.E.I. and Nova Scotia. At the end of the twentieth century Nova Scotia still has enough Gaelic speakers to support one Gaelic-speaking institution of higher learning. Unlike some of Montgomery's works, (e.g., Emily Climbs), there are no references to Gaelic speaking in Anne, but traces of Scottish forms of speech can be found. Phrases like “high dudgeon,” which originated in the Highland Scots' clannish and sometimes contentious culture, are still being used by Montgomery after the turn of the century to describe Marilla's feelings.

The importance placed on education on the island in relation to the Scottish heritage of its inhabitants is described by Rubio and Waterston in their introduction to The Selected Journals of L. M. Montgomery. They point out that the Scots were teaching British literature as a subject at their universities at a time when Oxford and Cambridge still considered such a subject vulgar. The emphasis on education in Montgomery's books is part of her Scottish heritage, and the curriculum that Anne and her friends are taught has a decidedly Scottish slant as well. The poets and novelists Anne loves are Scottish: Thomas Campbell, James Thomson, William Glassford Bell, Sir Walter Scott. And many of the poems and recitation pieces that Anne refers to, such as “Edinburgh After Flodden” and “Hohenlinden,” refer to Scottish history, particularly in relation to England. Other pieces in the Royal Readers, the primers both Anne and Maud used in school, like the “Story of Bruce and the Spider” and “The Battle of Bannockburn” in the Fourth Royal Reader, are further reminders of the islanders' Scottish heritage. Mary, Queen of Scots, is as important an historical figure to the schoolchildren of Avonlea as her cousin Elizabeth, Robert the Bruce as important a legendary figure as Robin Hood. …

Montgomery's ancestry, like that of her fictional family the Cuthberts, was primarily Scottish, “with a dash of English from several ‘grands’ and ‘greats’” (AP, 12). Anne plants on Matthew's grave a cutting from the “little white Scotch rose-bush his mother brought out from Scotland long ago” (p. 383). An attachment to the land of their forebears was still strong in Montgomery's lifetime. “There were many traditions and tales on both sides of the family, to which, as a child, I listened with delight while my elders talked them over around winter firesides. The performance of them was in my blood; I thrilled to the lure of adventure which had led my forefathers westward from the Old Land—a land which I always heard referred to as ‘Home,’ by men and women whose parents were Canadian born and bred” (AP, 12). In this author's novels, English or Welsh names are most often given to unlikable or flawed characters. Emily's teacher Mr. Carpenter is the most salient exception, but even he is called a drunkard.

In The Alpine Path, Montgomery tells the family stories of two of her female ancestors and their arrival in P.E.I. Her great-great-grandmother Montgomery was so seasick on the voyage to North America that when they stopped at P.E.I. for water she got off and refused to set foot on the boat again. As Montgomery describes it, “Expostulation, entreaty, argument, all availed nothing. There the poor lady was resolved to stay, and there, perforce, her husband had to stay with her. So the Montgomerys came to Prince Edward Island” (AP, 12). On her mother's side, her great-grandmother was so homesick that “for weeks after her arrival she would not take off her bonnet, but walked the floor in it, imperiously demanding to be taken home. We children who heard the tale never wearied of speculating as to whether she took off her bonnet at night and put it back on again in the morning, or whether she slept in it. But back home she could not go, so eventually she took off her bonnet and resigned herself to her fate” (AP, 12).

That Montgomery begins the story of her own life with the history of her ancestors is an indication of the degree to which place and family permeate her books, including Anne of Green Gables. The stories likewise emphasize a sense of tradition, history, and familial characteristics. At times this sense of tradition reveals itself as a resistance to change. For instance, Marilla keeps her household the way her mother and her mother before her kept it. Anne's outlandish behavior, like putting flowers on her Sunday hat, upsets the order of Marilla's life and world: the things that Anne does just aren't done.

But Anne is a Celt too, perhaps even more so than Matthew and Marilla. Anne's red hair serves as a cultural reminder that she is a vessel of the true heritage of the Scots-Irish, the so-called English settlers of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Anne's red hair shows that she is not really English, just as the principal settlers of Anglo-Canada are not really English. Indeed, not only is Anne decidedly red-headed but, if Matthew and Marilla represent the hardheaded practicality and clannishness that are arguably part of the Scottish national character, Anne represents its other face. Although she is not gifted with second sight like the equally Scottish (if dark-haired) Emily of New Moon, she, like Jane Eyre, seems almost “fairy born and human bred.” She retains, throughout the novel, an aura of otherworldliness that is almost frightening to the practical residents of Avonlea. A belief in the supernatural brought over from the Old World survived on P.E.I. into the twentieth century. Anne comes “from away” and is an unwelcome replacement to the expected child, like the changelings of Celtic lore. She is fascinated with the folklore of her ancestry, populating the landscape around her with dryads and ghosts, banshees and other eerie folk. The magical and supernatural, along with a close, loving relationship to the natural world, are all part of Anne's character, as of the mythical Celtic landscape itself.

Further Reading

Douglas Baldwin. Land of the Red Soil: A Popular History of Prince Edward Island. Charlottetown: Ragweed Press, 1990.

A. P. Campbell. “The Heritage of the Highland Scot in Prince Edward Island,” The Island Magazine 15 (Spring-Summer 1984): 3-8.

Andrew Hill Clark. Three Centuries and The Island: A Historical Geography of Settlement and Agriculture in Prince Edward Island, Canada. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1959.

Department of Tourism and Parks. Visitor's Guide: Prince Edward Island, Canada. 1992.

Edward MacDonald. “The Scots, The Irish, and The British,” in Prince Edward Island. Halifax, N.S.: Formac Publishing, 1995.

John Prebble. The Highland Clearances. London and Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963.

David Weale. “The Emigrant: Beginnings in Scotland,” The Island Magazine 16 (Fall-Winter 1984): 15-22.

———. “The Emigrant: Life in the New Land,” The Island Magazine 17 (Spring-Summer 1985): 3-11.