Scotland in the Middle Ages bards to the Lord of the Isles, existed in Scotland and a larger number in Ireland, until they were suppressed from the seventeenth century. Members of bardic schools were trained in the complex rules and forms of Gaelic poetry. Much of their work was never written down and what survives was only recorded from the sixteenth century. In the late Middle Ages, Middle Scots, often simply called English, became the dominant language of the country. It was derived largely from Old English, with the addition of elements from Gaelic and French. Although resembling the language spoken in northern England, it
Midwifery in the Middle Ages "the one sacrament in the Middle Ages that could be performed by anyone - cleric or lay person, man or woman." Such ecclesiastical and secular regulatory introductions, Greilsammer writes, led to a "reduction in the status and role of the midwives" that "was part of a more general degradation of attitudes toward women, and women in command of some knowledge and power in particular." Greilsammer notes that this change in perception can "be placed in its urban context and related to the general decline in women’s employment throughout Europe at the end of the Middle Ages." Such developments forced many