The translators' dilemma: The genesis of the Scottish Gaelic Shorter Catechism

An in-depth study, with historical and theological contexts, of the translation - and re-translation - into Gaelic of the Shorter Catechism during the 1650s: the first book printed (at least partially) in Scottish Gaelic.
Today, the Goidelic, or Q-Celtic, branch of the Insular Celtic linguistic family is
conventionally understood to comprise three separate languages: Irish in Ireland;
Scottish Gaelic in northern and western Scotland; and Manx in the Isle of Man. A
substantial and apparently long-established bundle of isoglosses differentiates the varieties of Gaelic spoken in Ireland from those in Scotland. Nevertheless, although Gaelic dialects in Scotland share distinctive elements of prosody, vocabulary, grammar, and syntax, no formal conception of ‘Scottish Gaelic’ as a separate language existed before the eighteenth century. There was, of course, the notion of Gaelic in Scotland, then generally referred to in English as ‘Erse’; but there was no corresponding distinctive linguistic identity, no codified grammar or orthography