History of Scottish Gaelic
All surviving dialects are Highland and/or Hebridean dialects. Dialects of Lowland Gaelic have become defunct since the demise of Galwegian Gaelic, originally spoken in Galloway, which seems to have been the last Lowland dialect and which survived into the Modern Period. By the 18th century Lowland Gaelic had been largely replaced by Lowland Scots across much of Lowland Scotland. According to a reference in "The Carrick Covenanters " by James Crichton, the last place in the Lowlands where Scottish Gaelic was still spoken was the village of Barr in Carrick: only a few miles inland to the east of Girvan, but at one time very isolated. Crichton gives neither date nor details.
Comrie
Historically, Comrie and the surrounding area has been part of the Gàidhealtachd. A statistical account of the Comrie Parish from 1799 recites that "The common language of the people is Gaelic and all the natives understand it; but many, especially the old, do not understand English". Gaelic appears to have remained the primary language during the early part of the 19th century, as the following passage written in 1828 from Mr.Mushet, local minister at the time, describing the annual celebration of the sacrament of the lord's supper testifies "The Lord favoured us (blessed be His name) with fair and seasonable weather. We had near eleven tables in Irish (Gaelic). Each table contained forty-eight persons or thereabout, and we had only two tables and some few persons at the third in English". As with the rest of Scotland however, the process of language shift away from Gaelic and towards English, facilitated by the Highland Clearances and the Education (Scotland) Act of 1872, was apparently well established by the late 19th century. Indeed, by 1891 census estimates suggested that only 17.9% of the population of Comrie were native Gaelic speakers. In 1901 only 8.3% of the population were native Gaelic speakers, while only 4.5% of the population had Gaelic as their sole language. The most recent census data for 2002 shows that less than 5% of the population are Gaelic speakers.