Scottish Studies (E-Journal)
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‘Cacmhor an Comann na Goill’
No full textThis poem has not been edited before, but is of interest at several levels. I offer it to John MacInnes as one who has had a longstanding interest in the Highland-Lowland cultural interface, and more particularly as one who has written perceptively about the way Gaels perceive their Lowland neighbours, a perspective that can be obscured by the plethora of writings on the way the Lowlanders perceive the Gaels
‘A Bhean Úd Thall!’ Macallaí Idirghaelacha i bhFilíocht Bhéil na mBan
No full textDrawing on John MacInnes’s writings on the òrain-luaidh and what he calls the ‘panegyric code’ in Gaelic poetry, this essay argues that the òrain-luaidh of Scotland and a number of genres of women’s oral poetry in Irish derive from a single oral-formulaic tradition that seems to have belonged particularly to women, and to have been dominated by women’s concerns until responsibility for the waulking of cloth passed to men in the migrant Gaelic-speaking communities of eastern Canada. The Irish texts quoted are best exemplified by the caoineadh, or lament for the dead, but also include joke laments, lullabies, work songs, and religious poetry. They share numerous themes and formulas, along with important features of diction, metre and composition, not only with waulking songs recorded in twentieth-century Scotland, but also with the luinneagan composed by Màiri nighean Alasdair Ruaidh (Mary MacLeod) in the seventeenth century
‘and yes I said yes I will Yes’
No full textThese thoughts were inspired by the following riddle: A young man asked a maiden, as she was at an open window, when she would go a walk with him; and he got the answer that follows: “When I shall have lifted the linen (or net), lowered the glass, and put the dead to bury the living.” He, thereupon, giving up hope, sailed to foreign parts; and, returning at the end of three years, he heard she was married to another, but was not at all happy. This grieved him, and, on going to see her, he got the solution of her statement, thus: “As soon as I would have lifted the linen off the table, shut the window, and smoored the fire; and that did not long delay me, though you were impatient.
The Great Caledonian Forest of the Mind: Highland Woods and Tree Symbolism in Scottish Gaelic Tradition
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‘Tha Feum Air Cabhaig’ The Initiative of the Folklore Institute of Scotland
No full text‘There is a need for haste’ formed the editorial message in An Gàidheal in May 1947, more pithily expressive in Gaelic, calling for the urgent collection of the oral tradition of Gaelic Scotland. Shortly thereafter, The Folklore Institute of Scotland (FIOS) was formed with the stated object of recording song and story and the oral cultural heritage of the country
Mì-thuigse, Dìth Tuigse, Tàthagan: Buannachd nam Mearachd ann an Cruinneachaidhean Beul-Aithris Alasdair MhicGille Mhìcheil
No full textThe field notebooks of Alexander Carmichael (1832–1912), now transcribed, catalogued, and available at www.carmichaelwatson.lib.ed.ac.uk, allow us to eavesdrop on interactions between a major Highland folklore collector and his informants. Carmichael noted names, ages, locations, and occupations of interviewees, along with dates of interviews, allowing us to trace continuities, breaks, and developments in his collecting career over more than half a century. Carmichael’s cluttered and sometimes chaotic notebooks free us from the notion of a formal encounter between performer and audience (or collector), and allow us to take in the multiplicity of voices heard in the Highland céilidh house. The paper focuses upon the miscommunications, misunderstandings, mistaken inferences, confusions, and communicative breakdowns recorded in Carmichael’s notebooks, and explores what these may reveal about relations between the recorder and his informants
Coire agus Coin-Shìdh am Beàrnaraigh
No full textA re-telling and short discussion of the popular story ‘The Tale of the Cauldron’ as told by the author’s grand-uncle in Bernera, Lewis – a story in which the protagonist is pursued by fairy dogs. This is followed by a place-name story, which the author heard from Iain Mac Coinnich (Iain Dhòmhnaill a’ Phìobair), also of Bernera, concerning Creag ’Ille Chaluim Ghlais, a fairy dwelling-place which was – according to the storyteller – the last place in which fairy dogs were ever seen
Grafting Culture: On the Development and Diffusion of the Strathspey in Scottish Music
No full textThe strathspey is typically understood to be an eighteenth-century variety of fiddle music instigated by two well-known musical families native to the Spey valley region