Scottish Studies (E-Journal)
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An Axle and Two Wheels: Material Culture and Memory in a Sutherland Emigrant Family of the Nineteenth Century
No full textIn June 1831 a Mackay family group from Sutherland departed from Scotland on the ship Cleopatra, heading for a district of Upper Canada (later known as Canada West and the present-day province of Ontario), where others from their area had settled in the previous years. There are aspects of their story which may offer useful insights for the ethnologist
The Legendary History of Alasdair MacColla As Received from Dugald Macdougall of Crubasdale, Kintyre, in 1825
No full textThis legendary history is found among the papers of Andrew Crawfurd held in the Central Library in Paisley
Rev. William Matheson and the Performance of Scottish Gaelic ‘Strophic’ Verse
No full textThe late Rev. William Matheson\u27s lifelong fascination with the performance of Gaelic songs in so-called \u27strophic\u27 metres ultimately resulted in his recording seventeen such songs for the album Gaelic Bards and Minstrels, No. 16 in the Scottish Tradition series of recordings from the School of Scottish Studies Archive. Strophic metre, used largely for clan eulogy, elegy, and other praise-poetry in the period after the decline of the syllabic metres, is remarkable in that the final line of each stanza contrasts metrically and ornamentally with all of the preceding lines in that stanza. This article examines Matheson\u27s sources, methodology, and performance; evaluates his rationale; and assesses the likely authenticity of his performances of six songs in which the number of lines varies from one stanza to the next
Richard Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer – A Flying Hebridean in Disguise?
No full textSeveral scholars have drawn attention both to the many Scottish references in Richard Wagner’s initial sketches of The Flying Dutchman and to the close links between the opera and the composer’s own disastrous Nordic sea journey, but discussions tend to centre on the opera’s libretto. What appear to be musical reminiscences of Hebridean songs in the opera’s core thematic material have not been alluded to since Marjory Kennedy-Fraser pointed them out at the beginning of the twentieth century. Having a long-standing interest in Wagner’s oeuvre, she associated various themes and tunes she had collected in the Outer Hebrides with the German composer, and among her extant field recordings – now at Edinburgh University Library – there are indeed snippets of music that closely resemble Wagnerian leitmotifs and airs, in particular Senta’s ballad in Der fliegende Holländer. Drawing on a paper Kennedy-Fraser read to the Musical Association in London in 1918, various scattered references, and letters from Sir Granville Bantock and John Lorne Campbell, my article discusses the potential links between Hebridean songs and, in particular, Senta’s ballad
Piping Sung: Women, Canntaireachd and the Role of the Tradition-Bearer
No full textCanntaireachd (pronounced ‘counter-achk’), Gaelic for ‘chanting’, is a complex oral notation used by Scottish pipers for centuries to teach repertoire and performance style in the courtly, ceremonial ceòl mór idiom. Its popular historiography since the 19th century suggests it was fixed and highly formulaic in structure and therefore formal (as befitting its connection to ceòl mór), its use the preserve of the studied elite. However, field recordings of pipers and other tradition-bearers collected and archived since the 1950s in the School of Scottish Studies present a vast trove of evidence suggesting that canntaireachd as a living, vocal medium was (and remains) a dynamic and flexible tool, adapted and refined to personal tastes by each musician; and that it was (is) widely used as well in the transmission of the vernacular ceòl beag idiom - pipe music for dancing and marching. In this paper, I offer some remarks on the nature of canntaireachd, followed by a review of the role of women in the transmission and performance of Highland, and specifically Hebridean, bagpipe music, including the use of canntaireachd as a surrogate performance practice. There follows a case study of Mary Morrison, a woman of twentieth century Barra upbringing, who specialised in performing canntaireachd; concluding with a discussion on what her singing of pipe music has to say about her knowledge of piping and the nature of her role as, arguably, a piping tradition-bearer
