Gaelic Bards and Norwegian Rigs

This article reassesses a major and controversial field, and its remit dictates its length. Firstly, it reviews the scholarship of the Highland Clearances (c.1760–1860) and Land Agitation (1870s/80s) since the 1970s. Secondly, and building on the cultural turn identified in the more recent scholarship, it argues for the primary importance not of demography or economy but ideology: the Clearances and Land Agitation as at root a clash between the political economy and a Gaelic ethical worldview or system which embodied a social contract and bears analogy with E. P. Thompson’s ‘moral economy’. For all that their collision is taken to explain the peculiar intensity of the Highland Clearances, political economy and Gaelic moral economy are not considered as monolithic or mutually exclusive, and allusions are made to a ‘third way’ never taken. Recovering and centring the Gaelic moral economy allows for a more holistic envisioning of the period from within and without, and depends upon proper engagement with Gaelic and Gaelic-derived sources: oral tradition, the evidence given to the Napier Commission (1883–4) and especially Gaelic poetry and song, the last treated here as both a living archive of Gaelic ethics maintained by the poets, and a seismograph of social change. Finally, the article draws on the cultural turn and Gaelic sources to reappraise Clearance and post-Clearance society, represented here by proprietors and tacksmen above, the middling factorial class, and ‘the people below’. Human relationships within and across these social strata are reconsidered, and human behaviour evaluated to acknowledge diversity born of personality and place, and spectrums of behaviour. Acknowledgement is also made of Gaelic participation and agency at all social levels, and on both sides of the mooted ideological divide.

Scottish emigration to North America is certainly one of the most relevant events in Scottish history. In Canada, Scottish immigrants and their descendants have contributed widely to the formation of Canadian society and culture. In the literary field, writers of Scottish origin as Alice Munro and Margaret Laurence have attained recognition for their work, and certain elements of the Scottish heritage are seen without difficulty in their work. The significance of Scotland is even more deeply felt in the stories of Alistair MacLeod, whose original Cape Breton tales examine the lives of displaced Scots who have frequently had to face difficulty and hardship in their new environment. Family history, oral tradition, nostalgia, clan loyalty, and the connection between Scotland and Nova Scotia have an influence in the lives of most of MacLeod’s characters. This contribution is aimed to establish the ways in which Scotland is shown in Canadian literature written by authors of Scottish descent. Its objective is firstly to broadly discuss the idea of Scotland in Canadian literature, and then, more concretely, to examine the importance of Scotland and Scottish heritage in the stories of Alistair MacLeod. His revealing stories come across more as an oral narrative than as a written one. The oral tradition is an important aspect of the Scottish Gaelic community which MacLeod’s family belongs to, and this fact shows the role of this heritage in his work. Keywords: Scottish emigration, Scottish tradition, Canadian literature of Scottish origin, Alistair MacLeod short stories, Cape Breton, etc.

Analysis of the geographical extent of the Gaelic language in Scotland has received comparatively little attention despite much interest in Scotland's Gaelic heritage. The paper examines the geographical extent and patterns of usage of Gaelic for one particular parish — Port of Menteith in Perthshire — at a specific period. The examination of a number of lists of Gaelic‐speakers in Port of Menteith for 1724–1725 casts light upon the patterns and processes of Gaelic language usage within the eighteenth‐century Scottish Highlands.

«We have here a masterly, well-indexed and clear account of the evolution of the legend of the Brahan Seer over the centuries, one that will add a contextual depth in understanding to the many sources which give the prophesies attributed to him. Sutherland manages to inform his readers of the way in which tales and traditions were transmitted in Gaelic culture, on the externally generated romantic images of the Highlands as well as their appropriation by the natives.» (Iwan Wmffre, University of Ulster) The Brahan Seer is a legendary figure known throughout Scotland and the Scottish diaspora, indeed anywhere there are people with an interest in looking into the future. This book traces the legend of the Seer between the sixteenth and twenty-first centuries. It considers the seer figure in relation to aspects of Scottish Highland culture and society that shaped its development during this period. These include the practice of witchcraft and prosecution of witches; the reporting of and scientific investigation of instances of second sight; and the perennial belief in and use of prophecy as a means of predicting events. In so doing the book provides a set of historicised contexts for understanding the genesis of the legend and how it changed over time through a synthesis of historical events, oral tradition, folklore and literary Romanticism. It contributes to the debates about witchcraft, second sight and prophecy and the relationship between ‘popular’ and ‘elite’ culture in Scotland. By taking the Brahan Seer as a case study it argues that ‘popular’ culture is not antithetical to ‘elite’ culture but rather in constant (and complex) interaction with it.

Fisheries organisations in Scotland have repeatedly called for culls of common and grey seals, despite their conservation status and no supporting scientific evidence. This current study investigated the opinion of tourists in West Scotland as to whether seal populations should be reduced to manage their increasing numbers. The study also looks at whether such a cull would influence tourist behaviour. In total 735 interviews were conducted. There were regional differences in levels of opinion but, on average, 60% of respondents believed that seals should not be regulated and 17% stated that the instigation of a cull would affect their decision to visit Scotland on holiday. In the Highlands of Scotland alone this could represent over £100 million in lost tourism income. A boycott by tourists to the Highlands, as the result of introducing seal culls, could equate to a financial loss equivalent to a third of the total value of Scottish fisheries. Tourism is Scotland's main industry and is particularly important for the economy of rural areas. Any further proposals for seal culls should seriously consider the negative and indirect impacts these culls could have, such as reductions in tourist numbers and tourism income to a region.

H. R. Trevor Roper (Baron Dacre of Glanton since 1979) in his essay on 'The Highland Tradition of Scotland' pronounces the Gaelic language and culture of the Highlands as sterile and devoid of any original literary merit. This was because, he contends, the Scottish Gaels were not a distinct people but 'were simply the overflow of Ireland'. Their culture as a consequence was purely Irish and drew its sustenance from Ireland: 'their hereditary bards, physicians, harpers (for their musical instrument was the harp, not the pipes) came from Ireland'. This state of affairs had apparently not changed from Dalriadic times in the Dark Ages to the Age of Enlightenment, whose beneficent rays had failed to pierce the Stygian gloom of Ultima Thule. In fact matters had steadily got worse, and Scottish Gaelic literature, says Trevor-Roper, 'such as it was, was a crude echo of Irish literature'. And so it was, holds Trevor-Roper, that in an attempt to make up for this glaring deficit the notorious James Macpherson, alleged translator but in reality the only begetter of Ossian, had impudently provided the Scottish Gaels with a bogus history and ancient culture of their own. This alleged culture, too, was made up of heroic ingredients that were almost Homeric, and included incredibly polished manners.1 But in reality, according to Trevor-Roper, Highland culture scarcely existed. Trevor-Roper's essay on 'The Highland Tradition' has been praised for its rumbustious and entertaining qualities even though it obviously lacks authoritative documentation. But no one seems to have noticed

Summary An account is presented of how plants have been viewed in folklore with particular reference to aspects of Gaelic tradition.

In northwestern Europe, the migration of legends has been a growing area of study, exploring their history, development, and geographical/cultural distribution. The past two centuries have been a time of large-scale voluntary or forced migrations that have provided new opportunities for investigating how folklore, including legends, has survived and changed during mass population movements. Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, is foremost among the Scottish Gaelic diaspora communities, established in North America during the Highland Clearances, where oral storytelling traditions have been extensively recorded, and provides a unique opportunity for ethnologists to study survival and adaptation of various folklore genres through comparisons with those surviving in the Scottish Highlands from the early 19th century. This article will examine the kinds of legends that have travelled over the Atlantic; how they have adapted; legends that have sprung up in the new environment; and what distinctive new developments have appeared in post-migration tradition.

The beautiful scenery around Ardgour in the North West of Scotland was the setting for the sixth annual Exploratory Measurement Science Group symposium. The meeting was organized as a study retreat for scientists with an interest in applications of mass spectrometry and associated technologies to discuss ideas in a relaxed, informal setting. Speakers were invited from a wide range of subject areas in the general field of mass spectrometry technology development and application.

FOR the past five hundred years the English Fairies have been described as vanished or vanishing creatures, familiar to each generation's grandparents but almost unknown to the modern man. Chaucer said so, Reginald Scot said so, and Corbet; Aubrey's tale of the Inkberrow Ting-tang is an early version of the Fairy Flitting told by Hugh Miller in the nineteenth century and repeated by Kipling in The Dymchurch Flit, a story probably founded on oral tradition. In Ireland and in the remoter Highlands of Scotland the fairies are contemporary characters still to be reckoned with, but even there the stories of their appearance are often some years old. It is not to be wondered at then that the modern accounts of the fairies date for the most part from before the first World War, though the narratives of them are still to be found in oral tradition. Some of these are variants of well-known fairy anecdotes, some descriptions of meetings with fairies or of uncanny experiences attributed to the presence of the fairies. There is, for instance, a Morayshire version of My Ainsel given me by Miss Charlotte Macdonald who now lives near Abingdon but who was told this story in her youth by an old man born in 1848 and brought up on the upper reaches of the Lossie, where there are both meal and wool mills.

North and North West Scotland (Duncansby Head to Cape Wrath and Fort William)

Reconstructing sustainability; participant experiences of community land tenure in North West Scotland

Marjory Kennedy-Fraser (1857–1930), daughter of famous Scots tenor David Kennedy, was a Scottish pianist, music teacher, suffragette, and collector of Gaelic songs. She toured the world as her father’s accompanist, studied singing in Milan and Paris, and read music at the University of Edinburgh. Widowed with two children to support, she taught piano and singing in Edinburgh, becoming part of the city’s avant-garde Celtic Revival circles. After visiting Eriskay in 1905, she collected, arranged, and published the Songs of the Hebrides, in collaboration with Gaelic editor Kenneth Macleod. With English composer Granville Bantock, she created The Seal Woman: A Celtic Folk Opera, premiered in Birmingham in 1924. Maligned after her death for exploiting and misinterpreting Gaelic culture, her oeuvre vanished from recital programmes, but her consummate art song versions of Gaelic traditional songs would merit their place in the standard art song repertoire, giving presence to both Gaelic Scotland among the Late-Romantic voices from all corners of Europe and a remarkable Scotswoman among British composers.

The death of Dr John Lorne Campbell on 25 April 1996 has robbed the scholarly world of folklore studies of one of its most gifted, robust, fiercely independent and kindly friends. His voluminous work on Scottish Gaelic oral tradition and Highland and Hebridean history came to be known and respected internationally. He was born on 1 October 1906, the eldest son of Colonel Duncan Campbell of Inverness in Argyll. His mother, Ethel Waterbury, was an American from New Jersey. Campbell was educated at Cargilfield School, Edinburgh, at Rugby and at St John's College, Oxford. At Oxford he read Rural Economy, was leading member of the University's Gaelic Society or Club, and came under the strong guiding influence of John Fraser, Sir John Rhys's successor as Jesus Professor of Celtic in the University. It was at Oxford that the boyhood interest in Gaelic was fostered to the point at which he began serious study of Gaelic lore and learning. This resulted in his first publication in 1933 of Highland Songs of the Forty-Five (republished, with corrections and additions, in 1984 by the Scottish Gaelic Texts Society, of which he was Vice-President). In that volume he declares his great indebtedness to Fraser. In all his publications he carefully and generously referred to the encouragement and support of so many people. Many readers of this journal will be aware of his lifelong work recovering, recording and transmitting so much of Gaelic song and literary and linguistic sources, initially from Barra but eventually from much wider Hebridean world. Campbell was undoubtedly pioneering scholar in the field of collecting and recording Gaelic song and story, benefiting from being untrammelled by the distractions and conventions of universities. In letter to me in April 1980 he declared how he had been very lucky to have studies under Fraser, and to have had the opportunity, including financial independence, to undertake the fieldwork which I later did and which could be dovetailed in with my way of life here [i.e. on Canna]. Had I become wholetime professional academic (which Fraser suggested: it would have meant year in Germany and year in Ireland) I might well, in Scotland, have become involved in some unpleasant feuds and politics later on. As it was, being an amateur and non-competitor I was able to maintain friendly relations with scholars who had little in common ... Not that Campbell was averse to blazing rows and controversy with educationists, the Highland Development board, the Scottish Office and all kinds of bureaucrats. He once told me that he had a nose for official excuses and propaganda. …

This article offers some reflections on the processes of nation-making and state formation as they affected the oldest ethnic and cultural grouping in the British Isles, that of theGaedhil,roughly in the period 1450–1650, and examines the ways in which these processes have been portrayed by historians. At the present day the Gaelic language remains the normal medium of communication in small areas of western Ireland and western Scotland; and in respect of political developments in both Scotland and Ireland, Gaelic customs and culture have exercised a much more substantial influence. Despite these similarities, there remain significant differences between British and Irish historians in the ways in which the Gaelic contribution to nation-making and state formation have been presented.A basic distinction advanced by historians both of Ireland and Scotland has been one between the Gaelic peoples inhabiting Ireland and those resident in Scotland. It can be argued that this may reflect the relative importance of the Gaelic contribution to the making of two separate kingdoms, and ultimately two separate states; but it also means that the wider process of interaction and assimilation betweenGaedhilandGaillis split into separate Irish and Scottish experiences. In theory, these two Gaelic experiences should provide material for a comparative study of a particularly illuminating kind, but in practice other historiographical influences have generally militated against this kind of comparative history. One such is the more marginal position of Gaelic studies within Scottish historiography than is the case in Ireland. Considering that half of Scotland was still Gaelic-speaking in 1700, for instance, it is remarkable how few Scottish historians seem able to make use of Gaelic sources. Another is the practice of establishing separate departments of history in the universities for the teaching of national history. This has meant, for instance, that students are usually taught that portion of theGaedhil/Gaillinteraction process which relates to the ‘nation’ by specialist teachers of national history. Yet, since these national surveys reflect modern nations and modern national boundaries, students are trained to study Irishmen and Scots in the making rather than to consider how the inhabitants of late medieval Gaeldom might have viewed developments in the wider Gaelic world. Arguably, behind these approaches lies the influence of the modern nation-state. Scotland and Northern Ireland remain part of a multi-national British state which is dominated by England.