What Gaels Communicate through Song andSinging

John ShawUniversity of Edinburgh

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The folk traditions of the Gaelic culture indigenous to the Highlands of Scotland, particularly genres based on the verbal arts, have long exerted a particular attraction on those with an interest in the ethnology of Western Europe. Scottish Gaelic, with its strong linguistic and cultural ties with Gaelic Ireland, belongs to the Goidelic branch of the Celtic language family. Presently there are some 60,000 speakers on the language in Scotland, placing it among those recognised by the EU as Lesser Used Languages. The North American Gaelic regions in Nova Scotia, eastern Canada, were settled during the first half of the 19th century as a result of the diaspora following the Highland Clearances. At their height,toward the beginning of the 20th century, they contained as many as 30,000 speakers, most of them monoglots. Today they number in the hundreds, or less. Gaelic Scotland and Ireland share a notable literary tradition extending back to the manuscripts of the middle ages, reflecting the needs and interests of the aristocracy, and assiduously studied by contemporary academics. Of equal importance, however, and much less investigated by researchers, is the tradition of verbal art that has been maintained and transmittedorally, often over centuries, in Gaelic communities. It is a vast cultural resource, unparalleled in contemporary Western Europe, amassed by field collectors, partially documented and held in archives. Due primarily to linguistic factors the attention it has so far received falls far short its importance to the field of ethnology.

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For the past two centuries among the genres that make up Scottish Gaelic oral tradition song has been the one most widely appreciated in the English-speaking world. Until late in the 20th century publications of the extensive and varied song repertoire have been primarily concerned with song texts, often printed without their airs or theaccompanying historical and social contexts. Recently, however, with the extension of the theoretical paradigms evolved in folkloristics, it has been recognised that fieldwork can offer additional information by including the wider social and political contexts, and the ways in which these are expressed and handled within a culture.

Let us begin with a short anecdote from the fieldwork I was carrying out in a Gaelic-speaking district – this time in the New World settlements in Nova Scotia – in the late 1980s. The purpose of the research carried out with some of the last remaining exponents of a continuous local singing tradition was to reveal as much as possible concerning the social contexts of songs and the practices of singing in their culture, with particular reference to their own internal ‘emic’ perceptions of their meaning and function. Among the opening questions I had included an apparently simple one, intended to engage their thoughts and pave the way to what I hoped to be further revealing discoveries: Why did they sing songs at all? The reaction certainly made me sit up and takenotice – without exception the singers regarded it

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as a non-question and registered a degree of politeconfusion as to what was intended by it. The only really coherent answer, that of my friend Dan AllanGillis of Broad Cove, stated the shared cultural perception concisely enough: ‘Singing songs? Well,I don’t know. People have been singing songs since the world began.’ The underlying message coming from a people whose favourite pastime is to speculate, usually with great eloquence, on anythingencountered in their daily experience, is that singing is a fundamental a property of creation along with humankind, the natural environment or thepassage of time. In the world-view of their community it doesn’t need explaining.

Such a background premise can quickly lead one down diverging paths, including those of the mythologicalorigins of song and functionalism in anthropology. However for the researcher it is important to remember that whatever is held to be axiomatic for aculture can often help to reveal what lies at its centre. For this paper the course I have chosen is to examine the role of singing and song as an expression of some of the central concerns among Gaels. It can be summed up in the question: ‘What dosongs and singing reveal concerning the inner values and workings of Gaelic culture?’

One of the striking features that fieldworkers on both sides of the Atlantic have noted is the central position of singing and songs in traditional Gaelic society. From the perspective ofcontemporary western society, where singing is so often associated with specific institutional and

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commercial needs, occasions and rituals, together with intensely personal expression, the centrality of singing in certain districts of economically developed countries until well into the last century must be regarded as remarkable. Areas suchas the western Highlands and Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton Island were remote and at some distance fromthe urbanised economic and cultural centres, yet they have provided a significant and active proportion of the labour force that was from the 19th century drawn to such cities as Glasgow, Bostonor Detroit and forms an important background to their very contemporary populations. Recent ethnographic observation together with written accounts from the Highlands reaching back as far as the 17th century attest that a wide range of activities in the daily lives of Gaels were permeated with song. In both the Old World and NewWorld Gàidhealtachds (Gaelic-speaking districts) it was usual practice for people to accompany even themost mundane of rural chores with singing, and commonplace for passers-by on the road to hear songs emanating from the crofts or farm holdings. Otherwise monotonous chores accompanied by singing included milking; churning; women’s gatherings for spinning thread; weaving on the family loom (often a solitary activity carried out during the winter months); waulking or milling the woolen tweed; the singing of hymns and psalms by men in the Protestant settlements as they hauled lumber out ofthe woods, or marked the boundaries between properties; Hebridean labourers in Scotland’s industrial belt sang when they gathered in the

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public houses; the cheerful singing of Nova Scotians returning in the winter on their sleighs from making purchases in the town could be heard over a considerable distance as they approached those at home in their rural parishes; and people would sing frequently when they ceased their daily routine activities for a few minutes to catch theirbreath. And it was by no means rare for people to sing when alone. The result, shared by virtually everyone in the community, was one whereby song with its perceptions, social messages, affective content and historical associations made up a central part of a person’s inner verbal activity for most of the day.

If not a day passed without multiple and varied occasions for hearing a song, the evenings, particularly in the winter, provided a dedicated context for communal singing. The universal Gaelic institution for tradition sharing is the céilidh, a word that despite its modern portrayals in Scotlandand North America, simply means ‘a house visit’. These informal gatherings, often held a few nights a week and open to all in the neighbourhood, have been the primary occasions for socialising and for supporting, exercising and developing community traditions of verbal art, dance and instrumental music. Neighbours would walk as far as three miles to attend, with certain houses known to everyone (though not identified by any formal means) as céilidh houses (taighean céilidh). A district could contain a number of these distributed over a few miles, and the younger people would sometimes visittwo or three houses in the course of an evening. In

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many instances the host families were known as specialists in a particular folklore genre which would form the focus of the evening’s entertainment. In some districts, particularly among the older generations, song (usually unaccompanied) was declared to be the genre preferred, but there were also céilidh houses known as centres for the performance of traditional tales, or of pipe or fiddle music.

In keeping with the informality with regard to the composition of the audience, the progress of the céilidh was governed by no set sequence of events. However céilidh descriptions, both contemporary and earlier, frequently point to a pattern of shared conventions where local matters and larger world events are discussed at the outset, to be followed by lighter forms of song or storytelling, and on some occasions concluding with a long and elaboratestory, perhaps from the repertoire of hero-tales. In some Hebridean communities a pipe of tobacco waslit by the host and passed around among the men present, a custom that has also been recorded in Ireland. Performances could be interspersed with card games, depending on the company present. Descriptions surviving from as early as the end of the 19th century emphasise the communal nature of the gatherings, involving the sharing of food by the hosts, attentive listening by a mixed audience,the ‘high-context’ conversation between participants concerning local topics or shared tradition, and the participation of all present in singing the choruses of songs. The words of these last refrains often served to make clear and

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reaffirm the values and perceptions at the core of the community. On both sides of the Atlantic, but particularly in the more socially conservative Gaelic districts of Nova Scotia, the oral symbolismof community was reinforced by the practice of holding hands and swinging them to the rhythm of the songs, and in some cases forming a complete circle within a room (cf. Broadwood: 281). Whateverthe genre, performers were expected to maintain a high standard, and the value placed by Gaels on thecommunal aspects has been nowhere better expressed than by the well-known Nova Scotian reciter of tales Joe Neil MacNeil (1908-1996) when recalling the céilidh gatherings of his youth:

‘In those days the people had entertainment that was really fine. There were those who excelled at singingsongs and people who excelled at reciting poems and people who were outstanding story-tellers as well as those who were good musicians and dancers. So they had what I consider to be the very best of entertainment. I mentioned before that they used to have everything that these electronic devicessupply us with today and more. And in myview the extra was that when you were listening to the people who were entertaining you there - whether it was playing music or singing or rhymes that they were reciting or songs, or whether they were doing a dance for you to watch

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– you were alive with them there in the flesh and participating in the whole event. You could talk to them right there, but if you ever chose to address the gadgets that I mentioned they could never answer you. So there was that pleasure and a sense of unity. I think that people felt very united, united physically and united in spirit’. (MacNeil: 16-17).

Within the folkore context, a notable feature of céilidh gatherings (and one not unique to Gaelic culture) is the extent to which the performed genres reinforce each other (Shaw 1992/93: 38-39). Thus in addition to genres such as storytelling, song, and instrumental music (to whatever extent they are distinct), the tradition also provides ‘intermediary’ genres that serve as bridges to linkthe major ones. Instrumental music and storytelling, for example, are linked by a repertoire of piping stories concerning famous performers or the origins of particular tunes, legendary or otherwise. Song and instrumental musiclikewise find mutual reinforcement through the singing of ‘mouth music’ (puirt-à-beul): verbal renditions of tunes either containing words or semantically empty vocables which serve to retain and transmit tunes, and can even be danced to. Of greatest interest to the present discussion, however, are the song narratives that link song with storytelling. These are in the form of generally brief stories associated with a particular song, and may consist of the naming of

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the bard followed by a short anecdote, often revealing of his or her character. Alternatively the narratives may provide a background to the entire text of the song, explaining to the uninitiated the reasons or circumstances of its composition. Such explanations, usually offered as a preface to performing the song, help the first-time listener to decode the often subtle allusions in the verses, and to appreciate the composer’s skilful use of language in the deployment of memorable imagery or social nuances. During our field recording sessions song narratives were included on numerous occasions by singers as a matter of course.

In some instances the full meaning of the song textcannot be appreciated without reference to the background story. A memorable, though potentially macabre example is the narrative attached to the widely known song ‘Mór My Wife Will Not Come Home’ (Cha Tig Mór Mo Bhean Dhachaidh):

Refrain: Mór my wife will not come home

Mór my beloved wife will not come

The mother of my children will not come

Tonight to lie beside me

You can see the cows at milking time;

Answering their calves

My Mór is in Dunvegan

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She will nevermore give an answer

Now you, my child,

You are but weak:

Your mother is under stones

She will nevermore give an answer

Evidently we have a simple lament by a family man sung to his young child for his departed spouse. The background story provided by the Outer Hebridean woman singer, however, provides a new perspective on the whole matter by incorporating a theme well known in legend traditions elsewhere. Here the vignette of the older man who has just buried his wife and is comforting the children witha song is carried further. Unbeknownst to him, one of the young men observes a ring on the wife’s finger as she is placed in the coffin. Undeterred by scruples, he opens the coffin and tries to remove the ring by force, which turns out to be fortunate, since she is not really dead and responds to the pain by crying out. She returns to their dwelling, where she hears the husband singingthe above verses, and is joyfully reunited with herfamily (MacAulay: 222-23)

The communal nature of song is central to the localbards’ composing activity. In a world where the fewrecords kept of peripheral Gaelic communities focused on matters of greater social significance to the state than to those communities, the work of

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the song-makers provided a welcome alternative to the external official record in the form of an internal social record. In keeping with traditionalperformance practice throughout Gaelic culture, thebards’ primary concern was in articulating the perspective of the friends, relatives and neighbours who made up their immediate social world- and much less with their own individual expression. This is an orientation deeply rooted inthe aesthetics of ordinary Scottish Gaels and shared with their counterparts in Ireland:

In traditional Irish society ‘the poets were rarely inclined towards originality of thought or the generation of avant garde ideas … Their concern was with giving heightened artistic expression in sungpoetry … to the full range of feelingsand emotions of ordinary life in the community, so that their neighbours could identify with their songs and savour in them ‘what is oft thought, but ne’er so well expressed’. It was precisely their role of community mouthpiece, and of lifting the humdrumof everyday life to the artistic level, that was the key to their beingintensely and personally appreciated by a society that had little other artistic outlet.’

(Ó Madagáin: 176)

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Fieldwork has demonstrated repeatedly that the singers themselves are acutely aware of the primarily narrative nature of their song tradition.When asked to identify the characteristics of a good singer, the respondents invariably place the ability to articulate the words and express their meaning above voice quality, though the latter is often in evidence. It has been noted that special attention is directed toward verbal articulation while singing, to the extent that differences from ordinary daily speech can be discerned. On a higher level of language, singers have drawn the parallel between performing a song and reciting a story. For this reason the order of verses in a song is strictly adhered to, and any changes in thesequence noted with disapproval by the audience. Inthis world song composition rarely, if ever, involves the creation of a new air; the song-makingprocess centres around the verses, and an air appropriate for its rhythm, or perhaps its associations from other songs, is selected by the bard from the large repertoire in circulation. In reviewing the variety and subject matter of local compositions in fieldwork archives and printed sources, it is significant how repeatedly expressions of important, sometimes critical, transitions in the community’s history are recordedand examined in songs commemorating weddings, deaths, drownings at sea, praise of place, trips occasioning contacts with the ‘outside’, departure of esteemed clerics, and nostalgia among those who for economic or other reasons have had to leave. The gift of satire likewise reveals much in its function as a social corrective device, be it to

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draw attention to individuals within the locality who have in some way departed from the accepted norms, or to give voice to internal shared values and perceptions when confronted with those of a larger society.

Having briefly examined some of the concepts emerging from the social contexts of singing and song, let us consider how such concepts are manifested on the level of the traditional song repertoire. For this purpose I have chosen to review a small number among the main genres of songpopular among Gaels which include epic ballads; love songs; work (e.g. waulking) songs; soldiers’ and war songs; laments; panegyrics; lullabies; mouth music (puirt-à-beul); fairy songs; pibroch songs; macaronic songs;psalm-singing/precenting (see Ross: 96-98).

The living tradition of epic ballads and tales termed the Finn Cycle, would at first view seem to be an improbable initial choice of a genre to illustrate some of our main points about Gaelic song. Though regarded as obscure today, in its altered forms and translated it was made popular throughout Europe through James Macpherson’s Ossian,and has functioned as the Gaelic counterpart to theKalevala of Finland. The most archaic materials in its oral traditions can be traced back through manuscript versions to the 12th century (admittedly far more recent than the period claimed by Macpherson for the bard Ossian), but their importance for Gaeldom extends beyond their undoubted antiquity. The ballads, recounting the

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adventures of the epic hero Fionn Mac Cumhail and his warrior band, are Pan-Gaelic, and were known and recited in every Gaelic-speaking district from the south-west of Ireland to Sutherland in the northern Highlands of Scotland. The ballads were performed within a larger oral context, and served to complement the body of elaborate narratives thatmade up the core of the cycle. The airs are distinctive to the genre, and are indeed unparalleled in Western Europe. During performances, which took place primarily in the evenings and during the winter months, it was knownfor a reciter to pause at an appropriate point and request an accomplished singer present to sing the duan or ballad. The reciter would then resume his story. Recitation of the narratives was customarilythe preserve of men, though many of the ballads were known and sung by women. As a young man in the1960s and 70s I had the good fortune to meet some of the last living Old and New World reciters of the tradition and to record material from them. In additional to being pan-Gaelic, the linked adventures of Fionn and his companions were preferred by ordinary Gaels to all other branches of the storytelling repertoire. Their primacy in the tradition is no recent state of affairs, as thefollowing summary of a testimonial by the clergymanAlexander Pope in the northern Highlands from earlyin the 18th century shows (from MacKenzie: 54)::

The account, revealing as well as amusing, is of an incident where an elderly and dignified parishioner with

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the surname of Campbell, when asked to recite the Duan Dearmot ‘The Lay of Diarmaid’, a ballad historically (or pseudo-historically) associated with hisclan, reverently removed his bonnet whenever he did so. Pope, having first presented the reciter with a bottle of ale, replaced the old man’s bonnet, which the old man promptly removed again. “At last he was like to swear most horribly that he would sing none, unless I allowed him to be uncovered; I gave him his freedom and he sung with great spirit. I asked him the reason; hetold me it was out of regard for the memory of that hero … [and] he thought it well became them who descended from him to honour his memory.”

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The tales and therefore the subjects of the balladsin the Finn cycle certainly contained their share of international folklore motifs, but cannot themselves be classified as belonging to the international tales known to modern scholarship. Given their marginality in space and time from the larger European traditions, what did such elaborate, archaic material communicate to Gaels? And how did it ‘resonate’ through the entire culture? Firstly, the cycle promotes the heroic ethic and values of a warrior society that gave rise to a Highland martial tradition continuing into our own time. In addition to drawing attentionto the heroes’ physical prowess and qualities of character, the cycle emphasises their loyalty to the warrior band and its leader Fionn. In repeated episodes they successfully defend the civilized world (Ireland) against threats and intrusions fromthe ‘outside’ by monstrous adversaries. These equivalents of our modern ‘space invaders’ are described in striking detail in the ballad tradition, and are typically identified with a sinister and shadowy region over the sea called Lochlann. Throughout the cycle there is a celebration of a loyalty to Gaelic cultural values that fits well with Malinowski’s functionalist viewof tales as a ‘social charter’, where myth ‘expresses, enhances and codifies belief; it safeguards and enforces morality; it vouches for the efficiency of ritual and contains practical rules for the guidance of man. Myth is thus a vitalingredient of human civilization; it is not an idletale, but a hard-worked active force’ (19). As is the case with other cultures, the various tales in

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the cycle reinforce each other through their intertextuality, and bring about the resonance withthe larger reservoir of shared cultural symbols that John Miles Foley has termed ‘Immanent Art’ (Foley 1991, 1995; cf. MacInnes: passim). These daysit is difficult for us to conceive of the power that the Finn cycle, with its emphasis on continuity of core social values, has exercised over the minds of some Gaels as recently as the second half of the twentieth century. Yet accordingto an anecdote circulating among folklore fieldworkers one of the most renowned singers of the ballads of that time in the Outer Hebrides while on her deathbed was heard as a final act to sing the Lay of the Smithy describing the forging of Fionn Mac Cumhail’s legendary sword.

The messages contained in Gaeldom’s large repertoire on love songs likewise point to preoccupations and values central to the culture. The most significant type, containing 8-line versesand known as òran mór ‘big song’ is objective and unsentimental in tone and characterised by a powerful use of language. A good proportion of songs composed from the viewpoint of the male are vigorous and lusty in their portrayals, with much positive emphasis on (extended) family and social bonds: they are far from puritanical in their typical recountings of trysts with young women while herding cattle in the high pastures during the summer months. When unrequited, however, another side of the experience is routinely featured: love as a malady that strikes down the

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warrior hero, leaving him helpless, weak and confused. The following verses are translated from songs composed by the much respected bard William Ross (1762-90), who, as one singer explained to me in tones verging on reverence ‘died of love’.

From the outset I curse the midwife,Who did not bury me alive,Before I got to know you. A maiden so fresh and free,That would not even spare me a kiss.Sick and unwell, awakened from my dull slumber,Remembering what seemed a marriage-to-be,My blessing with you who have bought meYoung though I might be, with your courting ways.

……………………………………………………

And a plague on that loveThat I could never leave behind.It has consumed meTo think of a woman of your looks.The love in your radiant faceHas brought ill health upon me,So that no physician can cure me,And I would prefer to die. (Ross: 124-25, 166-67)1

1 Unless otherwise credited translations are by the present writer

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Women in their love songs were inclined to praise the heroic qualities of their lover, frequently employing such stock formulae as prowess as hunter,aristocratic origins, blue eyes, thick curls, and that most mysterious and sublime of attributes: theability to walk without the grass bending underfoot. Frequently, however, such proud descriptions are followed by a complaint arising from rejection, or pregnancy, often by an aristocratic lover. The following 4-line verses illustrate the type:

On your account my hair is thinning And my cheeks, once red, arehollow; I wish that I’d been dead andburied Before I grew to love you.

………………………………………….

I’d rather you had told the truth As well as you could read theBible; Possessing you has cost me much Were I to make it public.

………………………………………….

A year ago I’d never thought That you’d so utterly forsake me; As trees by seasons shed theirleaves

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Your interest in me faded.

(MacLellan: 140-43)

A further dimension of life experience is recorded and handled in the important song-genreof laments. Here as in other societies, laments function as a means for individuals and groups to negotiate irreversible transition, at the same time adding to the shared oral history of the community. In this sense their role parallels that of songs concerned with natural catastrophes, forced migration, as well as marriages and small local victories. Typically laments are the primary means by which individuals are remembered; they contain a strong narrative thread and often include stock praise formulae together with precise information regarding the genealogy of the deceased. The following example, recorded in theOuter Hebridean island of Lewis, is simple and unadorned, bringing home to the listener by its telling detail the enormity of ordinary experience.

It is time for me to rise, To look for my shoes,To look for my staff So that it may take me a little part of the wayAs I go to visit the girlWho was in the cattle-fold alone.

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When I came to the homesteadThe house was not as it ought to be:My smooth bright, brown-haired girl Lying in the chamber,Lying beneath the window Where I could not hear her talk; Lying on a board in her shroud, still and cold.

Thou who didst shape the worlds, Keep me from going mad;Keep me from losing my reason – And let me not endure more. (Music from the Western Isles. Translation by the Staff of the School of Scottish Studies).

Whether it be concerned with local issues manifested through the dichotomy of praise-dispraise, or the machinations of large and remote governments, Gaelic traditional society is characterised by a pervasive and constant politicalsense. In many parts of the world song has been noted by folklorists as a ready and effective meansfor subject peoples or sections of society to express views otherwise unacceptable to their betters. Not surprisingly in the Highlands of Scotland song has constituted the main outlet over centuries for expressing and propagating Gaelic political views. In some instances – that of the bloody and disastrous 1745 uprising against Englishrule, for example – the orientation and direct perceptions in the Gaelic song-record directly challenge the views propagated by orthodox

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historians (Campbell: intro.). A more recent episode in Highland-British relations that caused asensation throughout the United Kingdom was the theft of the Stone of Destiny, the concrete symbol of Scottish sovereignty, from Westminster Abbey by a small group of young Scots in 1950. The (or a) stone was eventually returned to the authorities, and the resulting general amusement north of the border inspired Donald MacIntyre, one of Scotland’smost accomplished Gaelic bards, to compose a satireon the subject. Nearly six decades on the song is still played over Gaelic radio and has appeared on a recently issued CD. In these verses the bard with irreverent humour describes the scene:

The Minister was dejectedWhen he woke up in the morningAnd arose, his eyes streaming;Sobbing and prayingAs he paced the floor,Glancing back at the cornerFrom which the Stone had vanished.

He scurried about the placeIn great agitationAnd repeated to himself,‘Where, oh where is the Stone?O Saint Mary Most HolyWhat am I to do tomorrow?For this will certainly Drive the Queen out of her mind.’(MacIntyre: 147-52).

Conclusion

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In our very brief survey I have attempted to demonstrate in terms of our Gaelic world what has long been well known to researchers in Finland: traditional songs and singing are closely tied to social contexts, functions and expressions essential to society. As our colleagues in the humanities have so often been slow to realise, it makes no difference that little of such lore is written down as a part of the official record retained in the centres of power. If, as is more likely, it has been passed on over generations in small, out of the way settlements in the woods or on the coast, its shared contexts and associations unique to the particular culture are that much moreeffective in maintaining and transmitting the perceptions, ideas and world views that motivate societies, large or small.

One of the productive ideas explored and promoted by 20th century anthropologists and ethnologists ranging from the American Ruth Benedict to my Irishcolleague Lillis Ó Laoire (passim) is that each culture focuses on a number of fundamental themes that are played out in various arenas, including those of song, dance and traditional narrative. In the case of Scottish Gaeldom, we can identify some of the themes as revealed and realised in the Gaelic song tradition: the importance of social cohesion; the value of cultural loyalty; the power of ordinary experience; the varied nature of romantic love; the experience of long-term subjugation and marginalisation. Such themes, of course, are universals of human experience and not

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unique to any one group. Yet we should note in the case of Gaels that the orientations of songs and the singing occasions are often markedly different from those in mainstream popular and ‘high’ culture. The contexts of performance, as well as the song contents, demonstrate that singing and song are perceived by traditional Gaels as being primarily for and about society rather than the intensely personal experiences, based on concepts of individualism, that we encounter routinely in modern popular song culture. They are also, as we have seen, integral to the shared system of symbolsthat lies at the heart of Gaelic life. It is this all-important social ‘world’, I believe, that the singer Dan Allan Gillis was referring to in his reply that ‘People have been singing songs since theworld began.’

References

Broadwood, Lucy E. ‘Twenty Gaelic Songs’. Journal of the Folksong Society 35/5 (Dec. 1931): 281-303.

Campbell J.L. Highland Songs of the Forty-Five. Edinburgh: 1933

Foley, John Miles. Immanent Art: From Structure toMeaning in Traditional Oral Epic. Bloomington: 1991

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______________. The Singer of Tales in Performance.Bloomington: 1995.

MacAulay, Fred. ‘Margaret MacKay’. Tocher 3(1975-76): 209-25.

MacInnes, John. ‘The Panegyric Code in GaelicPoetry and its Historical Background’.Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness 50 (1976-78):435-98.

MacIntyre, Donald. Sporan Dhòmhnaill. Edinburgh:1968.

MacKenzie, Henry (ed.). Report of the Committee of theHighland Society of Scotland appointed to inquire into theNature of the Authenticity of the Poems of Ossian.Edinburgh: 1805.MacLellan, Lauchie. Brìgh an Òrain/A Story in Every Song.The Songs and Tales of Lauchie MacLellan. Montreal:2000.

MacNeil, Joe Neil. Tales until Dawn/Sgeul gu Latha: TheWorld of a Cape Breton Gaelic Story-Teller. Edinburgh andMontreal: 1987.

Malinowski, Bronislaw. Myth in Primitive Psychology. Westport, Conn.: 1971 [1926].

Ó Laoire, Lillis. On a Rock in the Middle of the Ocean.Indreabhán, Conamara: 2007.

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Ó Madagáin, Breandán. “Functions of Irish Song in the Nineteenth Century”. Béaloideas 53 (1985): 130-216.

Ross, James. ‘A Classification of Gaelic Folk-Song.’ Scottish Studies

1 (1957): 95-151.

Shaw, John. “Language, Music and LocalAesthetics: Views from Gaeldom and Beyond”.Scottish Language 11/12 (1992/93):37-61.

Recordings:

Music from the Western Isles (Scottish Tradition 2). The School of Scottish Studies. Tangent Records TNGM 110: 1971.

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