Gaelic

The Portable Fairy Hill: The Scottish Gaelic Storytelling Tradition in the Highlands and Nova Scotian Diaspora

6 June 2022 by Duncan Jones

July 6, 2022 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Headstrong heroines and hot-tempered chieftains, loch monsters and hill fairies, cattle raids and clan feuds, wise animals and foolish saints: the folktales of the Scottish Highlands preserve the history and beliefs of a people deeply rooted in their land and culture.

The fairy hill can be understood in Gaelic tradition not just as the portal to the Otherworld, but as the gateway of the imagination. Highland exiles from the Clearances carried these tales and traditions with them – most notably to Nova Scotia, where Gaelic storytelling has survived to the present.

This talk will offer an overview of the Gaelic storytelling tradition in Scotland and Nova Scotia, some of the masterpieces of this verbal art, and what it tells us about Gaelic cultural values and identity.

All welcome!

Dr Michael S. Newton was an assistant professor in the Celtic Studies department of St Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia from 2008 to 2013. He has written a multitude of books and articles about Gaelic culture and history and is a leading authority on Scottish Gaelic heritage in North America. His anthology Into the Fairy Hill: Classic Folktales of the Scottish Highlands will be published later this year by McFarland. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

This event will be run via Zoom. Login details for the event will be sent out by email on Tuesday 5 July. ASL gratefully acknowledges the support of the Scottish Government in presenting this lecture.

Free

Association for Scottish Literature

Online event

ALTUN, Ali, ‘John McGrath: an Anti-Class-based System Playwright’

12 September 2021 by Duncan Jones

A paper presented at ESSE 2012 |

One of the most prolific and outstanding figures in British drama, John McGrath was committed to socialism and used the stage as a political arena (Kershaw, 1992: 149) to promote his opinions and provoke the labour class audience to react against the established capitalist system in Britain (Holdsworth, 2002: xvii). With socialist insights into the nature of social struggle and the provoking tone concerned with the issues of oppression, McGrath’s plays can be classified as examples of agit-prop (Agitation-Propaganda) drama (Innes, 2002: 181). Using the stage as an instrument to give political messages, the playwright performed his plays at non-theatre buildings such as working-men’s clubs, pubs, village halls and community centres.

Having been influenced by some political thinkers of the left such as Antonio Gramsci, Rosa Luxemburg and Mao Tse Tung, McGrath grew interest in the social and political atmosphere of the late 1960s (Holdsworth, 2002: xv) and went to Paris during the revolts of May 1968. These revolts made important marks on him and the playwright started to grow opposition to the class-based society in Britain.

In 1971, McGrath, his wife Elizabeth MacLennan and her brother David MacLennan established the 7:84 Theatre Company, which took its name from a statistic that was published in The Economist that 7 per cent of the population of Britain owned 84 per cent of the country’s wealth. McGrath comments that “although this proportion may have fluctuated marginally over years, we continue to use it because it points to the basic economic structure of the society we live in, from which all the political, social and cultural structures grow” (McGrath, 1981:76). According to Patterson the reason why the company was founded lies in the fact that McGrath wanted to show the necessity of a struggle, a political organisation, and a hard, bitter, disciplined fight against powerful forces of capitalism (2003:109). Holdsworth indicates that the main aim of the company was to attract the audience to popular theatre so that they could be shown and provided with day-to-day realities of working class life. Yet it was not that easy to attract the audience to the theatre (2002: xvi).

In order to manage to attract crowds to his non-theatre performances, McGrath made use of such popular forms as ceilidh, song, live music and caricature, performing his works at the working-men’s clubs and trade union buildings where the working class men spend their time. But when using these forms, he also aimed to show that “working-class forms of entertainment and popular forms are not inferior and that such audiences are not philistine” (DiCenzo, 1996:140).

In 1973 the company were divided into two branches; English and Scottish. The first production of 7:84 Scotland was The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil, considered the masterpiece of John McGrath. The play provides information about different classes and historical background of the Highlands, how its people and natural resources were exploited by the ruling class and their capitalist aims after the discovery of the North Sea oil from a socialist perspective. One of the aims of the play was to make the audience aware of what had happened in Highlands and to tell of tales of local resistance, while also entertaining them. McGrath, when explaining the aims of the play, says that it “tries to present in its work a socialist perspective on our society, and to indicate socialist alternatives to the capitalist system that dominates all our lives today” (quoted in DiCenzo, 1996:137). Yet the main aim of the playwright was to create a counter-culture that would react against bourgeois culture and consequently overthrow them. Moreover it is mainly concerned “to encourage the Highlanders to alter the present system and the status quo in favour of the whole community” (Yerebakan, 1997: 194). To this end, McGrath used ceilidh form, unofficial histories, the Gaelic language and music of the region to arouse interest among the locals, which brought success to him and made him more popular. Thanks to tours to remote places, now the distant areas were introduced with theatre and this led to an increase in the number of audience, who also took more social responsibility. As a result, thousands of Highlanders saw the play and they both enjoyed it and were enlightened with their past, present and possible future events.

As far as The Cheviot … is concerned, at the very beginning the playwright talks of the history of Scotland as “that has a beginning, a middle, but, as yet, no end” (McGrath, 1981: 2), which comes to imply that Scotland and Highlanders have been used and abused by the British capitalists and the process of exploitation has not finished yet. On the other hand these remarks may also come to mean that the Highlanders should not lament their history, but should organise themselves into taking a militant action so that the exploitation that the play and the history reveals would not be repeated once again to the detriment of the working-class in the future (Yerebakan, 1997: 205). The political play is not only confined to economic exploitation of Scotland but also raises issues about cultural assimilation of a society. McGrath makes use of Gaelic songs to stress that new Scottish generation cannot speak their mother tongue because of the fact that they have been denied to learn it. He uses some striking historical facts about Scotland in the play and aims both to enlighten and have a great impact on the audience:

- M.C.1. In the 18th century speaking the Gaelic language was forbidden by law.
- M.C.2. In the 19th century children caught speaking Gaelic in the playground were flogged.
- M.C.1. In the 20th century the children were taught to deride their own language.
- M.C.1. The people had to learn the language of their new masters.
- M.C.1. A whole culture was systematically destroyed – by economic power (McGrath, 1981: 52).

As a result of cultural assimilation of this society, the Gaelic songs were not understood where Gaelic was less widely known. But elsewhere, where it was widely known, the songs were both joined in and appreciated. According to Winkler the reason why the Gaelic lyrics are not translated in the Methuen edition is “to evoke curiosity and the desire to retrieve what has been lost” (Winkler, 1990: 296).

Anti-capitalist playwright draws audience’s attention to the fact that they should not let others control their land and warns them against potential threat of capitalist powers. He advocates that Scottish people must own and control their land and that they should decide on their future; otherwise they will gradually lose their culture and identity.

M.C.2. By economic power. Until economic power is in the hands of the people, then their culture, Gaelic or English, will be destroyed. The educational system, the newspapers, the radio and television and the decision-makers, local and national, whether they know it or not, are the servants of the men who own and control the land
(McGrath, 1981: 55).

The views of socialist playwright are not only national but also international. While depicting Scottish working-class who have been suffering from the multinational corporations that seek their interests in the Highlands, he also touches on the problems of other workers in the world who have suffered as a result of political and economic imperialism.

- M.C. One thing’s for certain, these men are not just figures of fun. They are determined, powerful and have the rest of the ruling class on their side. Their network is international.
- M.C.4. Question: What does a meat-packer in the Argentine, a merchant seaman on the high seas, a docker in London, a container-lorry driver on the motorways, have in common with a crofter in Lochinver?
  (McGrath, 1981:57).

McGrath gives the message that working-class of the whole world share the same destiny as the Highlanders. Yet still their destiny is not pre-determined. According to McGrath the rise of working-class depends on the “social, political and cultural development of the working- class towards maturity and hegemony” (McGrath, 1989:21). So if all the working-class unify and take action against the exploiters, they can overthrow the hegemony of capitalism and create a classless society and thus live under equal terms.

At the end of the play, the playwright gives direct messages to the audience, saying that they should organise and take militant action to be victorious. Yet they should not fight “with stones, but politically, with the help of the working class in the towns” (McGrath, 1981:73). And in order to be more influential on the audience the play ends with a Gaelic song that calls for the unification of the oppressed, and a fight against the oppressors.

M.C. The song says:
Remember that you are a people and fight for your rights –
Remember your hardships and keep up your struggle
The wheel will turn for you
By the strength of your hands and hardness of your fists.
Your cattle will be on the plains
Everyone in the land will have a place
And the exploiter will be driven out
(McGrath, 1981:73–74).

Consequently, the socialist playwright McGrath vividly depicts the class struggle between the bourgeois and working-class, who have been abused and exploited by both Scottish and English landlords, and multinational corporations. The working-class not only have been made use of but also have been culturally assimilated. They were forbidden to speak their mother language – Gaelic – and even were denied to wear their traditional clothes. Despite all the hardships both Highlanders on national scale and all the working-class on international scale have suffered, there is still hope to change the status quo. If they unify and react against the hegemony of capitalism, they can manage to create a classless society both in Britain and in the world.

References

DiCenzo, Maria (1996), The Politics of Alternative Theatre in Britain, 1968–1990: the Case of 7:84 (Scotland) , Cambridge, New York and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.
Holdsworth, Nadine (2002) Naked Thoughts That Roam About, London: Nick Hern Books Ltd.
Innes, Christopher (2002) Modern British Drama: The Twentieth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kershaw, Baz (1992) The Politics of Performance: Radical Theatre as Cultural Intervention, London: Routledge.
McGrath, John (1981) The Cheviot, The Stag and Black, Black Oil, London: Eyre Methuen Ltd.
—(1989) A Good Night Out: Popular Theatre: Audience, Class and Form, London: Eyre Methuen Ltd.
Patterson, Michael (2003), Strategies of Political Theatre: Post-War British Playwrights, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Winkler, Elizabeth Hale (1990), The Function of Song in Contemporary British Drama, Newark: University of Delaware Press
Yerebakan, İbrahim (1997), “Stages as a Political Platform: An Assessment of John McGrath’s The Cheviot, the Stag and Black, Black Oil”, Edebiyat Bilimleri Araştırma Dergisi, No: 24, 189–208, Erzurum: Atatürk Üniversitesi

BATEMAN, Meg, ‘Gaelic Poetry for English Classes’

12 September 2021 by Duncan Jones

Laverock 3, 1997
(The text of a paper given to the ASLS Schools Conference in 1994)

I have been kindly asked to speak at this conference to make the suggestion that you might include some modern Gaelic poetry in translation in the work you do with your English classes. In my talk I hope to let you decide if this would be a good idea by talking about the poets involved, the books where their work is to be found, and the perspectives from which their work might be usefully studied.

Before I start on such practicalities I should take a moment to address the question of why teach Gaelic poetry in translation at all. A purist could argue that translation makes a nonsense of poetry and in some sense that is undoubtedly correct. A defence might be made on the grounds that poetry is in any case a translation – a translation from feeling to words, from a private insight to a parallel, hopefully communicable, experience. If this partially defends the teaching of translated poetry, I will continue with defending the teaching of Gaelic poetry, though perhaps to this audience no defence is necessary.

I would make such a defence on three grounds, the most important of which must be that there is some very good Gaelic poetry. At school level there is no point looking at inferior poetry simply because it’s there as we do when we want to get a picture of the whole or are in search of the sociological factors made evident in a poem. To inspire young people in the enjoyment of poetry only the “best” should be searched out, and I believe some of “the best” can be found in Gaelic.

The second argument is compatible with the notions of a child-centred curriculum. Gaelic, as one of the cultures constituting this nation, is bound to impinge at some level on all of the population. Any exposure bringing understanding and respect between the cultures can only be a good thing. I would be pleased to see a speaker on this platform next year representing translated poetry from other cultures in Scotland – translated for example from Urdu, Punjabi.

A rather more political point is that after centuries of the active destruction of the Gaelic language and culture by the school system, there is now a chance to make good a wrong. I would not want to make this claim on political grounds alone, if there were any question of pupils having to suffer for the sins of their fathers. But there is good material …

I’ll turn now to the practicalities of books. For the purposes of this lecture I would recommend firstly an anthology, Nua-bhardachd Ghaidhlig; Modern Scottish Gaelic Poetry, edited by Donald MacAulay. It was first published in 1976 and is due to come out again next month, November 1994. I feel it is a book where virtually every poem works. That may be too subjective a remark to be useful. The book as a whole has a certain homogeneity about it; it comes from a distinct time and a distinct place, with distinct perspectives on the world. All of the five contributors are Highlanders, born between 1911 and 1930, all are men and university-educated. They all share some of the following characteristics: an anti-clericalism which demands as fundamental the individual’s – and not the community’s – values; a sense of outrage at the history of the Highlands and Islands and the country’s indifference to the language and culture; a sense of tension between the security of belonging to a small rural community, at the price of being required to conform, and the freedom, in particular, the intellectual freedom, of city life, at the price of an anonymity which slips so easily into existential dread. This hurt is made clear in the lines of Derick Thomson:

The heart tied to a tethering post, round upon round of the rope, till it grows short,
and the mind free.
I bought its freedom dearly.
(Water and Peat and Oats)

The most important characteristic uniting the poets is the passion and honesty of their probing which accepts no easy answers. When their poetry was first published this was particularly refreshing as for over a century new Gaelic poetry had consisted mostly of sentimental evocations of a past that never was. It was as if Gaelic poetry couldn’t, or wouldn’t, look Gaelic society in the eye. There was of course good reason for this: with the upheaval of Clearance and emigration too much had been shaken for the old models to stand; likewise the present was often too gloomy to be the subject of the songs that emigre Gaels gathering socially in the cities would want to hear. It is no wonder if their preference was not for reality, but for a few hours of escapism that could hold them together before their return to the wheels of British Industry.

I will return to discussing each of the five poets individually in a moment, but first I would like to mention another anthology of younger Gaelic poets, An Aghaidh na Siorraidheachd/ In the Face of Eternity, edited by Christopher Whyte and published by Polygon, that came out in 1991. Poems are not written to an agenda, but we inevitably teach to one. Therefore it is important we realise the limitations (this is in no way a criticism, but a statement of fact) of the first anthology which are partially righted by the second. Four of the eight poets in the second anthology are women, three are conventionally religious, three are Gaelic learners, one is gay, and all of them reflect the world thirty or forty years later on. If my talk were addressed to teachers of Gaelic rather than English I would speak much longer about this second anthology, because I think it is important that young people from a Gaelic background do not think (as they might gather from the first book) that you have to be male and reject established religion to be a “thinker”. For Gaelic speakers, the second volume is interesting precisely because it does not have an exclusively island perspective. The language rather than the subject-matter defines it as Gaelic in what I believe is a healthy expansion of domain. But for English classes, it is because In the Face of Eternity is not so obviously a window on a different culture that I want now to return to the “Famous Five” of the first anthology, MacAulay’s Modern Scottish Gaelic Poetry.

The oldest poet amongst these, and indeed the inspiration of much of what followed, is Sorley Maclean (b.1911). Most of his poems were written in his late twenties and were a sort of enquiry into the conflicting demands of love, political idealism and self-preservation. The scenario which generated many of the poems was as follows: MacLean was a young man in love. This experience inspired in him new levels of commitment to humanity, which at that time meant fighting fascism in Spain. The contemplation of such heroic action also entailed the contemplation of death, and hence an end to love, but his fear of death also deprived him of the self-worth necessary to pursue love. I think many young people can relate to this sort of perfectionism. His poetry can also be used to discuss questions of social justice, in particular the Clearances (see the poem Hallaig) and to show symbolism at work with his use of the dramatic landscape of Skye.

I expect the most ‘teachable’ of the poets in the anthology is Derick Thomson. He has a number of highly-crafted poems where some features of the old way of life in the islands (a hand-made coffin, a well,etc) becomes a metaphor for change. These illustrate very clearly how the interweaving of the concrete and extended resonances make for a poem in which the overall effect is far greater than the sum of the parts. They are also the poems in the anthology which most poignantly grieve for the past.

The poetry of Iain Crichton Smith well illustrates the use of highly-coloured, if not surreal, language and imagery. These generally serve in making a plea for a fuller way of living, without the cramping of society’s ideologies (a frustration known to every adolescent). The poetry of Donald MacAulay makes much the same plea, and asks that people be given the respect to live by their individual yardsticks. He shows a suspicion of group behaviour and easy answers, and is critical of the sort of censorship practised by the very communities which Derick Thomson regards with such nostalgia.

George Campbell Hay stands out from the other poets in the anthology as being a poet of celebration, using beautiful language to evoke beautiful scenery. His anti-war poems too come from the same premise that life is beautiful and war a most unnatural evil.

I hope I have shown that this anthology could be a rich source of poems in the upper school and that I have given an idea of some possible approaches, both thematic and formal. The book itself has a detailed introduction and citations of other publications should a deeper study of an individual poet be required.

I would like to end with mention of a poem by the youngest poet in the second anthology, In the Face of Eternity. She is Anne Frater (b.Lewis,1967) and the poem is called ‘At the Fank’. In detail, she describes herself watching with a group of neighbours busy with sheep-dipping. At first she is reluctant to join in, feeling slightly cold and the job being messy. Gradually she is ‘moved to usefulness’ until at the final point of involvement and warmth she finds herself speaking ‘with her own language on her tongue’. I leave you here with this typically island scene depicted by a young woman who recognises language as the ultimate source of her identity.

Aig an Fhaing

Nam sheasamh thall aig geat a’ phrèiridh,
feur glan fom bhòtannan,
làmhan fuar nam phòcaidean,
fàileadh an dup
gu fann
gu neo-chinnteach
a’ nochdadh mu mo chuinnlean
’s mi a’ coimhead càch cruinn
lachanaich le chèile
timcheall air an fhaing:
a’ bruthadh nan caorach,
guthan àrd ag èigheachd
’s a’ gearain, ’s a’ gàireachdainn
’s gach druim thugams’
gam ghlasadh a-mach.
Mi seasamh, ’s a’ coimhead
’s a’ feitheamh airson facal
mo ghluasad gu feum.
Mi siubhal gu slaodach
a’ cruinneachadh nan uan
’s gan ruagadh romham
a-steach gu càch;
uain a’ ruith
gu meulaich màth’r.
Boinneagan uisge
mar mhillean mialan
a’ leum as an dup,
agus crathadh cinn nan adharcan
fliuch, fuar, feagalach
a’ dèanamh às.
Ceum no dha eile
’s chì mi aodannan nan gàir’.
Mo làmhan fhìn a’ breith air clòimh,
fàileadh an dup air mo chorragan,
peant a’ camharradh mo chasan,
poll dubh bog air mo bhòtannan
’s mo chànan fhìn nam bheul.

At the Fank

Standing over by the prairie gate
with clean grass under my wellies,
cold hands in my pockets,
the smell of the sheep dip
faintly
hesitantly
coming to my nostrils
as I watch the others gathered
around the fank
and laughing with each other:
pushing the sheep,
loud voices shouting
and moaning, and laughing
and all with their backs to me
shutting me out.
I stand and watch
and wait for a word
to move me to usefulness.
Moving slowly
gathering the lambs
and driving them before me
in towards the others;
lambs running
to a mother’s bleat.
Drops of water
jump from the sheep dip
like millions of fleas
and the horns’ head-shaking,
wet, cold, fearful
running off.
Another step or two
and I can see the laughing faces.
My own hands holding wool,
the smell of sheep dip on my fingers.
Paint marking my legs,
soft black mud on my wellies
and my own language on my tongue.

Anne Frater.

Recommended Texts

Nua-Bhardachd Ghaidhlig / Modern Scottish Gaelic Poems ed. Donald Macaulay pub. Canongate.
An Aghaidh na Siorraidheachd / In The Face of Eternity ed. Christopher Whyte pub. Polygon.

Aig an Fhaing / At the Fank copyright © Anne Frater.
First published in Gairm magazine, and reprinted here with kind permission of the author.

BYRNE, Michel, ‘Tails o the Comet? MacLean, Hay, Young and MacDiarmid’s Renaissance’

12 September 2021 by Duncan Jones

ScotLit 26, Spring 2002 |

On 4 May 2002 the ASLS held a conference at the University of Glasgow to celebrate the work of Sorley MacLean whose Dàin do Eimhir, so ably edited by Christopher Whyte, was the ASLS Annual Volume for 2001. ScotLit is very happy to reproduce here a slightly shortened version of Michel Byrne’s paper on the relationships between the poets Sorley MacLean, George Campbell Hay (son of the novelist John MacDougall Hay, author of Gillespie) and Douglas Young – all poets of the second wave of cultural energy which characterised the 1940s in Scotland – and Hugh MacDiarmid, poet and champion of the first wave who was a major influence on younger poets.)

At last, at last I see her again
In our long-lifeless glen
Eidolon of our fallen race,
Shining in full renascent grace,
She whose hair is plaited
Like the generations of men,
And for whom my heart has waited
Time out of ken.

Hark! hark! the fead chruinn chruaidh Chaoilte,
Hark! hark! tis the true, the joyful sound,
Caoilte’s shrill round whistle over the brae,
the freeing once more of the winter-locked ground,
the new springing of flowers, another rig turned over,
dearg-lasrach bho’n talamh dubh na h-Alba,
Another voice, and another, stirring, rippling, throbbing with life,
Scotland’s long-starved ears have found.

The exultant tone on which opens Hugh MacDiarmid’s long poem “On Receiving the Gaelic Poems of Somhairle MacLean and George Campbell Hay” (1940) should hardly surprise. Little could have done more to herald a new dawn of the Scottish Renaissance Movement launched twenty years before, than the emergence of these two poets. MacLean and Hay seem so much like the fulfilment of MacDiarmid’s hopes, that had they not existed MacDiarmid would have had to – and probably have tried to – invent them. This article aims to point out some of the connections between the two rising stars of Gaelic poetry and MacDiarmid’s Renaissance, and to highlight the role of fellow-poet Douglas Young, to whom the opening poem was first sent.

MacDiarmid had been waging his long kulturkampf against the Anglocentrism and parochialism of Scottish culture since the 1920s. The ‘Scottish Renaissance Movement’ (as it was named by French critic Denis Saurat) sought, in MacDiarmid’s words:

- - to shift the cultural and political emphasis away from “our affinities with the English, [and] to our differences with the English”
  - to “refecundate Scottish arts and letters with international ideas and tendencies … – importing them direct, not via England, and without … the automatic filterscreen of the English language”.
  - “to recover our lost Gaelic and Scots traditions in their entirety” – “among our main tasks must be a systematic exploration of the creative possibilities of Braid Scots and a recapture of our lost Gaelic background”.

In the course of the late twenties and early thirties, MacDiarmid’s preoccupation with the role of Gaelic in his cultural revolution grew more and more pronounced. It wasn’t merely that “the profitable affiliations of Scots lie, not with English, but with Gaelic”, but that Scots culture was “really a subsidiary development of … ancient Gaelic culture”, “represent[ing] the Celts’ compromise with circumstance”. In the introduction to his Golden Treasury of 1940 MacDiarmid would restate that the Renaissance aim of recharging the Scots language was “only a stage in the breakaway from English, preliminary to the great task of recapturing and developing our great Gaelic heritage”.

In 1927 MacDiarmid advocated that the next essential step in resistance to capitalist globalisation – “the great over-ruling tendency towards standardisation inherent in contemporary industrialism, dependent … on cosmopolitan finance” – should be the formulation of a “Scottish Idea” complementary to the “Russian Idea” of Dostoevsky and other Russian intellectuals. MacDiarmid identified an artistic tendency throughout Europe towards “neo-classicism”: “the re-concentration of advanced artists in all countries … on the ‘ur-motives’ [aboriginal motives] of their respective races. So far as we in Scotland are concerned our ‘ur-motives’ lie in our ancient Gaelic culture. We must repair the fatal breach in continuity which has cut us off from our own roots.”

In literary terms, in an echo of his “Back to Dunbar” cri-de-guerre to Scots poets, he recommends “an increasing endeavour to win back to the tradition and technique of the Bardic Colleges – behind the feminisation of Mary-of-the-Songs” (17^th century vernacular praise poet Mary MacLeod). He also calls for “social and political equivalents” and sketches out a theory of “neo-Gaelic Economics”, including the abolition of the usury-based banking system in favour of Social Credit. “The impetus to civilisation” MacDiarmid claims, “ was an Ur-Gaelic initiative” (presumably referring to the westward migration of the Celts), and he concludes that “the reconciliation of East and West” is therefore “the ineluctable mission of the Gaelic genius”.

The Scottish Idea also found expression in poems such as “Dìreadh”:

I covet the mystery of our Gaelic speech
In which rughadh was at once a blush,
A promontory, a headland, a cape,
… And think of the Oriental provenance of the Gael,
The Eastern affiliations of his poetry and his music,
… And the fact that he initiated the idea of civilisation
That today needs renewal at its native source …

MacDiarmid’s ideas are impressive in their ambition but also in their sheer presumption. However glorious the world mission being bestowed on Gaelic, the “ur-Gaelic intiative” is clearly the latest in a long line of alien appropriations of the language and its culture. (One is reminded of Derick Thomson’s wish for a ‘soisgeulaiche … nar cainnt fhin’ [‘an evangelist…in our own tongue.’]). Sorley MacLean himself would comment with exasperation in 1940 that MacDiarmid “should really stop his pose of interpreter of Gaelic Scotland” (though he conceded that “perhaps it’s not a pose, but honest boosting”). Yet it is striking the extent to which MacDiarmid’s notions chimed with MacLean and Hay’s own concerns. What we can see repeatedly is MacDiarmid flagging up very real issues in Gaelic culture, with a partially informed understanding which then gains in substance as he establishes his friendships with MacLean and Hay.

For example, before meeting MacLean in 1934 MacDiarmid had already opined with typical hyperbole that:

in Gaelic literature sight has been lost of the great traditions, and the whole field is monopolised by insignificant versifiers expressing Wee Free sentiments. The ministerial voice is ubiquitous and poems are judged by their conformity to sectarian dogmas and canons of provincial respectability. … And, above all it is insistent that the substance of poetry must be silly vapourings, chocolate-box lid pictures of nature, and trite moralisings. Penny novelette love is all right, but not politics, not religion, not war, not anything that can appeal to an adult intelligence. Finally good poetry cannot be anti-English. It must bow the knee to Kirk and State. Anglophobia and sedition are out of the question.

These criticisms prefigure the scathing assessments of modern Gaelic poetry and the prevailing cultural ambiance, that would issue from both MacLean and Hay – the preponderance of the “pretty-pretty”, of romance over truth, Hay’s reference to “the ring of clergy, Comann Gaidhealach Britons and academicians who would like to preserve the Gael in a kind of intellectual red Indian reserve where… they will be aesthetically and morally catered for by the soiree and the kirk”.

Similarly, before meeting MacLean MacDiarmid had already trumpeted the virtues of the major eighteenth century Gaelic poets, and had championed the re-evaluation of the 19^th century nationalist poet William Livingston of Islay (“that splendid masculine poet, who has put away childish things [and] was sure of misrepresentation in his pusillanimous and effeminate age”). But it was MacLean who enabled MacDiarmid to substantiate his promotion of Gaelic poetry by providing him with detailed translations of the work of MacMhaighstir Alastair, Donnchadh Bàn, and Livingston. These formed the basis of the texts published in MacDiarmid’s Golden Treasury of 1940. Not entirely to MacLean’s satisfaction, though, as he told Douglas Young:

I wish he had not represented Gaelic by the very few very bad prose translations [of mine] which were merely to give him an idea for versifying.

Neither did MacLean wholeheartedly endorse MacDiarmid’s enthusiasm for Livingston:

Why the hell has Grieve to boost L as a poet because of his political opinions? He never does that with Scots Lowland poets whom he knows at first hand.

To take yet another example, MacDiarmid had already understood in the Twenties the inauthenticity of Celtic Twilight presentations of Gaelic culture, condemning “the pseudo-Celtic ‘Hebridean’ songs of Mrs Kennedy-Fraser and the like”. In a 1935 article, however, we find that hecan offer specific examples of the “egregious fraud and shoddy substitution” effected in Songs of the Hebrides, which he has clearly derived from MacLean.

A final example is found in MacDiarmid’s ambition to “revive the classical traditions and modes of our ancient Gaelic literature, and reapply [these] to modern conditions”. Such literary re-Gaelicisation in MacDiarmid’s own work finds expression in bardic postures, in the notice given to a major Gaelic poets such as Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair and the liberal sprinkling of quotes from Irish and Gaelic found in To Circumjack Cencrastus. His specific call for a return to the discipline of the medieval bards, however, (quoted above, from 1927) emerges as one of the central tenets of George Campbell Hay’s poetic manifesto published in 1939 – in MacDiarmid’s own quarterly The Voice of Scotland.

Hay had broached the subject in a letter to MacDiarmid (probably his first communication with the doyen, cited anonymously in the Voice of May 1939), in which he decried developments imported wholesale from English poetry, and insisted that “Gaelic poetry hasn’t drawn all the sap from its own roots yet”. Modern poets should develop the metrical potential of Gaelic folksong, and emulate “the discipline and close-knit diction of bardic poetry.” The young poet was given space to elaborate his ideas in full in the following issue by an editor presumably delighted to see a decade-old hobby-horse vindicated from within the Gaelic world.

Hay was a valuable addition to the ranks of the Renaissance in other ways too: he fulfilled the internationalist role demanded by MacDiarmid, in his translations from Greek, Welsh, Irish, and (in the Forties) from French, Italian and Arabic; and above all, he embodied the reconciliation of Gaelic and Scots cultures, the “higher synthesis” of Highland and Lowland “without [which] … a Scottish cultural unity is impossible”. Since the Twenties MacDiarmid had denounced “the vicious Highland v. Lowland antagonism [which] proved one of the main stumbling blocks to the reintegration of Scottish nationalism”. Here was a trilingual poet who explicitly celebrated “Alba nan Gaidheal ’s nan Gall”.

These, then, are some of the ways in which MacDiarmid’s meeting with MacLean in 1934 and with Hay five years later drew their work into the centre of his cultural war. The development of MacDiarmid and MacLean’s friendship after their meeting in 1934 has been well documented (see Joy Hendry’s chapter in Sorley MacLean: Critical Essays), but it is impossible to discuss the relationships between MacDiarmid, MacLean and Hay in the late Thirties and into the Forties without highlighting the role of Douglas Young as intermediary, friend and propagandist.

A gifted classical scholar and polyglot, a genial man of immense integrity and strong political commitment, and himself a poet, he cemented the relationships between Hugh MacDiarmid and Sorley MacLean, introduced Hay and MacDiarmid to each other’s work, was instrumental in bringing MacLean and Hay together, played an important part in the publication of both Gaels’ work and also promoted their poetry through his own Scots versions. He was memorably described by the poet William Soutar as “an exceedingly tall fellow with a shovel-beard – his leanness, longness and fringiness [giving] the impression of a BBC announcer who had partially metamorphosed into an aerial”. His friends simply referred to him as God, or The Deity.

Young’s years in Oxford in the mid-thirties (following his first degree at St Andrews) coincided with Hay’s own classical studies, and the two young men struck up a very strong friendship, based largely on their passion for literature and languages and their commitment to leftwing nationalism. Before their return to Scotland, both had vowed to uphold an SNP conference resolution to resist conscription into the Crown Forces in the event of a war. This eventually led to Hay spending eight months as a fugitive in 1940-41, and twice to Young’s incarceration. (By then Young had entered the arena of electoral politics and was even elected Chairman of the SNP.)

It was at Oxford in 1936 that Young introduced Hay to the poetry of MacDiarmid. Indeed Young attributed Hay’s maturation as a poet to this “acquaintance [which] stirred him up to performances of novel and striking varieties”. He pithily recalls this in his “Letter to MacDiarmid, 1940”, when he describes himself passing time in Waverley Station reading Scots Unbound:

a present o whilk I well remember
giean to Deorsa ae day in December
fourr year syne. And I’ld aisilie show it
set him on to becoman a poet.
Thon’s a thing wi rime but nae reason,
the makan o Hay in a winter season.

It was in 1939 in turn that Young brought Hay’s work to Grieve’s attention, having written to comment on his new periodical The Voice of Scotland(the first issue of which had featured MacLean’s new poem BanaGhaidheal.) Immediately MacDiarmid featured a selection of original poems and translations from Greek, Welsh and Irish by Hay. Over the following months Young kept MacDiarmid abreast of his various projects with Hay, including a “gallimaufry” of their joint work, a satirical political sequence which was never completed (perhaps surviving only in Hay’s poem Grunnd na Mara, rendered into the Scots Thonder They Ligg by Young), and later a joint book of translations from Classical and modern European literatures.

MacDiarmid’s generosity in championing the younger poets is striking, particularly given his own extremely difficult circumstances in those years of poverty and isolation in Whalsay. Having been unable to include their work in his Golden Treasury (though drawing attention to the “two very remarkable young Gaelic poets” in his notes), in Spring 1940 he is not only preparing a sequel to include Hay, MacLean, Young and Goodsir Smith, but also a Six Scottish Poets for Hogarth Press which features these four with Soutar and himself. He also offers to draw on his Irish contacts including Douglas Hyde and Frank O’ Connor to ensure the publication of MacLean’s political epic An Cuilithionn and Hay’s poems, and suggests setting up a subscription list to which he’ll add his name and a note of commendation, for Hay’s and Young’s joint collection.

It was during MacLean’s period of teaching in Edinburgh in 1939 that he and Young met. The first selection of MacLean’s poems was published in Seventeen poems for 6d, a collaboration with Robert Garioch, in January 1940, and it was around this time that according to MacLean “Douglas Young came and pretty well took me over aesthetically”. Hay supplied Young with a review of MacLean’s contribution, in which he commented: “How long ago was it that the last Gaelic poetry that really meant anything was produced? At the time of the evictions? Long since anyway. But from these poems it seems as if we are getting out of the rut at last.” Later, in 1941, he would say of the still unpublished Dàin do Eimhir, many of which he had copied into his own notebooks: “The life of these poems is hot enough to break-up even the thick casing of dead-ice that has lain over Gaelic literature so long.”

Young’s extraordinary dedication in preparing the Dàin do Eimhir for publication is documented in Christopher Whyte’s splendid edition. It is astonishing that on top of his own academic, political and literary work, Young found the time and energy to meticulously type out and edit Sorley’s drafts – only painfully legible – checking variants and every linguistic dilemma with MacLean. Sorley told him while in Catterick military camp: “All I can say is that no one else has ever done so much for me as you have done, intellectually and materially.”

Hay also entrusted Young with his poems before leaving for North Africa and continued to send him copies of each wartime poem. The production of Hay’s volume, however, was a far more tortuous affair, suffering from too many hands on the oars and too little direction from Hay. The advertised collection, Gaoth air Loch Fìne, was scrapped by Hay when he realised that it included “political rants” he had no desire to see published as poetry. He had his own reservations in any case about his work, as he confessed to MacLean: “Doubts assail me at times as to whether ¾ of my stuff is worth publishing. A lot of it may be bonnie verse, but is not new or significant.” And a few months later: “It’s not a book that will show much advance or development on the past in the way Dàin do Eimhir has done. My only hope is that it revives a few genres and some technique that was valuable in the past. But I feel in the trim for a forward jump one day.” Within four months he had begun to write his great war poem Mochtàr is Dùghall, and the run of major poems which mark the apogee of his work.

The poem by Young quoted above, “Letter to MacDiarmid, 1940”, was composed in response to receiving from Grieve the poem which opens this article, “On Receiving the Gaelic Poems of Somhairle MacLean and George Campbell Hay”. In it Young refers to the younger poets (whom MacDiarmid wishes could visit him in Whalsay) as “sparks i the tail o your comet”. Young’s first collection Auntran Blads which appeared in the same year as the Dàin do Eimhir, was dedicated to Sorley MacLean and George Campbell Hay, and carried a long introduction by MacDiarmid. Among its translations from a dozen languages, it included Scots recreations of poems by both Gaelic poets. Young’s book highlights the close communication, the support and mutual inspiration binding some of the key literary figures of mid-twentieth century Scotland.

MEEK, Donald E., ‘The Gaelic Literature of Argyll’

11 September 2021 by Duncan Jones

Laverock 3, 1997

(This is a revised and expanded version of a talk given at the Conference on ‘Neil Munro and Writers of Argyll’, held by the ASLS in Inveraray on 11–12th May 1996.)

Argyll is a region of great significance in the development of Gaelic literature. A scan through the evidence contained in bibliographies and in such books as Professor Derick Thomson’s invaluable Companion to Gaelic Scotland shows that, since the early Middle Ages, Argyllshire writers, scribes and composers have made major contributions to the growth of Gaelic literature. Literary creativity, ranging from the copying of manuscripts to the writing of books, has been evident in Argyll since the time of the Lordship of the Isles (c.1200–1493). We can trace such creativity even further back to the Island of Iona and the work of Columban and post-Columban monks in their island ‘university’ in the sixth and seventh centuries A.D. The Iona monastery was a highly literate community, engaged in the making and copying of manuscripts, recording in Latin events of local and national significance, and maintaining close links with other Columban houses in Ireland. Iona was, of course, located within the early Gaelic kingdom of Dál Riata, whose heartlands were broadly coterminous with the later county of Argyll, and whose principal fortress, Dunadd, lies in the present day Mid-Argyll. We could devote a whole lecture to the so-called Dark Ages to the end of the Lordship of the Isles and the rise of the Campbells, who were also patrons of the Gaelic arts. The Campbells’ importance in this respect is often overlooked.

Literary creativity thus has a long history in Argyll, but in this lecture we will focus on the Gaelic evidence, particularly in the period since 1500. During that time, creativity in Gaelic has been so pervasive that there are few parts of the county which cannot lay claim to at least one writer or composer of some significance who originated there, and who made his or her mark on modern Gaelic literature.

There are some small problems of definition which arise when discussing the Gaelic literature of Argyll. First of all, there is the need to define Argyll itself. As one whose formative years in the area predate the local government reorganisation of 1975, I think (and will for ever think!) primarily in terms of the ‘old’ county of Argyll, extending on the mainland from the Mull of Kintyre to Kinlochleven on the east of the Great Glen and to Fort William on the west side, and embracing the Inner Hebrides as far north as Tiree and Coll. Nowadays, of course, the area is included in Argyll and Bute Region, having been part of the massive Strathclyde Region from 1975 to 1996.

Then there is the difficulty of setting restrictions to the ‘of’ in the phrase ‘of Argyll’. Is it the place of origin of the writer, or the place in which the ‘composition’ was done, which should determine the validity of the definition? Many of the writers ‘of Argyll’ who are discussed in this paper produced their material when living outside the county, but the identity of the majority with Argyll, usually through birth or childhood upbringing, is not in doubt. After 1800, it is generally the case that the most productive Gaelic writers from Argyll were resident outside the county, usually in Glasgow or Edinburgh, and, in another context, they could be included among the Gaelic writers of Glasgow or Edinburgh. One very fine modern Gaelic poet, Duncan Livingstone (1877–1964), who was a native of Torloisk, Mull, emigrated to Pretoria, and wrote some splendidly prophetic verse on the twentieth-century challenges which were to confront white rule in South Africa. He thus has a claim to be included in any forthcoming survey of the Gaelic literature of Africa!

The opposite process did, of course, occur, and the county became home to writers who originated in other parts of the Highlands and Islands. Often these were ministers or schoolmasters. If we were to compile a list of such people, it would include modern Gaelic writers such as the Rev. Dr. Kenneth MacLeod, of Road to the Isles fame (or notoriety), who was a native of Eigg, but was latterly parish minister of Gigha. It would also include Dr. Iain Crichton Smith, a native of Lewis who has lived in Oban and later in Taynuilt for a large part of his active literary life, and who taught English in Oban High School for many years. When I was a fifth-year pupil in Oban High School in 1965-66, Dr.Smith was my English teacher, and the Rector of the school was the distinguished Classical scholar, John MacLean. At the same time as Iain Crichton Smith was enriching Gaelic literature with his innovative short stories and poems (and explaining the significance of Sorley MacLean’s poetry!), John MacLean was translating the Odyssey into Gaelic. Both men had a great interest in Gaelic literature, and encouraged their pupils to take an interest in it too; but they also practised what they taught – and that was very impressive. With the infectiously pro-Gaelic activist, Donald Thomson (a Lewisman), in charge of the Gaelic Department, and Donald Morrison (another Lewisman!) also teaching Gaelic and writing short stories and Gaelic articles, Oban High School was a veritable Gaelic academy in those days! Among more recent Gaelic writers who have been attracted to the county is Myles Campbell, a Gaelic poet and prose-writer who hails from Skye, but who has been resident in Mull for a considerable period.

There are also some ‘borderline cases’ whose activities seem to straddle both sides of the county boundary, or who, while originating just over the border, drew inspiration from events on our side of the line. The virulently anti-Campbell Gaelic poet of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century Iain Lom (otherwise known as John MacDonald) illustrates the point; while belonging geographically to Keppoch (in Inverness-shire) on the ‘other side’ of the line, he was a frequent visitor to Argyll, and he loomed very large in the Argyll literary consciousness – so large, in fact, that he is given a prominent place in Neil Munro’s John Splendid. Iain Lom’s best known poem is his ‘Là Inbhir Lòchaidh’ (‘The Battle of Inverlochy’) commemorating the defeat of the Campbells by Montrose’s men in 1645. The poem is a series of painful verbal sword-strokes, cleaving the Campbell pride to its heart, and extolling the MacDonalds (especially Alasdair mac Colla) in the glitter of the blade. The outstanding eighteenth-century Gaelic poet, Alexander MacDonald, was another ‘borderline case’ and also a great tormentor of the Campbells!

There is, of course, great danger in thinking of literature too much in territorial terms; we need to recognise that literature is not a product of places but of people, whose inspiration is drawn not only from places, but also from events and happenings and processes of thought which may originate far beyond their own districts. What finds expression ‘in Argyll’ may be part of a thought-process which comes from the other side of the world. This is particularly significant in the Argyll context, since the county was so close to the Lowlands, and was exposed to ‘new’ modes of thought (e.g. the Reformation) earlier than other parts of the Highlands.

Notwithstanding these contextual challenges, I have decided to devote the main part of my paper to a Gaelic literary tour of Argyll, looking at different types of literature, and identifying some of the persons and places of significance in the creation of that literature. In this way you will gain some familiarity with the main features of the Gaelic literary landscape of Argyll.

As we travel along on our imaginary outing, I will name salient writers who belong to Argyll, pointing to the specific areas of the county in which they were reared or with which they were closely connected, and commenting very briefly on their significance. I also will leap across hills, valleys and centuries to mention some of their successors. For the purposes of the tour I will restrict my definition of ‘literature’ to what has been written down on paper, and more specifically to what has been published in print. Indeed, one of the distinctive features of Argyll is the high number of Gaelic writers whose works achieved printed form. To round off, I will try to answer the question of why Argyll has been such a productive county in terms of Gaelic writers.

First of all, we are going to visit places, and meet persons associated with the writing of Gaelic prose, both religious and secular, and then we will change gear, so to speak, and look at persons and places associated with Gaelic poetry.

Prose

The first stop on our quest for Gaelic prose writing must be Carnassarie Castle in Mid-Argyll. The very first Gaelic printed book to appear in Ireland or Scotland was published in Edinburgh in 1567, but it was produced in this imposing castle which stands just above the main road through Mid-Argyll, not far from Kilmartin. The occupant of the castle in the 1560s was a powerful and influential clergyman called John Carswell, who enjoyed the patronage of the 5th Earl of Argyll. If you go into the castle, you will see on the lintel of the main door the words Dia le ua nDuibhne (‘God [be] with Ua Duibhne‘, Ua Duibhne being the Campbell Earl of Argyll). With the warm support of the Earl, John Carswell became a Protestant at the time of the Reformation, and translated into Gaelic a fundamentally important book of the Scottish Reformation, namely John Knox’s Book of Common Order. The Book of Common Order was a directory for the conduct of worship in the Reformed churches. Carswell’s translation, calledFiorm na nUrrnuidheadh, was of great importance for the implantation of Reformed doctrine in this part of the Highlands; it would have been used by Gaelic-speaking ministers like Carswell himself who were formerly priests in the pre-Reformation church. But the book was of even more importance for the future of Gaelic; it established the tradition of printed Gaelic, and it used the Classical Gaelic of the Middle Ages as the vehicle for the transmission of Protestant doctrine. It also laid down a standard – the Classical standard – for the spelling of Gaelic. This is important because other scribes, notably the compilers of the Book of the Dean of Lismore (1512–42), a manuscript which takes its name from the title and office of James MacGregor, one of its scribes, were operating in Fortingall on the Eastern edge of the Highlands, and employing a spelling system for Gaelic which was based on the systems of Middle and Early Modern Scots. If these scribes had beaten Carswell to the printing press, the spelling of Gaelic might have been very different; it might have resembled that of modern Manx. Carswell’s foundational book ensured that there was to be continuity between the Gaelic literary conventions of the Middle Ages and those of the modern era.

The vision which inspired Carswell’s work was not only that of a Protestant Highlands; it was also a vision of a region whose literary culture had made a successful transition from script to print. Carswell was very much aware of the implications of the technological revolution of his own day, and in his Epistle to the Reader he wrote of the ‘information super-highway’of contemporary Europe.

Acht atá ní cheana, is mór an leathtrom agus an uireasbhuidh atá riamh orainde, Gaoidhil Alban agus Eireand, tar an gcuid eile don domhan, gan ar gcanamhna Gaoidheilge do chur a gcló riamh mar atáid a gcanamhna agas a dteangtha féin a gcló ag gach uile chinél dhaoine oile sa domhan; agus atá uireasbhuidh is mó iná gach uireasbhuidh oraind, gan an Bíobla naomhtha do bheith a gcló Gaoidheilge againd, mar tá sé a gcló Laidne agus Bhérla, agas in gach teangaidh oile o sin amach, agus fós gan seanchus ar sean nó ar sindsear do bheith mar an gcédna a gcló againd riamh, acht gé tá cuid éigin do tseanchus Ghaoidheal Alban agus Eireand sgríobhtha a leabhruibh lámh, agas a dtámhlorgaibh fileadh agus ollamhan, agus a sleachtaibh suadh. Is mór-tsaothair sin ré sgríobhadh do láimh, agas féchain an neithe buailtear sa chló ar aibrisge agas ar aithghiorra bhíos gach én-ní dhá mhéd dá chríochnughadh leis.

(Great indeed is the disadvantage and want from which we, the Gaels of Scotland and Ireland, have ever suffered, beyond the rest of the world, in that our Gaelic language has never been printed as all other races of men in the world have their own languages and tongues in print; and we suffer from a greater want than any other in that we have not the Holy Bible printed in Gaelic as it has been printed in Latin and English, and in all other tongues besides, and likewise in that the history of our ancestors has never been printed, although a certain amount of the history of the Gaels of Scotland and Ireland is written in manuscripts, and in the tabular staves of poets and chief bards, and in the transcripts of the learned. It is great labour to write that by hand, when one considers what is printed in the press, how smartly and how quickly each work, however great, is completed thereby.)

Erasmus himself could not have put the case more clearly. Carswell’s role underlines the importance of the Protestant Church in laying the foundation of Gaelic prose.

Since Carswell’s time, clergymen of the Reformed Church in Argyll have played a major part in the creation of Gaelic literature, particularly Gaelic prose literature. Clergymen were not so keen to compose original Gaelic poetry, though Carswell did compose a poem to send his book on its way; they did, however, contribute massively to the development of Gaelic prose, especially religious prose. Ministers of the seventeenth-century Synod of Argyll, following Carswell’s example, translated catechisms into Gaelic, and even set to work on a translation of the Bible into Gaelic. The Old Testament reached completion by 1673, and was apparently available in manuscript. Sadly, it did not reach print, because of the political and ecclesiastical turmoil of the times. When the Bible was eventually translated into Gaelic, between 1755 and 1801, Argyllshire men again played their part in the task, the most notable Argyllshire contributor being the Rev. Dr John Smith (1747–1807), a native of Glenorchy and minister of Campbeltown, who translated the Prophetic Books in a revolutionary manner resembling the ‘dynamic equivalence’ versions of today. His work annoyed some of his colleagues, and it was later brought into line with the ‘word equivalence’ of the other translators. Argyll was indeed a ‘dynamic’ and highly creative area!

We now move northwards at great speed, and reach the other end of the county. We cross the water from Oban to Morvern, and call in briefly at the Manse of Morvern, where we find further evidence of the contribution of Argyll to Gaelic prose. This is a place which contributed massively to the diversification of Gaelic prose literature of the nineteenth century, since it was the home of a family of MacLeods with roots in Skye, who produced a distinguished succession of ministers, whose best known modern representative was the Rev. George MacLeod, Lord MacLeod of Fiunary. The Manse of Morvern was the boyhood home of the Rev. Dr Norman MacLeod, otherwise known as ‘Caraid nan Gàidheal’ (‘The Highlanders’ Friend’) whose father was the parish minister of Morvern. MacLeod was the editor of the first Gaelic periodicals to be devoted to the regular publication of prose and verse. These periodicals were An Teachdaire Gaelach (1829–31) and Cuairtear nan Gleann (1840–43). MacLeod was successively minister of Campbeltown (1808–25), Campsie (1825–35) and St Columba’s, Glasgow (1835–62). He established the two periodicals in an attempt to provide a wide-ranging diet of good, informative reading in natural idiomatic Gaelic for the large numbers of Highlanders who were becoming literate in Gaelic through the work of the Gaelic schools and General Assembly schools from the opening years of the nineteenth century.

Today Norman MacLeod’s work may seem stodgy and dull, but in its own time it was very important in extending the range of Gaelic prose. Much of the available Gaelic prose material which had been written before his time consisted of translation of English puritan prose works, and it was heavily weighted towards doctrinal knowledge. MacLeod provided a variety of new prose styles, including dialogues, essays and short stories. The aim of the periodicals was didactic, but it was a broad-minded type of didacticism. In his venture he was ably assisted by two other Argyllshire men. One of these was his own son-in-law, the Rev. Archibald Clerk (1813–87), a native of Glen Lonan, who was latterly minister of Kilmallie. Clerk edited MacLeod’s collected works. The other Argyllshire man who helped Norman MacLeod was Lachlan MacLean (1798–1848), a native of Coll, who was a merchant in Glasgow.

Archibald Clerk has a further claim to distinction. He was the first editor of the Gaelic Supplement of Life and Work, first published in 1880, and continuing still, under the able editorship of the Rev. Roderick MacLeod of Cumlodden (although, sadly, we have to accept that he is a native of North Uist!). Another Argyllshire man, Donald Lamont (1874–1958) from the island of Tiree, edited the Gaelic Supplement for over forty years (1907–51). During most of this period, he was parish minister at Blair Atholl, Perthshire. Under Lamont’s ceaselessly provocative pen, the Gaelic Supplement became the main vehicle for thematic and stylistic experimentation in Gaelic; it carried sermons, essays and short stories. Lamont had a particularly lively imagination, and was not afraid to create ‘factional’ characters and scenarios, and to use these to carry the message he wanted to communicate. He was obviously aware, to a remarkable degree, of the opportunity he had, as a clerical writer, to contribute constructively to the well-being of the Gaelic language. His concept of a Gaelic Supplement was not one that ran in the rails of ecclesiastical convention, restricted by doctrinal rigidity and enslavement to purely homiletic styles.

The tradition of printed Gaelic prose was established primarily by writers from the mainland of Argyll, but, as the contributions of MacLean and Lamont indicate, writers from the islands were of great significance to the growth of modern written prose. One very fine writer of Gaelic prose came from the island of Jura. He was Donald MacKechnie (1836–1908). MacKechnie, who was resident in Edinburgh for most of his life, wrote essays in which he empathised with the animal world – cats, dogs, and deer – and discovered a close affinity between them and himself. He was the first Gaelic writer to internalise the influence of Darwin’s theory of evolution, and to acknowledge its implications for the relationship between humans and animals. He had a wonderful sense of humour too, writing a splendid essay on the theme of ‘Going to the ant’. He describes vividly how he sat down on an ant-hill on the Salisbury Crags, and, having got ‘ants in his pants’, had to pull off his trousers in dire emergency. His dog, seeing his master in this ‘state of nature’, went slightly crazy … and the whole chaotic scenario was witnessed by a rather ‘proper’, well-to-do lady. The moral of the story is that one must not take proverbs too seriously, lest primordial chaos and embarrassment should be the result. In his satirical and (philosophically) existential approach to life, MacKechnie differed markedly from his contemporaries, and not least from his close friend, Professor Donald MacKinnon (1839–1914), a native of Colonsay who became the first Professor of Celtic at the University of Edinburgh in 1882. MacKinnon contributed extensively to the Gaelic periodical, An Gàidheal, in the 1870s and onwards, and was the first major literary critic who wrote in Gaelic. He expounded, rather ponderously, the meaning and philosophy of Gaelic proverbs, and provided assessments of the works of Gaelic poets.

In our tour of the prose-producing areas of Argyll, we have touched on Carnassarie and Morvern and Glen Lonan on the mainland; and among the islands we have mentioned Tiree, Coll, Jura and Colonsay, but we must also pay tribute to Islay. There is one major literary figure connected with that island who deserves our attention – John Francis Campbell of Islay (1822–85). The son of the last Campbell laird of Islay, he was perhaps the first Gaelic scholar to acknowledge the special importance of the prose tales which circulated in oral transmission. He organised a band of collectors who wrote down the tales from the mouths of reciters, and later, between 1860 and 1862, a selection of these tales was published in four volumes entitled Popular Tales of the West Highlands. Campbell’s Popular Tales were no more than a small sample of the immense richness of the Gaelic story-telling tradition. Adventures of heroes seeking their fortunes, of great warriors overcoming tremendous odds to win fame, were the stuff of legend, and the inspiration of men; and it seems to me that Neil Munro was well aware of, and particularly influenced by, the riches of traditional story-telling in Argyll. He would have known full well of the particular contribution which the Campbells – first John Francis Campbell, and then Lord Archibald Campbell – had made in this field, by recording what Lord Archie called the ‘waifs and strays of Celtic tradition’.

Storytelling was very much part of Gaelic culture in Argyll, and the county produced a number of minor writers who had some considerable significance in their own time, and whose works would have been known to Neil Munro. I think, for example, of Henry whyte from Easdale (1852–1913), who was a stalwart of the late nineteenth-century Highland ceilidh circuit in Glasgow, and produced volumes of humorous tales; and I think too of the Mull writers, John MacCormick (d.1947), who produced the novel Dùn Alainn (1912), and John MacFadyen (1850–1935), with his series of books of humorous tales and poems, of which Sgeulaiche nan Caol (1902) is an example.

Poetry

The tales told by Neil Munro often allude to the Gaelic literary activity of the area, especially that of the poets. This is particularly evident in John Splendid, for example, where Munro frequently refers to Gaelic song and verse. Gaelic poetry, like Gaelic prose, has a long history in the county, and it is pre-eminently with poetry that the literary activity of Argyll is connected in the popular mind. A literary tour of the places associated with Argyll poets would take us to the native areas of some of the greatest poets of Gaelic Scotland. Starting in the north, we would look across to Dalilea in Island Finnan, the early stamping ground of the formidable poet, Alexander MacDonald (c.1698–c.1770), otherwise known as Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair, who served his reluctant time as a schoolmaster in Ardnamurchan, before becoming Prince Charles’s Gaelic poet-laureate, and lampooning the Campbells with his barbed wit. Later, after the ‘Forty-five, MacDonald was active in Inverness-shire, becoming baillie of Canna. MacDonald is widely regarded as the greatest of the eighteenth-century Gaelic poets, certainly in terms of intellectual fire. His volume of poems, Ais-eiridh na Seana Chànoin Albannaich, was the first volume of verse by a Gaelic vernacular poet to be put in print. It appeared in 1751, but because of its Jacobite sentiments, it was burnt by the public hangman in Edinburgh. Only a few copies of the original printing of the book have survived. MacDonald’s poetry had a profound influence on his contemporaries in Argyll, notably (it would seem) Argyll’s best known poet, Duncan MacIntyre.

Coming down towards Tyndrum (a village on the western edge of Perthshire!), on the road southwards from Glencoe, we would skirt the lower edges of a mountain which has ‘the honour above every mountain’, namely Beinn Dobhrain, which was celebrated by the Gaelic poet Duncan MacIntyre, better known as Donnchadh Ban Mac an t-Saoir (1724–1812). MacIntyre is the Gaelic nature bard par excellence; he celebrates the wonderful productivity which can be achieved when humanity and nature are in a co-operative harmony. His poem, ‘Moladh Beinn Dòbhrain’ (‘In Praise of Ben Doran’), is perhaps the finest poetic description ever made of the wildlife of any region in the British Isles. Duncan MacIntyre was, of course, unable to read or write, but many of his poems were written down by a native of Glenorchy, the Rev. Donald MacNicol, parish minister of Lismore. His verse was published in 1768.

Gaelic poets and songsters of lesser stature than Donnchadh Ban were active throughout Argyll. We could call at many places, and find an almost inexhaustible number of poets in all of them, particularly of the local ‘township bard’ type, commemorating events and personalities within their own districts. Representatives of the nineteenth-century poetic tradition on the mainland include Dr John MacLachlan, Rahoy; Calum Campbell MacPhail, Dalmally; Iain Campbell, Ledaig; Evan McColl, Lochfyneside; and Dugald Gordon MacDougall, a native of Dunach in Kilbride parish. MacLachlan and MacPhail, in particular, observed, and commented on, the patterns of social change as their areas were transformed by ‘improvement’ and clearing.

Poetry and song flourished strongly in the islands from the Middle Ages to the present century. The Lords of the Isles acted as patrons to the poets until the end of the Lordship in 1492, and thereafter the patronage of lesser kindreds, who filled the vacuum left by the Lords’ demise, grew in significance. Particularly noteworthy is the role of the MacLeans, including the MacLeans of Duart and the MacLeans of Coll, in maintaining poets of considerable stature. Island lairds too were often skilled in song. The ‘township bard’ is well attested in most island communities, especially in the context of crofting, after 1800. Tiree was particularly rich in poets of this kind. Some island poets achieved major recognition within the wider Gaelic area. Islay, for example, was the home of one of the best of the nineteenth-century Gaelic bards – William Livingstone (1808–70), who composed memorable verse on the clearances in Islay. Two editions of his poems were published.

The Gaelic poets of Argyll, like those of other parts of the Highlands and Islands, had a tremendous appreciation of the value of their own local communities. A sense of place has always been important to Gaelic writers, but it has probably been more evident in verse than in prose; it is epitomised in the lines in John Splendid, where the young Elrigmore, fresh home from the continent, says,’Shira Glen, Shira Glen! If I was bard I’d have songs to sing to it, and all I know is one skulduddry verse on a widow that dwelt in Maam!’ Argyll itself has been not only the home of the poets; it has been the creator and inspirer of poets, right down to our own time. One of the greatest Gaelic poets of the twentieth century is George Campbell Hay (b. 1915), whose roots were in Tarbert, Loch Fyne, and who celebrated the beauty of the Kintyre landscape and the achievements of its people, particularly the fishermen who were among the last custodians of the Gaelic language and culture of the area.

Conclusion

Looking across the centuries, we can see that Argyll has been highly productive of Gaelic literature, both prose and verse. Literary activity extended from the Middle Ages down to the present century, and the region has contributed massively to the development of Gaelic literature. Perhaps the most important contribution that Argyll has made to that development has been in facilitating the transition from oral tradition to manuscript, and from manuscript to the modern printing press, thus ensuring that there was, and is, a modern Gaelic printed literature. Writers born in Argyll led the field in the production of Gaelic printed books; the first Gaelic printed book comes from the county, and almost all the composers and collectors whom I have mentioned published printed volumes of their works. It is worth noting, in passing, that a native of Islay, Archibald Sinclair, established the Celtic Press in Glasgow in the second half of the nineteenth century, to ensure that Gaelic material was printed. In this he gave a singular service, not only to natives of Argyll, but also to other Highlanders until the 1920s, when the business was taken over by Alexander McLaren.

At the outset, I said that I would try to offer some explanation of why Argyll has such an important place in Gaelic literature. What made this county so productive of Gaelic composers and literary leaders?

Perhaps the fundamental reason is that Argyll was, throughout the centuries, a region in which there was a Gaelic literate class who were used to plying their literary crafts, and expressing their thoughts on vellum, parchment and paper. Literary creativity was given a high place from the time of the Lordship of the Isles onwards, and patronage continued through the Campbells and other local families. The value of literacy was maintained by the schools. When formal schooling began to come to the Highlands, Argyll was provided with parochial schools and grammar schools from an early stage in the seventeenth century. Not all of these schools were sympathetic to Gaelic, but in 1706 the parochial school in Lochgoilhead had a teacher who was capable of writing Gaelic, and he may have taught his scholars to do the same.

If schoolmasters were not always sympathetic to Gaelic, the clergy of Argyll certainly used the language, and greatly aided its development as a literary medium. The Protestant clergy in Argyll were less tied to doctrinal straitjackets than their colleagues in other parts of the Highlands. The evangelicals of the northern Highlands tended to regard Argyll as a rather ‘moderate’ region. It is certainly true that the more profoundly world-denying evangelical movements which altered the religious shape of the northern Highlands and Outer Hebrides were less influential in Argyll, though they were by no means absent. As far as Argyll was concerned, these post-1800 movements came very late in the ecclesiastical day, and did not displace the foundation of broad-minded humanism (in the Renaissance sense) which has already been laid by Carswell and his successors. This allowed sacred and secular to breathe together more freely, and even ministers of small, intensely evangelical bodies such as Baptists had a high degree of cultural awareness and published volumes of hymns; Duncan MacDougall, a native of Brolas in Mull who had close connections with the Ross of Mull, became the founding father of Tiree Baptist Church (1838), and put his hymns into print in 1841. His sister, Mary, was the composer of a Gaelic hymn, ‘Leanabh an Aigh’, which is famous today as the carol ‘Child in the Manger’. Mary also composed secular verse.

The proportion of ministers who were natives of the region and contributed constructively to the development of Gaelic literature per se is thus probably higher in Argyll than in any other district of the Highlands. The county had a liberal and liberating atmosphere in which writers could pursue their callings. This continuing feeling of liberation may partly explain why Gaelic writers from other parts of the Highlands still find it a congenial place.

The openness of Argyll was created not only by its religious complexion but also by its geographical position as a threshold area of the Highlands. This was its weakness as well as its strength. People from Argyllshire travelled backwards and forwards to the Lowlands with relative ease. As a consequence, the fashions of the Lowland south entered Argyll more quickly than they entered other parts of the Highlands; witness, for example, the ready reception of Protestantism in the region shortly after the Scottish Reformation. Printing accompanied Protestantism, allowing Gaelic tradition to take printed form faster in Argyll than in any other part of the Highlands and Islands. Argyll was a multicultural, cosmopolitan region, but this had dangers for Gaelic. The overall result is very evident. Today there are very, very few active Gaelic writers who are natives of Argyll, and the primary roles in developing and maintaining Gaelic literature in Scotland have passed to writers who are natives of the northern Highlands and the Outer Hebrides.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

General Works

Cameron,N.M. de S. (ed.), The Dictionary of Scottish Church History and Theology (Edinburgh, 1993)
Thomson, D.S. (ed.), The Companion to Gaelic Scotland (Oxford, 1993)

Prose

Campbell, Archibald: Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition, with various contributors, 4 vols (London, 1889–91)
Campbell, John Francis: Popular Tales of the West Highlands, 4 vols (Edinburgh, 1860-62)
Carswell, John: R.L. Thomson (ed.), Foirm na n-Urrnuidheadh, (Edinburgh, 1970)
Clerk, Archibald: (ed.),Caraid nan Gaidheal: The Gaelic Writings of Norman MacLeod, D.D. (Glasgow, 1867)
Lamont, Donald: T.M. Murchison (ed.), Prose Writings of Donald Lamont (Edinburgh, 1960)
MacCormick, John: Dun-Aluinn no an t-oighre ‘na dhìobarach(Glasgow, n.d.)
MacFadyen, John: An t-Eileanach (Glasgow, 1890); Sgeulaiche nan Caol (Glasgow, 1902)
MacKechnie, Donald: Am Fear-Ciùil (enlarged edn, Edinburgh, 1910)
MacKinnon, Donald: L. MacKinnon (ed.), Prose Writings of Donald MacKinnon (Edinburgh,1956)
MacLean, Lachlan: ed. of periodical, An Teachdaire Ur Gaidhealach, 9 numbers only (Glasgow, 1835–36); author of Adhamh agus Eubh (Edinburgh, 1837)
MacLeod, Norman (Caraid nan Gàidheal): see Clerk, Archibald
Smith, John: translator of the original text of Volume IV of the Gaelic Old Testament (Edinburgh, 1886)
Whyte, Henry: several popular volumes of essays and poems, including The Celtic Garland (Glasgow, 1881) and Leabhar na Cèilidh (Glasgow, 1898)

Poetry

Campbell, Iain (the Ledaig Bard): Poems (Edinburgh, 1884)
Hay, George Campbell: Several collections of verse, including Fuaran Sléibh (Glasgow, 1947), Wind on Loch Fyne (Edinburgh, 1948), O na Ceithir Airdean (Edinburgh,1952), Mochtar is Dùghall(Glasgow, 1982). We await the publication of Hay’s collected works, now in press, edited by Michele Byrne (publ. the Lorimer Trust).
Livingston, William: Duain agus Orain (Glasgow, 1882)
Livingstone, Duncan: There is no printed collection of the poet’s work, but see Ruaraidh MacThòmais’s fine article in Gairm, 119 (Samradh 1982), pp. 257-68
McColl, Evan: Clarsach nam Beann (Glasgow, 1836)
MacDonald, Alexander (Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair): A most useful introduction to the works of this highly prolific poet can be found in D.S.Thomson, Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair: Selected Poems (Edinburgh, 1996)
MacDonald, John (Iain Lom): A.M. Mackenzie (ed.), Orain Iain Luim(Edinburgh, 1964)
MacDougall, Dugald Gordon: S. MacMillan (ed.), Bràiste Lathurna(Glasgow, 1959)
MacDougall, Duncan: Laoidhean Spioradail a chum cuideachadh le cràbhadh nan Gael (Glasgow, 1841)
MacIntyre, Duncan: A. MacLeod (ed.), The Songs of Duncan Ban MacIntyre (Edinburgh, 1952)
MacLachlan, Dr John: H.C. Gillies (ed.), The Gaelic Songs of the Late Dr MacLachlan, Rahoy (Glasgow,1880)
MacPhail,Calum Campbell: Am Filidh Latharnach (Stirling,1947)

Note also the following collections of verse:

Cameron, H. (ed.), Na Bàird Thirisdeach (Glasgow, 1932). [Verse from Tiree]
Meek, D.E. (ed.), Tuath is Tighearna (Edinburgh, 1995). [Verse of the Clearances and the Land Agitation, with specimens by several Argyllshire poets.]
Ó Baoill, C. (ed.), Bàrdachd Chloinn-Ghilleathain: Eachann Bacach and other MacLean Poets (Edinburgh, 1979). [Seventeenth-century verse from Mull]
Ó Baoill, C. (ed.), Duanaire Colach (Aberdeen, 1997). [Verse from Coll.]

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