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It has been said that the greatest Gaelic poets were from Lochaber in the Scottish Highlands. Those who emigrated to Nova Scotia in the 18th and 19th centuries were the living memory of clan history and tradition. Allan the Ridge MacDonald stands out as one poet who inherited and maintained an extraordinary wealth of vocabulary and a superior knowledge of clan and legendary history. In this first compilation and translation of the known Gaelic songs of Allan the Ridge in print, Effie Rankin gives all readers an insight into the life of the poet and the traditions that made him a highly regarded seanchaidh.
Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Island is a beautiful region with a unique community whose history and ethnic composition have resulted in the evolution of a powerful sense of identity and place. While outsiders may think only of the island's perennial economic woes and long economic dependence on coal mining and steel production, it is also the home of a rich, vibrant, and distinct culture. Brian Douglas Tennyson's Cape Bretoniana is the first bibliography to gather together all known publications relating to the history, culture, economy, and politics of Cape Breton Island. With more than 6000 entries, it not only provides a comprehensive listing of publications and post-graduate theses, but als...
Scottish and “Celtic fringe” postcolonialism has caused much controversy and unease in literary studies. Can the non-English territories and peoples of the British Isles, faced with centuries of English hegemony, be meaningfully compared to former overseas colonies? This book is the first comprehensive study of this topic which offers an in-depth study of Gaelic literature. It investigates the complex interplay between Celticity, Gaeldom, Scottish and British national identity, and international colonial and postcolonial discourse. It situates post/colonial elements in Gaelic poetry within a wider context, showing how they intersect with socio-historical and political issues, anglophone ...
This book is a genealogical record of some of the pioneer families who settled in the Mabou and District area of Cape Breton. In addition to genealogies of Mabou families, the book also offers biographical sketches of prominent ecclesiastics, a history of the Parish of Mabou, and a brief reflection on the compiling of genealogies. Mabou Pioneers is an indispensible reference to the genealogy of this remarkable Cape Breton community.
Draws together contributions from the leading researchers to provide a contemporary evaluation of tartan and tartanry.
Few published collections of Gaelic song place the songs or their singers and communities in context. Brìgh an Òrain - A Story in Every Song corrects this, showing how the inherited art of a fourth-generation Canadian Gael fits within biographical, social, and historical contexts. It is the first major study of its kind to be undertaken for a Scottish Gaelic singer. The forty-eight songs and nine folktales in the collection are transcribed from field recordings and presented as the singer performed them, with an English translation provided. All the songs are accompanied by musical transcriptions. The book also includes a brief autobiography in Lauchie MacLellan's entertaining narrative style. John Shaw has added extensive notes and references, as well as photos and maps. In an era of growing appreciation of Celtic cultures, Brìgh an Òrain - A Story in Every Song makes an important Gaelic tradition available to the general reader. The materials also serve as a unique, adaptable resource for those with more specialized research or teaching interests in ethnology/folklore, Canadian studies, Gaelic language, ethnomusicology, Celtic studies, anthropology, and social history.
The bagpipe is one of the cultural icons of Scottish highlanders, but in the twentieth century traditional Scottish Gaelic piping has all but disappeared. Few recordings were ever made of traditional pipe music and there are almost no Gaelic-speaking pipers of the old school left. Recording an important aspect of Gaelic culture before it disappears, John Gibson chronicles the decline of traditional Highland Gaelic bagpiping - and Gaelic culture as a whole - and provides examples of traditional bagpipe music that have survived in the New World. Pulling together what is known of eighteenth-century West Highland piping and pipers and relating this to the effects of changing social conditions on...
In the summer of 2008, the twelfth in a series of biennial conferences on the Literature of Region and Nation was held at Aberdeen University in the North-East of Scotland. Over fifty scholars, representing no fewer than twenty different countries, convened for the occasion; and twenty-two of the papers presented are included in this volume. As at previous conferences in the series, the papers range widely in approach, in subject-matter and in geographical coverage: readers of this book will find explorations of literature from all five continents. The papers are arranged thematically: the central concepts of region and nation are examined in the first section; and subsequent sets of papers go on to consider literary and pictorial representations of places and peoples, literature of diaspora and exile (a keynote topic of the conference), the use of language (particularly non-standard languages) in literary texts, and artistic interactions between cultures. All the papers have been peer-reviewed, and some extensively revised. The collection demonstrates the vitality of scholarship in the field of regional literary studies.
Rebellion was recurrent in the Highlands because the Gaels (Scoti) were an often-oppressed indigenous minority in the nation, Scotland, to which they gave their name. They spoke a language, Gaelic, few outsiders would learn, and had their own family and social system, the clans. Warfare was bloody, culminating in the catastrophe of Culloden Moor during the doomed quest to restore the Stuart kingship to all of Britain. Economic hardship, including the near-genocidal Clearances, in which tenant farmers were replaced with sheep, drove the Gaels from the glens and islands, so that most today live in the diaspora, including millions in North America. Although the Gaels lack a single genetic identity, they clearly draw from distinct roots in the Irish, Norse and Picts. Despite their hardship, the Gaels are also presented in romantic portrayals by the artistic elite of other nations. This book offers ways in which the reader might find roots and ancestry in unfamiliar terrain. Chapters discuss the landscape and language of the Highlanders, the rise of clans, feuds and invasions, and eventual emigration.