Gaelic Song - An Introduction
The Gaelic language and its songs are inextricably linked in the minds of most folk who have an interest in the culture. And the images attached are equally strong, whether it be the "Enya" image of the solitary celtic female singing alone and lonely in a swathe of dry ice, or the "National Mod" (Gaeldom's premier festival) image of serried ranks of white blouses and tartan skirts as wee kids and ample choristers alike present their songs to censorious judges. And of course, who ever heard of a happy Gaelic love song?
These traditional images are alive and kicking, but the reality extends away beyond the stereotype. Traditional Gaelic song covers the whole range of human experience - life and death, love and loss, kith and kin, work and pleasure, land and season, the deadly serious and the wickedly humorous. This is just a small taste of the vast treasures on offer.
First of all, Gaelic songs are sheer poetry - literally. Until the mid-twentieth century, nearly all Gaelic poetry was essentially created to be sung, and so music and words were bound together, each dependent on the other. Not until the poetry of the likes of the great Skye bard Sorley Maclean and the lyrics of Calum and Rory MacDonald of Runrig did the two begin to separate. So - on to what's out there.
Love Songs
The Love Songs - there are happy ones and sad ones in equal measure! But love appears in many guises in song and in life - the love of parent for child, of lover for lover, of brother for brother, and of clansman for chief.
There are many beautiful lullabies in the Gaelic repertoire, attractive for their gentle, soothing melodies. But their content is often dark, such as with one of the most famous lullabies - "Griogal Cridhe", where a mother sings to her son of her husband's - and his father's - execution, and the hard life that awaits the boy. Most songs from parent to child are written from the mother's point of view, but there are some examples of a father's song, such as "Oran do Mhac Eoghainn Fidhleir", an exquisitely painful lament by a father for his drowned son, drawing a vivid image of the young man as a fine athlete and musician, and the cause of his father's heartbreak.
Of the songs of romantic love, there are too many to count, but some poets' reputations rest largely on their love songs, such as William Ross from the Isle of Skye. His songs - written for a Marion or Mor Ross, from Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis - were beautifully composed but ultimately unrequited, and Mor Ross married a man called Clough, settling in Liverpool. Tradition has it that William Ross died young of a broken heart, when in fact he died of tuberculosis - a far less romantic fate. Legend also has it that on the night of his death, Mor Ross was greeted at the door of her house by the ghost of William. She dropped the candle she was holding, setting her nightdress on fire and died that same night….
All the Gaelic love stories that jump out at me as I write are all the sad ones - but there are "happy ending" songs too. "Dòmhnall nan Dòmhnall" is an anonymous song of robust and good-humoured appreciation of a lover, described as a man who could earn the price of a hogshead - and drink it too; a fine-looking man with rosy cheeks, sweet apple-breath and golden hair. The composer is not afraid to show her colours either, as she talks of wishing to lie by his side, as she has become used to doing. She also turns the traditional image of man and woman as "hunter and hunted" on its head, as she talks of being the swan who would give chase to the fox, as opposed to the other way around.
Clan Chiefs and the Arts
The traditional clan system that existed in Highland Scotland until its systematic destruction by a London government up to and most completely after the 1745 Jacobite rebellion was also the major means of patronage of the arts. The noble houses of Gaeldom encouraged poetry, music, genealogy, storytelling and other disciplines - the traditional retinue of a clan chief was that of bard, piper, harper and fool.
The last man reputed to have maintained this artistic team was Iain Breac MacLeod in Dunvegan Castle at the end of the 17th Century, although the pedigree of such a professional class of musician stretched back centuries to its roots in Ireland, where several years training was required in the strict metres of classical Gaelic poetry. Indeed, the original artistic literary and musical hierarchy consisted of a "file" who would compose the poetry, the "bard" who would declaim or sing it, and the "harper", who would accompany the bard in performance. By the time we reach 17th century Dunvegan, the whole package was wrapped up in one man - Ruairidh Dall Morison, the Blind Harper, who served Iain Breac.
The main role of the bard was the composition of eulogy and elegy for the chief and his family. These professional bards composed in a more formal register than the vernacular of the time and observed to a large extent the rules of classical poetic metres, right up to their final demise during the 18th Century. Much of the poetry is beautifully majestic, ennobling their lords and masters. But there is also genuine feeling behind many of the songs, with the love and loyalty of the bards shining through the formality of their poetry, as does Ruairidh Dall with Iain Breac MacLeod. They were not however mere sycophants, and were equally capable of demonstrating their disapproval, as Morison did with Iain Breac's two immediate successors.
As with music-making, poetry was not approved of as a woman's pursuit, although some of Gaeldom's major poets were women. In some cases, nobility acted as justification or protection, as with Sileas na Ceapaich or Julia MacDonald of Keppoch. For others, life was not so straightforward. Mary MacLeod, Mairi Nighean Alasdair Ruaidh, was nursemaid to the MacLeods of Dunvegan at the end of the 17th Century. One of the finest poets in the language, she was reputed to have excused her poetry as mere lullabies for the children in her care. Legend also has it that she was buried face down at St Clement's Church in Rodel, Harris, for daring to compose poetry - a fate usually reserved for those accused of witchcraft.
Work Songs
Beyond the houses of the clan chiefs, song-making was also thriving, with songs accompanying every element of life, from birth through death - and beyond. Work songs were sung to ease the hard rhythmic labour accompanying the tasks, for milking, churning, grinding, winnowing, carding, spinning, rowing - the list goes on. The best-known of Gaelic work songs are those sung during the fulling or waulking of traditional hand-woven cloth. "Orain-luaidh" or waulking songs form some part of nearly every Gaelic singer's repertoire today, with their driving rhythms and call-and-response format attracting both singer and audience.
Originally, the waulking would have been a female-only pursuit (except in the diaspora of Nova Scotia in Canada, where men continued the tradition as a "milling frolic"). A day-long activity, the songs would be sung as the loosely woven tweed was beaten and passed around a table, the tempo of the work and the songs gradually increasing as the cloth gradually dried and its weave tightened.
The songs themselves vary in content, although they were always sung as a soloist with chorus joining in, either in short pave been phrases after each line of a verse, or in an extended chorus following a whole verse. Some songs are ancient ballads and heroic tales, preserved in waulking song format, others much lighter, sometimes extemporised at the table. Each waulking song is unique, with its chorus of vocables (meaningless syllables) as individual as a human fingerprint.
Mouth Music
Dance music forms the vast majority of modern instrumental traditional music in Scotland. Its vocal partner is mouth music - or "puirt-a-beul", literally, "tunes from the mouth". Rather than describing them as songs for dancing to, they are better seen as dance tunes that are sung - a direct vocal equivalent to the instrumental.
Various theories exist as to how this style of singing came about, the most popular being that it evolved in the years following the failed 1745 Jacobite Rebellion. In the absence of the pipes, having supposedly been banned as an "instrument of war", musicians took to singing the light music or "ceòl beag" of the pipes, i.e. the dance tunes. It is far more likely however, that these sung tunes have been around for as long as the dance and musical forms themselves have been. They would probably always have been sung as entertainment in their own right, or even as an accompaniment for dancing - not of course for the large-scale "cèilidh" style dancing which we know today, but in a more intimate domestic setting.
The rhythm and "lift" so vital to dance music is paramount in this style of singing as well. The words of the songs are important firstly to emphasise the rhythmic elements of the tunes. But they are also entertainment in themselves. Some words are tongue-twisters, or memory aids for the tunes, with the word patterns matching the musical phrases to which they are sung. Some words have obvious local connections, marking some event or making fun of a local character. Many of the singers noted for their particular ability in this style of singing also have piping in their blood, such as Rona MacDonald Lightfoot from South Uist, and the Campbells of Greepe in Skye.
Nature - the Land
The environment was and remains a strong influence on Gaelic poets. The zenith of Gaelic nature poetry could well have been the 18th Century when poets such as Duncan Bàn MacIntyre from Glen Orchy and Alexander MacDonald from Ardnamurchan produced long, intricate songs in praise of their surroundings. Duncan Bàn in particular, educated but not literate, had an eye for the flora and fauna that surrounded him in his work on the hills, paying as much attention to the tiniest leaf as to the high hills. Many pre- and non-Christian elements of Gaelic culture are also intertwined in nature, as charms and prayers were sung for dry weather, or to have a well yield its water, or for protection against the fairies, who were considered a dangerous and malevolent spirit force, not to be tampered with.
Love of homeland, whether in situ or in exile forms the inspiration for many of the Gaels' best-known songs. Given the turbulent history of the Highlands, it is maybe no surprise that so many songs of homesickness exist, with so many thousands leaving their homes for a new life abroad by force or freewill. There are too many to go into detail, but they vary from the Canadian experience of Tiree bard, John MacLean, who wrote of the "Coille Ghruamach" - the Gloomy Forest - by turns a real and metaphoric description of his change of circumstance on emigrating from his fertile, treeless home island, to that of Mary MacPherson, "Mairi Mhòr nan Oran", who lived for many years away from her beloved Isle of Skye, and wrote touchingly of a people and a way of life passing away, as in "Nuair bha mi Og" - When I was Young.
Her song-writing gift, awakened in later life after suffering a gross personal injustice, was put to powerful use in the service of the land struggle in Scotland, which resulted in the Crofters' Act of 1886, granting previously unheard of security of tenure to those who worked the traditional smallholdings of the Highlands.
Nature - the Sea
An island and sea-faring race, the Gaels are inextricably linked to the sea, right up to the present day, when fishing, fish-farming, shipbuilding, offshore work and the merchant navy remain significant employers of Highland Scots - albeit to varying degrees as heavy industry and fish stocks alike remain in decline.
Songs connected to the sea are many and varied, but significant types include rowing songs, many of which have survived as waulking songs, being of the same hard-working, driving rhythm with a heavy beat; and voyage songs, where the story of the song tracks the passage of the vessel concerned from beginning to journey's end. There are also songs of the seal-folk or silkies, as there are songs connected to other animal and birdlife, with some songs for instance imitating the call of different bird species.
Religion
The Highlands' pre- and non-Christian roots are very visible through the little charms and prayers that have survived to the present day, tapping into a belief in the spirit of land and sea, sun and moon, tide and season. Carmichael's collection, "Carmina Gadelica", gives many examples where the Christian and non-christian worlds collide, with invocations in one prayer to the sun and moon, and to Jesus and the Virgin Mary.
The Christian church in the North-West Highlands and Islands of Scotland is largely divided in geographical terms, albeit for historical reasons. This is most clearly seen in the Western Isles, where the northern islands of Lewis, Harris and North Uist are predominantly Protestant, while the southern isles of South Uist and Barra are Catholic. Each church in turn has its own distinctive repertoire for worship, but it is the Presbyterian psalm-singing that is most arresting.
Quite alien to most on the first encounter, this style of psalm-singing stems from the custom of a leader, or precentor, singing, or "putting out" each line of the psalm for the congregation to repeat. What has developed in the Gaelic-speaking protestant churches is a heterophonous congregational sound, where each individual singer sings the line, highly-ornamented and at their own pace, slightly different from the member of the congregation next to them.
Modern Song-writing
There are two main paths of modern Gaelic song-writing in the 21st Century. The tradition of vernacular poetry continues through to the present in the form of the "bàird baile" or village bards. The title seems rather lightweight for many of them, as the subject matter dealt with can be powerful and the intellect behind the poetry quite formidable, although the structure of the songs themselves are in the main conventional.
As mentioned before, the 20th Century saw a new breed of writers who created poems in their own right, without music. This was the first divide between poetry and song in Gaelic culture. Arguably the greatest shift however was the move to contemporary lyric-writing by the songwriters of the seminal Gaelic folk-rock band, Runrig. The songwriting partnership of brothers, Calum and Rory MacDonald, created a whole new body of work that has gone on to influence succeeding generations of musicians.
It has to be said that no one has yet appeared to take on the mantle of the MacDonald brothers, but there are several songwriters gradually beginning to make their mark in the contemporary field, such as the MacKenzie sisters - Eilidh, Gillian and Fiona, and Alasdair Codona. Other musicians, such as Donald Shaw and Kenna Campbell, have ironically reunited poetry and song, by setting the poems of Aonghas MacNeacail and Sorley Maclean to music.
