Not to discount the “treasure” status of the old birch and ash out front and the stream out back, but I want to mention a book that I have found particularly rewarding and interesting.
There are novels I
have fallen in love with: crown jewels of story. Many have
fallen by the wayside as years have passed, mostly because I grew more experienced
with the world and developed better critical sense as well. I could count on the
fingers of one hand the novels whose appeal has lasted.
There
are other books – mostly collections of Irish and Scottish Gaelic literature of
various sorts – that remain cauldrons of plenty and delight, no matter how
many times I look into them.
One is not
actually a book, or wasn’t until recently.
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Frances Tolmie was
born in the MacLeod country in Skye in 1840 into a family of the indigenous
Gaelic “middle class” of the period. These “tacksmen” were often the former
minor clan nobility and sept leaders, become slightly prosperous large tenants
in the new economic system. (Ordinary people often held land from them, in
turn.)
Her father was a
merchant who died when she was four, and the family mostly lived after that
with her mother’s brother in Skye or with Frances’ older brothers when they married,
in Strontian and Ross-shire. Frances belonged to the last “tacksman” generation that spoke Gaelic as their everyday language,
and though she was educated by a private tutor in English, she taught herself
to read Gaelic.
Why does any of
this matter? From childhood, she took a strong interest in Gaelic song and
poetry, and beginning with her mother’s lullabies etc., picked up the songs she
heard around her and wrote them down. She kept on learning songs all her life,
most notably with two old women who accompanied
her on walking journeys supervising a MacLeod-sponsored knitting project in
Skye from 1861.
One of them, Oighrig Ros, was “rather feeble-minded in practical life, but with a poetical soul...A kind creature, but wild-looking, and apt to turn crazy if unduly provoked.” Frances learned a number of informal “women’s” songs from her: one about the Gruagach, and another Slán gu’n Tig Aonachan, as well as a waulking song etc.
Another important
source was Janet Anderson from Srath and later and very importantly, Máirí Ránuill (Mary Ross) of
the Trotternish (MacDonald) district, born about 1848, who had learned old Ossianic ballads from her father and waulking songs from older women.
As an old woman
herself, Frances was persuaded to publish some of her songs in The (English)
Journal of the Folk-Song Society, Volume IV, 1914. The collection is pretty
unique in that it focuses on Songs of Occupation” (ie. cradle songs, nurse’s songs, Puirt a
Beul, waulking songs, reaping, rowing and milking), rather than on more formal
songs. Many of these were learned in the
first half of the nineteenth century from women who lerned them in the 18th century, and the songs are mostly much older than that. Most
of these are, as I mentioned, “women’s songs, ” and there are 105 of them.
Music is included in staff notation.
There is a later collection that includes similar songs (Margaret Fay Shaw’s Folksongs and Folklore of South Uist) but the old stuff was fast disappearing in the intervening century, and Frances’ collection is much much fuller, and derives from an insider, not a collector. It really is a window into the old culture, and the songs are the sorts of the things you’ll find nowhere else. Nothing comparable exists in Irish.
Why? Irish civilization was wrecked, even at the community level, much earlier. There was also no Irish-speaking nineteenth century “middle class” (except in Kilkenny where they spoke Irish, but took no interest in the culture). Ascent into big farmer status and security by definition implied English language and revulsion toward Irish.
(There was an Irish-speaking middle class, also remnants of minor nobility, in a few areas in the first half of the 18th century, and it was those areas that the Irish manuscript tradition/Irish literature/historical lore etc, were reestablished after the wreck of the 17th century
Frances died in 1926 and didn’t publish anything else. The Folk Song Society collection stayed fairly obscure, and, as far as I can see, was not much drawn on by younger singers. It has recently been republished as a book Gun Sireadh, Gun Iarraidh (Without Seeking, Without Trying/Looking) available from the Scottish Gaelic Books Council. I haven’t seen it, but I presume it’s actually mostly in English, like the original.
There is a 1977 biography by Ethal Bassin (The Old Songs of Skye: Routledge) that preserves a lot of information about Frances and gives examples of songs and classifies them by source and date of collection, but it’s really only of interest (in my opinion) to people who care about those things.
Anyway, the collection itself is treasure.
There is almost no point in giving samples
of the songs. They are simple, for the most part, and their power does not lie
in words alone. Unlike many of the old “big” songs, there is no complex
development of story and emotion. They are vignettes.
Their power derives rather from harmony of
words and music: so much so that it is almost inaccurate to speak about
harmony. For there to be harmony, there must be two or more things in relation,
and these songs, as Somhairle MacGilleain wrote (Ris a’ Bhruthaich, Acair,
1985: p 120: Some Thoughts About Gaelic Poetry,) “...the tunes themselves are
great, very great, or simply ineffable...they seem like exhalations from the
words, as if the very words created the tunes. "
He’s talking about the “big” songs of the
16th, 17th and 18th centuries, but it is
equally true of these hearthside songs. I wish I could point you toward YouTube
recordings, but I haven’t been able to find any of these songs there. I
haven’t looked in the Tobar a' Dualchais online archive of folklore collection
recordings, and maybe I should...
I am
including the Alan Stivell version of Tha Mi Sgith (a fairy song and maybe the
best known today of the songs in the collection), despite the fact his Gaelic
gets a little strange, and despite the guitar solos, because the other versions
are stuffy Mod-type parlor music, and at least Stivell’s doesn’t smother the
tune.
Here are the words: There are two “verses.”
Tha mi sgith, s mi leam fhín, chuile lá a
buain na rainnich. Tha mi sgith, s mi leam fhín chuile lá im ónar...chuile lá
daonnan.
Tha mí sgith, etc., Cúl an tomáin, bráigh an tomáin, cúl an tomáin bhóidheach...
I am sad and weary alone, every day cutting bracken: I am sad and weary alone, every day alone...Every day forever.
I am weary etc. back behind the knoll, up
on the knoll, behind the beautiful knoll...
(Don’t say I didn’t warn you!)
Here’s hoping some of these things survives the years to come.
