Gaeilge, or the Irish language, and Gàidhlig, or Scottish Gaelic, are a bit like twins separated at birth: they shared a written standard in the Middle Ages with a normalized standard practiced by bardic poets in the strict metres of the dán díreach that could be read on either island with equal ease. Each in turn has been exposed to different forces, each has taken a different route and undergone interesting processes of convergence and divergence. Comparative philology, Celticism, revivalism, and nationalisms of different shades have all had a part to play in these processes. In this field, if considered on wide screen, there is an ongoing relationship between philology and Celtic studies on one hand and cultural identity and community on the other. Michael Linkletter points out that the establishment of the Chair in Celtic at Edinburgh University in 1882 created the impetus for the foundation of a Gaelic and Celtic lectureship in Nova Scotia (137). This volume provides many interesting reflections on and insights into the nomadism and homecomings of language from Scotland, Canada, USA, Australia, and New Zealand to Argentina. Robert Teare’s contribution, the last in this collection, illustrates this by adding Manx, “a dialect of East Gaelic, rather than the Gaelic-English patois that a first glance” might suggest (365). Teare argues that Scottish Gaelic is closer to Manx than to Irish. For example, the Irish bóthar (road) becomes bayr in Manx, and rannsachadh is “research” in Scottish Gaelic while taighde has become the norm in Irish. Sometimes the differences appear overly pedantic: ransaigh in Irish continues to mean “search” or “examine.” My digression is inspired by William Gillies’ contribution to the proceedings of Rannsachadh na Gaidhlig 5, or The Fifth Scottish Gaelic Research Conference, held in St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, in 2008.

In this substantial collection of some 366 pages, twenty-four contributors offer a bilingual contribution to the study of Gaelic language and culture as well as to the social and cultural history of western Europe. In pleading for a map for the future, Gillies immediately identifies the elephant in the room, the constant companion of all who value this crucial field of learning. The early prestige reflected from the aura of comparative philology in Europe, of “words in their oldest written form” (137), may not be enough. Gillies highlights the fact that caring can be a burden in itself, what he calls the “bust a gut syndrome” (16). He refers to the sense in which scholars feel they must do all they possibly can for a field that is in a “precarious state” (10). It is now, has always been, possibly, subject to perennial warnings, reminders, patronization, and peering anglophone peer reviews. Good to know that these are shared sentiments; research on Gaelic may be contested but research through the medium of Gaelic is necessary because we need “scans and bloodtests” as well as thermometers. We need non-invasive speculation, thought from inside the world and culture of Gaelic. There is an ever-increasing need to learn how best to understand the values of the intellect within the humanities, how best to articulate them, how best to demonstrate their intrinsic human value in a homogenizing, dehumanizing world. This can be the key focus of the humanities and lies at the heart of the Liberal Arts project.

There is much in the collection for those interested in theory as well as in practice. Tiber F. M. Falzett’s article takes up the pioneering discourse-centered analysis and ethnography of speaking approach of Dell Hymes; he draws upon the work of Lillis Ó Laoire and John Shaw while echoing some of the pioneering application of discourse theory to folklorisitics that developed in Ireland in Cork’s folklore and ethnology department (Ó Cadhla 2000). This enables Falzett to emphasise the richness and complexitiy of shared local aesthetics and “the transmission of communal knowledge” (78). The shift in focus to knowledge is liberating and has great potential for future research beyond enumeration and morphology. Digitization has become something of an end in itself, but there are many obvious advantages to creating accessible resources. Catriona Mackie and Lorna Pike discuss the developing Faclair na Gàidhlig, a historical Dictionary of Scottish Gaelic. This will provide the history of every word evidenced in the written language and will offer evidence of the interface between Irish, Scots, and English and Welsh, contributing greatly to our understanding of the languages of these islands. Clive James discusses the Celtic diaspora in Argentina that embarked in the late-nineteenth century; many of these people speak Welsh today. A large number of Scottish settlers found their way to Entre Rios on the Argentina-Uruguay border, an area known as Colonia Nueva Escosia or the Colony of New Scotland. Evidence is presented of the Rev. Lachlan MacNeill from Barra ministering in the area in the Gàidhlig language. The language appears to have succumbed to Spanish in most known cases.

Sheila M. Kidd looks at early Gaelic electioneering, postulating that 1830 marks the “first” use of Gaelic and Gaelic song for electioneering purposes in Nova Scotia. In Scotland she traces the first evidence to Perthshire on the Highland-Lowland border in the years 1832-34. Although widespread in the nineteenth century, Gaelic died out here at the end of the twentieth century. Kidd looks at election posters printed in Perth as the “earliest extant piece of Gaelic election rhetoric” and the “emergence of secular Gaelic prose writing and writers experimenting with style and genre” (123-124). Election rhetoric, political eulogy, and incitement combined. Kidd links this interestingly to the abolition of slavery, and the recurrence of words such as soars, daorsa, trail in the text seem to echo this seminal political discourse.

Michael Newton raises an interesting question concerning the relationship between the Scottish Highlanders and the First Nations. Some commentators on Irish or Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, or Manx see distant indigenous peoples in much the same light as the Irish or Scottish peoples, while others lump all “Britons” together as though they were homogenous English-speaking, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (a convenient assumption for the majority of scholars who are unable to read or contextualize Gaelic, Irish, Manx, and Welsh texts) (221). In general, ethnological or anthropological perspectives and paradigms, although undoubtedly present in nation states, have often been reserved for others faraway rather than for natives at home. These are viewed as “colonial projections” of different shades, and Newton’s perceptive questions are applicable to even wider contexts of cultural contact. The shibboleth of civilization raises its head here. Highlanders, for example, could align themselves with the First Nations, recognizing that they too were often oppressed. On the other hand, they could also change allegiance to their white Briton identity.

The tree holds a special place in the Highlander’s imagination. The continent is sometimes referred to as Dùthaich nan Craobh or the Land of Trees, and the migration to North America is sometimes imagined as a return to the primal wooded landscape of the Highlands. Native Americans were known as coilltich or forest people, apparently a translation of the English word savage (from Old French sauvage meaning wild and the Latin silvaticus, the word for a wood) (227). The etymology of the word Gael itself is sometimes explained as “a wood dweller” from the Welsh. Agallamh na Seanórach was drawn upon by Patrick Campbell, a native of Argyll, in the nineteenth century to describe the conversion of the Mohawks (229). He was convinced, as Oisín (or Oïsean “in proper Gaelic spelling”) was in his time regarding the salvation of the Fianna, that even Mohawks who had never heard of Christ would be saved. He sometimes equated Gaelic with native languages (230).

Finally, emerging from the nineteenth century and the diaspora, the book, in Susan Wilson’s contribution, brings us into the contemporary world with a discussion of correspondence between two major Scottish poets, Hugh MacDiarmid and Sorley MacLean. There is a connection, however, as MacLean’s poetry “inspired a new generation of Gaelic scholars, writers and critics” in Scotland and Ireland (275). Such luminaries attest to the vital role of all languages in intellectual life in general. Gillies suggests that it may not be enough to rest on the faded laurels of yesteryear; he urges us to remember that “not all the best poems have been made yet” and that a link might be forged (again?) “between Gaelic and fighting back” ( 26).

Work Cited

Ó Cadhla, Stiofán. 2000. “‘Bríonna an tSeanchais: Red Bull nó Tae?” An Aimsir Óg 2:161-72.

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[Review length: 1410 words • Review posted on November 7, 2012]