These papers, the proceedings from a conference organized by the Islands Book Trust held on the Hebridean island of Benbecula in July 2006, center on the life and work of Scottish Gaelic scholar Alexander Carmichael (1832–1912), in particular his magnum opus, Carmina Gadelica: Hymns and Incantations.[1] During the four day conference, university-based and local scholars discussed the circumstances of Carmichael’s collecting and issues arising from his translation and editing of Gaelic oral traditions. The essays offer an intimate portrait of Carmichael’s life based on his own notes and letters and the memories of descendants of people from whom he collected in the islands, and represent an admirable example of local and academic collaboration. The papers also provide an examination of Carmichael’s collecting and publishing career, contextualized within the historical and political concerns of late Victorian Britain. The contributions of his wife, Mary, and daughter and son-in-law, Ella and James Watson, to his publications, are also described. Folklorists will find much fascinating detail here about the man, his times, and his work.
The stage is set by D. W. Stiùbhart’s discussion of Carmichael’s life and work based on manuscript sources housed in the Carmichael Watson Collection in the Edinburgh University Library [2], the National Library, and the National Archives of Scotland. Stiùbhart’s biographical approach brings to light Carmichael’s personal and professional interests in Gaelic oral and material traditions, revealing a man dedicated to the preservation and valorization of what was perceived at the time to be a dying and primitive culture. Stiùbhart’s adept use of Carmichael’s letters and notes conveys a sense of his honest fascination with Gaelic folk tradition that was borne of his own childhood on the island of Lismore (also discussed in Donald Black’s essay), and his dedication to recording and preserving songs, stories, and material culture (see Hugh Cheap’s article). His most fertile ground for collecting were the islands of South Uist and Benbecula, where Carmichael lived for seventeen years while pursuing his professional work as a customs and excise officer, recalling Robert Burns’ similar career. These Catholic districts preserved much of the oral tradition, music, and material culture long after it had been swept away by Calvinist reform elsewhere in Gaelic Scotland.
Carmichael’s published texts and translations have come under criticism from a modern academic perspective, but Stiùbhart and other contributors who scrutinize his publications, notebooks, and field collections in the context of his position within the Celtic revival of late nineteenth-century Scotland, provide a more nuanced understanding of this indefatigable collector. In particular, Ronald Black, in “I Thought He Made It All Up: Context and Controversy,” argues that the criticisms against Carmichael have been exaggerated, that he did practice scientific methods of collection as these were understood at the time (following the dictums of John Francis Campbell of Islay with whom he worked in 1860), and that the contents of volume I and II, primarily charms and incantations, are essentially sound.
That Carmichael’s editorial decisions had political and social motivations cannot be disputed. Stiùbhart states, “Throughout his life, Carmichael was strongly motivated by the desire to redeem Gaels and their traditions both from the odium of outsiders….and from the perceived hostility of a harsh Highland evangelical church…” (4). Taking up the second point, Donald Meek explicates the influence of nineteenth-century “Celtic” Christianity on Carmichael, especially as it was conceived by Dr. George Henderson, who wielded a powerful hand in the shape and form of volumes I and II of the Carmina Gadelica.
In a careful case study, William Gillies uses the body of material on the MacMhuirich poets to highlight Carmichael’s fieldwork and editorial methods. Carmichael believed these bards represented a Golden Age of Gaelic literature. Found primarily in the Carmichael Watson Papers investigated by the author and Barbara Hillers, these stories are classed around four themes: power over the elements, encounters with supernatural beings, displays of the bard’s ingenuity in human interactions, and Clann Mhuirich history. Gillies’s careful comparison of the manuscript material and what is published in the Carmina Gadelica leads him to conclude that Carmichael’s editorial interventions simply attempted to bring order to versions and variants. More problematic was his deliberate manipulation of the language to suggest an antique idiom and oral style. However, Gillies argues the case for the defense in terms of possible explanations for Carmichael’s interventions: a desire to capture the orality of the tales that he transcribed; a belief that the stories he recorded were a debased form that deserved to be restored; attempts to deal with dialectical and register differences heard during his residence on Uist; and the expectations of scholarship in the 1890s, when the potential for new Gaelic literary forms in a written literature was being suggested.
Shorter contributions cover other aspects of the man and his work. The essay on the visual dimension of the Carmina Gadelica reflects Carmichael’s interest in material culture and his wife’s artistic contributions to the first two volumes. Two articles address the archival materials, including other collections from Uist in the School of Scottish Studies. The memories of Uist families who had worked with Carmichael and Canon MacQueen from Barra conclude the volume on a personal note that reveals Carmichael’s past and abiding presence on the islands.
[1] Carmichael, Alexander, ed. and trans. Carmina Gadelica, Hymns and Incantations with Illustrative Notes on Words, Rites, and Customs, Dying and Obsolete. Volumes I and II,. Edinburgh: T. & A. Constable, 1900; Volumes III and IV, translated and edited by James Carmichael Watson. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1940–41; Volume V, edited and translated by Angus Matheson. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1954; Volume VI, indexes, edited by Angus Matheson. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1971.
[2] These materials, which include around 1400 volumes relating to Celtic and Scottish subjects as well as Alexander Carmichael’s notebooks, ledgers, and papers, were gifted to the University in 1948 by Carmichael’s son-in-law, William J. Watson, Professor of Celtic from 1914 to 1938, and Watson’s son, James Carmichael Watson. The Carmichael Watson Project, launched in 2005, aims to brings these materials into a more accessible form (see chapter 11).
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[Review length: 1011 words • Review posted on May 4, 2009]