Real and Imagined Communities in Gaelic Poetry from the Nineteenth Century to the Present

chapter 3 Speaking for Oneself and Others: Real and Imagined Communities in Gaelic Poetry from the Nineteenth Century to the Present

Emma Dymock

Abstract

A sense of community pervades much of Scottish Gaelic literature through the centu- ries in both the classical bardic tradition of panegyric as a mode of praise for both clan and individual hero, and the vernacular tradition of song, which celebrates the everyday life of the community and often includes a community-based dimension to its composition. This chapter examines how that legacy of Gaelic community in poetry survives and continues into the later nineteenth century to the present day and will argue that far from keeping Gaelic poetry in stasis, it has actually been one of the most significant vehicles of innovation, stimulating Gaelic poets in confronting and understanding their self-imposed role as spokespersons for both real and imagined communities. Historical themes such as the Highland Clearances, the Land Agitation and Land Reforms, emigration and the World Wars will be studied in rela- tion to perceptions of community, as well as the effect of literary and socio-political circumstances, including the rural–urban experience, the influence of Gaelic learners on the literature, and the concept of ‘native’ authenticity.

Keywords

Gaelic poetry – Highland Clearances – Land Agitation – World War One – World War Two – urban Gaels – crofting community

If the clan was the main marker of group identity for the Gaels, from the time of the Lordship of the Isles (arguably from the 1330s to 1493) to the Jacobite Risings (the period 1688–1746), then it was community, particularly the crofting community, which reinforced and, in some cases, replaced, clan society in the nineteenth century onwards. Taking into account traumatic events such as the Battle of Culloden in 1746 and its aftermath – the breakdown in the tradi- tional relationship between chief and clan as chiefs became increasingly more

62 Dymock akin to landowners – and the Highland Clearances, John MacInnes concludes that ‘the poets of the nineteenth century inherited a broken world’.1 Poetry is the genre of literature with the oldest pedigree in the Gaelic world; the poets of this literary tradition were the spokespersons for their society, with the official bards of the clans charting the history and genealogy of their people. Despite circumstances in the eighteenth century severely undermining this order, the role of the poet was still respected by the people. Poetry had previously been integral to clan life and it continued to pervade all aspects of Gaelic community; if the formation and cultivation of ‘community’ was a way for the Gaels to make sense of their changing world, then poetry was one of the means which united this community. The ceilidh-house was the centre of the community, a way for individuals to share stories, songs, cultural traditions and current news. Poetry was often practised in a community setting; the waulking song is a good example of the way in which a community can not only shape its literature, but uphold and preserve it by its habitual usage.2 Alexander Carmichael’s publication in 1900 of the first two volumes of his Carmina Gadelica, with its prayers, hymns, charms, blessings, poems and songs gathered in communities of the Highlands and Islands from 1860, firmly estab- lished the notion that Gaelic culture was a treasure to be preserved, even if its own communities were sometimes affording it less respect than it deserved.3 Significantly, the genesis of the Carmina Gadelica was more connected to the political aspect of community life than may be imagined and can be traced back to ‘Grazing and Agrestic Customs of the Outer Hebrides’, the second appendix Alexander Carmichael contributed to the Report of the Napier Commission in 1884,4 in which Carmichael attempts to represent the crofters as part of an ancient and noble culture, lending them an air of respectability in the process. The information that Carmichael had collected for this study

1 John MacInnes, ‘Gaelic Poetry in the Nineteenth Century’, in Dùthchas Nan Gàidheal: Selected Essays of John MacInnes, ed. by Michael Newton (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2006), pp. 357–79 (p. 357). 2 A folksong with a verse and chorus, usually sung in Gaelic by a group of women, while waulking (cleansing) cloth. The song helped the women to maintain rhythm as the newly woven tweed was beaten against the table. 3 See, for example, Alexander Carmichael’s introduction to Carmina Gadelica, vol. 1 (1900), pp. xxxv–xxxvi, in which a woman from Lewis explains how her community has turned its back on its oral tradition and customs in favour of Evangelical Protestantism. 4 The Napier Commission was the Royal Commission and public inquiry into the condition of crofters and cottars in the Highlands and Islands. The Commission was a response to the events of the Land Agitation or Land War, when crofters finally rebelled against excessively high rents, lack of security of tenure and rights of access to land.