This thesis has been submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a postgraduate degree (e.g. PhD, MPhil, DClinPsychol) at the University of Edinburgh. Please note the following terms and conditions of use: • This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, which are retained by the thesis author, unless otherwise stated. • A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. • This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author. • The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. • When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. ‘With heart and voice ever devoted to the cause’: Women in the Gaelic Movement, 1886–1914 Priscilla Scott Degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Edinburgh 2013 ii ‘With heart and voice ever devoted to the cause’: Women in the Gaelic Movement, 1886–1914 Priscilla Scott Degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Edinburgh 2013 iii CONTENTS List of Illustrations iv List of Abbreviations v Acknowledgements vi Abstract vii 1. Introduction: The Spirit of the Age 1 2. ‘Suas leis a’ Ghàidhlig’: Women in An Comunn Gàidhealach 27 3. Teaching the Mother-Tongue: Women and Gaelic Education 66 4. Interaction and Influence: Women’s Participation in Gaelic and Pan-Celtic Societies 104 5. Women, Gaelic and Literary Matters 143 6. Recording and Representing: Women Collectors of Gaelic Song and Lore 178 7. Women on the Gaelic Platform 211 8. Conclusion 240 Appendix Translations of Gaelic Passages 252 Bibliography 259 iv ILLUSTRATIONS Plate 1 Margaret Burnley Campbell, 1890 Plate 2 Margaret Burnley Campbell at the Stirling Mòd, 1909 Plate 3 Ella C. Carmichael, 1902 Plate 4 Edinburgh Gaelic Choir (Ladies Voices), 1907 Plate 5 Scene from ‘Toinneamh an t-Sugain’ (Twisting the Rope), 1907 Plate 6 Mary MacKellar Plate 7 Katherine Whyte Grant Plate 8 Frances Tolmie Plate 9 Marjory Kennedy-Fraser in Eriskay Plate 10 Jessie N. MacLachlan, 1892 Plate 11 Jessie N. MacLachlan Plate 12 Màiri Mhòr nan Òran Plate 13 Màiri Mhòr nan Òran Plate 14 Page from the Presentation Book given to Margaret Burnley Campbell by An Comunn Gàidhealach in 1933 Plate 15 Cartoon sketch: ‘A Suas Leis A’ Ghàidhlig’ v ABBREVIATIONS NLS National Library of Scotland AG An Gaidheal CMJ Caledonian Medical Journal CR The Celtic Review DG An Deo-G(h)réine GB Guth na Bliadhna JFFS Journal of the Folk-Song Society OT Oban Times OWN Oban Weekly News SGS Scottish Gaelic Studies TGSI Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to many people for help and support throughout the period of this study. I would like to sincerely thank my supervisors, Professor Wilson McLeod and Dr Anja Gunderloch, for their direction, encouragement and advice. My thanks to Francesca Hardcastle for allowing me to read Annie Johnston’s letters to her father, T. Douglas MacDonald, and I thank Norman MacDonald, Portree, for alerting me to their existence in the first place and for a number of other useful references that he sent in my direction. I am very grateful to Dr Domhnall Uilleam Stiùbhart for providing me with copies of the letters from Alexander and Ella Carmichael to Father Allan McDonald, and for other help. I am also grateful to the Gaelic Society of Inverness for permission to look at the Minutes of the Society. Any errors or misrepresentations in what I have written are my own responsibility. Members of staff in the National Library of Scotland where I have spent a considerable amount of research time have all been very helpful, as have the staff in other libraries and archive centres that I have visited in person or contacted by email. I greatly appreciate the friendly support I have had from everyone in Celtic and Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh, both staff and students, over more years than I ever imagined I would be involved with the department. This period of study was made financially possible through a scholarship from The Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland which I was very honoured to receive, and I am grateful to Professor William Gillies and Dr Anja Gunderloch who supported my application for this funding. I owe a great debt to my immediate family and friends for their constant encouragement, and for their understanding when I was ‘unavailable’ on numerous occasions. My greatest personal acknowledgement is to my husband who has been ever supportive and extremely patient. vii ABSTRACT The Gaelic movement was the general term used in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to refer to a range of diverse but interconnected activity in support of the Gaelic language and culture in Scotland, embracing educational, literary, musical and scholarly aspects. Accounts of the Gaelic cultural landscape at this time tend to focus on the leading male figures; the presence and participation of women has been largely overlooked and a number of women who were prominent and significant participants in the Gaelic movement have slipped into the shadows or disappeared completely. This study aims to reconfigure this view to foreground the contribution of women and to understand the complex dynamics of the Gaelic movement from the perspectives of the women involved. While the study importantly highlights certain individual women, the biographical focus is used as a means to uncover lesser-known women and the female friendships and networks in which they moved, as well as to explore their relationship and interaction with prominent male figures and other interconnected social groupings within the Gaelic movement and wider Pan-Celtic and Celtic Revival circles. The study examines and discusses the participation, contribution and influence of a number of women across a spectrum of Gaelic cultural activities, taking into account socio-historical, literary and cultural aspects and using gender as an analytical lens through which to examine the different challenges and tensions that individual women negotiated in a period of social and cultural change. The study shows that a number of women were actively involved with the Gaelic movement in the period between the passing of The Crofting Act and the start of the Great War; that they were innovative, ambitious and wide-ranging in their participation; and that they saw the accessibility of the Gaelic cultural sphere as an opportunity to progress both their individual aspirations as women as well as their support for the Gaelic language and culture. 1 1 Introduction: The Spirit of the Age Mòr ged a bha na caochlaidhean a thàinig air a’ Ghaidhealtachd ri linn Bliadhna Theàrlaich, agus a bha ciùrrail do ’n Ghàidhlig, gidheadh, cha robh iad ach faoin seach iadsan a tha air tighinn air Breatunn gu h-iomlan agus air an t-saoghal air fad anns an dà linn mu dheireadh seo. Tha an t-each-iaruinn, agus an dealanach air sréin aig a’chinne-dhaonna. Théidear gu iomallan an domhain na’s usa an diugh na rachamaid roimhe seo á Ionbhar-nis do Lunnainn. Is urrainn duinn bruidhinn ri chéile gu socair aig astar ceud mìle. Theid fios do Astralia á Lunnainn ann an dà mhionaid an uaireadair. Tha, mar so, cur is gabhail eadar gach uile chinneach, agus gach eadar- dheallachadh a bha eatorra a’ leaghadh gu bras air falbh. Tha so air atharrachadh mòr a thoirt air spiorad na h-aimsir.1 In 1905 and looking back over the last two decades of the previous century, the Gaelic writer Katherine Whyte Grant, in the quotation above, sums up the ‘spirit of the age’ as one of dramatic change with new and remarkable developments in industry, transport and communication, and suggests the early beginnings of a global culture. As a woman, she might also have referred to the significant advances made in the second half of the nineteenth century in expanding opportunities for middle-class women in education, employment and civic society, although at this point in time at the start of a new century women were still some distance away from achieving the right to the parliamentary vote.2 It would take another ten years of increasingly militant struggle and the hiatus of 1 C. W. G[h]rannd, ‘Na Cunnartan a tha Bagradh na Gàidhlig’, DG, 1 (1905–06), 10–12 (11). 2 It is important to note, however, that ‘neither in the Edwardian or the Victorian period was the parliamentary vote the sole definite feature of feminist thinking or action’. See Philippa Levine, Victorian Feminism, 1850–1900 (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1994), 157. 2 the First World War before voting rights were granted for a particular sector of the female population in 1918,3 and a further ten years before universal female franchise was finally attained in 1928. However, from the threshold of the new century, it could be recognised that women’s lives had advanced considerably in a number of important ways. Although it was still the case that in all areas of their lives Victorian and Edwardian women had to conform to or confront gendered ideologies and prescriptive notions of what was ‘appropriate’ feminine activity or ‘womanly’ conduct, these definitions were being vigorously contested and debated as the nineteenth century drew to a close. The women who participated in the broad cultural arena of the Gaelic movement in Scotland in this period and who are at the centre of this study were to varying degrees influenced, empowered and challenged by the changing status of women and the instability of traditional gender boundaries.