Macdonald, Iain (2013) The life and work of Fionn Mac Colla: determining a Gaelic experience. PhD thesis. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/4207/ Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study 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 Glasgow Theses Service http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] The Life and Work of Fionn Mac Colla: Determining a Gaelic Experience Iain Macdonald, M.A. (Hons) Scottish Literature School of Critical Studies College of Arts University of Glasgow January 2012 Portrait of a Young Scotsman, 1932 by Edward Baird (1904-1949) Scottish National Portrait Gallery Contents Abstract………………………………………………………………………….……iii Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………….....v Introduction…………………………………………………………..……………….vi Chronology…………………………………………………………….…………….xxi Chapter 1: The Life A Declining Culture...…………………………………………..…………………......1 Aberdeenshire: ‘The Genes are Paramount’…………………..…………………........9 Gaeldom: ‘My Roots in the Soil of Alba’…………………………………................14 ‘…The History of Myself, Directed by Myself’: The Place of Gunn and MacDiarmid………………………………………………………………………….29 An Elegy and a New Hope: Music and Nationalism…………………………..…….40 Chapter 2: The Albannach The Albannach…………………………………………………..…………………...51 The Significance of Music……………………………………………...……………63 The Gaelic Youth…………………………………………………………………….69 Cultural and Political Contexts for The Albannach…………………………...……..78 ‘Scorn of the Gael’…………………………………………………………………...87 ‘Pig’s Eyes in Alba’……………………………………………....………………...106 ‘The Worst of the Highlands’……………………………..………...………………115 Chapter 3: The Free Man The Free Man…………………………….……………………….………………...120 Opposition: ‘The Imbecility of Compromise’…..…………………………………..123 ‘O Ree, What Have We Lost!’ Scots Put to Shame………………….……………..124 ! i! The Finnish Example……………………………………………...………………..127 ‘Scotland’s Share of Guilt’…………………….…….……………………………...133 ‘The Psychology of the Anglophile’ and the Advantages of a Marginalized Language……………………………………...…………………………………….142 The Contemporary Relevance of Politics and Scholarship: The National Party of Scotland and ‘An Ecclesiastical Foot Note’……………………………..………….150 The Gaelic Movement in Scotland……………………………..…………………...160 From Palestine to Skye: Scottish Nationalism in the summer of 1928………….….167 Intellectual Radicalism: Following the Welsh Example?..........................................172 Modern Gaelic Nationalism………………………………………..……………….175 Chapter 4: And the Cock Crew An Empathetic and Psychological Response to the Clearances………….…………180 Fire in the Blood: The Purpose Behind And the Cock Crew….…………….………186 Tones of Voice and Intonations: Protecting Silence………….…………………….197 The State of the Language………………….…………………….…………………200 Cùis na Cànain…………………………………………………..………………….202 Education: The Transmission of Values.………………………………………..….208 Objective Control: The Representation of Maighstir Sachairi……………………...218 An Iron Text: The Conflict of Calvinism in And the Cock Crew…………..….……223 Negation and Betrayal………………………………………………………………236 The Psychology of the ‘Nay-sayer’…………………………………….…….……..239 The End of The Gaelic Experience?...........................................................................245 Conclusion…………………………….……………………………………………249 Bibliography and Further Reading…...……………….………..………….…….259 ! ii! Abstract This thesis is the first extensive consideration of the life and work of Fionn Mac Colla (1906-1975). In particular, it considers the influence of Gaelic language, culture and nationalism on Mac Colla’s corpus. Until now, critical reception of Mac Colla’s writing has been dominated by the legacy of the latter stages of his career, meaning that he has been seen solely as an embittered and polemical writer, motivated only by an angry reaction to what he saw as the negative impact of Scotland’s Reformation. This study argues that such criticism fails to acknowledge that Mac Colla’s creative output was, in fact, far more wide-reaching and complex. The thesis first considers Mac Colla’s genealogy and biography – placing his novels within their cultural and political context – in order to establish the first comprehensive portrait of the man and his work, and to establish the relevance of his writing to a modern readership. Attention is then turned to The Albannach (1932) in the conviction that this is a major work in the canon of modern Scottish literature and deserves extensive reassessment with regard to its political and Gaelic cultural contexts. This study then focuses on the work that Mac Colla contributed to the periodical The Free Man. This impassioned and polemical writing has neither been fully researched nor explored and its analysis makes a significant new contribution to our understanding of Mac Colla’s achievement. Lastly, the examination of And the Cock Crew (1945) highlights the peak and the turning point of his legacy in critical terms. This study contends that Mac Colla’s representation of the relationship between Scottish nationalism and Gaelic culture from the Highland Clearances to the 1930s was both politically and culturally radical. It is concluded that his writing, when examined in this context, proves him to be a novelist whose early work offers ! iii! more sophistication than has hitherto been explored, and ultimately extends his reputation far beyond that of a promising writer of unfulfilled early potential. ! iv! Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisors, Professor Alan Riach and Professor Gerard Carruthers for their encouragement and advice. My sincere thanks go to Tom Macdonald’s daughter and executor, Francesca Hardcastle, for permission to access literary materials and for her very kind and helpful correspondence. I also wish to extend sincere thanks to David Morrison and John Herdman, for their invaluable assistance and hospitality. Thanks too, to Frank Thompson, John Manson, Joy Hendry, Eric Cheyne, Iain McGlashan, Jonathan Blackwood, and the late Duncan Glen, for correspondence and assistance which has been invaluable to the writing of this thesis. I gratefully acknowledge a number of Trusts, without which this thesis would have taken significantly longer to complete: Sgeama Taic nan Oileanach Comun na Gàidhlig (CnaG), Urras Brosnachadh na Gàidhlig, Scottish International Education Trust, The Iain McGlashan Charitable Trust, The Andrew Tannahill Fund for the Furtherance of Scottish Literature and The Colonel Walter Scott Fund. I would like to thank the staff of the National Library of Scotland and Montrose Museum for allowing access to material and photographs. Thanks also go to the staff and doctoral students of the Department of Scottish Literature, particularly Dr Kirsteen McCue, Mrs Joyce Dietz, Ali Braidwood, Pauline Gray-Mackay and Megan Coyer. ! v! Finally, I want to dedicate this thesis to my father, my mother, and to Juliet Linden Bicket. “Is ann aig deireadh an latha is fheàrr na Domhnullaich” ! vi! Introduction This thesis is a reassessment of the writing of Fionn Mac Colla (Thomas Macdonald, 1906-75) and aims to explore in detail the Gaelic foundations of the work he published during his lifetime. His reputation as a bitter polemicist whose obsessive focus on the Reformation and what he considered to be its subsequent effect upon the Scottish psyche has had an adverse and overbearing effect on the appreciation of his art as a novelist. Mac Colla’s admittedly outspoken criticism of the Reformation and its legacy in Scotland has drawn critical attention away from these earlier, affirming, Gaelic cultural foundations. Moreover, his two major novels, The Albannach (1932) and And the Cock Crew (1945) demand reappraisal. In the 1930s Mac Colla was a young writer with publicly acknowledged potential, to which Hugh MacDiarmid’s championing of The Albannach can attest. However, his work has received little critical attention, apart from a brief resurgence in popularity in the 1970s, which was prompted by a younger generation of patriotic and nationalist Scottish writers and poets including David Morrison, John Herdman, Tom Scott, Alan Bold and Francis Thompson. This thesis presents the case that Mac Colla’s early novels and journalism are vital contributions to the understanding of Scottish nationalism and politics in the early twentieth century. Also, through the positioning of Gaelic within the spectrum of twentieth-century Scottish literature, Mac Colla is a figure who was unique among his peers. The chapters that follow present and analyse the evidence for this. Mac Colla is a neglected writer, partly because his writing is uncompromising and increasingly opinionated. As he published just two novels in his lifetime, The Albannach and And the Cock Crew, his limited output is undoubtedly another reason ! vii! for his lack of any lasting reputation, and his overall body of work has generated a relatively small amount of critical examination, with only one short collection, the poet David Morrison’s Essays on Fionn Mac Colla (1973) being entirely devoted to these two novels.1 In other volumes, criticism of Mac Colla’s work rarely extends beyond chapters on ‘Highland’ writing; he is often referred