Alexander Carmichael

Between 1860 and his death Carmichael collected a vast amount of folklore, local traditions, natural history observations, antiquarian data, and material objects from people throughout the Scottish Highlands, particularly in the southern Outer Hebrides where he lived, worked, and brought up his family between 1864 and 1882.

The material that Carmichael collected in the Carmina Gadelica - "The Hymns of the Gael" - is noted for its preservation of an indigenous "Celtic" spirituality that integrates the Christian with aspects of the pre-Christian.

While Carmichael does provide a little material from Lewis and Harris, most comes from the southern isles, especially South Uist, where a Catholic tradition had permitted the preservation of what, in the Protestant north, would usually have been dismissed in relatively modern times as "superstitions".

To what extent scholarship into Carmichael has been shaped over the past century by differences between Catholic and Protestant perceptions of Hebridean tradition is a question that has been asked privately by some scholars, but thus far not researched.

[citation needed] In his 1992 preface to the Floris single volume edition (abridged and without the Gaelic original) John MacInnes of the School of Scottish Studies concludes by quoting his University of Edinburgh ethnographer colleague, Ronald Black (Raghnall MacilleDhuibh), as surmising: "Carmina Gadelica is by any standards a treasure house ... a marvellous and unrepeatable achievement.