Scottish Gaelic literature
Fuller sources for Ireland of the same period suggest that there would have been filidh, who acted as poets, musicians and historians, often attached to the court of a lord or king, and passed on their knowledge and culture in Gaelic to the next generation.
[8] As the ruling elite gradually abandoned Norman French, they began to adopt Middle Scots, and by the fifteenth century it was the language of government, with acts of parliament, council records and treasurer's accounts almost all using it from the reign of James I (1406–37) onwards.
[8] The major corpus of Medieval Scottish Gaelic poetry, The Book of the Dean of Lismore was compiled by the brothers James and Donald MacGregor in Glenlyon during the early decades of the sixteenth century.
By far the most famous of Iseabail's three poems is Éistibh, a Luchd an Tighe-se, which Thomas Owen Clancy has described as, "a fairly obscene boast to the court circle on the size and potency of her household priest's penis.
While Classical Gaelic poetry had used a literary language largely fixed in the twelfth century while still being widely understood on both sides of the Irish Sea, the vernacular in both Ireland and Scotland had long since diverged from it, often radically.
Iain Lom recited a Gaelic eulogy at the King's coronation, and remained loyal to the House of Stuart even after their overthrow in 1688, opposing the Williamites and later, in his vituperative Òran an Aghaidh an Aonaidh, denouncing the 1707 Act of Union.
According to Marcus Tanner, the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge was incorporated under Queen Anne in 1709 and immediately began building both schools and libraries throughout the Gàidhealtachd with a twofold purpose.
[24] Following Alasdair Dubh's death (c. 1721 or 1724), he was eulogized by Sìleas in the song-poem Alistair à Gleanna Garadh, which hearkens back to the mythological poetry attributed to Amergin Glúingel and which remains an iconic and oft imitated work of Scottish Gaelic literature.
[26][27][28] Instead of patronizing the Gaelic Bards and hosting feasts at Dunvegan Castle for his clansmen and their families, Morison was disgusted that the Chief had become an absentee landlord in London, who, "spent his money on foppish clothes".
While teaching at a school run by the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge at Kilchoan, the bard compiled the first secular book in Scottish Gaelic to be printed: Leabhar a Theagasc Ainminnin (1741), a Gaelic-English glossary.
"[39] Due to the often "arbitrary and malicious violence" inflicted by Hanoverian Redcoats under the command of the Duke of Cumberland and Lord Albemarle, the aftermath of Culloden is still referred to in the Gàidhealtachd as Bliadhna nan Creach ("The Year of the Pillaging").
In those poems, like many other Gaelic poets who were urging emigration during the same era, Iain mac Mhuirchaidh complained that warriors were no longer valued and that greed had come to mean more to the Chiefs and the Tacksmen than honor, family, or clan ties.
According to Michael Newton, Iain mac Mhuirchaidh the war poet so inspired the Gaels settled along the Cape Fear River to rise up and fight for King George III that American Patriots, "treated him with great severity.
In the poem, Cionneach mac Cionnich mocks the Scottish clan chiefs for becoming absentee landlords, for both rackrenting and evicting their clansmen en masse in favor of sheep, and of "spending their wealth uselessly", in London.
Claiming to have collected poetry by the demigod Ossian from the Fenian Cycle of Celtic mythology, Macpherson published translations from Scottish Gaelic that he proclaimed were an equivalent to the Classical epics of Homer and Virgil and which immediately became an international sensation.
[76] According to Marcus Tanner, despite the post-American Revolution redirection of Scottish Highland emigration towards Canada, a Gàidhealtachd continued to exist in North Carolina, "until it was well and truly disrupted", by the American Civil War.
[77] According to Michael Newton, however, "Professor Catrìona Persons of St Francis Xavier University of Antigonish presented a talk about a recently discovered item to the International Celtic Congress in Edinburgh in 1994.
[91] Enraged by what he saw as, "a war of attrition against the Gaels", embodied in the Highland Clearances,[92] Bowmore poet and Scottish nationalist Uilleam Mac Dhun Lèibhe (1808–70) protested against the mass evictions ordered upon Islay, in the Inner Hebrides, after the island was purchased by James Morrison in the poem Fios Thun a' Bhard ("A Message for the Bard"), which was composed to the air When the kye came hame[93] Mac Dhun Lèibhe presents in the poem, according to John T. Koch, "a stark view of an Islay in which the human world has been all but banished from the natural landscape.
Before serving in the Seaforth Highlanders in British India and during the Fall of France in 1940, however, Gaelic language war poet Aonghas Caimbeul attended the 300-pupil Cross School on the Isle of Lewis after the 1872 Education Act.
The great majority of Gaelic verse, from the eighteenth century onwards, was steadfastly Pro-British and Pro-Empire, with several poets, including Aonghas Moireasdan and Dòmhnall MacAoidh, enthusiastically asserting the conventual justificatory rationale for imperial expansion, that it was a civilising mission rather than a process of conquest and expropriation.
The Scottish Gaelic poet John Munro, a native of Swordale on the Isle of Lewis, won the Military Cross while serving as a 2nd Lieutenant with the Seaforth Highlanders and was ultimately killed in action during the 1918 Spring Offensive.
His best known song An Eala Bhàn ("The White Swan") was produced there for home consumption, but in a remarkable series of ten other compositions he describes what it looked, felt, sounded and even smelt like to march up to the front, to lie awake on the eve of battle, to go over the top, to be gassed, to wear a mask, to be surrounded by the dead and dying remains of Gaelic-speaking comrades, and so on.
[119] In his award-winning memoir Suathadh ri Iomadh Rubha,[120] Caimbeul recalled the origins of his poem, Deargadan Phòland ("The Fleas of Poland"), "We called them the Freiceadan Dubh ('Black Watch'), and any man they didn't reduce to cursing and swearing deserved a place in the courts of the saints.
[125] Similarly to his contemporary Alexander Solzhenitsyn while imprisoned in the Gulag,[126] Dòmhnall Iain Dhonnchaidh composed many works of oral poetry during forced labour in German captivity, all of which he memorized and was only able to write down and edit for publication following the end of the war and his release.
[131] In 1948, MacDonald's poem "Moladh Uibhist" ("In Praise of Uist"), which he had composed while being held as a POW and carefully edited for publication following his release, won the Bardic Crown at the Royal National Mòd at Glasgow.
In his 1946 poem Cùmhnantan Sìthe Pharis ("The Paris Peace Treaties"), MacNeacail praised the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and threatened the same fate against Joseph Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov if they continued refusing to cooperate with the Western Allies.
Around 1910, MacGilleathain expressed his loneliness and homesickness in a song-poem composed upon his cattle ranch in Montana: 'S ann a fhuair mi m' àrach an taobh tuath de Alba mhòr ("It was in the north of great Scotland that I was reared").
The poem ended by denouncing the invasion of Belgium and vowing, even though Kaiser Wilhelm II had managed to evade prosecution by seeking and being granted political asylum in the neutral Netherlands, that he would one day be tried for war crimes and hanged.
[144] From his home in South Africa, Gaelic-poet Duncan Livingstone contemptuously mocked the collapse of the British Empire after World War II with the satirical Gaelic poem, Feasgar an Duine Ghil ("The Evening of the White Man").
"[146] The Sharpeville massacre also inspired Livingstone to write the Gaelic poem Bean Dubha' Caoidh a Fir a Chaidh a Marbhadh leis a' Phoiles ("A Black Woman Mourns her Husband Killed by the Police").
