tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca-fr/topics/gaelic-18594/articlesGaelic – La Conversation2023-10-30T12:11:30Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2109392023-10-30T12:11:30Z2023-10-30T12:11:30ZNos Galan Gaeaf: the traditional Welsh celebration being eclipsed by modern Halloween<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555331/original/file-20231023-27-3fyhsc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C6016%2C3998&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nos Galan Gaeaf on October 31 is followed by Calan Gaeaf on November 1 in Wales. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/sheep-cow-animal-skull-on-abandon-2353014109">PBabic/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Children throughout Wales will be dressed in witch or ghost costumes come October 31, going from door to door, chorusing “trick or treat” in the hope of receiving sweets. In other words, the scene will be very much like that encountered at Halloween in the rest of the UK. </p>
<p>On posters advertising Halloween events in Wales, the word Halloween is rendered in Welsh as <a href="https://museum.wales/blog/1857/Halloween-Traditions/"><em>Nos Galan Gaeaf</em></a>. A <a href="https://nation.cymru/news/call-to-ditch-anglo-american-halloween-and-restore-welsh-traditions/">common complaint</a> is that traditional customs at this time of year have been eclipsed by an increasingly homogenised and commercialised event imported from the USA. </p>
<p>But how would Welsh people have celebrated <em>Nos Galan Gaeaf</em> in former centuries? What is its origin? And has it always been intrinsically linked to Halloween?</p>
<h2>October 31 celebrations</h2>
<p>Halloween has its <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/All-Saints-Day">origins</a> in AD609 or AD610 when the Pantheon in Rome was converted to a place of Christian worship and dedicated to Mary and to all the martyrs by Pope Boniface IV, who ordered an anniversary to be celebrated. </p>
<p>In the eighth century, the date of the celebration at the Basilica of St. Peter was fixed on November 1. This was extended by Gregory IV in the early ninth century to the whole church. </p>
<p>This celebration was known in English as “All Hallows Day”, and thus the eve is Halloween. It is quite plausible that there was already a seasonal festival of some sort at this date and that some of the features of this festival were transferred to Halloween.</p>
<p>A common <a href="https://blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandheroes/2021/10/the-origins-of-halloween-traditions/#:%7E:text=Yet%2C%20the%20Halloween%20holiday%20has,costumes%20to%20ward%20off%20ghosts.">claim</a> is that Halloween is essentially Celtic. It is true that Gaelic-speaking places (Ireland, Gaelic Scotland and the Isle of Man) celebrated, at this time, a festival called <em><a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Samhain">Samhain</a></em>, references to which abound in early medieval Irish <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=tXEyEAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT8&dq=medieval+irish+samhain&ots=7srml1iSDo&sig=cZXC5ybD81Yu1vJAreNFi34Q1RI&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=medieval%20irish%20samhain&f=false">literature</a>. It was presented as a time of uncanny events and otherworldly visitations. </p>
<p>The name <em>Samhain</em> is often mispronounced by non-Gaelic speakers as “Sam Hain”. But it is actually closer, in modern Irish pronunciation, to “sow won” (sow as in female pig). </p>
<p>However, while Welsh is also a Celtic language, there is no evidence for <em>Samhain</em> having been celebrated in Wales – so, it could well be a Gaelic rather than a Celtic institution. The oft-repeated <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/halloween-owes-its-tricks-and-treats-celtic-new-years-eve-180960944/">claim</a> that it signifies the start of the Celtic year is based on the speculation of comparative mythologists.</p>
<p>The name <em>Nos Galan Gaeaf</em> certainly does not go back to a prehistoric period of Celtic linguistic unity. The word <a href="https://geiriadur.ac.uk/gpc/gpc.html"><em>calan</em></a> is borrowed from the Latin <em>calends</em>, meaning “the first day of the month”, while <em>gaeaf</em> means “winter”. </p>
<p>So we can think of it as “the winter calends”, or “the first day of winter”. <em>Calan</em> was one of hundreds of Latin loan words that entered the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Brythonic-languages">Brittonic</a> language, the ancestor of the Welsh language, during the period in which Britain was part of the Roman Empire. </p>
<p>There is, however, an element of the name which does have Celtic ancestry. <em>Calan Gaeaf</em> on its own is November 1, but <em>Nos Galan Gaeaf</em> (the “night of the winter calends”), is the night before. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0001">Julius Caesar</a> said of the Celtic-speaking Gauls (who inhabited what is now France and Belgium), that they counted the day to begin on the previous evening. This is reflected in <a href="https://celt.ucc.ie">medieval Irish</a>, where the term <em>aidche Lúain</em> means “the night before Monday” – what we would call Sunday night. This is merely a linguistic fossil, however, and does not prove anything about the antiquity of <em>Nos Galan Gaeaf</em>.</p>
<p>There are medieval references to it, for example, in poetry from the <a href="https://www.library.wales/discover-learn/digital-exhibitions/manuscripts/the-middle-ages/the-black-book-of-carmarthen">Black Book of Carmarthen</a>, a collection of early Welsh poems and manuscripts. <em>Calan Gaeaf</em> is also mentioned in the <a href="https://www.library.wales/discover-learn/digital-exhibitions/manuscripts/the-middle-ages/laws-of-hywel-dda#:%7E:text=The%20%27Laws%20of%20Hywel%20Dda,quarter%20of%20the%2013th%20century.">early Welsh laws</a>, detailed in 13th-century manuscripts, but those references are disappointingly prosaic. </p>
<p>And, it is only in the modern period that we have <a href="https://archive.org/details/in.gov.ignca.29074/page/n5/mode/2up">references</a> to <em>Nos Galan Gaeaf</em> customs, exhaustively catalogued in the 20th century by the historian, Trefor M. Owen.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A spooky black and white forest with twisted trees." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555615/original/file-20231024-23-xeucjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555615/original/file-20231024-23-xeucjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555615/original/file-20231024-23-xeucjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555615/original/file-20231024-23-xeucjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555615/original/file-20231024-23-xeucjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555615/original/file-20231024-23-xeucjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555615/original/file-20231024-23-xeucjm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Beware the lurking Hwch Ddu Gwta and the Ladi Wen.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/spooky-wooodland-scene-twisted-trees-black-619428050">bearacreative/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Spooky customs</h2>
<p>How people <a href="https://museum.wales/blog/1857/Halloween-Traditions/">celebrated</a> varied significantly from region to region. Many, such as bobbing for apples, and various types of divination to determine who will marry who, are far from unique to Wales. Nonetheless, some have an unfamiliar twist. </p>
<p>In south Wales, parties of young people would maraud from door to door like modern trick or treaters. In Glamorgan, boys would wear women’s clothing. Much more sinister were the <em>gwrachod</em> (meaning “witches” or “hags”) of Powys though. These were men who would go about in pairs, dressed as an old man and old woman, or in gangs dressed in sheep skins and masks, drinking heavily and demanding gifts.</p>
<p>The lighting of a bonfire, or <em>coelcerth</em>, was a notable feature too. Close to the fires, people would be safe from wandering spirits, but the return home could be a fraught business. In the darkness lurked the <em><a href="https://www.peoplescollection.wales/items/606778">Hwch Ddu Gwta</a></em> (tail-less black sow) accompanied by the <em><a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100047409">Ladi Wen</a> heb ddim pen</em> (the white lady without a head). </p>
<p>If you want to stand out from the crowd of mummies and vampires this October 31, you could do worse than dressing as one of these gruesome characters instead.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210939/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Rodway does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Nos Galan Gaeaf on October 31 in Wales is steeped in folklore and tradition.Simon Rodway, Lecturer in Celtic Studies, Aberystwyth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1981712023-04-04T15:06:03Z2023-04-04T15:06:03ZRough Cut: Netflix’s first Welsh language series is a further boost for subtitled content<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517858/original/file-20230328-806-otoojz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C32%2C5457%2C3837&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The drama series Rough Cut on Netflix follows a group of misfits as they try to pull off a diamond heist. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">S4C</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Netflix announced in January that it would be streaming its first ever drama series in the Welsh language, the news was met with widespread <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jan/29/a-real-moment-cymraegs-the-star-as-netflix-buys-welsh-language-drama">positivity</a> in the media. </p>
<p>The streaming giant <a href="https://www.s4c.cymru/en/press/post/54344/s4c-crime-drama-dal-y-mellt-sold-to-netflix/">bought the licence</a> for <em>Dal y Mellt</em>, which translates as “catch the lightning”, from the Welsh language public service broadcaster, S4C. Adapted from a novel by Iwan “Iwcs” Roberts, the gritty six-part crime thriller follows a group of misfits as they come together to pull off a diamond heist. </p>
<p>Having been available on S4C and the BBC iPlayer with its Welsh name, the series has now been given the title “Rough Cut” for Netflix and is being streamed for UK audiences with English subtitles as of April 10 2023.</p>
<p>Given <a href="https://theconversation.com/three-reasons-why-foreign-language-cinema-is-struggling-in-the-uk-59424">concern</a> in recent years over the decline of non-English language productions in UK cinemas, this is an important step. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="The words Dal y Mellt appear in bold set against a sunset." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518414/original/file-20230330-26-f7scm4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518414/original/file-20230330-26-f7scm4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518414/original/file-20230330-26-f7scm4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518414/original/file-20230330-26-f7scm4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518414/original/file-20230330-26-f7scm4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518414/original/file-20230330-26-f7scm4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518414/original/file-20230330-26-f7scm4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Originally broadcast on S4C and the BBC iPlayer, Dal y Mellt has been given the title ‘Rough Cut’ for Netflix.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">S4C</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/24/books/review/nordic-noir-guide.html">Nordic Noir</a>” has paved the way for subtitled drama in recent years. The dark, Scandinavian genre has <a href="https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Nordic-noir-in-the-UK%3A-the-allure-of-accessible-Stougaard-Nielsen/2353eaeafcb2ee9a9ee00e45f132bfd048eeeec4">surged in popularity</a> globally since the mid 1990s. And crime dramas such as <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0907702/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2">Wallander</a>, <a href="https://www.dr.dk/drtv/saeson/forbrydelsen_-i_351784">Forbrydelsen</a> (The Killing) and <a href="https://nimbusfilm.dk/film/broen-4/?lang=dk">Bron</a> (The Bridge) have set the tone for productions such as Rough Cut. The combination of a highly recognisable genre, coupled with a distinct sense of place, proved to be a winning formula to be exported across the world. </p>
<p>Other minoritised languages have used a similar brooding genre since 2010 too. The two Irish Gaelic series, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1749056/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1"><em>Corp & Anam</em></a> and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2792326/"><em>An Bronntanas</em></a>, were produced by TG4, the Irish public service television channel. While <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06fp6cc"><em>Bannan</em></a>, a production in Scottish Gaelic, was made by BBC Alba. </p>
<p>When the dark, Welsh detective drama <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03sgfbz">Hinterland</a> was filmed, it was shot back to back in Welsh and English. The English version (with brief passages of Welsh dialogue) was broadcast on the BBC, while the Welsh language version was shown on S4C. And that somewhat controversial trend continued with more recent dramas such as the BBC’s <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p066st1w/hidden">Hidden</a> (<em>Craith</em>), <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09s7357">Keeping Faith</a> (<em>Un Bore Mercher</em>) and Channel 4’s <a href="https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-light-in-the-hall">A Light in the Hall</a> (<em>Y Golau</em>). </p>
<p>But there is something unique about Rough Cut because there is no English version, just one production in the Welsh language. This suggests a growing confidence in Welsh language productions. It’s a far cry from the early 1990s when the first Welsh language film to be nominated for an Oscar, <a href="https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-hedd-wyn-1992-online"><em>Hedd Wyn</em></a> didn’t even receive a cinematic release in Wales or the UK. </p>
<p>Recently, the mainstream success of non-English language productions such as <em>An Cailín Ciúin</em> (The Quiet Girl), All Quiet on the Western Front and Squid Game, suggest a gentle sea-change in attitudes to subtitled content. The latter was <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2021/10/13/squid-game-is-now-netflixs-most-popular-show-ever-and-its-not-even-close/">Netflix’s biggest hit to date</a> in 2021. </p>
<p>Parasite, the Korean mystery drama, became the first non-English language film to win the Academy Award for best picture in 2020. And when he accepted his Golden Globe for best foreign language film, Parasite’s director Bong Joon-ho <a href="https://variety.com/2020/film/awards/south-koreas-parasite-crashes-the-subtitles-barrier-1203488979/">said</a>, “once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films”.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7j-oBxViuGw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The official S4C trailer for Dal y Mellt.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>All this can only be good news for any future Welsh language productions. S4C says it is <a href="https://www.s4c.cymru/en/press/post/54344/s4c-crime-drama-dal-y-mellt-sold-to-netflix/">keen to see</a> Welsh language dramas “stand shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the world”.</p>
<p>After all, there has been a remarkable growth in global content within a brutally competitive world of streaming. And that has been coupled with a radical transformation in viewing habits, which has resulted in public service broadcasters having to further justify their existence. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-public-or-the-state-who-calls-the-shots-at-the-bbc-198607">The public or the state: who calls the shots at the BBC?</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-63414736">S4C’s recent 40th birthday</a> has been an opportunity to reexamine its history and purpose. Initially on a trial period of three years, it was one of only four channels offering a limited service during peak hours. Forty years later, it is a multi platform broadcaster. It offers more than 115 hours of programming per week, with the digital revolution meaning the channel’s output now has global potential.</p>
<p>As for Rough Cut on Netflix, the statistics are pretty stark. Streamed as a box set on BBC iPlayer, it had a potential domestic reach of some 28.3 million households. Meanwhile, it is estimated that 231 million households have a Netflix subscription worldwide. Though Netflix’s ambitious claim, <a href="https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/12553/html/">voiced to the House of Commons Welsh affairs committee</a>, that it hoped it can play a role in helping to “promote and preserve the Welsh language”, is yet to be tested. </p>
<p>But for its audiences, Rough Cut, or <em>Dal y Mellt</em>, represents Welsh as a rich and vibrant community language, with its narrative both mapping and showcasing different parts of Wales.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198171/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Woodward does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Welsh language heist drama, Dal y Mellt, is being streamed on Netflix with the title, Rough Cut.Kate Woodward, Lecturer in Film Studies, Aberystwyth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1903852022-09-12T16:41:31Z2022-09-12T16:41:31ZDoric: the Scots dialect spoken by the Queen – what it sounds like and where it comes from<p>In the aftermath of her passing, it was reported that Queen Elizabeth <a href="https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/accent-fun-its-revealed-queen-7784099">could speak</a> the local dialect of Balmoral and the region around it. This dialect of the north-east of Scotland – called <a href="https://benjamins.com/catalog/veaw.t8">the Doric</a> by local people –- is a distinctive, well-preserved form of the <a href="https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-northern-and-insular-scots.html">Scots language</a>. </p>
<p>“Doric” is a term used across Europe during the Renaissance to refer to rougher, but more genuine forms of language, in comparison to the “Attic” of the cities, smart but corrupt. Today, the Doric is spoken across non-<a href="https://theconversation.com/bilingualism-why-boosting-the-rights-of-minority-language-speakers-could-help-save-gaelic-in-scotland-143767">Gaelic</a> Scotland and in pockets in the northernmost counties of Ireland. </p>
<p>Though a close relative of standard English, Scots has a different history, <a href="https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-a-sociolinguistic-history-of-scotland.html">as I have shown</a> in my book, A Sociolinguistic History of Scotland. It was the official language of the Scottish state in the 15th and 16th centuries, before being dialectalised under English, much like Occitan was under French, from the 17th century. This is the process by which a state language loses its social functions.</p>
<p>Socially, North-East <a href="https://theconversation.com/outlander-is-boosting-a-renaissance-of-the-scots-language-heres-how-101643">Scots</a> is of the soil. Its distinctiveness derives from the traditional work and lives of its inhabitants, in particular, farming and fishing. This means that much which made it so distinctive has faded as the world has changed. Many speakers of dense dialect remain, however, and are often celebrated in their communities.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A rural hut with a red roof in mountainous countryside under a cloudy sky." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484012/original/file-20220912-20-2yzrav.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484012/original/file-20220912-20-2yzrav.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484012/original/file-20220912-20-2yzrav.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484012/original/file-20220912-20-2yzrav.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484012/original/file-20220912-20-2yzrav.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484012/original/file-20220912-20-2yzrav.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/484012/original/file-20220912-20-2yzrav.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Scots is an earthy language, rooted in traditional ways of life.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/wooden-cottage-mountains-scotland-landscape-angus-1060127870">iweta0077 | shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Archaic linguistic features</h2>
<p>The best way to demonstrate what the Doric sounds like is to give an example.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A bus filled with old farmers from the north-east has stopped outside a <em>friterie</em> in Belgium. One of the farmers comes out of the chip shop looking disconsolate.</p>
<p>“<em>Fit’s vrang, Davie</em>?” says the bus driver.</p>
<p>“<em>Ah gings in an says til e quinie ‘A pyokie o chups, quine’. She leukit at me like Ah’d gaen gyte</em>,” says the old farmer.</p>
<p>The bus driver goes into the chip shop and says, “One pommes frites, please.” The young woman smiles and gives him a bag of chips.</p>
<p>“<em>Dod, man, Ah didna ken ye spikk Belgish</em>,” says the farmer.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As this example shows, North-East Scots is very distinctive in terms of pronunciation, including in relation to other dialects of Scots. In Scotland, as is also true in most of Ireland, “wh” words are pronounced differently from “w”, almost as if the “h” preceded the “w”. One shibboleth, or highly marked feature, of North-East Scots is that “wh” is in fact pronounced “f”. </p>
<p>Hence, the bus driver enquiring of the disconsolate farmer, “<em>Fit’s vrang</em>?”, meaning “What’s wrong?”. The classic local greeting is “<em>Fit like</em>?”, the stereotypical answer being “<em>Jist tyaavin awaa</em>”, (“Just struggling along”). </p>
<p>The Doric can be very conservative. Many of its features are long since extinct in other varieties of <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-a-brilliant-18th-century-linguist-linked-the-celtic-languages-132572">Scots and English</a>. This can be seen in “<em>vrang</em>” for “wrong”, which still uses a consonant before the “r”, as opposed to contemporary English, in which the “w” has been <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110897661.7/html">obsolete since the 17th century</a>. Similarly, local people call a carpenter a “<em>vricht</em>” (which is akin to the archaic English “wright”) and a naughty child, a “<em>vratch</em>” (like the English “wretch”).</p>
<h2>Borrowings from Scandinavia</h2>
<p>The vocabulary used is also strikingly different from English. In the above passage we have “<em>gyte</em>” meaning “mad”. This is common to many dialects of Scots. </p>
<p>“<em>Quinie</em>”, meanwhile, is a highly local word, meaning “girl” or “young woman”. This is related either to the archaic English “quean” meaning “woman (of ill repute)” or “queen”. Interestingly, in Norwegian, the word for “woman” is “<em>kvinne</em>”. Aberdeen, it should be noted, is considerably closer to Bergen than to London.</p>
<p>Then there is the use of the diminutive “-ie”, which is particularly prevalent in the north-east. See “<em>pyokie</em>” for “bag”. An older man is a “<em>mannie</em>”, who lives in a “<em>hoosie</em>” (a house) with his “<em>wifie</em>” (wife), and so on.</p>
<p>Many of the distinctive local words are of Gaelic origin. “<em>Clyack</em>”, meaning “harvest festival”, derives from a Gaelic word for a young woman. This refers to the corn dolly used in the festivities. </p>
<p>Another word which surprised me when I moved to Aberdeen is “<em>stew</em>” for “dust”. It was probably borrowed from a Scandinavian language in the Middle Ages. In other dialects the primary word for dust is “<em>stoor</em>”, which is of French origin.</p>
<p><a href="https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-modern-scots.html">Scots</a> has been and is a language of high literature. The north-east takes a strong place in this literature, in the figures of, for example, the poets and Aberdeenshire natives Charles Murray (1884-1941), and Sheena Blackhall (1947-).</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/U8txQMIxKIk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>In 2001, Scots was <a href="https://www.gov.scot/policies/languages/scots/">recognised</a> as a language worthy of protection by the UK government. More recently, the Scottish government announced a <a href="https://www.gov.scot/publications/consultation-scottish-government-commitments-gaelic-scots-scottish-languages-bill/">consultation</a> on a Scottish Languages Bill, which would give Scots further protection alongside Gaelic. </p>
<p>It is entirely fitting that Queen Elizabeth spoke the Doric. Many of her ancestors wrote in Scots. James I and James V of Scotland were accomplished poets. James VI (and I of England) wrote prose in the language and indeed continued to speak the language when he ascended to the thrones of Ireland and England. </p>
<p>As well as her many happy memories of Balmoral, the Queen might also have been drawn to the language because of her childhood visits to her mother’s family home in Angus. There they speak a dialect not terribly different from those spoken on the other side of the mountains. Much has been made, in Aberdeenshire, of the Queen being a local. In many ways, she was.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190385/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert McColl Millar does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Queen’s love for the Scottish highlands was well-documented. Fewer knew she could speak the language too.Robert McColl Millar, Professor in Linguistics and Scottish Language, University of AberdeenLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1335712020-03-13T12:03:52Z2020-03-13T12:03:52ZSt Patrick’s Day: how a saint’s day played a key role in the struggle for Irish nationhood<p>Traditionally, March 17 was a day to remember St Patrick, who ministered Christianity in Ireland during the 5th century. But over time, the day has evolved to represent a celebration of Irish culture more generally. Today, as with Halloween and Christmas, the true meaning of the celebration has been watered down even further. Now, it is just as likely to be marked by non-Irish people who use it as an excuse to consume large quantities of alcohol and dress as leprechauns.</p>
<p>Amid the dyed-green rivers and pints of Guinness, it can be easy to forget the symbolic importance of St Patrick’s Day to Irish people in the early 20th century. This was a turbulent period, when Ireland was seeking political autonomy from British rule. At a time when the British considered any form of Irish public gathering to be <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=eAuAAgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=st+patrick+gaelic+revival&ots=z19Gu2eu_n&sig=xyILWpMIV_fLMIyWqVnPRYLIM7I&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=fenian%20activity&f=false">“a front for Fenian [nationalist] activities, a license for drunkenness and a catalyst to violent disorder”</a> it became of national concern to make St Patrick’s Day a respectable holiday. This was achieved thanks to the efforts of the <a href="https://www.yourirish.com/history/19th-century/the-foundation-of-the-gaelic-league-1893">Gaelic League</a>.</p>
<p>The Gaelic League, or <em>Conradh na Gaeilge</em>, was established in 1893 by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Eoin-MacNeill">Eoin MacNeill</a> to encourage the use of Irish in everyday life and counter the ongoing anglicisation of the country. It was formed as part of the Gaelic revival, or <em>Athbheochan na Gaeilge</em>, which promoted a national revival of interest in Irish language and culture. The League aimed to “<a href="https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3815977/3815988/148/gaelic%20revival">leave politics outside the door</a>” and work together to further the cause of the revival and preservation of Irish language and culture.</p>
<p>The League played an important role in making Irishness something of which people were proud. It organised weekly gatherings to discuss Irish culture, established its own newspaper (<em>An Claidheamh Soluis</em>), provided Irish alternatives to imported pastimes and entertainment, encouraged Irish people to buy Irish goods only and successfully campaigned to have Irish included in the school curriculum. </p>
<p>At this time, Irish people could still be imprisoned by order of British law for <a href="https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3377876/3377882/114/gaelic%20league">using their native language</a> on official documents. So the League protested by encouraging citizens to address all letters and record all census returns in Irish. Edmund Kent became <a href="http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/reels/nai000129689/">Éamonn Ceannt</a>, for example, and Oscar Traynor became <a href="http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/reels/nai000041523/">Osgar Ua Tréinfhir</a>.</p>
<h2>Making a national holiday</h2>
<p>Although Saint Patrick’s feast day had been celebrated in Ireland since the 9th century it was still not a national holiday. Campaigning to make St Patrick’s Day a bank holiday became one of the League’s top concerns. March 17 represented a symbolic occasion for Irish people to reflect on their sense of self and look back with nostalgia at ancient Ireland. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320251/original/file-20200312-111253-12wl015.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320251/original/file-20200312-111253-12wl015.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320251/original/file-20200312-111253-12wl015.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320251/original/file-20200312-111253-12wl015.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320251/original/file-20200312-111253-12wl015.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320251/original/file-20200312-111253-12wl015.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320251/original/file-20200312-111253-12wl015.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">St Patrick depicted in a stained glass window at the Smith Museum of Stained Glass Windows at Navy Pier in Chicago.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Thad Zajdowicz via Flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The figure of St Patrick driving snakes out of Ireland became a metaphor for the struggle against British rule. As an <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=eAuAAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA54&lpg=PA54&dq=to+meet+the+encroachment+of+vile+anglicisation+and+hurl+it+back+into+the+sea,+as+Patrick+hurled+the+snakes+from+our+land.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=z19Gu0cx3o&sig=ACfU3U2rA6ORt7W-feU_wZ8Yt-k0s2m4kQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjmtcWH24_oAhVMQEEAHa9aBhcQ6AEwAHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=to%20meet%20the%20encroachment%20of%20vile%20anglicisation%20and%20hurl%20it%20back%20into%20the%20sea%2C%20as%20Patrick%20hurled%20the%20snakes%20from%20our%20land.%E2%80%9D&f=false">advert in The Gael journal stated</a>, one of the aims of celebrating St Patrick’s Day was “to meet the encroachment of vile anglicisation and hurl it back into the sea, as Patrick hurled the snakes from our land”. In 1903, the Bank Holiday (Ireland) Act 1903 was finally passed in Parliament. The national holiday of St Patrick’s Day was officially enshrined into law.</p>
<p>The Bank Holiday Act had immediately noticeable effects. Before, people marked March 17 by attending church services and wearing shamrocks. Now, parades and processions took place all over the land. In 1903, the Gaelic League arranged the first St Patrick’s Parade in Waterford. They also declared the entire week “Irish Language Week” – organising “language processions”, <em>feiseanna</em> (traditional dances) and concerts to promote the Irish language.</p>
<p>Fundraising was also an integral part of St Patrick’s Day, with money raised from concerts and processions going to the Irish Language Fund. As <a href="https://eirigi.org/latestnews/2020/2/29/117-years-on-seachtain-na-gaeilge-2020-begins">the League stated</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the Irish language is the one remaining link which connects the Ireland of to-day with the Ireland of the past. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>So, it was essential to use St Patrick’s Day to promote it. The Gaelic League was also credited with restoring order and sobriety to St Patrick’s Day. It encouraged the closure of public houses which they believed diminished the purity of the holiday – perhaps ironic given the celebrations that now surround the day.</p>
<h2>Grand Irish nights</h2>
<p>The Gaelic League also promoted the “correct” celebration of St Patrick’s Day amongst Irish communities in England, particularly in Liverpool and London. They argued that organising language processions and Gaelic masses was necessary in countering the “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=eAuAAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA54&lpg=PA54&dq=to+meet+the+encroachment+of+vile+anglicisation+and+hurl+it+back+into+the+sea,+as+Patrick+hurled+the+snakes+from+our+land.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=z19Gu0cx3o&sig=ACfU3U2rA6ORt7W-feU_wZ8Yt-k0s2m4kQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjmtcWH24_oAhVMQEEAHa9aBhcQ6AEwAHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=sham%20patriotism&f=false">sham patriotism</a>” of “Grand Irish Nights” that tended more to “denationalise and demoralise our people than provide healthy amusement”. These concerns show that, even in the early 20th century, some of the arguments we hear today about St Patrick’s Day were already being raised.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320242/original/file-20200312-111253-2i25bq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320242/original/file-20200312-111253-2i25bq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=663&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320242/original/file-20200312-111253-2i25bq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=663&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320242/original/file-20200312-111253-2i25bq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=663&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320242/original/file-20200312-111253-2i25bq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320242/original/file-20200312-111253-2i25bq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320242/original/file-20200312-111253-2i25bq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=833&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fervent Irish nationalist: Padraic Pearse.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">United States Library of Congress</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1915, the Gaelic League became infiltrated by the Irish Republican Brotherhood and by 1918 it had been declared an illegal operation by the British government. It <a href="https://www.rte.ie/centuryireland/index.php/articles/banned-sinn-fein-irish-volunteers-cumann-na-mban-and-the-gaelic-league">saw the League as</a> a “grave menace designed to terrorise the peaceful and law-abiding subjects of His Majesty in Ireland”.</p>
<p>Despite these claims, it is undeniable that the Gaelic League played an integral role in the promotion of Irish language and culture across the world and, as the writer and nationalist <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=GDgahGyGG44C&pg=PA350&lpg=PA350&dq=irish+language+week+1903&source=bl&ots=_uXVIh4SSP&sig=ACfU3U2RSI-v7cXYYf6hHpqlk04CBVQhDg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwid39im2I_oAhVGTcAKHfutCXoQ6AEwCHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=irish%20language%20week%201903&f=false">Pádraic Pearse claimed</a>, was one of the “the most revolutionary influences that has ever come into Ireland”.</p>
<p>Commercialism or nostalgia? Celebration or farce? Cultural appropriation or cultural appreciation? Whatever your view, we have the Gaelic League to thank for the fact that St Patrick’s Day remains a much-loved national holiday which keeps Irish culture at the forefront around the world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/133571/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lauren Alex O'Hagan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Irish language and culture, not Guinness and Leprechaun costumes, were at the heart of early St Patrick’s Day celebrations.Lauren Alex O'Hagan, Research Associate in the Centre for Language and Communication Research, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1305572020-01-28T13:16:10Z2020-01-28T13:16:10ZAutomatic enrolment in Gaelic education will benefit both children and the language<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312051/original/file-20200127-81362-1jrdf0m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C18%2C6144%2C4056&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/smiling-scholar-girl-sitting-other-children-1130197835">Shutterstock/Rido</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It was <a href="https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/scottish-council-becomes-first-to-teach-every-pupil-in-gaelic-1-5079347">announced</a> recently that the Western Isles (Outer Hebrides) Council will <a href="https://www.cne-siar.gov.uk/media/14528/H%208A%20-%20Gaelic%20Enrolment%20Strategy.pdf">automatically enrol</a> primary school children to be taught in Scottish Gaelic unless parents specifically opt to have their child educated in English only.</p>
<p>Gaelic Medium Education (GME), which sees pupils taught primarily in the language, is currently a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-51221475">popular choice</a> in the Western Isles – <a href="https://www2.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/School-Education/dspupcensus/dspupcensus18">nearly 40%</a> of children already attend GME. The Council’s decision represents a change in attitude towards an increased promotion of Gaelic and the benefits of a bilingual education.</p>
<p>In lowland Scotland, too, Gaelic Medium Education is expanding rapidly as more and more parents use their <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2016/8/part/2/enacted">right to request GME</a> for their children. In Glasgow, there are currently <a href="https://www.glasgow.gov.uk/article/17535/Gaelic">three GME primary schools</a> and plans to build a <a href="https://www.scotsman.com/education/scottish-government-pledges-2m-for-further-gaelic-education-1-5021937">fourth</a>, as well as a long-established secondary school. There is one GME primary school in Edinburgh, with <a href="https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/education/edinburgh-council-open-new-gaelic-schools-2024-564586">plans</a> for another and a secondary school. </p>
<p>At the same time as the expansion of GME, interest in learning Gaelic as a second language has soared. More than <a href="https://www.duolingo.com/enroll/gd/en/Learn-Scottish%20Gaelic">170,000 people</a> are using the new Gaelic Duolingo course since its <a href="https://theconversation.com/for-gaelic-to-survive-in-scotland-its-not-enough-to-learn-it-more-people-need-to-use-it-in-their-daily-lives-128417">launch</a> in late 2019. This represents a far larger number than the reported 57,600 speakers of Gaelic in Scotland at the most recent <a href="https://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk/documents/census2021/Scotlands_Census_2011_Gaelic_Report_Part_1.pdf">census</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/for-gaelic-to-survive-in-scotland-its-not-enough-to-learn-it-more-people-need-to-use-it-in-their-daily-lives-128417">For Gaelic to survive in Scotland, it's not enough to learn it – more people need to use it in their daily lives</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Maintaining this interest and increasing the number of speakers will be crucial for Gaelic to continue as a living and breathing language of Scotland. <a href="https://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk/documents/census2021/Scotlands_Census_2011_Gaelic_Report_Part_1.pdf">Census figures</a> have shown a decline in speaker numbers, although this did plateau in the 2011 data and even showed an increase in the youngest age group. </p>
<p>My research on <a href="http://theses.gla.ac.uk/4603/">GME pupils</a> and <a href="http://www.research.lancs.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/identity-accent-aim-and-motivation-in-second-language-users(cf9afc19-ae04-47cc-a659-556daa0f69dc).html">adult second language users</a> of Gaelic has shown that these streams can be successful in enabling speakers to become fluent. For example, in some aspects of speech GME pupils who do not come from Gaelic-speaking households <a href="http://www.research.lancs.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/-(e36eef85-4456-417b-b2db-7bdb8bd54702).html">cannot be distinguished</a> from pupils who have two parents who speak Gaelic. Many of the important positions in Gaelic development and politics are <a href="http://www.soillse.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/New-Speakers%E2%80%99-of-Gaelic-in-Edinburgh-and-Glasgow.pdf">held by adults</a> who learnt Gaelic as an additional language and have become language experts.</p>
<p>As well as strengthening Gaelic in its traditional heartlands of the Western Isles and Highland areas, the availability of GME and language revitalisation strategies in lowland Scotland has led to <a href="https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14160121.research-claims-new-gaelic-speakers-are-developing-a-glasgow-accent/">new linguistic variation</a>. Lowland Gaelic speakers develop their own unique ways of using Gaelic as it adapts for the 21st century. For example, the distinctive rising intonation of Glasgow English is also used in <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/language-in-society/article/new-scottish-gaelic-speakers-in-glasgow-a-phonetic-study-of-language-revitalisation/C2D8BB12C64E7D12B8DD9BFB4E6BEBD1">Glasgow Gaelic</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312235/original/file-20200128-81357-1uo3c4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312235/original/file-20200128-81357-1uo3c4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312235/original/file-20200128-81357-1uo3c4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312235/original/file-20200128-81357-1uo3c4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312235/original/file-20200128-81357-1uo3c4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312235/original/file-20200128-81357-1uo3c4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312235/original/file-20200128-81357-1uo3c4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gearrannan blackhouse village in the Western Isles. Learning Gaelic offers a connection with Scotland’s history and culture.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/gearrannan-blackhouse-village-views-outer-hebrides-1184991616">Shutterstock/MORENO01</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While many of Scotland’s parents, second language learners, Gaelic speakers and Gaelic planners support Gaelic and expansion of the GME system, that support is not universal. Last week, a member of the Scottish parliament <a href="https://www.scotsman.com/education/msps-demand-apology-for-highly-offensive-tory-comments-on-gaelic-education-1-5079566">remarked</a> that GME might harm a child’s educational progress due to the comparative lack of English in the early years curriculum. </p>
<p>These comments have been shown to have no basis in fact. <a href="https://www.gaidhlig.scot/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/OHanlon-2010-Taghadh-coileanadh-FtG-CR09-05-GME-choice-attainment.pdf">Academic research</a> demonstrates that GME pupils have at least as good and often higher attainment in all subjects – including English. Moreover, the Gaelic secondary school in Glasgow is regularly among the <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/gaelic-schools-scale-higher-peaks-nz79hnjhm">highest-achieving state schools in Scotland</a>.</p>
<p>Comments such as these stem from two sources. The first is the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/multilingual/scots_gaelic_history.shtml">historical persecution</a> of Gaelic language and culture, which has its roots in medieval Scotland due to changes in court language, religion and political loyalties. Marginalisation of Gaelic continued throughout the industrial revolution, and as recently as the 20th century children <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-19076304">were punished</a> for speaking Gaelic in school.</p>
<p>The second source of this negativity is the misconception that a bilingual upbringing may harm a child’s linguistic development. Multiple studies have now shown that bilingualism <a href="http://www.bilingualism-matters.ppls.ed.ac.uk/is-bilingual-education-harmful/">does not hold back</a> a child’s educational attainment. While linguistic development trajectories will differ in monolingual and bilingual children, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6168212/">overall outcomes</a> are excellent.</p>
<p>Gaelic Medium Education provides not only an opportunity for children to become bilingual – and access multiple employment opportunities in both their languages – but also the chance to become bicultural. <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/life-bilingual/201105/how-cultures-combine-and-blend-in-person">Bicultural individuals</a> are able to negotiate the social practices of both their cultures and may be at an <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/life-bilingual/201304/advantages-being-bicultural">advantage</a> in understanding different perspectives. This is surely an asset in a globalised world.</p>
<p>Gaelic is unique to Scotland and those acquiring the language have an unrivalled opportunity to access Gaelic culture through the language’s long <a href="https://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/gaelic-modern-scotland/content-section-6.4">literary</a> and <a href="https://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/gaelic-modern-scotland/content-section-6.2">musical</a> traditions. Those who learn Gaelic may become more aware of the languages’s significance in Scotland’s <a href="https://www.scotland.org/about-scotland/history-timeline">history</a> such as the Gaelic-speaking clans, the Jacobite rebellions and the Highland Clearances. </p>
<p>Even Scotland’s name <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Scot">originates</a> in a word referring to Gaelic speakers. This unique cultural heritage is not only of benefit to those acquiring Gaelic, but is widely recognised as an <a href="https://www.visitscotland.org/binaries/content/assets/dot-org/pdf/gaelic-tourism-strategy.pdf">economic asset</a> for Scotland.</p>
<p>The Western Isles Council has made a clear shift of perspective in deciding to automatically enrol children in Gaelic Medium Education. Their decision reflects prevailing parental opinion, and also provides young people with the valuable opportunity to become bilingual and bicultural citizens.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130557/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Claire Nance does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Education in Gaelic is hugely valuable in keeping the language alive in Scotland.Claire Nance, Lecturer in Phonetics and Phonology, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1284172019-12-18T13:26:22Z2019-12-18T13:26:22ZFor Gaelic to survive in Scotland, it’s not enough to learn it – more people need to use it in their daily lives<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305663/original/file-20191206-90557-tsab0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/bilingual-road-sign-english-gaelic-northern-4158901">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Launched to coincide with St Andrew’s Day this year on November 30, language app Duolingo’s Gaelic course attracted an impressive <a href="https://www.duolingo.com/courses">103,000</a> active learners in its first two weeks – outstripping <a href="https://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk/documents/analytical_reports/Report_part_1.pdf">the number of actual Gaelic speakers</a> in Scotland. The figure also represented more than <a href="https://www.gaidhlig.scot/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/G%C3%A0idhlig-do-dhInbhich-FIOS-DHEALBH-2018-INFOGRAPHIC-Gaelic-for-Adults.pdf">18 times</a> the number of adults learning the language in 2018.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.poileasaidh.celtscot.ed.ac.uk/MCLEODCATALAN2.pdf">Gaelic</a> was spoken in most of Scotland until the 11th century, but a gradual decline in the language means that today, <a href="https://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk/documents/analytical_reports/Report_part_1.pdf">most</a> of the of the country’s Gaelic speakers in Scotland live in the <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/place/Harris/@57.6608334,-7.9536986,8z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x488d994a185ff281:0x955e10628e919da9!8m2!3d57.9932604!4d-6.8736215">Outer Hebrides</a> (<em>Na h-Eileanan Siar</em>).</p>
<p>It is recognised as a <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2005/7/contents">national language of Scotland</a> and initiatives such as the dedicated Gaelic language channel <a href="https://www.bbc.com/aboutthebbc/scotland/commissioning/gaelic">BBC Alba</a> and the growth of <a href="https://www.gaidhlig.scot/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/D%C3%A0ta-Foghlaim-AM-FOLLAIS-2018-19-egn-3-PUBLIC-Education-Data-8.pdf">Gaelic Medium Education</a> have brought opportunities to those living across Scotland to hear and learn the language.</p>
<p>These initiatives were given a further boost when Gaelic joined a range of <a href="http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/lang/3049">endangered languages</a> (including Hawaiian, Navajo and Irish) to be added to the Duolingo platform after a successful <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/ScottishGaelicDuo/">social media campaign</a> lobbied for its inclusion.</p>
<p>Of course, not all of the 103,000 people who signed up to Duolingo will be new to Gaelic – and not all will continue with it – but the potential to bring new speakers to the language is considerable. It also raises the question of how this can be used to support the long-term survival of the language, which is considered to be <a href="http://www.unesco.org/languages-atlas/index.php">in trouble</a> in Scotland.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307657/original/file-20191218-11900-15vtbuv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307657/original/file-20191218-11900-15vtbuv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307657/original/file-20191218-11900-15vtbuv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307657/original/file-20191218-11900-15vtbuv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307657/original/file-20191218-11900-15vtbuv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307657/original/file-20191218-11900-15vtbuv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307657/original/file-20191218-11900-15vtbuv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Gaelic is mostly spoken in the Outer Hebrides, in places like Harris.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/beach-water-isle-harris-scotland-1381495343">Shutterstock</a></span>
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<h2>Keeping the language alive</h2>
<p>As with any endangered language, Gaelic’s health and vitality is often measured by the number of speaker – <a href="http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CLT/pdf/Language_vitality_and_endangerment_EN.pdf">both</a> as an absolute number and as a percentage of the overall population. The larger the number of speakers and the greater the percentage of the population, the more chance the language will survive and continue. </p>
<p>Languages considered “safe” typically maintain the speaker population at a steady level through the language passing from generation to generation, where children learn it in the home. Languages that are endangered – including Gaelic – often have low levels of generation to generation sharing as a result of caregivers being unable or unwilling to speak the language.</p>
<p>In these situations the language needs to rely on <a href="http://www.soillse.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/New-Speakers%E2%80%99-of-Gaelic-in-Edinburgh-and-Glasgow.pdf">new speakers</a> – individuals who have learned a language outside the home, perhaps at school or as adults, and can use it in their daily lives. Learning a language and being able to speak it is <a href="https://era.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/10636?show=full">not the same</a> as actively using a language. </p>
<p>The need to increase both the number of speakers of Gaelic and those using it was recognised in the <a href="https://era.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/10636?show=full">Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act of 2005</a>. This aimed to secure the status of Gaelic by making it an official language of Scotland, commanding equal respect with the English language.</p>
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<p>As a result, <a href="https://www.gaidhlig.scot/bord/about-us/">Bòrd na Gàidhlig</a> was established to oversee its promotion through a <a href="https://www.gaidhlig.scot/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/National-Gaelic-Language-Plan-2018-23.pdf">national plan for Gaelic</a>. It was also set up to support the creation of Gaelic language plans by public bodies, helping them to set out their strategies for promoting the language within the services their organisations provide.</p>
<p>These plans have contributed to the increasing visibility of Gaelic in the public landscape – such as bilingual <a href="https://www.ainmean-aite.scot/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Scotrail.pdf">railway station names</a> and <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michael_Hornsby2/publication/304652555_Minority_Semiotic_Landscapes_An_Ideological_Minefield/links/5813c03f08aeb720f68294df/Minority-Semiotic-Landscapes-An-Ideological-Minefield.pdf">road signs</a>. My own <a href="http://www.soillse.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/Inge-Birnie-G%C3%A0idhlig-ga-bruidhinn-an-seo.pdf">research</a> has shown that, while the inclusion of Gaelic on signs raises the visibility of the language, bilingual signs do not result in greater spoken language use. But it did find a link between individuals hearing Gaelic being used and being willing to use the language themselves in that particular place.</p>
<p>This is not surprising. All Gaelic speakers speak English and it can be difficult to identify Gaelic speakers in a community unless you hear a person use the language themselves. People felt encouraged to use their own Gaelic skills when they heard other people speak the language, even where most of the other conversations were in English.</p>
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<p>The focus needs to be not just on creating new Gaelic speakers, but also ensuring that those who have learned the language, or are learning through the likes of Duolingo for example, can hear it spoken in the community, with opportunities to use it themselves. </p>
<p>This is no easy task – less than 2% of the Scottish population can speak Gaelic. But perhaps <em>Bòrd na Gàidhlig</em>’s new programme, <a href="https://www.gaidhlig.scot/the-cleachdi-initiative/"><em>Cleachd i</em></a> (Use it), based on the Welsh <a href="http://www.comisiynyddygymraeg.cymru/hybu/en/Pages/Iaith-Gwaith.aspx"><em>Iaith Gwaith</em> initiative</a>, might provide the answer. Speakers are asked to indicate their willingness to speak Gaelic by wearing a small badge or lanyard to encourage conversations in the language. If all those who signed up for the Duolingo Gaelic course got on board, we might start hearing Gaelic being used all across Scotland once more.</p>
<p>The situation for Gaelic is critical – the number of speakers needs to increase. But just as important is the increase in its actual use. Now the real focus should be on ensuring that people are speaking the language in their daily lives. Shops and other community settings should encourage the use of spoken Gaelic. Speakers need to be offered the opportunity to use the language in their communities. Learning the language is not enough. Only by turning those learning and speaking Gaelic into people who use it every day will this important historic language survive.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128417/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ingeborg Birnie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>More people than ever are choosing to learn Gaelic, but Scotland needs a strategy to ensure they are using the language in their everyday lives.Ingeborg Birnie, Lecturer in Gaelic and Education, University of Strathclyde Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1266312019-11-11T17:09:06Z2019-11-11T17:09:06ZBilingualism and dementia: how some patients lose their second language and rediscover their first<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301103/original/file-20191111-194641-14t8ggc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Being bilingual can delay onset of dementia, but sometimes patients revert to their mother tongue, leaving them isolated.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/living-alzheimers-disease-two-trees-shape-100688473">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For many people with dementia, memories of early childhood appear more vivid than their fragile sense of the present. But what happens when the present is experienced through a different language than the one spoken in childhood? And how might carers and care homes cope with the additional level of complexity in looking after <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ana.24158">bilingual people living with dementia</a>? </p>
<p>This is not just relevant for people living with dementia and those who care for them. It can provide insights into the human mind that are equally important to brain researchers, social scientists and even artists.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><strong>Read more: <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-alzheimers-disease-24662">Explainer: what is Alzheimer’s disease?</a></strong></em> </p>
<hr>
<p>This relationship between dementia and bilingualism was the focus of <a href="https://ewds2.strath.ac.uk/Default.aspx?tabid=1306&articleType=ArticleView&articleid=13669">a workshop</a> we held recently in Glasgow. Bringing together healthcare professionals, volunteers, community activists, dementia researchers, translation experts, writers and actors, the workshop was organised around a reading of a new play performed by the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Scots-Gaelic-language">Gaelic language</a> group, Theatre Tog-ì. </p>
<p>The play, Five to Midnight, centres on a native Gaelic speaker from the <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/place/Lewis+and+Harris/@57.7937291,-6.6915454,8z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x488d9f021d5b2073:0x1302d3ff6e73b999!8m2!3d58.2436089!4d-6.6672018">Outer Hebrides</a> whose English begins to fade as her dementia develops. Her English-speaking husband increasingly finds himself cut off from his wife as she retreats into the past and to a language he does not understand. The couple’s pain and frustration at their inability to communicate is harrowing. </p>
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<h2>Health, well-being and culture</h2>
<p>It soon became clear in the workshop that the minority-language subject matter of the play was not a rare, isolated case but rather one that connects to a broader range of important issues such as health, well-being and preserving cultural heritage for <a href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-10-09/my-grandmothers-disease-has-stolen-her-memories-and-our-common-language">future generations</a>.</p>
<p>We heard stories from people working in care homes in Ireland, Scotland and Wales that told how bilingual people with advanced forms of dementia and almost no linguistic skills, were transformed by care workers who could speak the patient’s mother tongue. As with many people living with dementia, <a href="https://www.dementiauk.org/get-support/complementary-approaches/music/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMImKD3ksTY5QIVC7TtCh1kzg3WEAAYAiAAEgLG0vD_BwE">music and song</a> were often the keys that unlocked the flow of words and memories.</p>
<p>In Wales, where the number of Welsh speakers is estimated to be <a href="https://gov.wales/welsh-language-data-annual-population-survey-july-2018-june-2019">891,000</a>, the issue of ageing bilingual speakers with dementia is far more acute than in Scotland. One solution has been to place magnetic “Welsh spoken” signs on the hospital beds of Welsh speakers so that staff who speak the language themselves know they can communicate with patients in their mother tongue.</p>
<p>Bilingualism in the context of dementia affects millions of migrants all over the world. If parents have abandoned their original language to speak only English (or the dominant language of their adopted country) with their children, whole generations grow up cut off from their cultural heritage, unable to speak their parents’ language.</p>
<p>Which means first-generation migrants who develop dementia may find themselves unable to communicate with their own children as they revert to the language they used in their youth. At the workshop, a member of a local language-learning enterprise called <a href="https://www.lingoflamingo.co.uk/">Lingo Flamingo</a> explained this is why it organises <a href="https://search.volunteerscotland.net/opportunity/a0g1p00000FJxy3AAD/lingo-flamingo-volunteers">befriending programmes</a> for older people and patients with dementia, using languages such as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Punjabi-language">Punjabi</a>, spoken by people of Indian and Pakistani origin.</p>
<p>The varied backgrounds of the our workshop participants meant a wide range of topics were discussed, including the issue of language and translation in <a href="https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/dementia-professionals/resources-professionals/publications/assessing-cognition-older-people-toolkit">cognitive assessment</a> and diagnosis, the <a href="https://escholarship.org/uc/item/92f4233q">brain science behind bilingualism</a>, language-appropriate and culturally relevant care, language and identity, the loss and rediscovery of culture and language, and the sharing of minority languages down through families.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301105/original/file-20191111-194624-yhx51m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301105/original/file-20191111-194624-yhx51m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301105/original/file-20191111-194624-yhx51m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301105/original/file-20191111-194624-yhx51m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301105/original/file-20191111-194624-yhx51m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301105/original/file-20191111-194624-yhx51m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301105/original/file-20191111-194624-yhx51m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Bilingual dementia patients often improve if carers can communicate with them in their original language.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/asian-elderly-women-wearing-blue-shirt-1465634576">Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>The workshop also explored the role of the arts in raising public awareness of the reality of dementia in relation to language, as well as providing creative outlets for bilingual patients and their carers. As Five to Midnight demonstrated, the human stories the arts can tell are an engaging and affecting way to educate the public about dementia.</p>
<h2>Linguistic diversity</h2>
<p>Britain often imagines itself to be a monolingual English-speaking country, but alongside native minority Celtic languages there are bi/multilingual speakers from around the world in most of the UK’s major cities. The same is true for many other countries: linguisitic diversity is in fact far more common across the world than the existence of a single language.</p>
<p>Loss of language skills is a common effect of dementia, and research suggests that the resulting challenges may be more complex for bilingual dementia patients and their carers. As our workshop revealed, identifying this complexity is a first step in addressing the issue at a practical and a policy level.</p>
<p>However, the workshop also explored the positive effects of bilingualism in the context of dementia. Research from countries such as <a href="https://n.neurology.org/content/81/22/1938?ijkey=6b2bd0ebadbb00ea1ccab65d172aa56f7425337e&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha">India</a> has shown that people who speak more than one language tend to develop dementia four to five years later.</p>
<p>These findings are in line with many <a href="https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/STROKEAHA.115.010418e">other studies</a>, suggesting a milder age-related decline in cognitive ability and a better recovery of brain function after stroke in those who are bilingual. So it is important that we do not see bilingualism as part of the problem but as a potential part of the <a href="https://www.meits.org/policy-papers/paper/healthy-linguistic-diet">solution</a>.</p>
<p>Whether we approach the issue from the point of view of health and care provision, brain science or art and literature, our workshop showed the need to appreciate all the languages spoken by one person as an integral part of who they are – in sickness and in health.</p>
<p><em>Are you a relative or carer of a bilingual/multilingual patient? Or bilingual or multingual youself? Get involved in our research by taking part in our survey on language preferences across lifetime <a href="https://edinburgh.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6ySpqYdw2yyH1s1">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126631/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ingeborg Birnie received small research grant from Soillse, the national research network for the maintenance and revitalisation of Gaelic language and culture (<a href="http://www.soillse.ac.uk/en/">http://www.soillse.ac.uk/en/</a>)</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr Thomas H Bak receives funding from AHRC Grant "Multilingualism: Empowering Individuals, Transforming Societies (MEITS)"</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aedin Ni Loingsigh and David Murphy do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Why the lives of bilingual dementia patients can be transformed by finding carers who speak their native language.David Murphy, Professor of French and Postcolonial Studies, University of Strathclyde Aedin Ni Loingsigh, Lecturer in French and Translation Studies, University of StirlingIngeborg Birnie, Lecturer in Gaelic and Education, University of Strathclyde Thomas H Bak, Reader in Human Cognitive Neuroscience, The University of EdinburghLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/855062017-10-24T11:27:51Z2017-10-24T11:27:51ZWillies, ghillies and horny Highlanders: Scottish Gaelic writing has a filthy past<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191416/original/file-20171023-1698-zyb2ep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cheeky. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/big-secret-what-scotsman-wears-under-233022226?src=rWWMw08NdTGQRH9seVbbTg-1-3">Tim Large</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Think of Scotland’s Highlands and islands and you probably think hills, glens, tartan, shortbread, bagpipes, caber-tossing, whisky, haggis, stags in the mist, grandiose aristocrats, bearded ghillies and high-kicking kilted dancers. Or for the more grimly realist among you, there’s clearances, depopulation, the decline of Gaelic culture, Presbyterianism, barren deer forests and disappearing European Union funding. </p>
<p>Either way, sex is unlikely to be near the top of your list. Yet the history and culture of the Highlands is saucier than the lid of a shortbread tin or the contents of a catechism would suggest. You just need to know where to look – or how to listen. </p>
<p>Scottish Gaelic poetry and song has a rich, frank and raucous heritage. Take the Argyll noblewoman Iseabail Ní Mheic Cailéin, for example, who wrote a song 500 years ago in praise of her family priest that would make a BBC Radio 1 programmer shudder:</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189624/original/file-20171010-17676-134rm5w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189624/original/file-20171010-17676-134rm5w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189624/original/file-20171010-17676-134rm5w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=111&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189624/original/file-20171010-17676-134rm5w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=111&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189624/original/file-20171010-17676-134rm5w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=111&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189624/original/file-20171010-17676-134rm5w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=139&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189624/original/file-20171010-17676-134rm5w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=139&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189624/original/file-20171010-17676-134rm5w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=139&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>This may have been anti-clerical propaganda, which was not uncommon at the time, but it is also an unabashed acknowledgement of female sexuality and desire – and a generous advertisement for Fergus, whoever he may have been.</p>
<h2>Caber capers</h2>
<p>Poems in praise of penises were part of a vibrant if often anonymous body of erotic verse that burgeoned between the 16th and 18th centuries. It perhaps peaked with 18th-century poet <a href="http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poetry/poets/alasdair-mac-mhaighstir-alasdair">Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair</a> (Alexander MacDonald). The greatest Gaelic poet of all, he was also the most explicit by some way. A classic example is In Praise of a Fine Prick:</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189629/original/file-20171010-17697-901d0j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189629/original/file-20171010-17697-901d0j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189629/original/file-20171010-17697-901d0j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=55&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189629/original/file-20171010-17697-901d0j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=55&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189629/original/file-20171010-17697-901d0j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=55&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189629/original/file-20171010-17697-901d0j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=69&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189629/original/file-20171010-17697-901d0j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=69&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189629/original/file-20171010-17697-901d0j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=69&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>For those that don’t know, the chanter is the pipe part of the bagpipes. The same instrument is also integral to two poems Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair wrote about his wife, both of them based on the rhythms of pipe music. In Praise of Morag likens his wife’s breasts to “geal criostal” (white crystal) and lily of the valley, while comparing her sides to bog cotton and her kisses to cinnamon. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191367/original/file-20171023-1717-1126o96.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191367/original/file-20171023-1717-1126o96.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191367/original/file-20171023-1717-1126o96.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=680&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191367/original/file-20171023-1717-1126o96.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=680&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191367/original/file-20171023-1717-1126o96.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=680&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191367/original/file-20171023-1717-1126o96.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=855&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191367/original/file-20171023-1717-1126o96.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=855&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191367/original/file-20171023-1717-1126o96.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=855&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair by Ronald Elliot.</span>
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<p>But then comes In Dispraise of Morag, written after his wife discovered he’d been wooing another woman. Now Morag is “A bhan-pheacach sin gun loinn, / Làn de dh’fhòtas innt” – “a graceless sinful girl, / full of stinking pus”. It demonstrates his great ability to shift from romantic compliments to acid put-downs.</p>
<p>Another of Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair’s interests is rotting bodies – especially genitalia, both male and female. His poem on an outbreak of gonorrhoea in Ardnamurchan in the western Highlands, for example, describes members so “fetid” they’re “shedding their skin”, leaving them “stripped”, “dripping” and “crippled by clap”. This is relatively unusual in Gaelic poetry, though there are parallels in works by <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/r/rabelais/francois/r11g/book3.3.html">François Rabelais</a>, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=33f2AwAAQBAJ&pg=PT312&lpg=PT312&dq=Jonathan+Swift+rotting+bodies&source=bl&ots=REw4IK73JW&sig=Knjpy5ot3GiInS4HmoxzWXvQP4s&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiyq4eKvYbXAhWBJ1AKHfYrCTAQ6AEIODAH#v=onepage&q=Jonathan%20Swift%20rotting%20bodies&f=false">Jonathan Swift</a> and <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xy01AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA61&lpg=PA61&dq=Alexander+Pope+rotting+bodies&source=bl&ots=-jPsjzGPo_&sig=abVD9gU2rXrtQmG2-AnU7mIK6po&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwivo4OXvYbXAhUKK1AKHZv3AigQ6AEIQDAH#v=onepage&q=Alexander%20Pope%20rotting%20bodies&f=false">Alexander Pope</a>. </p>
<h2>Different porridge</h2>
<p>Many images in Gaelic love songs are common to the level of cliche. Breasts are like mountain-peaks, the colour of snow. Flanks curve like swan necks. Voices are sweeter than harp strings. Kisses are honey. Thighs are like tree trunks. </p>
<p>Yet not everything erotic was so open. Often it was hidden behind euphemism, double meaning, double talk and knowing glances. For example, Brochan Lom (Thin Porridge) is a popular example of port-à-beul, which translates as mouth music – a song to dance to. Coming from the oral tradition, it appears to be a celebration of one of the great Highland staples. But one Gaelic scholar has <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b082k9db">recently argued</a> it is actually about semen. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190804/original/file-20171018-32361-1idnuvn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190804/original/file-20171018-32361-1idnuvn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190804/original/file-20171018-32361-1idnuvn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190804/original/file-20171018-32361-1idnuvn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190804/original/file-20171018-32361-1idnuvn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190804/original/file-20171018-32361-1idnuvn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190804/original/file-20171018-32361-1idnuvn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190804/original/file-20171018-32361-1idnuvn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=751&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A quern handmill.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>Such double meanings have largely been lost as a result of the influence of the church and particularly <a href="http://www.scottishhistory.com/articles/highlands/gaelic/gaelic_page2.html">the decline</a> of Gaelic culture in the 19th and 20th centuries. Now even Gaelic speakers struggle to read their own culture. Brochan Lom is often sung by choirs at the <a href="http://www.acgmod.org">Royal National Mòd</a>, the annual Gaelic cultural festival, and famously appeared in the pub scene of the film <a href="http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/441458/index.html">Whisky Galore!</a> (1949). </p>
<p>Another port-à-beul from the oral tradition with saucy undertones is Am Muillean Dubh (The Black Mill), but you’ll likely miss the euphemism unless you know how to grind by pushing the rather phallic hand stone into the traditional quern to pound the grain. The “black mill” in the song is the vagina. The song associates it – perhaps fearfully – with devilish temptation:</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190806/original/file-20171018-32382-1x443bp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190806/original/file-20171018-32382-1x443bp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190806/original/file-20171018-32382-1x443bp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=100&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190806/original/file-20171018-32382-1x443bp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=100&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190806/original/file-20171018-32382-1x443bp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=100&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190806/original/file-20171018-32382-1x443bp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=125&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190806/original/file-20171018-32382-1x443bp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=125&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190806/original/file-20171018-32382-1x443bp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=125&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Even from a cursory glance at old Gaelic verse, things are clearly going on that are missing from our understanding of Highland culture. We need to recognise the bawdy sense of mischief that was common currency in the tradition before it was swept aside by the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks3/history/uk_through_time/religion_through_time/revision/6/">religious revival</a> in the 19th century. In contrast to the shortbread tin image of Highland culture, this sheds vital light on the past and the present – as Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair would have it, breasts, pricks, warts and all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85506/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Mackay does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Most people’s shortbread-tin ideas about the Highlands and Islands are missing a key traditional ingredient.Peter Mackay, Lecturer in Literature, University of St AndrewsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/768112017-04-27T17:08:30Z2017-04-27T17:08:30ZDid Europe’s leading fire festival do a deal with the Devil to stay alight?<p>In the heart of Edinburgh on the eve of May Day every year is an ancient Gaelic fire festival called Beltane. Set on the imposing <a href="http://www.edinburghguide.com/parks/caltonhill">Calton Hill</a>, opposite the headquarters of the Scottish government, this year marks 30 years since the ancient tradition was revived by a group of alternative artists. </p>
<p>It is now one of the most celebrated spectacles in the city’s events calendar, and the biggest of its kind in Europe. It is sometimes attended by more than 10,000 revellers – and it also happens to be 20 years since I first took part as one of the drummers. </p>
<p>Beltane has certainly paid a price for its current status, having professionalised and to some extent sanitised along the way. So was the journey worth it, and can alternative festivals go mainstream and still matter?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.newgrange.com/beltane.htm">Beltane</a> was originally one of four ancient Gaelic festivals that took place throughout Europe to celebrate the passage of the seasons (along with <a href="https://www.digitalmedievalist.com/opinionated-celtic-faqs/samain/">Samhuinn</a>, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/paganism/holydays/imbolc.shtml">Imbolc</a> and <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/296380946/Lughnasadh-Research-PDF">Lughnasadh</a>). Its <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-golden-bough-9780199538829?q=The%20golden%20bough&lang=en&cc=gb">origins</a> lie in the celebration of spring and the fertility of land, livestock and people. </p>
<p>The name is thought to originate from a Gaelic-Celtic word meaning “<a href="https://beltane.org/about/about-beltane/">bright/sacred fire</a>”, and a common element of these festivals was the “Neid-Fire”, lit by a spiritual figurehead. From this source, communal bonfires were lit and individual home fires were re-lit as a purifying rite – with “<a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-golden-bough-9780199538829?q=The%20golden%20bough&lang=en&cc=gb">plenty of beer and whisky</a>” swallowed along the way. </p>
<p>These festivals were discouraged in later, God-fearing centuries and were mostly discontinued in the prim Victorian era. In Scotland, only Edinburgh’s Beltane survived into the early 20th century until its beacon was extinguished, too. </p>
<h2>A new flame</h2>
<p>Then came a group in the late 1980s led by <a href="http://nva.org.uk/about/">Angus Farquhar</a>, then of industrial band <a href="http://testdept.org.uk">Test Dept</a>. Others included the poet <a href="http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poetry/poets/hamish-henderson">Hamish Henderson</a> and the folklorist <a href="https://www.margaretbennett.co.uk">Margaret Bennett</a>, then of Edinburgh University’s <a href="http://www.ed.ac.uk/literatures-languages-cultures/celtic-scottish-studies/archives">School of Scottish Studies</a>, and choreographers <a href="http://lindsayjohn.weebly.com/index.html">Lindsay John</a> and <a href="http://www.elizabethranken.com">Elizabeth Ranken</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167060/original/file-20170427-15105-p7f22y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167060/original/file-20170427-15105-p7f22y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167060/original/file-20170427-15105-p7f22y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=688&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167060/original/file-20170427-15105-p7f22y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=688&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167060/original/file-20170427-15105-p7f22y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=688&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167060/original/file-20170427-15105-p7f22y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=864&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167060/original/file-20170427-15105-p7f22y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=864&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167060/original/file-20170427-15105-p7f22y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=864&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Calton Hill.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Calton_Hill_from_a_kite.jpg#/media/File:Calton_Hill_from_a_kite.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
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<p>While the old Beltane had taken place on <a href="https://www.scottishsport.co.uk/walking/arthurseat.htm">Arthur’s Seat</a>, the hills that overlook the city, these organisers chose nearby Calton Hill because permission was easier. It is the site of Edinburgh’s unfinished acropolis the <a href="http://www.edinburghguide.com/parks/caltonhill">National Monument</a>, which at the time had a negative reputation as a no-go part of the city come dusk. The hill also acts as the symbolic seat of power for the Scottish government, which added to the sense of playful subversion they had in mind. </p>
<p>The original free all-night festival was attended by just a couple of hundred people. It was about protest as celebration, against the black and white politics of 1980s Britain. It overlapped with the wider British <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01438300600625408">free festival scene</a> that had led to the era of Stonehenge as <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-battle-of-the-beanfield-the-violent-new-age-traveller-clash-with-police-at-stonehenge-remembered-10287028.html">contested site</a>, later culminating in acid house raves, road protests and the controversial <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1994/33/part/V/crossheading/powers-in-relation-to-raves">Criminal Justice Act 1994</a>. </p>
<p>The core has always been a procession of the <a href="https://beltane.org/2017/04/14/whos-who-on-the-hill/">May Queen</a>, the death and rebirth of the <a href="https://beltane.org/2016/12/27/calling-our-next-green-man-for-beltane-2017/">Green Man</a>, and the lighting of a bonfire, all set to the beating of drums, fire and acrobatics. Among the additional characters are <a href="https://beltane.org/category/reds/">the Reds</a>, who embody the carnivalesque, the fools who become kings for a night, and the need in all of us to let loose and go wild. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167090/original/file-20170427-15102-c8rc2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167090/original/file-20170427-15102-c8rc2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167090/original/file-20170427-15102-c8rc2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167090/original/file-20170427-15102-c8rc2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167090/original/file-20170427-15102-c8rc2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167090/original/file-20170427-15102-c8rc2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167090/original/file-20170427-15102-c8rc2l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/patrickdown/17141150920/in/photolist-s7GSYQ-27RCY-27RFV-4KWjHj-4HLhs-4HLhA-D6CpG-6jNnCL-Jp6Zu-6kGAAa-EBDVz-6juUxW-Jp6ZJ-6jqJtR-9fBRmh-6jqJJ2-6jqJDH-6juUvC-6jqJqr-6juULs-6juUrE-6jqJxx-6juUzm-6juUHb-sqhXNR-6jqJyk-6juUF7-6jqJrM-6jqJog-6jqJAn-numX8T-aaWBb-JoZWz-Joo42-6jqJM8-6jqJBZ-dbf2K-7XKZ8W-JoZWx-dbf2N-JpCdY-6juUPS-6jNjoJ-EBDTF-dbgoR-JpBNN-dbgoS-6juUNA-6jJ6xt-sqad5J">Patrick Down</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I joined as one of the Beastie Drummers, who accompany the Reds, having been recruited through a djembe drumming class at Edinburgh University. It was a liberating experience, both primal and modern, all dancing and chanting to the beat of the drums. It would fragment into smaller hillside gatherings until dawn, as boundaries blurred with the audience and we all celebrated a sense of belonging to something forgotten</p>
<h2>Changing times</h2>
<p>The festival has overcome numerous hurdles over the years – the first when Angus Farquhar stepped down in 1992 and the <a href="https://beltane.org/about/">Beltane Fire Society</a> was formed. The new board still had to contend with a darker undercurrent linked to the location and the free nature of the festival, relying on year-round fundraising and bucket donations on the night.</p>
<p>“There were a lot of rougher people when it was free,” says one organiser. “[There was a] violent undertone which never manifested too often but it was there.” The police presence steadily grew and negotiations with the city council became increasingly fraught amid perceived fears about drug dealing, fights and health and safety regulations. </p>
<p>In 2002, I took part in what was to be my final Beltane drumming performance before leaving Edinburgh to work abroad for a time. It also turned out to be the end of the first era since the revival. The festival was <a href="http://www.scotsman.com/news/one-capital-event-we-must-reignite-1-873108">forced to cancel</a> in 2003, reduced to a low-key private ritual elsewhere. In the post-9/11 world, health and safety costs had gone through the roof and bucket donations were no longer adequate. </p>
<p>It returned the following year with low-cost ticketing and a 1am curfew. This removed the minority undercurrent but also “that sense of controlled anarchic freedom”, according to a former organiser. Some more activist supporters felt the spirit had gone, though the performance certainly retained that sense of temporary freedom, transgression from convention and wild abandon. </p>
<p>There was another milestone in 2008 when the Beltane Fire Society was granted charitable status. It now has a mutually respectful relationship with the council and works hard to encourage audience/performer engagement through workshops and additional groups and characters. </p>
<h2>A rite of passage</h2>
<p>The modern Beltane has always been a <a href="https://www.academia.edu/6960759/Tinsley_R._and_Matheson_C._M._2014._Layers_of_passage_The_ritual_performance_and_liminal_bleed_of_the_Beltane_Fire_Festival_Edinburgh">rite of passage</a>. It relies heavily on students and young people from around the world, and the <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261517714000247">audience</a> too is nearly 80% first-time attenders with most resident but not born in Scotland. This has always meant that new performers and organisers have been able to rejuvenate the society’s vision along the way. </p>
<p>Since my Beltane days, I have been through a fair few subsequent rites of passage of my own, one of which will accompany me to my first family-friendly Beltane community open day this weekend. I’ve also secured tickets to attend the main event this year with the school friend I originally signed up with 20 years ago. </p>
<p>The broader political climate too has come full circle for this 30th Beltane, with the Tories dominant and even threatening a comeback in Scotland. The festival might have had to compromise to be embraced by the Edinburgh establishment, but you can expect this year’s celebration to include nods to recent global events and the society’s activist roots. In an era that has forgotten so much of its ancient traditions, better a May Day cup that’s mostly full than nothing left at all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76811/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ross Tinsley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Edinburgh will this year host the 30th Beltane.Ross Tinsley, Lecturer, Tourism, Edinburgh Napier UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/709312017-01-06T14:57:47Z2017-01-06T14:57:47ZCrime novel His Bloody Project put Scottish writing back in the spotlight – here is what’s next<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151982/original/image-20170106-29222-zecvza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Bound for glory?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/pic-329572652/stock-photo-portrait-of-a-young-caucasian-girl-in-glasses-with-books-on-pink-background.html?src=GGJd14km6yQeCWLehRSlsw-4-19">Masson</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Thanks to the success of Graeme Macrae Burnet’s <a href="http://themanbookerprize.com/books/his-bloody-project-by-graeme-macrae-burnet">His Bloody Project</a>, Scottish literature has returned to prominence lately. The historical novel about a teenage boy who commits a triple murder was a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/sep/22/his-bloody-project-sales-booker-shortlist-graeme-macrae-burnet">surprise nominee</a> for the Man Booker Prize and an unexpected bestseller. Published by small Glasgow imprint <a href="http://booksfromscotland.com/2015/10/contraband/">Contraband</a>, it is one of the most successful novels to come out of Scotland in years. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151961/original/image-20170106-18650-vafsv2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151961/original/image-20170106-18650-vafsv2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151961/original/image-20170106-18650-vafsv2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=724&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151961/original/image-20170106-18650-vafsv2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=724&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151961/original/image-20170106-18650-vafsv2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=724&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151961/original/image-20170106-18650-vafsv2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151961/original/image-20170106-18650-vafsv2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151961/original/image-20170106-18650-vafsv2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Burnet reads His Bloody Project.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For a country that many like to associate with gritty fare such as <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/135836.Trainspotting">Trainspotting</a> and <a href="http://www.ianrankin.net/rebus-books-in-order/">Rebus</a>, where does its writing go from here? Besides various other <a href="https://www.bloodyscotland.com/uncategorized/focus-tartan-noir/">crime writers</a>, the big Scottish noises are mainly established figures such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2011/aug/26/john-burnside-life-in-writing">John Burnside</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/06/ali-smith-interview-how-to-be-both">Ali Smith</a>. Little attention has been paid to emerging writers in their twenties and thirties. </p>
<p>You might be tempted to believe novelist Kirsty Gunn’s <a href="http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/scots-authors-face-political-pressure-from-creative-scotland-1-4095679">widely publicised</a> recent <a href="http://www.word-power.co.uk/books/notes-towards-a-national-literature-I9780854111220/">attack</a> on the direction of travel. She accused Scottish literature of having become overly politicised – particularly the way writers are funded by Creative Scotland. She fears the dominance of a nationalist political narrative that awards works that somehow benefit Scottish society or culture rather than artistic merit alone. </p>
<p>While I disagree that there’s a nationalist agenda to blame, I do worry Scottish publishing has become somewhat inward-looking in recent years. With this in mind, here’s what can we expect from the year ahead.</p>
<h2>New work, old guard</h2>
<p>The coming highlights again point to much that is well established – we can expect some high quality. That would include three releases from the always prolific Burnside. There is a collection of poetry, <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/1110441/still-life-with-feeding-snake/">Still Life with Feeding Snake</a>, and his long-awaited new novel, <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/1090381/ashland-vine/">Ashland & Vine</a> (both Jonathan Cape). The novel is about a film student who drinks too much and develops an unlikely friendship with an old woman with a lifetime of stories. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151939/original/image-20170106-18656-1ut4vho.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151939/original/image-20170106-18656-1ut4vho.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151939/original/image-20170106-18656-1ut4vho.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=815&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151939/original/image-20170106-18656-1ut4vho.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=815&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151939/original/image-20170106-18656-1ut4vho.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=815&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151939/original/image-20170106-18656-1ut4vho.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1024&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151939/original/image-20170106-18656-1ut4vho.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1024&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151939/original/image-20170106-18656-1ut4vho.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1024&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">What is Utopia?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Little Toller</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Also from Burnside is a novella, <a href="https://www.littletoller.co.uk/shop/books/little-toller/havergey/">Havergey</a> (Little Toller), which is set on a remote island and explores the idea of Utopia. Combining the same themes as his best work, environmental destruction and community survival, it may again demonstrate his continued relevance to Scottish and British literature – and resistance to easy classification. </p>
<p>Several new works come from internationally established writers who are under-recognised in their country of origin. A good example is Glasgow crime writer
<a href="http://www.denisemina.com">Denise Mina</a>, who ought to be seen as one of Scotland’s best living novelists. Her historical crime novel The Long Drop (Harvill Secker) received ecstatic <a href="http://www.thebookseller.com/news/mina-moves-harvill-secker-orion-325563">early reader responses</a>. It tells the story of Peter Manuel, a serial killer who lived in 1950s Glasgow, and spent a night with the husband and father of two of his victims before being arrested. </p>
<p>Edinburgh-born writer <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/nov/09/interview-shena-mackay">Shena Mackay</a> also falls into this category. Having spent much of her life in London and now based in Southampton, the writer of acclaimed works like <a href="https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-orchard-on-fire/shena-mackay/9780349007212">The Orchard Fire</a> (1995) and <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1061797.Heligoland">Heligoland</a> (2003) has never received appropriate recognition as a Scottish writer. Virago will this year <a href="http://www.thebookseller.com/news/vrago-acquires-mackay-memoir-and-backlist">publish</a> her memoir and continue to reissue her backlist of 15 novels and collections of short stories. The reissues have begun to cement her reputation as one of the greats, and hopefully the memoir will further showcase her extraordinary talents.</p>
<h2>Villages and islanders</h2>
<p>If Mackay and Mina underline the strength of female Scottish writing, Nan Shepherd’s <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-36111759">prominence</a> on a new Scottish £5 note is a reminder that the classics were not all written by men either. Shepherd’s hillwalking memoir <a href="https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-living-mountain/nan-shepherd/robert-macfarlane/9780857861832">The Living Mountain</a> (1944) has become popular in recent years <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-30277488">thanks to</a> championing by various other writers, yet her <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Grampian-Quartet-Weatherhouse-Grampians-Mountain/dp/0862415896">three Modernist novels</a> about rural north-east Scotland remain under-read outside of Scottish universities. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151956/original/image-20170106-18679-1n8uwjq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151956/original/image-20170106-18679-1n8uwjq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151956/original/image-20170106-18679-1n8uwjq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151956/original/image-20170106-18679-1n8uwjq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151956/original/image-20170106-18679-1n8uwjq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151956/original/image-20170106-18679-1n8uwjq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1165&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151956/original/image-20170106-18679-1n8uwjq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1165&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151956/original/image-20170106-18679-1n8uwjq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1165&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Due for reissue.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This looks set to change thanks to Canongate’s release of <a href="http://www.canongate.tv/the-weatherhouse-paperback-canons-edition.html">The Weatherhouse</a> (1930) this month. With a new introduction by the Orcadian writer <a href="http://www.canongate.tv/authors/amyliptrot">Amy Liptrot</a>, whose memoir The Outrun was one of last year’s highlights, The Weatherhouse tells the story of a former soldier’s struggle to adjust to village life after returning from the trenches. </p>
<p>Speaking of vital reissues, Peter Mackay and Iain Macpherson’s <a href="http://www.luath.co.uk/the-light-blue-book.html">The Light Blue Book: 500 Years of Gaelic Love and Transgressive Poetry</a> (Luath) stretches this theme of inclusion to Gaelic verse. It came out just before the turn of the year and challenges popular conceptions with material “that ranges from the suggestive to the erotic to the downright rude”. </p>
<p>On the same theme of minority literatures, the veteran p<a href="http://www.luath.co.uk/a-hundir-inboos-till-a-diein-lied.html">oet Robert Alan Jamieson’s</a> A Hundir Inboos till a Diein Lied: A Poetic Voyage Through the (Linguistic) Margins of Europe (Luath) is set to combine original poems in Shetlandic with translations of work from other marginalised languages, including Hungarian, Icelandic, and Catalan. </p>
<h2>The way ahead</h2>
<p>But if these various releases are important and interesting in different ways, none address the deficit I mentioned at the beginning. The good news is there are also a couple of promising signs of where Scottish writing goes next. </p>
<p>One is Glasgow’s small publishing house <a href="http://www.freightbooks.co.uk">Freight Books</a>. Jim Carruth’s <a href="http://freightbooks.co.uk/killochries-by-jim-carruth.html">Killochries</a> was one of the most important books of 2015, for example, stretching the boundaries of what Scottish poetry can do in the form of a verse-novel. This year Freight is publishing Carruth’s second full-length collection, <a href="http://www.foyles.co.uk/witem/fiction-poetry/black-cart,jim-carruth-9781911332350">Black Cart</a>, which focuses again on his rural upbringing near Glasgow and looks set for a larger audience. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151958/original/image-20170106-18641-bnray2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151958/original/image-20170106-18641-bnray2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151958/original/image-20170106-18641-bnray2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=625&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151958/original/image-20170106-18641-bnray2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=625&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151958/original/image-20170106-18641-bnray2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=625&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151958/original/image-20170106-18641-bnray2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=785&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151958/original/image-20170106-18641-bnray2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=785&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151958/original/image-20170106-18641-bnray2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=785&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rachel McCrum.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Also on Freight will be <a href="http://dangerouswomenproject.org/2016/04/16/the-first-blast/">The First Blast to Awaken Women Degenerate</a>, the first collection by Rachel McCrum, one of the co-founders of the scene-defining <a href="https://rallyandbroad.com">Rally and Broad</a>, a Scottish spoken word/musical cabaret show. </p>
<p>Yet the most discussed upcoming publication of the year is by new publishing venture <a href="http://www.404ink.com/about/">404 Ink</a>, which incidentally received funding from Creative Scotland. This month it <a href="http://www.404ink.com/nasty-women-coming-2017/">launched</a> a crowdfunding pitch for its first collection of essays, Nasty Women, and met its target in less than three days. </p>
<p>Nasty Women will showcase a wide array of female voices, many of them new writers, focusing on intolerance and inequality to cover everything from Trump’s America to pregnancy. Like Freight, the arrival of 404 Ink is a sign that when we talk about cutting-edge Scottish publishing, the small publishers are increasingly defining the scene.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70931/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Timothy C. Baker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Despite the political renaissance, Scotland’s literature is in need of new blood.Timothy C. Baker, Senior Lecturer, Scottish and Contemporary Literature, University of AberdeenLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/445402015-07-13T05:24:42Z2015-07-13T05:24:42ZHow being Celtic got a bad name – and why you should care<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88133/original/image-20150712-17482-71lu4h.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Never a cross word?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St_Martins_Cross_on_Iona.jpg#/media/File:St_Martins_Cross_on_Iona.jpg">Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The British Museum has <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-33463151">just trailed</a> its big new autumn exhibition, “Celts: art and identity”, in partnership with the National Museums of Scotland. Opening in London in September and then moving to Edinburgh next year, director Neil MacGregor said the purpose of this exhibition is “to ask what ‘Celtic’ means and ‘who are the Celts?’” </p>
<p>Working as I do in the field of Celtic studies, I can’t help but feel a twinge of anxiety. These questions have been under the spotlight before, and the results have at times been contentious. To explain what I mean, let me strap myself into my intellectual DeLorean and prepare to go back to the future. </p>
<p>I suspect that few people in universities have seen the name of their field of teaching and research subjected to a sustained attack from the outside. That is what happened to the discipline variously called Celtic studies or sometimes just Celtic, especially in Britain and Ireland in the 1990s. </p>
<p>It started with sensible housecleaning of problematic terminology. This was primarily by archaeologists, who called into question the term “Celtic” for being used lazily and unthinkingly. <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9435280&fileId=S0003598X00084702">They challenged</a> the use of the term to describe art and artefacts, and <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9434705&fileId=S0003598X00086415">extended this criticism</a> to call into question the political and social motivation behind the use of the term more widely. </p>
<p>It was an uncomfortable time, especially as few of those doing the attacking seemed interested in the current fate or health of the modern Celtic languages. Indeed, those on both sides tended to avoid discussing the evidence of language, preferring to focus on art, archaeology, and whether people identified themselves as Celts. Since Celtic as a field of academic study is primarily one based in languages, this was a bit disheartening, and not a little disenfranchising. It seemed we were being told we couldn’t use our own term for our discipline, but based on someone else’s type of evidence.</p>
<p>It is worth remembering that Welsh, Breton, Irish and Scottish Gaelic, and also the revived languages of Cornish and Manx, were particularly stigmatised by law, education and imperial mindsets during the 18th and 19th centuries. Most of the people challenging the term (and quite a few defending it) were based outside the countries where these are spoken as living languages. It is perhaps understandable that in radio interviews and live debates, matters got a bit heated.</p>
<p>The irony was that the discipline had been going through a period of internal soul-searching, worrying that “Celtic” had become a term that could mean anything to anyone. This failure to pay attention to how “Celtic” was used had led scholars into a variety of paradigms about the past – and sometimes the present – that just didn’t stack up. Ideas like <a href="http://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/sbet/10-1_006.pdf">“Celtic Christianity”</a> and <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=D3jfIFUj32IC&pg=PA97&lpg=PA97&dq=sims-williams+celtic+nature+poetry&source=bl&ots=3FtqtAvOSu&sig=2EveDtQUtIsg_rlpH2USQhczGqk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=XoWhVbrCOfDB7AbE-LCYDA&ved=0CCQQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=sims-williams%20celtic%20nature%20poetry&f=false">“Celtic nature poetry”</a> were examined and found wanting, for example. Popular writing generally ignored such concerns. Caught between what Patrick Sims-Williams of Aberystwyth University called <a href="http://vanhamel.nl/codecs/Sims-Williams_1998a">“Celtomania and Celtoscepticism”</a>, most scholars just stopped using the C-word and got on with their work. </p>
<h2>New language barriers</h2>
<p>At the same time, there was another loss of confidence in what it might mean to be Celtic. People of my generation or older who studied Celtic languages were exposed to more than one of them at university, usually from different branches of the family – Scottish Gaelic speakers would study Welsh, for instance. We were also exposed to older periods of the languages, such as Middle Welsh or Old Irish. This made sense in a field born out of comparative linguistics – you learned the ins and outs of the languages by laying them side by side. </p>
<p>But in the 1990s and into the new millennium, things began to change. This was a time of radically declining numbers of native speakers, and a need to make these languages relevant and vital in the modern world. The “Celtic” project was increasingly rejected as not helpful to, for instance, revitalising Welsh or supporting <a href="http://www.udaras.ie/en/an-ghaeilge-an-ghaeltacht/an-ghaeltacht/">Gaeltacht communities</a> in Ireland. </p>
<p>It has become rarer to find young academics trained in more than one language as increasingly, partly due to funding pressures, university departments only offer their own local language. The positive side of this is that the modern languages are taught in more invigorating ways, which enhance students’ fluency, preparing them for successful careers where the language is a genuine asset. </p>
<p>But the new landscape presents challenges. The Arts and Humanities Research Council’s <a href="http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/Funding-Opportunities/Postgraduate-funding/Pages/Centres-for-Doctoral-Training.aspx">decision</a> in 2013 to fund a multi-institutional <a href="http://www.gla.ac.uk/cdtceltic">Centre for Doctoral Training in Celtic Language</a>, led by the University of Glasgow, acknowledged what risked being lost. The centre allows budding researchers to exchange ideas with research students and gain access to the resources of Celtic-language units across the different countries within the UK.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88132/original/image-20150712-17470-gvbq5g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88132/original/image-20150712-17470-gvbq5g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/88132/original/image-20150712-17470-gvbq5g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88132/original/image-20150712-17470-gvbq5g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88132/original/image-20150712-17470-gvbq5g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88132/original/image-20150712-17470-gvbq5g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88132/original/image-20150712-17470-gvbq5g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/88132/original/image-20150712-17470-gvbq5g.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The road signs that typically appear in the Celtic countries nowadays - in this case Scotland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GaelicSign.JPG#/media/File:GaelicSign.JPG">Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Standard bearers</h2>
<p>These debates smoulder on, though much less heatedly than in the 1990s. We shall see what the British Museum exhibition does to fan the embers. In the meantime academics are convening in Glasgow between July 13 and 17 for the <a href="http://celticstudiescongress.org/index.php/home/">15th International Congress of Celtic Studies</a>, which has been taking place at regular four-year intervals since 1959. </p>
<p>The Congress encompasses a big, baggy, interdisciplinary field. Scottish archaeologists will rub shoulders with Welsh socio-linguists, and experts on medieval Irish poetry will buy pints for scholars of Gaulish place names. It is extremely international, with 500 delegates from 25 countries and 130 institutions. The plenary sessions will take in Welsh modernism, Germany and World War I; Breton ballads and early modern history; continental Iron Age urbanism; medieval manuscript culture; and Celtic studies in the digital age. Despite all the debates, they still gather under the name of “Celtic Studies”.</p>
<p>Why should anyone care? This university discipline is tasked with attending to the health of several of the native languages of Britain and Ireland; and preserving the ancient, medieval and modern heritage of much of Britain and Ireland, including parts of what is now England. In other words it should remind people in Britain that, never mind current controversies over immigration, these islands have been from our earliest historical records a multicultural and multilingual place. </p>
<p>In the devolved regions that diversity of language is increasingly there to see and hear – in Welsh conversations on Aberystwyth streets, on <a href="http://www.gaelicplacenames.org/gaelicmaps.php">A82 road-signs in Scottish Gaelic</a>, and <a href="http://www.tg4.ie/">Irish-language television channels</a>. Many of these Celtic languages are experiencing a real resurgence <em>an aghaidh na sìorraidheachd</em> (“in the face of eternity”). It’s better to face the future together. </p>
<p> </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44540/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Prof Clancy receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and is also co-president of the 15th International Congress of Celtic Studies</span></em></p>As the British Museum gears up for some soul-searching about our inner Celt, 500 dons are gathering with much the same mission.Thomas Owen Clancy, Professor of Celtic, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.