The School of Scottish Studies has one of the best Gaelic-related sites that I've seen -- and just as importantly, heard -- on the World Wide Web. I say "heard" because the School has made a large number of audio files accessible from its site, including rare field recordings of storytellers and singers from across Scotland.

The School of Scottish Studies itself was founded in 1951 by the University of Edinburgh as a center for interdisciplinary research on Scottish subjects. It publishes a journal called "Tocher," the Scots word, derived from the Scottish Gaelic word for a dowry. It's the online version of Tocher that makes this site so unique.

The contents of more than 20 volumes of Tocher have been put online, and you can peruse them by volume number, select articles by type, such as "legends and folktales" or "songs", or search for specific content by using a word or concept. For example, a search using the word "Fionn" for Fionn Mac Cumhail turned up the hero-tale "Diarmad agus Gràine." Dr. John MacInnes recorded this story from Tiree Gaelic seanachaidh Donald Sinclair -- Domhnull Chaluim Bàin -- and it was published in Gaelic and English in Tocher 18.

Not only can you read the story in Gaelic and English on your computer screen, but you can listen to Domhnull tell the tale, if you have the free Real Audio Player plug-in for your browser.

All told, you can spend hours listening to songs and stories in Gaelic, Scots and English while you browse through this site, which the school on its PEARL server created thanks to support from the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council. Some of the original field recordings accessible through the server date back to 1949.

The site also includes a gallery of black and white photographs taken by German photographer Werner Kissling during his tours of the Highlands and Islands during the 1930s, 40s and 50s, and a link to Greentrax, a record company that offers a series of CDs and tapes drawn from the School of Scottish Studies sound archives.

The School of Scottish Studies website is located at:
http://www.pearl.arts.ed.ac.uk/

It's a long way from Carloway to California, but many Gaels have made the trip from the Highlands to the Pacific Coast Highway. The U.S. Library of Congress has made available on the Internet a treasure trove of Gaelic songs recorded in northern California during the late 1930s.

The songs are part of the Sidney Robertson Cowell Collection of California Folk Music, a remarkable collection of material that ranges from songs of the California Gold Rush of 1849, lumberjacks and Depression Dust Bowl migrants in English to Spanish, Basque, Armenian, Russian, Icelandic and Gaelic songs.

Sidney Robertson Cowell was a ethnographer whose work spanned the first half of the 20th century. From 1938-40 she led the Northern California Folk Music Project, funded by the federal government through the Works Project Administration and co-sponsored by the University of California and the Library of Congress.

The Library supplied her with 237 12-inch acetate discs. She eventually made 35 hours of sound recordings. Among the material she collected are more than 30 songs contributed by Gaels then living in California. In an April 1939 letter to Harold Spivacke, then chief of the division of music at the Library of Congress, Cowell wrote: "I've found some lovely Hebrides Islanders -- one my landlord; and have started a series of Gaelic records as good as those reserved by Marjorie Edgar which I made in Minnesota."

Her informants included several singers from the Hebrides, among them John Cunningham, whose father Alexander was a bard from Scalpay, Donald MacInnes, John MacPhee and Mary MacPhee, and at least one singer from Cape Breton, Mary A. MacDonald. Unfortunately, the Library of Congress website has little information on these immigrants -- hopefully more will be released or uncovered in the near future.

The songs themselves are an interesting mixture of compositions from Scotland ("'S truagh nach eil mise ann an Eilean an Fhraoich", "Chì mi an tìr 'san robh mi 'nam bhalach", "'S gann gun dìrich mi chaoidh") and from North America. One song that stands out in particular is "Na Gàidheil ann an Vancouver" -- "The Highlanders in Vancouver".

"I got a marvelous song, in Gaelic, about the Highlanders in Vancouver, reproaching newcomers from Scotland for pretending they know nothing of the Gaelic and comparing them ... unfavorably with the Chinese who refuse to abandon their customs and language no matter how much fun is made of them," Cowell wrote in 1939.

Unfortunately, the spelling of some of the Gaelic song titles in the collection is atrocious -- Cowell was not literate in Gaelic (and perhaps her informants weren't either). Gaelic transcriptions remained a problem for Cowell long after the WPA project ended. In 1955 she complained of "18 months of earnest and unavailing struggle" with the songs of some Gaelic-speaking Canadians.

"The singers do not read or write Gaelic," she wrote, "and the people who read and write Gaelic cannot understand their dialect." These informants also referred to songs as "Fergus' songs or Tom's long song, or the song they sang for the minister with the beard," Cowell wrote.

Translations were another problem. Gaelic, one informant told her, "has so many words that you don't have in English -- a man can make love in Gaelic, but English is no good for that." Cowell's singers believed "English is good for road building and garage work, and only partly useful in farming and fishing, and hardly any use at all in the home."

You can find the Cowell Collection on the World Wide Web at:
http://lcweb2.loc.gov

Follow the links to the California Folk Music Project and search the site using the keyword "Gaelic" to get a complete listing of the songs in the collection, as well as some photographs of the singers. If you have a Mac or a PC with a soundcard you can listen to the songs using Real Audio Player. You can find the plug-in at:

http://www.realaudio.com

You can find more articles in the archive under Fada 's Farsaing (Far and Wide)

If you would like to talk to Liam you can email him.

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