Thought folks here would like this:
It’s a song in Gaelic based on a poem written by Murdo MacFarlane, ‘Bard of Melbost’ (a small village on the Isle of Lewis). Here are the verses Karen Matheson sings in this version, including translations (from this page, which also has the full poem):
Cha b’ e sneachda ‘s an reòthadh bho thuath,
Cha b’ e ‘n crannadh geur fuar bho ‘n ear,
Cha b’ e ‘n t-uisge ‘s an gaillionn bho ‘n iar,
Ach an galair a bhlean bho ‘n deas
Blàth duilleach is stoc agus freumh
Cànan mo threubh ‘s mo shluaidh.
(It was not the snow and frost from the north,
nor the acute cold withering from the east,
it wasn’t the rain or the storms from the west,
but the sickness from the south
that has faded the bloom, foliage, stock and root
of the language of my race and my people.)
Seisd:
Thig thugainn, thig cò-rium gu siar
Gus an cluinn sinn ann cànan nam Féinn,
Thig thugainn, thig cò-rium gu siar
Gus an cluinn sinn ann cànan nan Gàidheal.
(Chorus:
Come, come on, come with me westwards
until we hear the language of the Fein;
Come, come on, come with me westwards
until we hear the language of the Gaels.)
Uair chìte fear-féilidh ‘sa ghleann
Bu chinnteach gur gàidhlig a chainnt
Ach spion iad a fhreumh as an fhonn
‘N àite gàidhlig tha cànan a Ghoill
‘S a Ghàidhealtachd creadhal-nan-sonn
‘S tir-mhajors is cholonels ‘n diugh th’ innt’.
(Once, if a kilted man were seen in the valley
it would be certain that Gaelic was his language;
but they have torn his roots from the ground,
in the place of Gaelic is the foreigner’s language,
and the Gaeltachd, cradle of heroes,
today it is a land of majors and colonels.)
Far a nuas dhuinn na coinnleirean òir
‘S annt’ caraibh coinnlean geal céir
Lasaibh suas iad an seòmair bhròin
Tìgh-‘aire seann chànan a’ Ghàel
‘S sud o chionn fhad’ thuirt a nàmh
Ach fhathast tha beò cànan a’ Ghàel.
(Pass over to us the golden candlesticks
and put in them white waxen candles.
Light them up in a grief-filled room
in the wake-house of the Gael’s old language.
That’s what its enemy has long been saying
but the language of the Gael is alive yet.)
Ged theich i le beath’ as na glinn
Ged ‘s gann an diugh chluinntear i ni’s mó
O Dhùthaich MhicAoidh fada tuath
Gu ruig thu Druim-Uachdar nam bó
Gigheal, dhi ‘na h-Eileanan Siar
Bi na claimheamh ‘s na sgiath’n ud dhòirn.
(Although it has fled, along with life, from the valleys,
although it’s rare today that it’s heard any more
from Strathnaver in the far north
right down to Drumochter where the cattle are,
nevertheless, for it in its Western Isles
the swords and shields there are taken in hand.)
Anyway it got me thinking, and I strung together a few ideas over here:
Basically I’m looking at the overlap between diversity of language and the diversity, or health, of the wider ecosystem. Will the Gaelic revival put Scottish, Irish & Welsh people in a better position to rewild? Do Celtic peoples ‘count’ as Indigenous, even though they’re agricultural, iron age cultures through-and-through? Or are they just not as civilised as the English, for example? Speaking of which, there’s also the problem of how to relate to the English language if it’s your mother tongue, and how to deal with all the imperial baggage that comes with it. The contemporary folk singer Chris Wood explored this issue in a great article here:
http://www.englishacousticcollective.org.uk/JMI/
An English diaspora
The reasons for England’s cultural uncertainty/reticence/ambiguity are many: empire, two world wars, a class structure which has survived both of those world wars, long American cultural shadows, perceived cultural confidence of European neighbours and ethnic minority groups. The list goes on and there is an article in each of them, but if we focus on one of the major contributing factors, that of the sustained enclosures acts which began in 1200, with the major phase taking place from 1760 onwards, perhaps we can argue the case for a cultural dispersal on a vast scale – an English diaspora.
Please understand these are the observations of a musician, not a history professor, but to paraphrase my dictionary, the common model for diaspora is the movement of a people away from the place where their culture was most concentrated. Putting the dictionary aside, my perception is that there is more often than not a bogey-man involved, real or otherwise, who will eventually play an important role. Upon arrival in new lands, the refugees congregate to reaffirm and reinvent their identity, and it seems to me that the oppressor plays a major role in this reunification and the cultural outpourings that follow. In many such cases diaspora becomes the catalyst to a great deal of positive cultural activity.
If, however, a people are not taken from their land and their way of life, but their land and their way of life are taken from them, we see the negatives of diaspora with few, if any, of the positives. Writing in the Journal of Music in Ireland I need hardly go into the details of enclosure and clearance, except perhaps to point out that these things took place in England too. The subtle but substantial difference is that we here in England are our own bogey-man.
Hugh Brody, writer, anthropologist and filmmaker, writes in The Other Side Of Eden on the enforced teaching of English as a replacement, not addition to, the native languages of North America.
‘It is possible to travel through the vast forests of the Pacific North West, look up at the wild beauty of the coastal mountains, stare into the clear fast waters of all those rivers, and hear a kind of silence. This is not the silence of wild empty wilderness, of remote mountains – these are extremes of geography, nature without culture. There is, rather, a silence that marks the loss of the words that give this place – and many such places – its fullest and richest expression. The loss of people’s own names for their hills, rivers, lakes, bays, peaks, slopes, islands, trails; and of their ways of evoking the origins, significance, humour and poignancy of the landscape.’
As a musician I have the opportunity to drive the length and breadth of England, but I carry with me that selfsame ‘wordlessness’ because England’s history, like every other nation’s history, is written by the ‘winners’. For example, Castle Howard is one of England’s flagship stately homes – probably on the ‘Icons Online’ list – but what of Hinderskelf, the village which was levelled to make way for it? There are many such examples – the English enclosures have taken place over seven centuries.
Where clearances were carried out in, for example, Scotland and Ireland, those atrocities have entered the cultural fabric of those countries. They are eloquently mourned in song, story, poetry, painting and dance, and carried in the heart of Anon. from generation to generation. But when your oppressor is writing your history for you, there will be a great many glaring omissions, and I do not believe it is an overstatement to say that ‘the English’ have not been allowed to mourn the loss of that which defined them.
Of course, recent immigrants are left with the further problem of where to direct their attentions - to the motherland(s) where their family originated or, wiping the slate clean, plunging headlong into the traditions of their adoptive land. Not easy, I can tell you!
Thoughts welcome.
best,
Ian