Songs Of Gaelic Scotland

Gaelic Scotland is one of the world's great treasure-houses of song. This work is an anthology of music and lyrics from the Gaelic-speaking Highlands and Islands. It provides an introduction to Gaelic tradition, musical transcriptions, and English translations. It portrays the social and historical background of the songs.

Originally published in 1966, this was the first book on this subject to be published for over a hundred years. It covers all facets including little-known types of Gaelic song, the bagpipes and their music, including the esoteric subject of pibroch, the Ceol Mor or ‘Great Music’ of the pipes. It gives a comprehensive review of the fiddle composers and their music, and of the Clarsach and its revival, with an example of all-but-extinct Scottish harp music. A chapter is devoted to the music of Orkney and Shetland and the book contains over 100 examples of music many of which were from the author’s own collection and published here for the first time.

Carolina Oliphant, Lady Nairne, a contemporary of Robert Burns, wrote over 80 songs which enjoyed great popularity during her lifetime and still do so up to the present day. They are some of Scotland's most famous traditional songs – including 'Charlie Is My Darling', 'A Hundred Pipers', 'Will Ye No' Come Back Again' and 'The Laird of Cockpen'. Despite their popularity, she shunned publicity and never acknowledged her authorship in her lifetime, even concealing it from her husband for a time. After her death, the publication in 1846 of her collected songs and poems as Lays from Strathearn revealed her secret. Partly because of her lifelong reticence, details of her biography and her personality have remained little-known though her songs are famous, and this important Scottish literary figure has been neglected. Freeland Barber, a descendent of Lady Nairne, now presents a long-overdue biography and reassessment of her life and work, much of it based on research into family papers to which he has recently had access.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.