The Blue Mountains And Other Gaelic Stories From Cape Breton

Shaw provides both the Gaelic texts and English translations. When possible, he identifies both the original Gaelic storyteller and the local reciters. Reciters in the collection include Joe Neil MacNeil, a major Canadian storyteller, as well as others whose stories have never before been published. The Blue Mountains and Other Gaelic Stories from Cape Breton showcases a unique and neglected storytelling tradition.

John Shaw has been documenting Cape Breton's Gaelic traditions since the 1960s. In The Blue Mountains and Other Gaelic Stories from Cape Breton he presents thirty tales recorded between 1964 and 1984. The collection includes popular tales such as The Dragon Slayer, hero-tales of Finn Mac Cumhail and his warrior band, accounts of the famed carpenter Boban Saor, stories of robbers and thieves, comic tall tales, historical legends, and accounts of clan traditions brought over from the western Highlands. Shaw provides both the Gaelic texts and English translations. When possible, he identifies both the original Gaelic storyteller and the local reciters. Reciters in the collection include Joe Neil MacNeil, a major Canadian storyteller, as well as others whose stories have never before been published. The Blue Mountains and Other Gaelic Stories from Cape Breton showcases a unique and neglected storytelling tradition.

MacNeil also describes his early years in a Gaelic-speaking rural community, where story-telling is still a basic element of community life. He explains how he learned the tales and the customs and practices associated with their telling. He also introduces us to the families and individuals who were custodians of the tales. John Shaw's introduction outlines the informant's tradition and its place in the world of the European story-teller. The commentaries of MacNeil and Shaw, the tales, the games, and the other folk material offer a rich and unique perspective on the Gaelic culture generally, and as it has developed on Cape Breton Island in particular.

This collection of essays explores the historical importance and imaginative richness of Scotland's extensive contribution to modes of traditional culture and expression: ballads, tales and storytelling, and song. Its underlying aim is to bring about a more dynamic and inclusive understanding of Scottish culture. Rooted in literary history and both comparative and interdisciplinary in scope, the volume covers the key aspects and genres of traditional literature, including the Gaelic tradition, from the medieval period to the present. Key theoretical and conceptual issues raised by the historical analysis of Scotland's rich store of ballad, song, and folk narrative are discussed in separate chapters. The volume also explores why and how Scottish literary writers have been inspired by traditional genres, modes, and motifs, and the intermingling of folk and literary traditions in writers such as Burns, Scott, and Hogg. It also uncovers the folkloric and mythopoetic materials of early Scottish literature, and the vitality of neglected aspects of Scottish popular culture.

A mere 150 years ago Scottish Gaelic was the third most widely spoken language in Canada, and Irish was spoken by hundreds of thousands of people in the United States. A new awareness of the large North American Gaelic diaspora, long overlooked by historians, folklorists, and literary scholars, has emerged in recent decades. North American Gaels, representing the first tandem exploration of these related migrant ethnic groups, examines the myriad ways Gaelic-speaking immigrants from marginalized societies have negotiated cultural spaces for themselves in their new homeland. In the macaronic verses of a Newfoundland fisherman, the pointed addresses of an Ontario essayist, the compositions of a Montana miner, and lively exchanges in newspapers from Cape Breton to Boston to New York, these groups proclaim their presence in vibrant traditional modes fluently adapted to suit North American climes. Through careful investigations of this diasporic Gaelic narrative and its context, from the mid-eighteenth century to the twenty-first, the book treats such overarching themes as the sociolinguistics of minority languages, connection with one's former home, and the tension between the desire for modernity and the enduring influence of tradition. Staking a claim for Gaelic studies on this continent, North American Gaels shines new light on the ways Irish and Scottish Gaels have left an enduring mark through speech, story, and song.

In any society, communicative activities are organized into models of conduct that differentiate specific social practices from each other and enable people to communicate with each other in ways distinctive to those practices. The articles in this volume investigate a series of locale-specific models of communicative conduct, or registers of communication, through which persons organize their participation in varied social practices, including practices of politics, religion, schooling, migration, trade, media, verbal art, and ceremonial ritual. Drawing on research traditions on both sides of the Atlantic, the authors of these articles bring together insights from a variety of scholarly disciplines, including linguistics, anthropology, folklore, literary studies, and philology. They describe register models associated with a great many forms of interpersonal behavior, and, through their own multi-year and multi-disciplinary collaborative efforts, bring register phenomena into focus as features of social life in the lived experience of people in societies around the world.

The publication of An Introduction to Scottish Ethnology sees the completion of the fourteen-volume Scottish Life and Society series, originally conceived by the eminent ethnologist Professor Alexander Fenton. The series explores the many elements in Scottish history, language and culture which have shaped the identity of Scotland and Scots at local, regional and national level, placing these in an international context. Each of the thirteen volumes already published focuses on a particular theme or institution within Scottish society. This introduction provides an overview of the discipline of ethnology as it has developed in Scotland and more widely, the sources and methods for its study, and practical guidance on the means by which it can be examined within its constituent genres, based on the experience of those currently working with ethnological materials. Theory and practice are presented in an accessible fashion, making it an ideal companion for the student, the scholar and the interested amateur alike.

Explores the connectedness of the diaspora to the homeland from a variety of different perspectivesThis book explores a range of different perspectives on the Scottish diaspora, reflecting a growing interest in the subject from academics, politicians and policy makers and coinciding with Scotland's second year of homecoming in 2014. The Scottish Government has actively developed a diaspora strategy, not least in order to encourage 'roots tourism', as those individuals of Scots descent come back to visit their 'homeland' diaspora. Key FeaturesExamines the importance of links within the Scottish diaspora for Scots both at home and abroad.Multi-disciplinary perspectives from literature to sportOf interest to policy makers, genealogists, tourism bodies, politicians and general publicThe Scots form one of the world's largest diasporas, with around 30 million people worldwide claiming a Scottish ancestry. There are few countries around the globe without a Caledonian Society, a Burns Club, a Scottish country dance society, or similar organisation. The diaspora is therefore of interest to politicians, to public policy makers and to Scottish business; as well as to those working in the media, in sport, in literature and in music.