| SCOTTISH GAELIC LITERATURE, 16th-17th CENTURY The first evidence of a distinct Scotish Gaelic literature tradition appears in The Book of the Dean of Lismore, complied between 1512 and 1526 by Sir James MacGregor (fl. 1511-1551). It is an anthology of writings by Scottish and Irish authors: heroic sagas; poetry (dating from the 14th century on), including a group of 28 Ossianic ballads; and ecclesiastical texts. Although it is presumed that much other early poetry existed, popular verse as well as the work of professional bards, none of it has survived. Some 16th-century folk poetry that had survuved orally was written down in the mid-18th century; and in the 17th and 18th centuries, work songs, also descendants of an older oral tradition, were set down in writing. Predominant among these are the "waulking" songs that accompany the fulling of cloth. In the 17th century Scottish Gaelic poetry flowered. Much of it was contained in three manuscropt collections, The Black Book of Clanranald and The Red Book of Clanranald, written by the Macmhuirich family, hereditary bards th the MacDonalds of Clanranald, and the Fernaig manuscript(1688-1693), a compilation of political and religious verse. Among many poets, three stand out. Mary MacLeod (c. 1615-c. 1706), bard of Harris and Skye, employed conventional imagery with a fresh, natural style, using strophic meters rather than the strictly syllabic meters of the bards. Iaian Lorn (c. 1620-c. 1707), active in contemporary events, wrote poems about the Battle of Killiecrankie and the restoration of Charles II, and in opposition to the union of the Scottish and English parliaments. Remarkable for their intensity of feeling are the works of Roderick Morison (c. 1656-1713?), known as the Blind Harper, such as Song to John MacLeod of Dunvegan. |
| SCOTTISH GAELIC LITERATURE, 18th-20th CENTURY In the 18th century contact with other literature brought new vigor to Scottish Gaelic writing. probably the most significant poet of the century was Alexander Macdonal (c. 1690-c. 1780), whose Resurrection of the Ancient Scottish Tongue (1751) was the first book of secular poetry printed in Scotland. His masterpiece is The Birlinn of Clanranald (after 1751), a vivid description of a sea voyage from the Hebrides to Ireland. He also wrote nature and love poetry, drinking songs, and biter satires. The poems of Duncan Macintyre (1724-1812), published in 1768, such as Praise of Ben Doran and The Misty Corrie, are emotional, finely detailed lyrics inspired by the scenery of Perthshire and Argyllshire. The greatest 18th-century writer of religious verse as Dugald Buchanan (1716-1768), whose Day of Judgment and The Scull employ impressively somber imagery. Sience 1760, when James Macpherson's Fragments of Ancient Poetry Collected in the Highlands of Scotland (actually forgeries of Ossianic ballads) were published, interest in Gaelic culture has continued. It has, indeed, been encouraged by scholarly anthologies of early texts, such as Reliquiae Celticae (2 vol., 1892-1894), by Alexander Cameron (1832-1912), and the Carmina Gadelica (6 vol., 1928-1971), edited by Alexander Carmichael (1832-1912), and by the work of An Comunn Gaidhealach (The Gaelic League). Short stories first began to appear in a number of periodocals in the late 19th century. Particularly notable arte the 20th-century works in this genre by Iain Crichton Smith (1928 - ). Much innovative poetry, still adhering to the old tradition of vivid nature imagery, was written by Smith and by his contemporaries Sorley Maclean (1911-1996), George Cambell Hay (1915- ), and Derick Thomson (1921- ). lively interest in the Gaelic language and culture is also still maintained in Canada among descendants of Highland settlers in Nova Scotia. Notable among poets writing in Gaelic was John (The Bard) Maclean (1787-1848), whose bitterness at the lot of the exile is expressed in his The Bard in Canada. Others were James MacGregor (1759-1820), who translated the Psalms into Gaelic; Duncan blair (1815-1893), best known for a majestic poem on Niagara Fall; and Malcolm Gillis (1856-1929), whose poetry praises the landscape of Cape Breton |
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