Art and the Gaidhealtachd

First year PhD project exploration for Celtic and Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh.

Building on the work of Murdo Macdonald and others in 'Rethinking Highland Art', about the contemporary art of the Scottish Gàidhealtachd, this paper considers the following: 'Rethinking Highland Art' and framing questions of identity, 'Rethinking Highland Art' and the relationship between Gaelic visual artists and language, Curating a visual Gàidhealtachd and ideas of ‘Gaelicness’, A Canon for Gaelic visual art and ideas of ‘place’, Why this explorative PhD research matters and a Bibliography.

Hunting inspired some of the greatest songs and stories of Gaelic literature and tradition—a theme which runs from the earliest Old Irish sources down to the literature of Modern Scottish Gaelic. This thesis examines the cultural history of hunting in the Scottish Highlands stemming from the late-medieval period through to the early modern. The three main areas covered are the iconography, literature and tradition of the chase.
Many hunting topoi appear upon late-medieval west Highland sculptures, remarkably similar to those on earlier Pictish sculpture, which are complimented by the Gaelic literature and lore of hunting contained within Fenian ballads and narrative stories. The apogee of Gaelic hunting motifs are contained within panegyric poetry and verse of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, sustained in the main by a late manifestation of an heroic age. Such imagery reinforced and perpetuated the identity of the chief as the paragon of pre-modern Gaelic society, who was always seen as a hunter-warrior. Hunting themes and motifs are also prevalent within Gaelic folksong tradition. Although this overlaps in terms of content with the bardic imagery of professional poets, the vernacular folksongs offer a more emotive and direct response to moments of crisis or celebration. The scale of these great hunts in the Highlands, borne out by the literary evidence, from the medieval period onwards, reflects a complex matrix of power, patronage, politics and ultimately propaganda. As well as being a surrogate for war the tinchel, in Gaelic terms, was a seasonal mobilising of the sluagh, or host, who followed the fine, the Gaelic nobility. This enhanced their status while reinforcing clan solidarity in a shared symbol of sporting endeavour, by chasing the noble quarry of the deer. Notable, also, is illegal, or covert hunting which masked a complex deer-culture, and marked the familiar tension of exploiting natural resources by the many against the privileged few who tried to implement their inherited rights to hunt. Inevitably, superstition pervades much of the traditions of the hunt, as it would in any given belief system centred upon age-old customs.
Hunting was an integral part of European culture, and it was a theme reflected in Gaelic literature, song, and tradition more evidently than in many other European cultures of a comparable period. This was because it reinforced strongly and perpetuated the idealised image of a warrior-hunter, the archetypal leader engendered within Gaelic cultural identity.

The ‘Gillie Mor’ – Hamish Henderson – drew on his intimate knowledge of Gramsci whose ‘Prison Letters’ he had translated for English language readers in developing his own conceptualisation of cultural production.  The Gillie Mor called it ‘the carrying stream’. 

Massey illustrates ways in which space is as concrete as place and resists a romaticisation of ‘local’ coupled with a positing of ‘global’ as the abstract universal.  This tendency underpins an insistent underexamined dualism ‘between Emotion (place/local) and Reason (space/global)’.  The carrying stream is not just etched out by those we might choose to label as artists and seannachaidh (tradition bearers).  Everyone affects and is effecting that stream.  The idea of the carrying stream has underpinned work within the Mackay Country group for a long number of years.

The proposal for Civic Geographies focuses on our Mackay Country work and material about the Ceardannan – Summer Walkers – their bough tent, tinsmithing and itinerant storytelling.  This team has informally become a Mackay Country sub-group since 2008 and on account of their annual events and education programme and their deep run commitment to each other and what they do, they have in recent years become commonly known as Family MacBough.

Hamish Henderson said that the travellers were the settled population’s libidinous alterego.  In north west Sutherland the Ceardannan were and are considered part of ‘the community’ and were generally accorded respect in that capacity whilst also being ‘othered’ – perhaps ‘the other’ within to some extent, the regular travelling routes forming pulsing veins through intractable territories.  Today’s activities by Family MacBough have rather unwittingly re-etched those trajectories with new and different functions in terms of goods and services – but again (or still?) embedding people in an area with less than one person per square kilometre into networks of conversation and belonging-ness.  In terms of civic geographies does this mesh place, space and selves – dynamically conjuring boundaries through these perambulations punctuated by carnivalesque events?  The securities which are sought by these activities are regional economic betterment; strengthening ties between and within the disparate remote communities of place; an altered sense of place in place and looking in from ‘the outside’ and an inclusive, opt-in set of local identities. 

In a 2004 draft research brief titled Ebb and Flow Mackay Country stated ‘The history of the Gaidhealtachd is a history of movement’ and went on to state ‘As a research topic migration is uniquely inclusive.  Everyone either has family who emigrated out of Mackay Country or family who emigrated into Mackay Country.  Some families have both.  This makes it an ideal topic for a community based research and heritage project.’  In the context of dominant loss based accounts of Highland history which revolve around Clearance and equate migration with disaster, asserting that in fact movement is the constant has the power to gradually rework everything from the ground up and may be understood as being an innovative long term manoeuvre in the bid to secure a better future in and for this area.

Issie conducted he research and wrote the play - performed as a rehearsed reading at the event.  A Sprinkling of Salt, A Sprinkling of Pride was produced on behalf Scottish Union Learning in the Highlands and Islands by Dr Issie MacPhail and Open Book PW Ltd.