Extract from Carmina Gadelica

Carmina Gadelica: Hymns and Incantations Collected in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland in the Last Century by Alexander Carmichael

For the best part of a hundred years, Alexander Carmichael’s great collection of Gaelic verse and prose, characterised by archaic charms and incantations, which we know as Carmina Gadelica, has dominated its own sector of the field of Gaelic literature. Carmichael’s interests, both as collector and litterateur, extended well beyond the sphere of the purely religious, as indeed the six volumes that Carmina eventually became were so richly to demonstrate.

• From the Preface by John MacInnes

This work consist of old lore collected during the last forty-four years. It forms a small part of a large mass of oral literature written down from the recital of men and women throughout the Highland and Islands of Scotland, from Arran to Caithness, from Perth to St Kilda.

The greater portion of the collection has been made in the Western Isles, variously called ‘Eileanean Bride’, ‘Hebrid Isles’, Outer Hebrides, Outer Isles, Eilean Fad, Innis Fada, Long Island and anciently, Iniscead, Innis Cat, Isle of the Cat, Isle of the Catey.

The Long Island is composed of a series of islands, separately known as Barra, South Uist, Benbecula, North Uist, and Harris and Lewis. This chain is one hundred and nineteen miles in length. (...)

But the charm of these islands lies in their people – goodly to see, brave to endure, and pleasing to know.

The population of the Long Island is about forty-four thousand. Of these, about forty-four families occupy two-thirds of the land, the crofters, cottars, and the poor who exist upon the poor, being confined to the remaining third. These are crowded upon one another like sheep in a pen:

There are no intermediate farms, no gradation holdings, to which the industrious crofter might aspire, and become a benefit to himself, an example to his neighbour, and a lever to his country. (...)

In a crofting townland there are several story-tellers who recite the oral literature of their predecessors. The story-tellers of the Highlands are as varied in their subjects as are literary men and women elsewhere. One is a historian narrating events simply and concisely; another is a historian with a bias, colouring the narrative according to his leanings. One is an inventor, building fiction upon fact, mingling his materials, and investing the whole with the charm of novelty and the halo of romance. Another is a reciter of heroic poems and ballads, bringing the different characters before the mind as clearly as the sculptor brings the figure before the eye.

• From the Introduction to the original edition, 1899

Blessing

This is no second-hand cloth,
And it is not begged,
It is not property of cleric,
It is not property of priest,
And it is not property of pilgrim;

But thine own property,
O son of my body,
By moon and by sun,
In the presence of God,
And keep thou it!

Mayest thou enjoy it,
Mayest thou wear it.
Mayest thou finish it,
Until thou find it
In shreds,
In strips,
In rags,
In tatters!

The primrose

Primrose, primrose
And wood sorrel,
The children’s food,
In summer;
Geimileachd, geimileachd,
Wine and plovers,
The food of men
In winter.

Checking the evil eye

I make for thee a charm
To check the evil eye;

Against the nine paths,
Against the nine tumults,
Against the nine crafty wiles,
Against nine slender women of faery;

Against the eye of bachelor
Against the eye of old maid
Against the eye of old man,
Against the eye of old woman.

If it be eye of man
May it flare like pitch,
If it be eye of woman,
May she want her breast.

Flooding be to her water,
And chilling be to her blood,
To her cattle, to her sheep,
To her people, to her wealth.