The more I look into Gaelic poetry, the more convinced I become that this is the most valuable approach for anyone wanting to get inside the head of pibroch composers. It offers rich evidence of cultural context, shining light on things otherwise impossible to understand.
Today I found the words ceol bec ∙i∙ cronan… i n-aith[fh]egad in moir (‘small music, that is, humming… in comparison with the great’) in a grammatical tract thought to have been written in the 7th century. The Auraicept na n-Éges was one of many textbooks for a professional class known as filidh in Scottish Gaelic (plural filidhean), or file in Irish (plural filí). They were far more important in Gaelic society than the word ‘poet’ suggests. On the basis of their fees, 12-year training, intimidating style of language and impact on lives, ‘lawyer’ is the closest modern equivalent.
They maintained an oral tradition which placed great importance on the ability to pass down material, without making changes. To that end, they used poetic and musical forms that combined both aesthetic and mnemonic functions.
Here are three excerpts from an overview of Irish literature by Douglas distills a vast mountain of material and scholarship into a few points. What catches my attention is that so many of his points about poetry have parallels in pibroch.
Certain it is that by the time of the Irish mission to the continent, as early as the 7th century, we find the Irish had brought the art of rhyming verses to a high pitch of perfection, that is, centuries before most of the vernacular literatures of Europe knew anything at all about it. Nor are their rhymes only such as we are accustomed to in English, French, or German poetry, for they delighted not only in full rhymes, like these nations, but also in assonances, like the Spaniards, and they often thought more of a middle rhyme than of an end rhyme.
In poetry and piping, delight in a middle rhyme produces syncopation or metrical tension between the structure of the lines and the fall of the rhymes. This is a complexity that became rather derelict in the 18th century and I suspect that this explains why pibroch lines were notated in proportions of 6.6.4, rather than the 4.4.4.4 suggested by Joseph MacDonald’s treatise. Like polyphony and fugue, cerebral ways of making music were widely abandoned in favour of clearer phrases that larger audiences could understand and enjoy. On a wider European level, this corresponds to the change in musical style between Bach and Mozart.
The following Latin verses, written no doubt after his native models by Aengus Mac Tipraite some time prior to the year 704, will give the reader an idea of the middle or interlinear rhyming which the Irish have practiced from the earliest times down to the present day:
- Martinus mirus more
Ore laudavit Deum,
Puro Corde cantavit
Atque amavit Eum.…A very curious and interesting peculiarity of a certain sort of Irish verse is a desire to end a second line with a word with a syllable more than that which ends the first, the stress of the voice being thrown back a syllable in the last word of the second line. Thus, if the first line end with an accented monosyllable, the second line will end with a dissyllabic word accented on its first syllable, or if the first line end with a dissyllable accented on its penultimate the second line will end with a trisyllable accented on its ante-penultimate. This is called aird-rinn in Irish
Does this explain why so many pibroch phrases alternate in lengths that differ by one beat? I know of examples alternating between 9 and 8 beats, 8 and 7 beats, 7 and 6 beats, 5 and 4 beats, 4 and 3 beats, and 3 and 2 beats.
So highly esteemed was the poetic art in Ireland that Keating in his history tells us that at one time no less than a third of the patrician families of Ireland followed that profession. These constituted a heavy drain on the resources of the country, and at three different periods in Irish history the people tried to shake off their incubus. However, Columcille, who was a poet himself, befriended them; at the Synod of Druim Ceat, in the 6th century, their numbers were reduced and they were shorn of many of their prerogatives; but, on the other hand, public lands were set apart for their colleges, and these continued until the later English conquest, when those who escaped the spear of Elizabeth fell beneath the sword of Cromwell.
The period between Elizabeth I and Cromwell was when the piping colleges reached their zenith. I wonder if any filidhean switched profession to piping!
For further reading on this topic, I’d recommend Keith Sanger’s post here and Hugh Cheape’s chapter ‘Traditional Origins of the Piping Dynasties’ in The Highland Bagpipe: Music, History, Tradition, ed. Joshua Dickson (Ashgate, 2009), pp. 97–126.
I would have thought the majority of this “poetry” was really song, to be sung, rather than poetry to be read from a page. I even wonder if it would ever have been read aloud - possibly not.
And if it were sung, there would be formulaic melodies for the singing, though these must be almost entirely lost. Do fragments of those melodies remain in fenian lay singing, and in ceol mor?
Well this could be fun and should while away some free time this afternoon, but lets get the caveats out of the way first. So to start with the fact that these ‘tracts’ were all first written down much later than the texts purport to date to and the modern academic view is that ‘early’ texts are now thought to more reflect the periods when written down rather than the supposed date of origin.
Douglas Hyde was a man of his time but again research has moved on in many areas and James Carney in more recent times ‘Early Irish Poetry’ (pub in 1965) argues that the ‘Dan direch metres were modelled on the Latin hymns of the early Church, and it was not until the amhran metres became universal in the 18th C that the natural stress accent became once more the dominant feature of Irish verse’.
Since the pibroch ‘grounds’ are clearly linked to the amhran (or song ) which was not the verse form used by the File, then their relevance is diminished. Though I would agree that the 6.6.4 structure is somewhat odd and should be some multiple of 4. ( File are to be equated with modern ‘lawyers’ is rather insulting to the File. Heirs to the Druids is the more sensible analogy and there were other professional families at that period who functioned as lawyers).
Neither did the File produce the earliest verse in a vernacular tongue, that claim belongs to the poem called the ‘Gododdin’, composed in Brythonic , (or proto Welsh), and geographically located to the area around Edinburgh.
Before leaving the carping one final point of relevance regarding pibroch, it certainly pre dates Elizabeth 1 and Cromwell, (and why choose two English figures to make your point, was the teaching of history in Scotland as ‘anglocentric’ when you were at school as it was when I passed through that system?). What is more relevant is that piobroch first emerges at a time when the practice of constructing variations on a ground had become the musical fashion everywhere else in Europe.
So to the constructive, your question ‘I wonder if any filidhean switched profession to piping?’. Well the Irish model of File did not really translate to Scotland where the ‘bard’ formed a similar function, or at least John MacInnes has so argued. But evidence of members of professional Gaelic families in Scotland moving to piping can be shown. As you know, since I did provide you with the evidence, the earliest member of the MacCrummen family to be identified under that name was a priest called Sir John McChrummen in Trotternish circa 1533. There was also a piper called in a Latin document ‘Evano’ at Dunvegan Castle around the same time, 1541 and while ‘Evan tends to be equated with the Gaelic Eoghann or Ewan, that was more usually Latinised as Eugenious which in turn in Ireland is often translated as Eoin or John.
At that period such ‘offices’ ran in families but as ‘surnames’ were only just coming in while there are a number of other slightly earlier clerics in that area whose personal names would slot into any MacCrummen genealogy, emphatic evidence is unfortunately not there. However I have also pointed out elsewhere (and a point taken up by Hugh Cheape in one of his lectures); that it is interesting to note that the ‘traditional’ origin of that family connects them to ‘Findlay of the White plaid’; and it is known from Ireland, that over there a white version of their equivalent garment called a ‘lumman’ denoted a ‘scholar’, for which read some form of ecclesiastic office.
Finally Simon is half right in that the verse composed by the File would have been ‘chanted’ in some way, but as pibroch is linked to amhran, then those verses in stressed metre would indeed have been sung. As for reading aloud, until fairly late and by that I mean well into the ‘modern era’, all reading was actually done aloud even if only for personal consumption. That historical picture of a load of monks in a scritorum all with their own volumes, but all muttering away to themselves is one thing that makers of historical films actually get right.
As a piper and a poet, I approve of this message. Thanks.
I agree with Simon that the word ‘poetry’ gives the wrong impression. They are ‘big songs’, so it helps to add the adjective ‘bardic’ or ‘epic’, making the connection with Homer, Beowulf, etc. The word ‘song’ successfully conveys the idea of performance with instrumental accompaniment, but not the literary stature - the focus on the words rather than the tune. I like ‘songsmiths’.
I’m very interested in Keith’s assertion that pibroch has greater kinship with stressed rather than syllabic poetry (òran/amhrán rather than dán díreach). Whose idea is this? Are they right - what evidence is offered to support it? It looks to me as if we have something closer to a 50:50 confluence, absorbing elements of both traditions.
‘Whose idea is this?’
Well Alan completed a dissertation on the linking of pibroch grounds to Gaelic Song, that is oran/amhran, or stressed vernacular verse, but the idea was first suggested as far as I know by the late Wm Matheson who went further and traced those song metres back to I think the troubadours.
Admittedly the situation can get confusing especially when throwing the word ‘bard’ into the mix as Colm O’Baoill has pointed out ‘strictly then a bardic poet is a tautology — but we will have to accept that the term ‘bardic poetry’ is in common use’. Colm does though make a more relevant point when pointing out that waulking songs, which have no parallel in Ireland, but whose prominent and essential feature was probably always its regular and clear beat present a paradox that in most cases the basic structure of the lines of verse is syllabic. -the type of line construction which seems least suitable for a regular beat. Or as he puts it ;- In simple terms the singer(s) must stress syllables which would normally be unstressed, in order to keep the beat regular.
I doubt though if the ‘File’ ever did anything so demeaning as woman’s work pounding urine soaked cloth in order to shrink it. After all it is claimed that they insisted that women poets who transgressed into their metres were buried face down for doing so. On the other hand by squashing syllabic metres into a non syllabic form for waulking purposes perhaps those women were really were taking the urine out of the file?
“In simple terms the singer(s) must stress syllables which would normally be unstressed, in order to keep the beat regular.”
This is wrong. It misses the whole point. A regular framework is provided by the syllable count, the oar stroke, the pounding of the cloth or (in Wales) the thump of the composer-conductor’s staff. Against this predictable beat, the word stresses fall in unexpected places, craftily distributed to create shifting patterns and dramatic shape. That’s the beauty of it - the tension between a regular beat and the changing, irregular, syncopated stress rhythms; the playfulness of one against the other. If they coincided all the time, the song/poem would be dull as ditchwater, without sonic interest or vivacity. Listen to Ella Fitzgerald - how she shifts the stressed syllables off the beat. Closer to home, listen to http://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/fullrecord/91894/1.
This popular rowing song is a great example of the beauty of unstressed syllables falling on the beat and stressed syllables shifted off the beat. Also - while we are on relationships between poetry and pibroch - it alternates leader (L) and chorus (C) in the pattern L C L L C L C C. This equal and opposite pattern, generating two balanced but contrasting halves, is a compositional principle found in 62% of the pibroch repertoire.
I think Allan MacDonald is only telling half the story in his thesis, i.e. that there is much more depth to the relationship between pibroch and song than is yet understood. Òran is simply what is more familiar to us through the wonderful performances of William Matheson, Allan MacDonald and now Griogair Labhruidh. Their creative approach bringing silent texts back to life is based on a speculative “yes” answer to Simon’s initial question: “Do fragments of those melodies remain in fenian lay singing, and in ceol mor?”
The next step is to absorb Peter Greenhill’s writings. Last month, he most helpfully compiled a single document with excerpts of his contributions to online discussions.
Well if it is wrong I would suggest you take it up with Colm , they are his words. But from your more elaborate exposition are you not trying to turn what are simply work-songs into art music, the introduction of a composer conductor’s staff perhaps being a Freudian slip?
Regarding rowing tunes though, as someone well familiar with ‘rowing’ heavy boats, (I did go to a Nautical Training School after all), I have never believed that the so called ‘rowing tunes’ as such could ever have been used for rowing as is, but must simply have been the basic grounds extracted from rowing songs with the further pibroch structure added on top. That is of course even without considering how well anyone could play the pipes in one of those very supple open galleys bouncing along on top of the waves even in a fairly moderate sea.
I have also been absorbing Peter’s thoughts ever since we met at the very first Ap Hew conference. However , while I can see the extensive cross links between Wales and Ireland, indeed a recent paper from an Irish Collection of Essays had the title ‘The Welsh Invasion of Ireland’, and goes someway to explain why Walsh (=Welsh), is the fourth most common name in Ireland, the cross links between Wales which would have to come to Scotland via Ireland are not quite as ‘safe’ as used to be thought given the revision of those very same Ireland to Scotland links that are underway.
Another dimension to the link between poetry and pibroch may be of interest.
A foot is a unit of metre, consisting of a combination of stressed and unstressed syllables. If stressed syllables are marked “/” and unstressed “u”, the main types can be shown thus: Iamb: [ u / ], such as “delight”. (The adjective is “iambic”.) Trochee: [ / u ], such as “badger” (Trochaic) Anapest, or anapaest: [ u u / ], such as “unaware” (Anapestic / anapaestic) Dactyl: [ / u u ], such as “multiple” (Dactylic) and, more rarely: Spondee: [ / / ], such as “tooth-ache” (from poetry archive online.)
It is plain that these metres, as well as others, are found in pibroch; many siubhal variations consist of trochees, and the Dactyl is frequently seen.
The motif described as ‘na crathinin’ by Joseph MacDonald, is found in the Nether Lorne Ms as ‘Cherede’, ‘horodo’, ‘hiriri’, etc. and consists of three syllables, the first and the last stressed, the middle one unstressed: / u /, CHE re DE. This is known as a ‘Cretic’ foot (meaning it was a pattern used in Crete, by Greek poets).
A more complex ‘foot’ may be seen in Donald MacDonald’s setting of ‘Cumhadh Chleibhar’ (Claverhouse’s Lament), at the end of the first line, rendered in Campbell’s notation thus: ‘Hiorodo do’, or (stressed) HIO ro DO DO: / u / /. Indeed, this pattern pervades the urlar, and is known as a ‘Choriamb’. (Or you might think of it as a Trochee followed by a spondee).
A tune recently discussed, ‘Fhear Pioba Metic’ - ‘Hihararao aem Hihararao aem cheredeaem…’ seems to be built on the pattern / u / u / u; a Cretic foot followed by an ‘Amphibrach’: u / u. Again, almost every motif seems based on this pattern or ‘foot’.
Seeing this pattern can be helpful in deciphering more obscure passages, such as ‘hinotra o hin em’. (Note how ‘o hin em’ is also seen in ‘Lasan MhicCheich’ or ‘The Flame of Wrath’).
Thank you Ronald & Keith. Your contributions have prompted me to (re)read three articles that contain important advances on this topic:
William Gillies, ‘Music and Gaelic Strict-metre Poetry’ in Studia Celtica 44 (2010), pp. 111-134
Virginia Blankenhorn, ‘Observations on the Performance of Irish Syllabic Verse’ in Studia Celtica 44 (2010), pp. 135-154
Peter Greenhill, ‘Bardic Rhythm: The Implications from Cerdd Dant Studies’ in Studia Celtica 45 (2011), pp. 131-153
William Gillies’s article is a most readable and magisterial overview looking back on what has been done and mapping out how interdisciplinary interactions can help move us forward, breaking an impasse. I think we all recognise that there is much to be gained by dismantling barriers between Musicology, Celtic Studies and Performance Practice. My own experience as a performer, in particular playing the lyre for the Altus prosator (a 25-minute syllabic hymn from Iona) and developing solutions for a range of historical Gaelic texts with Griogair Labhruidh and Siobhán Armstrong, has generated insights that I feel a duty to feed back into the public domain. That’s why I’m writing here - somewhere accessible to musicians and Celtic scholars.
I’d like to respond to an astute assessment made by in the article by William Gillies (p. 122). This reflects the current scholarly consensus:
on the one hand, a rhythmically regular series of accompanying chords or similar would create an unlikely counterpoint to the rhythmically irregular stresses of the word text; and on the other hand, a series of accompanying flourishes that followed the irregular stresses of the word text would require the harper as well as the reacaire to have the text off by heart. Both these scenarios are possible but, I submit, unlikely.
Evidence from Wales, however, opens a new window and Gillies provides a helpful section for people who run into cross-cultural comparison too quickly, or shun it altogether. In 2011, Peter Greenhill published a footnote, drawing attention to what I described in yesterday’s comment as “the composer-conductor’s staff”:
A description of the use of the staff is given by Siôn Dafydd Rhys in his Grammar of 1592, quoted by Einir Gwenllian Thomas, ‘Astudiaeth destunol o Statud Gruffudd ap Cynan’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Wales, Bangor, 2001), 837: ‘Datceiniad penn pastwn a elwir yr vn a bhô ynn datcánu heb bhedru dhim canu tant i hûnan. A hwnnw a dhyly sebhylh ynghhenawl y neuadh, a churaw i phonn, a chanu i gywydh neu i owdl gyd â r dyrnodieu’ (‘Datgeiniad pen pastwn’ is the name of the one who performs without being able to play strings himself. And he should stand in the middle of the hall, and beat his staff, and perform his cywydd or his awdl together with the thumps).
I rejected this approach at the start of an experiment in 2014, accompanying Caius Choir singing the Altus prosator. We performed it in Cambridge, Dublin, Galway and Frankfurt and you can hear the end result on the Delphian CD, In Praise of Saint Columba. Initially, guided by the scholarly consensus, I tried to follow the irregular Latin stresses. But in the first performance, I lost my place on the page and for several lines had to busk, strumming an improvised riff that was accidentally in counterpoint with the words. This happened twice - the hymn is 25 mins long.
Listening back to the recording of this first attempt, I was surprised to find that the sections of unintended syncopation, in which I strummed more regularly, were more compelling. I changed my experimental approach for two reasons. Firstly, a more regular riff was vastly less stressful and taxing. On that first recording, the unintended sections emanated confidence rather than fear; they somehow worked better, the ensemble between me and the choir was tighter, I realised I could relax and “vibe it” as Jazz and Hindustani musicians do, performing without scores. It became clear that this was a more workable solution for an accompanist than turning pages in low light levels, worried about alignment with something unpredictable. Strumming to coincide with the word stresses involves greater levels of risk and far more preparation time. As Gillies recognised, both singer and accompanist would have had to memorise the poem, unless they were reading texts - but this contradicts the evidence (including the fact that musicians could be blind).
The other reason I switched, encouraged by an article by Alan Bruford which looks at evidence for a wide range of performing options, is the extent to which musical cultures relish the entrancing effects that complexity coupled with limited musical pitches have on the human brain. Just as most musical cultures in Africa prize sophisticated, trance-inducing sonic textures, musicians working in the chapels and courts of medieval Europe delighted in extremes of rhythmic virtuosity far removed from the style of music most of us listen to today. These awe-inspiring varieties of music serve a very different function and respond to very different aesthetic criteria and worldview. I suggest that they may be closer to what was known to medieval Gaelic listeners, at least in the performance of strict-metre poems.
So, I would sum up my response to the scholarly consensus articulated by William Gillies in 2010 as follows. Experiments accompanying the Altus prosator in 2014 lead me to submit that the counterpoint of scenario 1 is a likely and robust performing solution, and that scenario 2 can be ruled out unless we can identify manuscripts that appear to have served as performing scores.
Let me end with a quote from Virginia Blankenhorn’s article (p. 140), which reminds us of one of the key reasons that the performance of filidheachd is relevant to students of pibroch:
the subtlety and difficulty of Irish panegyric verse – in addition to protecting the status of its practitioners – no doubt increased the standing of those for whom it was composed, namely, the Gaelic chieftains themselves. Indeed, the primary purpose of this poetry was to celebrate the reputations of the chieftain and his forefathers. As J. E. Caerwyn Williams points out, the evidence of the poems themselves indicates that the poets ‘arrogated to themselves the right to confer honour and fame’, and that ‘as the Irish poet tells us, “No man can be famous without an ollav.”
The social functions and performing environments of filidheachd and pìobaireachd overlapped substantially, and as strict verse fell from favour, pibroch rose to prominence.
The musical duo of Bard and Clarsair (harper) is depicted in the well-known woodcut in Derrick’s ‘The Image of Ireland’ showing the Chief of the MacSweyns at a feast, being regaled by the Bard while the Clarsair sits near him, plucking the strings in accompaniment.
http://www.docs.is.ed.ac.uk/docs/lib-archive/bgallery/Gallery/researchcoll/pages/bg0055_jpg.htm
Well Barnaby lots of meat in that reply but how I miss footnotes in these sort of exchanges. But before tackling your last statement I am comfortably familiar with all the sources you cite but they still tend towards using examples from one area to make their case in another without attempting to first produce any evidence that there can actually be shown to be any such connection at ground level.
Ireland was different from Scotland in several ways, and that is before touching on M P Coira’s comparison of the verse structures and content over Gaelic Scotland. The File were certainly at the top of the tree in Ireland and composed in a language standardised around 1200 AD, an event thought to have been triggered in response to the Norman incursions into the Irish cultural scene. That the File composed in a number of syllabic metres seems to be generally accepted, and that it was in turn ‘performed’ by a ‘reciter’ to as musical accompaniment is also generally accepted to be true.
But where just about all the published material touching on those matters goes off the rails before even leaving the station is that in Ireland that musical accompaniment was undertaken by two different stringed instruments, one the Cruit/Clarsach/harp (whichever term you wish to use), while the other was the tiompan or in modern terms a lyre. It is clear from the poetry as both instruments are mentioned, but without any good reason when the instrument is just described as ‘stringed’ the translators always indicate a harp, even in some case where it actually has tiompan it has been translated as a ‘harp’. Furthermore though the tiompan was falling out of favour over time it was certainly still around in the early 1600’s therefore covering the whole period of classic syllabic verse.
That situation just described simply does not translate to Scotland. Neither the ‘standard’ Gaelic of the File, nor the File themselves made much impact in Scottish Gaeldom and the only reference known to the tiompan being in use in Scotland is from the Book of the Dean of Lismore where it’s player was clearly an Irishman. It is though with your last statement which I would like to continue this reply.
That, ‘The social functions and performing environments of filidheachd and pìobaireachd overlapped substantially, and as strict verse fell from favour, pibroch rose to prominence’.
For that to really have any real significance you would need to show ’cause and effect’ and that is where I do take issue. Yes I will also put my hands up as although I have picked at doing something related to this subject with what I am sitting on I prefer to have my nose in archives looking for what I do not know rather than publishing what I do. But any further statements I make here are based on contemporary documented evidence duly photocopied and transcribed and filed away here in my secondary archive I call home.
So where to start? perhaps with the harp to get that out of the way. When due to my interest in piobaireachd and somewhat dissatisfied with Collinson’s work I decided to turn the problem around and look at it from the other end. That is by looking at the harp in Scotland I was told that little information remained, a statement I think over the years I have disproved. When I first started looking into the harp in Scotland and people tend to fixate on the wirestrung harp forgetting that there was a very strong tradition of gut harps in Scotland as well. The first thing I did was put up a large wall-map and using those little stick on coloured spots added one every time a harper was identified. Colour denoted the century and a number in the spot correlated to a key.
Initially the fact that what was supposed to be the ‘home territory’ of the clarsach showed the least early ‘spots’ I for a long time dismissed as being significant as I passed it off as there being less contemporary material surviving for those areas for harpers to show up in. It took a long time for the realisation to sink in that it was not the case and did indeed reflect the distribution of harpers and that the areas of greatest concentration of ‘clarsach’ players was not in the far north west. Yes there were visiting harpers but take for an example the MacKenzies who held much of the northern mainland and Lewis. They had clarsach players but like the MacKenzie chiefs themselves they lived over in the east at Brahan and surrounding areas.
Let us turn now to the poets and pipers. A paper by Hugh Cheape and Michael Newton expounded the argument that the pipes were a ‘new’ instrument because it was not until the early 17th C that the poets started to mention it. I was sent a draft of that paper for comments but due to a problem they had with their publisher it came with an apologetic note that in fact no changes could be made. So I restricted myself to just pointing out that the piper in the earliest verse they quoted could in fact be named.
The contemporary verses they they used in that article are fine, but, and to be fair not their fault as they did not know what I knew, the conclusions do not really hold fast. It is here that we return to your statement Barnaby. The poets who most closely conform to that Irish model in Scotland were in fact mostly Irish or of that near decent. The principal one being the MacMhuirich family of poets to the Lords of the Isles based in Kintyre and the MacMarquis poets also in Kintyre while a later family the O’Muirrgheasain when first appearing in Scotland were associated with Mull. These are all you will note in Argyle and Clan Donald south connections.
After the fall of the Lords of the Isles, and the Campbell take over of the former Clan Donald lands the MacMhuirich poets moved north to serve the MacDonald’s of Skye, though actually based on North UIst. Prof Thomson in his paper on that family speculates that the move probably occurred through an otherwise unknown ‘Cathal’ in a long genealogy got from an illiterate North Uist descendant of the family by the HSS. That ‘Cathal’ does actually appear in an Argyle rental I found where the Kintyre lands were around 1600 still in the hands of ‘John MacMhuirich and his son Cathal’.
So I hope that is enough ‘evidence’ for starters as my fingers are getting tired, so lets re-look at the background. Around 1600 the nearest to what Scotland had to the Irish File moved from the most Irish influenced part of Gaelic Scotland, to North Uist where they found that native harpers had never been plentiful but that piping and piobaireachd was already dominant. Being used to being ‘top dog’ the poets were less than impressed and hence the poetic views. Of course after the MacMhuirich poets moved north so did the O’Muirgheasin’s but they were later. The next member of that family after their appearance in Mull was still kicking around Campbell territory in Argyle in the 1690’s before then turning up at Dunvegan.
So to rephrase your comment; Other than both being products of a Gaelic biased cultural environment, where there would be some shared cultural tastes, Filidheachd and piobaireachd only overlapped because the poets had first moved into the piping stronghold where pibroch was already prominent. Strict verse had never been in a particularly strong place in most of Gaelic Scotland outside of the Lordship of the Isles in the first place. and was already on the way out of favour, even in Ireland by around 1600 when the Kintyre poets moved north to North Uist.
Do I need a drink the bottle calls.
How wonderful! Keith, your sharing of knowledge and concern to keep us right are a true delight. It is a privilege to have you contributing here. Thank you and slainte mhòr!
Thank you for those comments Barnaby, but don’t overdo the flattery especially as I have to add a correction. It is why I hate these little post boxes and trying to decide what goes in and what is left out since it cannot be bounced into a footnote.
The MacMhuirich poets moved to the Clanranald territory of South Uist, not the Skye MacDonald lands in North Uist. I was trying to decide at the time if another ‘example’ to make the background case should go in, and as this starts afresh I may as well add it.
It is further esoteric evidence that the strict Irish approach to creating verse by the File did not apply in most of Gaelic Scotland, especially in that north west area. It is significant that in the male dominant world of that time three of the most prominent Gaelic poets were women.;- Mairi nighean Alasdair Ruaidh (Mary MacLeod), Mairghead nighean Lachlainn (?) and Shilis na Ceapaich (Giles NicDonald).
While in Ireland women feature in poetry and patronized poets, it was a lot later timewise before they start to register as poets and even then not in such a tight geographical area. (cf Women in Early Modern Ireland ed. M MacCurtain and M O’Dowd).
Another example of the distribution of harpers comes from matching of a 17th C poem on the MacKenzie of Applecross and what we think is a reference to a harper. In the poem mention is made of a visit to MacKenzie by a harper of the Earl of Antrim. This is usually linked to a traditional story about an Irish harper on circuit who was asked who had been the most generous of his ‘patrons’ and replied the ‘right hand of the Laird of Applecross’. He was then asked who had been the next most generous and replied ‘the left hand of the Laird of Applecross’.
What is significant about the reference we have found that looks like an Irish ‘clarsair’ (the scribe had an even more cavalier approach to spelling and the actual name behind what is written is still being worked on) . The reference is well over on the east side north of Inverness. However why this would tie in with the Applecross family is that despite that estate being over in the west, the family actually preferred lived at ‘Chanonry’ the old name for the area around Fortrose.
Absentee landlords were nothing new and existed way back in the 17th C.
I, personally, would love to see this very informative, very historical and very academic talk distilled down to a few key take-away points for those of us looking to understand how to perform pibroch better. There appear to be a few background points regarding harping, poetry, song and pibroch that can be used (along the lines, perhaps, of Allan thesis?). There may even be some regarding an appreciation and understanding of scansion and structure.
But I hesitate to put anything definitive, as my mind is still swimming in names, dates and places.
What can I learn from this discussion as a player?
“What can I learn from this discussion as a player?”
I’ll stick my neck out and say that old Gaelic music is basically a very old, very complex “classical” music that can’t just be “distilled down to a few key take-away points” any more than “orchestral music” could.
The more I see it like that the more obvious it is that all of these arts are intimately connected, because they were being done for the same patrons by related artists. And that both the artists and patrons loved subtlety, complexity, concealed as well as overt structures and systems, and were ferociously intellectual about it all.
“What can I learn from this discussion as a player?”
This discussion is about finding a reference point for rhythm and flow in poetry contemporary with pibroch tunes. It is difficult to find these things in the dots, especially as they’ve come down to us. As Ailean has said, listening to Matheson’s recordings of Gaelic songs will reveal a great deal.
I would like to see many of the points made in this very interesting discussion expanded to include more detailed analysis of Gaelic poetry with textual and recorded examples spoken are sung by a Gaelic speaker, like Ailean. I have studied Gaelic with a teacher, and I can read the poetry with the help of Dwelly’s dictionary, but I doubt I’ll ever come close to replicating the rhythm and flow of Gaelic poetry on my own.
Thanks very much Keith and Barnaby for this very interesting discussion.
Keith, please gather all of your insights and research into a book. I will be the first to buy it.
David, I have been pondering your question and wondering how to propose an answer without it appearing facetious. ‘How to perform pibroch better’. Better than what?
Historically there was unlikely to have ever been only one way to achieve a competent musical performance and therefore it comes down as in all ‘art forms’ to the personal taste of the listeners. That is unless you are thinking in terms of satisfying the Judges in the modern competitive scene. In that case I doubt that ‘history’ will help at all although the original post by Barnaby and these discussions may have added a little to your background knowledge as well as confusing, err I meant convincing you how uncertain much of history actually is. However that is the meat in the sandwich of academic discussion.
But to return to that first paragraph what finally induced me to respond was a recently posted thesis on the academia.edu site, a study of Scottish Dance since 1805 to date with particular interest in chapter 7 on piping over that period.
https://www.academia.edu/26092605/Regulation_and_Reaction_The_Development_of_Scottish_Traditional_Dance_with_Particular_Reference_to_Aberdeenshire_from_1805_to_the_Present_Day
While this is a new thesis it sits nicely in conjunction with an older article by Virginia Blankenhorn on changes in Connermara Sean Nos singing over a much shorter period.
https://www.academia.edu/1211385/The_Connemara_Sean-N%C3%B3s_since_the_gramophone
What they significantly have in common is an illustration of the effect of competitions on the original traditional form. I will though give you time to digest these before digging any deeper.