The amazing story of The Carmina Gadelica

Alexander Carmichael was not a philanthropist. He was, professionally, an exciseman. A tax collector. It was on those orders that he found himself traversing the far reaches of Scottish Highlands and most rural places.

On his official duties for state revenue, he was treated to the well known Scottish hospitality to be shown even one’s most mortal enemies. A place from the cold, a chair, maybe some supper, and unbeknownst to him at the time, the beginning of his historic collection of runes, prayers, incantations, myths and lore now known as The Carmina Gadelica . “The Hymn of The Gaels”.

Like their cousins around the Celtic world, Scots are story tellers. The stories and related folkloric gems that befell Carmichael’s ears on his tax treks were not just bar banter. They were parts of the Scottish culture which had lasted for centuries as oral tradition, sequestered and preserved in the mouths of a rural people as the last remnants of far forgotten ages and ways of living. They were Runes, which is another word for incantation. They were prayers that melded Christianity with the shards of pre-Christian belief to be found in the furthest corners of the Scots’ realm. They were songs and poems, blessings, proverbs, small preserves of the language and culture that managed to survive even Scotland’s most brutal repressions.

Alexander Carmichael began writing them down. This was no longer a professional man’s distraction, but a salvation of folkloric culture on the verge of dying in one more generation. This was the compilation of lore gathered by Gaelic speaking Scots between 1860 and 1909.

Carmichael’s work can be traced to a bucolic report to the Nappier Commission of 1884, called ‘Grazing and Agrestic Customs of the Outer Hebrides’ which first introduced these findings to more genteel Scottish ears and institutions. Francis Napier, 10th Lord, engaged Carmichael to write a piece on traditional Hebridean land customs based on writings in the third chapter of William Skene’s “Celtic Scotland”. That led to the introduction of Carmichael’s work, unorthodoxically produced as a collections of runes, prayers and folklore. He then proceeded to produce the first two volumes, published in 1900 with the assistance of family and friends. Further edits and editions continued throughout the 1900s, with the last on being in a single volume 1992 publication by Floris Press.

That the work was unique and historically compelling was never in question. With that mantle also came controversy and criticism. It’s first offering being under the title “ Idylls of the Isles” , it appealed broadly to masses both intellectually and emotionally. Carmichael’s unhappiness with the publisher Archibald Cox’s plans, and his determination to see the collection through the press on his own terms and according to his own design, put a hiccup in the process.

Questioning the historicity of Carmichael’s work, a number of people had gripes with how he handled the transcripts, and accuracy of the material he collected. One work above others — “The Genealogy of Bride” caused grief not only for academics but churchmen who were uneasy with how the rune touched on the pre-Christian sentiments of Scottish culture still in evidence. For good reason.

Bride/Brighid is one of the bona fide pre-Christian Goddess forms which were enveloped in later Celtic Christianity, and the tome to her “genealogy” which was in fact a Jacobs Ladder form of spirit and mind progression from inspiration to divine change. Also, from related research, the Genealogy is born out as a pure and true remaining rendition, not the questionable inventions of a later age.

The Carmina Gadelica remains controversial. Along with that, its words have to be read with the times of Carmichael, political struggles of Scotland and widespread then revulsion with “backward” Gaelic culture in mind. Still, it remains as a beautiful treasure trove of of the culture beliefs, customs and way of life of Scottish Gaels in the 19th century. A window, a front seat into what mysterious and powerful folkways not only continued to drive that culture, but the stirring and still largely unknown origins of the magical foundations of its enduring appeal.