Author: Anne MacVicar Grant
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Author: Michael Newton
Publisher: Birlinn
ISBN: 0857907670
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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An enlightening illustrated overview of Gaelic culture and history in Scotland. Words have always held great power in the Gaelic traditions of the Scottish Highlands: Bardic poems bought immortality for their subjects; satires threatened to ruin reputations and cause physical injury; clan sagas recounted family origins and struggles for power; incantations invoked blessings and curses. Even in the present, Gaels strive to counteract centuries of misrepresentation of the Highlands as a backwater of barbarism without a valid story of its own to tell. Warriors of the Word offers a broad overview of Scottish Highland culture and history, bringing together rare and previously untranslated primary texts from scattered and obscure sources. Poetry, songs, tales, and proverbs, supplemented by the accounts of insiders and travelers, illuminate traditional ways of life, exploring such topics as folklore, music, dance, literature, social organization, supernatural beliefs, human ecology, ethnic identity, and the role of language. This range of materials allows Scottish Gaeldom to be described on its own terms and to demonstrate its vitality and wealth of renewable cultural resources—making this an essential compendium for scholars, students, and all enthusiasts of Scottish culture.

Author: Mary Miers
Publisher: Poetry of Place
ISBN: 9781906011291
Category : Hebrides (Scotland)
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Songs, satires, laments, poems, and incantions from various artists familiar with the mountain glens of the Scottish Highlands.

Author: John Macleod
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
ISBN: 9780340639917
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
A history of the isles and glens of the Highlands of Scotland. Starting from a journey north to the author's home in the Western Isles, this book is a tour of the past, great and sad, of the Gaels of Scotland, and through the realities of the present.

Author: Yo'av Karny
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0374528128
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 470

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The story of the region, told by an intrepid journalist Many dire predictions followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, but nowhere have they materialized as dramatically as in the Caucasus: insurrection, civil wars, ethnic conflicts, economic disintegration, and up to two million refugees. Moreover, in the 1990s Russia twice went to war in the Caucasus, and suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of a nation so tiny that it could fit into a single district of Moscow. What is it about the Caucasus that makes the region so restless, so unpredictable, so imbued with heroism but also with fanaticism and pain? In Highlanders, Yo'av Karny offers a better understanding of a region described as a "museum of civilizations," where breathtaking landscapes join with an astounding human diversity. Karny has spent many months among members of some of the smallest ethnic groups on earth, all of them living in the grim shadow of an unhappy empire. But his book is a journey not only to a geographic region but also to darker sides of the human soul, where courage vies with senseless vindictiveness; where honor and duty require people to share the present with long-dead ancestors, some real, some imaginary; and where an ancient way of life is drawing to an end under the combined weight of modernity and intolerance.

Author: Daniel Cook
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198803559
Category : English poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 785

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The pride o' a' our Scottish plain; Thou gi'es us joy to hear thy strain, (Janet Little, 'An Epistle to Mr Robert Burns') The 18th century saw Scotland become one of the leading international centres of literature, philosophy, and publishing and yet still retain its lively oral tradition of ballads and poetry. Scottish Poetry, 1730-1830 edited by Daniel Cook contains over 200 poems and songs written in Scots, English, and Gaelic which reflect this vibrant period of literary flourishing. The collection places Burns, Scott, and other major writers alongside lesser known or even entirely forgotten figures. Gaelic poets feature in their original language and in translation, along with many important long poems in their entirety. Lairds and ladies jostle with labouring-class writers, satirists with sentimentalists, Gaelic bards with Gothic balladists, rural singers with urbanite odists, and together they reveal the unrivalled range of Scottish poetry. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Author: Charles Wells Moulton
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : American literature
Languages : en
Pages : 808

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Author:
Publisher: Broadview Press
ISBN:
Category : English literature
Languages : en
Pages : 1609

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Author: D.L. Macdonald
Publisher: Broadview Press
ISBN: 1551110512
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 1609

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Book Description
The selections from 132 authors in this anthology represent gender, social class, and racial and national origin as inclusively as possible, providing both greater context for canonical works and a sense of the era’s richness and diversity. In terms of genre, poetry, non-fiction prose, philosophy, educational writing, and prose fiction are included. Geographically, America, Canada, Australia, India, and Africa are represented along with Britain, emphasizing Romantic literature as a world literature. Biographical headnotes, explanatory footnotes, and an extensive bibliography clarify and illuminate the texts for readers.

Author: Nigel MacNeill
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 581

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The Celts and the Teuton started westward from the cradle of the human race, spreading themselves over Europe; while other members of the same stock went eastward, extending themselves over wide tracts of Asia. From the Celts, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Teutons have sprung the chief nations in whose possession Europe still remains. It is interesting to think that the brothers who parted thousands of years ago, somewhere in teeming Asia, the one going east and the other west, are now meeting again on the plains of Hindostan. Their movements during those thousands of years have encircled the whole earth. Fiercely have they fought and disputed over every inch of the ground which one or other of their tribes at one time or other occupied. Theirs has always been the chief ruling power in the world. They begin to know one another again. From the extreme west of Europe, across the New World, the Anglo-Celt arrives in India and recognises the Hindoo as his brother. The Aryans migrated into Europe in a somewhat advanced state of civilisation. According to Sayce their advent was from the north, a theory which subverts nearly all previously accepted opinions on the subject. Some of them, however, such as the Greeks first and the Romans afterwards, favoured by the maritime countries in which they settled, made more rapid progress than the others. It was largely their self-conceit that led the Greeks and Romans to describe all the nations beyond their bounds as “barbarian.” Our ancestors in these islands, whether Celtic or Teutonic, were never mere savages. They had a religion, if not radically the same, fully as enobling in its tendency as that of Greece and Rome. They evidently made some progress in the useful arts, while in the days of Rome’s greatest splendour they were in possession of military weapons which were not much inferior to her own. The form of government among the Celts was patriarchal, and this continued for a long time among the Gaels of Scotland. There was the king or chief, who was regarded as the father of the clan, tribe, or nation. With him was associated a council of chieftains or elders, and in important matters the mot of the whole people. But with all this political organisation they could not make such progress in civilisation as the Greeks and Romans, who mostly dwelt in cities. The Gaels who along with the Germans acted the part of pioneers on the plains of Europe, and living a rural life, could not compete successfully in the race for higher civilisation with the brother races who inhabited the maritime cities of Greece and Italy, and who, besides, obtained much of an earlier civilisation from Phœnicia and Egypt. The early migrations of the Gael are involved in much obscurity. By the study of topography, however, we can follow many of his footsteps westward. This study, however, is rendered very difficult, and at times very uncertain, because the discoverable traces of the presence of the Celt lie embedded in the soil of the life of the powerful pre-Celtic races. The Celt and the Teuton have always been close neighbours. The progress of the two westward appears to have been somewhat simultaneous, at least on the Continent. The geographical positions of France and Germany at the present day represent not inaccurately the attitude of the Gaelic and Teutonic races towards one another in their earlier movements from the east. It has been said that the Celts came too soon into Europe, just as the Slaves came too late. It would be difficult to verify this remark in the light of history and in the face of existing facts. While admitting that the remark may have an element of truth in it, we must remember, with regard to the Slaves, that it is premature to anticipate what they may become. We see them a mighty threatening wave on a westward course. The Chinese hordes, who are already a trouble, press behind the Russians; and the growing power of the latter in Europe is a matter of serious concern to our statesmen. The struggle between Celt and Teuton again cannot be said to be at an end as long as France and Germany maintain their present watchful and hostile attitude. As to their racial composition respectively the former may be said to be as much Celtic as the latter is Teutonic. But on the other hand, in the United Kingdom, Celt and Teuton may be said virtually to agree. They have so blended for centuries that, notwithstanding boasts on both sides, which science cannot sustain, it is impossible almost to produce a pure Saxon or a pure Gael. It cannot certainly be done in Scotland. This intermingling of races in the British Islands has produced a national character very unlike our Continental neighbours. The Anglo-Celtic power of the British Empire is not so immobile or sluggish as the German, nor so light and airy as the French; and its rule appears almost to have arrived at the incipient stage of universal dominion. Great Britain was peopled in the north and in the south simultaneously from the Continent, and Ireland was similarly peopled from the north and south of Britain. The Gaels of Ireland and of Scotland were the same people, having the same language and music; and all the elements of civilisation about them were the common property of both. At the same time there are evidences that the Gaels of the North of Ireland stood in closer relationship to those of Scotland than those in the South of Ireland. And this holds true even to this very day. It should always be borne in mind that there have been different tribes of pre-Celts, Celts and Teutons in Ireland, which has hitherto prevented that national cohesion in the time of danger which alone could secure the independence of the country. Ireland being peopled at a later period, has taken a longer time in developing a full-orbed nationality. On the other hand there has been an earlier homogeneity among the Scottish Celts; whether called Picts, Gaels, Scots, or Albanaich, they were always one against the common foe, whatever might be the feuds among themselves. In more recent days the reformation of religion in the 16th century helped to produce in the Scottish Gael a distinctively different character from that of the Gael of Ireland; it also destroyed in Scotland many of the old Gaelic things which were associated with a religion that was regarded as superstitious. Thus much of the history and the literature of the Scottish Gael was lost. In Ireland, where no violent changes took place in the condition and religious beliefs of the people, we find very extensive manuscript literature—rich with interesting spoils of the past—as well as more relics even of earlier Gaelic life in Scotland.