HIGHLAND FOLKLORE

Folklore is not restricted to backwards, illiterate, or rural people: every society, and every group of people, has and creates folklore. The American Folklore Society defines folklore in the following way:

Folklore is the traditional art, literature, knowledge, and practice that is disseminated largely through oral communication and behavioral example. Every group with a sense of its own identity shares, as a central part of that identity, folk traditions - the things that people traditionally believe (planting practices, family traditions, and other elements of worldview), do (dance, make music, sew clothing), know (how to build an irrigation dam, how to nurse an ailment, how to prepare barbecue), make (architecture, art, craft), and say (personal experience stories, riddles, song lyrics).

The Scottish Highlanders have been noted for their rich stores of folklore. The famous American folklorist Alan Lomax said that the song of the Gael is "the finest flower of Western Europe."

The topics in this section contain some indications of the variety and diversity of Highland folklore. Although folklore could be shared and learnt anywhere, the most important focus for the oral tradition in particular was the céilidh, an informal gathering, usually in a someone's home in the neighborhood.

All sorts of things could happen at the céilidh house: people sang songs, played music, danced, challenged each other with riddles, told legends, related folktales, recounted anecdotes from their lives, discussed genealogy, debated community issues, and made plans for the future. It was a traditional Highland education, in which everyone of all ages participated and had something to contribute. This allowed the collective wisdom and value system to be transmitted from one generation to the next, and it gave a sense of collective purpose and identity to young and old.

REFERENCES

A Handbook of the Scottish Gaelic World, pp. 101-5.