A Handbook of Scottish Gaelic Culture provides, for the first time, an overview of Scotland's indigenous Celtic society, including many primary sources which have never previously been edited or translated. This presentation of materials allows the reader to appreciate Gaelic culture from its own point of view in its proper cultural context.

Gaeldom is the heir to the deeply rooted Celtic societies of Scotland. During the early medieval period, an elite culture common to Scotland and Ireland flourished and developed political and intellectual institutions. After the disruption of the Viking Age, the MacDonald Lords of the Isles cultivated a renaissance of Gaelic culture in a stable principality. Yet, in the last several centuries, Gaelic culture and language have been suppressed and stigmatized as primitive and doomed for extinction.

The premises of these stereotypes are re-examined with a post-colonial outlook that places Gaeldom in a wider cross-cultural context. This book investigates the general features of Gaelic clan society in the latter medieval period as well as its responses to institutionalized Anglicization since the mid-eighteenth century.

Poetry, songs, and tales, supplemented by the accounts of insiders and travelers, illuminate the traditional way of life, examining such topics as the oral tradition, social organization, morality, sense of place, ecology, cosmology, music, and the role of language. This is an essential and accessible source-book for scholars, students, and all enthusiasts of Scottish culture.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Roimh-Ràdh (le Iain MacAonghais)

Chapter One: Thinking about Culture

• Culture, the Matrix of Life
• A Dynamic, Organic Entity
• Culture, Race, and Individuals
• Imperialism and Cultural Myth-making
• Celtic, Gaelic and Scottish

Chapter Two: A Gaelic History of Scotland

• Celts, Romans, and Christians
• Forging the Nation
• Feudalization and Clanship
• Anglicization and Polarization
• Unions and Conquests
• Final Conflict
• Clearance, Exile and Inferiority
• Conclusions

Chapter Three: The Gaelic Oral Tradition

• The Primal Context
• The Classical Gaelic Order
• The Official Poet in Action
• The Scottish Gaelic Vernacular Tradition
• The Gaelic Panegyric Code
• Wider Oral Tradition in Society
• The Cèilidh House
• Decline of the Oral Tradition

Chapter Four: The Organization of Society

• Clans and Kingship
• Kings and Chieftains
• Nobility and Hierarchy
• Ties That Bind
• Women
• Territory, Ownership and Power
• An Integrated Sense of Self
• The Structure Dismantled

Chapter Five: The Operation of Society

• Honour and Warfare
• Cooperation and Obligation
• Values and Morality
• Affection and Sexuality
• The Stages of Life
• Cyclic Thinking
• World Turned Upside Down

Chapter Six: Nature and Ecology

• Culture and Environment
• Land Use
• The Cycles of the Seasons
• Limits and Constraints
• Humankind and Nature
• Nature and Traditional Cosmology

Chapter Seven: Landscape and Culture

• Wilderness, Civilization and Improvement
• Town and Country
• Marriage to Territory
• The Sacred in the Landscape
• Place-names and Place-lore
• Sense of Place

Chapter Eight: Language

• Historical Developments
• Language and Culture
• Music and Language
• Words, Names and Magic

Chapter Nine: Belief, Tradition, and Science

• Custom, Ritual and Belief in Society
• Belief Systems and Peace of Mind
• 'Folk' Science and Native Epistemology
• Resistance Against False 'Progress'
• Protestant Progress and Cultural Attack

Chapter Ten: Past and Future Prospects

• Gaeldom in Health
• Cultural Invasion and Decline
• Development and Recovery