A Myth in the Making: Willie Ruff, Black Gospel and an Imagined Gaelic Scottish Origin

Abstract

Professor Willie Ruff argues that the performance style of psalms precented in Gaelic in Scotland's Protestant Hebrides is the root influence on African-American ‘gospel’ and by extension all other forms of African-American music. The present study considers ‘what must be true’ in order for Ruff's theory to be valid, and concludes from historical evidence that, rather than the one form influencing the other, the practice of ‘lining out’ in both Hebridean and African-American traditions is a vestige of an older English practice that has long since disappeared in England itself. The impact of Ruff's theory and of the publicity it has received on public opinion and on the status of psalm precenting in Scotland is evaluated, but little evidence is found of this media attention being beneficial to the tradition.