Elegies and Laments in the Nova Scotia Gaelic Song Tradition: Conservatism and Innovation

Robert Douglas Dunbar

doi:10.3390/genealogy6010003

Abstract

Gaelic-speaking emigrants brought with them a massive body of oral tradition, including a rich and varied corpus of song–poetry, and many of the emigrants were themselves highly skilled song-makers. Elegies were a particularly prominent genre that formed a crucially important aspect of the sizeable amount of panegyric verse for members of the Gaelic aristocracy, which is a tradition dating back to the Middle Ages. This contribution will demonstrate that elegies retained a prominent place in the Gaelic tradition in the new world Gaelic communities established in many parts of Canada and in particular in eastern Nova Scotia. In many respects, the tradition is a conservative one: there are strong elements of continuity. One important difference is the subjects for whom elegies were composed: in the new world context, praise for clan chiefs and other members of the traditional Gaelic aristocracy were no longer of relevance, although a small number were composed primarily out of a sense of personal obligation for patronage shown in the Old Country. Instead—and as was increasingly happening in the nineteenth century in Scotland, as well—the deaths of new community leaders, including clergy, and other prominent Gaels were recorded in verse. The large number of songs composed to mark the deaths of community members is also important—particularly young people lost at sea and in other tragic circumstances, occasionally in military service, and so forth. In these song–poems, we see local poets playing a role assumed by song-makers throughout Gaelic-speaking Scotland and Ireland: that of spokespeople for the community as a whole.

Highlights

Gaelic-speaking emigrants brought with them a massive body of oral tradition, including a rich and varied corpus of song–poetry, and many of the emigrants were themselves highly skilled song-makers
In the absence of clan chiefs, and with no landlords to exercise authority over the daily lives of the people in Nova Scotia and most other parts of the New World in which they settled, Gaels turned to other figures for leadership
It is important to remember that poets have used such song–poems as a means of expressing their own deeply felt personal grief. Such grief is present, often with considerable intensity, in laments for public figures in Gaelic society and in those laments that express communal solidarity. It is this intensity, and the artistry with which sorrow is conveyed, that make some of the laments we have looked at ones that have been kept alive on the lips of singers and in the hearts of audiences long after the particular events that they mark took place

Summary

Elegies for Community Leaders: ‘True’ Panegyrics

In the absence of clan chiefs, and with no landlords to exercise authority over the daily lives of the people in Nova Scotia and most other parts of the New World in which they settled, Gaels turned to other figures for leadership. The praise of the subject’s appearance and of his martial air in the first verse quoted, and the use in the second of kennings such as the noble tree and the valiant lion (an image redolent of martial associations) are very common motifs in panegyrics In another fine elegy for Bishop Fraser References to the Presbytery and Kirk Sessions would not be found in a panegyric, but ‘Ursainn-chatha’ (‘battle pillar’) was a motif that was very commonly redeployed and one that could be transposed to the new setting Another important category of community leaders for whom elegies were composed was ‘culture heroes’—highly regarded exponents of Gaelic culture. In all such song-poetry, though, the central preoccupation is the maintenance of the core values of the community

Elegies and Laments to Address Communal Grief

The Poet Expressing a Personal Sense of Loss

Conclusions