artsyhonker | DUAN NA H-AOIGHEACHD (Reply)

Chunnaic mi coigreach an dé;
Chuir mi biadh an àit' ithidh da,
Deoch an àit' òil,
Ceol an àit' eisdeachd;
'San ainm naomh na Trianaid
Bheannaich e mi fhin 's mo thigh,
Mo ni 's mo dhuine;
'S thuirt an uiseag 's i seinn,
Gur minig, minig, minig,
A theid Criosd an riochd a' choigrich,
Gur minig, minig, minig,
A theid Criosd an riochd a' choigrich.

What is this, you ask?

It's a Gaelic 'Rune of Hospitality' that is all over the internet in its translation by Kenneth MacLeod, although usually without attribution, so that I only found the name of the translator by chance. It's claimed by some to be mediaeval in origin, but nobody ever posts a source.

Unfortunately for me, Kenneth MacLeod died a few years too recently for his translation to be public domain. I doubt his inheritors, if he has any, are going to sue me for six years worth of royalties, but I can't really take the risk of a viva voce question about the copyright of my text showing that I've willfully ignored copyright.

But it was a translation, right? So there might be an original around, right?

Well, maybe. But I couldn't find it, which makes setting it hard. And some of these late 19th/early 20th -century "transcriptions" of traditional folk material were, in fact, made up of whole cloth, and not transcriptions at all. Others were said to be traditional folk this or that but were actually invented by the particular person being transcribed, because, well, messing with anthropologists is totally a traditional pastime, right?

But I really, really wanted to use this text.

So I asked the hivemind. And someone on Mastodon managed to find this tweet:
https://twitter.com/alastairmci/status/662989458422255617

Which states that the above text is published in CelticReview Vol. 7 1911, pp 50-51. And has a picture. The picture further states that the text was transcribed from Janet MacLeod on the Isle of Eigg.

A further tweet states, "Checking bio in R Black's An Tuil, 720-2, Rune's source was Janet MacLeod, Skye aunt #KennethMacleod, not 2b confused with eponymous mother".

----

Well, then.

I'm still not 100% in the clear, here: I don't know when Janet MacLeod died, I don't know if she wrote this text or if it really is 'traditional'. But it seems more likely that it is than that it isn't; and it seems also to be more likely than not that she will have died before 1948, which is the current line for things to go into the public domain.

I may have to delve into the census records to be sure, but I do now feel I have enough to be going on to start setting the text.

In Gaelic.

Ah...

About that.

I don't think this will actually be a huge problem for the choir that is premiering the work: this performance is happening in Aberdeen, some members of the choir have definitely sung Gaelic before, and so on.

But I don't have the first idea of what I'm doing in setting it, and that's not so good. And it might give hiccoughs to future choirs.

I need:
-A guide to Scottish Gaelic pronunciation that I'm allowed to reproduce in the musical score, which I will eventually want to release under CC by-SA
~~-A recording of someone who speaks Scottish Gaelic reading this poem, slowly and clearly~~ A friend will do this for me tonight, yay!
-very soon (I am already hideously behind on this project).