PETRA JOHANA PONCAROVÁ (2024) DERICK THOMSON AND THE GAELIC REVIVAL

As a writer in exile, writing about a writer in exile, PETRA JOHANA PONCAROVÁ offers an authentic voice.  Neither English nor Gaelic is her first languages. She was brought up speaking Czech.

To paraphrase Paul Valery, Language is a thing that belongs to us; but for us it is not entirely a thing; and it belongs to us a little less than we belong to it.

I’m no poet. And I do not speak Gaelic. No surprise then that I hadn’t heard of Derick Thompson or The Gaelic Revival. Perhaps there should be a question mark here. Because the Gaelic Revival, Thompson fought for most of his life is withering.

‘In the year of Thomson’s birth [1921], the census listed 158,779 Gaelic speakers in Scotland. The census conducted in 2011, a year before his death, listed the figure of 57,602, revealing a decrease of almost two-thirds.’

PONCAROVÁ, in writing about Derick Thompson, and the so-called Gaelic revival, she also uses a wider lens to look at how Scotland was, is, and how Thompson suggested it ought to be. With the routing of SNP at the polls, Scottish Independence  at the present time seems as likely as Scotland as a multilingual nation.

PONCAROVÁ follows behind Thompson’s poetry, prose and commentaries on other writer’s works. She meets Thompson on the page.  

Thompson was born on the island of Lewis. He was steeped in Scottish literature in the same way crofters lived in black houses. In some ways, he was Gaelic literature.

PETRA JOHANA PONCAROVÁ’s text has that feel of academic research on a subject that confirms her Phd. Interesting enough, but a niche market.

‘An Tobar’, as Whyte suggests, discusses ‘the plight of the Gaelic language’, for ‘a language cannot be conserved, it can only be allowed to live’

Read on.

https://bit.ly/bannkie

 

 

 

 

Notes.

My involvement with Gaelic started with a general interest in Scotland that

led me to modern Scottish Gaelic literature, which I first encountered

in the bilingual anthology Nua-Bhàrdachd Ghàidhlig/Modern Gaelic Poetry

(1976). It was the works of the five poets included that motivated me to

learn the language, so that I could access their writing in the original.

As a person brought up in the Czech Republic speaking Czech, my

compulsory education featured a great deal of positive discussion of the

Czech national revival, which occurred during the late eighteenth and the

nineteenth century and connected efforts to revitalise Czech language and

create a Czech culture with the endeavour to obtain political emancipation

from the Habsburg Empire. This background made me sensitive to and

instinctively supportive of other revivalist efforts that are still ongoing. My

place of birth in North Bohemia brings with it strong connections to displaced people, their language and the material traces of their existence –

the vanished and erased German-speaking neighbours, the connected

linguistic and cultural loss, and their imprints in the form of ruined towns

and villages overgrown with woods that mark the Sudetenland and its

borders. These phenomena likely prepared the ground for my interest in

the Clearances, and their literary reflections.

My account of Derick Thomson, although I have tried to make it balanced, is not and cannot be completely detached, and the decision to undertake this book also had a personal and revivalist motivation, to provide grounds for due appreciation of Thomson as one of the makers of the modern Gaelic world who conceptualised it in such a way that it would be open and welcoming to people with no familial ties to Gaelic Scotland. This monograph is based on my previous research on Thomson His career spanned almost sixty

years, arguably reaching its peak in the three decades of the 1950s to the

1970s but continuing well into the 2000s. Most of the activities he undertook during his long and productive life were aimed at the preservation

and further development of Scottish Gaelic as a viable, versatile language

able to take on the modern world, and the promotion of Scottish political

independence. This study aims to describe his work in the Gaelic movement comprehensively and in detail, and to evaluate its impact at the time

and its continuing legacy.

In his recent monumental monograph Gaelic in Scotland, Wilson McLeod

notes that in the period between 1872 and 2020, the number of Gaelic

users in Scotland decreased by more than four-fifths, and the language

steadily weakened as a means of daily communication.

that in recent decades, ‘the position of Gaelic has become increasingly contradictory, with this ongoing decline in the total number of Gaelic speakers and the intensity of Gaelic use coexisting with a dynamic of revitalisation, heightened recognition and increased public status’.11 As this book tries to illustrate, the life and work of Derick Thomson were part of these contradictory and dynamic processes in the Gaelic world in the twentieth century, and he exerted an important influence on them.

During Thomson’s lifetime, most responses to his work took the form of reviews of his poetry collections that appeared in various Scottish magazines. T

poetry of place, a concept deeply rooted in the Gaelic poetic tradition, and both popular and critical attention was paid especially to Thomson’s Lewis verse, where he explores his complex relationship to his native island and its culture; and to a lesser extent, to his writing about Glasgow, the city where he spent most of his life

In terms of public commemoration, MacLean is also much more visibly present in Scotland. In his native island of Raasay, his poetry is featured on tourist information boards and a memorial cairn in his honour is located near the cleared village of Hallaig, which inspired his most famous eponymous poem. He is one of twelve poets honoured by a bust in Edinburgh Park, South Gyle, copies of which were also gifted to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.32 Thomson, on the other hand, has no such public prominence, with the exception of the bust located on the premises of the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh.33 In 2018, The Gaelic Books Council (Comhairle nan Leabhraichean) decided to name their annual prize for the best new book of Gaelic poetry after Thomson, creating the ‘Duais Ruaraidh MhicThòmais’ (Derick Thomson Award), taking a promising step in this direction

By exploring Thomson’s thought and career, it also manages to map some aspects of Scottish history, politics and culture in the second half of the twentieth century from the perspective of the Gaelic world, trace certain trends in Gaelic revitalisation and in research into Gaelic and lesser-used languages, and outline how European and global developments were reflected in Scotland. This study builds on various works of Gaelic scholarship. It had the good fortune to emerge right after McLeod’s incisive Gaelic in Scotland had been published. The monograph provides a much-needed general and detailed overview of the development of Gaelic from 1872 and is employed here as a background to the discussion of Thomson’s role in the movement and his contributions

In the year of Thomson’s birth, the census listed 158,779 Gaelic speakers in Scotland. The census conducted in 2011, a year before his death, listed the figure of 57,602, revealing a decrease of almost two-thirds. This sharp drop was accompanied, as McLeod notes, by the gradual development of Gaelic education, media and publishing, and the embodiment of Gaelic in various official structures.64 This book seeks to examine how Derick Thomson responded to these phenomena and how he contributed to the preservation and further development of the Gaelic language in Scotland and beyond.

Timeline65

1921: birth of Derick Thomson

1921: census, 158,779 Gaelic speakers

1923: first Gaelic radio broadcast

1931: census, 136,135 Gaelic speakers

1934: foundation of the SNP

1945: SNP gains its first seat at Westminster (Robert McIntyre)

1951: publication of An Dealbh Briste

1951: census, 95,447 Gaelic speakers

1952: publication of the first issue of Gairm

1956: foundation of the Chair of Celtic, University of Glasgow

1961: census, 80,978 Gaelic speakers

1967: publication of Eadar Samhradh is Foghar

1968: foundation of The Gaelic Books Council

1970: publication of An Rathad Cian

1970: Donald Stewart becomes SNP MP for Western Isles

1970: discovery of the Forties oilfield

1971: census, 88,892 Gaelic speakers

1974: publication of An Introduction to Gaelic Poetry

1977: publication of Saorsa agus an Iolaire

1979: unsuccessful devolution referendum

1981: census, 82,620 Gaelic speakers

1982: publication of Creachadh na Clàrsaich

1983: publication of The Companion to Gaelic Scotland

1991: census, 65,978 Gaelic speakers

1991: publication of Smeur an Dòchais

1993: beginning of government-funded Gaelic TV broadcasts

1995: publication of Meall Garbh

1997: successful devolution referendum

1999: return of the Scottish parliament

2001: census, 58,652 Gaelic speakers

2002: publication of the last issue of Gairm

2007: publication of Sùil air Fàire

2011: census, 57,602 Gaelic speakers

2012: death of Derick Thomson

2014: unsuccessful Scottish independence referendum

McLeod summarises the challenging and complex history of Gaelic in Scotland in the following manner: Gaelic slowly emerged as the dominant language of Scotland in the central Middle Ages but following language shift it became confined to the northwest of the country. In the subsequent centuries Gaelic became stigmatised as a language of poverty, backwardness and even barbarism. Since the middle of the eighteenth century, against the background of severe economic and social disruption, language shift from Gaelic to English in the traditional Gaelic area gathered pace, so that the position of Gaelic as a community vernacular is now weaker than ever before.

e sixteenth century saw the disintegration of Gaelic society based on the clan system and on the authority and patronage of the vanished Lords of the Isles.8 As McLeod observes, ‘anti-Gaelic prejudices intensified in the later sixteenth century, when the Reformation transformed Lowland Scotland into a bastion of reformed Protestantism’.9 After the Union of the Crowns in 1603, when James VI of Scotland ascended the English throne as James I, anti-Highland policy grew in severity, taking a distinct shape in the Statutes of Iona (1609), a set of laws aimed at obliterating the overall distinctiveness of the region and the related political threats, which required Highland chiefs to send their heirs to be educated in the Lowlands. According to McLeod, ‘in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the government in Scotland had expressed an aggressive policy of linguistic assimilation – if not extirpation – in relation to the Gaelic language’ but there has been no official ban on Gaelic at any point.10 In 1688, James VII/II, the last Catholic

e Highland Clearances, occurred mostly between 1780 and 1860.12 The Highlands and Islands thus lost a significant part of their Gaelic-speaking inhabitants to emigration both to the Lowlands and overseas, in some cases no doubt motivated by private ambition and initiative but often forced overtly by removals and covertly by lack of opportunities. This led to the creation of Gaelic diasporas in Canada, Australia and other parts of the world. In Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Gaelic is still spoken in some communities and is the subject of local revivalist initiatives

 

developments, in combination with existing prejudice, resulted in what Silke Stroh describes as ‘the double marginality of the Gàidhealtachd, both within Scotland and within Britain’.1

The impact of the First World War on the Gaelic-speaking population of Scotland was devastating: as MacKinnon points out, drawing on the results of the 1921 census, ‘the Gaelic population bore a disproportionate share of war casualties and dislocation’.18 The sinking of HMY Iolaire, when more than two hundred returning servicemen drowned on 1 January 1919 within sight of Lewis, became one of the symbols of these losses.

One of the SNP’s first major achievements was the victory of Winnie Ewing33 in the by-election in Hamilton in 1967. In that year, the party had about sixty thousand members.34 While in 1970, it gained only one seat, for the Western Isles, four years later, eleven MPs for the SNP were returned to Westminster, making the general election an unprecedented success.35 In the 1970s, the independence cause was naturally fuelled by the discovery of North Sea oil (Forties field in 1970, Brent field in 1971) and concerns over control of it and the use of the profits from its extraction. An economic case for independence was put forward, epitomised by the slogan

However, the number of SNP members continued to grow even after the failed referendum, making the party the third-biggest in the UK. Under the leadership of Salmond’s successor, Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP enjoyed a landslide victory in the May 2015 UK General Election, gaining fifty-six out of fifty-nine constituencies. The EU referendum of 2016 revealed a major division between England and Scotland, and the ensuing Brexit negotiations drove the two countries still further apart. After the victory of the Conservatives under Boris Johnson in the General Election in December 2019 and another SNP landslide in Scotland, the party started to campaign for a second independence referendum in 2020, and the campaign for full independence has continued despite the hiatus caused by the 2020–1 Covid-19 pandemim

[wiped out be events, dear boy, events.]

In Herder’s theory, formulated most famously in Treatise on the Origin of Language (1772), the nation coincides with language, and individual languages therefore constitute distinct fixed communities whose particular way of thinking is determined by the respective language. Herder promoted the idea that languages are precious in themselves, as they contain the tradition, history, religion and customs of their people, claimed that linguistic variety allows for a diversity of thought, and perceived immersion in one’s own history and culture as the only path to real freedom. Herder also stressed the role of culture and language in the formation of nationality and authentic group experience, but also paid close attention to civilisation and will, as people need to choose to speak their own language and discover their own history. An important moment in Herder’s theory is the idea of the moral equality of cultures, providing a vital point of departure for the promotion of minoritised languages and cultures.

[because you are bigger does not mean you are better]

the use of the language itself creates the culture. The basic concepts of the revivalist ideology, especially the notion of the nation and the homeland, are derived from language

Although the concern with the Gaelic language is omnipresent in his work, Thomson was not a linguistic essentialist: he considered the language a unique part of Scottish identity which should be embraced and promoted, but he also made it clear the country could exist without Gaelic, although the loss of the language would reduce its diversity and also impoverish it economically. In a number of works, Thomson seems to be driving at a similar point to the one Gwyn Williams makes in When Was Wales

‘The Role of the Writer in a Minority Culture’ (1966

, most writers are arguably part of a ‘particular cultural environment, and to have their work defined, or restricted, or enriched, or influenced in some way, by that environment’ (256)

In a culture which is not hindered or threatened, the writer’s role includes communication, disseminating information and instruction, stimulating thought and provoking debate, providing entertainment, ‘defining, consciously or subconsciously, the ethos of his community, or protesting against it, or satirising aspects of it’, and is undertaken ‘as a normal professional activity, for which they are adequately paid, and by which they can earn a livelihood’ (259). The economic aspects of revivalist enterprises were never far from Thomson’s mind

, Thomson recognises some restrictions, such as the small maximum public, the limited offer of employment outside education and entertainment, and specific examples of the inability to make a living by writing novels or plays in Welsh. For these limitations, he proposes two solutions.

The state can provide adequate subsidies where the public market is too small; however, this step requires a much larger extent of economic and political autonomy and ‘a degree of cultural interest and goodwill on the part of the government which is not apparent even in the case of Ireland’

Alternatively, the writer needs to combine creative work in the minority language pragmatically with another source of income.

He notes that in his view it is not ‘over-fanciful to see the work of writers in a minority culture as a kind of crusade’, but admits that one should be conscious of the dangers of such an attitude

observing that the position of the writer on a borderland between two cultures produces benefits that are sometimes claimed by the majority culture and sometimes reaped by the minority one. In this sense, he also reflects on the fact that ‘fiercest partisanship occurs in the border area’, which begets both the harshest a incipient persecution complex, should be subjected to satire periodically’, for ‘a society that can learn to laugh at itself becomes more resilient, and the minority cultures need all the resilience they can muster’ttacks on the minority culture and the most extravagant defences of it

[if you don’t learn to laugh at yersel. Somebody else will]

 

 

As MacLeod, notes, from around 1953, the modern type of short story, in which ‘psychological insight is more important than plot development’, started to appear in Gairm. 60 Early proponents include Hector MacIver and Paul MacInnes (Pòl MacAonghais). One incentive Thomson and MacDonald used to attract more contributions were the short story competitions: in 1956 (Gairm 18), the editors offered a prize of ten guineas for the best short story ‘anns an nòs ùr’ [in the new vein], and another competition was advertised in 1961 with a prize of £20. Colin MacKenzie (Cailean T. MacCoinnich) won the first round with his mystery story, ‘An Sgàthan’ [The Mirror], and the winner of the second one was Crichton

These pages give evidence of the many twists and turns that occurred over the years, about history and folklore, about the new world and the old one. Those who are interested in literature will find precious evidence here as to how Gaelic literature grew in scope and depth, especially in the realm of poetry and the short story. It is very clear that some part of this growth would not have occurred, if the writers did not get the opportunity to see their work published, and to see the work of their contemporaries and predecessors.

In previous Gaelic periodicals, the overwhelming majority of the content was supplied by male authors. This is true both for the publications run by Norman MacLeod and Erskine of Mar, as is evident even from a cursory glance over the lists of contents for the individual issues

Given the title and focus of the lastmentioned section, it seems that the quarterly was still relegating women to the realms and interests traditionally assigned to them, but it may also be seen as an attempt to cater for as broad a readership

 

Reflecting on Canadian bilingual policies, he describes the focus on English and French and the fact that French is forcing out Gaelic in towns, but also suggests that some of the policies, such as the consistency of using bilingual texts on food and drink packaging, could also be adopted for the benefit of Gaelic, if only the state were more positive towards the language in Scotland. Observations on lifestyle in parallel to Scotland include the  absence of visibly drunk people in public and less explicitly sexual content in the newspapers and advertisements, and some space is again devoted to the question of food, especially fish. In the last paragraph, Thomson turns his attention to another minority, and draws the reader’s attention to the Canadian First Nations, stating openly that these are the people to whom the land belonged before the arrival of the English, Scottish and French immigrants, acknowledging the roles of Scottish settlers, including the Gaelic-speaking ones,

He notes that although Finland may be bigger than the UK in terms of area, it is nonetheless very small in terms of population, and suggests that Scotland could learn from it in several areas, namely the support for minority languages, especially for Swedish and for Sámi to a lesser extent; the policies at schools and universities, which also support the minority language; the impressive number of daily newspapers (and the fact that twelve out of ninety-four are published in Swedish); and finally the healthy attitude to work which combines productivity with self-esteem.

In the editorial to Gairm 160 (1992), Thomson acknowledges the happiness of seeing six million words in the 160 issues that bear witness to the changes and developments in the Gaelic world, including the development of a broader and more varied literary scene, especially in the realm of poetry and short fiction, which arguably would not have happened if the writers

had not had the advantage of a suitable and supportive venture for publishing their work, and Donald John MacLeod considers Gairm the basis of the revival which took place in Gaelic literature in the second half of the twentieth century.73 Gairm Publications became one of the most prolific Gaelic publishers of the era, bringing out new literature, teaching materials, nonfiction and books for children, and thus preparing the ground for later and more diversified initiatives such as the publishing houses Acair, CLÀR and Stòrlann, a body that coordinates the production of teaching materials

The essay also touches on the widespread misconception that Gaelic is obsolete and unable to cope in terms of vocabulary with the modern world, having no terms for ‘asset stripping’ and ‘carbohydrate’, a feeling of inadequacy common also among the users of the language themselves, and Thomson notes mischievously that ‘often they have no idea how many such words can in fact be called into service in Gaelic. I may have been under some small temptation to react to such initiatives, but (not surprisingly) we have no Hugh MacDiarmid to produce from the Gaelic hat, so I have largely let it be.

James Macpherson and the Ossian controversy At the beginning of his career, James Macpherson (Seumas Mac a’ Phearsain, 1736–96), a native of Ruthven from Badenoch, published three volumes of poetry – Fragments of Ancient Poetry (1760), Fingal (1761) and Temora (1763) – which proved to be a major success with the reading public, played a crucial part in the early phase of the European Romantic movement, and sparked a controversy that raged mostly in Macpherson’s own time but which continues in different forms to this day. Fiona Stafford has argued that Macpherson’s activities were influenced by his experience in his native region, where he witnessed post-Culloden repression, and by a desire to achieve more prestige for Scottish Gaelic culture at a time of profound crisis by providing it with a national epic poem, a proof of long-standing history, and cultural refinement according to the standard of his time.14 The success of the poems and the question of their ‘authenticity’ were from the beginning connected with the prestige of Scotland as a nation,15 and the nationalist dimension continued to influence the controversy, together with different and changing attitudes towards authorship

Like the pamphlet Why Gaelic Matters, the article on Macpherson reveals Thomson’s ability to combine accessibility and revivalist boost without retreating into excessive generalisation and simplification. Alexander MacDonald

The Author’s Praise of the Old Gaelic Language), which wittily and defiantly celebrates the language while the Gaelic culture and way of life were suffering from post-Culloden repercussions. MacDonald appeals to Enlightenment values and expresses surprise that in an age characterised by freedom of thought, love of knowledge and moderation, a nation and its language could be so violently persecuted.

However, he calls not for another armed uprising, despite having enough first-hand experience, but for a revival and a deeper study of Gaelic culture.

MacDonald also produced the first Gaelic school textbook while he worked as a teacher for the Society in Scotland for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge (SSPCK):

As McLeod notes, ‘until the 1980s, for example, almost no government publications were issued in Gaelic; Gaelic was used only in a small number of notices or leaflets relating to public health or law and order, which the authorities were concerned to ensure were understood by all.’51 In the article, Thomson refers to a class of Higher Gaelic he taught at the Celtic Department in Glasgow. The seminar also explored contemporary Gaelic and the way it was employed in official conte

 

Perhaps it is even more necessary for a small nation, or for a small country, to be acquainted with literature that has broader capacity. For the Gaels, it is healthy to be aware that there are other people, and other literatures, apart from that of English. In getting closer to Europe in terms of trade and politics, it is useful and appropriate for us to have better knowledge of literature, and the many kinds of literature, of our European neighbours.

subject of biology for translation into Gaelic, there was hardly anything written on the subject in our own language. But I have always been strongly of the opinion that Gaelic is very able to absorb new things into itself, and that it is the miserable history of the last three hundred years that was hindering us in this way, and so often leading us to old-fashioned opinions and approaches. Thus, I jumped at the opportunity to get involved in this work. [. . .] I hope that this is a beginning of growth for us, and that we will see many other unexpected topics discussed through the medium of Gaelic. For the Gaelic people have ample right to take possession of the life and of the knowledge this book deals with.

Unlike Sorley MacLean, who discussed his literary influences and reading preferences in personal essays, such as ‘My Relationship with the Muse’, and in interviews, Thomson, although he published two autobiographical essays and was interviewed by, among others, Christopher Whyte and John Blackburn,58 rarely spoke about his reading outside the Gaelic canon. Some of Thomson’s translations included in the anthology first appeared in Gairm and some only in the volume. From Scots poetry, he translated the sonnet ‘Fra Bank to Bank’ by the sixteenth-century poet and soldier Mark Alexander Boyd and two poems by Hugh MacDiarmid, ‘Lourd on My Hert’ and ‘Empty Vessel’. Scottish poetry in English is represented by Edwin Muir’s ‘The Horses’. Translations from Welsh include the anonymous poem ‘Hen Benillion’ and two pieces by Dafydd ap Gwilym, one of the leading Welsh medieval poets. The only representation of English literature is Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 (‘Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day’). Thomson reaches to the Continent by including ‘La sera del dì di festa’ by Giacomo Leopardi, ‘Herbst’ by Rainer Maria Rilke, and an extract from Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s prose poetry. One of the most striking choices is the poem ‘Fil-katakombi’ by priest, lexicographer and Maltese national bard Dun Karm (Carmelo Psaila, 1871–1961), which is another manifestation of Thomson’s intellectual curiosity and interest in minoritised and lesser-used languages in Europe and in the world, not only the Celtic ones. The poem originally appeared in Gairm 142 (1988) alongside the above-mentioned essay on Karm, translated by Thomson into Gaelic, and another of his poems, ‘Inti Ma Targax’. Irish literature is represented most substantially among Tho

He discusses the question of bilingual publishing in the editorial to Gairm 184 (1998), noting both the dangers and positive aspects of the practice for the future development of Gaelic, and reflects on the ongoing debate as to whether bilingual books are beneficial for the language, as they increase the reach of Gaelic literature, or whether they are detrimental and contribute to the bypassing of the original and to the illusion that everything written in Gaelic needs to be automatically accessible in English too.

[less work, less learning]

, Thomson’s translations of his own poetry are close and reliable, and in some cases of intricate wordplay, they include explanatory notes or admissions that the given passage cannot be reasonably carried over into English. A more mischievous approach to translation can be detected in his essays and introductions, such as in Gàidhlig ann an Albainn and Bàrdachd na Roinn-Eorpa an Gàidhlig, where the contents of the English and Gaelic texts differ quite substantially, at the expense of readers with no command of Gaelic.

CHAPTER FIVE Gaelic Revitalisation in Thomson’s Poetry and Short Stories

Thomson ever made was to write in Gaelic, and to write in Gaelic about everything he wanted to. In his own view, it was purportedly not a decision governed by artistic necessity, but a political choice influenced by nationalist motives:1 In my case I had decided by that time fairly firmly to make Gaelic studies my main career. That reinforced tendencies that had been showing up throughout my secondary school, nationalistic tendencies if you like, which I think began to link by my early teens with the language question.

 

Thomson comments on the choice of language in ‘The Role of the Writer’, where he notes that ‘one often senses, among writers in such a situation, a feeling of communal responsibility and pride in the work they are doing

The whole body of Thomson’s poetry can thus be seen as a revivalist act, a lifelong gesture comprising eight collections of poems.

chapter is organised according to the collections which came out during the poet’s lifetime. Thomson published quite evenly throughout his career, from his thirties to his late eighties, and his collections can be read, as Whyte suggests, ‘as a single creation, almost a novel, with a plot-like excitement at discovering what became of its initial premises’, offering us ‘the privilege of insight into how a single mind responded to half a century of Scottish history’.5 With regard to the chronological discussion, it is important to keep in mind that the poems included in a certain collection were not necessarily all written around the same time, and the discussion thus relies on the poet’s decision to publish them at a particular point and situate them in a particular context.

Thomson briefly formulates his programme as a poet, claiming: If Gaelic is to live, it must be written and read, and the idiom of speech and thought that belongs to our time must find some expression in it. Thus, if both my language and my subject-matter resemble none too closely the language and subject-matter of the old Gaelic

[remade]

And when I looked in her eyes through the bracken I saw the sparkle of that water 15 Creachadh na Clàrsaich, 48–9. 16 ‘Geal’, although it denotes white, can also mean ‘clear, radiant, bright, glistening’

that makes whole every hurt till the hurt of the heart. Throughout his works, Thomson was interested in the figure of the old woman, and in several cases these strong and independent

If the water indeed stands for the Gaelic language and culture, the woman has been living outside the natural and cultural environment of her youth. She still recalls the taste of the water though, so her need is not the greatest – people who are most needful of the refreshing sip are those who lack awareness of the country’s Gaelic heritage. Although there is not a single mention of language policy and revival, ‘An Tobar’, as Whyte suggests, discusses ‘the plight of the Gaelic language’, for ‘a language cannot be conserved, it can only be allowed to live’.17 A convincing reading along these lines can be proposed, but the poem works even when one misses the political dimension, as a reflection on old age and a disappearing way of life in rural communities, which can easily be the case for readers unacquainted with the context of Gaelic Scotland and Thomson’s work

[Nurtured]

làrach’ translates as ‘site, ruin, (im) print, impression, mark, scar’. Given the frequent occurrence of ‘làraichean’ in poetry of the Clearances, from William Livingstone (Uilleam MacDhunlèibhe) to Sorley MacLean, the very title of the poem can be read as a reference to the traumatic events that contributed to the break-up of the traditional Gaelic society. The reference may also be to emigration, which was still draining people away from the Gaelic-speaking areas in the 1920s and which could have been the reason of the change of a lively township into a ghost town: apart from the ruins, the poem mentions rotting boats and sleeping empty fields, so both fishing and agriculture are abandoned.

 

‘A Chionn ’s gu Bheil’ (Since the Picture is Broken), which also provided the  title of the volume. It communicates the feeling of futility in a number of specific images and refuses to be interpreted in relation to any particular  disappointment. Words such as ‘briste’ (broken), ‘sgàinte’ (cracked), ‘sgaoilte’ (untied) and ‘creachte’ (raided), which occur at the end of lines, literally breaking them apart while connecting them semantically and aurally, communicate the prevalent sense of loss and disruption

[If the picture is broken, why not paint another?]

Eadar Samradh is Foghar Thomson develops here a new ironic register which replaces the ‘slightly hectoring tone of some earlier political writing’,21  (1967

pride and anger – pride in people, anger at what history has done to people, and at what people have allowed to happen – as well as celebration of Gaelic ability to withstand the onslaught of hostile forces, all begin to break surface in Eadar Samhradh is Foghar’.22 The battle of Culloden and the Clearances, events with a profoundly negative impact on Gaelic-speaking areas, are brought together in the poem ‘Cruaidh?’ (Steel?). Apart from the disastrous military encounter which crushed Jacobite hopes and the breaking of the tack-farms, it mentions another crucial and, in Thomson’s view, damaging event in the history of the region. It is ‘Briseadh na h-Eaglaise’ (Breaking of the Church), the Great Disruption of 1843 when 450 ministers left the Church of Scotland and established the Free Church, from which the Free Presbyterian Church seceded in 1893, starting a long history of fragmentation and rivalry in the Evangelical churches in the Highlands and Islands. The inclusion of the Great Disruption into the triad of plagues was based on the strong association between these radical churches and hostility to the traditional culture and the Gaelic language

 

second strophe urges the addressee(s) to throw away soft words, otherwise there would soon be no words left, and in the context of the collection, this reference can be read as another appeal on behalf of the Gaelic language

visited by Ossian on his famous journey, is the mythological Otherworld and their habitat. Both these elemental concepts of shared Celtic mythology of Scotland and Ireland are dismissed as irrelevant to the present critical situation: this might be a covert reproach to those whose interest in Gaelic topics is limited to the misty charms of a Celtic past and who do not strive to keep Gaelic alive in the present and address the social, cultural and political problems of the region. The Promised Land is likely a reference to religious escapism, which has, especially in the Evangelical context, often been seen as a major factor contributing to the plight of the Gaelic-speaking areas in the nineteenth century, as earthly suffering and injustice were disregarded in favour of divine matters and seen as justified punishment for human sins. [you brought this on yourself]

The image of the Gael who reaches the Promised Land, tiptoeing, only to encounter a confident Englishman who states that God has entitled him to the land as a favour of kinship, serves as a warning about what will, metaphorically, happen to those whose intellect is not sharp enough and who seek false comfort in religion or in the Celtic past and do not stand up for their rights. The connection between the deprivation of land and rights and an English person who moreover presents the situation as the God-approved natural order of things draws both on the history of dispossession in the Highlands and Islands in the nineteenth century and on the continuous neglect of Scottish affairs by the Westminster government

Stroh points out that in Thomson’s view, the union with England forced ‘the entirety of colonised Scotland to fight the wars of its coloniser’ and that the poem ‘expressly refuses to contribute to this fatalistic and fatal discursive tradition and instead asserts the necessity of supporting the present and future survival of the Gaelic world’.30

[the colonised becomes the coloniser]

Perhaps the grandchildren will think otherwise when they are old men and women: listening to their own grandchildren, the little strangers, who have lost their mother tongue, and their people’s virtues, and saying, each one alone:

‘We put out the light’.

The last line, chilling in its simplicity, lays the blame for the decline of the language on the users themselves and their inability to pass it on, not only on h

The simultaneous withering of the language and improvement in living standards is addressed in the editorial to Gairm 148 (Autumn 1989), in which Thomson describes the transformation of Glasgow, recalling how dark and polluted the city used to be at the time when Gaelic was still strongly present in it, and that the cleaned houses, new shops and international restaurants share the space mostly with English. A similar point is touched upon in the short story ‘Tea Feasgair’, examined later in this chapter

[correlation?/not cause?]

Until the ragged children carry it away with them on the steamer to England, or to Glasgow, where it dies in its sister’s arms – the royal language of Scotland and of Ireland become a sacrifice of atonement on the altar of riches.

The connection between the plight of the Gaels in Scotland and Ireland echoes William Livingstone’s ‘Eirinn a’ Gul’ (Ireland Weeping). The poem implies that speakers of Irish and Gaelic who immigrated to the Lowlands or to England for economic advancement often stopped using the language, so that it would not hinder their prospects. As Whyte notes: All languages survive through a process of constant transformation. For Gaelic, this should have meant the evolution of an accepted standard, phonetic and lexical change, even bastardisation, and the creation of a modern vocabulary through borrowing or coining neologisms. Reading ‘Dùn nan Gall’ hurts so much because we recognize that Gaelic has indeed been this, but that if it continues in the same way, incapable of surviving urbanisation, economic change or the arrival of prosperity, there can truly be no hope.

in the Western Isles. This is much the same as saying that English influence has penetrated to all parts of the Gaelic area. There is now no linguistic hinterland to which the Gaelic writer can retire, except for that hinterland of the imagination which can be summoned up at times; though it too needs its defences.

 

And in the other school also, where the joiners of the mind were planing, I never noticed the coffins, though they were sitting all round me; I did not recognise the English braid, the Lowland varnish being applied to the wood, I did not read the words on the brass, I did not understand that my race was dying. Until the cold wind of this Spring came to plane the heart; until I felt the nails piercing me, and neither tea nor talk will heal the pain.

The ‘joiners of the mind’ in the ‘other school’ refer to education authorities actively trying to remove Gaelic and replace it with English, and the children’s school desks will thus become coffins in which their dying culture and language are going to be buried. The startling image which subverts the traditional association of children with life and hope for the future can also be connected to the ‘little strangers’ of ‘Cainnt nan Oghaichean’. As a child, the speaker did not have the ability to grasp what was happening and only realised the enormity of the loss in adulthood.

‘cinneadh’ as ‘race’, and it is indeed used in that sense in modern Gaelic (the term for racism is ‘gràin-chinnidh’, lit. ‘hatred of race’), but its range of meaning includes also ‘clan, tribe, surname, relations, kin, kindred’. The situation in the poem concerns schooling and education, not intermarrying of the Gaels with the English, and what the speaker mourns here is not the disappearance of racial purity – which would anyway be difficult to imagine, given the turbulent history of the region, also in terms of genetic influences – but the death of language and culture. In Thomson’s view, these are not a birthright but can be achieved and adopted, as well as lost

[won, but more easily lost]

An Rathad Cian (1970) An Rathad Cian (The Far Road), Thomson’s third collection, is devoted solely to his native isle of Lewis and addresses the island in various guises, using mostly local imagery

to an extent, he subscribed to the widespread view that the Evangelical churches had contributed to the suppression of the traditional Gaelic culture and to the endangered state of the language, and that they had helped to sever the strong and profitable cultural links with Catholic Ireland.55 This point of view is expressed most strongly in the poem ‘Am Bodach Ròcais’ (The Scarecrow), in which the image of the minister/preacher draws on a tradition of portraying the representatives of Evangelical churches in the Highlands as sinister figures opposed to all things joyful,5

[god had no joy and only sadness in him. And that’s not god at all]

A little girl, with frightened eyes, plays on a tricycle. No rag-doll now – plastic from Hong Kong – and you in turn will take the road of fortune and TV, and the cradle will rot in the new barn with its zinc roof.

English words, such as ‘tricycle’ and ‘zinc’, jut out from the poem. The traditional term for a doll, ‘liùdhag’, is juxtaposed with the borrowed ‘doll’, and the contrast is even starker as the doll is made of plastic and imported, not home-made from cloth, as a ‘liùdhag’ would be. In Thomson’s own words, the poem describes ‘the break-up of Gaelic tradition on the island, not the break-up of Lewis itself or Lewis society, but certainly of a Gaelic

[Gaelic becomes a borrowed language, then no language at all]

1 The poem stresses the fact that the Gaelic areas have for long been under assault not only from Westminster but also from the Lowlands and the Scottish capital, and this attack ‘from home’ is even more insidious and damaging. ‘Na Tràlairean’ (The Trawlers) continues in the satirical vein and brings together economics and education. It starts with a plain definition of trawlers as boats that pull fishing nets behind them along the seabed, sweeping it clean. This method of fishing is effective but can in consequence be damaging both to the sea environment and to the long-term viability of the economy of the Islands and coastal Highlands, as indeed there would be no successful cultural and linguistic revival without sound business

[without and within]

An Rathad Cian – the sequence is famous mostly for poems discussing the different shades of internal and external exile, and those in which the spell of the native place is at the same time reinforced and exorcised.

Saorsa agus an Iolaire (1977) Saorsa agus an Iolaire, published seven years after An Rathad Cian, marks Thomson’s move from the past to the present, from the personal to the public, and from the Highlands and Islands to Scotland as a whole, and issues related to the Gaelic revitalisation are not as prominent. The concern for the language is here subsumed under the broader struggle for independence, the only political framework that would provide conditions for the survival of both Gaelic and Scots. A hundred years in school and we’re Gaels still! Who would have thought the root was so tough? They poured a load of books on us, languages, foreign history, science, and put a match to them. O what a blaze [. . .] We have often seen a bush that was burnt – I’m just joking, have no fear, directors of education, county councillors, with your fluent English – growing – that’s right, centralise education in Stornoway – faster.

The last sentence has a more specific implication in the Gaelic original. In literal translation, ‘sguabaibh a’ chlann a Steòrnabhagh’ means ‘sweep children to Stornoway’, referring to the frequent closures of small local schools in Lewis, and by implication in the remote parts of the Highlands and Islands in general, and centralisation in the main towns, such as Stornoway, which has for long been mostly English-speaking. Such arrangements provide fewer opportunities to keep Gaelic alive in the communities and lead to depopulation, for when schools close, people with young families are naturally prone to move away and less likely to settle in the area.

‘Ola’ (Oil) is concerned with the discovery of North Sea oil, a turning point in Scottish history with far-reaching consequences for the independence struggle. The SNP launched the campaign ‘It’s Scotland’s Oil’ in 1973,

[Past tense, It was Scotland’s Oil.

They say now that we have an eternity of oil in this little land –

Smeur an Dòchais (1991) Thomson’s next book of poetry, Smeur an Dòchais/Bramble of Hope, is a diverse, contemporary and also a distinctly European collection. It marks a move towards the multicultural world of Glasgow, its inhabitants, and issues such as religion, immigration, poverty and the expansion of popular culture. Glasgow, thanks to its industries, has long been attracting and absorbing newcomers, including Gaelic speakers from the Highlands and Islands, and has become known as ‘Baile Mòr na Gàidheal’ (City of the Gaels). In the twentieth century, it also became the home of various Gaelic bodies, including the BBC Gaelic Department and, from the 1950s, the Gairm offices. As Thomson himself noted, even in the late 1930s there would be streets in Glasgow where children playing in the street habitually spoke Gaelic

I have heard music in my time that will never be heard again, no recording instrument will pick it up, it will not adhere to electro-magnetic particles, it will expire in a museum, the BBC won’t buy it and will not get it for nothing, it isn’t to be found in a dictionary, every excellence it had is sinking into the grave. [. . .] I hope that before we go to sleep that music will throw a long shadow

Meall Garbh (1995) In its broad mixture of topics, Meall Garbh/The Rugged Mountain resembles Smeur an Dòchais, and some poems, according to the cover, were actually written before those pieces included in the 1991 volume, which may explain why in some ways Meall Garbh feels like a step back, rather than forward. While Smeur an Dòchais had a distinct Glaswegian focus, the title of the 1995 collection announces a return to Perthshire, a region which Thomson often visited on family holidays and where he lived, in Aberfeldy, from 1977 to 1984. A number of poems discuss, in various combinations, the position of Scotland and Gaelic in the contemporary world, the loss of cultural awareness, the corruptive influence of the tabloid media and consumerism, and the inscrutable ups and dow essentially Scottish, and points out that even seemingly timeless places do not stay the same: once in prehistory, Scotland was a sandy desert south of the equator, there was no St Kilda yet, no eagles and no capercaillies; Lewis was not covered in heather and there were no Callanish Stones, not to mention Edinburgh Castle. In future, some of the places which are considered important in contemporary Scotland, such as the nuclear power stations, may disappear as well. The poem closes with an expression of hope that the breath of the Gaels will not evaporate with the last peat smoke, and that they, the speaker included, will erect standing stones for their own century,ns of

[Let now standing stones stand that do not throw a long shadow and speak of you] [gravestone topple The poem thus implies that Gaelic identity is not dependent on place or a way of life – burning peat and living in a blackhouse is not imperative – and should not be essentialised in this manner, as it is something far more universal. A willingness to engage with the language, keep it alive and create new culture within it is presented as the decisive marker.

[essentialism, checklists]

of all the economic and cultural losses the Gaels had suffered at foreign hands. The lack of self-government in Scotland is put side by side with global consumerist culture. Stroh observes that ‘rights of property, justice and injustice are reversed, and it is the “foreign” elites whose hunting and fishing activities are incriminated as theft. The computers imagined to calculate the extent of these thefts thus accomplish not only a mathematical but also a moral reckoning.

Sùil air Fàire (2007) In the last collection published during Thomson’s lifetime, Sùil air Fàire/ Surveying the Horizon, all the themes and influences present in the seventy years of the poet’s career are represented. Issues concerning Gaelic feature in many poems, often as part of the listing technique where Thomson brings together various phenomena, events and people, and reflects on the changing world he has been witnessing for almost ninety years. It also reflects his interest in the recognition of Scots and its future. In the poem ‘Àros nan Sean?’ (Old Folks’ Home?), Thomson presents a particularly gloomy image of the gradual decay of Gaelic and of the futility of revitalisation efforts: in a care home built with funds from the National Lottery, clients weakened by age and illness will be supported by an apparatus so that they can mumble the slogan of Gaelic activists, ‘Suas leis a’ Ghàidhlig!’ (Up with the Gaelic!), to the accompaniment of harp music, another trope associated with Scotland’s Gaelic heritage

[what will we save if we can’t save ourselves?]

 

top·onymy

[təˈpɒnɪmi]

noun

1. the study of place names.

Thomson decided to write in Gaelic, and the Gaelic world in the second half of the twentieth century was, in terms of the number of speakers, shrinking and expanding at the same time, which also affected the prospective readership of the poems. The target group of his deliberations on the state of Gaelic would be a rather small group of fluent intellectuals with literary leanings, and increasingly also the international community of second-language users of Gaelic. It thus seems Thomson’s poetry about the Gaelic revival was primarily not a means of persuading other people to follow a course of action, but rather a private channel to consider the situation of the language and its repercussions, using a different form than an essay, newspaper article or public speech. It is safe to say that the appeal of the Gairm editorials, which were often openly persuasive and tried to move the reader to a certain course of action, was much greater.

Thomson may be described as one of the poets who, in Stroh’s words, ‘employ historical perspectives as a means to encourage present and future resistance and revival’.

Many of the poems concerned with Gaelic either see it dying, imagine the future without it, envisage its survival as a mere relic or a dead language of learning similar to Latin, or express concern about the directions in which the Gaelic revitalisation efforts are moving and the results they are producing

Gaelic in Thomson’s short stories The other form of creative writing Thomson explored, though to a very limited extent, is fiction, namely the short story. Seven of his eight published stories appeared in Gairm and one in the

The results of the two referenda, on Scottish independence in 2014 and on EU membership in 2016, would have come as a severe blow to Thomson due to his nationalist stance and also his pro-European orientation,

[scunnered]

Gairm had an impressive readership of about eight hundred when it stopped appearing.7 In the editorial to the last issue, Gairm 200 (2002),

 

Returning to Donald John MacLeod’s observation that at three periods, the cosmopolitan and experimentally inclined Gaelic revival was centred around one distinct personality, it may be said that Thomson was perhaps the last one, and he was already commenting on the growing diversification of revitalisation efforts

expresses his conviction that ‘once Scotland is standing on its own feet again’, such projects will ‘suddenly seem more natural and more attractive, and the scholars will appear to undertake more work of this kind’, and notes that Scottish scholars may find themselves racing with American academics working in Scottish and Gaelic studies.18 Perhaps it would have amused and gratified him that a focused study of his own work and role in the twentieth-century Gaelic world in a way proves his point, although it emerged not from the USA, but from Central Europe, thus confirming the international reach and relevance of his work