An Comunn Gàidhealach Publications > Gaidheal > Volume 43, October 1947--December 1948

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Other Folk-lore.
The riddle, like the folk tale, has lost all standing as
a popular form of entertainment. Mrs. Smith recalled
two, one similar to Riddle 39 in J. F. Campbell’s
Popular Tales, the other sufficiently interesting to include
in th's report:
Bean an tigh’, gligeadaich.
Bean an tigh’, glagadaich,
Bean an tigh’, slugadh a biadh;
Cha d’rinn i riamh altachadh.
—Cuidheall-shnlomha.
Housewife, clickety,
Housewife, clackety,
Housewife, gulp her food;
She never said grace.
—A spinning-wheel.
I heard an occasional Gaelic proverb also and suppose
this type of folk literature is more likely to survive than
the riddle.
Highland superstitions seem to have evaporated
without a trace. William Ross, a retired schoolteacher in
South Haven, told us that there was a time within his
memory when dozens of spots on every road were
believed to be haunted at night. He remembers Cape
Breton settlers who dreaded the evil eye and believed that
a man endowed with it could transfer the good from
another man’s cows to his own.
One folk custom at least has remained, the custom of
Gathering. On the last day of the year all the young
people go around the district gathering for the poor.
They sing a Gaelic song at the door of each house,
demanding a whole list of items—potatoes, soup, and the
like. If they get anything they sing a song of thanks;
if not, they sing a curse. Dan Smith, who told me about
the custom, said that Gathering used to be a very popular
form of amusement, the singers particularly enjoying a
refusal by some crotchety person so that they could sing
their curse. Since there are no longer any poor people
to look after in South Haven, Gathering has not been
carried out there for the last few years, but the practice
is still continued elsewhere in Cape Breton.
The Gaelic Language.
The Gaelic language in Cape Breton is undeniably
in a state of decline, both in the number of people who
speak the language and in the correctness of usage among
the speakers. Even in Scotland it has. proved a difficult
task to teach Gaelic as a school subject. In Nova Scotia
there is legislation permitting the teaching of the
language in any school where a teacher can be found, but
the Separate School at Iona is the only one I know of
where courses are actually offered. It would be difficult
to find many teachers adequate to the task, for literacy
in Gaelic is comparatively rare. Even ministers and
priests who preach in the language and can read it falter
when it comes to writing Gaelic with its complicated
spelling. Gaelic is also taught at St. Francis Xavier
University at Antigonish on the mainland and at the
Gaelic College, but this teaching only reaches a small
number of people at present. Gaelic speakers in Cape
Breton are, on the other hand, for the most part
extremely proud of their language and are loath to let
it die, unlike many Highlanders in Scotland, so its
continuance has at least some temporary guarantee.
Gaelic speakers are remarkably aware of their own
shortcomings. I was constantly told that the Gaelic I
heard around me was not the fine Gaelic of the Highland
settlers in Nova Scotia. The finer points of the language
are ignored. One Highland lady complained to me, for
instance, that young people would say to her, Am, bheil
thu gu math? (“Are you well?”), using the familiar thu,
while their forefathers would always have said, Am
bheil sibh gu mathl, using the polite sibh. General terms
are taking’the place of more exact words. Murdock Angus
MacDonald told me, for example, that fishermen now use
bata generally in reference to all kinds of boats, including
dories, while the old-timers would refer to a dory always
An Damhar, 1948.
by the specific term, eithear, a word now almost forgotten,
and never by the general word Mta.
Gaelic speakers are forced more and more, either for
lack of a native word or through ignorance of one, to use
English words mixed in their Gaelic. The following are
a few I noted in conversation :—
census
blood poisoning
deck
drive, verb
driver, noun
ride
gum (chewing gum)
smoke, verb (smoke a pipe, etc.)
truck
well, adverb (frequently used to begin a
sentence in story-telling)
wharf
wheel-barrow I11)
Occasionally I noticed evidence that Gaelic speakers
had shown their ingenuity by using Gaelic words they
brought with them from Scotland for new purposes rather
than adopting a foreign word. Maorach, which means in
Scotland “mussel,” is applied in Cape Breton to the clam,
a shell-fish unknown in the mother-land. Briscaid, which
in Scotland refers to the English “biscuit” (American
“ cookie”), is now applied to the Canadian and American
“ biscuit.”
Anyone knowing the language well could illustrate this
phenomenon in far greater detail, but I mention it to show
that Nova Scotian Gaels have at least tried at times to
preserve the purity of their language as much as possible.
But they are playing an impossible game in the face of the
many new technical words which are constantly becoming
part of their everyday speech. There are, for instance,
no old Gaelic words that can be acceptably remodelled to
mean “torpedo,” and Gaelic circumlocutions to express
new terms such as James MacNeil suggests in his
“ Vocabulary of Rare and New Words,”(12> although
extremely interesting to the Gaels I met, are apparently
never adopted by them.
There are occasional radio programmes broadcast in
Gaelic; there is the Gaelic column in the Antigonish
Casket; the editor of The Steelworker and Miner of
Sydney, N.S., occasionally prints a Gaelic song in h's
weekly. That is the only public recognition that Gaelic
receives in Nova Scotia.*13) Gaelic may be the language
of the home, of the fisherman, and of the farm, but Cape
Breton is becoming a commercial and industrial centre.
The language of industry and commerce is English, and
unfortunately in our materialistic world it is the language
of industry and commerce that seems fated to conquer.
Appendix.
In an appendix Mr Dunn gives a detailed list of
Dictaphone recordings collected in Cape Breton. It is
unnecessary to print the Appendix in full here, but the
following items may be of special interest.
Items recorded from the Rev. J. D. Nelson MacDonald
included his singing of a Gaelic version of “Tell me the
old, old story” to the tune composed by his great grand¬
father and the following traditional tales: (1) “How
Kenneth brought the Dun Horse from Turkey”; (2) Little
men (sithichean) help with spinning, leave at call “ Beinn
Doireann’s on fire”; (3li Girl escapes from sleeping water-
horse (earh-uisge) (4) Water-horse rides off with boy; (5)
(lb John Lome Campbell has a much longer list which
includes none of these, however, in American Speech,
11 (1936|), pp. 128-136. (cf. An Gaidheal, March, 1948,
pp. 69 ff.)
(12) Gaelic Lessons for Beginners, Sydney, N.S., 1939,
pp. 66-72. . ,.
(is) j. G. MacKinnon used to have occasional Gae.ic
articles in the Sydney Record, and the local papers
occasionally print Gaelic songs.
AN GAIDHEAL.