Ossian Collection > Carmina gadelica > Volume 1

A1MSIRE
NUALL NOLLAIG
[55]
Christmas chants were numerous and their recital common throughout Scotland.
They are now disappearing with the customs they accompanied. Where they still
linger their recital is relegated to boys. Formerly on Christmas Eve bands of
young men went about from house to house and from townland to townland
chanting Christmas songs. The band was called 'goisearan/ guisers, ' fir-duan,'
song men, 'gillean Nollaig,' Christmas lads, ' nuallairean/ rejoicers, and other names.
The ' rejoicers ' wore long white shirts for surplices, and very tall white hats for
mitres, in which they made a picturesque appearance as they moved along singing
their loudest. Sometimes they went about as one band, sometimes in sections of
twos and threes. When they entered a dwelling they took possession of a child, if
there was one in the house. In the absence of a child, a lay figure was improvised.
The child was called ' Crist, Cristean ' — Christ, Little Christ. The assumed Christ was
placed on a skin, and carried three times round the fire, sunwise, by the 'ceann-
snaodh ' — head of the band, the song men singing the Christmas Hail. The skin on
which the symbolic Christ was carried was that of a white male lamb without spot
or blemish and consecrated to this service. The skin was called ' uilim.' Homage
and offerings and much rejoicing were made to the symbolic Christ.
The people of the house gave the guisers bread, butter, crowdie, and
other eatables, on which they afterwards feasted.
The three poems which follow were taken down from Angus
Gunn, Ness, Lews, then over eighty-four years of age. Angus Gunn
had been a strong man physically and was still a strong man mentally.
He had lived for many years in the island of North Roney,
and gave a graphic description of it, and of his life
there. He had much oral lore which he told with great
O Ri, ho Ri,
Beannaicht e, beannaicht e,
Ho Ri, ho Ri,
Beannaicht e, thainig s an am,
Ho Ri, ho Ri,
Beannaicht an tigh 's na bheil ann,
Ho Ri, ho Ri,
Eadar chuall, us chlach, us chrann,
Ho Ri, ho Ri,
Iomair do Dhia, eadar bhrat us aodach,