Brigh an Òrain - A Story in Every Song
- Publisher
- McGill-Queen's University Press
- Initial publish date
- Feb 2001
- Category
- Folk & Traditional
-
Hardback
- ISBN
- 9780773520639
- Publish Date
- Feb 2001
- List Price
- $65.00
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9780773568518
- Publish Date
- Feb 2001
- List Price
- $75.00
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Description
Few published collections of Gaelic song place the songs or their singers and communities in context. Brìgh an Òrain - A Story in Every Song corrects this, showing how the inherited art of a fourth-generation Canadian Gael fits within biographical, social, and historical contexts. It is the first major study of its kind to be undertaken for a Scottish Gaelic singer. The forty-eight songs and nine folktales in the collection are transcribed from field recordings and presented as the singer performed them, with an English translation provided. All the songs are accompanied by musical transcriptions. The book also includes a brief autobiography in Lauchie MacLellan's entertaining narrative style. John Shaw has added extensive notes and references, as well as photos and maps. In an era of growing appreciation of Celtic cultures, Brìgh an Òrain - A Story in Every Song makes an important Gaelic tradition available to the general reader. The materials also serve as a unique, adaptable resource for those with more specialized research or teaching interests in ethnology/folklore, Canadian studies, Gaelic Language, ethnomusicology, Celtic studies, anthropology, and social history.
About the authors
Lauchie MacLellan's profile page
John Shaw is the editor and translator of Tales Until Dawn: The World of a Cape Breton Gaelic Story-Teller and Brigh an Òrain: A Story in Every Song. He is senior lecturer in ethnology at the University of Edinburgh.
Alistair MacLeod was born in Saskatchewan in 1936 and raised in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. He has published two internationally acclaimed collections of short stories: The Lost Salt Gift of Blood (1976) and As Birds Bring Forth the Sun (1986). In 2000, these two books, accompanied by two new stories, were published as Island: The Collected Stories of Alistair MacLeod. In 1999, MacLeod's first novel, No Great Mischief, was published to stellar critical acclaim. The novel won the Dartmouth Book Award, the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, The Trillium Award, the CAA Award, and the Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Awards for Fiction Book of the Year and Author of the Year. In 2001, No Great Mischief was awarded the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, one of the world's most prestigious literary prizes.
Editorial Reviews
"An excellent and valuable work. I have no doubt that this will be a much-quoted source for Gaelic ethnology in years to come." Colm J. O Boyle, department of Celtic Studies, University of Aberdeen "An excellent book. Brìgh an Òrain gives the reader a comprehensive and rounded view of the richness of the tradition inherited by Lauchie MacLellan and continues the process of redefining our understanding of the cultural legacy of, and the communal values in, the one Gaidhealtachd in North America." Pádraig ÓSiadhail, Chair, Department of Irish Studies, Saint Mary's University
Other titles by
Other titles by
Island
Penguin Modern Classics Edition
Running the Whale's Back
Stories of Faith and Doubt from Atlantic Canada
To Every Thing There is a Season
A Cape Breton Christmas Story
Lives of Short Duration
An Orange from Portugal
Christmas Stories from the Maritimes and Newfoundland
Atlantica
Stories from the Maritimes and Newfoundland
No Great Mischief
Gifts to Last
Christmas Stories from the Maritimes and Newfoundland
As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories
