GREENTRAX AND EDINBURGH UNI RELEASE TRIBUTE TO FOLKLORE COLLECTOR CALLUM MACLEAN
There is many a poor man in Scotland Whose spirit and name you raised; You lifted the humble Whom our age put aside ...
T Thus the great Gaelic poet Sorley Maclean paid tribute to his brother in his Elegy for Calum I Maclean, after he succumbed to cancer, aged just 44, in August 1960. For Maclean preserved for posterity the voices of his fellow Gaels, whose songs and stories might otherwise have remained, quite literally, unsung.
Less widely known than his poet brother, Calum was one of Scotland’s most industrious folklore collectors and the first appointed to the then newly created School of Scottish Studies at Edinburgh University. Now, 55 years on from his untimely passing, his vital work is being honoured by a double CD, officially launched next week.
Cruinneachadh Chaluim – “Calum’s Collection” – is released by Greentrax as part of its Scottish Tradition series in collaboration with the School. Its 33 tracks of Gaelic song and instrumental music from the Highlands and Islands represent a handful from the new online resource of some 4,000 recordings and transcriptions created by the Calum Maclean Project, a joint venture between Edinburgh University and University College Dublin.
Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the project has run its course, leaving this invaluable digitised archive of Maclean’s work, including more than 13,000 manuscript pages of mainly Gaelic folklore. The album, edited by the project’s Dr John Shaw and Dr Andrew Wiseman, features music collected “in the field” by Maclean, the latest during the year he died.
Maclean published only a few papers and, most famously, his widely acclaimed book The Highlands, described by one commentator as “an uncompromising view of the Highland people, history and culture from the perspective of an insider, a Gaelic-speaking Scot”. His field notes, however, were extensive. “For the sleeve booklet we’ve been able to draw on his diary entries, as well as published articles and
The CD opens with Maclean, the collector collected
his Highlands book,” explains Dr Katherine Campbell, senior lecturer in ethnomusicology at Edinburgh University’s Department of Celtic and Scottish Studies and general editor of the Scottish Traditional recording series. “Calum’s main legacy is these recordings and we’re very lucky for it. The 1950s was a tremendously important time for field collecting in Scotland.”
Having worked initially in Ireland – where he developed an easy grasp of Connemara Irish Gaelic – and Scotland for the Irish Folklore Commission, Maclean started work with the School of Scottish Studies on New Year’s Day, 1951. He was a hugely industrious and committed worker, who understood that every
Ochòin a Rìgh, Gura Mi Tha Muldach – “O Lord, I Am Sad and Weary”. The instrumental disc opens with the overtone buzz of Angus Lawrie of Oban playing pipe tunes on the Jew’s harp and goes on to feature pipe music in abundance, on both pipe and fiddle, with Rona Lightfoot of South Uist, then still in her teens, playing a lovely piobaireachd, A Lament for Mary Macleod.
Then there’s the piping of Calum Johnston of Barra, who, at the age of 82, dropped dead while playing, regardless of driving wind and rain, at the funeral of the author Sir Compton Mackenzie.
The song CD opens, however, with Maclean himself, giving fine voice to ‘S daor a cheannaich mi an t-iasgach, “Dearly have I paid for the fishing” – the collector collected, as it were. Hearing him gives additional poignancy to the inevitably elegiac quality of all such archive collections, all these resonant voices and dexterous fingers now stilled – apart that is from the redoubtable Rona Lightfoot, who is still very much with us.
This is the legacy of a man whose naturally outgoing nature, good humour and sensitivity could win the confidence of the most recalcitrant of interviewees. As Sorley wrote in his elegy: “They understood the heavy depths of your humanity / When your fun was at its lightest.”
The Calum Maclean Project website is www.calum-maclean-project. celtscot.ed.ac.uk/