New Article on Gaelic Gutting Songs
Hello everyone! My first peer-reviewed article on gutting songs is now available. I’m so honoured to be published in Scottish Studies, the flagship journal of the field. You will even find a photo of herring gutters on the cover of the issue, courtesy of the Scottish Fisheries Museum!
The article is called “‘Tam o’ Shanter ‘s Geansaidh Snàith’: The Innovative Work Songs of Gaelic-Speaking Herring Gutters”. It’s available for free download here. You can also see it on my Academia.edu page. The article is based on my masters research into Gaelic-language gutting songs. It looks at the evidence for singing while gutting; the connections between work song and dance song in Gaelic; the topics that gutters sang about, such as love, economic opportunities, and housing; and the linguistic and musical influences of Scots and English on the Gaelic gutting song repertoire. During the course of my PhD, I am planning to apply similar types of analyses to gutting songs from other language communities, such as Scots speakers from Shetland, but this article just covers the Scottish Gaelic material.
You can hear some of the Scottish Gaelic gutting songs I wrote about online on Tobar an Dualchais. The title of my article comes from a gutting song recorded from Peggy MacRae of Uist. Peggy spent eleven weeks working as a gutter in Shetland in 1922. She learned a variant of a common Lewis gutters’ song from her fellow workers there. The version she learned included this verse:
Tam o’ shanter ‘s geansaidh snàith
Tam o’ shanter ‘s geansaidh snàith
Tam o’ shanter ‘s geansaidh snàith
‘S RNR air m’annsachd
This means “my lover is wearing a tam o’ shanter hat, a woollen gansey, and RNR”, referring to the insignia of the Royal National Reserve. The name “tam o’ shanter” for a round cap is a Scots one, whereas the Gaelic name is “boineid cruinn”. Peggy’s verse shows that women who worked as herring gutters were being exposed to English and Scots even while speaking and singing in Gaelic amongst themselves.
Another version of this song was recorded from Mary Morrison of Barra. She composed several of her own verses to the song. You can listen to her version here. If you listen carefully, you will notice that there are a lot of English words used throughout. These are mainly vocabulary from the fishing industry, which was dominated by Lowland Scots even while employing thousands of Gaelic speakers from the Hebrides. It makes sense that Gaelic-speaking women picked up English and Scots fishing vocabulary while they worked in the industry. Mary Morrison’s version can be dated to sometime after 1921, since it refers to boats that weren’t being used as fishing boats until then. Mary was renowned for her ability to sing mouth music to accompany dances, and you can get a similar sense of quick rhythm and fun from her gutting song recordings. Most Gaelic gutting songs were dance songs like this one.
Here’s a selection of a few other Gaelic gutters’ songs to listen to:
Rionnag às an Oidhche Fhrasaich
That’s all for now – mar sin leibh!
Hi Meg,
I’m a writer of fiction (www.esthomson.co.uk) I am currently trying to complete a ghost story set in Caithness. I need a few lines from a herring gutters song that might’ve been sung around 1870 (or thereabouts) in Wick . I wondered whether you can help? Gaelic would be great as I realise many of the herring girls came from the Outer Hebrides. I tried to access your new article, but failed…
with very best wishes and thanks in advance. Your research sounds so interesting, and enriching. I loved the recordings you provided here (though im not a Gaelic speaker so could not understand the words) Good luck with it!
Elaine
Hi Elaine, thanks for your message! I’m sorry that the link didn’t work to access my article. Does this one work? https://journals.ed.ac.uk/ScottishStudies/article/view/7208 It should be available for free to view as a PDF. If this one works I’ll update the article to make sure there’s a working link.
That’s really cool that you are wanting to incorporate herring gutters – and their songs! – into one of your novels! The earliest dateable Gaelic gutting songs date to the 1880s (but was likely sung earlier), and there are references to gutters singing in Gaelic in the same period in Wick, so that would be a good fit for your novel. These songs were contributed by Nan MacKinnon, whose mother learned them from Lewis girls while working as a herring gutter. They’re both pretty fragmentary, but here are the lyrics and translations (transcribed in the School of Scottish Studies):
“Tha i fuar tha i frasach” (It is cold and showery)
Tha i fuar tha i fuar
tha i fuar tha i frasach
tha i frasach tha i fuar
aig mo luaidh air a bhanca.
Refrain:
Dari am dar i do ló
dari am dar i do lari
dari am dar i do ló
ha i ó siod mo leannan.
Théid mi sios théid mi sios
théid mi sios ‘s gheibh mi leannan
gheibh mi sia duine deug
an a Siadair a chladaich.
[translation]
It is cold it is cold
it is cold and showery
it is showery and cold
for my love on the bank.
Dari am dar i do ló
dari am dar i do lari
dari am dar i do ló
ha i ó there is my lover.
I will go down I will go down
I will go down and get a lover
I will get sixteen
in Shader by the shore. [Shader is a place in Lewis]
Then here is the second one (note that the Gaelic orthography is quite outdated in this transcription):
“Haoi o nach dannsadh sibh e” (Haoi o dance it)
Haoi ó nach dannsa siu e
nach dannsa siu e ga-rìru
haoi ó nach dannsa siu e
nach dannsa siu e ga rìru
haoi ó nach dannsa siu e
nach dannsa siu e ga-rìru
dannsaibh e gu h-aighearach
an taighean Alig Steven.
O gu bheil mo leannan-sa
a togail tigh geal dhomh-sa
gu bheil lobhta chruidh ann
agus staidhrichean an òrdan.
English translation:
Haoi ó dance it
dance it indeed
haoi ó dance it
dance it indeed
haoi ó dance it
dance it indeed
dance it merrily
in Alick Steven’s houses.
O my lover
is building a white house for me
there is a wooden floor in it
and stairs in order.
“Alick Steven” was a herring curer of Alexander Stephen & Sons. She’s singing about the temporary hut housing that he built for them in Shetland. In Wick they would have been housed in barns, storage rooms, or spare rooms around the town. I’ve got more about the housing and how it relates to the songs in my article. Pultneytown was the planned fishing district of Wick (which you may already know!).
Do let me know if you have any other questions, and when the book is coming out!