first time.  The experiment was well worthwhile, and will itself, we hope, become part of the Mod tradition.  But at the same time there were lessons to be learned.

It’s hard to understand, for example, why each singer had to sing two songs in quick succession, leaving them with no time to get the first out of their system before venturing on the second.  The rush certainly contributed to things going pear-shaped.  Two singers got the pitch horribly wrong, and three others forgot their words: every singer’s worst nightmares in the space of ten minutes, leaving excellent young performers who had trained for months wishing the ground would swallow them up.

But there was further trauma when the judges announced their verdicts: Ceitlin Smith, who had begun the night leading the ladies’ competition, had been relegated to third place; and one thing was clear: this wasn’t an accident.  It was hard to believe that her performances on the night had blown her chances.  She had sung like an angel.  Someone, somewhere, was making a point.

But what point?  We didn’t hear the comments of the judges, but as the studio discussion unfolded a consensus began to emerge: Ceitlin’s was not ‘traditional’ singing.

This is hard to bear.  Do An Comunn lay down guidelines as to what is or is not traditional?  The first song, ‘Cha teid mi le fear gun bhata’ was in the best tradition of Gaelic humorous romance, sung to the rhythm of a waulking song.  The only objection might be that Ceitlin’s presentation was not traditional.  After all, old-style Gaelic singers used to stand like statues, not a muscle moving, their eyes fixed (probably in terror) on the clock at the back of the hall.  Ceitlin certainly didn’t do that.  She moved with the music (as did the late Ishbel MacAskill).  As for the argument that the song didn’t suit her, it should surely have been to her credit that she didn’t confine herself to one genre, but chose different kinds of songs.

There was certainly nothing un-traditional about the second song, ‘Leòdhas mo Ghraidh’.  It was composed by Murdo Morrison (Bard Bharbhais) and published in 1923 in a collection called, ‘Fear Siùbhail nan Gleann’.  Its age alone gave it every right to be deemed traditional, but for me Ceitlin’s rendering had something else: it was as if the late, beloved Kitty Macleod had come back from the dead.  Not that Ceitlin was merely imitating, but the influence was unmistakeable: the diction, the emphases, the phrasing and, above all, the tonality of the voice itself.  I found it emotionally overwhelming, and the idea that this was not traditional singing filled me with disbelief: a song by Bard Bharbhais in the style of Kitty MacLeod not traditional?

And so off I went to my old, treasured, scratched Gaelfonn disc and played it: Kitty MacLeod, brought up in a culture with a Gaelic soul, singing ‘Leòdhas mo Ghraidh’ sixty years ago; and when I heard it last Thursday evening it made the tears flow, because it brought back precious memories of a native genius, and the beauty and assurance of a lost world.

It’s hard to believe the judges didn’t know the provenance of Ceitlin’s rendering, and were Kitty still alive today, her paranoia would be working overtime.  An Comunn Gaidhealach never honoured her in life; and now, it seems, they don’t appreciate her even in death.

The decision whether a song is being sung in traditional mode cannot be left to the whims of judges.  There must, surely, be more objective criteria.  The description ‘traditional’ or ‘seann nos’ is itself fairly recent (in the sense that anything introduced in my life-time is ‘recent’).  The specification used to be ‘an unpublished song’ and I well remember sitting glued to a neighbour’s radio over sixty years ago and hearing a posh BBC voice announce that my pal, Donnie Murray (then about ten years old) would ‘now sing a song his grandmother taught him’.  It was ‘Guma slàn don ribhinn òig’, composed by the Glendale bard, Niall Macleoid.  It has dropped out of the repertoire, but curiously enough its tune goes well with another of Murdo Morrison’s songs, ‘Slan le Leòdhas nam beann fuar’.  Both songs, sadly, now seem forgotten.   On the other hand, I also remember an uncle trying to teach me in the early fifties, ‘Bho ghruaman cha bhi mi’n diugh’: at that time almost totally unknown, now widely sung.

‘Unpublished’ was a clear objective criterion, though ‘out of print’ might sometimes have been a more accurate description, but in the wake of all the research and collecting of the last sixty years it’s hard to imagine that much remains unpublished, unless there are still unsung  treasures in the bowels of the School of Scottish Studies.  But one other possible route is to re-label the Gold Medal competitions, one for accompanied singing and one for unaccompanied.  After all, the very essence of the traditional style was that it was unaccompanied; and accompaniment would bring a new dimension (and perhaps musical security) to the ‘classical’ competition.  Those who have the old Grampian record, ‘Beannachdan bho Eilean Leodhais’ will remember with pleasure Duncan Morrison accompanying former medallists Alma Kerr, James Smith and John Murdo Morrison.  A culture which has welcomed the guitar certainly cannot cock a snoop at the piano; especially not this year, when the Mod allowed that ancient biblical instrument, the dulcimer, on to its stage.

In the immortal words of the gentleman who married Wallis Simpson, ‘Something must be done’.  As things stand, there is no reason why the same song could not be sung in the same way in both Medal competitions, and this is a formula for confusion.  Indeed, we saw this last week in the new competition for former Gold Medal winners.  The worthy winner of the Kennedy Gillies Trophy (donated in memory of the late Calum Kennedy and his wife, Anne Gillies) was Darren Maclean, singing, ‘Gruagach òg an fhuilt bhàn’.  But is this not a traditional song?  Or does Darren not have enough grace-notes?

But the last word on the Mod must go to Education Secretary, Michael Russel.  ‘Use it or lose it,’ he warned Gaelic speakers.  That may be easily said, but it is a sober truth.  The challenge we all face is how to implement it.

 

Published in the West Highland Free Press 26 October 2012.