Lost in music at the Royal National Mod

I close my eyes to listen to these songs as I am a non-Gaelic speaker and I wonder if I can better sense something of their meaning that way. There are seven choirs in this category, each of them singing two songs, the first of which is a compulsory, set one. Soon, you fancy that you can date and locate each song and begin to catch its essence. I’m certain there is a lullaby or two in here, handed down through generations, and at least one hymn. But in some of the songs there is also defiance, belligerence and liquor. With each passing song you feel this ancient language reaching out to you as you become attuned to its depths and cadences, seeking to be understood and asking you to stay a little while longer. And, not for the first time, you wonder why she was hidden from you for so long and why you didn’t try a bit harder to seek her out before now.

Curiously, though, you are also glad you don’t possess the gift of the Gaelic right now because it forces you to listen more closely to the notes as they dip and soar. Perhaps this is the way you ought to try to appreciate an abstract painting: to behold it with your imagination after you have first tried in vain to take the easy route through a familiar shape or pattern. I am suddenly enchanted by the thought that if Scotland were ever to gain independence then our first Eurovision entry as a proper, self-determining nation should be written and performed in this ancient tongue and by a choir like this.

The Royal National Mod is commonly described as the premier festival celebrating Scotland’s Gaelic music and Gaelic cultural heritage. But to describe it merely thus is to call Zinedine Zidane a former French international footballer. There would be a Mod without Scotland but you couldn’t imagine a Scotland without the Mod. For the last nine days Oban, the spiritual home of the Mod – it was founded there in 1891 – has hosted an entire people, though not just a people. This is a civilisation that is beyond mere Scottishness but which gives to Scotland something few other countries have: an ocean full of songs and poetry and literature in an old tongue that could have been created for the purpose.

For much of what I suppose we must call the modern period, though, it seems Scotland has done its best to banish this language and bundle it into the cupboard underneath the stairs; a thing never quite understood and thus always feared; something that makes the rest of us feel uneasy. And so the Royal National Mod has never been more important for the survival of the language and the culture and the people who are formed by it.

According to the last census there are 58,600 fluent Gaelic speakers in Scotland, a number which rises to 80,000 if you include those who possess some ability to speak Gaelic. The language has been on a steep downwards trajectory for more than 100 years and has reached a point beneath which lies cultural oblivion. Let me put it more starkly: if in the next few years those 58,600 are not soon augmented then this language will simply die, choked by civic Scotland’s casual indifference and occasional scorn. Let it die, is the cry of the unimaginative, the uninformed, nothing lasts for ever: look at what happened to Latin and ancient Greek; languages and civilisations die out, do they not, and nothing lasts for ever. But there is a difference between a natural death and an execution. Yet, contained in those 2011 census figures is a thin beam of hope. After this century-long decline the figure of 58,600 is a stabilisation. And while the language declined among older speakers there was an increase among speakers in the 2-11 years range. This may yet prove to be the salvation of the language.

John Morrison is a former Scotland correspondent for the BBC and presents a Gaelic language sports programme on Radio nan Gaidheal every Saturday morning. He is a regular visitor to the Mod and considers it to be akin to an annual pilgrimage. “I grew up in North Uist and everything in my world was Gaelic: the names of everything were in Gaelic. We interacted with the world and encountered modern culture in Gaelic. We talked about Celtic and Rangers and Jim Baxter and Jimmy Johnstone in Gaelic.

“This might be an old language, but it is a living and vital language which has a lot to teach modern Scotland about where the country came from and how it emerged from its past; what shaped and formed us. I think that, after years of neglect, the message is slowly getting through that Gaelic has so much to offer modern Scotland. BBC Alba is now pulling in more than 500,000 viewers every week and is part of Scotland’s broadcasting hinterland. And even those who know little of Gaelic culture and language acknowledge that Celtic Connections brightens up the most dismal month of the year.”

ON MONDAY afternoon in sunny Oban in a little theatre near the back of the seafront Corran Halls, groups of primary school children are preparing for their acting debuts. They are re-enacting scenes from Shakespeare’s Macbeth in 10-minute adaptations to a full house of spectators. These children and the extent to which they can hold on to their language as they grow up and encounter the all-pervading non-Gaelic world will determine the future of the language.

The success of Gaelic medium primary schools has been the outstanding feature on Scotland’s educational landscape in recent years. More than 3,000 children are being taught in Scotland’s Gaelic medium schools with around half of them continuing their language studies into secondary. The Gaelic school in Glasgow’s Anderston district, Sgoil Ghaidhlig Ghlaschu, outperforms every other school in the city and possesses the fastest growing school roll. A second school was opened earlier this year. The recently-opened Gaelic medium school in Edinburgh is beginning to emulate the success of its Glasgow sister. Non-Gaelic speakers are thronging these schools because of their educational records, not the least of which is the startling fact that their pupils are bi-lingual by the time they are eight and are becoming fluent in one or two languages by the time they leave primary education.

Yet there are still implacable opponents of the promotion of Gaelic in Scotland, some of them dimmer than others. Jackson Carlaw, the former used car salesman turned Conservative Party MSP, tweeted derisively about the cost of Gaelic signposts. “An education system failing our poorest, cuts to college places … but at least the SNP spent £26m on Gaelic signs.” Carlaw’s figures were a figment of his imagination as £26m is the entirety of what the Scottish Government spends on promoting Gaelic. Incidentally, the Welsh Government spends almost the same amount promoting the Welsh language in a nation with a population which is just over half of Scotland’s.

The Highlands and Islands Enterprise board conducted research recently that said Gaelic usage had the potential to generate up to £148.5m to the Scottish economy annually. The rise in Gaelic music festivals and Celtic Connections contributes greatly to this. This year’s Mod is expected to inject around £3m into Oban’s economy. Last year’s event in Inverness was worth £3.5m. The seafront bars and hotels of Oban have been thrumming with the notes and voices of a thousand musicians from all over the world. In one of them on Monday night, where the floorboards leapt until 4am I sat mesmerised by the language being spoken around me and wondering why not a trace of it was to be found anywhere in Scottish secondary schools until only very recently.

John Morrison is sanguine about the neglect of his native tongue and feels that government is now getting the message. A corner has been turned, he feels, and Gaelic might just be on the cusp of a long-term upturn.

“In the early 1970s, no-one had written the history of the islands or the Highlands from the perspective of its persecuted people,” he says. “History is written by the victors and the story of the Highlands and islands was drawn from official sources, which were mainly records held by the lairds, the churches and the government. No historian had paid any attention to oral stories passed from generation to generation, to Gaelic poetry or to the testimony from the stone ruins of houses in glens and bays around the north and west of Scotland.The seminal work by Dr James Hunter, The Making of the Crofting Community, was still a PhD thesis in progress.”

It seems that along with our better understanding of the politics of the land in Scotland and the cruelty of the Clearances and the way in which the British state tried to stamp out all traces of the traditional Highland way of life has come a revival in interest in Gaelic studies. Morrison feels that something has begun to stir in the teaching of Scottish history in our schools and universities. “As part of our studies for a Gaelic O-level a young teacher straight out of training college got the class involved in a project about the local kelp industry and how its collapse led to mass evictions in North Uist.

“This was really radical to me at the time and I have a lot to thank this young teacher for, not the least of which was introducing me to my own history and politics, in my native language. The knowledge of this, which had been concealed from me, was one of the cornerstones of my life philosophy. Progress has been slow but, compared with how we, as a nation, once used to treat Gaelic, we are living in a much-improved world. I’m very optimistic about the future.”

When the Mod ends today more than 3,000 people will have participated in 200 events while the Mod Fringe has become almost as big as the Mod itself, attracting tourists and musicians from all over the world. This, though, wasn’t deemed sufficient by Creative Scotland, who turned their back on a modest plea for cash support.

Among those making their first visit to the Mod are a German Gaelic choir called the Kantorei Haselau from the village of Haselau near Hamburg. “We are a very small farming community of about 1,500 people but there is an interest in Scottish traditional music in this area but some of us were very interested in Gaelic culture and decided that the best way to pursue that interest was to start a choir,” says Michael Horn-Antoni, founder of the choir. “We have been going for 25 years and the age range of our membership is between 16 and 81. This is our first time competing at the Mod, and we are very excited to be here; it is such an honour.” In the hotel next door, Scottish Natural Heritage are hosting a reception for a group of Scandinavians who belong to the Sami community, the indigenous people of Scandinavia who are to be found in Norway, Sweden, Finland and on Russia’s Kola Peninsula.

In the gardens that surround the Corran Halls a dozen little barefoot soldiers of Dunsinane are gambolling in the grass with their tragic king, who has lightened up since we last saw him on stage trying to face down witches and moving forests. Eleven-year-old Finlay McLuckie from the town’s Rockfield Primary has just been handed a handsome silver cup for the efforts of he and his fellow Highland thespians at interpreting the Scottish king (whose native tongue was most probably the language of the Gaels). He is fluent in Gaelic, which he has been speaking for five years. “I really like speaking Gaelic and am proud that I can speak both it and English and I’m looking forward to continuing that throughout my life,” he says.

His classmates nevertheless opted not to greet their success in traditional Highland manner, but in the new global argot of the football field. “Championees,” was the cry. On the drive back to Glasgow I’m eager to play my new CD of Gaelic Songs (Volume One of Three) which I purchased that morning at a stall beside the main concert hall. I had bought it in a hurry and I now see that it is at the more traditional end of the Gaelic music spectrum and features the voices of Calum Kennedy, Mairi MacArthur and Alasdair Gillies. Nevertheless, I make room for it among works by those other fine Scottish musicians, Angus Young, Alex Harvey and Dan McCafferty. At the end of the journey it is still there but I’d give anything to have a CD of the singing of those young people who participated that morning in the Under-19s unaccompanied choir competition.