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Calum Iain Maclean, Calum
Iain mac Chaluim ’ic Chaluim ’ic Iain ’ic Tharmaid ’ic Iain ’ic Tharmaid,
or, more simply, Calum an Tàilleir (Scottish Gaelic: Calum Iain
MacGilleathain, 6 September 1915-17 August 1960), a Scottish folklorist,
collector, ethnographer and author, was born in 1915 in Òsgaig, Isle of
Raasay, Scotland, to a family of five boys and two girls to Malcolm
MacLean, or Calum Chaluim Iain Ghairbh (1880-1951), tailor, and his
wife, Christina Nicloson, or Ciorstaidh Shomhairle Mhòir Iain ‘ic
Shomhairle Phìobaire ‘ic Iain ‘ic Eòghain (1886-1974), daughter of
Sorley Nicolson of Braes, Skye, and his wife, Isobel. His four other
brothers were the famous Gaelic poet and scholar, Sorley MacLean [Somhairle
MacGill-Eain] (1911-1996), a schoolmaster and classicist, John Maclean
(1909-1970), and two general practitioners, Dr Alasdair Maclean
(1918-1999), and Dr Norman MacLean (1921-1998). Ishbel (1924-) and Mary
(1926-), their sisters, were also schoolteachers.
Education
Maclean received his early education at Raasay Public School and then
Portree Secondary School (1929-1935), Skye. Maclean then went to the
University of Edinburgh (1935-1939) where he took a first in Celtic
Studies under the tutelage of two famous Gaelic scholars, Professor
William J. Watson (1865-1948), and his son Professor James Carmichael
Watson (1910-1942). He won the McCaig and Macpherson scholarships which
enabled him to enrol at University College Dublin where he undertook
further study in Early Irish under Professor Osborn Bergin (1872-1950)
and in Medieval and Modern Welsh under Professor J. Lloyd-Jones
(1885-1965). At the outbreak of the Second World War, Maclean’s studies
came to a temporary halt and he had to cast around for some other means
of livelihood. At first he worked in a factory in Clonmel, Co. Tipperary,
and from there he went to stay in Indreabhán, just west of Galway City
in Connemara. While domiciled there, Maclean began to take an interest
in the local Gaelic traditions, inspired mainly by the influence and
writings of Douglas Hyde (1860-1949).
Early Fieldwork
With relative ease Maclean acquired a particular skill in the modern
Irish of the Connaught Gaeltacht and was appointed by Professor Seumas
Delargy (1899-1980) as a part-time collector for the Irish Folklore
Commission (Coimisiún Béaloideasa Éireann). During this period, Maclean
turned his back on his Presbyterian upbringing and converted to the
Roman Catholic faith. From August 1942 to February 1945, Maclean sent a
considerable amount of southern Connemara lore to the Commission,
amounting to six bound volumes. By April 1945, Maclean had been given a
full-time appointment by the Commission in Dublin. During the next few
months, Maclean learnt the craft of folklore, extracting excerpts from
19th century printed Scottish Gaelic tale collections and gaining
experience in cataloguing.
Recording in Scotland for the Irish Folklore Commission (1945-1950)
On 19 December 1945, the Irish Folklore Commission sent Calum Maclean to
the Hebrides with an ediphone recording device so that at least one
serious attempt would be made at the scientific preservation of this
material before the last Gaelic storytellers and folk-singers who had
escaped the net of the 1872 Education Act had passed away. Maclean was
fully conscious of the task that lay before him and applied himself to
the work with gusto. An entry from a diary, which he wrote in Gaelic,
gives an insight into his work as an ethnographer at this time:
Thòisich mise, Calum I. Mac Gille Eathain, a’ cruinneachadh
beul-airthris agus litreachas beóil ann an eilean Ratharsair am paraiste
Phort-righeadh anns an Eilean Sgitheanach air an 19mh lá de ‘n Dùdhlachd
(Nodhlaig) 1945. Rugadh mi agus chaidh mo thogail anns an eilean seo. An
uair a bha mise òg bha tòrr dhaoine anns an eilean seo aig a robh
sgeulachdan agus seann-òrain nach deachaidh a sgrìobhadh sios riamh is
nach téid a sgrìobhadh sios gu bràth. Tha an t-seann-fheadhainn an nis
marbh agus thug iad gach rud a bha aca leotha do’n uaigh. Có dhiubh tha
cuid de dhaoine ann fhathast a chuimhneachas bloighean de na h-òrain a
bhiodh aca agus bloighean de’n t-seanchas eile cuideachd. Shaoil mi gu
robh barrachd òran air am fàgail anns an eilean seo na bha de aon rud
eile. Uime sin chuir mi romham na h-òrain a sgrìobhadh sios uile mar a
chuala mi aig na daoine iad. Ach sgrìobh mi sios cuideachd gach rud a
thachair rium. Tha fhios agam gu bheil sinn tri fichead bliadhna ro
anamoch gu tòiseachadh air an obair seo, ach dh ‘fhaoite gu sàbhail sinn
rud air chor eigin fhathast, mun téid a uile a dhìth…
I, Calum I. Maclean, began two days ago to collect the oral tradition of
the island of Raasay. I was born and reared on this island. When I was
young there were many people here who had tales and songs which had
never been written down, and which never will be, since the old people
are now dead, and all that they knew is with them in the grave. There
are still some people alive who remember some of the songs and
traditions of their forefathers, and as it seemed to me that there are
more songs than anything else available, I decided to write down those
which I could find. I realise that we are sixty years late in beginning
this work of collection, but we may be able to save at least some of the
traditional lore before it dies out…
It was clear from Maclean’s preliminary collection he made (mainly from
his own relations) in Raasay that there was still a great deal to
collect and, in light of this, the Irish Folklore Commission took the
decision in 1946 to send Maclean back to his native land in order that
he could continue his work in the field. Over the next four and a half
years (from June 1946 to the end of December 1950), while still in the
employ of the Commission, Maclean worked assiduously in collecting a
further nineteen bound volumes of lore (amounting to over 9,000
manuscript pages) as well as his diaries, amounting to a further five
full bound volumes (over 2,000 manuscript pages). It was during this
period that Maclean collected the longest story ever recorded in
Scotland, the 58,000 words of Alasdair mac a’ Cheird (Alasdair son of
the Caird), told to him in 1949 by Angus MacMillan. This almost doubled
the previous “record” of the 30,000 words of Leigheas Coise Cein (The
Healing of Kane’s Leg), recorded from Lachlin MacNeill, an Islayman, by
J. F. Campbell and Hector Maclean in 1870.
Collecting for the School of Scottish Studies (1951-1960)
On New Year’s Day 1951, Maclean formally began to work for the newly
founded School of Scottish Studies based at his alma mater, the
University of Edinburgh. Since being given this long over due
institutional berth, the systematic collection of Scottish Gaelic and
Scots folklore began in earnest through the avid work of Calum Maclean,
the School’s first appointed collector, Hamish Henderson (1919-2002),
John MacInnes (1930-), to name but a few, and their successors. The very
first recordings that he made for the School included no less than 524
Gaelic tales from a roadman encountered “in the dead of winter, and
Lochaber lay white and deep in snow.” The last that Maclean made were
literally on his death bed.
Maclean was among the first fieldworkers to undertake the systematic
collection of the old Gaelic songs, stories and traditions in the
Highlands and Islands with modern recording apparatus. Therein lies the
importance of his work. A good deal had been done previously in the way
of collecting old stories in the Highlands by John Francis Campbell of
Islay (1821-1885) and his collectors, but lacking any means of making
mechanical recordings, their task of writing down such tales from
dictation was a very laborious one, and J. F. Campbell himself admitted
that his collection in no way exhausted the stories current in the
Highlands “whole districts are yet untried, and whole classes of
stories, such as popular history and robber stories, have yet been
untouched.”
International Links and Gaelic Tradition Bearers
Most importantly, Maclean spent a little over a year (from Summer 1951
to Autumn 1952) undertaking professional training at Uppsala University
in Sweden which was then, as now, at the forefront of folklore
methodology, cataloguing and archival techniques. Maclean benefited
greatly by what he learnt at this institution as well as his time at the
Irish Folklore Commission. Having studied under Professor Dag Strömbäck,
he later set up an index system for Scottish folklore at the School of
Scottish Studies based on the Uppsala one. Maclean’s fieldwork
experience, in-depth knowledge of Gaelic oral tradition and broad
academic knowledge provided him with a unique combination of skills that
were advantageous to collecting. In addition, Maclean had a remarkable
facility to put people at ease and so gained their confidence. He
stressed this observation in one of his articles that “for any folklore
collector the crucial time is when contact is first made with the
tradition bearer” and that “every folklore collector must be prepared to
efface himself and approach even the most humble tradition bearer with
the deference due to the high and exalted.” Calum Maclean lived out this
principle to the full, and so, with his easy-going personality coupled
with a sometimes-mischievous sense of humour, managed to open many a
door that would have otherwise been closed. Everywhere he went he found
the best contacts and tradition bearers and by doing so he managed to
gather in a vast amount of oral material straight from people’s
memories. Out of the hundreds of people recorded by Maclean, there were
four storytellers that struck him as exceptionally talented: Seumas
MacKinnon, known as Seumas Iain Ghunnairigh, (c. 1866-c.1946), from
Northbay in Barra, Duncan MacDonald, Donnchadh Mac Dhòmhnaill ‘ic
Dhonnchaidh, (1882-1954), from Peninerine in South Uist, Angus (Barrach)
MacMillan (1874-1954), from Griminish in Benbecula and John (The Bard)
MacDonald (1876-1964) from Highbridge in Brae Lochaber.
A Fieldworker’s Legacy
Maclean was struck down by cancer in 1956 necessitating the amputation
of his left arm the following year. Even with the onset of cancer that
was to finish him, he continued to work and remain cheerful under
extremely adverse circumstances that reflected the strength of character
that belied his small stature. Sadly, Maclean’s only major publication
was The Highlands (1959), and what may be described as an uncompromising
view of the Highland people, history and culture from the perspective of
an insider, a Gaelic-speaking Scot, received many favourable critical
reviews on publication. Apart from a modest amount of academic papers
and popular publications, due to the amount of time spent in recording,
and the concomitant task of transcription and indexing, Maclean’s
foremost legacy is his vast collection of mainly Gaelic oral tradition
carried out in the field over a fourteen-year period (1946-1960). The
vast majority of the collection was made in the Western Isles (in South
Uist, Benbecula and Barra) and on the mainland Scottish Highlands.
Maclean was always conscious of being a successor to those great
collectors who had gone before him: John Francis Campbell of Islay,
Hector Maclean (1818-1892), John Dewar (1802-1872), Alexander Carmichael
(1832-1912), Fr. Allan McDonald (1859-1905), as well as many others. In
some ways he surpassed them all.
At the comparatively youthful age of only 44, on 17 August 1960, Calum
Maclean lost his battle against cancer and died in the Sacred Heart
Hospital, Daliburgh, South Uist, Scotland. He was to have received, in
September of that year, from the University of St. Francis Xavier at
Antigonish, Nova Scotia – an institution with very strong Highland
connections – the degree of LL.D., honoris causa, for recognition of his
work for the preservation of Gaelic oral tradition. It was a fitting
honour for a scholar – the one word that he pleaded not to have marked
on his gravestone but where “Celtc Scholar and Folklorist appears — who
had spent so many long hours collecting in the field. He was buried in
Hallan Cemetery, South Uist, an island that not only claimed him but one
that he claimed to be his own. His brother, Sorley MacLean, wrote a
moving elegy typifying for many the great loss felt at his untimely
death:
Tha iomadh duine bochd an Albainn
dhan tug thu togail agus cliù;
‘s ann a thog thu ‘n t-iriosail
a chuir ar linn air chùl.
Thug iad dhutsa barrachd
na bheireadh iad do chàch
on thug thu dhaibh an dùrachd
bu ghrìosaich fo do bhàigh.
Mhothaich iadsan an dealas
a bha socair na do dhòigh,
thuig iad doimhne throm do dhaondachd
nuair b’aotroime do spòrs.
There is many a poor man in Scotland
Whose spirit and name you raised;
You lifted the humble
Whom our age put aside.
They gave you more
Than they would give the others
Since you gave them the zeal
That was a fire beneath your kindness
They sensed the vehemence
That was gentle in your ways,
They understood the heavy depths of your humanity
When your fun was at its lightest.
The Little One of
the Big Heart
Calum Iain Maclean (1915-1960) by Dr. Andrew Wiseman (pdf)
Calum I.
Maclean's Fieldwork Diaries in Arisaig, Morar, and Moidart, 1954
Part one (pdf) |
