Alexander Carmichael

Alexander Carmichael (full name Alexander Archibald Carmichael, or Alasdair Gilleasbaig MacGilleMhìcheil in his native Scottish Gaelic) (1 December 1832, Taylochan, Isle of Lismore – 6 June 1912, Barnton, Edinburgh) was a Scottish exciseman, folklorist, antiquarian, and author. Between 1860 and his death Carmichael collected a vast amount of folklore, local traditions, natural history observations, antiquarian data, and material objects from people throughout the Scottish Highlands, particularly in the southern Outer Hebrides where he lived, worked, and brought up his family between 1864 and 1882. Alexander Carmichael is best known today for Carmina Gadelica, an influential but controversial compendium of edited Highland lore and literature published in six volumes between 1900 and 1971.

The material that Carmichael collected in the Carmina Gadelica - "The Hymns of the Gael" - is noted for its preservation of an indigenous "Celtic" spirituality that integrates the Christian with aspects of the pre-Christian. While Carmichael does provide a little material from Lewis and Harris, most comes from the southern isles, especially South Uist, where a Catholic tradition had permitted the preservation of what, in the Protestant north, would usually have been dismissed in relatively modern times as "superstitions". The southern isles might have been more open to "nature religion" than other Catholic regions because, after the Reformation, they were re-evangelisd by Franciscan missionaries, open to nature spirituality. To what extent scholarship into Carmichael has been shaped over the past century by differences between Catholic and Protestant perceptions of Hebridean tradition is a question that has been asked privately by some scholars, but thus far not researched.

In his 1992 preface to the Floris single volume edition (abridged and without the Gaelic original) John MacInnes of the School of Scottish Studies concludes by quoting his Edinburgh University ethnographer colleague, Ronald Black (Raghnall MacilleDhuibh), as surmising: "Carmina Gadelica is by any standards a treasure house ... a marvellous and unrepeatable achievement. There will never be another Carmina Gadelica." More recent scholarship on the Carmina by Domhnall Uilleam Stiùbhart at Edinburgh University's Carmichael Watson Project can be accessed through the Biography link (below). Amongst other points, this explores the extent to which Carmichael might have embellished some of his material.

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