Doing Something Good For Gaelic: The Scottish Gaelic Foundation of the U.S.A. is underway!

Doing Something Good For Gaelic: The Scottish Gaelic Foundation of the U.S.A. is underway!

Scottish Gaelic in the United States truly is a marginalized language and culture, and it has been largely subsumed and reinvented on a very different Anglo-Scottish model. Thus, much of the discussion necessary to set the stage for expanded efforts at Gaelic culture and language recovery and revitalization tends to be a bit dark and more than a little uncomfortable. Such […]

Read More

“Our children are bred for emigration”

“Our children are bred for emigration”

Yesterday was the birthday of a great Gael. One of the greatest in fact. Poet, story teller and Gaelic cultural warrior Somhairle MacGill-Eain (Sorely MacLean) was born on Raasay on October 26th in 1911. Somhairle died in 1996. Had the Gaelic people, culture and kingdom not been overtaken and marginalized (i.e. stolen) by Anglo aggression, ethnic cleansing and forced […]

Read More

Gaelic, Not Gaelic: Two Scotlands two Diasporas

Gaelic, Not Gaelic: Two Scotlands two Diasporas

If one looks at Scotland from a certain perspective, it is completely possible to identify two distinct worlds co-existing under one Alban sky. A close reading of north Britain human history reveals about 1,300 post-Roman years of a multi-cultural, multi-lingual, dynamic melting pot of Gaelic, Pict, Norse, Briton and finally Anglo Saxons and Normans. Rich, […]

Read More

You might be a Gael if …

You might be a Gael if …

I wrote a Not Your Father’s Gaelic blog post a few weeks ago wherein I expressed how nice it would be to have neighbors who are aware of and interested in their Scottish Gaelic heritage. Perhaps even neighbors with whom I could joke around in Gaelic! As it is, even my own (Italian American) mother’s eyes […]

Read More

Scottish Heraldry 101: The Court of Lord Lyon

Scottish Heraldry 101: The Court of Lord Lyon

Just off Edinburgh’s bustling Princes Street sits a grand old building that houses hundreds of years worth of Scotland’s records. HM New Register House is well known as home to the General Register Office for Scotland but also houses the Court of Lord Lyon – Scotland’s centuries-old heraldic authority that can be traced back to […]

Read More

The SSPCK and a painful link between Gaelic and Native American cultures

The SSPCK and a painful link between Gaelic and Native American cultures

What is the SSPCK? Well, it is not the Society in Scotland for the Protection of Christian Kangaroos although much damage and loss might have been avoided if protecting kangaroos had been the organization’s mission. Instead, the Society in Scotland for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge (SSPCK) has followed in the first footsteps of British […]

Read More

How Gaelic is the Scottish clan system?

How Gaelic is the Scottish clan system?

One of the many Scottish heritage subjects that could benefit from additional knowledge is the role of Gaelic culture and civilization in the remarkable development of what we lovingly call the Scottish clan system. Go ahead. Google it. It is a simple question but you will not be finding a simple answer. At least not […]

Read More