Gaelic | Pop Up Library

The School of Scottish Studies Archives holds:

over 30,000 sound recordings
320 film / video items
over 50,000 images
manuscript collections

As part of the University’s Gaelic Week programme of events we will be popping-up at the first floor reception desk in the University Library on Thursday 23 October, 2-4pm. We will be highlighting some of our Gaelic holdings but will also have information available on all of our collections.

Over the past sixty years, fieldworkers at the School of Scottish Studies have collected thousands of audio recordings of songs, music, tales, verse, customs, belief, oral history and much more in Gaelic, Scots and English. These are complemented by film, photographic and manuscript collections. From rallying political songs to soothing lullabies, supernatural tales to humorous anecdotes, traditional crafts to fire festivals; the full range of Scotland’s cultural legacy is represented and brought to life in this rich tapestry of archive material.

The School of Scottish Studies Archives
Peter Cooke interviewing George Moss

There will be an opportunity to listen to some of our thousands of recordings, many of which can be accessed online via the Tobar an Dualchais / Kist o’ Riches website.

You can also learn, hands on, about the history of sound recording. Sound recordings were made using a variety of recording machines from wax cylinders to DAT tapes and digital memory cards. For many decades the reel to reel recording machine using quarter-inch magnetic tape was the standard and as a result the vast majority of our archive recordings are on open reel tape.

We invite you to come along to make your own recording using an open reel tape machine! You can record your own message or why not try one of the Gaelic or Scots sayings that we have selected? You can take the section of tape away with you, and we will also give you a QR code so that you can then listen to your recording online.

All this and more at the School of Scottish Studies Archives Pop-Up Library session on Thursday 23 October, 2-4pm.

—Grant, Peter. Dain spioradail. Elgin : Peter Macdonald, bookseller, 1837. New College Library Gaelic Collections 250.

Did you know that over 400 items which together form the Gaelic Collections at New College Library have recently been catalogued online? Come and join me at the Pop-up Library (on the first floor of the Main Library) on Wednesday 22 October, 10-12 pm, to find out more.

The Gaelic Collection contains several editions of “Dain spioradail ” by the celebrated hymn writer Peter Grant, and this edition at Gaelic Coll. 250 is the fifth edition, considerably enlarged and improved from earlier editions. It was published in Elgin, in the highlands of Scotland.

The title page information refers to Grant’s Gaelic name Pàdraig Grannd nan Òran, which means ‘Peter Grant of the songs’. Grant was a Baptist minister, born on 30 January 1783 at Ballintua, Strathspey, Scotland. He was a skilled fiddle player, who was able to set his poems on evangelical themes to well known tunes which were popular into the twentieth century. This work is typical of the works in the Gaelic Collection, which contains many volumes of religious poetry. The Gaelic Collection was put together from various sources, including a substantial donation from the bequest of the Rev. Roderick Macleod.

Christine Love-Rodgers, Academic Support Librarian – Divinity

Pop Up Library

Edinburgh University Library: Out from behind the shelves……

Tag Archives: Gaelic

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