FIONN, The Celtic Lyre A Collection of Gaelic Songs with English Translations. Glasgow: Alexander Maclaren & Sons, 1946.
(215 x 136 mm) pp. 72. Staple bound booklet in orange wrappers, with ads for Maclaren’s Gaelic Poets on back cover. 68 songs. First printed 1883-1895, MacLaren’s Jubilee Edition 1946. Overall VERY GOOD.
This booklet is a small thread in a larger tapestry that blankets and bolsters Scotland’s reclamation of its language and culture. WWI saw the single largest decrease in native and monolingual Scottish-Gaelic speakers— however, the 19th century Celtic Revival set the framework for what would blossom into the Scottish Renaissance and Scottish Gaelic Renaissance in the 20th century. Glasgow, where this booklet was published, was an important seat of visual arts, seeing the modernisation of the artistic style.
As Annetta Scott writes in the introduction to this Jubilee printing of her father’s work, “The "Celtic Lyre" has always been a prime favourite with Gaelic vocalists and helped in no small degree to popularise Gaelic song and music at a time when they were seldom heard on the concert platform. It was a pioneer effort in publishing Gaelic music in both notations and much of its success was no doubt due to the fact that the melodies appeared exactly as they were sung round the peat fire in the long winter nights.”