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  • The Storyteller, the Scribe, and a Missing Man:Hidden Influences from Printed Sources in the Gaelic Tales of Duncan and Neil MacDonald
  • William Lamb (bio)

1 Introduction

The Scottish Gaelic tradition bearer Duncan MacDonald1 (1883-1954) was one of the most remarkable storytellers of twentieth-century Europe.2 He piqued the interest of a host of ethnologists in the later years of his life because of his considerable repertoire of traditional knowledge. They were especially interested in his ability to tell certain tales of his—particularly those with ties to older literary versions in manuscripts3—in a virtually identical fashion from recitation to recitation. During a period when scholars were admitting that the conservatism of Gaelic oral tradition had been perhaps exaggerated at times (see Ó Duilearga 1945), Duncan MacDonald's abilities were seen as an acquittal of the seanchaidh.4 It became clear that it was possible in certain cases for the surface forms of language, not just plot, to survive down through the ages in an almost unaltered form. MacDonald's genealogy (see Matheson 1977), with its ties to the hereditary poets and historians of Clann Dòmhnaill of Sleat, suggested that he was an approximation of the kind of professional Gaelic storyteller that would have been an institution in earlier times.

Maartje Draak (1957) was the first scholar to comment upon the verbal consistency of Duncan's narratives. She compared two versions of a story well known as Fear na h-Eabaid5 ("The Man of the Habit"). The first was taken down by K. C. Craig in 1944 and published in Sgialachdan Dhunnchaidh (MacDhòmhnaill and Craig 1950), and the second was recorded on wire in 1950 by John Lorne Campbell.6 Campbell's recording was transcribed for a folklore conference that Draak attended (Du. MacDonald 1953).7 Draak says that his narration at the conference—where he had been invited to give a demonstration—was "nearly word perfect" (1957:47) when compared to the transcription of Campbell's 1950 recording; however, when compared to Craig's 1944 transcription, there were instances of imperfections and "story decay" (ibid.:53). Most of these changes seem negligible8 when considering the length and complexity of the story as well as the crucial fact that Craig's version was more temporally removed than Campbell's.9 Additionally, Draak's equating him to a literatus at one point (1957:54) is an indication of the standard that was being employed.


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Image 1.

Duncan MacDonald. Photographic archive of the School of Scottish Studies.

Bruford10 (1979) extended Draak's analysis with the inclusion of another four versions, totaling six altogether. Importantly, Bruford included a text from Duncan's brother Neil, also a storyteller of note. This text was taken from the manuscript collection of Donald John MacDonald (1919-1986), Duncan's son (see §3.1.2 below). The various versions of Fear na h-Eabaid are listed below for ease of reference and are in diachronic order. The abbreviations are as per the original, and the word counts are from the present study:

  • D1 (1936): Peggy McClements,11 from dictation, 5171 words.

  • D2 (1944): K. C. Craig, from dictation, and published in MacDhòmhnaill and Craig 1950,12 6571 words.

  • D3 (1947): Calum Maclean, transcribed from an Ediphone recording made for the Irish Folklore Commission (IFC MS 1031:152-85), 6771 words.

  • D4 (1950): John Lorne Campbell, recorded on wire and transcribed by Matheson and Thomson (Du. MacDonald 1953), 7492 words.

  • D5 (1953): Calum Maclean, recorded on tape for the School of Scottish Studies and transcribed by Donald Archie MacDonald (SA 1953/34 A4-35 A1), 7381 words.

  • N (1955): Donald John MacDonald, from the dictation of Neil MacDonald, for the School of Scottish Studies (DJM MS 3524-83), 6109 words.13

Bruford's paper bolsters Draak's findings and conclusions for the most part, providing a running account of the different types of variation found among the texts. Unlike Draak, however, he does not cast discrepancies in negative terms, and he highlights the impressive similarity between the renditions (Bruford 1979:33-34):

I have not produced examples of the most remarkable feature...

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