I wanted to provide a preview of things to come at the Sources site:
We will be updating all the Tunes pages that have Gaelic titles listed, with some new revisions to Roderick Cannon’s Dictionary entries and with the addition of Allan Macdonald sound files giving the proper pronunciation of them.
But in addition, occasionally Allan and Barnaby dig a bit deeper, and as a result we learn some truly wonderful stories about the tunes.
These are not necessarily the same kinds of stories that, say, Angus MacKay wrote in his book, or that others have offered in their histories. These are fresh insights, brought from the Gaelic, canntaireachd and Allan’s own reflections upon his native language and cultural traditions.
Listen to this, and see what I mean.
Now, this will be a long process of integrating the soundfiles and some of these reflections into the Sources site, so don’t be surprised if you don’t find anything there today, but see new things pop up where they hadn’t been before.
Enjoy!
Thank you so much Barnaby and Allan for this vivid and informative discussion. I look forward to hearing more!
Great stuff. I want my Pibroch to be true to the Gaelic spirit , world view, and values and this will deepen that understanding.
It’s worth looking at the Nether Lorne Ms, the oldest version of this tune, where it is NOT called a lullaby nor a cronan, which raises the possibility that the popular name has been tacked onto it, to connect it with a local myth. It’s also interesting that there are no other ‘cronans’ in that collection, suggesting this was not a mode used by pibroch players in the past. The only other tune with a name approaching this word is ‘Croan air Euan’, which some regard as a mis-spelling of ‘Cronan’ – but the word ‘croan’ means ‘claw’, and ‘Euan’ is likely to be a variation of ‘eun’, meaning ‘bird’, ‘raptor’, ‘eagle’. ‘Air’ means ‘on’, in the sense of location, but not ‘about’ nor ‘for’.