PS 098 – The Half-Finished Pibroch

      Am Port Leathach

Primary Sources

C2 Leacran C2.14: 36
CK Leacran CK.2
KB Am Port Leathach / The Half Finished Piobaireachd KB.55: 144

Notes on Gaelic Titles

Am Port Leathach Leacran C2; Leacran CK; Am Port Leathach / The Half Finished Piobaireachd KB. The half-tune. The term leacran has not been interpreted but presumably the first element is leth- ‘half’  and the second may be related to any of the many meanings of crann; or to cran, a term in Irish piping, or ‘crunluath’ spelled in various ways in Scottish sources.  Cf. S. Donnelly, ‘Irish cranngal ‘cran’ – a piper’s technical term,’ Celtica 20 (1988), pp. 132-140; ‘Cranngha(i)l a sound effect in music,’ Celtica 22 (1991) pp. 16-171; C. Ó Baoill ‘Moving in Gaelic musical circles. The root lu- in music terminology,’ Scottish Gaelic Studies 19 (1999), pp 172-194. In such a word the ‘c’ would be lenited after leth, and if the word is a true compound, as Colin Campbell seems to imply, the accent would be on the first element, as for example in leth-chrun for the ‘half-crown’ coin, where the second element crùn is long when it stands alone for ‘crown’ but short when compounded in this way.

Roderick Cannon (2009)

Other Material

William Donaldson’s Set Tunes Notes (2017)

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