The 19th-century Gaelic poet & songwriter Màiri Nic a’ Phearsain (Mary MacPherson) – known as Màiri Mhòr nan Òran (Great Mary of the Songs) – was born #OTD, 10 March 1821. Much of her work was political & was especially focused on the struggle for land rights
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#Scottish #literature #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #19thcentury #Victorian #history #landrights
“Her cartography of place is a peopled landscape … symbolic of the community & culture that she knew in her youth, & these personal and communal associations have a fervent emphasis in her songs”
—Priscilla Scott on the poetry of Màiri Mhòr nan Òran
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https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2017/06/a-sense-of-place-in-the-poetry-of-mairi-mhor-nan-oran/
#Scottish #literature #poetry #song #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #19thcentury #Victorian #history #landrights #Skye
If you happen to be visiting Portree, the main settlement on the Isle of Skye, the chances are that you will take a wander down to the bay where in the flurry of tourists and opportunistic seagulls, it is easy to miss a plaque on a white-washed wall with the Gaelic words: ‘Moch ‘s mi […]
Thugaibh taing dhan a’ mhuinntir
Tha fo riaghladh na Bànrigh,
Rinn an lagh dhuinn cho diongmhalt’
’S nach caill sinn Beinn Lì…
—Màiri Nic a’ Phearsain, “Òran Beinn Lì”
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#Scottish #literature #poetry #song #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #19thcentury #Victorian #history #landrights #Skye
Màiri Mhòr composed “Òran Beinn Lì” after tenants on Skye won back their grazing rights on Ben Lì & a reduction in rent – following “the Battle of the Braes” in 1882, where 50 police officers had fought with local crofters & arrested 5 men & 7 women
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https://thepeoplesvoice.glasgow.ac.uk/song-ben-li-cathy-ann/
#Scottish #literature #poetry #song #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #19thcentury #Victorian #history #landrights #Skye
“Màiri… provides a model for ways of resisting centralizing power, of imagining community reinvigoration & renaissance… her songs were engagedly political”
“How Do You Solve a Problem Like Màiri?: Nineteenth-Century Gaelic Song, Rewilding, & Audience Creation”
—Peter Mackay, Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century 37 (2025)
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https://19.bbk.ac.uk/article/id/11188/
#Scottish #literature #poetry #song #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #19thcentury #Victorian #history #landrights #rewilding #resistance
Màiri Mhòr nan Oran (Mary MacPherson, Big Mary of the Songs) was the most influential Scottish Gaelic songwriter/poet of the late nineteenth century and one of the most high-profile land and language activists of the period. This article examines some of her (incredibly popular) work and the manner in which she weaves contemporary comment, biography, and a reworking of traditional tunes and motifs in a way designed to have social and political impact. It discusses some of her most well-known songs alongside those which have rarely been translated into English, and places these alongside the work of her contemporary Mary MacKellar (bàrd of the Gaelic Society of Inverness), and within the context of debates in the 1870s and 1880s about the future of the Gaelic language and the political campaign for greater rights for crofting communities — and then asks what, if anything, can be learned from this for contemporary debates about land use in the Highlands of Scotland.
Assoc for Scottish Literature