Publisher's Synopsis
In April 1932, John Lorne Campbell, while on a visit to the United States, took the chance of going to Cape Breton Island and Antigonish County in Eastern Nova Scottia, to find out how the descendants of emigrants from the Scottish Highlands and the Hebrides were faring in their new country, and to what extent the Gaelic language had been maintained among them. In September 1937, after four years on Barra, he returned with his wife, Margaret Fay Shaw, taking with them a recorder in order to collect Gaelic song and tradition and compare it with surviving tradition in the Western Isles. This book is the result of that expedition. As a preface the book includes an account of the collapse of the Hebridean kelp industry after 1820 which led to the bankruptcy of the last Chief of the MacNeils of Barra in the direct line, and which was a major contributory factor to the great flood of emigration from the Hebrides to Canada and America. The title refers to the traditional song and lore preserved by emigrants from Scotland in the new land to which they came. Much of the tradition has been lost in Scotland and was only to be found in Nova Scottia. The quality of the music in the original edition was a matter of considerable concern and this edition completely corrects and revises it.
