Cèillean Annasach [=Curious Implications] [kay-lyun ana-such] Susannah Bolton encounters Gaelic in the archive
Susannah Bolton writes and makes in tandem as an artist and poet. They live and work in North Uist, Outer Hebrides.
Image: Susannah Bolton
“My concern here was to comment on some textile principles underlying some evident facts. By taking up textile fundamentals and methods, I hoped to include in my audience not only weavers but also those whose work in other fields encompasses textile problems.
This book then, is an effort in that direction.”
—Anni Albers, April 1965
~~~
There is a journey of multiple stages to reach the void. I have to leave the island. Each time, I fly, which gives the exquisite moments, shortly after departure and soon before arrival, of seeing the place from afar. I dizzy in the up-welling. The emotional surge in my blood forces delight out through each rising hair and breath. Seeing undulations of bealach and peak; twelve-spot ladybirds of fish farms lurking in the east lochs; peat banks flowering outwards as lichens; mackerel-bellied waters; waves porpoising white and I compulsively look for whales I’ve never seen.
Once, the air steward scolds me for falling asleep with my head pressed against the sparkling scenery. She’s worried: you might miss the sight of sunshine over Uist! Drowsily excusing myself, I laugh I’ve seen it enough already. This is a lie.
Repetition, circling. Turn a wrist around and around and around: it’s calming. Releasing the nervous system from a plan of action allows new thoughts to develop. An archipelago freckles out to the horizon, and I’m happy with my false conviction that these islands are new to the world, unseen and unsurveyed.
The islands have been seen.
Islanders have been drawn, photographed, observed, recorded, interviewed, documented, counted, mapped. The land measured, named, paced, valued, graded, -scaped. All, collected.
~~~
Faic: irregular verb See, look, behold. 2* Observe. 3 Show — W. of Ross. [Dwelly (1902) p402]
Active Voice:
| Indicative past | chunnaic mi etc, I etc saw. |
Indicative future | chì mi etc, I etc shall see. |
Interrogative & negative past | am? (nach fhaca? chan fhaca), faca mi etc, did I etc (not) see? |
Interrogative future | am? (nach fhaic? chan fhaic) faic mi etc, shall I etc (not) see? |
| Subjunctive past | (ged) chithinn, (though) I would see; (ged) chitheamaid, (though) we would see; (ged) chitheadh tu, e, i, sibh, iad, (though) you (sing)., he, she, you (pl)., they would see. [Another form after interrogative or negative particles — am? (nach fhaicinn? chan fhaicinn, mur), faicinn, would I (not) see?] |
| Subjunctive future | (ma) chì mi etc, (if) I etc shall see. |
Imperative 1st pers singular | faiceam, let me see. |
Infinitive | a dh'fhaicinn, [& a dh'fhaicsinn] to see. |
Present participle | a' faicinn, [& a' faicsinn] seeing. |
Passive Voice:
| Indicative past | chunnacadh mi etc, I etc was seen. |
Indicative future | chithear mi etc, I etc shall be seen. |
Interrogative & negative past | am? (nach fhacadh? chan fhacadh), facadh mi etc. Would I (not) see?, I would see etc. |
Interrogative & negative future | am? (nach faicear? chan fhaicear) faicear mi. Will I (not) be seen? I will be seen. |
Subjunctive past | (ged) chiteadh mi etc, (though) I etc would be seen. |
Subjunctive future | (ma) chithear mi etc, (if) I etc shall be seen. |
| Past participle | faicte, seen. [Parallel passive impersonal forms — bhon chiteadh, since it would be seen; but, nach fhaicteadh? would it not be seen? |
~~~
Chì mi dhut e, I will show it to you; faic dhomh e, show me it; faiceam do phìob, let me see your pipe.
faic ! int. See ! behold ! lo ! Faic mo dheòir,
observe my tears.
faic, fut. interr. of faic.
faic, -e, -ean, s.j. Hiding-place, den, hole. 2
**Sparkle.
How to see passively.
How to be seen actively.
How to see the sparkle in another’s eyes.
Let me see: I will show it to you. What has been lost and what is to be found amongst your tears? There are fieldworkers coming to the islands to collect what remains. They are researchers in the field(s) of Scotland with a plan to record the life and culture of the population so as to preserve it, as though it might not be otherwise seen.
In Gaelic, the fields may be known by many words, while the wilderness is usually am fàsach. The desert, the empty place, yet also for some the fàsach could be good pasture, a place of fàs, or growth. Context is the key to understanding which of these diametrically opposed meanings is invoked. How actively is the speaker looking for pasture where another sees desert?
For an anthropological fieldworker, context is the value you hope to record in your research. The context of your relationship to your subject—the seeing and being seen—is the balance of your ethics. If you think you are in a desert, fresh water becomes a valuable commodity worth mapping; dew is hardly remarkable in a healthy pastoral ecology. One of the occupations of fieldworkers is recording words and the meanings people hold for them.
Bindle: the cord or rope that binds any thing, whether made of hemp or straw. Byndele: a binding.
The Linguistic Survey of Scotland began in 1950, and for thirteen years, fieldworkers collected information on phonology and morphophonology in Gaelic and Scots (some further fieldwork was undertaken in the 1970s). The intention was to identify the features of the many dialects within these languages, mapping the ways in which words were pronounced and how grammar was used. This data would provide waymarkers in tracing the routes of word formation and sound patterns through and between Gaelic, Scots, and English in Scotland.
“...[I]nformants were asked for their pronunciation of a list of words—893 in total—that were transcribed phonetically on the spot by the fieldworker. There were also questions relating to grammar and the questionnaire took at least eight hours to complete.”
—School of Scottish Studies website, 2026
How to be seen actively when you are described as an informant, leaking the confidential data of your mother tongue as a researcher notes the choreography of your personal syllabic dance. To sit with an earnest ear attending to your voice for eight hours. I wonder if it is possible to lose grip on reality this way, to lose sight of normal speech. When lone words are divulged one by one, they accrue new significance with ease.
Leap—cross—pass
Proximally associated, these juxtapositions reveal the connective and dissociative powers of the unconscious.
Leap—cross—upset
The fieldworkers collected bundles of lives lived and brought them back to the institutional archive for people to visit, revisit, relive. People who listen closely to speckled words snipped and clipped into flavourful criomagan [=small bit of anything]. Source type: Reel to reel. Audio quality: good. The people of the future are looking for significance in the void.
How collections are organised.
This collection is housed in Edinburgh, across rooms and cupboards, most of which are locked. There is something about the inside of the building which shuns temporality. I can’t bear to look out to the failing sun—the light must wait until after the research window.
This first visit, I am here with recommendation of intellectual legitimacy: as an artist-in-residence commissioned to respond. Grasping in the amorphous dim of online collections, I travelled here to be with records in their materiality. Permission is granted for me to see behind the doors that stay firmly closed when I am The Public again. Is the paid gaze less abrasive? Is one darting scan of each room sufficient for a creative response?
The School of Scottish Studies encompasses a fish eye view of life in Scotland/ of Scotland/ near to Scotland/ similar to Scotland/ loosely related to Scotland. With rooms and reams of visual and audio material in close quarters, the index provides a grounding to the shimmering hallucination of sequential ideas. The nationalistic hologram of an anthropological folk haunts this space.
| My fingertips are taking a careful walk. Picking over index cards, I trip on promising records and reveal a sliver of thought to lamplight. Perhaps it will develop on exposure. Textiles takes me to obair a’ chlò, gu slàt Ghàidhealach, mun cuairt gu tomhaisean, thairis gu coiseachd anns na seann làithichean, tro sgeulachd an liosadair, the preparation of oilskins, suas gu obair lìn an Cnoc an Torran, and across to a filing cabinet with a series of photographs of rope making | [the work of tweed, to the Gaelic yard, around to measurements, across to walking in the old days, through the story of the fabric printer, the preparation of oilskins, up to flax work in the Small Hill] |
The digital catalogue insists on a search term, and won’t look anything out for you without a guiding notion. A sidestep: the full stop that sits quietly in every record ID. If you search for a full stop, you can manipulate the finding by broader categories. If you search for a full stop, you may find that which you do not have the words for. You might find serendipity, or chance, or a bindle. Devoid of any sentence, each full stop is a blameless, lightless portal, a void I leap into eagerly.
How curiously time passes.
Acknowledging that I must emerge and return to the outside world. The void swallows my time but beyond, life is in fact ongoing at a walking pace. I was quick to forget. Moving to leave, I insulate myself from the east-coast winter, and Cathlin hands me a muted bundle. They are a trio of Tocher issues, the School of Scottish Studies Archives journal, published in-house until 2009. Bound by four lines of unbleached cotton string (naturally)—for the road—she gestures. Each is a collection of signposts to paths I haven’t walked. I leave with a sense of purpose.
Image: Susannah Bolton