Island Voices/Guthan nan Eilean was born out of the original POOLS project – and the outward-looking European relationship continues… Gordon Wells has recently returned from Brussels where he was chairing the first meeting of “POOLS-3” in which new partners will be transferring POOLS innovations to the Catalan, Czech, and Irish languages. Do you want to see speakers of Czech and Catalan talking Irish? Watch this video…
Category: UGC
Incy Wincy busy in Balivanich
Island Voices activist Mary Morrison was busy in Balivanich School before the summer. Under her guidance, and with the support of Cothrom Family Learning, a group of eager young storytellers put together a fantastic new interpretation of Eric Carle’s well-known and well-loved tale of “The Very Busy Spider” – complete with glove puppets, illustrative booklets, and this amazing video.
Parents and other helpers also played their part in a truly creative and collaborative venture. Well done all!
This video now joins others in the Island Voices “Pot Luck” playlist. Take a look and see what other treats lie there…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7OczE1nBog&w=400&h=300]
Nunton House and Stories of the Prince
Tommy Macdonald has added to the store of local tales about Bonnie Prince Charlie’s Hebridean adventures in a conversation with Donald MacPhee, who renovated and now runs the Nunton House Hostel.
Here is where Flora Macdonald, Lady Clanranald, and other local notables planned the escape “over the sea to Skye”.
The “big house” has changed in function and ownership many times since those days, with Donald’s part of it now given over to accommodating tourists and visitors, but, even in the latest renovation, some tantalising hints and clues came to light about what life may have been like in the immediate aftermath of Culloden.
Listen to Tommy and Donald’s fireside chat here:
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More stories, and perhaps a song or two, will be added to the collection in the coming weeks.
Watch this space!
Benbecula and the Bonnie Prince
Today was the first day of recording of local Bonnie Prince Charlie stories for Stòras Uibhist. Tommy Macdonald “compared notes” with Alasdair Maceachen, who has a family connection with the Prince’s companion Neil MacEachan, on the accounts of the Prince’s movements around Benbecula after the defeat at Culloden.
The discussion took place at Nunton Steadings. As the conversation reveals, there are historical connections with the story.
Tommy and Alasdair spoke first in Gaelic:
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And this is their “reprise” in English:
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Robert Burns on Benbecula
As rumours circulate that Prestwick Airport is to be renamed “Robert Burns International Airport” the Island Voices project expands its linguistic scope still further, placing local recitations of two of Scotland’s national bard’s most famous poems on the online Clilstore platform. Clicking on any word will take you directly to a choice of Scots, rather than English, dictionaries.
It’s true that the Hebrides are traditionally much more closely associated with Gaelic than with Scots, but here’s another reminder that people are much more mobile these days – even if they do still like to hold on to speech patterns acquired in younger days…
Dumfries-born Denis Johnston addresses the haggis, while simultaneously wielding the knife here, serving up a tasty verbal hors d’ oeuvre: http://multidict.net/cs/1454
And Rob Keltie, in a prodigious feat of memory, takes his audience through the very substantial main course with a dash of Doric seasoning, delivering Tam O Shanter in inimitable style here: http://multidict.net/cs/1451
Clilstore remains “work in progress”, being taken forward by a multinational partnership through the TOOLS project, in which Sabhal Mòr Ostaig plays a key part. Comments and suggestions for improvement are always welcome!
A Crofter’s Life on Clilstore
Mary Morrison’s revealing chat with Iain Trimsgarry has now been uploaded to Clilstore. This means that Gaelic learners who can’t follow everything that is said just by listening will be able to listen and read at the same time, simply by scrolling down the transcript as the video plays.
What’s more, if there’s a word you don’t know in the transcript you can simply click on it, which will take you to straight to the appropriate entry in an online Gaelic-English dictionary. What could be easier?!
You can access the unit on Clilstore by clicking on the picture or by following this link: http://multidict.net/cs/1411
Pot Luck Playlist
Congratulations to Mary Morrison on organising two very well attended community events in North Uist this week. Mary had the imagination and foresight to record two well-known raconteurs and singers and use their stories or songs as a stimulus for the pupils of Carinish and Lochmaddy primary schools to compose their own poems.
There were many highlights to each evening, including 
live re-tellings of the stories by the original storytellers as well as recitals of the new poetry and sundry musical performances, either by the pupils themselves or other community members or visitors. Topped off with the best of Uist home-baking!
Island Voices has had to start off a new playlist to accommodate all these songs and stories. It’s called “Pot Luck” and Mary’s hand can be detected in each video. Perhaps there are more to come still…
Gaelic in Uist and New Media: Research Report
Seo Gordon Wells a’ bruidhinn mu dheidhinn pròiseact rannsachaidh a chaidh a dhèanamh ann an Uibhist
The second Soillse Small Research Fund project conducted in Uist is now complete. The title is “Gaelic Digital Literacies in a Bilingual Community: a Sampling of Practices and Preferences”. The report is now freely available online either through this link or on the Soillse site. The link has also been added to the Guthan nan Eilean Research page, where the preceding report can also be found. It has been written with online “readers” in mind, and includes live links to samples of community members’ work in the footnotes. It can, of course, be printed off for reading on paper, but this will not afford the same “multimodal” opportunities for sampling video and audio work.
Òrain is Sgeulachdan
Tha dà thachartas sònraichte gu bhith ann air a’ mhìos seo le sgoilearan à Càirinis agus Loch nam Madadh a’ cruinneachadh air an oidhche gus sgeulachdan agus òrain a chluinntinn agus a ghabhail. Bidh ceòl agus bàrdachd ann cuideachd, le luchd-tadhail agus aoighean às a’ choimhearsnachd. Tha barrachd fiosrachaidh an seo.
Agus dìreach airson blasad a thoirt dhen spòrs agus dibhearsan a dh’fhaodadh a bhith ann, seo Dunnchadh MacFhionghain à Beàrnaraigh, le òran inntinneach. Saoil carson a chaidh a ghabhail?
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XL-_EiekT3I?rel=0]
(For this notice in English please visit the Voices page of Am Pàipear.)
Trilingual Trip
The recent short visit by the Guthan nan Eilean/Island Voices project to Ireland generated quite a range of recordings in various formats and genres – and in three different languages!
This online table brings them all together for ease of reference, with live clickable links to take you to the clip of your choice on the appropriate platform. That could be YouTube for video, or Ipadio for audio – or it could also be Clilstore if you want access to a wordlinked transcript while you watch and/or listen.
Clilstore is a learner-friendly platform being developed by Sabhal Mòr Ostaig in partnership with other institutions in the “TOOLS” project. It’s still work in progress, so if learners or teachers have comments to make on how it could be improved please feed them back to us!