How Do You Solve a Problem Like Màiri?: Nineteenth-Century Gaelic Song, Rewilding, and Audience Creation

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.