‘Crìosda Clèireach os ar Cionn’: Reconstructing a vernacular hymn

The article is a focused study of one item from Alexander Carmichael’s Carmina Gadelica (1900), which compares the published prayer with transcriptions in Carmichael’s notebooks and other versions published or collected since, including a sung oral recording from the 1950s. Associations with Christmas, Good Friday / Easter and Hogmanay are discussed, as well as problematic aspects of language and imagery, with reference to previous studies by Margaret Fay Shaw and Ronald Black and to the twenty-first-century re-examination of Carmichael’s editing methods. Speculation on the origins of the piece is included.