ABSTRACT
The Highlands and Western Isles, or Outer Hebrides, of Scotland evoke poignant images of a geographically remote place where ‘folklore and history visibly meet’ (Dorson 1973:75). Here folklorists and historians search for the essence of a ‘traditional culture’, a way of life that has somehow evaded the ravages of modernisation (Figure 8.1). The perception of the Gaelic-speaking Highlands as
a timeless place of ‘otherness’ emerged in the late fourteenth century and has galvanised over the course of the past two hundred and fifty years (Devine 1994: 1). A large amount of ink has been spilled in an effort to disentangle elements of ‘traditional’ Gaelic culture from outside influences, a search for authenticity that has been termed the ‘quest for culture’ (Macdonald 1997). In this paper I do not intend to contribute to this ongoing debate. I will instead explore the ways in which folklore material has been collected in the Western Isles over the past one hundred and fifty years, with particular reference to the island of South Uist. It is my intention to situate the actions and motivations of collectors within a broader anthropological framework, and to examine why this rich corpus of folklore material has generally failed to inspire studies in historical ethnography.
