18 Sept 2009

Gaelic psalms

A colleague of mine recently returned from a conference in St. Andrews, Scotland, where he heard sung the Psalms in Scots Gaelic, with a precentor leading the congregation. Here are three samples:







To my untutored reading eye (I know nothing of the Celtic languages) it appears that the psalms sung above are from this Scots Gaelic metrical psalter, on the website of St. Columba's Church of Scotland in Glasgow, where there is a Gaelic Psalm Singing School.

Update: As far as I can tell, the second tune above, MARTYRS, to which Psalm 79 is sung, is the same as PLAINTIVE MARTYRS, as found at the Cyberhymnal website. Note the much brisker pace of the latter.

2 comments:

Baus said...

Psalters from defunct 'cgmusic' site is now on Internet Archive:
http://web.archive.org/web/20080120085853/www.cgmusic.com/workshop/psametre_frame.htm

David Koyzis said...

Thanks for the link, Gregory. I notice that not every link works, e.g., Isaac Watts' psalter and the tunes at the right. Cgmusic did come back on briefly some weeks ago, but then it went back out again. I don't know what's going on. But the material on it is priceless.