A blog about Gaelic Scotland.

Hi, I’m Iain, a writer from Scotland. This is a bilingual blog (Scottish Gaelic & English) about the stories, places and history of Gaelic Scotland. There’s writing, a podcast and short films.

I write this blog because I really like the stories. The poet Kenneth Whyte talks about places with hidden narratives. In this case, it is as much to uncover these stories for myself as to share them with others.

I didn’t learn anything much about this in school - the place I’m from, the language I grew up with, the different layers of history. I had an inkling of it, my uncle gave me a first idea if the shape of it by taking me long walks and showing me sites where time was layered on them. So now I am trying to ‘dig where I stand’.

I was young when I came across Tim Robinson’s books on Aran and Connemara where he mapped the island in a different way which resonated with me. He talked about the place, but also the placenames and the stories behind them, the geology, material culture, stories. I was quite taken with that.

The second reason is that I’ve used many of these stories as the storing point for plays and documentaries. Revisiting them now, without a hungry cameraman telling me to hurry up and decide something, is something I’m really enjoying.

And the third reason is that I am interested in language and learning languages. A writer I really like is Scottish poet Alastair Reid, who talks about language in such an interesting way.

I want to create content in Gaelic which people can use if they have an interest in the language. I enjoy learning languages and like websites and channels which are about subjects I am interested in. Also, which are at the right language level for me where maybe I understand 80-90 percent of what is going on.

I started looking at language learning through comprehensible input. (Stephen Krashen’s website is full of free resources on this subject). So the writing on the blog is bilingual so anyone can access it, and the podcast has an English text version as well.

But mainly, it’s because of the first point. The stories are just so incredible.

If you’re interested, you can subscribe and I send out a post every month or so.

Thank you for reading. Tapadh leibh!