Pelican in the wilderness: symbolism and allegory in women’s evangelical songs of the Gàidhealtachd
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Date
30/06/2016Author
Macleod Hill, Anne Isabell Martin
Metadata
Abstract
The Pelican in the Wilderness: Symbolism and allegory in women’s evangelical
songs of the Gàidhealtachd
The Gaelic women’s song tradition has been studied in depth, and the post-
Reformation Church and its impact on the Gàidhealtachd examined from various
perspectives, yet the body of evangelical song which shows the interaction of the two
is possibly the least explored area of traditional Gaelic verse and the least understood
outside the immediate environment in which it was created. In their devotional
songs, evangelical elegies and waulking songs, generations of women have left a
record of the domestic, spiritual and cultural life of the Gàidhealtachd which would
be difficult to retrieve from any other source. The present study provides access to
this important literary and cultural resource by creating a research corpus of 600
poems, representing the work of 165 women from many different parts of the
Gàidhealtachd, dating from the mid-eighteenth century to the present day. The
historical, theological and literary background to the songs is explored, using both a
range of secondary sources and the words of selected poets as they articulate and
define contemporary events within the context of Reformed doctrine.
Analysis across the corpus shows songs creating an allegorical world within which
every creature, person and place is imbued with spiritual significance, each acting as
a mnemonic for an associated biblical paradigm. This use of scriptural and doctrinal
allusion is functional rather than purely ornamental, with core metaphors expressed
and made authoritative in lexicons of honorifics, epithets and poetic place names.
The thesis facilitates fuller reading of spiritual song by explaining the symbolic
significance of the above elements, demonstrating their role in creating contextual
settings, linking songs into a network of biblical, doctrinal and poetic texts,
extending and validating the poet’s message. The functioning of this referential
system is further explored in detailed literary analysis of the work of a representative
sample of poets, each of whom is set in her own social and historical context.