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This page deals with two of the most interesting and distinctive forms of Gaelic music - music for working and music for dancing. The best known example of work music is Orain Luaidh, used for many centuries to waulk (shrink) tweed - an essential part of its manufacture. Likewise, a unique type of dance music exists in the Hebrides, known as Puirt a Beul. These occur in Scottish Gaelic Music, but not in the Irish or Manx traditions and in fact their forms are unique in world folkmusic. Although their melodic structure and scales are essentially identical to those explored in the previous chapter, they are distinguished by strong driving rhythms - which is why they merit a separate section.
Everyone knows that repetitive tasks can be extremely boring - and in a non-mechanised culture there are many of them. Early in their history, the Gaels developed songs and chants to help while away the tedious hours of these tasks. The most famous of these songs are Orain Luaidh or "Waulking Songs," which were sung during the process of waulking cloth (usually Harris Tweed). The waulking process is communal and was performed well into this century. A group of (usually) women sit around a long table on which the tweed is laid. They knead the material rhythmically against the surface, passing it down the line as they do. The thumping of the cloth on the table provides a regular beat for the song. Such gatherings were a greatly enjoyed social occasion - a chance to sing and exchange gossip. Along with Ceol Mor, more research has been done into Orain Luaidh than any other aspect of Gaelic music.
It is known from written references that many Work Songs are very old. In fact a good example of an old song is that mentioned on page 1 of the Introduction: Cailin o Chois tSiuire Me. In fact this is the Irish name of a song, which in the Scottish tradition is known as Chailin oig as stiuramachie or sometimes Cailin og gun stiuir thu mise. The song shows all the traits of very old material. Firstly, it exists in both the Irish and Scottish traditions. Secondly, varying (but related) versions exist over a wide geographical area (in the future it may be possible to judge a song's age from the variations between versions). Finally, there are some archaic terms present in the lyrics (and in the case of this song there are early references to it). Although one of these attributes does not necessary point to the antiquity of a particular song, a collections of several helps us to recognise early material.
Orain Luaidh also sometimes exists as a slower song form. It certainly appears that singers thought nothing of setting older material, for example heroic ballads, to work rhythms when it suited their purposes. Songs which have been transferred from other traditions into work music are usually recognisable because the rhythm of the words sits uncomfortably with the form.
Although Orain Luaidh is the best known example of the work song, other classes exist including: Rowing songs, Milling songs, Spinning songs, (butter) Churning songs and Milking songs. These have their own rhythm, suitable for the task at hand. Rowing songs, for example, have a slow, deliberate beat suitable for pulling on heavy oars. Clapping songs were sung with a very quick beat at the end of the waulking. These songs traditionally had an element of improvisation - the best singers making up verses as they went along (usually about the supposed courting habits of the young men or women). This thread of improvisation was also present in Vocal Dance Music (and to a lesser extent in other Gaelic music - but not bardic music such as Ceol or Oran Mor), but is now seldom demonstrated.
Orain Luaidh consists of a solo singer singing a verse of the song - usually a line or couplet and the rest of the group answering with a refrain or chorus. The refrain may be a single answering line or up to several lines long and may be vocables, words or a mixture of both. There are several different types recognised, based on the length and order of the verse and chorus. However, since we are interested primarily in the musical rather than the literally aspects, the fine distinctions need not concern us. The strong rhythm makes this type of music fairly easy to notate. The commonest rhythms are shown below:
Timing (beats in the bar) Percentage
261%
418%
32%
619%
The predominance of 2 beat per bar tunes is dictated by the rhythm imposed by the nature of the work itself. Note that most of the tunes notated as 4 in a bar come from Margaret Shaw's collections, most other collectors would probably denote them as 2 rather than 4. The tunes in 2 also change regularly to 6 (and vice versa), this is just the equivalent of saying that there a lot of triplets used in the songs.
The melodic structures and scales found in the songs are exactly the same as those mentioned in the previous chapter:
Scale Used Percentage of songs
Irregular8%
Pentatonic40%
Modal26%
Gaelic26%
A typical example of a song is, 'S toigh leam cruinneag dhonn nam bo shown below
The origins of Vocal Dance Music or Puirt a Beul are obscure. Two schools of thought exist: Firstly, that it is an ancient form and secondly, that it evolved quite recently, around the time of the Jacobite risings as a substitute to instrumental dance music as instruments became unavailable. The truth may lie in-between, certainly, unlike Orain Luaidh, references to it are mostly quite recent. However, instruments would always have been beyond the means of many of the common people and it may always have been a substitute for merry making. Also, and unlike Orain Luaidh, forms similar to Puirt a Beul do exist in Irish song, although in nowhere like the same quantity as in the Scottish tradition.
Puirt a Beul are short (typically 8 or 16 bar) jaunty tunes in dance rhythms. All the normal Highland dance rhythms are represented, but reels and strathspeys are much more common than jigs. The strathspey is a rhythm with a strong "cut and dot" or "Scots snap", that is it is based on repeated semi-quavor / dotted quaver two note units - these give a driving rhythmic pulse as opposed to the smoothly flowing melody of a reel. The rhythms used in Puirt a Beul tunes are shown below:
RhythmPercentage
2 or 4 beat reel type rhythm45%
2 or 4 beat strathspey type rhythm49%
3, 6 or 9 beat jig type rhythm6%
A typical example is, 'N am amadan 'n am amadan a bha mi riamh, shown below
Because Puirt a Beul (and Orain Luaidh) requires a steady non-wavering rhythm there is sometimes a mismatch between the stresses in the text and those in the music. Gaelic verse uses irregular stress patterns and this may well be the origin of the varying accents described in other pages. Although this probably filtered through from the general rhythm of Gaelic language, rather than the specific words of the particular song (after all, the bard must fit several verses to one melody and we know that some created the music before starting on the words). These mismatches between lyric and musical metre create a type of wordmelody syncopation which adds to the rhythmic interest of the material (like the tongue twisting possibilities of the words, some composers deliberately exploit this). This is a contrast with slower songs, where the variations of metre are sometimes deliberately used to heighten emotion at key points in the piece.
Most of the tunes have very strong melodies. As with many other types of Gaelic songs (especially those not composed by the bardic class), there is a economy of notes which ensures the compositions are engineered for powerful musical effect. The scales used in composition are shown below:
Scale UsedPercentage of songs
Irregular3.5%
Pentatonic14%
Modal25.5%
Gaelic57%
The improvisational element mentioned in relation to Orain Luaidh also applies (but less strongly) to Puirt a Beul and some are deliberate tongue twisters, written as one village bard tried to outdo another in terms of cleverness, fitting difficult and witty words to the melody. In fact Puirt a Beul does seem to have something in common with work music in melodic structure as well as rhythm and it is possible that Puirt a Beul evolved from Work Music or that it at least Orain Luaidh played a part in its development. However, Puirt a Beul's subject matter is almost always light and trivial- it is "fun" music and is not taken as seriously as Orain Luaidh which can have quite weighty subject matter.
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