CARMINA GADELICA
a collaboration with Martin Shaw
The Carmina Gadelica is a collection of prayers, blessings, songs and charms collected by Alexander Carmichael in the late 1800’s around the Islands of the Outer Hebrides. It is a remarkable artefact from a time and place when the life of these Islanders was in constant daily communion with the divine. As such, it is a wonderful resource of sacred language from the edge of the world.
Below are demo recordings of versions by Martin Shaw from the Carmina, set to music by Natasha Kozaily and featuring Tristan Kessell on fiddle.
BLESSING OF THE HOME
“Welcome to all:
The poet and the warrior,
The mother and the bairn,
Kid and crone be gathered in…”
Invoking Justice
“My face is washed bright
In the nine rays of the sun,
Just like Mary washed her boy
In rich Egyptian milk…”
Croon of the cattlemaid
No one with a big-mouth
Gets my cow, or those who need a
meal,
I’ll not give you to the old with milky
eyes,
It’s with the Gael that you shall
be!…”
THWARTING THE EVIL EYE
“Who will defeat the evil eye?
That would be me I reckon,
In the name of life’s King.
So powerful three seven commands
Said Christ at the door of the city…”
THE RIB OF JESUS
“I don’t want disaster,
I don’t want stress,
I don’t want to be tired
All the time.
MY SWEETHEART IS THE HERDSMAN
“He: Put away the spade,
Pen the goats, the lambs and sheep,
Fetch my rope and snare,
I can hear the gannets on the waves!
THE GIFT
“Son of the Moon,
Son of the Sun,
Great son of Mary
From the mind of God.
I am the gift, I am the poor,
I am the Man of this night.
I am the Christ at your door…”