Our Three-Voiced Country
“Our Three-Voiced Country”: Twentieth-century cross-currents in Gaelic and other Scottish writing. ASL/Sabhal Mòr Ostaig Conference 2026
26–28 June, Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, Isle of Skye
£60 (ASL members / Speakers / Students / Unwaged)
£80 (full rate)
Conference fee includes teas/coffees & Saturday lunch
This conference will examine the shared influences and interconnections between Gaelic and other Scottish writing, from the Celtic Revival and the Scottish Renaissance to the beginnings of the new millennium. It follows successful predecessors which led to the publication of two influential ASL volumes: Crossing the Highland Line: Cross-currents in Eighteenth-Century Scottish Writing (2009) and Gael and Lowlander in Scottish Literature: Cross-currents in Scottish Writing in the Nineteenth Century (2015). A forthcoming volume based on selected conference papers will complete this sequence.
This conference will be in-person only. Bed & Breakfast accommodation at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig is available to delegates at special conference rates, from £37 per person per night.
FRIDAY EVENING
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19.15: Opening of Conference (David Goldie and Gillian Munro)
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19.30: Contacts between Gaelic and Scots in Twentieth Century Gaelic Magazines (Petra Poncarová)
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20.00: Dread and Revelation in Dòmhnall Mac na Ceàrdaich’s short stories (Aonghas MacLeòid)
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20.30: The Crosbie illustrations for Sorley MacLean’s Dàin do Eimhir, and their wider contexts (Plenary: Murdo Macdonald)
SATURDAY
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09.00: Dàin do Eimhir and Auntran Blads: the impact of Sorley MacLean and Douglas Young in 1943 (Emma Dymock)
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09.30: Contexts, texts and resistance: MacLean, Garioch and MacDiarmid (Alan Riach)
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10.00: A woman of many parts – the tripartite influence of Scotland’s languages in the poetry of Helen B. Cruickshank (1886–1975) (Elaine Morrison)
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10.30: Shifting Perspectives: Scots and English in Nan Shepherd’s novels (John Corbett)
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11.30: ‘The Deeds of the Dead Remain’: Joseph MacLeod’s ‘Open Letter to the Countess of Sutherland’ (Nigel Leask)
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12.00: A Light in the Dark: Lighthouses, Language, and the Afterlives of Walter Scott’s Lighthouse Yacht Journal (1814) (Hilary Clydesdale)
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12.30: The Bi-lingual Basis of Creativity (Donald S. Murray)
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14.00: The literary qualities of a Scots township poet – Billy Henderson (John Howieson)
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14.30: ‘Strange in His Foreign Tongue’: language and identity in Simon Taylor’s Mortimer’s Deep (1992) (Smilla Steiner)
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15.00: Cultural hybridity and ageing: the representation of older women across Iain Crichton Smith/Iain Mac a’ Ghobhainn’s Gaelic and English works (Gabrielle Fath)
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16.00: The Shape of Seeing: Colour, Shape and Moral Vision in Iain Crichton Smith’s Work (Plenary: Kevin MacNeil)
19.30: Conference Dinner (booking required) and Ceilidh
Nan Shepherd
SUNDAY
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09.30: Intermedial Polyphony and the Twentieth-century Makar: Margaret Tait and the Cross-currents of Poetic Hybridity (Anne Ciecko)
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10.00: Three Voices, Living Archives: Gaelic Presence and Cultural Translation in Twentieth-century Scotland (Catherine MacPhee and Sorcha Dallas)
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11.00: Gaelic Poetry in Chinese (Daisy, Li Li)
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11.30: Negotiating the contact zone: the politics of translation in contemporary Scottish Gaelic literature (Anne Morrison)
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12.00: Round table on Scots and Gaelic language development (Discussion led by John Hodgart and Boyd Robertson)