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The Storyteller, the Scribe, and a Missing Man: Hidden Influences from Printed Sources in the Gaelic Tales of Duncan and Neil MacDonald

The Scottish Gaelic tradition bearer Duncan MacDonald1 (1883-1954) was one of the most remarkable storytellers of twentieth-century Europe.2 He piqued the interest of a host of ethnologists in the later years of his life because of his considerable repertoire of traditional knowledge. They were especially interested in his ability to tell certain tales of his--particularly those with ties to older literary versions in manuscripts3--in a virtually identical fashion from recitation to recitation. During a period when scholars were admitting that the conservatism of Gaelic oral tradition had been perhaps exaggerated at times (see O Duilearga 1945), Duncan MacDonald's abilities were seen as an acquittal of the seanchaidh.4 It became clear that it was possible in certain cases for the surface forms of language, not just plot, to survive down through the ages in an almost unaltered form. MacDonald's genealogy (see Matheson 1977), with its ties to the hereditary poets and historians of Clann Domhnaill of Sleat, suggested that he was an approximation of the kind of professional Gaelic storyteller that would have been an institution in earlier times.