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Paper short abstract

Recordings of Calum Ruadh, crofter and bard of Skye, reveal how land and livelihood shaped his identity and songs. Archival contexts have reframed these as national heritage, showing how “natural” lives and environments can be transformed by recording and preservation.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines how recordings of Gaelic bard Calum Ruadh (Calum Nicolson, 1902–1978) in the School of Scottish Studies Archives complicate ideas of “natural” and “unnatural” contexts in folk narrative research. Ruadh, a crofter on the Isle of Skye, consistently framed his sense of self through crofting, a way of life intimately tied to land and community within the Gàidhealtachd. Yet in the archive, this identity is often overshadowed by his status as a bard, repositioning him within a curated narrative of national heritage.

Ruadh himself resisted these frameworks. He spoke of private songs, refusing to surrender them to the public record. At the same time, he expressed hope that his work might reach future listeners, using oral tradition both as self-expression and as testimony to the struggles of crofters in the modern era. His words reveal how environment, livelihood, and memory intertwined in shaping his storytelling practice.

Recording technology, intended to capture traditions in their most “natural” state, tried to create an “induced natural” setting: domestic yet mediated, personal yet drawn into nationalist projects that seek to preserve the culture of the Gàidhealtachd as a symbol of authentic Scottishness. Following scholars’ insights into archival silences, I argue that these recordings demonstrate how archives both preserve and transform tradition, elevating some voices while quieting others. By listening to the tension between his crofting and bardic identities, between silence and song, we can better understand how narratives of nature and nation emerge from the (un)natural contexts of the recording process.