Top 2 Quotes & Sayings by Alexander Carmichael

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Scottish author Alexander Carmichael.
Last updated on September 18, 2024.
Alexander Carmichael

Alexander Carmichael was a Scottish exciseman, folklorist, antiquarian, and author. Between 1860 and his death Carmichael collected a vast amount of folklore, local traditions, natural history observations, antiquarian data, and material objects from people throughout the Scottish Highlands, particularly in the southern Outer Hebrides where he lived, worked, and brought up his family between 1864 and 1882. Alexander Carmichael is best known today for Carmina Gadelica, an influential but controversial compendium of edited Highland lore and literature published in six volumes between 1900 and 1971.

On the first day of May the people of the crofter townland are up betimes and busy as bees about to swarm. This is the day of migrating, bho baile gu beinn (from townland to moorland), from the winter homestead to the summer sheiling. The summer of their joy is come, the summer of the sheiling, the song, the pipe and the dance, when the people ascend the hill to the clustered bothies, overlooking the distant sea from among the fronded ferns and fragrant heather, where neighbour meets neighbour, and lover meets lover.
Be thou a bright flame before me,
Be thou a guiding star above me,
Be thou a smooth path below me,
Today, tonight and forever. — © Alexander Carmichael
Be thou a bright flame before me, Be thou a guiding star above me, Be thou a smooth path below me, Today, tonight and forever.
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