Is there anything sadder than a Scots Gaelic lament?
Sad songs hit harder, I find, when their meaning hangs just out of reach. Aside perhaps from the exquisite ache of Portuguese fado, there is no more desolate sound in the world than a lamentation in Scots Gaelic, sung in a language most of us can’t speak but conveying emotions we seem, atavistically, to somehow understand. This became clear last weekend while watching Julie Fowlis, the internationally renowned singer from North Uist whose extraordinarily pure voice evokes the power, beauty and savagery of the Hebridean and Highland landscapes, but also connects to some even more profound and universal force.
