A New Approach to the Classification of Gaelic Song

A good deal of water has flowed under the bridge since James Ross published “A Classification of Gaelic Folk-Song” in 1957.1 Ross’s study was typical of a time when scholars favored a clinical and taxonomical approach to oral traditional culture, before modern theories about text, context, and genre began to raise good questions about the application of scientific methods to the analysis of cultural activity. The search for answers to these questions has greatly advanced the way ethnographers and ethnomusicologists understand culture, including the cultures of the Gael.2 After six decades, it seems fitting to revisit Ross’s classification system, and to examine whether the effort of constructing such a system is still worthwhile or not. In The Anthropology of Music, Alan Merriam (1964:209) suggests that we understand musical activity by considering the uses and functions that music serves within a given culture: