Gaelic Algorithmic Research Group

At our recent steering group meeting our Chair, Prof Melissa Terras, noted that the index cards I shared in the post on Alan Bruford’s Tale Types make great writing prompts. This immediately cast me back to my Am-Dram days, when our director would ask us to pick a number and assign us whichever ATU tale

Today (October 3rd) is Scottish Museums Day, a day to celebrate everything great and wonderful about Scottish Museums, galleries and archives! This year, the theme is: A Museum of Happiness, inspired by Stuart A. Paterson’s poem… I’ve made my own Museum of Happiness, which isn’t built of brick or stone or wood, its walls the

Here in the The School of Scottish Studies Archives we have tales classified under the ATU index, as well as tales grouped together under story types, such as Robber Tales, Historical Tradition; Romance Tales; Hero Tales and Legends. There are also indexes of tales which are classified under “Supernatural Witch” and “Supernatural Fairies” which were

The ‘secret’ of making heather ale has been a popular folktale in Scotland, with claims that the brewing of it dates back to ancient times. I came across a few references to it while digitizing the ATU index cards in the SSSA’s Tale Archive. Read the full Gaelic version from Calum Maclean’s collection of Fìion

Our own Prof Will Lamb is working with Dr David Howcroft (lead investigator) and Dr Dimitra Gkatzia from Edinburgh Napier university to build the first tools for Gàidhlig chatbots. This is starting with the creation of a new dataset to train AI models. Our current experiments (which you can participate in if you speak Gàidhlig!) are focused

Today is International Cat Day and that is as good as excuse as any to look in the Tale Archive for any material purrtaining to Felis Catus. Don’t worry though – should you not hold with such cosy nonsense – for the tale I’ve chosen is far removed from cute and fluffy! ‘Sùil a Sporan

(English Synopsis: How working on a nearly illegible word in a story taken down by Lady Evelyn over a hundred years ago helped solve the mystery of what exactly the term alaire means and whether it has a long or short vowel in Gaelic) Seadh, ’s Lady Evelyn Stiùbhart Mhoireach à Siorrachd Pheairt a tha

The study of folktales can reveal a lot about cultures from around the globe, including the movement of people and ethnic groups. I recently came across a ‘Hero Tale’ that caught my eye, entitled Am Breabadair agus an gille glas or The Weaver and the Grey Lad, in the Tale Archive, copied from an edition

There is a lot of cross-over in my two jobs as Archive & Library Assistant at The School of Scottish Studies Archives (SSSA) and Copyright Administrator working for the Decoding Hidden Heritages Project, as I work with the same collections for both. Recently I came across this card from the “Informants index” in the Tale

Since 2008 people from across the UK have celebrated Gypsy, Roma and Traveller History Month each June. Through celebration, education and raising awareness, Gypsy, Roma and Traveller History Month helps to tackle prejudice, challenge myths and to amplify these voices in wider society. At The School of Scottish Studies Archives, we try to share relevant