“Dr Anne Lorne Gillies’ book, Songs of Gaelic Scotland, is impossible for anyone with an interest in the language to put down. The volume contains texts, tunes, and histories behind each and every one of its 151 Gaelic songs. It is packed with classics, which are hard to get hold of in print, and defies the cliché that Gaels sing nothing other than desperately sad love songs.” (Scotland on Sunday)

“All the old feelings of enthusiasm and admiration came flooding back to me in full measure as I opened this substantial new publication by one of Scotland’s most renowned figures in the world of music and Gaelic literature. But this great treasure-house of song does not only belong to Gaeldom, nor only to Scotland. It belongs to the world, as one of the great anthologies of music gathered from every corner of the Gaelic-speaking community. This book is unique in that it crosses the boundaries between music and literature. Nothing quite like it has ever been done for Gaelic. It is a truly wonderful achievement.” (Scots Magazine)

“From Mull of Kintyre to Sutherland, from Perthshire to St Kilda, this remarkable book provides a detailed analysis of Gaelic song in all its wonderful variety. Musical notation (often with alternative melodies), literary criticism, historical research, cross cultural comparisons and linguistics are combined to produce a work that is both scholarly and entertaining. Musicians will find Gillies’ notations and commentaries an indispensable aid, and the comprehensive appendix of CDs should prove useful for all music lovers. She walks a fine tightrope between encouraging innovation and respecting tradition, never once falling off. Poets – and lovers of that art – will find verse of the highest quality ranging from bawdy to devout, from anguished to joyous, from formal Bardic metres to vernacular verses. All this is placed within historical and cultural contexts, often demonstrating the roots and development of songs.“ (Am Bratach)

“Anne Lorne Gillies’ Songs of Gaelic Scotland is a substantial book. There are 151 songs in it. Each song comprises music, Gaelic words, English translation, and some pages of history, opinion and advice to the singers. There was a real need for the likes, and this book will be with us as a vital reference book as long as ‘the water runs and the wind blows’. I think Birlinn were very wise to have asked Gillies to assemble this crock of gold. She is an expert in the length and breadth of Gaelic song. She learned her songs from master singers over 50 years. She is hungry to share her expertise. She certainly had heart and energy and confidence and zeal to have completed this work without too much delay.“ (Scotsman)

“Anne has done many invaluable things to promote the culture of the Gaels, but I believe that this book will be like a beacon that will last forever and be of untold value to generations still to come. I had good reason for buying two copies of this book: the children in this house have almost worn out one copy already, singing the songs, playing the music of the piano, the fiddle and the clarsach. The book is also beautifully designed, and its hard cover gives extra status and recognition to the songs. It reminds me of Margaret Fay Shaw’s Folksongs and Folklore of South Uist, and that is the highest praise I can offer.” (West Highland Free Press)

“On the opening page of this beautifully produced volume is a Gaelic quotation:

Riaghladh goirid air an or, ach riaghladh fada air an oran

(Shared gold goes not far, but a shared song lasts a long time)

Carmina Gadelica vol.5 p.62

These lines enshrine the very spirit of this exciting book. It is an anthology – a very personal anthology from an artist whose whole life has been spent in the spiritual land where these songs were born. It is a collection in word and song that springs from these pages as a vital living thing – by no means the relics of a dead and departed culture as some might have us believe has been the lot of the Gael … There is humour, there is sorrow, there is love – and there is conflict. There is also a not unexpected “earthy” quality which might even today raise an eyebrow! Gaelic song, refusing to be entombed in dusty volumes on darkened shelves, lives happily within this volume which is a joy both to read and to sing. Despite the erudition of its compiler this is no stuffy academic treatise: its purpose, serious enough, discharged with wide-ranging scholarship, yet leavened with Anne Lorne Gillies’s vibrant personality that blows through these pages like the westering wind over the sands and shores (‘Tràighean’) of the isles of the West. It has been done before. In her exhaustive bibliography of around 175 items, there are at least a dozen major collections. But there is not one remotely like this!“ (Colin Scott-Sutherland, MusicWeb)