“Stad is éisd ri guth bho’n uaigh” [Stop and listen to a voice from the grave]: The Deathways and Deathscapes of Canada’s 18th- and 19th-Century Scottish Gaels

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue of Genealogy invites papers on the subject of the deathways and deathscapes, both tangible and intangible, of Canada’s 18th- and 19th-century Scottish Highland immigrants. Although the history of Scottish immigration in Canada has been extensively documented in terms of politics, education, religion, sports, literature, publishing, settlement, and folk culture, scholarship on the role of death among Highland immigrants is virtually non-existent. It is difficult to understand why so little academic attention has been given to their death rituals, either material or immaterial, as a window into the broader significance of their group identity/ies within commemoration behavior. The objective of this Special Issue is to show how death for Highland Scots in Canada was more a “counterpoint” of life than a “contradiction”. For example, their poetry, folklore, and family stories were all deeply enmeshed in death traditions, which linked kin and community over time and space. In sum, Highland immigrants felt a profound connection with the afterlife, and many expressed their identity as vividly in death as they did in life. This proposed publication promises to make a significant contribution to a field of untapped potential and to offer an important corrective to a historiography which fails to acknowledge the centrality of this human experience to Scottish immigrants who came to Canada during the 18th and 19th centuries.

The topics enumerated below will be considered for inclusion in this Special Issue; however, other relevant topics are welcome.

• Ethnicity and identity related to Scottish deathways;
• Mortality and transatlantic connections: continuity and adaptation;
• Wake traditions;
• Bardic laments;
• Second-sight stories and other death-related folklore;
• Burial customs;
• Memorialization (e.g., headstones, obituaries);
• Religion and death;
• Music and death;
• Role of women and gender in death rituals and burial customs;
• Influences and interaction with other cultures (Indigenous, Irish, French, English, etc.) in connection with burial practices, funeral customs, and death;
• Death imagery in Scottish-Canadian literature;
• Family narratives and death.

Dr. Laurie Stanley-Blackwell
Dr. Michael Linkletter
Mr. John D. Blackwell
Dr. Elise M. Ciregna
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the Special Issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Genealogy is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.