Quebec and Scotland

This work records the oral history, folklore and folk-life of emigrants from the Outer Hebrides to Quebec in the 19th century. It opens with the historical background before telling oral history as remembered and experienced by the emigrants' descendants, telling of land clearing, homesteading, farming, lumbering, bridge building and all the other tasks required to build a new community in the wilderness. Gaelic-speaking presbyterians, the group kept their language for the first three generations and still retain their religion to this day, as well as the tradition of the "taigh ceilidh". For more than a century people in the Outer Hebrides have been asking what happened to those who left. This work answers much of that question. Oatmeal and the Catechism: Scottish Gaelic Settlers in Quebec.