Some languages are more similar than others, and some in ways we may not expect. One would not put ecclesiastical Latin and Scotch Gaelic into the same category – the words are almost all different. But as music scholar, organist and singer Catherine Helferty discovered, while pursuing graduate studies in Sacred Music over in bonnie Scotland, is that Gaelic and Latin both flow rhythmically, the consonants and vowels overlapping. Hence, it was natural to put the Our Father in Gaelic to its traditional Gregorian melody. Here is Catherine performing her own rendition, before the ruins of Saint Andrew’s cathedral. We may imagine the monks and nuns of old doing the same. The reader may scroll down for the Gaelic words.
