Last week was World Gaelic Week and the children of Eigg Primary celebrated with a number of activities throughout. Our P6 learners are here to talk about what they got up to!

Can you tell us about your week?

P6 Learner C
We celebrated Gaelic and sang Gaelic songs down at the pier! In school we had workshops with Joy Dunlop online and had Gaelic lessons. In the workshops she talked about “Use it or Lose it,” to keep the language alive and Calum MacLean was there too to talk about using Gaelic outdoors, like wild swimming and climbing mountains.

P6 Learner V
He was a bit of a daredevil! He liked doing lots of different things outside and use his Gaelic at the same time in nature.

P6 Learner C
He also said “Cleachd i no caill i.” That was the phrase for the week. It just means that we need to keep using the language to keep Gaelic alive. Thinking about Eigg, the woods outside the hall have Gaelic, Gruilin too, Kildonan, Howlin I think? And Laig?

P6 Learner V
An Sgurr! Ben Buidhe! There’s quite a few Gaelic names in Eigg. I love Ben Buidhe…I think we should have a school picnic up there. We can speak Gaelic – tha tì agus cèic blasta! (“tea and cake are tasty!”)

P6 Learner C
It would be cool to have a visitor who could talk to us about how they use Gaelic in their jobs.

P6 Learner V
You (Jenna) could do that for us, and Mr MacInnes because you used to use Gaelic in your jobs all the time! Maybe we could have a WHOLE DAY where you talk to us in Gaelic. That would be so cool.

P6 Learner C
We had someone visit us who spoke Irish Gaelic, Risdeard, and he played an instrument for us? There were lots of words that was quite similar in the two Gaelics. Oh! It was also Irish Gaelic Week last week too, not just Scottish Gaelic so that was pretty cool. It’s important to keep the languages alive – they’re quite…not very many people speak the languages any more so we need to do more to keep it going and get more people talking, so it’s a great way to do that! It’s an important part of our history and culture, so let’s do it!

P6 Learner V
We also made Gaelic t-shirts with slogans and pictures on them for a competition, that was really fun. And we are making a poster that we stick together with all of our own pieces that make up a big picture of lots of things, like thistles and the kelpies and castles and stuff – they’ve got Gaelic phrases on them too, like “Madainn mhath,” and “Feasgar math,” and “Tapadh leat,” We’ve not finished it yet but it’ll look so cool when it’s all put together! The babies visited too and did a Gaelic Bookbug. We had a little bit of that in school too with a story and a song – it was silly and fun!

P6 Learner C
My favourite part of the week was the Friday because we got to sing Gaelic songs down at the tearoom. We enjoyed it as a community, still in school but doesn’t feel like it is, and GG, Sonny, Edith and Isabel were there and Christine was there too, so we got to play for people and they could join in if they wanted to. I said hello to GG in Gaelic and “Ciamar a tha thu?” which means “how are you?” in Gaelic. Freya, Tadhgan and Tamsin joined us to play and Gabe was singing too, so it felt really like a community thing. Even though we were in the snug, people could hear us in the tearoom.

P6 Learner V
That was my favourite thing too, because I got to play my button box and it was really fun to play with people and have people listening. More adults came to join later too which was really cool.

P6 learner C
I think we should do more of that, singing and playing for other people because it really felt like the community were together.

P6 Learner V
It would be cool if we could all go to the hall and do some ceilidh dancing and singing and playing there too – it’s a bigger space and we could get people dancing! It would be really lovely.