Heather Sparling. Reeling Roosters and Dancing Ducks: Celtic Mouth Music. (Sydney, NS: 2014, Cape Breton University Press. Pp. xv + 356, index, ISBN 978-1-927492-98-7.)

The book is a survey of “mouth music” in Scotland and Cape Breton, focusing more specifically on puirt-à-beul. While the term mouth music can be used to refer to many different styles of vocal performances of instrumental music, some consisting entirely of either improvised or even predetermined nonsense syllables (vocables), puirt-à-beul are a specific genre of Gaelic song. In some ways akin to nursery rhymes, they are light-hearted, often bawdy in nature, and lack the flowery, esoteric poetry of “serious” Gaelic songs. Sparling explores the role of puirt-à-beul, generally thought of as silly or insignificant, in instrumental tune transmission, dance accompaniment, and commercial audio recordings, as well as contemporary Gaelic language education. The book includes extensive lyrical transcription of puirt-à-beul in both Gaelic and English throughout, which would be particularly useful for anyone with an interest in, or knowledge of, the Gaelic language. With relatively little scholarly research done on puirt-à-beul, this is a book that fills a significant gap in the literature. Moreover, Sparling is well-positioned for such a study. As a topic that straddles both the fields of Celtic studies and ethnomusicology, research on Gaelic music can be challenging. Too often scholars lack sufficient background in one of these two areas. It is common for academics to be highly knowledgeable in Gaelic language and culture while having no background in ethnomusicology (or music in general), or conversely, to be knowledgeable ethnomusicologists who lack the linguistic skills to properly contextualize their musical analysis. One of Sparling’s inherent strengths is her ability to seamlessly incorporate the perspectives of these two disciplines, each with different priorities and values. The book begins with an in-depth look at mouth music (Chapter 1), exploring both the use of informal and improvised vocables. Sparling discusses solfege and Cantaireachd (a system of vocables specifically for Scottish bagpiping), but also makes cross-cultural comparisons to equivalents in Indian classical music and jazz. In doing so, she carefully demonstrates the shared characteristics and uses of different mouth musics, while contextualizing puirt-à-beul as a distinct genre. In Chapter 2, Sparling continues to address the historical-cultural background of puirt-à-beul by investigating various origin theories of the genre. She provides a thorough historical investigation of widely held beliefs about these origins, such as the proscription of the bagpipes following the battle of Culloden, religious pressures, or connections to ancient Druidic language. Sparling challenges each of these beliefs, while carefully acknowledging they function as important narratives in the culture, regardless of their veracity. She contends that the origins of puirt-à-beul “likely emerged in unremarkable ways for fairly mundane reasons,” though the lack of historical evidence is insufficient to draw any verifiable conclusions and is, at best, conjecture (95). The middle portion of the book is dedicated to textual analysis, both in relation to musical and lyrical content of puirt-à-beul (Chapters 3 and 4, respectively). In a musical context, Sparling demonstrates how puirt-à-beul melodies relate to their purely instrumental counterparts, particularly in relation to how they are adapted for vocal performance. Chapter 4 includes potential lyrical interpretations of common examples of puirt-à-beul, relating them to the role of humour and bawdry. The final three chapters focus on more functions of puirt-à-beul in various contexts. Chapter 5 examines a particularly prominent aspect of puirt-à-beul: their relationship to dance. Drawing on classic historical research by dance scholars such as George Emmerson as well more recent work by Celticist Michael Newton and ethnochoreologist Mats Melin, Sparling investigates early forms of step dance and European set dances that were the antecedents to more modern square dance in Cape Breton and other parts of …