Open Reading Group

In philological terms duthchas is the abstract noun from duthaich or ‘country’ in the same way that luathas means swiftness and luath means swift. So it’s a word like ‘nationality’ (as a way of thinking and acting) or ‘heredity’ or (perhaps) ‘community’. I think it’s a matter of concentric circles: in traditional terms your duthchas centres on your home, and radiates out to take in your glen or island and all of your kindred. At the root of duthaich/duthchas is duth. You also have dual which gives dualchas. Duthchas and dualchas make a pair: patrimony and tradition, or the like. Duthchas is mainly geographic whilst dualchas is mainly cultural. Dualchas includes songs and stories. But both words seem to be used similarly in the sense of rudeigin as dual/duth dhomh – something that’s in my blood.* This discussion suggests that dùthchas refers to an existential sense of being in place. From Gaelic history and culture there are countless which support this. For example, the traditional process of inaugurating a new king involved marrying them to the land. A famous song includes the lines MacGriogair a Ruadhshruth/Dha’m bu.

*No. 378 in the series Litir do Luchd-ionnsachaidh highlights the difference between the words dùthchas and dualchas. They are often confused because both can be translated as ‘heredity’ or ‘heritage’. More precisely, however, dùthchas means ‘place of origin’ or ‘homeland’ as well as heredity. Dualchas is connected more strongly to hereditary in the context of the family. (Read more)

Extract taken from Place and Exile (2009)

“He knew, of course, that the colony was not peopled exclusively by colonists or colonizers. He even had some idea of the colonized from his childhood books; he had seen a documentary movie on some of their customs, preferably chosen to show their peculiarity. But the fact remained that those men belonged to the realms of imagination, books or the theater. His concern with them came indirectly – through images which were common to his entire nation, through military epics or vague strategic considerations. He had been a little worried about them when he too had decided to move to a colony, but no more so than he was about the climate, which might be unfavorable, or the water, which was said to contain too much limestone. Suddenly these men were no longer a simple component of geographical or historical decor. They assumed a place in his life.”

The Colonizer and the Colonized, 1965