Abstrakt
Ruaraidh MacThomais (Derick Thomson) is primarily recognised as a poet, scholar, activist, and the founder and editor of the quarterly, Gairm. It is not so well-known that his oeuvre includes six short stories, and that some of them count among the finest Gaelic works in the form.
This essay seeks to introduce these stories to a wider audience for the very first time, to analyse their themes and narrative strategies, and to evaluate them in the context of Scottish Gaelic fiction. It discusses three short stories connected by the figure of the old woman, comments on the satirical story portraying the Gaelic revival and relates it to Thomson's own revivalist activities, and it analyses the two stories that are arguably most accomplished, 'Bean a' Mhinisteir' [The Minister's Wife] and especially 'An Staran' [The Stepping Stone Path], at greater length.