IF YOU'RE a fan of Mary Jane Lamond, Canada's best-known singer (and seller) of Gaelic songs, chances are your ears are already attuned to one of Cape Breton's hidden treasures -- an old-style song tradition known as puirt-a-beul ('poorsht ah beel'). Certainly York ethnomusicology doctoral student Heather Sparling noticed. Funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, she's spent the last two summers in Nova Scotia interviewing native Gaelic singers, attending ceilidhs, milling frolics, and concerts where puirt-a-beul is performed. There's very little written or known about the uses and origins of the tradition, she says."I've always been interested in Celtic music. And I think Celtic pop and traditional music became popular because there are so few Canadian music styles that sound different from American mainstream music. Celtic music is something we can produce more easily than the Americans. We have an indigenous source. We shouldn't underestimate the uniqueness of that. "If you talk to some native Gaelic speakers in Cape Breton, they dismiss puirt-a-beul. People will say they're not the 'real' songs (for example, those celebrating great battles). It's a bit like comparing nursery rhymes to Shakespeare, in their opinion. But I think it's more complex than that. They're not just a way of remembering fiddle tunes. That's one use, but puirt-a-beul has others -- like selling records, or even satirizing your neighbours. And many beginning Gaelic speakers use puirt-a-beul as a way to learn the language. So the songs are one element among many that work to preserve Gaelic traditions," says Sparling. Photos: Debra Friedman Next Story