Saothair Sgoileireil aig Ministear san Eaglais Shaoir Aonaichte

Charles Moncrieff Robertson (1864-1927) left a wealth of research papers and essays, now in the National Library of Scotland, in which he recorded the living language of Scottish Gaelic during his church ministry which took him to most parts of the Gàidhealtachd. In 1899-1902 he submitted entries to An Comunn Gàidhealach competitions for 'technical terminology', a current interest in the UK world of education when Europe was considered to have overtaken the British initiatives in technical education laid down at the time of the Great Exhibition. The recording of this vocabulary and idiom, largely subsumed within 'material culture', has left a vital corpus for Gaelic from the time when the language was much more extensive and when 'material culture' was itself poorly defined in the dictionaries. The chapter examines Robertson's scholarship and assesses its ongoing significance.