AT A TIME when some 600 languages across the world are being lost every year, the recovery of Gaelic in Ireland, Scotland and Nova Scotia in Canada shows that the depletion of man's cultural heritage is not inevitable. And perhaps proof of this is no better demonstrated than by An Leabhar Mòr - The Great Book of Gaelic, which brings together the work of more than 200 Irish and Scottish poets, visual artists and calligraphers to create a major contemporary artwork in the form of a visual anthology. This exists as both a travelling exhibition and as a book and, at the end of last year, it reached the University of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, as part of its international tour.

An Leabhar Mòr is also one of the most convincing demonstrations of the incredibly high standard that can be achieved by a Gaelic undertaking of this nature containing, as it does, 100 Gaelic poems from the 6th to the 21st century - including work by Seamus Heaney, Sorley MacLean, Hamish Henderson, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Cathal Ó Searcaigh - and responses to the poetry by Alan Davie, Rita Duffy, Will Maclean, John Byrne, Calum Colvin and many others. The exquisite and varied calligraphy was produced under the direction of Don Addison. The Great Book of Gaelic proves, beyond question, that the work in this book can stand up to comparison with the best that is produced anywhere else in the world.

An Leabhar Mòr, however, is not an isolated manifestation but the result of efforts to revive Gaelic culture that has been going on in Scotland since the 1970s, as Murdo Macdonald, Professor of the History of Scottish Art at the University of Dundee, explained in a lecture he gave to the University of Cape Breton linked to the travelling exhibition. One of the pioneers of this revival was Richard Demarco, one of whose journeys linking contemporary art to the landscape went to Calanais in 1975. The circle of prehistoric stones was, itself, the subject of an exhibition in Stornoway in 1995 and is represented in The Great Book of Gaelic by a lithograph by Frances Walker, who first visited the stones while working as an art teacher on North Uist.

Joyce Cairns

Another early inspiration was Lucy Lippard's use of Highland archeological sites in her survey of land art, Overlay: Contemporary Art & the Art of Prehistory, published in 1983. Indeed, this has led to Professor Macdonald's current research project, Window on the West: Towards a Redefinition of the Visual within Gaelic Scotland. The project is funded by the UK Arts & Humanities Council in collaboration with the University of Dundee and Sabhal Mòr Ostaig - the Gaelic College on Skye.

Visually, the most important precursor to An Leabhar Mòr was the book and exhibition dating from 1986, and driven by Malcolm MacLean, called As an Fhearann - From the Land, whose subtitle was Clearance, Conflict & Crofting - a Century of Images from the Scottish Highlands. As Professor Macdonald notes, "The book is still a key point of reference: it comprises a careful selection of visual images which include contemporary art and thought- provoking photography.'

Perhaps the most impressive signifiers of this revival in recognising the Scottish Gaelic culture are the cairns created by Will Maclean that followed As an Fhearann. The three on Lewis (with another still to follow) mark key points for the struggle for land on Lewis - a struggle against absentee landlords that still continues today.

The memorial cairn at Aignish, for example, commemorates the raiding of the farm by troops on January 9, 1888 when 13 men were imprisoned - an event commemorated in An Leabhar Mòr by a poem by Iain Crichton Smith with calligraphy by Don Addison and an illustration by Frances Walker.

Another work by Maclean shows the boarded-up window of a deserted croft whose title, Inner Sound, refers to the stretch of water between Raasay and Applecross. Inner Sound also refers to Sorley MacLean's poem, Hallaig, the deserted township that exemplifies the Highland Clearances. Hallaig is also the title of a film about MacLean that was made by Timothy Neat.

Also by Maclean is Emigrant Ship, which makes reference to the east window of Croick Church in Sutherland on which the evicted tenants of nearby Glencalvie scratched messages of despair in 1845. Maclean also refers to two other emigrant ships - one scratched on the walls of a deserted schoolhouse on Mull and the other, The Sailing of the Emigrant Ship, painted by William McTaggart that now hangs in the National Gallery of Scotland. McTaggart, who spoke Gaelic, was remembering emigration from the communities he knew on Kintyre.

At the party celebrating the arrival of An Leabhar Mòr in Cape Breton, the strength of Gaelic music and song was demonstrated by the local Barra MacNeills, and of Gaelic poetry by Louis de Paor from Ireland, Aonghas Macneacail from Skye and Lewis Mackinnon from Nova Scotia. There was also the suggestion, made by the President of the University, that Cape Breton might create its own Great Book of Gaelic (a suggestion he broadened out later when I talked to him to include Canada, Australia and New Zealand).

However, while Cape Breton has great strengths in Gaelic music, song and storytelling, its visual culture is very poor. I was surprised that anyone could think of producing another An Leabhar Mòr in Canada.

An Leabhar Mòr is published by Canongate Books, Edinburgh.