The material that Carmichael collected in the Carmina Gadelica - "The Hymns of the Gael" - is noted for its preservation of an indigenous "Celtic" spirituality that integrates the Christian with aspects of the pre-Christian. While Carmichael does provide a little material from Lewis and Harris, most comes from the southern isles, especially South Uist, where a Catholic tradition had permitted the preservation of what, in the Protestant north, would usually have been dismissed in relatively modern times as "superstitions". The southern isles might have been more open to "nature religion" than other Catholic regions because, after the Reformation, they were re-evangelisd by Franciscan missionaries, open to nature spirituality. To what extent scholarship into Carmichael has been shaped over the past century by differences between Catholic and Protestant perceptions of Hebridean tradition is a question that has been asked privately by some scholars, but thus far not researched.