Day 2- A Uist Sojourn

Our first evening took us  to the first presentation undertaken and delivered successfully in Eriskay Hall.

 My own vivid memories of my first time in this hall was at the very first Ceolas Gaelic Summer School in 1996, 20 years ago. I was studying Gaelic at the time, had just started my serious stufy of Gaelic Song and to me, everything was new and fresh and exciting, possibilities boundless as far as song was concerned. I had purchased my first copy of Margaret Fay Shaw’s seminal work “ Folksongs and Folklore of South Uistt” on the first day and was instantly entranced by her depiction of a disappeared way of life. It became my Gaelic song ‘bible’ straight away and has been so ever since.

The phrase which keeps springing to my mind, as I sit here outside Taigh Mairi Anndra on a day so different from yesterday, blue skies and skylarks.  Is “ If you had told me 20 years ago, that one day I would be charged with looking after Margaret ( and Johns) precious archives and  reminding people of the preciousness of it all, I would have said , in Gaelic “ Thalla! ( Away ye go”) or Mach a seo- Get out of here”! This to me is, apart from the births of my 3 children, the most precious job I could ever hope to do in my life. Margaret Fay Shaw , in folklore circles, has achieved almost mythical proportions of ‘Celtic excitement’  and ‘academic worth’ but here, sitting looking at the place in the rocks  where Peigi Anndra did her washing and stopped for a second to let Margaret take her picture, the realisation that in fact, Margaret was all ‘about’ life, seeing her friend’s life through an outsiders eyes, eyes for the future generations of people interested enough to seek out the knowledge, joys and heartaches of the hard working people of South Uist.

The Eriskay Hall presentation and the following one in Kildonan Museum were both heart-warming and scary!  I am conscious that to some, I am ‘teaching my granny to suck eggs”. To some this information and these pictures will be as familiar as a pair of slippers on a cold day. I apologise in advance but say that I hope people will go away at least having learnt something they didn’t know before, or see a picture or film, or hear a song, they didn’t know before.

Eriskay saw me deliver Margaret’s paper “ Contrasts” which describes her contrasting musical lives, from the hallowed corridors and dressing rooms of Carnegie Hall, New York, to the songs sung by a nursemaid in Boisdale House on New Year’s Day.  Margaret’s words, not mine, form the text part, I merely enhance it with pictures, film, sound archive and my own voice.  This paper was last heard n Women’s Hour, on the BBC in 1956, never since.  It has never been published so It is unlikely to have been heard since.

Kildonan sees me deliver “Hunting Folksongs in the Hebrides” which was published in the National Geographic Magazine in 1947.

 Again, unless someone happens to have a copy of this publication tucked away in an attic somewhere or one is an academic, it is unlikely that anyone present would have seen this paper before. Margaret describes in vivid detail, her arrival in the Hebrides, hearing songs for the first time, the people she lived with and their traditions and customs- for Hogmanay, weddings, death and rats! Again I ‘fill in the gaps’ with the pictures  which she used in the article and add film, sound archive of the songs she talks about, as well as use my own voice.

The response from the audience is, to me as both a singer and a folk-curator, quite overwhelming. The silence in the room is tangible as folk strain to listen to Peigi’s spindly voice on the ‘wire’. There are chuckles at some of Margaret’s anecdotes and tears too, at Margaret’s final piece of film, taken for her 100^th birthday.

It is important that folk do not forget their history. In this modern word of stresses and strains, politics and terrorism, it is important to remember where you come from. Uist is special in that it most definitely has a strong sense of place and identity. People love to hear their ancestors and their voices, see their images and the place they come from.

Here, using Wi-Fi, which Peigi and Mairi would have surely  found so unbelievable, it is my duty to remind us all of where we come from and the part that Margaret and John Campbell played in this. And as for  telephone?  Well……….