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 100th
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……….
