Songs have been a big part of life in my family
for generations and thanks to this inheritance I have been lucky
to travel with my music to many fascinating places and to meet
many wonderful people.
When I find myself singing in places such as Moscow, Russia, or
Theatres in Italy, Germany, U.S.A. or Canada, I often think of
what my granny or my great granny would have thought not only of
my experiences, but of hearing, in these far off places, the songs
which they loved so much but took for granted to some extent as
simply being part of life.
My great granny, Cairistiona Gillies, was born on the island of
Mingulay at the south end of the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Her
parents had been forcibly cleared from the island of Barra by the
landlord at the time in the 1830's. While some emigrated to
Canada, others went to neighbouring islands such as Mingulay to
try to continue their lives of crofting and fishing. Mingulay is a
particularly beautiful but very remote and rocky island. Life
there must have been very difficult but in these situations people
work together and communities are strong. In that environment,
storytelling and song was a big part of life and songs would be
sung while working or gathering socially in each others homes.
Apparently, Cairistiona Gillies sang a lot of "worksongs" and, for
example, would sing while spinning wool or churning milk. Apart
from the work songs she would sing at night in the house with
friends and one of her favourite songs is also now one of my
favourites. It is a very moving lament called "Oranna Bantraich"
(The song of the Widow). The song tells of a woman who has watched
a boat sink presumably after hitting rocks or a reef just off the
coast. The boat was carrying her three brothers, her father and
her husband, Angus from Barra.
Mingulay has been uninhabited since 1912 and the story of the
island is a bit like the story of the island of St. Kilda,
although much less well known. Isolation, absentee landlords, and
insufficient fertile land, all contributed to the evacuation of
the island. Before my granny on my mother's side was born,
Cairistiona, and her husband Michael, returned the family to Barra.
Following the setting up of the Crofters Commission around 1883,
larger farms were broken up into small crofts and Lots were drawn
to assign small crofts to those coming from Mingulay. The croft my
great grandparents received was in Garrygall, Castlebay and it
amounted to around 3 acres of quite rocky land.
My mother's mother, Annie Gillies, was born on Barra and the songs
and stories continued to be an important part of life. The
remoteness of Mingulay and Barra from the outside world clearly
contributed to the survival of a strong oral tradition going back
for centuries.
My mother, Flora MacNeil, was born in Barra in 1928. She talks of
never consciously learning the songs and she seems to have "soaked
them up "while growing up on the island. Telling stories and
singing songs when neighbours would gather together were the main
source of entertainment in those days. The singing tradition
appears to have been strongest amongst the women but then many of
the men would have to leave home, sometimes for years at a time,
to go to sea sending money home when they could. Whether the men
were in the Merchant Navy or just private fishermen, the running
of the croft along with the rearing of children was usually the
work of the women and many of the songs were sung while working.
My granny, Annie Gillies, her sister Mary and brother Neil were
all keen singers and great uncle Neil was also a noted
Storyteller. The love of singing came primarily from a love of the
poetry and stories in the songs. No-one talked of quality of
voice, as no-one was performing the songs, just singing them
because they loved them and enjoyed sharing them with each other.
Songs were composed and sung unaccompanied and this fact has
contributed to the use of ornamentation and vocables in the songs
which help to give the songs a distinctive character.
In and around the 1950s, when my granny could afford a wireless
(radio), there was a 15 minute Gaelic song recital broadcast once
each week. These recitals usually involved trained singers singing
Gaelic songs with formal voices and classical style piano
accompaniments. My granny certainly thought that the recitals were
very far removed from the way she would sing but nonetheless she
was simply pleased that Gaelic was being broadcast on the radio at
all!
From the time she could talk, my mother learned or "absorbed"
literally hundreds of song from her mother, aunt and uncle and
also from other singers on the island. At the age of 4 she could
sing one of the greatest of the "Orain Mor", called "Mo Run Geal
Og" (My Fair Young Love), with its rich and complex poetry. This
lament is said to have been composed by the widow of William
Chisholm, who was the Standard Bearer at the Battle of Culloden,
after his death.
My mother then took her songs with her (in her head of course!),
when she left Barra at 19 years of age in 1948 and went to work in
Edinburgh. It was around this time that mum began to be asked more
and more to perform these songs at ceilidhs and concerts. She came
to the attention of some of the Gaelic poets and academics living
in Edinburgh at that time who were fascinated by the amount of
stunning traditional songs this young woman knew. Many other Gaels
were not interested in these songs and they were certainly not the
fashionable Gaelic songs of the day. Nevertheless, mum was
encouraged to keep singing these songs she loved by people such
as, Derek Thomson and the late Sorley MacLean, two highly
respected Gaelic poets, Calum MacLean, Sorley's brother and a very
important folklorists and collector of Gaelic music, Professor
John MacInnes then of the School of Scottish Studies, and the late
Norman McCaig a world famous poet (although not in the Gaelic
language). She was also recorded by the famous American folklorist
and collector, lan Lomax. In the 1950s there was what is often
referred to as a Folk Music Revival in Scotland and in 1951 mum
took part in the first People's Festival in Edinburgh which has
now gone down in history as a landmark event at the start of the
said Revival. And so, it is around that time that my mother's long
singing career began and the songs of my family were taken out of
the everyday crofting and fishing life to places such as London,
Washington, DC, Cape Breton in Nova Scotia, Paris, Stockholm...
the list goes on.
I am glad my granny was alive to see what these songs had done for
my mum and she at least lived long enough to pass on to me a few
songs and see my love for them, although she was not to know and
did not expect me to make the singing of these songs my
profession.
Getting back to the journeys of these songs, I would like to
stress that many of the songs I have learned from my granny and
mother came into existence many years before they were born and
often came from other islands or the mainland of Scotland. We
cannot date many of the songs although some songs such as "Mo Run
Geal Og" (above) mention a particular event from history, which
allows us to get a rough idea of when they were composed. Other
songs have been dated back to 12th Century and, as I said, many
remain a mystery.
It is a very special feeling performing, especially for
international audiences, these ancient songs which I know my
ancestors sang. The most important thing I would like to say at
this point is that the reason I continue to sing these songs is
not because they are part of my ancient family tradition but
because they are so beautiful and a real joy to sing.
When I performed at the First International Celtic Music Festival
of Moscow in 2000 I was struck by the reaction of the Russians to
the songs. I think it is partly because, due to obvious political
reasons, they have lost so many of their traditions and so much of
their traditional music. To hear me introduce a song, as a song
which I know was a favourite of my great granny around 1870 was
amazing and wonderful to them. I must say that when I sang one
song in particular called "Laoidh Mhoire Mhaighdeann" a "Hymn to
Our Lady", composed by Sileas MacDonald of Keppoch in the early
18th Century, very many people spoke to me about it
enthusiastically after the concert. I had explained to the
audience that my great aunt, Mary Gillies, used to sing this song
which tells the story of Jesus Christ from his birth to his death,
to her mother, Cairistiona, when she waso ld and frail, as a form
of helping her to pray. The melody is very chant-like and hypnotic
and although I sing only a fragment of the whole song in concert,
I have been surprised and pleased that it touches so many people's
hearts and I don't mean only those of a Christian faith. I must
also say that with songs such as this one there appears to be
little or no language barrier.
I have spoken of the musical tradition on my mother's side only
and I would like to tell you a wee story that concerns another
journey made by a member of my father's family due to her
knowledge not only of songs but also the skill of spinning wool.
My father's family all come from Barra also and his father, Donald
MacInnes, had a sister, Mary MacInnes who later married and became
Mrs. Mary Morrison. In 1938 she was asked to go to Glasgow with
her spinning wheel and take part in the British Empire Exhibition
in Glasgow, where she was introduced to King George V1 and Queen
Elizabeth the current Queen's mother. Mary would sing many songs
while spinning and a great interest was taken in her. After the
exhibition she was invited to San Francisco to perform and she
went there by boat in 1939 returning just before World War Two
broke out. I don't know any details of her trip but I am sure it
was quite a culture shock for her to leave Barra and arrive in San
Francisco at that time.
Certainly, taking these songs onto a concert platform and adding
instrumentation, as I often do, changes something about them but I
do not think that there is anything wrong with that in itself. If
you sing the songs from the heart, and if you are using
instruments sensitively, leaving plenty of room for the beauty of
the melodies and the words to shine through, I think that the
music can help paint the pictures of the songs without taking
anything away from them. I believe that these songs should be
heard by as many people as possible and not preserved only in
archives and glass cases. After all, this is a living language and
tradition which should be celebrated and encouraged although the
unbroken links to the past should not be forgotten.
I have spoken of the incredible journeys these songs have made
over the years and the fact that, despite all odds and political
anti-Gaelic feeling especially since the Jacobite Rebellion of
1745, it is a testament to the power and worth of these songs that
they are still sung today and will be, I hope, for a long time
after many of us who are currently travelling with them are gone.
By Maggie MacInnes, 2002 (copyright reserved)
Copyright 2003 NPR and Fiona Ritchie
