It was very fitting that A Little Bird Blown Off Course, the musical tribute to Margaret Fay Shaw devised and performed by Fiona Mackenzie, should have premiered on South Uist, the island where she started her work and her lifelong love of the Hebrides, and finished its first run on Canna, the island which was her home for 70 years. Read more
Tag: Margaret Fay Shaw (page 1 of 1)
Great news that A Little Bird Blown off Course, a new piece of music–theatre by Gaelic singer Fiona Mackenzie celebrating the life and Gaelic song collection of Margaret Fay Shaw, is to be performed in the islands and Highlands as part of the Blas Festival next month.
A letter in the post. Not a bill or a fast food flyer but a real letter. One of the lasting rediscoveries I have made in researching and writing John’s life is that letters are a great way of making and keeping contact with other people. And in the post, this is not just any letter. Read more
There was an inevitability about the meeting of John Lorne Campbell and Margaret Fay Shaw; their paths and their interests had been intertwining for years. Several times they had been in the same place at the same time, but had not met until a wet night in 1934, when he took the Lochearn to South Uist to address a meeting of the Sea League. Read more
Before the hurricane struck, I was looking for words to end the old year or, since the clock was ticking, start the new one. I found Margaret’s letter typewritten late at night during another storm-tossed Christmas. At almost the same time I came across the December West Word, an action packed newsletter written by gas and candle light as the western highlands and islands recovered from a battering which felled trees, flattened outbuildings, lifted roofs and wrecked power and water supplies. Read more
Pictures of Margaret with kind permission of Kildonan Museum.
“Margaret Fay Shaw I always remember from a 100th birthday photo in the South Uist museum: fag in hand, dram on the arm of her chair!”
Memories, memories. With the anniversary of Margaret’s death coming up these pictures gain special significance. Martin’s comment – which I found quite by chance on the excellent Scottish Island Explorers blog – got me searching through pictures and memories of my own. I had also seen that 100th birthday photo in the very fine Kildonan Museum on South Uist, or Comann Eachdraigh Uibhist a Deas in Gaelic.