“The Glen of Muses”
Gleann na Ceolraidh
a celebration of the life and work of
Margaret Fay Shaw
‘MARGARET’S GLEN’ CD
Monday evening of the Conference will see the launch of a new CD in St Peter’s Hall. It was Margaret Fay Shaw’s wish that her friends Paul McCallum and Vivien Mackie should come together to record songs from her book ‘Folksongs and Folklore in South Uist’.
Paul is a Mod Gold Medalist and his upbringing in North Glendale, South Uist beside the Macrae sisters’ home, allows him to interpret the songs exactly as he heard them and exactly as Margaret herself heard them in the 1930s.
Vivien Mackie is a cellist of considerable acclaim having studied under Pablo Casals. But she also enjoyed visiting Canna House, where she accompanied Margaret playing songs from her book on her Steinway grand piano.
Paul and Vivien performed together in Canna House, and in Glendale, before recording the CD. They now present a first selection from Margaret’s book and a second CD is promised in the not too distant future. They bring them back to their original state, just as the local folk sung them for Margaret, just as she painstakingly wrote them down note by note and word for word. Without Margaret’s efforts many of these priceless songs would have been lost or else irreversibly changed with the pass of time.
It was as a platform for the CD’s launch that Paul first envisaged this conference, and as a means to celebrate Margaret Fay Shaw’s life and work in Uist. Paul and Vivien will now perform the songs publicly for the first time, in front of an audience of local people and conference attendees.
