A little bird blown off course: the States for South Uist and
She was the American socialite who swapped the high life for a far harder life helping to protect and preserve ancient island culture in the Outer Hebrides.
Margaret Fay Shaw, a steel magnate’s daughter and talented concert pianist, swapped the States for South Uist in the 1920s and, working alongside islanders, hauling seaweed, milking the cows, and “waulking the tweed”, the Manhattan musician absorbed the language and culture of the island.
More importantly, she was the first person to transcribe its traditional music, saving in written form songs that had been passed orally from generation to generation. Her lifetime collection – bolstered
Archivist Fiona J Mckenzie
by her photography, letters and diaries and, together with recordings later made with her husband, John Lorne Campbell, a historian, folklorist and farmer – is said to be the most significant in the preservation of Scotland’s Gaelic culture.
But, 17 years after her death, archivist Fiona J Mackenzie has revealed new finds, a letter and diary entries shedding new light on the life of an extraordinary woman.
Fiona said: “A previously unseen letter that Margaret wrote to her sister Caroline from North Glendale on March 11, 1930, was given to me by her great niece in America, Maggie Van Hafton.
“This letter has never before seen the light of day. We also have some original diary entries that have never been published. Margaret Fay Shaw is right at the top in terms of significance to the preservation of a culture. Had she not done the work that she did, it would be largely lost.”
Fiona is based on the island of Canna bought by the Campbells three years after their marriage in 1935. John, who died in 1996 aged 89, and Margaret, who passed away in 2004 aged 101, gifted the island and the home in which their cherished collection was housed to the National Trust for Scotland.
The archivist explained: “Her Gaelic work is unsurpassed in terms of the physical writing down of that oral history. She was the first person who possessed the musical education to be able to write down songs never before written down.
She had a good ear; she could understand the musical notes and strange intervals present in Gaelic tunes.
“At the same as writing them down, she was taking photographic images of the people who were giving them to her. And she was writing about and corresponding with them. There are also artefacts. What we have is not just one isolated piece of heritage, but a big jigsaw where every piece fits.”
Margaret Fay Shaw’s great-great-grandfather,
Inverness man Alexander Shaw, who worked for the Carron Company ironworks at Falkirk, sailed with his four sons from Gourock to Philidelphia in 1782. Most of the family then set up businesses in Pittsburgh. But Margaret’s parents died while she was still a child, leaving her and her older sisters in the care of aunts.
In 1920 she was sent to Helensburgh to spend a year at St Bride’s School where, during a concert, she heard Marjory Kennedy-fraser