Flora MacNeil

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MacNeil in 2006

Flora MacNeil, MBE (6 October 1928 – 15 May 2015)[1] was a Scottish Gaelic singer. Originally discovered by Alan Lomax and Hamish Henderson during the early 1950s, she continued to perform into her later years.

Life[]

MacNeil was born in 1928 into a Gaelic-speaking and Roman Catholic family inside her parents' croft at , Castlebay, on the island of Barra, which is sometimes called, "the island the Reformation never reached". There were singers on both sides of the MacNeil family, but the menfolk were often away at sea for long periods, leaving the women to raise the children and tend the croft – while constantly singing to assuage their labours. Her mother was Ann Gillies. Her father, Seumas MacNeil, worked as a fisherman and died when Flora was 14.[2]

In these pre-television and pre-radio days, ceilidhs were a regular occurrence on Barra, and from earliest childhood MacNeil later remembered "soaking up" literally hundreds of songs, as if by osmosis. Whilemost of MacNeil's repertoire was passed on from her mother,[2] one of Flora's other sources for the many Gaelic songs she learned at the Barra ceilidhs was her mother's cousin, Mary Johnstone. Johnstone's parents had lived locally, but had then been evicted during the Highland Clearances. They had moved first to Bernerary and then to Mingulay before, their daughter Johnstone moved back to her ancestral district on Barra. In later years, Johnstone would regularly visit Flora's mother and often sang at local ceilidhs and, for this reason, Flora's repertoire also included many Gaelic songs from both Benerary and Mingulay.[3]

Clearly, the music was in her blood: by age four, famously, she was already tackling the sophisticated Jacobite war poetry of Mo rùn geal òg ("My Fair Young Love"), one of the Òrain Mòr, or "Big Songs".

Following her father's death, a 14-year old Flora left school to work in the island’s telephone exchange to help provide for her family. In 1949, the Post Office offered her a position in Edinburgh, where she immediately moved. Word of MacNeil's talents as a Gaelic singer had already preceded her and she was embraced by Edinburgh Communist poets and folk song promoters Hugh MacDiarmid, Hamish Henderson and Sorley MacLean.[2]

With their assistance, she found a public platform in the burgeoning round of Edinburgh ceilidhs and concerts that marked the first stirrings of the British folk revival. Sorley MacLean and Hamish Henderson also arranged for American musicologist Alan Lomax to meet MacNeil and record her singing.[2]

When Lomax first arrived in Scotland in June 1951, he later recalled, "It was in Edinburgh one June night in the house of Sorley MacLean, a poet, that Scotland really took hold of me. A blue-eyed girl from the Hebrides was singing." The girl was Flora MacNeil and the song was Cairistiona. [4]

Henderson also invited MacNeil to perform at the . The ceilidh brought Scottish traditional music to a large public stage for the first time inside Edinburgh's Oddfellows Hall and continued long afterwards at St. Columba's Church Hall in August 1951. The Scottish Gàidhealtachd was represented at by Flora MacNeil, fellow Barra native , and John Burgess. The music was recorded live at the scene by Alan Lomax.[2]

During the Ceilidh, two Scottish Gaelic songs about the Jacobite rising of 1745 were performed onstage. Barra-native Calum Johnston, who was "keen to show his own admiration for [the] poet and for the Highlanders who fought for Charlie", performed Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair's Òran Eile don Phrionnsa.[5] Flora MacNeil then performed, Mo rùn geal òg, 's lament for the death of her husband, William Chisholm of Strathglass who fell while bearing the standard for the Chief of Clan Chisholm during the Battle of Culloden in 1746.[6]

Until 1954, the Edinburgh Festival Ceilidhs were an annual event. Eventually, however, the fact that Henderson and many other board members and organizers were members of the Communist Party of Great Britain caused the Ceilidhs to lose the backing and involvement of all members of both the Labour Party and the Scottish Congress of Trade Unions.[7]

MacNeil also recorded two albums, Craobh nan Ubhal in 1976 (reissued in 1993) and Orain Floraidh in 2000.[2]

While performing in 2000 at the annual Christmas Island Ceilidh in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, MacNeil spread her arms wide and cried, "You are my people!" The hundreds of Canadian-born Gaels in the audience erupted into loud cheers.[8]

In 2005, Alan Lomax's recording of the 1951 Ceilidh was released for purchase on compact disc by Rounder Records. This and all of Lomax’s other recordings have since been digitized and put online by the .

Flora MacNeil died after a short illness on 15 May 2015, aged 86.[2]

Personal life[]

In 1955, Flora MacNeil married fellow Barra native, Alister MacInnes, who worked as a lawyer in Glasgow, where the couple raised their five children; Kenneth, Cairistiona, Seumas, Maggie and Donald. Alister and Flora's daughter, Maggie MacInnes, is also a Gaelic singer and harpist.[2]

Quote[]

  • "Traditional songs tended to run in families and I was fortunate that my mother and her family had a great love for the poetry and the music of the old songs. It was natural for them to sing, whatever they were doing at the time or whatever mood they were in. My aunt Mary, in particular, was always ready, at any time I called on her, to drop whatever she was doing, to discuss a song with me, and perhaps, in this way, long forgotten verses would be recollected. So I learned a great many songs at an early age without any conscious effort. As is to be expected on a small island, so many songs deal with the sea, but, of course, many of them may not originally be Barra songs. Nevertheless the old songs were preserved more in the southernmost islands of Barra and South Uist possibly because the Reformed Church tended to discourage music elsewhere."[9]

References[]

  1. ^ Brian Wilson (20 May 2015). "Flora MacNeil obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 May 2015.
  2. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g h "Flora MacNeil, the "Queen of Gaelic singers", dies at the age of 86". BBC News. 16 May 2015. Retrieved 16 May 2015.
  3. '^ Edited by Eberhard Bort (2011), Tis Sixty Years Since: The 1951 Edinburgh People's Festival Ceilidh and the Scottish Folk Revival, pages 75-80.
  4. '^ Edited by Eberhard Bort (2011), Tis Sixty Years Since: The 1951 Edinburgh People's Festival Ceilidh and the Scottish Folk Revival, page 199.
  5. '^ Edited by Eberhard Bort (2011), Tis Sixty Years Since: The 1951 Edinburgh People's Festival Ceilidh and the Scottish Folk Revival, pages 206-207.
  6. '^ Edited by Eberhard Bort (2011), Tis Sixty Years Since: The 1951 Edinburgh People's Festival Ceilidh and the Scottish Folk Revival, pages 208-209.
  7. '^ Edited by Eberhard Bort (2011), Tis Sixty Years Since: The 1951 Edinburgh People's Festival Ceilidh and the Scottish Folk Revival, pages 35-44.
  8. ^ Description of a 2000 Ceilidh in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia
  9. ^ "Hands Up for Trad – Scottish traditional music for all". Footstompin.com. Retrieved 16 May 2015.

External links[]

Alan Lomax Research Center[]

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