TOBAR AN DUALCHAIS - Key Persons
Angus MacLellan was well known in South Uist for three things - his expert skills with sheep, with horses, and his storytelling. His storytelling ability, which he also shared with his sister Marion Campbell (Bean Nìll), was lauded by the many scholars who visited him, and he could remember simple tales by hearing them once, and longer, more complex tales after hearing them three times. He was known to have a unique talent for dramatizing his characters:
"Aonghus Beag possesses to an uncommon degree the power of reproducing the conversation of his characters, and of carrying his voice to imitate their tone, whether it be of an angry general, a disagreeable crone, a self-pitying drunkard, or the despairing mother on whom the fairies have inflicted a changeling for her own infant. He is also an expert in the art of giving a spoken story form and climax." - John Lorne Campbell (1960), 'Stories from South Uist', p. x.
MacLellan was recorded extensively from the 1940s onwards by John Lorne Campbell, Calum Maclean, and Donald Archie MacDonald, and Tobar an Dualchais is privileged to have more than 400 tracks featuring Angus MacLellan available online. These cover a vast range of material, from personal stories from his boyhood, and his time on the mainland, to stories about Cù Chulainn, the Fenians, and about the supernatural. He leaves behind precious legacy of material which reminds us not only of the extreme poverty and oppression in 19th-century Uist, but also of the resilience and endurance of a rich oral culture which weathered hundreds of years of attempts to dismiss and destroy it.
Job Titles:
- Data Editor & Transcriber
Job Titles:
- College Librarian - Sabhal Mòr Ostaig
Donald Archie MacDonald (Dòmhnall Eairdsidh Ghearraidh Iain) was born on 8 September 1929 in Sollas, North Uist. A renowned Gaelic scholar and folklorist, he dedicated a lifelong career to the recording of Gaelic story and song, and of Hebridean and Highland life. During his thirty-two years with the School of Scottish Studies, MacDonald carried out fieldwork across the Gàidhealtachd - from Islay in the south, to Lewis in the north, and also in Ross-shire and Sutherland on the mainland. As a legacy he leaves around eight hundred tapes of recordings, many of which we have the privilege of hosting on the Tobar an Dualchais website.
Donald Archie MacDonald grew up in a bilingual household in North Uist. His father was from Uist, his family having been there for two hundred years, and his mother was from Caithness. Growing up in two cultures, the wealth of tradition in his native area was no doubt apparent to him from an early age. He received his initial schooling at Paible School, before leaving Uist to receive a secondary education across the Minch in Portree. He excelled academically in Portree, and in 1948 he won a place at the University of Edinburgh where he took two honours degrees - one in English Language, graduating in 1953, and one in Celtic, graduating in 1955.
Upon graduating from Edinburgh, MacDonald worked in Register House in Edinburgh, then with the National Library of Scotland in the manuscripts section. He joined the School of Scottish Studies in July 1962 as a research fellow and remained an employee of the School for the rest of his career. He was particularly passionate about the oral traditions of Scotland, and in 1966 he established a study archive for oral narrative, which made the archives more accessible to postgraduate students and researchers.
He took great pleasure from his work at the School, and held several positions there, including researcher, lecturer, and eventually Director of the School. Together with Dr Alan Bruford, he established the 'Tocher' journal, which drew on the wealth of recordings in the School of Scottish Studies, transcribing and translating recordings, and making them available to a wider audience. He continued as co-editor of the journal for a number of years. He maintained a strong working partnership with Bruford throughout his career, and in 1994 they published 'Scottish Traditional Tales' together, which was a tribute to their work collecting folklore across Scotland.
On the Tobar an Dualchais website there are currently around 4,500 tracks recorded by Donald Archie MacDonald from a large variety of people with their own unique backgrounds and experiences. The majority of the recordings were carried out between 1960 and 1980, and around half of these are from Barra and South Uist, with a considerable number also coming from MacDonald's native North Uist, Benbecula, Islay, and Skye. The content is incredibly varied, from supernatural stories to waulking songs to information about traditional ways of working the land. There are also recordings which feature discussions about the process of remembering traditional songs and stories in a traditional oral culture.
Prominent contributors recorded by Donald Archie MacDonald include Donald Alasdair Johnson (Dòmhnall Alasdair mac Iain Mhòir 'ic Dhòmhnaill 'ic Iain 'ic Raghnaill) (1889-1978) of Ardmore, South Uist; Sorley Maclean (Somhairle mac Chaluim 'ic Chaluim 'ic Iain) (1911-1996) of Òsgaig, Raasay; Peter Morrison (Pàdruig Ghilleasbuig Phàdruig 'ic Iain) (1889-1978) of Grimsay, North Uist; Kate MacDonald (Bean Eairdsidh Raghnaill) (1897-1977) of Garryhallie, South Uist; and Gilbert Clark (1904-1989) of Port Charlotte, Islay.
Job Titles:
- Director of Development, Fundraising and the Arts - Sabhal Mòr Ostaig
Job Titles:
- Curator, School of Scottish Studies Archives
George Moss was also the featured artist on a volume of the 'Scottish Tradition' series of commercial albums, a project initiated by Peter as a collaboration between the School of Scottish Studies and Tangent Records: "As a musician […], I was […] concerned that the best of a huge store of music recordings accumulating in the School's archives needed to be made publicly available and much of my time and energy, apart from teaching, went into working with colleagues to select and publish music itself rather than words about music." Peter acted as series editor for fifteen volumes between 1971 and 1989, and these were reissued on the Greentrax label in CD format in the 1990s, with additional volumes continuing to be added to this day.
Hamish Henderson was the first person from the School of Scottish Studies to meet Kate while visiting the Western Isles, five years before the establishment of the School in 1951. She was first recorded by Polly Hitchcock from the School in 1951 and then by Calum Iain Maclean and his brother Alasdair in 1953. Other fieldworkers who made recordings of her included Donald Archie MacDonald, Alan Bruford, Peter Cooke, and Angus John MacDonald. In total, around 200 of her repertoire of songs were recorded from a wide range of genres, the most notable being her repertoire of waulking songs.
Although Kate was recorded singing many times, she always declined to talk about herself or to acknowledge her extraordinary talents. Paying tribute to Kate after her death in 1977, Donald Archie MacDonald commented that: "Even if she had never sung a song Kate MacDonald would still have been remarkable - for her humanity, her dignity, her sparkle, her ready wit and her infectious sense of fun. She was one of the most remarkable people I have known, and I cared for her greatly."
Job Titles:
- Representing the National Trust for Scotland
John Hewit was born in 1900 in the village of Heiton, Roxburghshire, where he worked as the village blacksmith - the fourth generation of his family to do so. He married Mary Laidlaw in 1921 and had three children - Robert, Ada, and Ethel. His son Robert (Bob) took over as the blacksmith and farrier in Heiton and was the last generation of the Hewit family to fulfil this role. He features in the book 'The Last Blacksmith' by Ron Hewit (Robert's son), who writes about the family history of the Hewits of Heiton, and their roles as blacksmiths and farriers in the village.
John was a keen birdwatcher, and a lover of the countryside and wildlife in general. He was also very fond of the work of Robert Burns, and played a major role in the Heiton Burns Club, which held very popular annual Burns Suppers in the local village hall. Following his death, the village Burns Club dedicated a bench in the village to his memory.*
John was recorded by Calum Iain MacLean in September 1956. He speaks on a variety of subjects, from his work as a blacksmith, to local anecdotes, local traditions, and nature.
John MacDonald was born in Highbridge, near Spean Bridge in the Highlands, the third eldest of 11 children. The family's original name had been MacGillivantic, but they changed their name to MacDonald after the 1871 census. The MacGillivantics are thought to originally have come from the Isle of Barra and the first recorded MacGillivantic was Dòmhnall Ruadh Beag Mac Gille Mhantaich who was present at the Battle of Leachdar in 1497. By that time the MacGillivantics had allied themselves to the MacDonalds.
John's father, James (Seumas Ruadh) was a stone mason who travelled throughout Lochaber with his work. On his travels he learned place names and stories relating to every part of the landscape, and passed this knowledge on to his son John. In this recording from 1953, John talks about learning stories from some of the elderly men in the community. He also tells how people would come to listen to stories told by his father.
After leaving school John worked as a railway surfaceman on the West Highland line. On his retiral, he worked for a further nineteen years as a roadman with Inverness-shire County Council until he lost his sight in his early eighties.
As a renowned local historian, John contributed information to several publications, including ‘Bygone Lochaber' written by Somerled MacMillan and D.K. Brooster's book ‘The Flight of the Heron'. There was also an article written about him in the Scottish Daily Express in May 1962.
In the book ‘The Highlands' Calum Maclean recalls his first encounter with John and that John "could not remember how many songs he had composed, perhaps a hundred or two [hundred]. He had just composed a song in praise of the young Scots who had removed the Stone of Destiny from Westminster Abbey. The Stone was then at large. We crouched down behind a wall and he sang the song. It was full of vigour and fire … I knew I had met a real character."
Job Titles:
- Honorary Fellow - University of Edinburgh
MacDonald, Donald Archie, 'Mrs Kate MacDonald, Bean Eairdsidh Raghnaill (1897-1977): in memory of a notable singer from South Uist', in Tocher vol. 27: Tales, Songs, Traditions: Selected from the Archives of the School of Scottish Studies (Winter 1977), ed. by Alan Bruford, pp. 129-135
Job Titles:
- Researcher at the School of Scottish Studies
Stuart MacDonald, ‘The MacGillivantic MacDonalds and John, Bard of Highbridge' (Lochaber Pamphlet No. 3)
Job Titles:
- Executive Producer - BBC Gàidhlig
Job Titles:
- Professor at the Department of German
Alan James Bruford was born and brought up in Edinburgh, and would go on to have a profound influence on the development and resources of the School of Scottish Studies in his capacity as Archivist, and later also Senior Lecturer, from 1965 until his untimely death in 1995.
Bruford was born in 1937 to a scholarly family; his father, Walter Bruford, was a professor at the Department of German at the University of Edinburgh and encouraged his son's academic inclination. As it happened, Walter would also be one of the key lobbyists in the late 1940s for the creation of the School of Scottish Studies.
Following his early education at Edinburgh Academy and Winchester College, Alan Bruford chose to read History and Anglo-Saxon at St John's College Cambridge, after which he returned to Edinburgh to earn his PhD. This doctoral research involved analysing the development of Irish and Scottish Gaelic folk tales from literary medieval Irish romances, and Bruford consequently spent a great deal of time in Ireland, including work at the Irish Folklore Commission. His thesis was published by The Folklore Society of Ireland as 'Gaelic Folk-tales and Mediaeval Romances' - considered both then and now as a seminal work on the topic.
In 1965, Bruford was appointed to the School of Scottish Studies as its permanent Archivist, responsible for accessioning and documenting the field recordings made by the School's researchers, which he did with a meticulous gusto. However, he also took upon himself the further roles of fieldworker and researcher; Donald Archie MacDonald, Bruford's long-time friend and collaborator, commented:
"He had already made some recordings for the Archives before he joined the Staff of the School in January 1965. However, his first major fieldwork exercise as a member of Staff was in South Uist in Autumn 1965. His own Progress Report for the period […] refers to this as follows: 'I spent a month […] in South Uist in order to improve my understanding and speaking of Gaelic; this was reasonably successful, though I cannot yet claim to be fluent. While there I recorded ten tapes of songs and stories and made one or two valuable new contacts: new tradition bearers can still be found even in such a thoroughly worked area."
Bruford's contribution to the study and preservation of Gaelic folklore is extensive and invaluable to our understanding of both of the Gaelic oral tradition and of life in the Highlands in the late 19th and 20th centuries. On the Tobar an Dualchais website, there are over one thousand recordings in Gaelic of traditional tales, song, and local information - much of which was recorded on field trips across the width and breadth of the Highlands and Islands with Donald Archie MacDonald, and often also with Mary MacDonald.
The majority of these recordings took place in the 1960s, and with a notable focus on areas of the Highlands where Gaelic was only spoken by the older generation such as in Morar, Kintyre, Sutherland, Jura, and Colonsay. Bruford also carried out a significant amount of work in Islay which has proved particularly important given the precarious decline of Gaelic in the latter half of the twentieth century. Notable contributors recorded by Bruford on the Mainland and in the Southern Hebrides include John Shaw of Jura; John MacArthur of Islay; Angus MacLellan of Mallaigvaig (1892-1978); and Dolly Ann MacDougall of Colonsay (1888-1975).
In addition to his work in the Gaelic-speaking communities of the Mainland and the Southern Hebrides, Bruford also carried out work in strong Gaelic-speaking communities in the Outer Hebrides and Skye, recording some of the most significant tradition bearers of the time, such as Nan MacKinnon of Vatersay (1903-1982); Kate MacDonald of Garryhallie (1897-1977); Annie Arnott of Linicro (1887-1978) and Mrs Mòr Stewart of Barra.
Besides his major interest in Gaelic narrative traditions, Bruford would conduct significant fieldwork all over Scotland, resulting in one of the largest collecting contributions to the School's archives. In the Tobar an Dualchais website alone, his fieldwork recordings number almost 2,500 tracks at the time of writing, and more will be added as time passes.
Job Titles:
- Senior Lecturer in Scottish Ethnology - University of Edinburgh