Big Mairi of the Songs
  • Maureen
    Posts: 678
    I was just watching "Grand Tour of the Scottish Islands" on Amazon Prime, and Season 1, Episode 6 is about Skye.

    About 11 minutes in, they start talking about Mary McPherson, the Victorian Gaelic songwriter who popularized the tune Bunessan with her Christmas carol, "Child of Wonder" (aka a bunch of English and Gaelic titles). There is even a photo of her! It is cool!

    (For whatever reason, the presenter says a lot of stupid stuff in the rest of this ep, whereas other eps in the series are as good as the research and landscape video. They do paint McPherson as mainly a protest singer, whereas she was more of a local person writing and singing about local stuff of interest. But a photo!)
  • Maureen
    Posts: 678
    Oh crud. Ignore. Apparently my info (and that of many people's) was wrong. "Leanabh an Aigh" was written by Mary MacDonald (who was from Bunessan), but was often attributed to Big Mary instead.
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