Songs Remembered in Exile

by John Lorne Campbell

In April 1932, John Lorne Campbell, while on a visit to the United States, took the chance of going to Cape Breton Island and Antigonish County in Eastern Nova Scottia, to find out how the descendants of emigrants from the Scottish Highlands and the Hebrides were faring in their new country, and to what extent the Gaelic language had been maintained among them. In September 1937, after four years on Barra, he returned with his wife, Margaret Fay Shaw, taking with them a recorder in order to collect Gaelic song and tradition and compare it with surviving tradition in the Western Isles. This book is the result of that expedition. As a preface the book includes an account of the collapse of the Hebridean kelp industry after 1820 which led to the bankruptcy of the last Chief of the MacNeils of Barra in the direct line, and which was a major contributory factor to the great flood of emigration from the Hebrides to Canada and America. The title refers to the traditional song and lore preserved by emigrants from Scotland in the new land to which they came. Much of the tradition has been lost in Scotland and was only to be found in Nova Scottia. The quality of the music in the original edition was a matter of considerable concern and this edition completely corrects and revises it.

246 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

John Lorne Campbell was a Scottish historian, farmer, environmentalist and folklore scholar.

In the 1930s Campbell was living on the Hebridean island of Barra where, with the author Compton Mackenzie, he founded the Sea League to fight for the rights of local fishermen and organised a strike of motorists in protest at having to pay tax on an island with no made-up roads. In 1935 he married the American musician Margaret Fay Shaw, whom he met on the island of South Uist. In 1938 the couple bought the island of Canna, south of Skye, and went to live there in Canna House. He farmed the island for 40 years and made it a sanctuary for wildlife. At the same time he continued to record a disappearing Gaelic heritage and to write and publish extensively about Gaelic and Highland culture and life. In 1981 Campbell gave Canna to the National Trust for Scotland, but he continued to live on the island.