Berneray, Gaelic song, and sheep dogs
Beautiful island attached to North Uist
I hope you enjoyed last week’s profile of the great Gaelic singer Julie Fowlis. Although she grew up in North Uist, she no longer lives there, so I asked her for suggestions of Gaelic singers who do still live in the area, who might sing for our group. I felt it important that our travelers have some personal experiences of Gaelic song and culture while visiting the Outer Hebrides.
Julie suggested I look up Duncan MacKinnon, a well known singer in his late 80s. He lives in Berneray, a small island about a half mile north of North Uist. Since 1999, the two islands have been connected via causeway.
I was able to connect with Duncan despite his serious hearing problems, which made it difficult for him to speak by phone, and no computer. A written letter on paper (remember those?) did reach him, and he was nice enough to write back. We were very fortunate to have had the chance to visit him in his home on several of our trips to Berneray. It was a window of opportunity that has since closed, as he is now in his 90s and virtually deaf.
Duncan’s father Hector had been a bard, who wrote songs documenting events and people. He wrote the poems but probably not the tunes. Gaelic poems were traditionally set to music using existing melodies. Bards were chroniclers or journalists of sorts, always very well respected in the community. Duncan also had a female bard in his family, an ancestor of his grandmother Mary MacLeod, who had the same name, Mairi MacLeod of Berneray. She died in 1707 and was buried in St Clement’s Church in Harris, which we visited later in our tour. A bagpipe lament was written for her.
One of the events Duncan’s father documented was the tragic sinking of the Iolaire off Lewis in 1919, with the loss of over 200 soldiers coming home from World War I, an event we’ve mentioned a few times in recent articles.
Before we visit Duncan MacKinnon’s home and present some photos and a link to a video, let’s explore the little island of Berneray. Below is a map, and next to that is a view of the causeway connecting Berneray to North Uist. The other two photos were taken from where we stayed, along the bay on the east coast.
Roughly 2 miles in diameter, the island is easy to get around. As we walked into town along the water, we came across ruins by the side of the road, as shown below. On the left is the infallible local weather forecasting system, which we found outside the local convenience store, an important place for finding necessities such as ice cream bars.
The ruins of that building are not old compared with Neolithic structures on the island, such as this standing stone.
Heading toward the West Beach, you cross broad expanses of machair, the special fertile soil made up of windblown seashell dust along the west coast of all the islands in the Outer Hebrides. Below you’ll spot members of our group walking in the distance, a view of the beautiful fields of flowers growing low in the sea winds, and a photo of Dorothy and me, on the machair in Berneray.
Here are some views of the West beach and the dune grasses nearby.
And here, below, a sea view and an arctic tern that my camera caught in mid-flight. This type of bird has the longest migration pattern in the animal kingdom. They breed in the arctic and subarctic regions of the far north, and summer in the far south near Antarctica, covering up to 45,000 miles round trip every year.
On one of our visits we arrived during Berneray Week, a time full of events, including three ceilidh dances and a concert, as well as races, craft sales, a Gaelic song class, sandcastles and kite flying, barbeques, and quizzes. We managed to go to one of the ceilidh dances, with a very lively band and dancers of all ages hanging out at tables and often getting up to dance.
Several times our trip coincided with a sheep dog competition. What a sight when the shepherd whistles for the dog to take off, the dog shoots far off to the side and zips to the end of the field, about as far as we could see, and crashes the party where four sheep were placidly munching on grass. The dog got them running toward us, around and through several obstacles, and if all went well, herded the sheep into a pen, which the shepherd would carefully close. It’s amazing to watch and hear the various whistles and commands making the dog move left or right or stop and crouch down to urge the sheep in exactly the right direction. One task they had to accomplish was to somehow separate the four sheep into two groups, threatening the right sheep at the right moment to create an opening, and then herding them in separate directions. Some of the shepherds had great dogs doing their every bidding; others were just learning the ropes. One time, a sheep got fed up and stood up to the dog as if it was going to fight, but mostly the sheep just acted… like sheep.
Duncan MacKinnon welcomed us into his kitchen, where we sat round his table as he told stories, sang songs, and pulled out a small accordion. We heard about his father and his songs, about how horses used to swim behind the ferryboat to get to the other side, about one horse he spotted that he knew had died a year ago but continued swimming with the ferry as a ghost, and other tales of the island.
At one point he wondered why we wanted to hear him sing, since the songs of the bards are all about the words and none of us spoke Gaelic, but he sang anyway and could tell how much we enjoyed it and appreciated him for doing it. One person asked him whether he had ever married, and he replied, “Why? Would would I do with all my girlfriends?!” I don’t know about his girlfriends but I do know he had some good friends who would come in and help him out with his cow, the telephone, mail and errands, as he lived alone by the sea.
In the photos below, you can see him as he sang, played accordion, and a view out of his window.
In 2021, the Celtic Connections Festival held a special event spotlighting the Music of North Uist. At that link, you’ll find a video of Duncan MacKinnon singing a song by his father, in which he names, praises and describes all the parts of Berneray. Another video features Julie Fowlis singing the beautiful “Eilean Uibhist Mo Rùin.” Still other videos on that page include a number of other island singers, pipers, harp, piano, and more. Gaelic lyrics and English translations are listed for all the songs as well.
We’ll end with “Fagail Bhearnaraigh (Leaving Berneray),” sung beautifully by Karen Matheson with Capercaillie.