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July 21, 2004
ST KILDA MAILBOAT
The first ‘St Kilda mailboat’ was sent out as a distress signal in 1876 from the remote island group of St Kilda, in the Outer Hebrides 87 kms off Scotland. Food was short and a visiting journalist wanted to be ‘rescued’.
A letter was placed in a watertight container, with a sheep’s bladder to act as a float, and set loose to sail wherever the prevailing Atlantic currents would carry it. Since then, St Kilda mailboats have been launched from time to time, more for the amusement of visitors than as a genuine signal of distress. Many have been washed ashore in Scotland or Scandinavia.
The custom has given its name to St Kilda Mailboat, an album of 20 songs about St Kilda, Scotland and St Kilda, Australia. Mostly in Scots Gaelic, the songs are performed by distinguished Gaelic singer and academic, Dr Anne Lorne Gillies.
Dr Gillies included Paul Kelly’s iconic “From St Kilda to Kings Cross” on the CD after making contact with the City of Port Phillip earlier this year. She was accompanied on the track by distinguished Australian pianist Peggy O’ Keefe.
“Peggy began her days on a dairy-farm in Warrnambool and trained at the Melbourne Conservatorium. She came to Scotland on a three-month contract in 1962, and has been here ever since! But she still talks with affection of how she began her professional career while living in a flat in St Kilda,” Dr Gillies said.
St Kilda, with its jagged cliffs and boiling seas, is Britain’s remotest inhabited island group. The principal island is known in Gaelic as Hiort or – more properly – Hirt. Gaelic-speaking communities lived in Hirt for at least a millennia until their evacuation in 1930. According to the Skyeman Martin Martin, who visited the islands in 1697, about 180 people lived in Hirt and they were an exceptionally lively and musical people. The archipelago is now owned by the National Trust of Scotland.
The idea for the album first arose in 2002 while Dr Gillies was performing and lecturing on board the National Trust for Scotland’s Hebridean cruise.
“The audiences were delighted with all the St Kilda songs which are universally understandable songs about love and longing and loss, work and play, happiness and sorrow, yet full of local colour – customs, language, preoccupations, a way of thinking which could only have emanated from this most remote of communities.
“Most of the carefully researched material is very old and hitherto unrecorded. It brings to life the people who once lived in the islands – where now only the birds sing. We send our mailboat forth on behalf of the Gaelic-speaking people who once lived in Hirt. And we hope it may reach, and be enjoyed by, some of their descendants across the world – and of course those who love music and culture everywhere,” she said.
Dr Gillies stresses that it is not just an album for the antiquarian.
“The musical arrangements sparkle with originality, and some of the tracks are modern, including the Scots songwriter Brian McNeill’s classic ballad about Ewen Gillies – a St Kildan man who spent most of his days gold-prospecting in Australia and America. Then there is a performance of Professor Douglas Dunn’s wonderful poem “St Kilda’s Parliament”, with Rhona and Eddie painting heart-breaking musical pictures behind the words,” she said.
Port Phillip Mayor Dick Gross said that he was delighted to learn about St Kilda Mailboat.
“While the palm trees in St Kilda might have it hard, they're on easy beach compared to the former inhabitants of St Kilda, Scotland who were forced to petition for evacuation in 1930. Life there was incredibly grim.
“Here in St Kilda Australia we're all thrilled to have reconnected with such a vital part of our past. We hope this is the first of many new connections,” he said.
As a result of contacting the City of Port Phillip, Dr Gillies was put in touch with Dr Ronald McCoy is a long-time Melbourne St Kilda resident, Gaelic language scholar, singer and teacher who visits Scotland each year for National Gaelic singing competitions, where he has won first places in Gaelic language competitions.
"Ironically, I first learned Gaelic from a language program that Anne produced and have enjoyed her music over the years, but this CD is really special," said Dr McCoy.
"The story of St Kilda is fascinating and Anne's singing has really captured this intriguing history. The joys, the work and lives of the people that once lived there for many generations. Women's work songs, rarely heard, which sound as fresh as the first day they would have been sung, rowing songs, lullabies and tragic songs that realistically depict the of the harsh life and death struggles of the inhabitants before they all left the island. Many of them emigrated to Australia.”
On a recent visit, Dr McCoy climbed the tallest mountain on the remote Scottish Island of South Uist, just to see St Kilda 80 kms miles out in the Atlantic Ocean.
“Since that time, I have collected much information on the life and times of the Scottish St Kildans and their relationship to us here in our Melbourne St Kilda, but Anne's music, poetry and songs has vividly brought to life this part of our heritage more than words could ever possibly do," he said.
Dr McCoy will be a guest of the St Kilda Historical Society on February 20 next year when he will discuss the life, times and music of the people of St Kilda.
In 1852 thirty-six St Kildans emigrated to Australia though St Kilda, the suburb, did not take its name from those homesick immigrants, despite the inference on the CD cover. The suburb takes its name from the schooner, The Lady of St Kilda, which was often moored off the foreshore from 1841 onwards.
The ship was named after the islands which its owner, Sir Thomas Acland and his wife, Lydia, visited early in their marriage. The ship’s figurehead depicted a woman, thought to be Lady Acland. (The name Acland is commemorated, of course, in the name of one of St Kilda’s main streets.)
There are various theories as to how the St Kilda off Scotland got its name. The islands are said to have been inhabited by Norwegians from the 9th to the 15th centuries, and as there is an excellent fresh water spring, the name may originate from the Nordic name for spring, “kilde”.
According to documents in the State Library, St Kilda was actually called “Sakilda” or “Sakilder”, a Scandinavian word for a row of shields, the archipelago’s appearance as it was approached by sea. A Dutchman in the 1600s allegedly made a mistake in copying a map and mistook the first ‘a’ in “Sakilda” for a ‘t’ or missed it al together because of a crease mark. Whatever the real story, everyone is agreed that there was never a Saint Kilda.
Dr Gillies is accompanied on the CD by Rhona Mackay, Eddie McGuire and Stephen Adam on cello and keyboards, Argyll musician Ben Edom on guitar, vocals and bodhran and the young Ayrshire virtuoso Duncan MacColl on pipes and guitar.
The cover of the CD features a brand-new painting by one of Scotland’s leading artists, Frances Walker. Entitled “Leaving St Kilda”, it was sketched when Frances was a passenger on board the Black Prince and is featured in her exhibition “Passing Islands”.
A copy of the CD was placed in a St Kilda “mailboat” last month and we are yet to see where the tide will take it.
Further info: Contact Dr Anne Lorne Gillies, Brìgh Productions,
anne@annelornegillies.co.uk
Tel: 01560 484500 * Mobile: 077 1777 4863 *
* Please note that these are United Kingdom phone numbers,
there is a time difference of about 11 hours between Australia and the UK.
Copyright
Carmel Shute
Media Officer
City of Port Phillip
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