"You have to know the past to understand the present.”

The past. The present. The future. I am here today and in the position I am in because of what has happened in the past and this is why I am so proud of my heritage. My roots. My traditions. My family.

One of my courses at university is Listening and Musicianship. Our tutor a selt-taught jazz flautist has a real interest in folk music. This has got me thinking. I love a good ceilidh. Always have. Skerryvore are my friends. So I felt I needed to research this music even more. I have begun to play more trad. music on my flute and have even inherited the family fiddle so I can learn how to play trad. on the violin. I have become obsessed.

When sorting through my huge quantities of sheet music recently, I came across an SATB unaccompanied setting of the Iona Boat Song. The story goes that this melody was sung by the monks of long long ago, when they rowed the dead Kings of Scotland from the mainland to be buried on the sacred island of Iona, neighbouring the Isle of Mull, off the West Coast of Scotland. Macbeth and Duncan, who were immortalised in the play "Macbeth" by William Shakespeare are buried there and their graves can still be found today. The melody was arranged and the words written by Sir. Hugh S.Roberton

Softly glide we along,
Softly chant we our song
For a king who is resting is come.
O, beloved and best
We are faring out West
To the dear Isle Iona, my home.

Calmly there shalt thou lie
With thy fathers gone by,
Their dust mingled deep with thine own,
Ne'er again to awake,
Till the last dawn shall break
And the trump of the judgement is blown.

Softly glide we along,
Softly chant we our song,
For a king who is resting is come.
O, beloved and best
We are faring out West
To the dear Isle Iona, my home
To the dear Isle Iona, my home.

Re-acquainting myself with this beautiful setting of words to music reminded of the story behind the Gaelic hymn composed in the Scottish Highlands called Bunessan. I first heard this story read and sung by the Scottish singer, songwriter, broadcaster, author, academic and all round genius Anne Lorne Gillies at the Cancer Research Christmas Concert at Glasgow Cathedral last year. I can't remember the whole story behind it but it was truly wonderful and my plan is to find it and share it with you. I don't know where I will find the information. But I will. The basics to the story are a well know Gaelic hymn originated as Bunessan became Child in a Manger and then as it is popularly known as now Morning has Broken. It's a cracker and really highlights the influences of traditional folk music. 

I'm so tired. You shouldn't really expect two blog posts from me in a day but I can't sleep due to the looming Style Studies deadline and the fireworks that are still going off in the Meadows at 0100. The joys of city life. Roll on the 14th of December when I go back to Buchanan for a family filled, country-side Christmas! Before that though, Carmina Burana with RSNO, Paul Mealor Cruxifius with NYCoS, 3 deadlines, 5 rehearsals and a singing lesson and that's only this weeks activities! The life of a music student. Always busy. 


"Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life." ~Berthold Auerbach


AAM x

"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song." Maya Angelou

"Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. When you read you being with A-B-C, when you sing you begin with DO-RE-MI."

So I did start a blog earlier on this year, but I lost interest in it very quickly. I have now also forgotten my username and password for my old blog. So here I am, silly me. Starting again.

I am currently a second year music student at The University of Edinburgh and one day I hope to enter the professional world. It is my love, my dream and nothing makes me happier than when I am singing. Whether in a foreign language or in my native English, I just love to tell a story through music. It's a big hope but as Mozart once said, "Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love that is the soul of genius." Music is in everybody's lives in some way or another and when music fails to agree to the ear, to soothe the ear and the heart and the sense, then it has obviously missed the point.

I will come and go to this blog when I have time to write it in amoungst RSNO Chorus rehearsals, EUMS rehearsals, NYCoS rehearsals, singing lessons, uni work and my non-existant social life.

Viva Verdi! Ciao for now

AAM