An Long Hirteach / St Kilda Mailboat
Anne Lorne Gillies

© 2004 Brigh Productions BR003
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Rare and beautiful songs from the Scottish Hebridean Island of St Kilda, a World Heritage Site where now only the birds sing...

All the tracks on the album either come from St Kilda (Britain's remotest inhabited island), or have a direct connection to it. The album is a unique view into what must have been an incredible lifestyle living on such a remote and rugged island.

Anne Lorne Gillies singing is exquisite as always and makes this collection of works simply a joy to listen to. You can feel yourself being transported back in time and space to St Kilda itself...

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.

Extraordinarily tuneful songs: the St Kildans were described as unusually musical by Martin Martin at the end of the 17^th century, and this is reflected in every one of the songs on this album.  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.

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. And there is a brand-new version of the Australian songwriter Paul Kelly’s five-times platinum track “From St Kilda to Kings Cross”: it paints a picture of a modern St Kildan leaving his home in Melbourne to go to Sydney and features an all too rare contribution from the legendary Australian-born pianist Peggy O’ Keefe. Peggy started out her professional career in Melbourne’s St Kilda.