Let's Talk Local History! A Zoom Conversation with Fiona J. McKenzie about Margaret Fay Shaw

Celebrating 125th Anniversary of Shaler Township! 

Margaret Fay Shaw was born in Glenshaw, in 1903, to the prosperous steel manufacturing family of Henry Clay Shaw and his wife Fanny Patchin. She was the youngest of five sisters. She was orphaned at a young age and was brought up by her aunts and sisters before being sent to school in Helensburgh, Scotland in 1920,to study for a year. A talented piano player, here she heard Gaelic song for the first time and decided that was what she wanted to do with her life. After studying music in New York and Paris, she travelled to Scotland and ended up living there for the rest of her life, collecting and transcribing a lifestyle in the Hebrides which no longer exists.  

This illustrated presentation will describe her early life in Pittsburgh and the work she carried out in Scotland which has made her one of the world's most important Scottish folklore collectors, despite being a native of Pennsylvania. She died in 2004 at the age of 101 and is buried on the island of South Uist in the Outer Hebrides.  It took a girl from Pittsburgh to save ,for the future,  a vital part of Scottish history.

Fiona J. Mackenzie, MA.  MA, Dip.Lib, Aberdeen University and University of the West of Scotland,  from the Scottish Highlands, was the Archivist for the Canna Collections in the Inner Hebrides  of Scotland for almost ten years.   Canna House is the home of the world renowned Campbell  Collections of Gaelic Folklore and Song, created by folklorist Dr. John Lorne Campbell and his wife Dr. Margaret Fay Shaw. Fiona is an award-winning Gaelic singer and songwriter and has       released three CD’s on the Greentrax label.  She attributes the work of Margaret Fay Shaw, Campbell and John Lorne Campbell as being the sources which inspired her to pursue a career in Gaelic song and Folklore.  She has performed and lectured extensively on the Campbell’s work in North America and Europe including Harvard and St Francis Xavier, Nova Scotia. She published the first collection of Shaw’s island photography with Birlinn in 2018  and will be publishing the first biography of Shaw in 2025.