At long last, we are able to invite members and guests to a face to face lecture, although it will also be streamed via Zoom for our overseas members. The meeting will take place at the Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Place, Edinburgh EH1 6QE on Friday 8 April at 1.00 pm. It features Dr Virginia Blankenhorn of the Department of Celtic at the University of Edinburgh and her subject is The Legacy of Marjorie Kennedy Fraser.
Marjorie Kennedy-Fraser (1857–1930) was an Edinburgh-based singer, music-teacher and folksong-collector with a classical training. Although her Songs of the Hebrides enjoyed great success during her lifetime, Kennedy-Fraser’s name fell under a cloud immediately following her death in 1930, with the likes of Sorley Maclean and John Lorne Campbell accusing her of wantonly appropriating and damaging the song heritage of the Gael. This talk will take a look at Kennedy-Fraser’s legacy, including what she was accused of (and why), what she actually accomplished, and how her work continues to influence how Gaelic song is performed and heard today.
Dr Virginia Blankenhorn is an Honorary Fellow in Celtic and Scottish Studies at Edinburgh University. She received a B.A. in music from Wellesley College, and pursued post-graduate study in Celtic Studies at Harvard University, the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies and Edinburgh University.
Dr Blankenhorn’s publications include works on Irish vernacular poetic metre, paralinguistic features in modern spoken Irish, and the song traditions of both Ireland and Gaelic Scotland. The essay on which this talk is based, ‘Songs of the Hebrides and the Critics’, appears in her book Tradition, Transmission, Transformation: Essays on Scottish Gaelic Poetry and Song, supported financially by the Royal Celtic Society and published by Peter Lang Ltd in 2019.
Admission costs £5.00 on the door (£2.00 for society members, senior citizens and students). Admission to the Zoom meeting is by PayPal donation. Please email info@royalcelticsociety.scot for the link.