Angus Macleod - Introduction, Introduction

[Angus]

Hello,

My name is Angus Macleod and I have recently joined The Highlander Radio Community Forum. My family originated on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland's Outer Hebrides, before being evicted from their croft and transported overseas by Lewis landlord James Matheson. Both my father and grandfather were native Gaelic speakers. In fact my grandfather and great grandmother were both talented interpreters of Gaelic song. My earliest memories of my grandfather are of a kindly old gentleman singing to me in a strange and awkward tongue. At the time I thought that the old man was making up his own "special" language. I was in my teens before my father explained to me that my grandfather was really singing to me in Gaelic, the ancestral tongue of our Hebridean homeland.

Last year I released a CD entitled The Silent Ones, A Legacy of the Highland Clearances. The recording tells the story (in song) of 109 families who were evicted from their crofts on Scotland's Isle of Lewis in 1851 and shipped overseas, settling together in a block of farms in Bruce County, Canada. The group who has become known as the Lewis Settlers maintained their language and culture well into the 20th century. I even know a couple of local families who still speak Gaelic in the home.

The Silent Ones CD is especially dear to my heart as I am direct descendant of these Gaelic pioneers. In February of 1998, I left a comfortable administration job and returned to Bruce County where I set up Torquil Productions and Recording Studio on land first cleared and settled by great grandfather and namesake, Angus Macleod (a native of Mid Borve on the Isle of Lewis' west side and one of the evicted crofters). The Silent Ones was recorded, there, on the very homestead of my great grandfather. Producing the recording at the exact location where my ancestors lived, breathed and toiled so diligently in the Canadian wilderness was truly an emotional and deeply spiritual experience for me.

The motivation to research and record The Silent Ones CD came as a direct result of a family history fact finding mission. The location was the Isle of Lewis in Scotland's Outer Hebrides where on a cold and rainy November morning I found myself surveying the ocean and a tiny collection of ruins which looked more like randomly placed rock piles than former dwellings. I had come to Lewis with my aging father to find the village of our ancestors. With the village in sight and tears dripping down my cheeks from the emotion of the moment and from the gale force winds pounding off the Atlantic, the motivation to pursue my life long dream came like a thunderclap.
Returning to Canada, I vowed to tell the story of my family and their forced exile from their ancestral homeland - a story that can be echoed by literally hundreds of thousands of Canadians of Highland and Island descent. To tell the story I knew that I had to return to the place of my childhood - a place where there was still a glimmer of my Hebridean past, a place where images for The Silent Ones were first stirred within in me some forty years earlier.
My production company, Torquil, is devoted to preserving the Highland and Hebridean Heritage of North America with The Silent Ones CD being the new company's flagship production. We are also involved with a number of community related activities including a Gaelic learning program and an annual Hebridean Heritage Festival. The first festival took place last August and we had visitors from all over North America in attendance (Washington State, Oregon, Colorado, Texas, California, New York State, Manitoba and New Brunswick - just to name a few locations). In addition, a special contingent made the trek over from the Isle of Lewis. The contingent included the Convenor (Mayor) of the Western Isles and the Gaelic Development Officer.

I spent around three and a half years researching and recording The Silent Ones project, interviewing old-timers, pouring over seemingly ancient manuscripts and family histories kept many of the area's Lewis descendants. Many of the area's older generation still possess wonderful old photos, family bibles and a variety of antique artifacts including a spinning wheel dating back to the 1700's brought to Canada during the 1851 Lewis evictions.

The Lewis Settlers were, of course, deeply religious people with the church being the focal point of their community. Like most Gaels, however, they had a pagan and mystical side to them and were quite superstitious. Aeneas McCharles, a Cape Bretoner, who was the settlement's first schoolmaster, chronicled his experiences among the Lewis Settlers in his book, Bemocked of Destiny. In the book he describes a couple of strange ritualistic ceremonies conducted by a woman known as the Lewis Witch. She also pops up in a number of local history books and within the folklore of individual families in Huron Township, Bruce County. She appears to have been a practitioner of herbal medicine who also performed some fairly bizarre fertility rituals.

Interestingly enough, I have been contacted by several Lewis based historical societies regarding McCharles' book and the Lewis Witch in particular. On the Isle of Lewis, little is known about the music, dance and customs of the island during the 18th and early 19th centuries. Presumably, such things would have been considered pagan and vigorously resisted by the church. Because written and documented material was largely confined to the church and to business, there are few accounts of rural life and culture on Lewis for this time period. It is therefore quite interesting that the Lewis folk's pagan side would pop up here deep in the Canadian wilderness thousands of miles from the settlers' homeland.

Further information on The Silent Ones CD, the Lewis Settlement of Huron Township, Bruce County, Canada and the Highland Clearances in general can be found at my website located at http://www.torquil.net

I look forward to participating in the group! I put some pictures in the photo section of the site. In case anyone wonders why I am wearing the MacLeod of Harris Kilt and not the MacLeod of Lewis, it is for sentimental reasons ? the kilt was my grandfather?s.

Mise Le Meas

Aonghas MacLeoid              


Some Media Response to my CD


"a must for anyone who wants to understand the many links between Scots and
the New World."

from a review by
Alasdair Maclean
The Scots Magazine
Dundee, Scotland

"The production is exceptionally good, very much in the style of
Capercaillie at their best.
...Unless you happen to be a blinkered adherent of heavy metal or
improvisational jazz or are totally devoid of a soul, this recording
deserves a place in your CD rack."

From a review by
Brian Palmer
The Ileach Newspaper
And Web
Isle of Islay, Argyll
Scotland

Nominated for Album of the Year
"The story and history are fascinating and the music is stunning."

Patrick Laffan
Host/Producer
Celtic Connections
Radio Show
Middletown, CT

"The music of The Silent Ones is absolutely stunning, both in performance
and content, more so, because it comes from deep within the soul of Angus
Macleod. Perhaps all Celtic music flows from the heart, but very little of
it has the heartfelt quality of The Silent Ones."

Frank A. Mills
Celtic Heritage Magazine
Halifax, Nova Scotia

"a hauntingly beautiful experience"

Moira Mackay
Scottish Memories Magazine

"hauntingly beautiful...Angus Macleod's music has a compelling eloquence..."

SCOTS - Celebrating Our Scottish Heritage Magazine
Bowral, N.S.W., Australia

[maggiemahone1]

Hi Angus, First of all I welcome you to the Highlander Radio community.  Second, I think it is absolutely wonderful the way you are preserving your family history.  I am a big fan of genealogy, the bug bit me about 13 years ago when an uncle gave me, my great grandfather's family bible.  It is one of my most prized possesions and I hold it dear to my heart.  Third it takes a lot of guts to pack up and leave everything that you have known and go to a new place, but I wonder if it wasn't like coming home...You have a very nice website.  Are those your highland cows you are standing by in one of the pictures? Take care and don't be shy to post.  Everyone here is great and we like to know what's going on in all parts of the world.

maggiemahone1

[Aon_Daonna]

Welcome here =)
And I will certainly see if I can get it in germany =)

[aklassie]

Hi Angus, Welcome to the forum.  It's really wonderful what you're doing.  I look forward to visiting your site.  I hope you will stop by often.  We're not just friends here, we're family.

[Angus]

Thank you aklassie, Aon_Daonna and maggiemahone1 for the warm welcome to the forum. It's very much appreciated. I know that i will enjoy participating! aklassie, I hope you enjoy my site - we are going to be updating it in the next couple of weeks. Aon_Daonna, unfortunately the CD is not available in Germany in stores. We are working on it though. I do however ship my CD to locations all over the world and have received orders from Austalia, New Zealand, Europe, UK, Ireland, USA etc. The CD can be ordered from my web page. maggiemahone1, I love family bibles and have a collection of over 30 gaelic Bibles that have been given to me by Lewis descendants residing in my area. I also have my grandfather's Gaelic Bible which I treasure the most. Coming back to Huron Township's Lewis Settlement was truly like "coming home". In fact, I have never felt so at ease and fulfilled. My favourite place, here, is the old Lewis Cemetery, burial ground for many of my ancestors including my great great grandparents Murdo and Annie Macleod. The cemetery is located in a forrested area of the township and is quite remote. When I go there I feel this undescribable connection to my family's past. In fact, the very first time I visited the site I had a very strong feeling that I had been there before. I asked my father about it, thinking that perhaps I had been there as a child, but he assured me that I had never ever visited the Cemetery. I have since put it down to some kind of genetic recall.

Thanks again for the warm welcome. I am looking forward to visiting the forum often.

Angus Macleod
http://www.torquil.net
[email protected]  

PS I have attached a photo of the site of the Lewis Settlers' first church in the wilderness where the cemetery descibed above is located.

[Aon_Daonna]

Just Aon, or Mirri, Angus, the whole name is too much.
well, could you ship it too germany then?
I just have some financial problems right now, so you have to wait until I finished all this hassle

[RavenWing]

Welcome, Angus!

[tartangal]

Hi Angus,
   Welcome. I read your posts with great interest.It must be wonderful to have such a connection to the past and such a sense of your own heritage .What an achievement to produce such work and how much more special given your ties to the story.I hope that it is as successful as you wish and that many more people get to know what happened there.

[CelticRadio]

Hi Angus,

I just wanted to welcome you to the forum and thanks for posting all of the great information about yourself and your CD. I know that we had received your CD last year and we are currently playing your songs on the broadcast. Once our site is re-designed we would like to have you as a featured artist in our musician database. Thanks again for stopping by!