Her background is Glasgow, Irish and on her mothers side from
Skye and the Stewarts. Her father was a piper.
When she was young she was ill with polio and during that
time heard stories from her grandfather.
She went over to Newfoundland Canada with her father and
discovered all these old Scottish traditions that had died out in Skye and in Scotland.
She had trained as a primary teacher but now decided to become a folklorist and
she has been teaching at the school of Scottish studies at Edinburgh
university. There she worked with the Scottish poet Hamish Henderson who was
always asking her to poetry readings.
Her talented
son Martyn Bennett went with her everywhere and heard as a child all these
traditional singers and pipers. He had an excellent teacher at school and when
he was doing his higher music students were allowed to play the Spanish guitar
but NOT the Scottish pipes! So he sat
his higher music playing the pipes, one of the first to do so.
Martyn
sadly died at the young age of 32. I was at the wonderful opening concert at
Celtic Connections 2014 which was the first orchestration of Martyn's
incredible Grit album - one of the best concerts I have been at. I wondered
where he got all these references for his music as if he'd pluck them out of
the air - now I know it was from his mother. She
said in a recent radio interview that she tries to be thankful every day for
the small gifts. Things that rankle -
let them go.
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