Song of the Summer: Walk to the Shieling

Meet 10am at the Fank Car Park - map link here - All Ages Welcome - Dress for the Weather 

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At the threshold of summer, we invite you to join a community walk remembering the tradition of the shieling - a time when people across the Highlands moved with their cattle to the high summer pastures, or àirigh in Gaelic. We’ll make our way to the shieling hut on Càrn na Leitire, returning to Abriachan hall for a soup lunch, songs and art activities.

On the walk, we’ll notice and name local plants, trees, wildflowers and birdsong. Ryan will bring to life the world of the shieling: how children played an active role in this seasonal way of life - camping in small bothies, looking after the cattle, gathering plants for food and medicine, churning butter, sharing songs and stories. We’ll even make our own butter along the way, to bring back down for lunch!

Back at the hall, Gaelic song group Ealtainn will sing shieling songs. Inspired by what we noticed on the walk, we’ll write new words for the Gaelic song ‘Far am bi mi fhìn is ann a bhios mo dhòchas’ (Where I will be, there my hope will be) and sing them together, and create some art inspired by the day too. 

Led by Mairi McFadyen and Ryan Dziadowiec, with special guest songbirds Ealtainn (Maebh Sandilands, Anna Rose Pollock & Sophie Stewart)

Any questions or for more info email Mairi at hello@mairimcfadyen.scot.
*Ticket limits on this event are due to parking availability and hall capacity.*

'Song of the Summer' takes its name from Òran an t-Samhraidh - a celebrated Gaelic nature poem composed c.1741 by Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair (Alexander MacDonald, c.1698–1770). It is full of sensory and ecological detail: the song of the cuckoo and the thrush, the quality of the light the trees, the smell of wild herbs and flowers. It notices the world so carefully it becomes an invitation to do the same. Here is a verse that speaks to the shieling season:

Bi am beithe deagh bholtrach 'urail, dosrach nan carn,
ri maoth-bhlas driuchd cèitein, mar ri caoin-dhearsach grèine,
bruchdadh barraich troimh gheugan, am mios ceutach a' Mhàigh:
am mios breac-laoghach, buailteach, bainneach, buadhach gu dàir.

The birch will be sweet-scented and fresh, thick around the cairns,
with the tender taste of morning dew, the gentle glittering of the sun,
buds bursting through the branches, in the blythe month of May:
month of speckled calves, folds, milk and bounty.

Supported by Creative Scotland with funds from the Scottish Government.

This day is part of 'Songs, Stories and Stewardship' in Abriachan Forest - a Creative Scotland funded project by Mairi McFadyen, a creative practitioner with a place-based, research-led practice exploring questions around land, culture and community in response to the climate and ecological crisis. 

Ryan Dziadowiec is a researcher and educator whose work explores the connections between people, place and language, particularly in the context of Scotland's Highlands and Islands. Sense of place is the thread which connects his past work as an outdoor educator at the Shieling Project and his recent PhD research on the Gaelic concept dùthchas. He is interested in the ways that traditional Highland notions of belonging, stewardship, and kinship can inform contemporary thinking on land, ecology, and community.